Wikipedia talk:Backlog/Archive 1

What is a backlog?

What is a backlog? --Abdull 15:14, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

A long list of things that need to be done, that has not been done for some time. r3m0t ^talk 00:17, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Moved definition to main page, since I almost missed it here. After a while someone should delete this section of the talk page. 192.80.65.246 22:55, 2 January 2006 (UTC) anon.

Maintenance collaboration

Should the maintenance collaboration be wikifying articles, as adding articles that have been requested for over a year is not always possible and is not something everyone can be involved in? --Draicone ^(talk) 01:15, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

You can still work on articles without it being an official collaboration. In fact, that's a very good thing to do. Crystallina 15:54, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

Where did Category:All uncategorized pages go?

Until recently it was on the backlog list; that's how I found it. I've found Special:Uncategorized pages but wonder why this came off the backlog list... BusterD 15:45, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

There is Category:Category needed, did you meant that? Garion96 (talk) 04:05, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps there was a CFD that I missed, and perhaps I'm under some delusion, but until just a week ago there was such a category listed on this backlog page, sorted by alpha (see this diff). If one visits the (non-existent) category, one sees countless pages listed as belonging to this non-existent category. 04:45, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Yep, it was indeed deleted. See [1] I guess it wasn't necessary since you have the articles sorted by month in Category:Category needed Garion96 (talk) 13:50, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Like a little brain, this place. Synapses firing, pathways being rerouted, all seemingly by itself. No intelligent design, as such. But sophisticated intelligence nonetheless. Thanks for the response. Feared I was becoming a bit wikicrazy. BusterD 14:51, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Automatic backlogs and reorganizing this cat

Hi! I've just created {{Automatic backlog}}, which can be used to "automatically" add and remove the Backlog template from categories, based on how many pages are in the cat. With this tool to make it easier, I propose that we create "backlog" categories that list all pages with a particular problem. We already have this for some things, like Category:All articles needing copy edit, but not for all for all of them (e.g., where's Category:All articles with topics of unclear notability). Therefore, I propose to implement these new "compilation" categories for backlog universally, having them alongside every by-month backlog category. By doing so, {{Automatic backlog}} can be placed on the "All articles..." categories to automatically add and remove the cat from the backlog as appropriate, which right now can only be done with certain cats. Each of these "All articles..." cats would then contain links to the primary, by-month cats, which can still be used to systematically work on the backlogs from the oldest backlogged pages to the newest. This would also have the benefit of automating the counts on the main backlog page of how many pages are in each category, using the {{PAGESINCAT:}} magic word, which is currently used to generate only some of the numbers on this page. Thoughts? –Drilnoth (T • C) 13:57, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Do you have any estimates on the edit rate of such an automated service? Covering everything may be excessive. Perhaps specific categories could be added to a list when the need for backlog monitoring was felt needed? Also, what is considered a backlog? Can we configure what is considered back log? Can one category have a limit of 10, and another a limit of 20? Is this some clever use of templates or is it a bot?(lots of questions I know) Chillum 14:29, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Okay, here's some more details:

1. The {{Automatic backlog}} template uses the {{PAGESINCAT:}} magic word. Because it's a magic word, kind of like DEFAULTSORT or FULLPAGENAME (just with a different function), it doesn't actually edit pages; you won't see anything in the category's edit history other than one edit to set up the automation. For example, the following number uses PAGESINCAT to count the total number of pages in Category:Living people: 1,088,472. When I first added this comment, the number generated was 350,553. This number should change on its own, without saving it as an edit, as the number of pages in the category changes. The {{Automatic backlog}} should in fact lower the total number of edits made, since users won't need to manually add and remove {{Backlog}}.

2. What is considered a backlog varies depending on the category. CAT:SPEEDY uses 75 as a rule of thumb; others may have higher or lower numbers. The template used to generate the backlog template with this idea ({{Automatic backlog}}) has a customizable parameter so that you can set exactly how many pages need to be in the cat for it to be added to the backlog. You could, for example, add Category:All articles needing copy edit automatically to the backlog when it has at least 100 articles, and Category:Copy to Wikimedia Commons when it has 500. It's really just an arbitrary decision based upon how important the issue is that the category covers, but right now it's even more arbitrary since it's just based on someone going "Okay, I'll add this to the backlog" or, "Hmm, this only has fifty articles. I'll remove it from the backlog".

