User talk:Jekoko/Cleanup links

Some glosses on the pages

• The Wikipedia:Cleanup/month pages are temporary, meant to be re-tagged with the Scheme II tags, as it says on their header. The fact that they haven't been done yet is just because nobody has done it yet... JesseW 2 July 2005 07:55 (UTC)
  • Cleanup/month tags to be replaced by Scheme II tags. I can see I'll need a little more here. What is Scheme II, please? Jekoko 8 July 2005 01:51 (UTC)
    • oookkaayyy, got it now. you meant my list's Scheme II. I need caffeine. Jekoko 8 July 2005 17:00 (UTC)
• The reason for Category:Cleanup_from_September_2004 and Category:Cleanup_by_month was a semi-aborted attempt to organize category-based cleanup listings with a date format - it was more or less still-born, and the category should be cleared and submitted to WP:CFD. (IMHO, of course.) JesseW 2 July 2005 07:55 (UTC)
  • I agree completely that these two need to go. Jekoko 8 July 2005 01:51 (UTC)
• Category:Cleanup_leftovers is slightly different - it's a special tag to be applied to articles which have needed cleanup for more than 6 months, for those who want to work on the hard cases. I suppose that it could be applied by a bot to articles in the Scheme II area. Or we could just get rid of it. JesseW 2 July 2005 07:55 (UTC)
  • I think that Cleanup/leftovers has some merit. When I first got here, that one caught my eye right away. I wanted to work on the really old ones that everyone else might have given up on. Jekoko 8 July 2005 01:51 (UTC)
• Category:Wikipedia cleanup is populated by the {{cleanup}} tag. AFAICS, this is just a Really Bad Idea - I thought the cleanup tag was for taging items to be placed on the old Wikipedia:Cleanup page; putting them in category too just seems like a mistake. JesseW 2 July 2005 07:55 (UTC)
  • I agree that the category of Wikipedia Cleanup could go, so long as somewhere editors could find an alphabetical list of articles needing work. Jekoko 8 July 2005 01:51 (UTC)
• Most of the Special pages have been pretty much outdated by the output of specially written programs run against the periodic database dumps by individual Wikipedians, who then put the output up on the Wiki and get lots of other Wikipedians to fix whatever was noticed. The archatypal project like this Wikipedia:WikiProject Wiki Syntax. I think Ancientpages falls into this category. JesseW 2 July 2005 07:55 (UTC)
• All the Categoryies in Scheme II are the result of User:Beland's reform of the cleanup system - the page for this list is Wikipedia:Cleanup resources. JesseW 2 July 2005 07:55 (UTC)
  • Soooooo, there has already been one reform of the cleanup system. I think it needs a little tweaking yet. Jekoko 8 July 2005 01:51 (UTC)
• Wikipedia:Categories of pages needing attention is another list like yours. ;-) JesseW 2 July 2005 07:55 (UTC)
  • Hmmm. My list exists simply to help me navigate and to remember where I found things. I was getting very frustrated, knowing I had seen certain lists of articles to be fixed somewhere, but was unable to find them again. Jekoko 8 July 2005 01:51 (UTC)
• I don't know why you only included Wikipedia:WikiProject Punctuation - pretty much all the Wikipedia:WikiProjects are designed to work on articles that need(or could use) some improvement. JesseW 2 July 2005 07:55 (UTC)
  • I only included punctuation because, unlike the other projects, that one is concerned with copyediting. I am a professional editor and may have a different hierarchical structure in my head for what belongs in a cleanup scheme. That's another reason I'd like a clearer distinction between cleanup and maintenance. Jekoko 8 July 2005 01:51 (UTC)
• Wikipedia:Pages_needing_attention must die! :-) Seriously, I think it would be good to run through the articles on that page and re-tag them. I'll start right now, and (barring objections) we should be able to finish eventually. I'll add a note to the top of the page stating that new requests should not be added, which should galvanize any opposition... JesseW 2 July 2005 07:55 (UTC)
  • After looking over the page, and the talk page I think I can gloss it's use as follows: Pages needing attention is pages needing content work from people knowledgable about the subject. It does still seem to be being used. Considering that, I think it should mainly be replaced with an improved way to submit articles to the apropriate WikiProject. I'll start adding such links(unless I again decide something else should really be done...) JesseW 2 July 2005 08:04 (UTC)
    • Pages needing attention isn't going to get any votes of confidence from me. If the pages need content editing by someone knowledgable, they should get a more specific tag than just needing attention. Surely there are other tags to use. If the number of articles there were whittled down, it might be useful as a sort of clearing house where folks could dump an article when they don't know exactly what is needed, only that the article as it stands is not good. Jekoko 8 July 2005 01:51 (UTC)
• Hope this remarkablely long reply is of use to you... Again, thanks and good luck with The Cleanup Mess. JesseW 2 July 2005 07:55 (UTC)

Hey guys; saw your post on VP. Here's my 2 cents on the Cleanup subject. If I'm reading the various article/talk page histories and archives correctly, W'pedia used to only have one page for listing articles that needed to be fixed: Wikipedia:Cleanup, and editors had to specifically list an article "by hand" on that page. As W'pedia grew exponentially over late 2003 thru 2004, other pages were created in order to list articles with specific problems (like Wikipedia:Requests for page expansion or Wikipedia:Deadend pages.) Then sometime in late 2004 User:Beland more-or-less unilaterally created a system where tagging an article automatically caused it to be placed in an appropriate Category. Some editors thought this was swell, others hated it. So now there are two ways to list or find an article that needs help; tagging it automatically places it on an appropriate Category page, and/or it can still be listed "by hand" on a Wikipedia namespace page.

