Wikipedia talk:Dead-end pages/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Schools

There are a good number of schools on here. I think most of them are already in the WikiProject School database. If not, tag them {{WPSchool}} and they will get attention. -zappa 17:25, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

Remove "not applicable" entries.

Many articles already contain internal links to other articles and they are no more deadend pages eg: Beard Papa.

Shouldn't these entries be removed?

tkark|wanna Talk 04:47, Mar 15, 2005 (UTC)

In general no, articles should only be removed once they comply with the style guide and are basically acceptable articles. We list deadend pages not because they contain no links, but because containing no links is an important clue that an article is sub-standard. Especially important is that a significant number of deadends are copyright infractions that must be dealt with as soon as possible. Adding {{wikify}}, a category, or a single link does not turn an unwikified mess into a good article. Removing such pages from the list makes it less likely they will receive the attention they need. - SimonP 04:51, Mar 15, 2005 (UTC)

Well, I think it would be fine to remove articles that are no longer deadenders. If they still have other problems, they should be tagged appropriately. (See Wikipedia:Cleanup resources.) Part of the benefit of describing the specific problem than an article has is that some people are interested in fixing specific types of problems, and mixing in "general problem" articles makes problem-specific lists less useful in this regard. Besides which, I think people will remove articles from lists when they don't seem like they belong there, and of course when the list is updated from a new dump, "general problem" articles will not continue to be listed. -- Beland 00:53, 24 July 2005 (UTC)

If this list also contains articles that are not deadends, but instead have style problems, then either they need to be removed from this list or this list needs to be called something other than "deadend". It is deceptive to have non-deadends on a deadend list.--P Todd 22:09, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

I agree; if this is a deadend page list, non-deadend pages with other problems should not be listed here. That is what the copy-edit tag {{copyedit}}, among others, is for. --Mddake 01:32, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

Deadend page needs an update

I think this list of deadend pages needs an update soon. Can it be re-generated easily ? -- PFHLai 00:07, 2004 Jul 5 (UTC)

• • I'm going through right now and clearing out the articles that have already been Wikified. Give me a couple hours and we'll see how many deadends are really left. Wclark 10:00 AM, 2004 Jul 5 (EST)
  • Actually I'm cleaning up incorrectly; I was only really looking to see if there were links to other articles, not whether other characteristics of style were being followed. I'm stopping now -- but there were so many pages that needed work that I don't think the page needs an update anytime soon. -- Wclark 10:43 AM, 2004 Jul 5 (EST)

There's a reasonably up to date version at Special:Deadendpages now. Angela. 05:37, 10 Jul 2004 (UTC)

SimonP updated it. (Yay!) -- Beland 21:16, 30 July 2005 (UTC)

It wasn't a real update. I just added the still deadend pages from Special:Deadendpages, Special:Uncategorizedpages, and Special:Shortpages. Since the first two no longer seem to get updated, an alternate method will be needed in the future. - SimonP 23:00, July 30, 2005 (UTC)

Shortcut

I gave this a shortcut, WP:DEP. I figured "DEP" was the most logical abbreviation of Dead-End Pages. Hope nobody minds. The Literate Engineer 05:52, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

Strikouts

Some of the articles on the deadend list are being marked by striking out. What is this intended to signify? If they are done we've been deleting the entry. What is strikeout supposed to indicate? RJFJR 20:39, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

Strikeouts are supposed to be for reference. However, deleting the affected articles in question is a much more efficient way to prune the list. --Siva1979^{Talk to me} 20:50, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Focus on some sections

We need to focus more on the sections A, B, C. Work with those first to get their lists to a normal level , then we could work on the rest of the letters --Revolución (talk) 22:35, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

Out of curiousity, why are A, B, C so much longer than the other sections in the first place? -- Avocado 15:37, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

I believe it is because we have only been getting partial updates lately. For instance, I know at least one of the recent updates has been from special pages (see the "Deadend page needs an update" discussion above), which for some reason seem to only list the first 1000 pages and usually in something resembling alphabetical order. That's what I know, I'm sure someone here can elucidate more. Whitejay²⁵¹ 15:54, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

Congratulations to everyone on the 'A' section. It is almost empty now. Looks like the 'B' and 'C' sections are still in real need of help. James084 15:49, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Repeated entries

Have just removed 20+ repeated items from the B and C lists. How did they get there in the first place? -- Picapica 13:05, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

It could have been a glitch in the servers that caused this anomaly. --Siva1979^{Talk to me} 20:51, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Some Questions

A couple of things, first of all i think that the A, B, and C sections are so much larger at least partially because it is easier to work on dead end pages if you get the satisfaction of "i finished all the z's" etc. also because the abc seem to get updated more. I managed to work the b's and c's to just below 300 today, but I cant do it alone. Next question is should wictionary cantidites be removed from the list if they have links in them? Ah well happy editing! --Meawoppl 20:47, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Consistent Procedures for Removing Pages

Based on a conversation between myself and Jdcooper I think that further conversation about when to remove a page from this list needs to be opened up. Jdcooper pointed out to me (rightfully so) that removing pages tagged for 'Move to Wiktionary' does not necessarily warrant the article being removed from this list. His point being that if the article is not transwikid to Wiktionary before the next run of the Deadend pages report then the article will show up right back here.

My question is this, if the pages are marked 'Move to Wiktionary' and also given a 'Wikify' tag does this fix the problem enough to remove the page. According to the instructions on this page if an article is tagged for AfD it should be tagged 'Wikify' as well to prevent it from re-appearing here.

For articles on AFD, you can tag them {{wikify}} (in addition to the AFD notice) and remove them from this list. That way, if they survive deletion, they will still be tagged for fix-up. (They will not show up here on the next run if someone adds a single wikilink, but this may not indicate the article is fully wikified.) These pages should be de-listed because later updates to this page may overwrite annotations.

I would just like to ensure that there is a consistent effort for either removing or not removing pages from this list. This helps out those of us working on this list and eliminates duplication of effort.

Anyone have any thoughts, suggestions, criticisms?

