User talk:Naconkantari/cleanup

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[edit] Let the discussion begin...

I believe this is a good idea. I fail to see harm in saying "Hey, we've been running for six years and we have over 1.5 million articles plus templates, categories and other miscellany. Wikipedia is taking a day to clean up, and we welcome you back in (hours:minutes) to edit if you do not have an account." A single 24-hour span is workable. Sort out what needs to be done, let Wikiprojects know, give it at least 2 weeks from adoption to action, and go to town with mops, brooms, sponges, toothbrushes and toilet brushes. Teke 05:48, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

This also strikes me as a great idea. People can clean up maintenance categories and such, and vandalism will be much more concentrated (because some people are going to create autoconfirmed accounts earlier, sigh.) Gracenotes^T § 16:56, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

I have a question. Does anyone think that it would be better to have a three-day notice for this, to avoid autoconfirmed vandal accounts, or do we truly need to time to organize this as openly as possible? Gracenotes^T § 22:40, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

I think, if implemented right, this could help. I would add a suggestion to Wikiprojects, that they list start and B class articles that need cleanup so their members can focus on priority tasks. If we announce it correctly, the media could see this as a good thing (Wikipedia wants to clean itself up!). If we do it wrong though, the media could see this as a cabalist measure. The only problem I see is that most editors are not regular editors (edit almost every day). If they don't participate, the articles to editors ratio could be around 20-30:1. If it were possible to send an email to all editors with a registered email address though, we could bring it up. Mr.Z-mantalk¢Review! 19:56, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Shutting down non-cleanup things

I propose that during the spring cleaning, through the miracle of cascading protection, we shut down fora not relevant to the cleanup, such as RFA and RFAR. RFC should be kept open in case of an emergency. Any thoughts? —Signed, your friendly neighborhood MessedRocker. 07:37, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

I think that the line Further disputes should follow the standard dispute resolution protocols. covers RFC. I would recommend getting approval from Arbcom before saying that they will be closed. Naconkantari 16:52, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

What do you mean by "shut down"? No new RfAs, RfArbs, etc... can be added? Existing ones can't be edited? I could maybe see the former, but probably not the latter. ChazBeckett 15:32, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

This seems completely pointless; I don't see evidence that not being able to edit RFA or RFAR will make anyone wikify a page. Kusma (talk) 17:04, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Let's do this on April 1

Which will otherwise become another giant "Let's screw up Wikipedia, haha" exercise.--Eloquence * 17:18, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Strongly agree. Can it be organized in time for that? --Quiddity 20:14, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The day after

I'm worried that this could lead to huge chaos the day after the cleanup day. For one thing, we can expect a slight increase in anon/new-user edits the day after, for especially dedicated or perseverant anons; for another thing, the processes such as DRv, etc., where anons could appeal decisions made in their 'absence', could quite likely get a huge spike of activity all at once. --ais523 15:31, 19 March 2007 (U T C)

[edit] Four Million Users?

Somehow I doubt we really have 4 million users. More like 400000, possibly even less. That may or may not affect the scalability here. >Radiant< 15:33, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

It's very well possible that we have 4 million registered accounts, if you include all vandalism-only accounts, SPA's, sockpuppets, meatpuppets and role account. When it comes to active users, the number is indeed more likely near the 400,000 mark. A ecis^Brievenbus 17:47, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Depends on how you define an "active" user. Take a look at these rather outdated stats. In October 2006, there were about 40,000 users who made at least 5 edits (in that month) and about 4,000 users who made at least 100 edits. ChazBeckett 17:55, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Interesting proposal...

...but I have two problems with it. One, to restrict new page creation for one day isn't all that helpful if we're trying to clean content up. What if I need to make a redirect page as part of a cleanup exercise? What if there's a redlink I can kill easily and quickly, and then move forward? On the flipside, suspending AfD isn't a bad idea, but allowing all speedy deletions to run their course may be dangerous. Will suspending deletions be a useful thing for cleanup? No. But some of the more controversial ones (A7, G11) may need a little more attention, so holding off on some of them may be useful.