I've found this confusing myself, and like you I've "lost" an article that needed to be fixed since I couldn't remember where I found it. And, just like you, after I'd been here about a month I had some thoughts about rearranging the whole system; then I did some investigating, and saw how much work would need to be done, so I abandoned the idea. Kudos to you for attempting to do something about it, but here's a few things to keep in mind (IMHO, of course):

1. Messing about with the cleanup process is messing about with some of the major "behind-the-scenes" mechanics of W'pedia - this is one place I would advise 'not being bold and instead suggest coming up with a plan and submitting it to Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals) and make sure you have community consensus before changing too much, especially because,
2. Everyone uses Wikipedia differently - there are many different paths to the same destination. This is, generally, a Good Thing. So you should realize that a specific reorganization may make sense to you because you use Wikipedia in one way, whereas another editor who uses W'pedia a different way may find it confusing or frustrating. Example: JesseW's suggestion to eliminate Wikipedia:Pages needing attention and instead submit pages to the appropriate WikiProject sounds reasonable, except there are many editors (like me) who pay no attention to WikiProjects; if you ditch Wikipedia:Pages needing attention, you are "forcing" other editors to use W'pedia "your" way. And, BTW, Wikipedia:Pages needing attention is still definitely in use; it's only been a couple of months since it was reorganized by subject instead of one huge list. Also, there aren't enough WikiProjects, AFAIK, to cover all the articles on Wikipedia:Pages needing attention.
3. One reason people like the Wikipedia namespace pages (where articles must be listed "manually") it that it allows them to make some comments on what needs to be done for the article, which you can't do with the Category system. This is (I suspect) why the namespace pages are linked to from Special:Recent changes (which is a pretty important page).
4. Rather than redo the whole system, if I were you I might concentrate first on rewriting/expanding/clarifying some of the instructions on the various pages to make it easier for newer editors to find their way around. I have done some of this on Wikipedia:Cleanup and Wikipedia:Cleanup process. I agree that the "cleanup-by-month" categories seem to be unused and could possibly be eliminated. Oh, yes, and Wikipedia:Cleanup is the "sort of clearing house where folks could dump an article when they don't know exactly what is needed, only that the article as it stands is not good" page"

So there's my Humble Opinion on the "Cleanup Mess." Hope I've given you some food for thought, and thanks for listening. Soundguy99 16:03, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

Thank you, Soundguy! After looking into Pages Needing Attention, I realized it was still in use, and I take back my suggestion that it be removed. I agree with you that updating the instruction pages is a better idea than reforming the system, at least, as a means to deal with new users confusion with it's complexities and variation. I'll look over your changes to the pages you mentioned. I think it's great to have some PNA people editing the Cleanup instructions - hopefully we can hammer out a central set of instructions, at least. ;-) (And thanks for letting me know on my talk page, I am watching this page, but it was nice to be reminded.) JesseW 16:51, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

That's a lot of good info

I really appreciate the time you took to give me this info and for waiting while I got back to you. I'll try to respond in the same order as above.

(Responses merged into the message by JesseW 8 July 2005 19:29 (UTC))

You have obviously given this issue some thought and we appear to be mostly in agreement as to what needs to be done. You've been here longer than I have. What's next? the tildes are not working, my log-in is kaphlooey. this is Jekoko 65.125.44.137 8 July 2005 01:51 (UTC)

No problem. I've been here (somewhat) longer, but I don't really know how to combine all the requirements of a cleanup system. Beland is on a wikibreak until September or so, when he gets back he's a good person to talk to. When/if I think of more, I'll add it here. JesseW 8 July 2005 19:29 (UTC)

Beland's recommendations

I agree the state of cleanup tracking on the site is quite a mess! I guess I'm not taking a very effective Wikivacation by posting here, but I happened to be passing through, so, here goes....

I moved Wikipedia:Cleanup from a central-listing style to a tag-and-talk style mostly because we seemed to have reached agreement on the corresponding talk page that it was a good idea, but no one was actually implementing it. I guess a lot of people who didn't like the idea didn't notice the discussion until the page was actually switched over. It's fine with me if people continue to just dump things there; it's good that there's a low barrier to noting a problem, and that there is someplace where people will actually look at the note and do something about it.

