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Archive 1Archive 2Archive 3

Um, the page reads "This category contains articles that need Wikifying, that is, formatting the articles according to the guidelines laid out at Wikipedia:How to edit a page." but it seems that Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style has the guidelines that people should use. TomCerul 15:01, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Many times when new, long, unwikified pages get created by unregistered users, these are cut-and-paste copyright violations. I find that a significant number of the articles in this category can easily be found as such by doing a simple Google search on a portion of the text. So before you put "wikify" notices on a page, please google it first, and if it's a cut-and-paste, replace it with a "copyvio" notice instead. NTK 18:29, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I have found the same thing, something like 1:3 of the wikify articles that I have checked are copyvios. I've added a 'check for copyvios' warning to the wikify page. --nixie 05:19, 19 Jan 2005 (UTC)
If something is has a copyright violation, should the wikify tag be removed? (Yeah, newbie, sorry!) Csari 03:50, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
The whole article should be removed and replaced with the copvio template. See Wikipedia:Copyright problems. Btw, everyone was a newbie once. :) Garion96 (talk) 11:50, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Wikify vs cleanup/transwiki/vfd/stub/etc

I've begun systematically going through the list of articles to be wikified, but I'm noticing some interesting patterns.

  1. A lot of them also have a WP:Cleanup tag. Does "Cleanup" just cover article text, or could wikification be considered part of Cleanup in the first place? If an article lacks so much content that formatting isn't even really an issue (or if the accuracy/usefulness of that content is questionable) should I remove the Wikify notice and just leave the Cleanup tag?
  2. Is improving the formatting sufficient grounds for removing the "wikify" tag? For very short articles, there's often not much that can be done besides add a few wikilinks and maybe a WWW reference or two.
  3. A few of these articles are turning out to be sub-stubs, and some of them should probably be moved to Wikitionary (Doutel, Downgrade, for example). Hence I wonder why the Wikify tag was added in the first place.
  4. Finally, in the case of misplaced sub-stubs (like dicdefs), what is the correct procedure to deal with them? Transwiki was a bit confusing on that. Do I add a "move to wiktionary" tag, then list on Vfd? Or is the Move tag sufficient? How do I actually do the transwiki? Vfd is huge and it's nice to avoid having to add to the clutter if possible. I also think it's better to address the issue as completely as possible rather than shuffling tags around and passing the buck.

I apologize if some of these questions should go somewhere else, but hopefully I can get some advice and maybe add a few points to the procedure text here. Thanks. Jeeves 06:18, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

In my experience, the combination of wikify and cleanup tags makes a copyvio even more likely than a wikify tag alone. The reason is that the formatting of copy/pasted stuff often looks entirely different from WP-style and editors add a cleanup tag for that reason. — Adding the transwiki template is enough, some people here specialize in doing the transwiki work, they will pick it up. Rl 08:46, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I've seen alot of stubs or near-stubs. I've been kind of parsing the information into headings (with obcenely short bodies) anyways, to encourage people to add to them.Themissinglint 03:34, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

I cleared out the last of the A entries on the main list (and moved the focus to B ... doubt articles beginning with Z will ever get wikified); 4 out of 10 were definite copyvios. Best way to check is copy five or six words in a row, preferably including a name, from the middle of a sentence, and enter the whole thing into google with speech marks around it. Proto 13:56, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