James084 13:05, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

I think it is important to remove all pages that can be, otherwise it can become time consuming to actually find pages that need to be fixed (not at the moment I know, but when the list is older). So I think it is sensible to either tag wikitionary candidates as wikify and remove or even simply remove them and hope they are moved to the wiktionary. Even if they are not the worst that could happen is that a couple reappear on this list next time (and that's if they aren't fixed before hand). p.s. thanks for the all the hard work you are doing on this James. Martin 13:42, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

James, having thought about it more I think that AfD and MtW are different cases. If an article is being moved to wiktionary, then it is a dicdef, and as such there isnt always much to be wikified, linked etc. AfD is an article, just one with questionable notability, so I think articles on AfD shouldnt be removed (unless it is clear that the article will be deleted, down to the editor's opinion how "clear" that deletion must be i suppose) since the article is still dead-end. AfD doesnt really have much to do with this department, IMO. I think I am still in favour of keeping everything on this list until it goes red or gets links, but I'm not going to argue with consensus :) Jdcooper 18:25, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

I just went through the first 10 (or so) articles on this list, and every one was linked, some were stubbed, some tagged as copyvio. I think any short article that is stubbed and has relevent links activated, or has been copyvio-ed or otherwise identified as needing other work, should be removed from this list to avoid extra searching for eligible articles SailorfromNH 02:24, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

I second (or third?) this idea. It seems some articles need help more than others and if we are only looking for dead-ends here, then those with proper links, formatting, etc. really aren't dead-ends and shouldn't be on the list. They may need other help, which is what the other cleanup categories are for. --Laura S 03:13, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

Here are my 2c - very much in line with the previous comment. I think this list would be most useful as "a list of deadend articles that have not yet been assigned to another cleanup category" - that is, not yet tagged for one of the other cleanup categories. Or in other words - this is a list of deadend articles that have not yet been through first stage triage. That way we would save time of clicking on articles only to find that it has already been tagged for copyvio/proposed deletion/speedy deletion/whatever. If we adopted this interpretation then it would follow that a) (ideally) the script that generates this list would exclude exclude articles that have a tag in them and b) those of us working on deadend articles would remove them from this list as soon as we have tagged them. If a different consensus emerges then I'm happy to abide by it. At the moment we don't seem to have a clear consensus (correction welcome), so I will continue to remove any articles that I tag for copyvio/speedy/prod/wikify. Cje 10:01, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

A second comment, independent of my last one. If we are going to continue to tag articles proposed for AfD as wikify too, then it would be consistent to put the wikify tag on articles marked for ProD too. Personally I think this it would be better to put just the AfD or ProD tag on, and then make it practice to put wikify (if wtill required) onto any article that survives AfD or ProD. Cje 10:01, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

The way i understand "dead-end" is that someone, upon surfing wikipedia to that article, would be unable to surf anywhere else, because there were no useful wikilinks to click on, thus making it a dead-end. As wikify and clean-up tags are just maintenance, they dont count (to me) as useful wikilinks (from a reader's POV) so i think we should at least try to add something else than just a cleanup or wikify tag. Maybe? If we can? The exception would be those bastards that you have to put a context tag on, i usually have no idea what im talking about, when its like computer-science types and those management structure articles that we have far too many of. Basically, remove the article from the list when you feel personally that you have done all you can reasonably be expected to do at triage. That's what I do anyway. Jdcooper 15:55, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

Well we agree on the definition of a deadend! Also it sounds that we both have similar working practice on trying to do good first stage triage. So I'm more than happy to carry on as I am already doing. If a more formal consensus emerges then I'll abide by it. In the meantime I'll continue to shoot vanities on sight - well tag and remove from this list. I'm not an admin so I can't actually shoot them. I can usually make a good first guess on true computer science articles, but I draw the line at magmas, computer games, fan cruft and management! Cje 08:50, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

How do you shoot vanities? Is there a Speedy tag for patent vanity? I know there was a discussion of it at some point, but i also know not all CSD criteria have their own tag, which is annoying, as i do not know the criteria by their code (the time i do will be when i start to worry about wikiholism!), because i hate patent vanity pages. I generally just tag them {empty} or {nonsense}, is that how? {vanity} never seems like enough of an action, just passing the buck to some horribly backlogged and inefficient department (not like DEP, natch). so how to shoot? Jdcooper 14:18, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Well I use "nn-bio" (Is this an alias of vanity?) and they seem to be shot pretty quickly by admins. Cje 11:57, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

PS I hate vanities too! In fact some of my quick clean out of the latest big list was to go through looking for common first names, start checking, and tag where appropriate. I try to be nice where it is a new editor and the content is half way reasonable (appropriate for a User pag). I have no patience with "Jaz is cooooo....ool!" type articles. Cje 11:57, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

It does sound like there's almost a concensus here! I also agree on the concept of dead-end. I've been removing articles that have appropriate (and enough) wikilinks and are therefore no longer dead-end. If they still need other work that might cause a lot of rewriting or outright deletion, such as copyvio attention, context, etc., I put on the appropriate tag and remove it from this list. This is for two reasons: 1, those tags will put the article on other cleanup lists, so it won't be abandoned from all help, and 2, it doesn't really make sense to add links if the articles will be changing drastically. Basically, what Jdcooper said - do what I can for links first, then formatting or anything else I can handle, then tag it appropriately if it still needs something and send it on its way. Apparently someone agrees with me because the A's have been reduced to pretty much nothing in just a couple days! --Laura S 00:19, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

A quick look at the history suggests that its the contributors to this discussion who did almost all of the clean out of the As. Though in my case a good number of the articles had already been fixed by others. I just crossed them off this list. Now onto the Bs. Cje 11:57, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Yup I've been finding a lot that were already done, either linked or tagged as copyvio. There are a huge number that are copyvios, some more blatant than others, it's pretty unfortunate. Made some good progress on B last night! I'm afraid of S. --Laura S 13:51, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Proposal

Why not do something in-between removing them and leaving them on the list. Why not add some text to the side of the link

For instance next to it can say

• CopyVio
• Needs Cleanup.
• Wikify
• AFD

This way people know more about the link before they click on it, and yet those who want all the non perfect articles on the list can still have them here.--E-Bod 22:49, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm all for that. It sounds workable and helpful! --PhiJ 15:54, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

We've informally tried that in the past. I'm not happy with it because annotations on this list get overwritten when the list is updated: at least in the past that did happen.