3. It's just a template, no bots involved, with a magic word. The entire coding for the template is: {{#ifexpr:{{PAGESINCATEGORY:{{PAGENAME}}|R}} > {{{1|}}}|{{{{{2|Backlog}}}}}}}{{#ifexpr:{{PAGESINCATEGORY:{{PAGENAME}}|R}} <= {{{1|}}}|{{cmbox | image=none|text =This category is automatically added to [[:Category:Wikipedia backlog|the backlog]] when it contains more than {{{1|}}} pages}}}}, which not only allows you to specify how many articles create the backlog, but also to change what template is added (e.g., to use {{Adminbacklog}} rather than the default template), and to display a messagebox saying that the page is added automatically to the backlog when the chosen number of pages are in the cat. –Drilnoth (T • C) 14:51, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Sounds like a great idea. I think it should be applied to those back logs that people see a need for it on. Not universally though, I am sure there are areas where discretion is used to determine if there is a back log. Chillum 15:18, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Certainly not all cats would use it, but I think that it would be quite useful for maintaining the list of backlogged pages. In some cases discretion is certainly needed-such as if not all pages in a category actually have the problems which the cat is for-but for most categories it should work just fine... things like Category:All articles needing copy edit don't have many false positives which could cause mistakes. –Drilnoth (T • C) 19:53, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

FWIW: If a page is added or removed from a category based on inner logic of a transcluded page, the page will need to recieve a null edit. For this to work, there'd ideally be a bot that goes around and null edits all pages that transclude this template every couple hours (or, even better, have all such pages in another (hidden) category so that this bot could be used for similar cases, like all pages transcluding {{db-t3}} which currently have the same problems).
A regular purging of the page would be necessary in any case, to reevaluate PAGESINCATEGORY. --Amalthea 15:16, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Indeed, but the template transclusion should add the pages to the categories after a period of time, once the job queue gets to it, without the need for a null edit. It might be off by a few pages depending on the size of the cat, but it shouldn't really make much of a difference for this purpose... it should be fixed in a day, anyway. –Drilnoth (T • C) 15:22, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

I don't know much about the job queue, but I don't think it will do that, since the underlying template is never explicitly changed. If it did then the job queue would have to reparse each and every page every day. At the very least someone will have to request the category page, which IIRC causes a reparsing after some cache period (which I believe is closer to one week than one day).
Someone at WP:VPT will probably know details. Amalthea 15:50, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Looking at Help:Category#Adding a category by using a template, it would appear that this is only a problem if a new category is added to the template. So if we added Category:All articles with topics of unclear notability to {{notability}} and {{importance}}, it wouldn't be instantly populated by all of the applicable articles. But, given a week or so, the job queue should "recache" most of the pages, basically performing a null edit on each of them, and adding the page to the transcluded template's category properly. So, this might be a problem when we're first getting this set up, but already-established categories (e.g. Category:All articles needing copy edit) will be readily usable right away. So, it might take a month or so to ease into the new process, depending on how many templates would need to be changed, but its really just a technical detail. The main question is whether or not this sort of process should be used, then we can worry about making sure that all the right cats exist and contain the correct articles. –Drilnoth (T • C) 16:12, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

The case at hand is different since nobody will actually edit the template: it is supposed to be recategorized just because a parser function evaluates differently than before. Those jobs won't ever be created! --Amalthea 16:28, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

