Wikipedia talk:Database reports/Biographies of living people containing unsourced statements

Hi, I was thinking as a way of promoting remedying this area, was it possible to make the run exhaustive (i.e. all 8000 of 'em), and then run monthly? I was thinking of posting a link and running tally on the signpost in an effort to get folks sourcing unreffed BLPs. Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 11:16, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

All right. I'll try to explain this from the technical side and the social side. Currently, this script runs a query that makes two temporary tables, one of all pages that transclude Template:Fact in NS:0, and one of all pages that are in Category:Living people in NS:0. It then compares the data and outputs the rows that are the same. However, it's very slow at doing it, so it is limited to 500 entries. Having the script output the two sets of data and then compare them itself (rather than having MySQL do it itself) would likely be much faster, but will require someone to write that code.

Now, from the social side, it's usually best not to show people the entire elephant, as it makes it much, much harder for them to eat it. By only showing 500 entries, the list isn't as overwhelming. (Which isn't to say a full list isn't possible from the technical side, just that the current limit has its benefits.) Also, I'm not sure how good of an idea it is to publish just how many unsourced BLPs we have. (1) It could be an embarrassingly high number; (2) this only looks at one individual template rather than looking at others, so the number may or may not be wholly accurate.

Thoughts on all of this? --MZMcBride (talk) 22:30, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

I agree that huge numbers look scary, with the result that people are discouraged. Given the mechanics, I can see that a snip of 500 for folks to peruse may be a good starting point for the signpost anyway. OK, I will see if Ral thinks it is a good idea to slot in for a while and see if we see any action. Any idea how we calculate the total amount anyway (raw tally)? Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 02:47, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Well, outputting the two lists and running them through a script is simplest to grab a total. I just did that and got 17,608 results. :-/ That's 17,608 pages in NS:0 that are in Category:Living_people and transclude Template:Fact. Good grief. --MZMcBride (talk) 03:34, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Whoa!! Well, it's a number at least. I have posted to Ral's talk page. If he is OK with it, I was musing on a link and status update every post. It would be nice to reduce the number. No idea what is reasonable though. Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 04:40, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

The list that I am seeing now, I mostly see politicians and many of them just have one fact template in the article. Been trying to remedy those now, did about 20. User:Zscout370 ^{(Return Fire)} 04:43, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Woo-HOO (in best Homer Simpson voice) Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 14:14, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

Template:Citation needed?

In July 2009, {{Fact}} was renamed to {{Citation needed}}. From this page, it seems to be saying that it only lists pages from here (which transclude {{fact}}), rather than {{cn}} or {{citation needed}} directly (or the other redirects). Is this correct? And if so, shouldn't it be changed to those which transclude {{Citation needed}}, so that all of the redirects (including {{fact}}) are included as well? Mhiji 00:07, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Done: https://github.com/mzmcbride/database-reports/commit/ecd48af4bdb225a199a8b064354f63884ab2653c --MZMcBride (talk) 02:16, 7 January 2011 (UTC)