The core issue here is this; is this page a simple list of articles that have no external links (at least at the time the list was generated) or is it a list of articles awaiting triage (at least at the time the list was generated). My personal preference is for the latter - I don't see why anyone would even look for a list of deadend articles, unless they wanted to do something about them. The emerging consensus (at least in practice) is that articles are only removed from this list when they are tagged for deletion (Speedy, ProD or AfD) - anything that looks promising gets categories and minimal links even if it is also tagged "wikify" or whatever. So long as a "has problems" article appears on a "needs attention" list somewhere -and preferably only one list - that's good enough for me! Cje 20:18, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

I would like a list for only dead end pages because what if I am not good at cleaning up arties but I can at least make a link to anything I don't know about in the article. Could we have two sections? One for Dead end and another for arties that are no longer dead end but need other work. And as far as not keeping the annotations after the cache is updated, can’t you just have the cash add it to the list and then alphabetize the list so the duplicates are easy to spot. What I really am concerned about is what do you do if you are only interested in adding links to the articles (Because I don’t quite know how to cleanup articles) and aren’t comfortable changing the text. How do you mark that you finished that part of the job. And why do you need to redo the cache while you still have existing articles that haven’t been helped. I would say help these articles and then after the list is empty redo the cache. It would see weird if arties starting with "A" are better than articles starting with "W" (assuming some people like bottom up)--E-Bod 20:37, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

How about only having the markings if it is AFD or copyvio? That way you know which ones are tagged for copyvio and AFD, but if they survive, they are still on the list. --PhiJ 16:32, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

The script will bring them back around to us anyway if they are dead-ends. If they survive AfD or copyvio, hopefully they will do so with some improvements (when i used to work on AfD i used to try and triage articles as they came through). And plus, if they are sent to AfD or copyvio in the first place, to me that suggests that, even if they survive, they are not as heavy priority as articles that are clearly noteworthy just unwikified. Its the Article Improvement Drive priority principle. I think that adding the text here creates extra work to take up time that could be better spent cleaning-up poorly formatted articles, which is what we are all here to do really. Jdcooper 17:45, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

categories but no prose links?

If an article is well-categorized but has no internal links in the text itself, is that considered a dead-end page? --Allen 16:05, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

Yes, it is still considered a dead-end page (However, I may be inaccurate in my view on this). --Siva1979^{Talk to me} 19:59, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Are there any specfic examples of such an article? --Folajimi 10:06, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Well, I had something in mind when I asked the question, but that was a few months ago. In retrospect, it no longer seems important. :-) --Allen 23:46, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Tagging articles nominated/proposed for deletion for cleanup

I suggest not tagging articles nominated for deletion (articles for deletion (AfD), speedy deletion and proposed deletion (prod)) for cleanup, unless the article has a good chance of surviving. The cleanup categories are already swamped, particularly wikification and general cleanup. Some newbie editors may work on articles that end up getting deleted and the rest of us will get frustrated from clicking on pages to work on and repeatedly finding them nominated/proposed for deletion and perhaps removing the tags, unaware that they were intentionally placed after the proposed deletion. Less importantly, it inflates the numbers of articles that actually need cleanup. Since multiple tags are usually added to the article, especially cleanup, wikify and uncategorized, the problems are multiplied. Removing the tags has always been my practice, but I did not know that anyone would ever intentionally add them after the article is nominated/proposed for deletion and I will not fight with other editors by reverting. -- Kjkolb 11:50, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

I agree with both:

• removing articles from this list that are tagged for AfD or ProD
• not tagging such articles as "need wikification" in case they survive.

for all the reasons given above. Instead, if an article survives AfD or ProD, THEN it should be tagged for wikification (if still required). Is this already part of the process for the admins who handle AfD and ProD? If not, then where should I propose this?

PS Unless a different consensus develops, then I am going to follow the emerging consensus and remove AfD and ProD articles that I find on this list. I think we're all wasting too much time following links to articles that are already being dealt with.

Cje 10:40, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

I think Kjkolb brings a valid point. We shouldn't be removing these articles from this list at the expense of another list. The current instructions on the project page state that you should tag an article with the {{wikify}} template. If a page has been properly tagged for AfD or Prod it would then no longer qualify as a dead-end page, albeit temporarily. If the article survives deletion then it would re-appear here on the next refresh of the dead-end pages; allowing a "dead-end editor" to go about cleaning it up. I completely agree that AfD and Prod articles need to be removed from the list as per Cje. Any additional thoughts or criticisms? James084 13:38, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm sure this is there's an uphill answer to this question but

look at Raphew Reed Jr. this diff makes me wonder if it's worth going through and copyediting. anyone ever wonder stuff like this? I wann help but if th orginal author or someone knowledgable never comes back, how do we know if any of this content is any good? does it matter if almost nothing else points to it? KzzRzzKnocker 02:46, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Well I've had a go at editing it! First there is no doubt that the guy exists (multiple Google hits from reputable sites) and won double gold medals in the relays at the 2004 Paralympic games (listed in Wikipedia articles and official sites e.g. [1]). So we have verifiable information and a double gold in a major sporting event is notable. Now I've got a shrewd suspiscion that the original article came from Raphew Reed himself, look at the author name, and that some of his friends have been messing around with the article - the diff you flag. So I've taken everything doubtful (no Google hits) out, and trimmed down the high school history to a level that is more consistent with articles on other athletes. If you find an article that really doesn't justify wikification then propose it for deletion - see WP:PROD, WP:DEL and WP:CSD for the various mechanisms available. Does that help? Yes, I do wonder about bothering with some of the unwikified articles I find here on WP:DEP but this particular one didn't worry me! Cje 13:48, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

sweet dude. glad to hear of confirmed existence and notability of that guy. thanks. good lookin out. yaa. /izl. 04:22, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Deleting Articles

There seems to be some disagreement here as to when to remove Articles from the dead-end list. I'm very new here and went through and cleaned up some short articles for a start. I added links, fixed spelling, added italics and bold, marked them as stubs or move to Wiktionary, etc. Considering the definition on the dead-end page is "The pages contained on the list below are either not wikified (are plain text, not properly formatted, and so on), and/or they do not contain internal links to other articles." it seems that should be enough to remove them from the list. Is there more that needs to be done? I don't want to leave articles there that no longer need dead-end cleanup (as someone else suggested, if they need other help, such as fleshing out, they should be tagged as such). At the same time, I obviously don't want to remove anything that really does belong here. Is there any sort of consensus on when to delete articles from the list? --Laura S 03:09, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

