Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Unreferenced articles

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Backlog progress

86,998! Well done, everyone :) Boleyn (talk) 09:22, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Looking good! Anything you'd like to see highlighted on the August update on the 4th? Kazamzam (talk) 15:15, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, Kazamzam, I have just seen this. Nothing in particular, just lovely to see it heading downwards. Boleyn (talk) 08:29, 9 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Template:Wikipedia Unreferenced articles improved

It's very strange for a WikiProject template to not start with "WikiProject" (only 2 templates in Category:WikiProject banners with non-standard names don't start with "WikiProject" vs. the 1076 in Category:WikiProject banners with quality assessment & Category:WikiProject banners without quality assessment that do) , so Template:Wikipedia Unreferenced articles improved should be renamed to Template:WikiProject Unreferenced articles improved, unless there's a good reason to keep it as-is.

I put in a RM to do so 2 weeks ago, but admittedly forgot about it until I noticed its recent close (as no consensus), and realized I should have posted here after initiating it, so am posting here now for visibility & historical purposes, and in case anyone else feels the need to re-RM. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 06:58, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Tom.Reding - excellent catch, thank you so much for alerting us to this. Definitely agree that it would benefit all to have the template reworked. Paging some of the usual suspects (@Boleyn, @CactiStaccingCrane, @ARandomName123, @DreamRimmer, @Cielquiparle) to get more feedback. Kazamzam (talk) 14:36, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! Looks good to me, though Gonnym’s suggestion could work as well (ex. {{WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors}}) ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 01:02, 18 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, {{WikiProject Unreferenced articles}} works for me too, and it's probably the most intuitive option, but I'm agnostic about whether or not "improved" is kept, since it's been used since 2010, so I'll defer to project participants on that. Redirects for either case can be made if desired. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 17:09, 18 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@ARandomName123 @Tom.Reding I think alerting people to the project's existence by changing the template name but also the discussion would be very useful, especially as we gear up for the drive. We could also revise the edit summary that we use for main space for a talk page summary as well. Kazamzam (talk) 11:40, 27 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@ARandomName123 and Kazamzam: RM submitted @ Template talk:Wikipedia Unreferenced articles improved#Requested move 12 August 2024. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 13:35, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

August 2024

Shorter update than usual but happy 17th anniversary to the launch of the Phoenix spacecraft! I hope everyone is doing swimmingly.

Headline: We cleared 5148 articles since June! For yourself and your fellow editors, please clap.

Highlights: September 2008 is in the bin! There was also tremendous work done by editors @MIDI on geography stubs, reducing September 2013 from 1,489 to 627 (57%!), and to @Gnisacc for whittling December 2023 down to 73 articles, a 71% decrease.

Low-hanging fruit: October 2008 is only a measly 8 articles left, dangling precariously like a sinner in the hands of an angry God. Give it a nudge.

High-hanging fruit: Everyone's favourite BFC (Big Friendly Category), December 2009, is a shapely 11,593 articles as of this writing - so much freshness and only 2 calories. The other high-hanging fruit are, still, the Frustrating Five (name open for revision): January 2013 (1,118), April 2019 (1,037), May 2019 (2,103), June 2019 (4,433), and September 2020 (1,393). Once again, September 2020 had the lowest percentage of change between updates. Godspeed to anyone working on these.
Announcements: The second URA drive is in the planning stages! We will begin 1 November 2024 and end 30 November 2024, with a proposed extra week for review where participants can earn extra points. The planning is active and ongoing so please feel free to get involved.
New challenge: no ties this update! Carry on.