But the templates will be edited... {{Notability}} would be edited so that it transcludes Category:Articles with topics of unclear notability into whatever articles it is in. It doesn't relate to or use parser functions at all... just a few Includeonly tags and a category name added to each applicable template. Wikipedia will register this as an edit to the template, and add it to the job queue. –Drilnoth (T • C) 19:52, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, adding {{Notability}} will actually instantly place the page in question into the notability category. From then on, PAGESINCAT used with the notability category will return 1 more than before. If I then look at the category page, it might be reparsed and actually claim that it is in the backlog category.
However, the category page itself will never be edited, and none of its dependancies will be edited. Therefore, the backlog category will never list the notability category. For that to happen, it would require an edit of the notability category (→ added instantly to the backlog category) or one of its dependancies i.e. transcluded templates (→ will be added to the backlog category once the job queue gets around to it).
You can try it. Create a page with {{#ifexists:User:Drilnoth/doesitexist|[[Category:Drilnoth test exists]]|[[Category:Drilnoth test exists not]]}} and you find it listed in Category:Drilnoth test exists not. If you then create User:Drilnoth/doesitexist, but don't ever (null) edit the actual test page with the parser function, it won't show up in Category:Drilnoth test exists no matter how long you wait I think. If you purge it, it will claim to be in the category, but it won't be listed there. --Amalthea 20:17, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Okay... this is getting a tad confusing for me. I've put in a request for more input at WP:VPT so that we can try to sort this out... the only other thing that I can base my thoughts on, at this time, is that CAT:SPEEDY has used a virtually identical "automatic backlog" method for a long time, and whenever there were over 75 pages in the category, {{Adminbacklog}} would appear and the page would be added to Category:Administrative backlog. I find it unlikely that users were performing null edits to get it to appear properly in the backlog category, but it is certainly possible. –Drilnoth (T • C) 20:35, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

By the way, I do have this proposed process in use on a few categories already, if you'd like to see active examples. A full list can be viewed here. –Drilnoth (T • C) 16:16, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

I don't see the benefit in keeping track of so many backlogs. Can someone give a use case of this? --- RockMFR 22:06, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

It's just convenient to have them all in one place, as kind of a "Things that need to be done" type of listing. –Drilnoth (T • C) 22:50, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

I am not really following this proposal. I understand how the template works but not the re-organization that is being proposed.--BirgitteSB 00:03, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Basically, the proposed reorganization is as follows:

Right now, we have Category:Articles with topics of unclear notability, as well as month-by-month subcategories of it. This would be unchanged.

An additional category, Category:All articles with topics of unclear notability, would contain all of the articles of the month-by-month categories relating to notability.

The {{Backlog}} template would then count the number of pages in this new category to determine whether or not it does, actually, contain a backlog. (note that the template does not yet have this functionality; this is being discussed elsewhere and can currently be done using {{Automatic backlog}}).

Because the backlog template would be counting the number of pages in the "All" cat, that would appear in Category:Wikipedia backlog, rather than the "main" categories, such as Category:Articles with topics of unclear notability. However, the "All" category would include a link to the main cat for ease of navigation.

In short, to fully automate all of the backlogs, the subcategories in this category would be changed from being the "Main" category for a type of problem to being the "All" category.

Does that clarify things? –Drilnoth (T • C) 01:15, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes that makes sense.--BirgitteSB 01:37, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

There are several issues discussed here, so let's number them:

1: Using "all" categories: I currently have no point of view on when to use and not use "all" categories.

2: We should not use the {{automatic backlog}}, since we already have a better option. We already added the "autoreport feature" to {{adminbacklog}} itself a week before {{automatic backlog}} was created. Having the function directly in {{adminbacklog}} has a number of advantages, you can read the details about that over at Template talk:Adminbacklog#Autoreport feature. We are also planning to add the same functionality to {{backlog}}, see its talk page. Thus making {{automatic backlog}} unnecessary. If I correctly understand Drilnoth's response at another talkpage it was kind of a mistake to create {{automatic backlog}}, since he had missed to read these talk pages before he created it. I too every now and then forget to read the talk pages before I change or create a template... And it took me two weeks and several versions to get the code of the autoreport feature just right, so this is tricky stuff.