So long as you are adding the appropriate internal links, I think an article can be removed from this list, but it seems recently some people have simply been adding a stub or some other tag to the article, and that doesn't fix the dead-ends any... if you wanna add stubs, and other tags, or partially wikify it, that's cool... so long as the main body of text is embedded with blue links where neccesary... - Adolphus79 06:01, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

From what I understand, as soon as you add the necessary/appropriate links, you can delete it from the list. --Brain 02:01, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Updating this list

I was recently asked to update this list again, but would it be preferred if I waited until the list was complete before updating again, or is it better to update more frequently? I personally would like to update more frequently as it purges all the wikified/deleted articles. Martin 16:39, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

• Sure, do it as often as possible, that keeps our efforts focused on wikifying articles rather than removing done ones from the list. Jdcooper 16:57, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
  • I also would prefer it more frequently. It's too bad you can't see much progress that way, but, like you said, at least you get rid of all the articles which are already done or deleted. Garion96 ^(talk) 17:00, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
    • Personally, I have found the frequent updates of the stack to be a great demotivator. Actually observing the whittling down of the list is important to me; it's absence suggests that the effort expended is useless... Folajimi 17:17, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
      • Whilst it isn't particularly motivating to see the list rebuilt frequently it makes it a lot easier to find articles to work on. Having a quick look at the current list, I'd say that at least a third of them are not dead end pages any more. This means that you waste time looking for articles to work on. Would it be possible to update the list weekly and put the total number of pages found at the top? Hopefully this would mean that there wouldn't be too many new pages added each week and we could track our progress week to week. RicDod 17:39, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
        • If enough people want to work on the list, we could also split it up so that we're not all checking the same articles. --cholmes75 ^{(chit chat)} 17:40, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

In the last few weeks/days I went through the A-K list and finished it today. In my opinion, it certainly would be worthwhile to update the list because I encountered A LOT of articles that were no longer dead-ends. Some of them had been wikified quite some time ago. Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr) 13:12, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

I see it's been updated - which is a Good Thing - but could you PLEASE put in a marker saying when it's been updated? It caught me mid-edit.... --Alvestrand 13:10, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia Integration

I've identified this project as a candidate for material to be analyzed by Wikipedia Integration methodology. Please feel welcome to offer suggestions and feedback. WP:ʃ Cwolfsheep 16:34, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Working DEP's

I've been trying to work on DEP either by patrolling the new pages or looking in here once in awhile. There are a lot of pages I've caught by checking the new pages that are a few hours old. Right now it seems there are about 500 new pages started every 4-6 hours.

When I do find a DEP I give it every tag that it seems to need at the time. Something like this: {{uncat}} {{unref}} {{linkless}} {{wikify}} so that it comes to the attention of each cleanup project. If you were to place only the {{wikify}} tag on the article it might be several months before a wikify project member finds the article and adds the additional tags (if ever) the article needs. Currently there are over 7000 articles waiting to be wikified.

If a DEP gets full tags from the beginning then there will be more exposure to bring the article into line which I think is the overall goal of each project. Only problem there is that people often forget to remove the tag after it is no longer needed.

When I visit here and try and work on the DEP list I often find the article has already been tagged for various things which can be rather frustrating. If an article has been seen and given tags, that should turn it over to the various cleanup groups and shouldn't merit listing as a DEP any longer. I notice there is a lot of controversy here over what should or should not be done as far as tags placed or removed, so I'm just putting in my 2 cents on this matter. --Brad101 12:14, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

An article that has been tagged but does not contain any links, should remain on DEP in my opinion, since it does NOT have any links to other articles (which is the criterium for inclusion here). And personally, I am not really in favor of simply putting a load of tags on any article, even new one. I'd rather see that people use that time to fix some of the problems. Especially adding links to other articles, adding categories (or stub tags) and correcting layout are very simple tasks. Performing those tasks, rather than adding a bunch of tags are more constructive edits in my view. Editing an article for {{unref}} {{linkless}} can be more time-consuming, so those tags are more useful. I also check the newpages from time to time, but always try to improve the articles (or save them from the all to quick speedy deletion lovers) rather than tag them. Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr) 13:19, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

I believe that tagging DEPs should not be sufficient condition for removal from the list for about the same reason you put forward for putting on multiple tags beyond {{wikify}}. Getting more eyes on the article by having it come to attention of multiple projects will lead to its being improved and incorporated into Wikipedia sooner. If we were to treat this list as one full of articles that just need tags, we might as well just have a bot go through the list and add them. Whitejay²⁵¹ 19:29, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

That's not a bad suggestion. Perhaps a bot could in fact be run which would simply tag all of these articles {{uncat}} {{unref}} {{linkless}} and {{wikify}}, and we could turn our attentions to categorizing and other tasks. It's a pain to update this list, because by definition the entries have no category: perhaps that should be our first priority here. Salad Days 06:21, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

I am not a fan of this idea. The ONLY criterium on this list is that an article has no links to other articles (and as a consequence no categories). So automatically adding a bunch of tags will lead to a lot of falsely tagged articles:

• In fact, quite a few of the DEP pages do contain references of some sort, so they would not need {{unref}}. (Examples from current list: [2][3])
• Some of these articles are created by people clicking redlinks, meaning they ARE linked to and therefore they would not need {{linkless}}.
• This list is always outdated and many articles already contain links or tags. Any bot would have to doublecheck both, otherwise we would be creating quite a mess.

Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr) 07:35, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Concerning adding the {{uncat}} tag to all uncategorised articles, see this proposal Wikipedia:Enforce inclusion of categories and a related discussion here. Garion96 (talk) 22:46, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

One possible procedure for human editors would be to insert all the tags mentioned above, and deleting those that do not fit. However, I don't think we should tag things with {{linkless}} when they are not.... --Alvestrand 22:13, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Re: all the comments so far have merit. It's possible that a bot placing tags on an article could be done. Isn't there one that already does this? Anyhow, I didn't intend to mean that I place all tags on all articles without looking. I only place tags that an article needs. As far as the {{linkless}} tag goes, I often do find articles with no links from other articles by checking the "What links here". If I see no links or links that only go to user, talk or project pages, I place the tag on.