Part one currently restricts my ability to support this, but two isn't a dealbreaker - this seems like a worthwhile exercise. --badlydrawnjeff talk 15:41, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps we could still have page creation. —Signed, your friendly neighborhood MessedRocker. 20:13, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

If we disable page creation, we also need to disable page moves (or get the developers to make it impossible to change a redirect into a non-redirect), both of which will interfere with some cleanup processes. Kusma (talk) 11:04, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] won't make any difference

A single day of lockouts will not make any difference in getting things cleaned up. We could just as well have a "cleanup day" without locking things down, just running an ad campaign that says something like "If everybody fixes one page, we'll have a lot of better pages!" and pointing people to the cleanup queue. The bigger issue is getting people to actually take the task on, and this will do nothing for that. I'd like to see a sitenotice and a monthlong campaign like the fundraiser, only instead of asking for cash, we ask for editing help. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 17:26, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

By locking out Wikipedia of most of its parts, we won't have to be distracted by most vandalism, article writing, and processes, and just focus on the cleanup. Sounds bad, but remember Wikipedia really needs cleaning and this is only one day or whichever short period of time we end up doing. —Signed, your friendly neighborhood MessedRocker. 19:37, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

People are going to do what they want, and blocking them from doing what they want to is not going to make them do something they don't. If you can convince them to do it, you won't need to block them from doing other things. A short period of time won't be enough anyway, but if we can convince people to do a page a day for a month, then we'd accomplish so much more. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 19:59, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Sorry but I can not understand what would the benefit of this block. If you are able to convince/persuade some people, who usually spend most of their time in discussing and voting articles for deletion or to rise disputes, to reduce the time they spend in activities like these ones, and improve quality of article and their clean up, then it would an useful thing. But clean up may in some case be obtained by adding something rather than removing something. Why should someone be blocked to created a new article? And would be so useful for the clean up to prevent anonymous and no-autoconfirmed user to edit?

Wouldn't it be against the main spirit of the wiki? Is it acceptable to block anons and not-autoconfirmed users?

If I have understood correctly of of the original idea of the Wikipedia project was that errors would be fixed by a successive edit, rather than hunting them. Have we lost this idea (or actually this hope)? -- AnyFile 16:54, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Why?

Why do we want to discourge new editors from contributing? Corvus cornix 17:33, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Your use of "discourage" is a bit inappropriate, in my opinion. Are new users going to be saddened and never return again? Or are they going to be rational human beings, accept it, and wait? Even I would be fine if I couldn't edit Wikipedia for a day. And if you think that the point of this proposal is to discourage new users for editing, I mean no offense, but it kind of went over your head. Gracenotes^T § 23:11, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

I can see his point, though. This will discourage readers who just happen to stumble upon a typo, as you're placing a barrier on them on becoming editors. If they can fix a typo on the spot, and someone welcomes them, there is a higher probability of that user crossing the reader/editor boundary. If the user cannot fix the typo, he will say, "too bad", will laugh at the typo, will acquire the information he needed, and won't bother to come back to fix the typo when he is able to edit. Readers have things to do; it is a bit self-centric to assume that someone is going to go through the hassle of waiting for something he or she does not necessarily values or cares about. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 06:24, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] We absolutely can not make this longer than a day

Since DRV is suspended. Combine that with the extra speedies that will happen when people aren't allowed to do other things, and if we try to extend it to even two days, we get 100 DRV nominations when they're allowed again. Most from extremely ticked off people, who were told "cleanup!" as a response to their protests. And as a side note, I love how admin-only page creation is tucked into part of a sentence in the details. -Amarkov moo! 03:55, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Good point. Since only autoconfirmed users can create articles, they will still be able to edit during the cleanup period. They would be able to do hold-on, which is not a substitute for DRV but they'll be able to at least voice themselves, right? —Signed, your friendly neighborhood MessedRocker. 10:29, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

My WHole point is not to do the suspensions. There's no way we could clean up as much in one locked-down day as in a concerted effort over a period of time. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 16:48, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

The trick here is to make the deletions so that any admin can overturn them. However, this should only take place if sufficient sources to be able to write a decent article about the subject are provided. That way, DRV won't get overwhelmed. MER-C 10:11, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] define "cleanup"

run spell checker
autoseach for "poop" etc
delete stubs
sort cats
add "needs cleanup" template
identify and block puppets
create new admins
!vote on stuff

???? anyone have a definition for what will be the focus for 24 hours ???? 4.250.33.183 12:53, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Essentially, we need to get rid of this. MER-C 10:12, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

That is work for far more than a single day. Fortunately there is no deadline. Kusma (talk) 10:49, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] A possibility

Two of the things I have heard about this are that there's too much to clean up in one day and that if we expand the period of time to over a day, there would be chaos. What I was thinking we could do is not have just one cleanup day, but multiple cleanup days spread out to allow for some regular editing in between. If we did this, we could have thematic days; one could address a certain maintenance backlog, another for wikifying, another for removing spam, etc...