And B done. I'm on fire! *pats own head* Proto 12:44, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • You know, I put the wikify tag on the Aung San Suu Kyi article there for a reason, not just for kicks - please do go see my response to your edit on the talk page for the article. I may be new, but I also believe that I am capable of judging when an article could use some formatting and I don't think there was any harm in my adding that tag since the article could definitely be improved to follow a more wikipedia-style format. I'd just appreciate it if next time you put something on the talk page asking about the tag or at leasting letting us know you're planning on changing it, before you just go and do it. Thanks. --Xiu Xiu 14:25, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Actually, Xiu Xiu, I looked at the article and it shouldn't have had the wikify tag on it. The wikify tag needs to be reserved for articles with no wikilinks whatsoever or articles that are very very long, but are only partially wikilinked and have no catagorization at all. The article you put the tag on actually had lots of links and looked fine to me. You say you are new. So I would suggest looking at a bunch of articles in the articles that need to be wikified catagory to see what kind of articles are tagged. The problem with tagging too many articles with that tag is that we already are very very overloaded with articles to wikify, so it needs to be reserved for articles that need major help, not just a couple of headings to be added. My advice would be that if it needs minor editing, do it yourself instead of slapping the tag on it.
The other thing I wanted to say is don't feel offended if someone alters your article or removes a tag without discussing it first. It's going to happen. Good thing to learn is that there are really no "rules" on Wikipedia. Wikipedia has conventions that people try to follow, but in this case, that tag was so unwarranted that the person who edited the article felt like it just shouldn't be there. All I can say is...relax...don't get too caught up in stuff like that or else you will go crazy, trust me. And you will run into far worse on Wikipedia. --Woohookitty 19:04, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Woohookitty is right. If we tagged every article that needs a little improvement, almost every article would be in here. Most of the articles in this category are trainwrecks instead of fender-benders. When I take a tag off an article that I didn't improve or only minimally improved, I put something about it in the edit summary. If we had discussions about each tag, we'd never get anything done. Also, it's good advice not to take these things personally.
Good work on catching the copyvios, Proto. I went through every article in the category and checked for copyvios a few weeks ago, so most of the oldest ones should be gone. I probably missed a few, though. It's difficult to overstate the problem. Sometimes I got ten copyvios in a row in the back of the list. Also, the other day I found and reported 40 of copyvios one day while wikifying and not even looking for them. Unfortunately, half the articles coming in are also copyvios, maybe three-quarters if you don't count the stubs. Some are understandably missed, but some are so obvious that I wonder why the person who placed the tag didn't catch it. A few said "copyright" at the top of the article! Other articles are so bad that they should have been speedily deleted or taken to AfD. I cleanup whatever I can, even rewriting as a stub, but some can't be saved - vanity, spam, attack page.
As for the combined use of the wikify and cleanup tags, I use the cleanup tags when the actual writing is the problem, not a lack of links, categories or paragraphs breaks, or that the subject isn't bolded. If it's not that really bad, I just clean it up myself while wikifying. However, I don't know if anybody else makes the distinction.
Here's more advice about searching for copyvios: Take a word grouping that's big or unusual enough not to get a lot of irrelevant hits and search for it in quotes. Like Proto said, use the middle of a sentence. The beginning of sentences are often altered, especially if the article's title or a pronoun is used. For example, people change "he" to "mike smith", "microsoft" to "the company" or vice versa. Make sure you try at least one search that doesn't include the company's or person's name because it may have been different in the source ("microsoft" vs "microsoft corp." vs "microsoft corporation", also "mike smith" vs "michael smith" vs "michael j. smith"). Also, take samples from different parts of the page because sometimes original material is mixed in with copyrighted content. If you have problems with Wikipedia mirrors showing up, exclude the words "wikipedia", "wiki" and "gnu" from the search results, which will get most of them. -- Kjkolb 12:25, 24 October 2005 (UTC)
Another note on copyvios. I have seen a few articles that take one or two sentences from another site, then sprinkle in one of their own, then copy a few more, and so on. So if my first check doesn't reveal a copyvio, I usually check a fragment from a second sentence as well. That's revealed at least one copyvio that I wouldn't have found just looking at one sentence. --Laura S 18:25, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

Sub categories

  • How does one create sub-categories ? Markh 15:48, August 22, 2005 (UTC)
Add to the article:Foo articles needing wikification. Then put that cat in the main wikification cat. Maurreen (talk) 17:02, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

Focus letter.