I'm seeing a lot of redundancy in some cleanup projects and trying to come up with some ideas to get everyone on the same level which is generally bringing articles up to standards. --Brad101 04:37, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

I run User:Bluebot, which tags articles as uncategorised and wikify, I could also add linkless, but another bot is doing that. I also update this list when needed, it is pretty easy for me to do, so I think that although there is some duplication in the goals of various projects, I don't think there is any duplication in effort, so I think it is ok to have them running beside eachother, though if it is decided to merge some projects, then that is also fine by me. Martin 11:05, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

If you could tag all articles in this list uncat and wikify immediately after updating, it would simplify this work immensely. Salad Days 18:01, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't think I would be too popular if I pumped 10s of thousands of articles into those categories, it is a tempting idea though. Martin 19:49, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

But the articles are unwikified and uncategorized, whether or not they are actually tagged as such. On the other hand, I can understand your reluctance to be the scapegoat for all of wikipedia's crummy one-edit articles. Salad Days 20:01, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Project redundancy

Please see User:Brad101/redundancy for things that have been on my mind lately. Use the talk page there for comments about changes etc. Thanks --Brad101 15:01, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Finally the f's are gone

I have finally got rid of the F's but how come the G's,H's and I's are so long!L06ChBea

Well done, it is always good to see people cleaning up like this. I have only one comment though, whenever addressing the articles listed here, you also might want to try to format them more or less according to the Wikipedia style guide and add them to appropriate categories where applicable. With regard to the other letters, the lists simply are longer because they didn't get that much attention so far (everybody starts at 'A'). --Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr) 20:07, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

I have found it a fun strategy to pick a favourite letter and start there in all lists - makes the size of the problem seem much nicer :-) - so you'll find me at T....

One reason for different lengths is some common starting words - the T's are blessed with all the articles starting with "The", for instance; "J" seems to have a ton of people named John, James and so on in it. "S" is extremely long too. --Alvestrand 20:29, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

I think 'R', 'S', and 'T' have consistently been the longest, after having watched this twice through. Salad Days 06:27, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

A note on copyvios

As many who work on this part of Wikipedia know, a lot of articles that get listed here are blatant copyright violations. Usually those articles would be listed at WP:CP. For those who aren't aware, a change was recently made to the db-copyvio template that removes the criteria that the article had to be less than 48 hours old. Now, if you find a blatant copyvio you can mark it for speedy deletion regardless of how old the article is. This should help clear this list much quicker. --cholmes75 ^{(chit chat)} 05:26, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Good work guys

I see that a recent lot was just cleared out. Congratulations! --WikiSlasher 08:30, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Suggested improvements

• Is it worth checking for external links only to generate a separate list of likely advertisements? - TB 10:09, Jun 9, 2004 (UTC)

• If i made an php script that ran the code listed above, and auto formatted all this stuff would someone higher up install it to run nightly or so? --Meawoppl 19:41, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

• Have a page that takes the overlap between deadend pages and orphaned pages. Would be a good way to screen for AfD candidates. Amcfreely 23:05, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

• Keep dead-end pages that are left just before a re-run in a separate list. The problem is that the list is dealt with mostly alphabetically and reverse-alphabetically. So, pages sort of in the middle of the alphabet stay on this page longer than needed. -- Koffieyahoo 05:43, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

  I've actually been keeping a separate list of pages that are still on the list after a regeneration. It covers the last two regenerations. I was keeping it on my hard drive, but seeing Koffieyahoo's suggestion, I moved it to my user space. Everyone is welcome to work on it: Holdovers. Whitejay²⁵¹ 00:28, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Updates and User:Bluemoose Leaving Wikipedia

I'm trying to figure out how to get the Dead-End Pages updated. As near as I can figure out, Bluemoose/Martin was responsible for updating the page. Since he has left Wikipedia, this seems to be falling through the cracks. I like working on the Dead-End Pages but without any way of updating the list, I'm unable to work on them. Does anyone know of a way to find another person to do this? I'd volunteer but if it involves downloading the current database (1.8 GBs?) and working with it, that's not possible since I'm on a relatively slow connection. I tried but the estimate for download time was 10-12 hours. Anyone have any ideas? --Pigman (talk • contribs) 04:24, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

It's not just your connection, it's slow for me too. I will give it a try once the download finishes. Salad Days 05:14, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! I'd also need a new hard drive if I was going to do it. I only have about 10 Gb left free and the database apparently unpacks to 8.5Gb. That's a little to close to the edge for free space for my taste. --Pigman (talk • contribs) 05:25, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Okay, I think I have figured out how to do it, but the database dump is two weeks old so many of the entries on it have already been dealt with and are redlinks. I have uploaded my results to User:Salad Days/Sandbox. However... it has nearly thirteen thousand entries. I've updated the directions if anyone wants to give it a go. Now, what's the consensus? Should I upload the two-week old version before L-Z is finished, or wait until the database is updated? Salad Days 11:13, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for doing this! Not too sure what to do about the age of the dump or how to weed out the articles which have already had some wikifying and tags put on them. My main concern is that these pages not remain dead-end. Any tags will help them be noticed by other editors, projects, etc. It seems to me there must be some way of sorting the links but I don't really know how. Not much help on this, am I? --Pigman^{talk • contribs} 17:12, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Well, it's a start at least. There's probably a way to get stuff removed from the results that is a member of a category already; I will give it another shot when the database is updated. Salad Days 19:49, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

I figured out how to remove articles that contain templates from the list. This cut the results from 13 thousand down to 3. See User:Salad Days/Sandbox 4. Salad Days 00:31, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

You can always put it up for a letter (e.g. A) and see what what people think. --- Skapur 03:12, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

I asked a few dead-enders and they seemed to think it would be best to wait until the current pass is finished to refresh the page. In the meantime, if you want to you can work on my super-secret sandbox page. Salad Days 04:30, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Trouble is, the gap between dumps is varied and undefined.... Rich Farmbrough, 15:54 31 December 2006 (GMT).