While it'd be unfortunate to lock down many things, the whole point of this proposed plan for action is that the typical distractions are taken away for a day so all there is to do is clean up the joint. This would make cleaning up Wikipedia a community-wide effort -- for just that day. This plan isn't perfect yet -- we still have to iron things out. And we need your help. —Signed, your friendly neighborhood MessedRocker. 01:27, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Narrowing down the proposal

I've created a set of polls here to hammer out the specifics of the proposal before submitting the final draft to the community for approval. The poll is scheduled to last for seven days which should be enough time to generate some kind of consensus on the specifics. Note that this poll will not mean that the proposal passes or fails, it's purely to clean up the proposal before letting the community decide on whether to accept or reject the proposal as a whole. Naconkantari 05:56, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

The entire concept seems contrary to the fundamental ideas of wikipedia (being open to editing by everyone) and this is just contrary to another principle (voting is evil). Obviously the idea isn't settled enough to be voting on details yet. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 21:24, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

The poll I don't think is binding, it's probably to get a rough idea of what everyone thinks. —Signed, your friendly neighborhood MessedRocker. 21:54, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] You've shackled a great idea to a contentious one

I don't know why you've decided to shackle a great idea to a contentious one. If you'd just proposed a Cleanup Day, as an act of goodwill without any rules or regulations to enforce it, you might have achieved a hell of a lot. The maintenance backlogs are so big it is depressing to work on them, but I would happily do so if I thought the entire community had been mobilised for a busy bee / spring clean. Instead, you've shackled your idea to a highly contentious implementation detail that will have half the community screaming blue murder. Hesperian 06:10, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

If editing is restricted, editors can focus their efforts on actual cleanup instead of the noise of good-faith errors, new page patrol, and vandalism reversion. I don't expect this proposal to pass unanimously, but by restricting editing for one day, resources can be better spent in other places. Naconkantari 06:13, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

I understand why you think restricting editing is a good idea, but I still say it will kill this proposal. For many people, the fact that Wikipedia is "radically open" is core to their understanding of it. These people simply will not permit your pragmatic notions to trump their idealistic ones (And rightly so, IMO). Hesperian 06:23, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

I simply do not see why you say that editors will be able to ignore the "noise of vandalism reversion". The fact that sleeper socks still vandalize George W. Bush every once in a while indicates that not all vandalism comes from new or anonymous editors. On the contrary, restricting editing in this way would give a false sense of security, as less people would be doing RC patrol, for example. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 06:28, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

I disagree. I would venture to guess that the majority of those "screaming blue murder" (if any) have rarely participated in cleanup efforts of any significance. Cajoling/prodding them into action, showing them what needs to be done can only be a Good Thing. Gathering metrics on the number of typos fixed, articles cataloged, stubs cleaned off, etc. in relation to that done on regular days can not only provide us a long overdue cleanup but also with a measure on the extent/fixability of the problem. Too many steps forward, we need one or two steps back. --Hooperbloob 06:20, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

I am happy to work on the cleanup backlogs if you give me a carrot, but I won't do anything if you try to make me do it with a stick. Kusma (talk) 10:51, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Uncyclopedia: how they do it

I'd like to point out that Uncyclopedia already does this kind of thing: once about every six months they have a forest fire week where anything substandard is flammable. Someone who has a better knowledge of Uncyclopedia should explain the nitty gritty of what happens so that we can get an idea of what a possible solution would be.

That said, we really need this kind of thing. I have my own ideas on how this should be run. It's the specifics that need to be ironed out. MER-C 07:48, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] I disagree with this proposal...

I disagree with this proposal for the following reasons>

Anonymous editors, can, and do make good contributions.
Wikipedia does not work to deadlines - can anyone direct me to the relevant page (I've forgotten the link!)
This would spoil the "free encyclopedia anyone can edit" philosophy.

--sunstar net^talk 10:10, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

WP:DEADLINE. Kusma (talk) 10:52, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure if you're seeing past the means of this proposal to understand the ends. Gracenotes^T § 16:04, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] You can't force volunteers to do anything

Encouraging people to do cleanup is good, we have a large cleanup backlog. I don't see how this is at all related to editing by IP adresses. I also don't see why we should make it hard for people to do non-cleanup things. Everybody here is a volunteer, and volunteers will do work they enjoy, and we can't force them to do anything else. If we do not welcome their good contributions, they won't make them.