The focus letter has been the same for weeks now. Nobody seems to be updating it so I am removing it. All the letters need work, not just specific letters. I have also added a hideable box to store the progress in, so they don't overclutter the page. QQ 12:35, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Update: Using a new template, the focus letter will now update every day, elininating the need for manual updating which has been neglected. QQ 16:24, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
Didn't even realized there was a focus letter until the change. :) I saw it now, good idea. I only would change it every other day. One day seems too short per letter. Garion96 (talk) 22:40, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
Where did the focus letter go? I actually have been paying attention to it, and like the element of 'randomness' it adds to how I pick an article to work on. If it weren't for the focus letter, I probably would have felt entirely overwhelmed and never started wikifying pages on the list. I'd like to see it come back, even if it occasionally lands on an empty letter. Archivizt 15:39, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
Support. It was not removed because of the empty letters, someone removed it without leaving a note. Let's put it back. Piet 16:19, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
The reason for removal may have been that a few people are working on another mechanism for categorizing the list. Piet 16:21, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

I always check for copyright violations before I start working on an article that needs wikifying, but these signs will help to identify the most likely ones. I also have this on my userspace if you find it useful.

Signs that an article may be a copyvio

  1. It is a very long article made in a single edit.
  2. It has formatting that Wikipedia does not support (you'll see symbols or code).
  3. It has indented paragraphs, more than one blank line between paragraphs or long sections of text without paragraphs.
  4. It is almost entirely unwikified or is wikified in an inappropriate manner (redundant linking, large numbers of redlinks or linking words unlikely to ever have articles).
  5. The article is extremely promotional, or appears to be professionally written, or the writing style has characteristics of newspaper or magazine articles.
  6. It has a big reference list, especially if most of the references are offline.
  7. The content was added by an anonymous user or a registered user with no user page.

Signs that an article may not be a copyvio

  1. It does not have the signs above.
  2. It has a few obvious spelling errors.
  3. The author appears to know how to use Wikipedia.
  4. A note on the talk page or in the edit summary when the material was added says the source is public domain or gives permission for it to be used. This may need to be verified, however.

How to find the source

Take a word grouping that's big or unusual enough not to get a lot of irrelevant hits and search for it in quotes. Use the middle of a sentence because the beginning of sentences are often altered, especially if the article's title or a pronoun is used. For example, people change "he" to "mike smith", "microsoft" to "the company" or vice versa. Make sure you try at least one search that doesn't include the company's or person's name because it may have been different in the source ("microsoft" vs "microsoft corp." vs "microsoft corporation", also "mike smith" vs "michael smith" vs "michael j. smith"). Also, take samples from different parts of the page because sometimes original material is mixed in with copyrighted content. If you're only going to take one or two samples, don't use text from the introduction because it is often reworded or even original. If you have problems with Wikipedia mirrors showing up, exclude the words "wikipedia", "wiki" and "gnu" from the search results by adding a hyphen to them. That will remove most of them.

Notification

I suggest that you check who added the wikify tag to an article. That way, you can notify editors who repeatedly add the tag to copyright violations, especially if it has been added to obvious ones. This can make a big difference because most wikify tags are applied by a relatively small number of editors. In fact, some editors have added hundreds of copyvios in a very short amount of time. You should tell them how to identify copyvios, find the source and how to report them. If the person who added the copyrighted information is likely to do it again, you should tell them that Wikipedia cannot accept copyrighted content and what sources are usually copyrighted.

--Kjkolb 14:04, 7 January 2006 (UTC)


Current focus, zero articles

Why does the current focus not move to 'A' if there are no articles under 'Y' and 'Z'? Piet 08:17, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

I think that it used to be changed manually, but now there's {{focusletter}} there. I guess that it moves it one letter per day automatically. It would be better if it stayed there until all of the articles were gone, though. -- Kjkolb 08:30, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
I manually set it to A. I hope it doesn't upset anyone. --Apoc2400 09:53, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

I've restored focusletter since 'A' is a bit too static for our needs. I don't mind that the focusletter points to empty classes now and then, if there's no easy solution we'd better leave it like this. I just asked to see if there might be an easy way around it. Piet 08:41, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

HELP

What exactly is wikify?H-BOMB 19:48, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Did you read the page? This category contains articles that need wikifying, that is, formatting the articles according to the guidelines laid out at Wikipedia:Guide to layout. See Wikipedia:How to edit a page for technical help and Wikipedia:Manual of Style for broader questions. Follow the links to find out more. Piet 20:35, 9 March 2006 (UTC)


Wikify by month

This category is getting very large, I propose we copy Category:Cleanup by month and have a seperate category for each month, it should be fairly easy to set up, and bots can handle any extra work it might initially cause. The benefit would be that the categories would be a more managable size, and there would be satisfaction in completing the wikification of a month-category. Comments? Martin 23:23, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