Are dumps dated anywhere? If not, why not? It seems to avoid stressing the live database, being able to know the date of the dump you're dealing with is important. Or is it rare for people to use the dump for this kind of purpose? (I get the strangest feeling of immaturity writing about "dumps".) --Pigman^{talk • contribs} 17:59, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes, the "dumps" are dated. The one that I used for my sandbox pages is labeled 2006-12-04. Salad Days 18:03, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

I don't think the age of the dump is a big issue. Weeding out redlinks when you have a list up in a buffer is FAST - and has to be done routinely in the days/weeks after the newly installed list anyway, as articles are deleted by other Wikipedia maintainers. I'm happy with working from a month-old dump if necessary. (Note: have you considered asking for an account on the wikimedia experimental server?) --Alvestrand 10:42, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

What experimental server? Salad Days 15:36, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

can't find the info now - heard that somewhere (Germany?), there's a server with a mirrored copy of the MySQL database, which people can query without disturbing the running system. But I can't remember where I saw it, and Wikipedia/Wikimedia searching is ... .not very helpful. --Alvestrand 21:27, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

I found the secret dump place here[4], and I should have it downloaded by tomorrow :) Salad Days 22:42, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Updated the list

I have a new version made from the 12-30-06 data, just let me know when you guys want me to put it up. Salad Days 07:34, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Any time is fine with me. My current way of processing the list is to plug it into AutoWikiBrowser (AWB) and let AWB scan the pages for problems. When it catches one, I go over it more thoroughly for problems other than just being a dead-end page: verify, copyedit, wikify, etc. and tag it accordingly. I even do some actual editing sometimes! Are you going to post them to your sandbox pages again? --Pigman^{talk • contribs} 17:00, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Okay, I will be bold and update it now. I don't see much point in waiting, since the longer it takes, the more will simply pile up. Salad Days 18:07, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks - diving right in - T reduced from 1091 to 975 just by deleting the redlinks; took no time at all. Now for the fun! --Alvestrand 20:15, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Great Dayton Flood

Hello. I just did a major revision to this article and it no longer is a dead-end page. I noticed that it was listed by checking the pages that linked to the article. I didn't know if there was anything else I could do to remove this article from your list, I'm not familiar with this project. Any advice for me would be welcomed. CRKingston 02:01, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Just delete it from the list. Can't get much simpler than that.. --Alvestrand 02:53, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

The list is maintained by hand because by definition, the entries are not members of any category. Just remove if it's in good shape :) Salad Days 02:54, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Pages too long

The current method of generating the list produces pages that are too long (~170 kb) in some cases. It would be better if this could be broken up into much smaller chunks. This time I did some of this by hand, but it is a time consuming thing to do for a set of pages that is just going to be regenerated in a few days. ike9898 22:13, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

The regeneration does not happen every few days: it happens every month or two, after a new database dump is made. It cannot be created on the fly. If you edit the sections by letter, rather than the entire page at once, they are much more manageable. Salad Days 22:36, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Can we get a bot to automatically remove red links? - Penwhale | Blast the Penwhale 03:48, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

You could try Wikipedia:Bot requests and see if anyone could easily add this functionality to an existing bot, or see if making one from scratch would be an easy task. It certainly would help reduce the tedium involved with maintaining this page. Salad Days 23:18, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Jayden54 has said he will create a bot to prune this of redlinks once a day... woohoo! So no moving or renaming the dead-end pages, guys. Salad Days 18:45, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Orphaned article - Anderson's Rule

I've just been working on this article (with help) and there is only one dead-end link remaining. Can someone take a look at the article and critique? Is there anything else that needs to be done? Do the stubs have enough information? For R. L. Anderson himself (the remaining link), I was thinking of creating a biographical stub. What would you suggest? After this one is done properly, I'd like to pitch in and help with other orphaned or dead-end articles. Thx! LtlKty 23:17, 27 January 2007 (UTC)^talk

The article looks fantastic! This project is not about the number of red links in an article; instead, it is a list of articles which contain no links whatsoever, at least, at the time it was last updated. Feel free to edit the section for the letter A and remove the reference, if you like. Salad Days 00:05, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Thoughts on the red link, You could unlink it, you could check Anderson and see if the author is there by another name. I would not suggest a Stub unless you have a bunch of info on the author is it would not pass WP:BIO and would likely get deleted. Or you could just leave the red link there. You did a fine job, looks good. Jeepday 00:22, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for taking a look. This article was already removed from the dead links page, I suppose by one of the other editors. I'll unlink the reference to Anderson because I haven't yet been able to find more about him than the articles he wrote. I suppose this article was actually an orphaned page (no links to it) rather than a dead-end page (no links out of it). Thanks for helping me understand the difference. I plan to work on both types. Thanks again! --LtlKty^{talk | contribs} 20:54, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

I looked through the page histories, and the original dump of dead-end pages did not include Anderson's rule, and the article "Anderson's rule" was never a dead-end page (ie. all versions of it include wikilinks)... is it possible you came here by mistake somehow? Salad Days 21:05, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Anderson's rule is listed on an old W. Marsh list of orphaned pages - that is, pages that no page points to. So I guess it was an orphan at one point - but it isn't now. --Alvestrand 23:06, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

I did come by mistake thinking that the article was a dead-end page when it was actually an orphaned page. Since I'd also like working on dead-end pages, I think I'll stay. :) --LtlKty^{talk | contribs} 04:44, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Welcome aboard, have fun and if you have questions ask. Looks like you must have some experience as your history is much shorter then your Wikipedia mark up skills would imply. Jeepday 04:49, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the encouragement. I really appreciate it. --LtlKty^{talk | contribs} 05:20, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Templates to ignore

I have realized that I should avoid listing pages which contain particular templates the next time this is updated, for example the {{deletedpage}} template... does anyone have any suggestions as to what else to filter out? Perhaps articles already tagged {{wiki}}? Salad Days 00:40, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Oh please avoid the protected deleted pages, it is frustrating to remove them over and over again and it does make the list longer than it should be! As for the other tags, I suspect most of us work the same way as me - work on the articles we want to irrespective of any existing tagging and leave the rest! --Richhoncho 10:42, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

I tried to do that, but apparently it didn't work. I will have to read the database scanner docs more thoroughly... Salad Days 16:26, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Bot question

I notice from the header that we now have a bot eating all the redlinks for us - good!