3: Question: When does the template count the number of items in the category, so it knows when to hide or show? Answer: MediaWiki only parses the code when the category page is re-rendered. That is, when someone views the page and it is more than one week since it was last re-rendered. Since MediaWiki caches pages for one week. Thus it can take a week before the template changes when the number of items have changed. But if no one visits the page then it can literally take forever. (I did run such a test for several months some time ago.) To get an immediate change you can purge the page, for instance by clicking the () button in {{adminbacklog}}. And that is why {{adminbacklog}} has such a recount button when it is set to autoreport. Just purging the page doesn't cause an edit to the page, thus not filling up the edit history of the page, and thus costing less server resources (less CPU and less disk space).

While I am at it, and since you guys discussed it above, here's some more technical info:

The jobqueue is not involved in the re-rendering of pages that are more than one week old. Instead what the jobqueue mostly does is to make it so that pages that depend on a page that has been edited or purged are pushed out of the cache, so they will be re-rendered the next time they are visited. That is, when you edit or purge a page MediaWiki checks in the page code and database what other pages and categories depend on it, and then lists them in the jobqueue. (For instance if a template is used on lots of pages, whenever that template is edited all those pages are added to the jobqueue.) When the process that works the jobqueue takes the next page name from the jobqueue it sends an order to all the cache servers to drop that page. And that is the reason for having the queue, since the order to drop the pages is fairly costly since it has to be sent to lots of servers. Thankfully the purge function is smart, if the purge doesn't result in any change of the page then it doesn't add the dependant pages into the jobqueue, then it only causes a re-rendering of the page itself.

There seems to be several jobqueues with different priority, since different kinds of updates take different time: Category updates are much slower than template (transclusion) updates, and removing of items from a category is much slower than adding items to a category, and removing/adding subcategories in a category is slower than removing/adding normal pages in a category. Thus the slowest thing I am aware of is removals of subcategories from categories. When the servers are very busy it can sometimes take up to a week before a category shows that a subcategory has been removed from it. (And I agree with that priority order, the Wikimedia sysadmins know their job.) Note that category pages have two parts that are updated separately, at different priority: The category description at the top updates like a regular page, while the category list below updates much more slowly.

Disclaimer: I have done extensive testing of this over the years. But I have not read the MediaWiki code and server settings, so this is based on what others have told me, and then verified by my experience and my testing.

4: Having a bot purge these category pages at regular intervals. (As Amalthea suggested above.) I think this can be a good idea. Purging the category pages once a day should probably be enough. We shouldn't purge them too often since even just purging costs some resources. Just as Amalthea suggested I/we can easily make it so when {{backlog}} and {{adminbacklog}} is used with the autoreport limit set, then they automatically put those category pages into some hidden "purge once a day" category. (As Amalthea mentioned, other templates might need other intervals, thus they might use say a "purge every 4 hours" category.)

And I think I know how we can optimise this so the bot only needs to purge the category pages when it actually is needed, thus making it very server efficient. (It would be similar to what we did with the category redirect bot, it involves category sort order and using the MediaWiki API. Long story. Note to self: Use negative and positive sort order values.)

But we shouldn't bother too much about this bot purging yet, since so far it seems the autoreport feature will only be used on a handful of categories.

Anyway, does someone know who runs the bot that are currently purging pages for some templates? So I can discuss this with that bot owner.

--David Göthberg (talk) 00:18, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Wow... that was almost—almost—tl;dr, but I did actually read almost the entire thing. Thank you very much for your explanation on this topic. –Drilnoth (T • C) 01:15, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

1: Now that Drilnoth has explained more about how he means the "all" categories should work: I agree with his suggestion, we need such "all" categories. Since it will help both automatic and manual backlog reporting to work better. And it will help us find all cases, since sometimes there are pages in for instance month categories who have no category description thus they are not listed at their parent category. (Or the month category description simply is not marked with the parent category.)

Such "all" categories should be hidden, since otherwise the pages that are marked with them shows both the subcategory and the "all" category, which looks bad. We already use such hidden "all" categories for many other things than "work needs to be done" categories.