I might do some cleanup on a "hey! let's do some cleanup together!" day, but if people are discouraged or disallowed from contributing, I don't want to be part of it.

The German Wikipedia recently had some "let's not start new articles, but do cleanup instead" days ("Artikelfreier Sonntag", "article-free Sunday"), which generated more heat than light, although it was completely voluntary (but proposed as a test run for restricting page creation for a month; fortunately that proposal recently failed). The feeling that my reasonably good new articles are not wanted (because of cleanup backlogs that have nothing to do with my work) makes me want to not contribute at all.

So please encourage people to do cleanup and maintenance work, but please do not discourage anyone from doing other things. Kusma (talk) 10:32, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] WikiProject Day

I will tell you a secret: I had had a similar idea in my mind. It is my belief that every topic should be covered by, at least, one WikiProject. Thus, I was thinking about encouraging everyone to spend one day reviewing the items in your watchlist, categorizing every article in a WikiProject. Sure, it is not the same, but at least you are able to let WikiProjects know about articles they may have never heard about. Just a side note. -- ReyBrujo 13:44, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Try it, see what happens

I don't think this is quite going to work well, but it's worth a try, and the idea behind it is worthy. If it doesn't work out, (a) one day's not much to lose in the grand scheme of things, and (b) there's no harm in trying. Of course some implementation details still need to be ironed out. YechielMan 17:55, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

That's the spirit.DGG 06:05, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

I vehemently disagree that "there's no harm trying". Potentially great contributors will go away. I can see the headlines now: "WIKIPEDIA PREVENTS CREATION OF NEW ARTICLES". Corvus cornix 21:13, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Corvus cornix. Look at contributors like User:68.39.174.238 - if this goes ahead, they won't be able to contribute. IP addresses make good edits too, and, as for the point about the headline, well, I hope that headline doesn't come up. This may cause a negative view of Wikipedia in the media, and we don't want that after the Essjay incident, do we?? --sunstar net^talk 23:03, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
- Oh no! Not the Essjay incident! Gimme a corner to cry pensively in, quick! ... or rather, by now, the media doesn't care about the Essjay incident, and those that do care would criticize us whatever we do. Imagine reading "Slashdot prohibits article submission for 24 hours while they rewrite software", or "YouTube disallows comment submission for 12 hours in order to remove years of spam accumulation" or "OEIS restricts content submission for several days to copyedit existing entries". Front page of The New York Times? I don't think so. And "they won't be able to contribute"? You make it sound permanent. Gracenotes^T § 04:12, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
  - If we don't totally screw up the implementation, I would hope the media would see it more as Wikipedia wants to cleanup its act. Mr.Z-mantalk¢Review! 04:31, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

My mistake for mentioning the Essjay incident. That was wrong of me. Sorry, Gracenotes. I hope we don't screw this up though if it goes ahead. --sunstar net^talk 09:00, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

No problem. I'm also worried about the possibility of this getting screwed up, but... as this section started out: there is little harm in trying. It is a gamble that will probably help Wikipedia in the long run. Gracenotes^T § 04:11, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

OK, so if we do gamble, we should try a smart gamble. We want that people concentrate on cleanup, so the suggestion is to shut off other parts instead. Where do people who might help with the cleanup spend their wikitime and how can we relieve them of other duties? Would our RC patrollers (those who might get some relief from an IP editing ban) actually help with cleanup, or are they so specialized that they only want to do RC patrol? We shouldn't shut down parts of the Wiki that won't make a difference with the cleanup processes; in fact, some (like WP:PR) might be considered part of the cleanup process. Kusma (talk) 19:33, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Sorry...

While it's a good idea in theory, it would never work. You have too many people who are too interested in meta-issues (AFD, DRV, RFA, etc etc etc), and if they found out they couldn't do that, and could only cleanup articles, they'd probably just say "Screw it, I'll take today off." Like I said, good idea, but the logistics wouldn't hammer out right. As someone said above, a widely-advertised but 100% voluntary cleanup day would probably work better than a forced lock down. ^demon^{[omg plz]} 04:39, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] I love this idea.

There's so much cleanup to be done. More than anybody thinks. Dig below the pretty FAs and such and there's a massive underbelly of - let's call it what it is - mess. I'm honestly surprised nobody's thought of this sooner. The anonymous restricting part is secondary; what we really need is the big group effort. Crystallina 18:00, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

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