Benefits of "tag and talk":

• There is only one place to discuss what changes need to be made to the article - the article's talk page. With central listings pages, you have the people who are discussing the article in the annotations to the list, and people who watch or who are using the talk page of the article, and these two groups might not notice one another. This can lead to duplicated efforts, confusion about what needs to be done, and missed opportunities for people to contribute improvements.
• You don't lose the ability to have a central listing, thanks to categories. It's also still possible to organize articles chronologically, at least by month.
• People who are reading the article itself come across the tag (if it's one of the tags that gets posted on the article page instead of the talk page) and this tends to get more people involved in fixing it.
• With central listings, it's very common for someone who doesn't know the central listing entry (or page, for that matter) exists, so they fix the article, but it's not unlisted. This creates a lot of overhead for maintainers, who have to continually check through listings to see whether or not any of the articles there have been fixed, and also wastes the time of potential contributors, if they try to fix articles that have already been fixed. With maintenance tags, random editors who fix articles or notice they have been fixed remove the tag; this automatically removes it from the corresponding maintenance category.
• Central listings pages, especially "todo" lists, are always in danger of becoming neglected and forgotten. Tagging individual articles not only increases the chances that that particular article will get fixed, but it also provides a link (via the category system) to the central listing. This increases the chances that more people will discover it.

Benefits of central listings:

• A community of people who habitually use the page tends to grow up around it.
• It's easier to find things that were added in the last day or week.
• Some people find it nicer to edit the central page to add and remove listings, instead of editing article pages.

About the old Wikipedia:Cleanup/month pages: I was actually going to have my bot Pearle automatically tag these with {{cleanup-date|MONTH}}, but I discovered that this is probably not the right thing to do. (And this is where the conversion project stalled.) As I mentioned above, one of the drawbacks of central listings is that articles can get fixed without being de-listed. No one is really checking these old pages to see if articles have been fixed. Here's what I started doing:

1. Check to see if the article is fixed. If so, delete the listing and do the happy article dance.
2. See if there is a more specific tag on Wikipedia:Cleanup resources than just generic "cleanup". In particular, if it should be punted to the stub sorting project or Wikipedia:Pages needing attention, then do so.
3. If it just needs generic cleanup, tag it {{cleanup-date|MONTH}}.
4. If there are any comments in the listing, move them to the article's talk page.
5. Delete the listing.
6. Repeat until the cleanup page is empty. Redirect the page to the by-month category.

I suspect lots of the pages listed here have had the generic {{cleanup}} tag applied, which is why that category is so full. So sorting through these will help that problem some by sorting them by month.

Sorting by type of work that needs to be done seems to encourage remedial work to get done faster. I think different people are fixing different problems. For example, wikification of articles listed on Template:Opentask seems to get done really fast, though there are a lot of articles to do. I try to rotate those requests frequently, so there's always fresh work in this high-profile list. Having articles tagged makes this really easy. I just open each article in a new tab and see if it still has a wikification tag at the top. If not, out it goes, and I cut-and-paste the name of an article from the wikification category.

For wikification and other types of work where there's a relatively small number of articles in the queue, I've been using alphabetical rotation, coordinated on the category page. This prevents any one article from sitting around too long in need of fixing.

Generic cleanup work does not go very fast, but fortunately there are compensating mechanisms. We get a lot of listings on Wikipedia:Cleanup every month, but a lot of those articles get fixed right away. A "by month" page that has been sitting around for half a year or more will have a bunch more fixed simply by random chance. Then if you follow my procedure above and punt non-generic-cleanup tasks to other queues, the monthly list has become a lot more manageable. The ones that are left are usually the harder nuts to crack. What I've been doing is feeding the oldest, hardest cleanup tasks to Template:Opentask, to get them wide exposure. If they aren't fixed within a reasonable amount of time (a week or two), I move them to Wikipedia:Cleanup Taskforce, where they get passed from desk to desk until they get fixed.

I was a bit concerned about the Taskforce's capacity to close as many articles as it opened in a given month, but it seems like if someone comes along and reassigns neglected issues to new desks, they do disappear fast enough. I wonder if it wouldn't be more efficient, in the short run, to open a slew of new issues (like say, all the undone generic cleanup tasks left in Wikipedia:Cleanup/September) there, so each participant will have at least one open issue on their desk. I also notice that some Taskforce items marked as open can probably be closed, and some of the issues listed there were actually expansion requests, which isn't quite what it's for.

Speaking of which, expansion and stub requests listed on Template:Opentask get processed very slowly. These aren't just a matter of fixing the content that's already in the wiki; you actually need to know something about the subject, or be willing to do research, which means you probably need to have an interest in the subject.

So it makes sense to me to organize these by subject area. This has already been done for stubs; I think it would make sense to do the same for expansion requests. For stubs, this is done with "tag and talk". I would prefer that method for expansion requests as well, since they sit around for so long and no one ever checks the lists to see what has been fixed. For example Wikipedia:Requests for expansion 2004 is most certainly in need of purging. Many of these articles have already been expanded, and can be de-listed. I see that many of them are also already tagged or should be tagged as stubs, and these shouldn't also be listed as having expansion requests. (Still others are actually now merge requests, and so on...)

Regarding Wikipedia:Pages needing attention, I agree it needs some help. Clearly, we need somewhere where articles needing cleanup by content experts are collected, arranged by subject, and this is the seed of that. I think it would be better used if this was clarified. A few ways to do this:

• Rename the page to "Pages needed expert attention" or "Expert cleanup" or somesuch.
• Change the tag used to {{tl:expert}} instead of {{tl:attention}}. Better yet, use expert-computers, expert-law, etc.
• Purge all of the items that don't need expert attention. There are a lot of them. And Wikipedia:Pages needing attention/Maintenance is the worst offender.