--David Göthberg (talk) 01:57, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Exactly! And they would certainly be hidden, just like all cleanup cats. If wanted, I can start work on creating such cats for templates which I can... I'll just have to make editprotected requests for some templates, unless an admin can go around and do them. –Drilnoth (T • C) 02:00, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

• I'd suggest separating "level 1 backlog" and "level 2 backlog", somehow, such that urgent-ish backlogs (like CAT:SD or WP:AIV) are prioritized over the long slog-type backlogs (like WP:PUI). tfeSil (aktl) 08:37, 1 April 2009 (UTC)
  • The urgent backlogs you mention are not in this page at all. They are in Category:Administrative backlog which is much smaller.--BirgitteSB 12:16, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

I find the tracking information useful

Please don't remove it.--BirgitteSB 16:47, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

The template contains all of those categories, and tracks them live. They're organized by type and quantity. Which of the tracking information do you find useful... the numbers (which are also in my version) or the "backlogged over one year"? –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 17:40, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

I think the new version is an improvement. All of the same information is there, but I find the organization lets people with interests in certain parts of the wiki find similar areas to work on. --NickPenguin_(contribs) 18:06, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

It does not contain the same information. The information about the age of the backlogs is lost. As well as the information about how close the oldest subcategory is to being emptied. Can't you use defaultsort to arrange the categories by types? Or make subcategories for "Image backlogs" etc. to help people find similar stuff to work on?--BirgitteSB 18:36, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

That seems like it would be clunkier. Also, when the category itself includes by-month cleanup cats, it doesn't give the full count of the category, whereas this does. Would it make sense to include both the "over one year" age info and statistics and the new template? –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 18:57, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

I don't know what you mean. You removed information that I find useful to have together where it can be compared. If you think adding information about the similarity of backlog type would be useful, go ahead. If you think adding that would be too clunky, don't add it. But please don't remove information.--BirgitteSB 19:34, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

The "backlogged over 100,000 pages" and "backlogged over 10,000 pages" sections are, effectively, included in my version. The only thing it doesn't have is something equivalent to the "backlogged over 1 year". Would it make sense to you to replace the current first two sections with {{Backlog status}}, which has more information and includes all the current info of the first two sections, and then have the list of oldest backlogs above or below that? I'm thinking of something like this. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 21:53, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

FWIW, I think {{Backlog status}} is nicely laid out and looks awesome. :) JamieS93 22:01, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

I just added some more subsections to it... do you think that it is now better or worse? –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 22:03, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

• Sorry for leaving you hanging for so long, I have been swamped in meatspace. This is fine with me.--BirgitteSB 22:18, 4 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Sounds good to me. Thanks! –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 22:36, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Random page in category

At my request, a new template {{Random page in category}} was created. It's been added to a couple of backlog categories, e.g. Category:Unreferenced BLPs. The idea is to make it easier for an editor to find a particular page to work on. The link could also be used for informal random surveys of articles in a category. I propose adding the template to all the categories listed on the backlog page, but I'd like to get other's opinion before I proceed.--agr (talk) 11:41, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

I happened to read this, so I took a look at the {{random page in category}} template. It seems to work fine, and uses the toolserver so it is an "in house" tool, so using it seems okay. I added a suggestion for a small technical improvement of it on its talk page.

Personally I probably won't use the links that that template produces, but I don't mind it being on the category pages. So my point of view on the matter is: If you think you and others have a use for it, then go ahead and add it.

--David Göthberg (talk) 17:23, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Highlight by priority

The backlogs are getting out of hand. We need a way to draw attention to the areas that need attention the most, perhaps by highlighting the urgent areas somehow from within a list to attract workers to it, or creating some sort of newsletter page that will emphasize the importance of focusing efforts in a certain area before it gets out of hand. Or we could set up some sort of system where maintenance editors and wikignomes can sign up for which areas they enjoy working in then target backlogged categories to those specific editors. I'm just throwing out ideas here, I'm sure with a little brainstorming we can improve on this. -- œ^™ 08:05, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

-Or we can pay them to do it!! ;) -- œ^™ 21:48, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

1. BLPS, COIs are higher priority.
2. Then probably promotional, peacock, weasel.
3. Then un-ref type stuff
   1. Whole article
   2. Section
   3. Statements
4. Then improvement needed, expand,
5. Then cosmetic (style, clean-up etc.) or almost almost cosmetic - page number needed etc.