The problem is that at the moment the category is growing at an enormous rate, a lot more article are being added than wikified. We should get more people doing this. I support your idea though, it would indeed make the whole thing a bit more manageable. Piet 16:43, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
I have added this category to Template:Active Wiki Fixup Projects, hopefully that will get some more people involved. Martin 17:28, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
I suppose that splitting them up by month might be good. We can change it back if it causes problems. We need to reduce the number of inappropriate tags (short for templates) applied as well as getting more people working on wikification. Changing the tags ourselves is problematic, as it takes up time, especially when the site is running slowly, and it is often not obvious what the tag placer wants done. Also, if you remove or change the wikify tag, he or she is likely to put it back unless you give a very thorough explanation of why you are doing it, which takes up additional time.
There are four ways I can think of that a tag can be applied inappropriately. First, a large percentage of articles in the category are blatant copyright violations, perhaps half of new articles coming into the category. One day, I found 40 copyright violations to report and only got 5 articles wikified. Users should report copyright violations themselves. Wikify tags are usually added by an admin or veteran editor, so we need a lot more awareness of the problem among all users (hundreds were added by a long-time admin several months ago).
Second, some users apply wikify tags whenever an article needs work, but an expansion, cleanup, copyedit, category needed, context, too technical or rewrite tag is often more appropriate.
Third, some users add two, three or more different cleanup tags to articles. Adding cleanup and wikify tags is redundant, at least to me, but the tags are often in conflict. There is no point in wikifying an article that needs to be rewritten. An article that needs to be merged or needs extensive cleanup should not be wikified either because large portions of text may be rearranged or deleted for redundancy or poor quality, and the remaining links in the cleaned up or merged article may no longer be the first mention of the term, so the person who does the cleanup or merge may have to remove the links added. Also, it is slightly easier to merge or do extensive cleanup on an article that has few links.
Fourth, some articles in the category are obvious candidates for speedy deletion, proposed deletion or articles for deletion. Such articles should not be wikified until it is decided whether to delete them or not.
I have some suggestions on how to reduce the number of inappropriate tags. More information could be added to the wikify template, such as a short description of what wikification means. A warning that the article might be a copyright violation might also be helpful. Also, the people who add tags inappropriately could be notified that they should stop. Finally, a page could be created explaining how wikify tags are added inappropriately. The page could be linked to in the edit summary when removing the tag and on the talk page of the user who added the tag. If we could stop even just half of the inappropriate tags from being placed, it would be an enormous reduction in the amount of work we have to do, especially in the case of copyright violations. -- Kjkolb 19:02, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
I agree with all that, unfortunately we are always going to have the problem of people ading the wrong or too many tags to an article, I think we should just be bold in removing them when we see fit. To start I have created Template:Wikify-date which adds Category:Wikify from March 2006 to the article, which is in turn a sub category of this one. The easiest way to add this new template is to paste {{Wikify-date|{{subst:CURRENTMONTHNAME}} {{subst:CURRENTYEAR}}}} or {{Wikify-date|March 2006}}
For some reason Category:Wikify from March 2006 does not appear to be showing up as a sub-category of this one, I must have done something wrong, but I can't see what? Martin 19:59, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Focus letter?

Was there a reason {{focusletter}} was removed from the page? Any objections to my restoring it? (I doubt that there would be, but I'd rather my time wikifying than arguing over the present/absence of a single tool.) -- llywrch 22:01, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Go for it! Martin 22:14, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
See my comment above under Focus Letter. I'm all for it. Archivizt 22:54, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
For now I added it back. →AzaToth 23:06, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Now sorting by date

By popular demand, Pearle is now converting the category to use {{wikify-date}}. This means this category will be sorted by month, making it a better FIFO queue. There's no longer any need for any humans to sort articles by date. Pearle will do this overnight, so human editors can devote all their energy to actual wikification. Please let me know if there are any problems or concerns. -- Beland 03:24, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Sweet. Thanks, Beland. -- Kjkolb 06:55, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
Absolutely brilliant, thanks Beland! Martin 08:43, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
Thumbs up! GfloresTalk 15:25, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
I agree. Great job! Garion96 (talk) 21:40, 4 April 2006 (UTC)


Archived progress bar

(This has been moved here because the progress counting method has changed. -- Beland 20:45, 4 April 2006 (UTC))

what is wikified?