Personally, I would prefer a "tag and talk" tree, so experts would browse categories instead of central pages, for the reasons already mentioned. (But especially for ease of maintenance, since these requests live a very long time, and checking for updates is not really done much.) But keeping a central listing would also be fine by me, as long as it's purged and clarified; we can make some attempt to keep it reasonably updated.

I'll share one success I had at reducing the meta-cleanup mess - I managed to eliminate the rather neglected Wikipedia:Help wanted by removing everything that was already fixed or listed somewhere else. That left very little, if anything, to fix myself, and then the page was empty, so I redirected it to Wikipedia:Cleanup. I'm optimistic some of the current clutter can be reduced...it's not that hard to purge a week or two of backlogged requests off a page in one sitting. Which brings me to me next post...

-- Beland 05:27, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

Enlisting help

Given the amount of purging that needs to happen, it seems to me that it's either going to take several months or more than one person is going to need to work on it. I have several recommendations for enlisting help:

• Viral marketing seems to be very effective. Create a project page and in the instructions for helping out, give people a string to add to their edit summaries that links back to the project page. People will see this link when they check their watchlists or look at article histories, and some of them will click on it and some of them will join in.
• List your project page on Template:Active Wiki Fixup Projects, Template:Opentask, and Wikipedia:Village pump somewhere (though the village pump is under-read these days, it seems).
• Submit a story about your project to the Wikipedia:Signpost.

You might try assigning purges of specific pages, or parts of pages, to people on the Wikipedia:Cleanup Taskforce who have expressed interest in meta-tasks.

If you have articles which are particularly worthy of improvement, Wikipedia:Collaborations of the week and Wikipedia:This week's improvement drive are the places to go. I wonder whether nominating "Purge cleanup lists from 2004" or somesuch would work on any of those pages. Hmm, probably not. But that would be a great way to publicize a meta-project - cleaning out things that have been neglected for an embarrassingly long amount of time. You could also just directly list yourself on Wikipedia:Community portal, as a few collaborations have done.

Good luck, and I hope to help tidy up more when I come back from wikivacation. -- Beland 05:27, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

(See the new Wikipedia:Maintenance collaboration of the week, which arose when I followed my own suggestion to advertise maintenance tasks on the Community Portal. -- Beland 03:54, 8 August 2005 (UTC))

Soundguy99's response to Beland's recommendations

1. Beland's "Tag, categorize and talk" system now makes more sense after his explanation. However, my humble opnion is that the community benefits, simplicity and long-standing use of central pages outweigh any "efficiency" concerns. The central listing pages are linked to from the Special:Recent changes page, and I'm sure that a lot of editors use these pages regularly, or have them on their watchlists. I would not eliminate, rename or significantly alter how these pages work without very wide community support.
2. I agree that one of the weaknesses of the central listing system is that articles can be fixed and de-tagged w/out being de-listed. I've been doing some work on that sporadically. I like Beland's system of moving cleanup-listed articles that have not been fixed in a while to other "This article needs help" pages to see if they get more attention there and to clear out the backlog.
3. Too many cleanup/month pages is distracting. I, personally, would like to see a maximum of six past-month pages. One solution is to just empty a page by putting all the non-fixed articles into the "leftovers" page.
4. And/or we could just accept the fact that an article is not getting worked on and de-list it. While this may be unsatisfying, it is, in the long run, temporary, since sooner or later another editor will find it and re-list it or fix it.
5. I don't think many people know about the {{cleanup-date|MONTH}} tag, which is why it's rarely used. We should probably popularize it via the Village Pump and some instructions at the head of the Cleanup page.
6. Wikipedia:Pages needing attention/Maintenance. I'd forgotten that this page existed, especially since it isn't linked to from the main Cleanup page (??!!??). This is a leftover from the older system and needs to go away. Or, actually, it should contain instructions on how to maintain the Cleanup pages (like how and when to de-list a page), incorporating a lot of our ideas and list of names on the
7. Cleanup Maintenance Taskforce. Rather than significantly alter the system, we should use a mechanism that's already in place and create a Maintenance Taskforce to watch over and maintain the cleanup pages, de-listing, de-tagging, and moving articles. The core of the group could be me (although my Wikitime during the summer can be sporadic), JesseW, Jekoko & Beland. List the Taskforce at Wikipedia:Wikipedia maintenance, the VP and on the main Cleanup page.
8. Agree that Requests for expansion should be organized by subject.
9. I strongly disagree that "Pages needing attention" should be renamed or even used as an "expert attention" page. Here's why:

1. Frankly, a lot of articles listed there don't need expert attention - just attention from an editor who knows something more about the subject, or has more interest in the subject, or simply more time than the editor who found the problem article.
2. In fact, often an article will need less expert attention and more attention from a layman. We are trying to write a general-use encyclopedia, and non-expert editors can provide valuable input & editing to make sure that a general reader can understand the article.
3. IMHO, Wikipedia already often wanders perilously close to being a collection of loosely-associated feifdoms, with small groups of editors working only on small groups of articles. One of the core strengths of the WikiWay is that anyone can edit anything, and suggesting (even subtlely) that "only experts should work on these pages" is only encouraging that kind of splintering. Since PNA is already organized by subject, real experts can find articles to work on if they want to (or use the Category system), and other editors can browse to find articles they may know a little about, or that just need some rewriting without neccesarily knowing much about the subject. The key to Wikipedia is collaboration from many people, not small-focus attention from experts.
4. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Nobody has provided evidence for a practical problem resulting from the way PNA works now. Just because it offends one or two editor's sense of organization doesn't mean that it's ripe for restructuring. As I said, in W'pedia there are often many paths to the same destination, and this is good. "Your" way of using W'pedia is neither the only way or necessarily the "best" way.

Thanks for listening. Soundguy99 16:20, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

Working hard on long response

Spending time working through all these thoughtful views. Preparing lengthy response. Don't want to post anything half-baked. Jekoko 16:32, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

Jekoko's Very Long Response

This response does not include any response to Soundguy99's latest post (most of which I agree with BTW). First let me give you the absolute bottom line of what I think. I have come to the surprising conclusion that things are nowhere near as bad as I thought. We have some good systems; they just need to work together instead of in parallel.

Here is how I see the Wikipedia structure if you organize the basic areas of what is done here. I call it the V-McFetch structure. (It's the best I could come up with using only one vowel.) I have not added or deleted anything we currently have, just shuffled a very few subareas around.

VERIFICATION

• Copyright issues
• Sources and references
• Fact checking
• Systemic bias
• Neutral point of view disputes
• Accuracy disputes
• Other controversies

MAINTENANCE

• Updates
• Vandalism
• Deletions
• Featured articles
• Peer review
• Featured images
• Surveys
• Protected pages
• Archiving
• Sandbox sweeps
• Welcomes

COMMUNICATIONS
FUN
EXPANSION

• Stub sorting
• Requested articles
• Missing articles
• Expansion requests
• Splitting

TRANSLATION

• Translations

CLEANUP

• Punctuation
• Typo team/spell checking
• Wikification
• Editing:
  • Clarification
  • Context
  • Copy edit
  • Dubious importance
  • Explain significance
  • Fiction unclear
  • Limited geographic scope
  • Non-standard pronunciation
  • Rewrite
  • Self-contradictory
  • Style edit
  • Too technical

HIERARCHY

• Moving
• Disambiguation
• Merging
• Broken categories
• Orphan categories
• Red links
• Double redirects
• Transwiki issues
• Deadend pages
• Duplicate articles
• Articles to be sorted

I also list my original scheme of cleanup pages for reference:

List of Cleanup Links in Three Schemes
Scheme I
The following seem to be centered on the date the work was requested:

• Category:Cleanup_by_month
• Category:Cleanup_from_September_2004
• Category:Cleanup_leftovers
• Category:Wikipedia_cleanup
• Special:Ancient_pages
• Wikipedia:Cleanup
• Wikipedia:Cleanup/September
• Wikipedia:Cleanup/October
• Wikipedia:Cleanup/November
• Wikipedia:Cleanup/December
• Wikipedia:Cleanup/January
• Wikipedia:Cleanup/February
• Wikipedia:Cleanup/March
• Wikipedia:Cleanup/April
• Wikipedia:Cleanup/May
• Wikipedia:Cleanup/June

Scheme II
The following seem to be centered on what work needs to be done:

• Category:Articles_that_need_to_be_wikified
• Category:Limited_geographic_scope
• Category:Self-contradictory_articles
• Category:Wikipedia_articles_of_dubious_importance
• Category:Wikipedia_articles_needing_clarification
• Category:Wikipedia_articles_needing_context
• Category:Wikipedia_articles_needing_copy_edit
• Category:Wikipedia_articles_needing_rewrite
• Category:Wikipedia_articles_needing_style_editing
• Category:Wikipedia_articles_needing_their_fiction_made_clear
• Category:Wikipedia_articles_that_are_too_technical
• Category:Wikipedia_articles_which_could_be_improved_by_explaining_significance
• Category:Wikipedia_articles_with_nonstandard_pronunciation
• Wikipedia:Categories_of_pages_needing_attention
• Wikipedia:WikiProject_Punctuation

Scheme III
This page and its subpage are the only two that seem to have no time-frame or indication of the work to be done. They seem to be mostly alphabetical with a few subject categories.

• Wikipedia:Pages_needing_attention
• Wikipedia:Pages_needing_attention/Maintenance

Proposal

Within the Cleanup area, as defined above, we have three schemes (I-date, II-type of fix, III-alpha/subject) to access/add to lists of articles needing cleanup, using two different methods, “central listings” and “tag & talk.” I think that all three schemes and both methods have merit and should be retained. However, they need to be revised in order to work together more effectively and efficiently. In the best of all possible worlds, each article needing fixing would be listed in all three schemes — by date, by fix needed and by article title/subject — and most of the process would be automatic.