Rich Farmbrough, 18:42, 10 October 2010 (UTC).

Femto Bot keeps the months up to date now. It would be possible to, nine times out of ten, record the last entry in a monthly category, and find the editor who fixed it. The possibility of Barnstarring them, with an (almost) unique barnstar then arises. Rich Farmbrough, 13:58, 22 October 2010 (UTC).

Yes! Excellent idea. So how do we keep track of which categories are down to their last entry? I suppose since BLPs and COIs are higher priority we should focus on just those for now? We still need to come up with a suitable barnstar.. but it doesn't necessarily have to be totally customized, I'm sure there's something existing we can use. -- œ^™ 14:14, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Since FemtoBot already cleans the page I guess it can go off the the one-item cats and store the name of the "last" item. There is a chance that another one gets added and they get cleaned in the "wrong" order, but that's slim. I cleared the last item from the oldest unref BLP cat today, maybe I should have saved it for later! Rich Farmbrough, 02:23, 24 October 2010 (UTC).

		The Empty Set Barnstar
		For emptying a clean-up category.	{ }

Woohoo! We now have an organized effort happening! Check out The Great Backlog Drive. -- œ^™ 05:42, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

Linked counts to list of articles prioritized by number of incoming links

The number of "What links here" incoming backlinks an article has is a useful proxy for how many pageviews it gets, which currently takes way too long to query

If there are any questions about User:Dispenser's awesome new http://toolserver.org/~dispenser/cgi-bin/categorder.py script, please ask me because I helped a very small amount and promised I would try to filter the easy bug reports. Thanks! Npmay (talk) 07:36, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

• Thanks! I have tried other tools but this one is FAST. My problem is: where will I find this URL again next time I need this? Ottawahitech (talk) 13:22, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

Backlog by WikiProject?

When I look at the list of backlogs, I find it very overwhelming to see over 2,000,000 issues that need to be fixed. Is there a way the backlogs could be viewable by WikiProject? For example, I can run Dab Solver for WikiProject The Beatles or other WikiProjects I'm interested in, and focus on fixing those issues. If editors could view the backlogs by WikiProject, I would hope each WikiProject would resolve their issues, and we could make a dent in these backlogs. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 15:41, 15 July 2012 (UTC)

Thanks to User:Svick, we have the WikiProject cleanup listing for many WikiProjects. For example, here's a link to the cleanup listing for WikiProject The Beatles. GoingBatty (talk) 02:59, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Message to anybody watching this page

I've proposed a Wikipedia wide watchlist backlog drive at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Watchlist notice backlog reduction. You might be interested. Ryan Vesey 21:57, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

A proposed tool for reducing backlogs

FYI

I proposed a tool for quickly moving through a lot of the backlogs here. Discussion is at Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab)#A proposed tool for reducing backlogs. APerson (talk!) 01:27, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

Monitoring backlog categories

A good idea of User:TheJJJunk: He monitors certain backlog categories using {{User:TheJJJunk/Backlog}}, a template he made:

Backlog status ()

Category	Current status
Pages with missing references list	Not done
Persondata templates without name parameter	Done
Articles with incorrect citation syntax	Not done
Pages with URL errors	Done

which determines if the category is empty or not. He also uses ARA, a script that he developed, to help fix citation errors. --Frze ^{> talk} 17:57, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

First, that's cool. I'm going to use it. Second, a question. It looks like the formula is asking "Is the number of pages in this category equal to (a specified number)"? Don't you want to ask if the number of pages is less than a specified number (i.e. the backlog number)?