I have notice a lot of article that, while they can use some work, are basically wikified. If it has a heading paragraph, section, categorized and some relevant wikilinks what is left to do? Jon513 19:21, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

If you feel it's wikified enough already, remove the tag and leave a comment on the edit summary if possible. GfloresTalk 20:18, 5 April 2006 (UTC)


Still backlog?

What's the policy on removing the backlog tag? The backlog page defines backlog as either more than 10,000 items, or items over a year old - we have neither here. Should we keep the tag until things are actually sorted or should we remove it now the older articles have been dealt with? (I vote for keeping it, I'm just wondering if there's a policy) --Tango 19:57, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

I would say that it has a backlog as long as it have things undone. →AzaToth 20:15, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
In which case it will always have a backlog - we're never going to have everything wikified, at least not for more than an hour or so. There has to be a point where it stops being a backlog and just becomes an acceptable number of articles that we should attempt to maintain, but doesn't have to be reduced (although it would always be nice to try). --Tango 21:14, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
If you mean this page, then I don't think that there has to be 10,000 articles or items over a year old for a project to be backlogged. That is under a "related" heading. Also, I think that general cleanup is the only cleanup project that has ever had over 10,000 articles, so that definition would not be very useful. Having things undone is not a backlog either, as only a few cleanup projects will ever be complete, like doing a cleanup of articles taken from a specific source.
This category definitely has a backlog compared to the usual number of articles. Before, a normal amount of articles was between 1,000 and 2,000, but we now have 7,120. I think we have a lot more articles coming in than we did previously, although maybe fewer people are working on wikification instead. It could also be a combination of those two things. We should probably redefine "backlog" by how long the articles stay in the category. However, until the number of articles being added is not so much higher than the number of articles being completed, it is difficult to come up with a reasonable figure. Over 4,000 articles were added to the category in March (there's less than that now, since some were wikified out of order in March and the first week of April, there may have been about 5,000 tags added over the course of the month). There's no way that we could keep up with that pace with the current number of people working here. Unfortunately, April does not seem to be any better. I think it would be nice if articles were wikified within three to four months, but the number of articles being added to the category or the number of people working on wikification will need to increase to even get close to that. -- Kjkolb 10:53, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
In the past, the threshold on this page has been around 2 or 3,000. I think it has to be case by case. I am pleased to see that we're dividing this by month now. Much easier to navigate. --Woohookitty(cat scratches) 11:05, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
  • Yeah, the "related" section was intended to be a "worst of the worst" list. I've updated the backlog page to make that a little clearer. I personally consider the "worst" backlogs to be anything over 1,000 articles or 1 year. "Small" backlogs happen whenever the number of things being added to a task list surpasses the number being removed for a sustained period of time. For these, the backlog tag usually serves as a "call to action" that summons volunteers to bring the load back under control. For wikification, it's certainly possible to get enough volunteers working on it to keep up with the number of articles being added. Given that, it would be better if we were keeping up with this month's articles, rather than 4 months ago's articles. That's why we're making a special effort to "bottom out" this queue. I'm hoping it will stabilize at a buffer size of one month or less (like the stub sorting page, which is constantly being emptied). At that point, we can do a little dance and remove the backlog tag. The sort-by-date system seems to be helping a lot - we have already taken care of all the neglected articles from August, September, and October, and we are 3/4ths of the way through November. We still have to get through the one-time "bump" from bot-assisted identification of previously untagged unwikified articles that have been sitting around for who knows how long, but a little publicity goes a long way, and a single volunteer can dispatch a relatively large number of articles (compared to say, cleanup, which can take a long time for each article). -- Beland 18:10, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
    • I thought that the bot moves were finished. If they aren't, that would explain why the rate of articles being added for April is about the same as in March (30/7 X 1,014 = 4,346). If they were finished before the beginning of March, then I guess there's another reason for the increase... and god help us all. ;-) Kjkolb 07:48, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
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