Archive:The Big Cleanup

What's going on here? We need you, yes you, to sign up as a tester for the Big Cleanup. As a tester, for each article in a set of articles, you'll do two things: first, you'll go through a simple "to do" list; second, you'll slap the {{checklist}} template on the talk page and fill it out. Neither of these things is terribly difficult.

How to get started as a tester

Follow the following instructions; if you have any questions, ask below! Note, you might find it most efficient to follow the precise steps listed below in this precise order each time.

1. Sign up above. To find your articles, go to Special:Allpages and search on the page for your first article.
2. For each article, complete this to do list (it's quite easy to do), which can be found at The Article Checklist:
   • Bold the article title, if necessary.
   • Remove all unused (red) templates, category tags, images, and interwiki links. It might be a good idea to copy the templates and images to the talk page for people to reinsert later. Please don't remove links to nonexistent articles (unless you feel moved to work on the article: removing such links isn't part of the "assignment").
   • Add workgroup category tag(s). Please use only the workgroup categories listed under CZ:Discipline Workgroups. If you think there needs to be another workgroup (which hasn't been created) in addition to one that you've placed an article into, then simply specify: cat_check = y . Also, use "Category:Needs Workgroup" (capitalization important) only if there are not any suitable workgroups for an article.
   • Add Category:Topic Informant Workgroup if an article is a biography of a living person, profile of a company, group, etc.--essentially, any article that concerns an existing nonpolitical entity with legal interests.
   • Add (or remove) the CZ Live tag as appropriate. Note: remove "CZ Live" if no significant changes have been made to an article. Removing unused templates, etc., are not significant changes. For purposes of this exercise, let's define "significant changes" as at least three changes in three different places to the wording of an article. Deletions count as changes. Any new article, even if a stub, is automatically "CZ Live".
   • Check the "Content is from Wikipedia?" box if the article is sourced from Wikipedia. NOTE: if this is the only edit that you make to an article, you have to make some small edit in the article text box as well (e.g., add a space at the end of a line--it won't show up). Otherwise your change won't be saved. Doublecheck at the bottom of the page that there's a link to Wikipedia.
3. Then add Template:Checklist to the article's talk page, and complete the Article Checklist. Basically, copy the code in the box below, paste it on the article's talk page, and fill out the form. It's pretty easy. Essential instructions for doing so are on CZ:The Article Checklist. Please sign your name with four tildes, not three, so that the date you filled out the checklist is given.
4. If you have any suggestions or questions, please state them below. If you think this is all a big big mistake, say that, too!

Here is the checklist template you can copy and paste:

{{checklist
|                 abc = 
|                cat1 = 
|                cat2 = 
|                cat3 = 
|           cat_check = 
|              status = 
|         underlinked = 
|             cleanup = 
|                  by = 
}}

Some examples

A complete list of articles that make use of the Article Checklist can be found at Category:Checklisted Articles.

Tester sign-up

Samples article sets, for testing. These are just the first twelve articles in the first five letters of the alphabet. We really need some practical experience doing this before asking people to do this on a large scale. To find your articles, just go to Special:Allpages and paste in the name of your first article into the search box.

To sign up to handle the articles in the set (12 articles per set), just sign your name.

1 CE - acclamatio

Cleaner: Larry Sanger

Done? Yes

Baccalauréat - Bahá'ísm

Cleaner: 'Dragon' Dave McKee

Done?

Cachalot Scout Reservation - Canthal scales

Cleaner: luke brandt

Done? Yes

Daboia - Daboia persica persica

Cleaner:

Done?

Ear - Echidna Gabonica

Cleaner: Supten

Done? Yes

Factor analysis - Fence plowing

Cleaner: --AlekStos 03:53, 10 March 2007 (CST)

Done? Yes (more feedback soon)

Suggestions

Questions that it would be useful to have answered. Is this a good idea? Is it worth the effort? Is this something we can expect to implement on a large scale? Is it too confusing to be implemented on a large scale? (If the answer is "yes," please be honest.) Should we add, or delete, any fields to the checklist? Should we add, or delete, any items to the cleanup "to do" list?

Particularly if you have been doing some testing, please give feedback here. Are there Article Checklist fields that you'd like to see added? Would you like to see new categories tracked? New things to put in the checklist?

If basic cleanup includes removing underlinking, will the links have to be reinserted as and when those new (related) articles come up in CZ? But will anyone be tracking them at that time? On the other hand, if the red tags remain, that may stimulate some of the contributors to start articles on those - at least in WP I had created many new pages from the underlinks. Supten 22:56, 8 March 2007 (CST)

Basic cleanup does not involve removing red links to articles, but only red links to nonexistent templates, pictures, categories, and interwiki links. --Larry Sanger 21:56, 11 March 2007 (CDT)

Hmmm. The workflow feels broken... or maybe I just didn't quite fall into one. Might do a bit more somewhere (there were four actual articles and eight redirects to Baha'i Faith in my dozen!) 'Dragon' Dave McKee 14:00, 9 March 2007 (CST)

Well, as the veteran of countless hours of busywork, my advice is to pick one workflow and stick to it. As you practice exactly that workflow, you get better and more efficient at it quite quickly. --Larry Sanger 14:57, 9 March 2007 (CST)