I just wonder: does it know to eat the whole line (everthing after the # and before the next #), or do I have to worry about pieces of my "editor's notes" being left after the entry is gone? --Alvestrand 01:42, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

I brought that subject up here: Wikipedia:Bot_requests#Keeping_WP:DEAD_free_of_redlinks, and it looks like the bot does gobble the entire line, notes and all! Salad Days 02:19, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Point of difference

Added internal links to this article and edited it a bit. It still needs a lot of work - I've left it as a stub for now. If you agree, I'd like to take it off the dead-end page list - and also the orphaned page list if it is there.--LtlKty^{talk | contribs} 05:13, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Looks good! Whenever you have wikilinked a dead-ender, feel free to delete it from the list. Askari Mark (Talk) 05:32, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Prod Thought

Just a thought, Adding a prod tag when we are working the list is becoming a habit for all of us, and I think it's a good one. I have also begun adding a date behind my prod tag on the list so if someone is coming behind me they can tell at glance if it has been over 6 or 7 days, if it is still blue and if the article might need another look. Jeepday 23:36, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

I noticed that an editor had started doing that and I also think it's a great idea. It really saves time. I like the date idea and I'll start doing that as well. janejellyroll 23:37, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

I'll get on board with that, too. I'm in the middle of using AWB to find the prods and mark them here. FWIW, I also put the prods on my watch list so I can get to them if they get de-prodded. Kathy A. 00:05, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Article count update

For no particular reason, I noticed that the counts of articles at the top of each letter were outdated by a month, so I updated them manually. My general observations:

• Very short letters, such as Q and Y, were almost completely exhausted. A was also substantially reduced. This indicates a tendency in this WikiProject to knock off a whole letter, or to tackle the list from the beginning.
• Generally, a reduction of 20-25% in the length of the list was normal. For example, K went from ~400 to ~300. There is some activity everywhere, and even if the list is not updated for a while longer (or ever), it will take at least three more months to exhaust it, and probably more. YechielMan 01:47, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure what the point of the numbers at the top is... all you have to do to see how many there are, is to scroll to the bottom. Perhaps they are there to provide a measure of current progress? A more accurate way to compare progress might be the size in kilobytes of the original update, to the current size. For A-L this number is 151 to 105, which is closer to a third complete. That also doesn't account for articles which have been improved but not yet removed from the list. Salad Days 02:38, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

I thought the idea of the numbers at the top (which I think were put there with the original update) was to go "oh wow, we've gotten X done"... --Alynna 18:36, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

That's always what I assumed they were there for, and the reason I added a bunch of them when the last update was done. It gives me a sense of collective accomplishment to see that we started with 895 in a certain letter and have whittled it down to 254 (which I can see by scrolling down to the bottom of that section.) If the count at the top is strictly to see how many we have at the current instant, it's a bit pointless. Kathy A. 19:06, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Why oh why must somebody tamper with the number of articles? There were 580 at list regeneration, I can see how many there are now because they are numbered. Please leave the numbers alone, I like to see how much we have done without spending hours on the history screen. --Richhoncho 19:25, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

I have been bold and added back the original number of entries for A-K. Will do L-Z tomorrow a.m. if no one beats me to it. Kathy A. 01:35, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

I like how you added both: it makes it look like we are whacking away at the hitpoints of a monster. Salad Days 01:42, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Well done, Kathy A, much gratitude from this contributor. --Richhoncho 09:03, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks to everyone for your insightful follow-up. I did not realize what firestorm this would cause, and I did not intend to do harm. YechielMan 05:12, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

How you can help edits

While I really appreciate what your doing on the front page YechielMan I think you need an overview to start off, then a second section with more detail if you want. We don't want to scare off newcomers, by making it to complex, the primary goal of this project is add [[wiki links]] to articles. While the rest of the stuff you are talking about might be nice to do, there are other projects and editors to do them. Just as articles progress slowly so do editors. We start with one thing and as we learn more we do more, but not just starting out. Jeepday 03:38, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

I will think about it. My rationale was that the text as I saw it was uncompelling, and that these are the criteria that I use to deal with DEP. I see that a more simplified approach might benefit users who come from a cleanup/wikify background rather than an notability/AFD background. YechielMan 05:15, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Jeepday, I tried a new version. I'd like your feedback here. The purpose of this edit was to simplify things for people without AFD interests. YechielMan 05:30, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

YechielMan you did a great job on the directions. Simple starting for newbies and people coming from other projects, and more complex for the advanced user. I think you should add Wikipedia:Dead-end pages to your vanity list. Jeepday 13:38, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Ditto Jeepday, --Richhoncho 14:23, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Section breaks within letters

Someone placed a section break within E at En. This was done already with S, and I'm okay with it, but it messed up the section editing: "En" edited as "F", "F" edited as "G", and so forth. Figure out how to fix that bug before you reinstate the section break. YechielMan 18:00, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Someone would be me Jeepday glad I only go them half done before I had to go to work. Not sure how it could have got messed up. The Section break is still in "G" at Gi and Gr and they seem to work there, and it worked on S for about a week now. YechielMan (or someone) can you check and see if you are experiencing the problem on any of the remaining sub sections, if so let me know so I can try and recreate it and figure out what is causing it. It is pretty simple wiki stuff so should not break unless I did something stupid (time passes)... I think I found the stupid thing I did. Looks like I entered a sub section ===Dek== with 3 starters and 2 finishers (which has since been reverted away) that probably knocked the whole thing out of whack (I was rushing did not check my work, bad me}. I will leave it alone for a few days, to see if others have any problems before trying again. Jeepday 03:19, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

I tested a top level subsection on Wikipedia:Dead-end_pages/L-Z#S that I kind of like (you can open just the top without not the whole thing, so we don't step on each others toes). And I forced a Table of contents just above it, which I think I don't like (feel free to remove it if you find it really annoying) I was going to try to force just a sub table for just the "S" stuff but did not figure out if and how to do it yet. I could build one like is built on top of the page but would it be worth it? Jeepday 04:10, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

This problem occurs because Wikipedia uses section numbers when sending sections to edit, while it uses section titles when referring to sections. The sequence of events was probably:

• Yechiel looked at the page, and went to section 11, "G" (say)
• Jeepday inserted a section in the "E"s, which renumbered section "G" to be section 12.
• Yechiel pressed the "Edit" link on his screen, which still contained the number 11
• Yechiel was surprised to see section "F" appear on his screen.