Reasons to Keep What We Have

Merits of Date Listing/Scheme I [Tagged articles]

• Working by month or by “older than 6 months” lets editors choose whether they want to help with newly discovered problems or help with very old problems.
• Volume of articles in each month’s listings helps editors realize the size of the backlog and how old it is, emphasizing need for help.
• Readers see the tag when viewing the article and know that it needs fixing in some way, increasing involvement by newbies and transients, perhaps whetting their interest in Wikipedia.
• Tags provide an automatic link to the tag category page.
• Removal of the tag by an editor causes automatic update of the tag category page.

Merits of Work Needed Listing/Scheme II [Tagged articles]

• Those specializing in a certain type of editing, such as wikification or rewriting, can find lists of articles needing their particular skills.
• Volume of articles in each type of editing category helps editors realize the size of the backlog, emphasizing the need for help.
• Readers see the tag when viewing the article and know that it needs fixing in some way, increasing involvement by newbies and transients, perhaps whetting their interest in Wikipedia.
• Tags provide an automatic link to the tag category page.
• Removal of the tag by an editor causes automatic update of the tag category page.

Merits of Alpha-subject Listing/Scheme III [Central listing]

• Linked to the Special:Recent changes page, users of this special page can keep close tabs on what needs doing.
• Listed alphabetically or by subject, editors can skim for articles they’d like to work on.
• Adding to a central listing, a namespace page, is easier for newbies and transient visitors, who are not familiar with using tags.
• Central listings can be watched easily.
• Central listings can act as a clearinghouse for the other two schemes.
• Central listings can build their own communities of editors/requesters, making comments on each listed article as needed.

Problems with the current system

We currently have a big mess, but the more I look at it, the less vast it seems. What are the reasons for the current mess?

• We lack clear instructions on what to do when one spots an article that needs help. Being wary of instruction creep, I think we can still hammer out an easier way for people to figure out what to do in this situation.
• We lack an easy way for newbies to figure out what goes on around here.
• We lack a clear division of tasks, which means that:
  • Cleanup editing is confounded with maintenance and/or verification, as defined above.
  • Duplication of effort is common.
  • Comments in the central listing and comments on the article’s talk page are often two parallel lines that may not intersect even at infinity, causing further confusion, duplication and missed opportunities.
• Non-removal of fixed articles from central listings after cleanup causes unnecessary work for those who maintain the central listing pages and for those who go to an article intending to fix it, only to find it already fixed.

Proposed Solutions are Not Draconian

Noting that an article needs help
Let’s say someone decides that an article needs something done to it. There are at least two things that can happen in an ideal and automated situation:

• If the reader is an experienced Wikipedian, a tag is placed on the article and it is automatically listed on the Scheme I page for the current date, as well as the Scheme III central listing by the article’s subject and/or title. The tag itself places the article in the appropriate Scheme II listing page by what sort of fix was requested. All three schemes, all automated once the tag is placed.
• If the reader is a newbie, a transient, or just knows that something about the article is not good enough for Wikipedia, they can list it manually (with comments) at a central clearinghouse page. Doing so triggers automatic listing in Scheme I, by the date of the request, and Scheme III, by the subject and/or title of the article. In this case, the only thing that can’t be automated is what kind of fix is needed. If the requestor doesn’t (or can’t) do that themselves, that’s where we need a V-McFetch team, who will decide, based on the requestor’s comments, where to place the request in the V-McFetch system. All the team member has to do is add the appropriate tag. Simple, efficient, effective.
  

Basic information page
We need to revamp the page that purports to explain how Wikipedia works, so that newbies can find their way around with less confusion. This page needs to contain a summary of the V-McFetch system, along with a large number of links to the major areas.
Promote and publicize the V-McFetch system
Explain that the V-McFetch system is only a new way to look at what we’ve already got. Explain that we are not eliminating the ways people use Wikipedia now, only making the ways work together instead of in parallel. In particular, we can automate listings on the tag lists, ask folks to continue any comments on the central listing at the article’s discussion page, have a V-McFetch team monitor the central listing adding tags where needed.
Keeping the lists up-to-date
If tag removal triggers automatic removal from Scheme I and II listings, couldn’t removal from those listing pages trigger removal from the Scheme III central listing page? Is this feasible in the Wiki software? At worst, we could have the team monitor the tag lists and manually make the removals on the central listing page.

Information Newbies Need

• A clear outline of wikipedia structure
• A clear list of what they can do here
• A suggested list of things to do
• A suggested tour of pages to visit
• A clear statement of what wikipedia is for
• A clear statement of wiki behavior policies
• A request for newbies to become part of the wiki community

Some suggested text
Building a free encyclopedia is not like running a company, commanding an army or even raising children. Wikipedia is most definitely NOT a hierarchy of commands from up top.

A good way to think of Wikipedia might be along the lines of a community potluck dinner, except that you get to change the recipes if they aren’t quite right. You can also help organize what goes on what table— desserts here, salads there. You can help clean up spills, prevent the kids from running wild, welcome the newcomers to the community, talk around the punch bowl, keep your neighbors Mary and Harry from arguing about politics, and ditch Agatha’s really bad potato salad (yecch!).