You also have to strip commas from the PAGESINCAT result for categories with over 1,000 pages. My code looks like this:

|{{#ifexpr:{{formatnum:{{PAGESINCAT:Pages with citations having wikilinks embedded in URL titles‎|pages}}|R}}<100|{{done}}|{{notdone}}}}

Which results in this:

Backlog status ()

Category	Current status
Pages with citations having wikilinks embedded in URL titles‎	Done

Further enhancements are welcome. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:01, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

Very cool - thanks for sharing! Any chance of adding the ability to limit the results to articlespace? For example, I check Category:Pages using multiple issues with incorrect parameters, but don't fix the user/template talk/Wikipedia pages. Also, any chance of adding the ability to exclude subcategories? For example, I check Category:Films for articles that need to be moved to be moved to the appropriate subcategories. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 00:51, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

I can answer one of my own questions based on mw:Help:Magic words#Statistics: {{PAGESINCATEGORY:categoryname|pages}} will exclude subcategories. GoingBatty (talk) 01:07, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

Initial page

I set up this page rather than having a redir to the category because I feel it is a very important issue. The content started off with essentially what was in Category:Wikipedia backlog. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 19:45, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

Thank you so much for this! So much easier to find the articles that need help. I've only just begun but I have a rather boring job that affords me lots of time. I'm clearning out some of the "missing links" right now but simultaneously editing for content and copy. --Kobuu (talk) 20:49, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

Wow

Looking at this page, it's overwhelming how large the backlog is. It seems like it will be impossible to process all of these articles and files. It's rather daunting to know where to begin. NewJerseyLiz ^{Let's Talk} 01:03, 19 August 2013 (UTC)

Indeed. Round the numbers per category to the nearest 100,00, add them up, and you get ±1,700,000 tags to deal with. Now this does not represent 1,700,000 articles because many articles have multiple tags. {These tags represent both the inline and larger banner type templates, and an article can get tagged for the same issue month after month at different points. For example, you will see "disputed" and "citation needed" for the same bit of information.) So, this is actually a major problem in WP because so much garbage gets in and never gets tagged for any sort of problem. I wonder if the Foundation is tracking this. I.e., do we/they know if the over all number is increasing, decreasing or what? So, consider, we have 129,524 active registered users. How many of them work on the back log? My guess is one percent. Well that gives the dedicated 1,300 users each one thousand + tags each to work on. (And the problem continues month by month.) Daunting is too mild a term. – S. Rich (talk) 08:07, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

Agreed! I've been focusing on the BackLog of "No WikiLinks" for now. Once I clear out the past months, I'll move on to another category. Unfortunately, I'm seeing that as each month goes on, the numbers go up dramatically and then stop. We'll probably never be current, but at least we can help out the older articles. I try to clean up other tags when I'm in an article or relabel them for the current month so as to roll them forward. There seems to be a more active userbase for the more recent articles. Kobuu (talk) 13:02, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

@Jimbo Wales: + @Sisyphys: What do you two think? – S. Rich (talk) 05:50, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Consolidation and targeted effort.

Hi Team, is there a way to modify the script that populates this maintenance CAT to automatically weed out the pages that either do not require our attention or are deliberate "errors" to provide examples. e.g. All User, Draft and Wiki help pages in any/every CAT. This will give us more a realistic number of errors and allow participating editors to focus on the crux of the issue(s). Regards The Original Filfi (talk) 02:55, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

User:The Original Filfi There should not be many, give me some examples. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 22:28, 21 February 2016 (UTC).

Backlog - topic for November 4 Tip-Of-The-Day

Greetings! On November 4, the Tip-Of-The-Day is about the WP backlog. The tip is Help reduce the Wikipedia backlog and includes a link to Wikipedia's backlog page.

This November 4 tip was recently added at the TOTD Schedule Queue and is also posted at the Tips library. Regards, JoeHebda (talk) 23:13, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

Category:Articles with unsourced quotes

Hello. I've been going through : Category:Articles with unsourced quotes and I've seen that the articles have been tagged by date, but the category is all put together. I was wondering if the articles could be broken up by the date they were tagged (such as Category:Wikipedia articles needing page number citations's format) to help organize and see which month(s) need to work on first. Thanks! --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 04:40, 23 January 2017 (UTC