Next update will be 4 October 2024 and then, after a pause for the drive, 4 January 2025. My personal goal is to have 2008 entirely finished by the new year and it seems more doable than ever. Happy editing! Kazamzam (talk) 14:10, 4 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

84,960! Still steady progress. Well done, everyone. Boleyn (talk) 08:30, 9 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks @Boleyn for the round up! And thanks to @Cielquiparle (and whoever else is responsible) for again working to clear up the dregs of another month. October 2008 is dead! Turtlecrown (talk) 13:43, 9 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Anytime! 💁🏻‍♀️ Kazamzam (talk) 14:51, 9 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thenks for the update, @Kazamzam! (And for dealing the final blows to October 2008.) Curious whether we collectively succeeded in decreasing every category by at least 10, as you suggested back in June? Cielquiparle (talk) 04:23, 14 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Cielquiparle - thanks so much for the follow-up! There were eleven categories that didn't make the cut. Both February and June 2009 only decreased by 7 articles, which is...not great but that means there's just more room for improvement. Kazamzam (talk) 22:56, 14 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

83,996! Still heading in the right direction. Boleyn (talk) 19:46, 31 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

November 2024 Backlog Drive Planning

Maybe we could just discuss here instead of waiting for someone to start a separate Talk page? Seems prudent to start planning now since it's mid-September. @Kazamzam, @ARandomName123, @Boleyn, @CactiStaccingCrane, and whoever else is interested in helping. Cielquiparle (talk) 07:42, 11 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Cielquiparle - you’re absolutely right. I think the biggest issues from February were how to judge an adequate reference (and how to make sure we have enough reviewers), if one reference is sufficient (I don’t love it for a big article but I think it has to be sufficient given the premise of the project and the campaign), how to make sure edits are counted (we used the edits summary function but personally I like the idea of people submitting through a checker in the same way that Asian Month does) and if there’s a way to get multiple points for one article (I’m on the fence). If anyone else has big ticket items to address, please bring them up! Kazamzam (talk) 10:52, 11 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Kazamzam: I'm assuming the checker you're referring to is https://fountain.toolforge.org/? I haven't used it before, but if by checker you mean there's a function for us to review edits in the tool, that'd be really nice. I also noticed there's https://hashtags.wmcloud.org/, which imo is better than the tool we used last time, which searches for an edit summary (with a hashtag) over all users (ex), instead of one-by-one as we did previously. I'd personally prefer edit summaries for the convenience though.

The extra review week last time went pretty well imo, though I'm not sure if we actually applied the point deductions for failed reviews.

In total, we had 14.3k articles reffed, with just under 2k reviews (14% or so). This could probably be a bit higher, as it was kind of hectic last time.

There's not really much else I can think of to address, other than what you already mentioned. ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 05:59, 12 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Kazamzam @ARandomName123 Can we just run a little trial using the checker, so we can all get comfortable with it now? Is it hard to set up? Cielquiparle (talk) 21:07, 18 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Cielquiparle @ARandomName123 - I was just looking through this before I saw your ping; great minds think alike! Looking at the checker (Fountain), it seems like it relies a lot on individual checking and the Asian Month competition I've referenced (rather egregiously, now that I look at the metrics) had fewer than 200 articles submitted. Given that we had over 14,000 articles submitted for the last backlog drive, I have doubts about the volume because I haven't seen any submissions on that scale (the other recent projects that I clicked through were also rather small). I'm going through the hashtag search now to see how that works - that might be our best bet but we need to have a 100% unique and distinct hashtag that no one gets wrong. Seems doable as long as we're clear from the jump and really hammer it home. Kazamzam (talk) 21:14, 18 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Agree on hashtags, and we could just do the same as last time, something like #NOV24. There's currently no edits with that hashtag, though I did do a small test with #NOV24 test. Volume shouldn't be an issue, as the #WPWPARK has a fairly similar revision number (16k) and is still fairly fast. ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 21:25, 18 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@ARandomName123 - we love to see it! Something more distinctive than a hashtag might be helpful + an edit summary that uses the template like WP:FEB24 would be good for directing potential participants to the drive. I think the hashtag is the best route for counting but we should encourage people to use a template either way. Kazamzam (talk) 19:16, 19 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Kazamzam: I was thinking we could just combine the two (#[[WP:NOV24]] or #WP:NOV24), but after testing it a bit, it unfortunately doesn't seem to work. "[[WP:NOV24]] #NOV24" does work, but it's a bit long imo. ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 19:31, 19 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]