In this analogy, think of Wikipedia as a set of tables with goodies on them, a set of people milling about the tables and a set of tasks that need to be done if the dinner is to be a success. If there is anyone in charge, you can’t pick him or her out of the crowd. (Although if you ask, someone will kindly point you in Bill’s direction.)

Getting back to Wiki-reality, here are the major areas of Wikipedia structure, V-McFetch.

Verification - making sure that all is right and legal and that this is an encyclopedia, not a diatribe or polemic
Maintenance - making sure things are not forgotten or ruined, keeping the wheels turning
Communication - making sure we have a place to exchange ideas
Fun - making sure we don’t take this or ourselves too seriously
Expansion - making sure that little articles grow and new articles are written
Translation - making sure the English Wikipedia is in English
Cleanup - making sure that articles are of good quality
Hierarchy - making sure we can find what we are looking for

why doesn't my sign-in work on this computer - frustrating!! Jekoko 65.125.44.123 18:45, 24 July 2005 (UTC)

Responses

Wow. That is long and interesting! I've read it (yes, V-MacFetch is an embaressing name, but we can work on it. ;-) ), and lots does make sense. I think you've missed a few bits: the central listing cleanup page (would a fan of that speak up and tell us how and what they use it?), the subject orientated WikiProjects, and some other ones I can't remember right now, but you've got a lot of them, and I like the arrangement. I'll have more responses later. Great job! JesseW 04:36, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

Definitely wow. Very nice analysis of the situation, although I had to read it a couple of times - this kind of detailed breakdown complete with acronym and dividing by schema doesn't really come naturally to me; I'm more of a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants kind of guy. A few initial very general thoughts:

1. Jekoko, did you click "Remember me" when you signed in? I had the "automated log-out" problem too, and apparently (I Am Not A Computer Engineer) periodic W'pedia server cache-clearing and/or your personal computer's cookie/cache settings can result in an automated logout after a period of time or a jump between multiple open windows. Clicking "remember me" fixes that problem for me, although I've seen some people complain about the problem even with the "Remember" button clicked.
2. AFAICT, fixing the cleanup mess so that things happen automatically the way you described them in your "ideal" situation would involve writing code and AFAIK all or almost all of the Wikimedia software developers are volunteers, too. So unless we can convince a developer to write the code, or one of you wants to do it, it probably won't happen anytime soon. We'll probably need to concentrate efforts on fixing the situation via already existing methods.
3. Your analysis of the Wikipedia structure grew (naturally) from analyzing the cleanup situation to analyzing W'pedia as a whole and thinking about how we present ourselves to newbies. Very insightful, but for practical purposes let's keep the focus tighter and work on the "Cleanup" problem before tackling general W'pedia structure or organizing for newbies.
4. Re:Jesse W's "fans of the central listing cleanup page": Well, I don't know if I'm a fan, but when I'm putzing around W'pedia I like to use "Recent Changes" as a sort of central page, and so from there I'll wander over to the Cleanup page (which is wikilinked @ the top of RC) to see if there's anything I want to work on or to do some de-listing maintenance.
5. Um, not to point out the blindingly obvious, but you guys do realize we're having this discussion on a user Talk page that's part of a user sub page. . . . . . In other words, probably the only editors that know about this are me, Jekoko, JesseW and Beland. I think that before we go too much further (and definitely before any serious work gets done) we need to open the discussion to the wider community. I'd suggest creating a new sub page @ Wikipedia talk:Cleanup (although we don't have to copy all of these comments to it), and then spread the word via the VP and a few other places so we get some more input and approval from the community. Soundguy99 15:12, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

Other bits in the Wikipedia namespace

• Category:Wikipedia_policies_and_guidelines
• Category:Wikipedia archives
• Category:Wikipedia basic information - i.e. tutorials, about pages, etc.
• Category:Wikipedia FAQs
• Lots of other stuff...

Not that they are related to cleanup, just so we are slighly more aware of them. JesseW

Progess

Well, I managed to get rid of Wikipedia:Pages needing attention/Maintenance by re-tagging or resolving all the problems listed there. A small victory against todo list clutter. -- Beland 10:00, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

Beland's reply to Soundguy99

Too many cleanup/month pages is distracting. I, personally, would like to see a maximum of six past-month pages. One solution is to just empty a page by putting all the non-fixed articles into the "leftovers" page. And/or we could just accept the fact that an article is not getting worked on and de-list it. While this may be unsatisfying, it is, in the long run, temporary, since sooner or later another editor will find it and re-list it or fix it.

Well, I agree it would be nice to keep the list of cleanup subpages to a minimum. I don't think they should simply be abandoned - it took some amount of effort to identify those pages and tag them. Readers should continued to be warned that they may be getting bad information from those articles, and there are editors who specifically work on the oldest ones. Given the smaller number of articles in the later months, I'm sure a concerted effort could get us down from a year behind to six months behind. Just yesterday I started assigning September tasks to the over 50 members of the Wikipedia:Cleanup Taskforce, many of whom have had desks lacking assignment. Despite my previous worries, I was also able to close out a bunch of tasks previously assigned to the Taskforce, so it seems they are making good progress there.