There seems to be some problems with template implementation. Not specifying either "y" or "n" in the "underlinked" attribute leads to a "Not specifiedNo" output. As other attributes have no problem with not specifying any entry that seems strange. Also specifying "status = 2" leads to the article (resp. the talk page) becoming member in "Computers Developing Articles" as well as "Computers Nonstub articles" (and if one specifies the status as 1, one additionally gains the "developed article" category. Shouldn't it be only one category? Otherwise "Nonstub article will become quite full. --Markus Baumeister 15:04, 9 March 2007 (CST)

I'll investigate and fix the first bug. "Developing Articles" are a subset of "Nonstub Articles," which is 1 + 2--a useful category, because it shows us how many (and which) articles are under active development and beyond stub stage. --Larry Sanger 16:02, 9 March 2007 (CST)

Another thing: It would be useful if the Template:Cite needed template would exist. I just removed it several times from Computer Science because it was red. That seems wasteful. If WP thinks some citations are lacking, we should not remove those hints during cleanup. --Markus Baumeister 15:53, 9 March 2007 (CST)

I disagree. Articles are written for the end-user, not for contributors, and the Template:Cite needed template is a hint strictly for the use of contributors. Users should take everything in the article with great caution, regardless of any template, if it hasn't been approved by an expert. Besides, Wikipedians do not seem to be particularly good at deciding what does and does not require citations. --Larry Sanger 15:59, 9 March 2007 (CST)

I agree with Larry. In practice, many "POV-pushing" Wikipedians use Template:Fact or Template:Cite needed (or the worse Template:Dubious) just as a mark for the content they do not like (or a first step to removing something if the requested source is not given). So it needs a general cleanup. While sometimes it is well-intended and, in Wikipedia, perfectly OK, it looks useless here, as I guess we make the well-intended requests on talk pages. --AlekStos 04:05, 10 March 2007 (CST)

Hi Guys - I missed out canis familiaris and Canonical Gospels for now, and did an extra 2 instead. The canis article seems to have been developed a lot from the original Wikipedia version, so "External article: from another source, with little change" didn't seem right. And I wasn't sure about Canonical Gospels. --luke 19:25, 11 March 2007 (CDT)

---

Some feedback. It looks like a good idea. However, it was not as simple to do as I thought before. For example, it is not always clear whether the "WP checkbox" should be checked (see e.g. FCLB). Sometimes it was difficult to judge the status (is the article nearly complete or not that much??), especially when it concerned topics outside my domain (so virtually all articles given by the "standard" alphabetical range). I assessed as "almost complete" a viper article; at the same time a much longer article on another viper was labeled "developing" by a more qualified editor (BTW, the serpents are somehow special).

Is it worth the effort? I think so. It gives a good general framework. It can be useful for workgroups and improve some "management" of the project. I see an analogy with bookkeeping in a business - while sometimes it can be excessive or "virtual", basically it reflects the state of the project.

Is this something we can expect to implement on a large scale? I guess it's not impossible. I'd prefer to deal with my domain. This would at least double the speed and divide the number of doubts by two. However, if we put "cleanup your home" as the general rule, a problem arises, since not all workgroups are really active at the moment. So, maybe we could start the cleanup by domains where we have some active users and then pass to what remains.

Now, how many articles per author on average? As far as my scripts can tell, we have about 100 users visible on recent changes from March 1; about 40 of them have made more than 10 edits. So, roughly 30-40 articles per author. Looks feasible, not effortless, though. Not sure how many articles here on board; nor how many authors would be interested in "accountancy".

Other remarks/suggestions.

• Almost all our articles - as far as I can tell - are "underlinked". I guess it still will be the case a few months from now. So the checklist entry looks superfluous.
• technical issue observed: The "Show changes" button do not work properly when editing a section (if editing the whole page it works well). BTW, glad to see "WP content" checkbox working properly ;-)
• Serpents articles are somehow special... These are often of status 2 or 1 CZ live _internal_ articles - and at the same time not very different from its Wikipedia version, so, formally, of status 4 _external_. I think this would be more frequently the case when we have more former WP authors on board. It is not clear to me whether the "content-from-WP" checkbox applies in such cases. After all it uses the author's own knowledge and not that much the content of WP. Maybe a declaration of the author would do?

Sorry, it was long (just some thoughts). --AlekStos 16:21, 12 March 2007 (CDT)

Questions?

Please list any questions you have below, and Larry (or someone) will answer them.

What if I don't know what category to put an article in?

Choose a category from our list of workgroups that seems most likely to you, and then make sure that on the checklist you set cat_check to "yes" (so, one line in the checklist template looks like this:

cat_check = y

If none of the categories look right, then add Category:Needs Workgroup to the article.

An article is not linked from other expected articles not because the links were not made, but because those other articles do not exist yet. Expected links from existing articles instead exist. Does such an article qualify as underlinked? --Nereo Preto 14:19, 8 March 2007 (CST)

Yes, it does. The point of tracking "underlinked" articles is that we want to encourage the development of the important conceptual pathways, as it were, to our relatively specialized articles. The more of these "in demand" articles we create, the more sense CZ will make to the end user. "Underlinked" articles are a superset of orphaned articles (articles to which no other articles link), but reason for caring about the concept is roughly the same.

Does Topic Informant Workgroup exist? I assigned it once and it was red. --AlekStos 16:47, 12 March 2007 (CDT)