I have seen this before, and I think it's hard to avoid - it's basic to the way Wikipedia deals with sections. I guess I can live with it. --Alvestrand 07:30, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

That's actually pretty funny. I can only laugh. :) YechielMan 05:48, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Now that I know what happened, I can watch for it Jeepday 03:49, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Section breaks within letters, Good idea or not?

What is the the thought on putting in section breaks? I like them especially for any letter with lots of articles as it makes it easier to work in the middle of the selection. I don't mind doing the work to put them in as often as Salad Days will reload the data, if other users find them useful. If you don't want them, I will just put them on what ever section grabs my attention to work. Jeepday 03:49, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm not a fan of the section breaks within the letters. (I don't find it all that hard to scroll down, even through the big sections.) However, I won't get worked up about them, either. *grin*--Kathy A. 05:09, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

New data

I made a new version of the page from a dump ten days old... but I don't dare put it up and remove everyone's comments and so forth. If anyone wants to be bold and risk pissing someone off it is located at: User:Salad_Days/Sandbox_2 and User:Salad_Days/Sandbox_3. Salad Days 01:13, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Instead of creating these lists, wouldn't it be easier to automatically insert a maintenance tag for dead end pages - subpaged into months. Although there would be no visual guide to how well we are doing, it would easier to remove from the list, and, hopefully, attract more people to help on dead end pages. Just a thought. As for adding the new data, you won't offend me, I can start nearer the top of the list again! --Richhoncho 01:20, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Be Bold Go for it, the comments are not that important. the articles will either come back on the list or not, if a user cares about the comments for tracking a single article the can go back to history just before the update and get them. GO FOR IT SALAD DAYS! New data is always better then old. Signed Jeepday 13:10, 17 February 2007 (UTC) (a leaver of comments on the page)

I, too have thought that a maintenance tag would be a great idea. Actually, I can see pros and cons to both methods. With a maintenance tag, you lose the abilty to have notes, such as prod. (Of course, when I prod an article, I also watch it so I can go back if someone de-prods it.) With the maintenance tag, you don't have to keep going back to maintain a long list. As to putting up the new version -- the comments are easy to replace. It didn't take me long with AWB to find all the prods; if we have a set of three or four comments people care about (prod, AfD, notability, merge?), I can search for all of them at the same time and mark them.--Kathy A. 16:13, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

My thoughts are in line with Kathy's. If you're placing csd's, prods and AfD's, it's useful to have notes to follow over time. I'm wondering, though, whether there is a way to automate (re)capturing those notes automatically, without somebody having to AWB them? Askari Mark (Talk) 17:29, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

I see your very reasonable points - in my case I note them as watchable, but change the list only if I remember which isn't that often. I might also decide I am being more productive if I move onto the next article. Perhaps the answer is to add notes into the discussion page for the category when we think it worthwhile. Just a thought.--Richhoncho 19:18, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

I like the list version - the thing about putting notes in the list is the structure is already there; as opposed to a category discussion page where, well, putting "some article is prodded" seems a bit too trivial for a new header... and it would be more of a pain to keep those comments in alphabetical order... plus it's easier to see progress in a list, albiet not ~that~ much easier. I don't find it too much effort to update the list while i work - I just keep it open in another tab - but not everyone might feel that way. --Alynna 19:40, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

I always put my prods on my watchlist so that if they become unprodded, I can slap a ton of maintainance tags on them. Thanks for the input, guys. Salad Days 20:28, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

I see the data is updated. Good stuff! I guess it reinforces the point that if you place links in an article (so that it won't be in next month's list), you need to add the maintenance tags at the same time. A lot of the maintenance tags have their own by-month lists, so they get watched by someone even if it's not me. --Alvestrand 20:54, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Exactly. The wikify project is very strong and should be able to catch a great deal of the stuff we might miss. In many ways I view this project as being basic triage: deleting a lot of the pure garbage that the new page patrollers miss, and sorting the rest into proper cleanup categories, so that editors who focus on those things can do an expert job. Converting this stuff into perfect articles is just frosting. :) Salad Days 21:00, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Reality check? What's everyone talking about? There seems to be some discussion about maintenance tags versus creating by month categories...? YechielMan 05:52, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

I think the idea is to make a tag like {{deadend}} and have a script add it to all the pages on the list, which would be a metric buttload of work. Salad Days 12:34, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

I suggested it. I assumed, rightly or wrongly, that the tag could be added automatically by bot (much the same way as the orphan tag is added). So when we work on an aricle we can remove the tag at the same time, thus making the manual editing of these pages redundant. Perish the thought that anybody thought I was creating work. LOL --Richhoncho 12:59, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Well, if you look at the holdovers page page (which currently has 1000+ entries) it's pretty clear that untouched articles will just show up on the page refresh. I think the wiki tag already summarizes what these pages need farily well; perhaps you could convince a bot owner to run through the dead-end pages list and add {{wiki}} to all of them? That would reduce the need for making another redundant cleanup tag... mind you, I think it's a good idea, I just wasn't sure about the whole making a new category thing when there's already so many. Salad Days 22:36, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

But would a tag such as {{triage}} (to make up a hypothetical name for the hypothetical tag be redundant? If {{wikify}} would do the same thing, it seems like we don't even need a DEP project -- the bot could identify DEPs and apply the {{wikify}} tag, end of story. If the point of the DEP project is to do some basic triage, then the {{wikify}} tag doesn't quite cover that. (I'm not making an argument (yet) for tag or no-tag, because I still see lots of pros and cons for each methods, and a few pros and cons for both a list and a tag.)

Hmmm, you make several good points. Adding a new category sort of strikes me as a bit of instruction creep though, so I think that's why my initial reaction was along the lines of "it ain't broke, don't fix it." Salad Days 23:53, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Copyvio

Just a quick reminder to everyone on the project that blatant and total copyvio is eligible for speedy deletion under the "db-copyvio|url" template. There's a ton of articles on dead-end pages that are rather long and totally unwikified, which is a dead giveaway. All you have to do is grab a random sentence fragment and paste it into Google in quotes to spot the source. Salad Days 23:33, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Just be sure it is not a Wikipedia Mirror that you find ;) Jeepday 00:58, 22 March 2007 (UTC)