We also have the new Wikipedia:Maintenance collaboration of the week, which helped clear out about 500 articles from the wikification backlog. I think if we finish the Cleanup/Month conversion (so volunteers don't waste time looking at already-fixed articles in parallel) and/or sort {{cleanup}}-tagged articles into monthly categories (which can by done by bot), it would be a great idea to nominate the cleanup backlog for a weekly collaboration. I'm sure it would make a significant dent. -- Beland 00:56, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

• These all seem like good ideas to me. You are correct; with almost 700,00 articles to date we should not be abandoning un-cleaned-up articles. Soundguy99 15:03, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

I don't think many people know about the {{cleanup-date|MONTH}} tag, which is why it's rarely used. We should probably popularize it via the Village Pump and some instructions at the head of the Cleanup page.

Good idea. I added such to Wikipedia:Cleanup. -- Beland 00:56, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

Rather than significantly alter the system, we should use a mechanism that's already in place and create a Maintenance Taskforce to watch over and maintain the cleanup pages, de-listing, de-tagging, and moving articles. The core of the group could be me (although my Wikitime during the summer can be sporadic), JesseW, Jekoko & Beland

Feel free to add yourself to Wikipedia:Cleaning department. Personally, I care less about forming a new committee than having clear instructions for maintenance so anyone can pitch in. I recently updated Wikipedia:Cleanup process to these ends to try to help make the Wikipedia:Cleanup archiving process more clear. -- Beland 00:56, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

• Good point - better to get more people involved in cleaning than form a new committee. Nice work on the Cleanup and Cleanup process instructions, BTW. Soundguy99 15:03, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Nobody has provided evidence for a practical problem resulting from the way PNA works now.

Well, there are a few practical problems. First of all, because it's not a tag-and-talk system, someone has to go through the listings to see whether or not the described problem has been fixed yet or not. That's pretty much just a waste of time. Secondly, as you can see on Wikipedia talk:Pages needing attention, people are confused about which mechanism they should be using to report problems. There's also the problem that people who visit the article itself, or its talk page, either don't know there's a central listing on PNA, or can't find it, or don't bother finding it. So they don't get the benefit of any comments which have been left there. -- Beland 00:56, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

• I think the two systems would co-exist more comfortably if we put some notice at the top of both the central listings page and the category page explaining that tagging does not automatically put a page on the central listings page. Although I have fooled around with this, I have not yet been able to come up with a concise and clear way to phrase this that doesn't just add more verbiage to an already lengthy set of instructions. Then, of course, there's the question of how many people actually RTFM anyway. . . . . . Soundguy99 15:03, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

Frankly, a lot of articles listed there don't need expert attention - just attention from an editor who knows something more about the subject, or has more interest in the subject, or simply more time than the editor who found the problem article.

Yes...I guess the word "expert" does not really express what I mean. Does "Pages needing subject-specific attention" make more sense? You're certainly right about not wanting people to feel they're not qualified to edit articles. The important part is to distinguish this mechanism from general cleanup, so people know where to put things and where to find them. -- Beland 00:56, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

• I dunno. . . . seems like a kind of clumsy page title. I think the sentence that you (I believe) added to the top of PNA clarifies things nicely. Soundguy99 15:03, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

Next steps

OK, I'm trying to distill some concrete recommendations from Jekoko's long post.

• Regarding Soundguy99's response: I don't think any software changes are needed...removing a categorized template from an article already automatically removes that article from the category.

• Regarding cross-referencing by-task queues by date...this is currently being done for {{cleanup}}...sooner or later, I'll use a bot to sort those out. (Though I think Wikinews is using some Mediawiki magic to get a list of the most-recent additions to particular categories.) We're getting more help converting by-month archived central listings to tag-and-talk style these days, too. (See Category:Cleanup by month. This is useful because this queue will probably always be a few months behind. For other categories, like wikification, I'm hoping to actually get rid of the backlog, so simply encouraging people to rotate through the alphabet should keep stuff from staying there for too long. But there are other backlogged categories where you might want to sort by date, like NPOV. Which are you proposing be done this way, Jekoko? Who is going to implement this? As Soundguy99 suggests, such plans should probably be announced and debated on the relevant template, category, or central listing talk page.

• I definitely agree that documentation for newbies is in vast need of improvement. I've added some suggestions to Wikipedia:WikiProject Wikipedia Namespace, in addition to what was already there. I would suggest coordinating such efforts there. I've copied the amusing proposed text Jekoko came up with to there, too.

• We also still have the "Should Wikipedia:Pages needing attention be reformed?" That discussion should clearly proceed on Wikipedia talk:Pages needing attention, where it's already half-started.

-- Beland 04:02, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

• Update: Pearle is now sorting Category:Wikipedia cleanup by month. -- Beland 03:32, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

On wiki-vacation

I have bad things happening here and must go on wiki-vacation until further notice. Sorry.

Jekoko 15:59, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

Back at Wikipedia

Hi all. I had to deal with a death in the family (Iraq) and it will take me a while to see all that you guys have been busy with while I was gone. If the discussion on cleanup has moved elsewhere, please let me know. Thanks, Jekoko 16:08, 12 October 2005 (UTC)