Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Categories/uncategorized

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Contents 1 Need help with list of uncategorised articles that previously had categories 2 Hints and tips 3 AWB 4 Could we have a special attention section? 5 Don't be afraid to PROD 6 About the stats...

[edit] Need help with list of uncategorised articles that previously had categories

User:Alai has made a list of articles that previously had categories but lost them because of some reason. A big reason is vandalism, usually very old vandalism even. Help is appreciated since it's a depressingly big list. The list can be found here. Garion96 (talk) 23:39, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Added this to the project page under "another task". →EdGl 01:14, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

• Dumb question: What do the numbers as section headers mean?
  
• Also, how about adding the list at User:Alai/prevcat-Jan07b to the categorization progress chart? Keesiewonder ^talk 11:08, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
• There was a [[Category:Previously categorised]] which was useful but that seems to have gone.Flowerpotman ^talk-_{wot I've done} 01:04, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Hints and tips

Can we copy the section "Hints and tips" in Category:Category needed to this wikiproject and expand it here to create a comprehensive guide. There are some potential items to add, such as :

• use {{DEFAULTSORT|surname, givenName}} for biography
• add cleanup/maintenance/stub tags where appropriate

In most cases, we are also the first few editors to read the uncategorized articles, therefore we are kinda at the frontier doing "New-Page Patrol". Hence, we should try to:

• Check the validity of the article
  • Check if the article qualifies for speedy deletion/prod/afd/merge/redirect, nominate if appropriate
  • If suspicious, check for possible copyright violation

With this section in the wikiproject, I hope we can also exchange tips on how to improve efficiency when doing categorization. I notice some members are very efficient and wonder how they do it ;). Comments? --Vsion 05:15, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Hey, that's perfect. Go right ahead and add that to this project page. In addition, we might need to think up things like an edit summary we could use to sort of advertise the task force (like they have at WP:DLR and the like), and a special template to show which categories fall under our jurisdiction so to speak, like other WikiProjects, and how about a template for user talk pages, in case we need to send a message relevant to the task force to those who participate (like updates, or "welcome to the team", or whatever). Someone else needs to get crackin' at this since I'm supposed to be on WikiBreak! →EdGl 17:50, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

According to Template:DEFAULTSORT the correct syntax is {{DEFAULTSORT:Xxx}} not {{DEFAULTSORT|Xxx}}. Gimboid13 18:25, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Well either both work or the template description is incorrect. Pascal.Tesson 19:54, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

{{DEFAULTSORT|}} appears to use Template:DEFAULTSORT which calls the "magic word" DEFAULTSORT whereas {{DEFAULTSORT:}} invokes the magic word directly. There's a link in the listings below the edit screen that puts {{DEFAULTSORT:}} on the page you're editing with the cursor placed for entering the sort key. Gimboid13 07:27, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] AWB

This may go without saying, but I'm going to say it anyway. There is no saner way I know of than to use AutoWikiBrowser for this sort of thing; it's such a time saver. I ever-so-highly recommend its use.

This has been a unpaid commercial announcement. We now return you to your regularly scheduled program.

 ;) --Ebyabe 21:00, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

I believe you, but the learning curve is proving to be frustrating. My current barrier seems to be when I go to download the file pages_articles.xml.bz2, what downloads is of insignificant size and the transmission does not display any errors of any kind. I've checked all the links for help I could find, and have not gotten anywhere. I'd appreciate any suggestions. Also, even when not trying to explore the 'make list from database dump option,' AWB is frustrating in that 'saves' rarely take due to ... ??? ... servers being overloaded or something? ... Keesiewonder ^talk 00:30, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

I've never used any of the database dump options. I tried, but couldn't figure them out at all. I just use the basic stuff, making a list from the category of one month's worth of uncategorized articles, and going from there. --Ebyabe 12:35, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Ok; makes me feel a little better. I'm stubborn enough that I do want to figure out the database dump possibilities, but, will opt for a simpler route for now. I may still need your help, though. Thanks for replying. Keesiewonder ^talk 14:47, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

You're quite welcome; always glad to help. And if you do figure out the databsse thing, then you can explain it to me! :) --Ebyabe 15:16, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Could we have a special attention section?

Like, I was looking through the pile, and found the following:

• Goowiki
• Nanowiki
• PiciWiki
• Wikipedia:Finding articles that contain unreferenced material

And my favorite:

• Http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flame Dream

Not sure what to do with them, but wanted to document somewhere that they might need looking at. --Ebyabe 21:55, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes, see "Articles that need help" section of this project page (second to last section). If you would like to redefine that section, feel free to alter its name (but I think it's exactly what you want). →EdGl 22:24, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

I went ahead and added them to the project (task force) page. →EdGl 03:17, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Don't be afraid to PROD

Normally I don't believe in proposing articles for deletion; I think fixing is more helpful. But I've run across a few really wonky entries whilst going thru the backlog (like The Darthbyte and The Deathbyte), that I did. So if it seems appropriate, add that ole prod tag. My opinion, for what it's worth. :) --Ebyabe 21:03, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

{{db|reason}} work well too! - Ozzykhan 21:10, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Didn't know how the speedy version worked. Not as complicated as I thought. Thanks for the info! :) --Ebyabe 00:56, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Let me second the above comments. Bear in mind that many of these articles are relatively new when tagged, and have had little or no attention since. While they've gotten past the "first line of defence" of newpage-patrollers, they may very well be of various grades of nonsense, spam, honest beginners' errors, and who-knows-what-else. Deletion may well be indicated, or indeed re-filing as in may be in need of all manner of cleanup. Alai 02:27, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] About the stats...

I can't help but be skeptical about the stats. Every time Alai (talk • contribs) and his god-sent bot go through the new database dump we get 10K new uncategorized article so it's not clear that we can really make sense of the average growth per week of the category. Also, I don't have any specific stats but it's clear that a lot of articles get categorized way before we even get a chance to look at them. In any case, I would like to remove that part in the taskforce page just to make it clear that our main focus should not be on speedily categorizing everything but on categorizing everything properly (fast is just a bonus). Thoughts? Pascal.Tesson 16:06, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

I was just trying to give an idea about the pace at which we will have to work to clear the initial back log (in a reasonable amount of time). It isn't supposed to be an 'official guideline' of how many article we should do per day. I rather we catergorize more than 5 pages a day, otherwise we'll never get up to speed! I don't have a problem with removing it from the taskforce page.
Just one question though, what do you mean when you say: "but it's clear that a lot of articles get categorized way before we even get a chance to look at them"? - Ozzykhan 16:18, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

I hope you did not take my comment the wrong way. It is nice to have some stats except that I don't think that they are correct. As for that last sentence, I mean that a lot of articles get categorized because editors happen to read the article, see the template and categorize the article. I think most people from the taskforce work on the oldest category (in our case, January) but the category for February is regularly shrinking. My point, I guess, is being a month back in the backlog is not that bad since it also allows us to take advantage of that phenomenon. Pascal.Tesson 17:01, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

I didn't notice that the February list was shrinking! That would make the stats incorrect (not to mention some of the other generalizations I made)! - Ozzykhan 18:06, 14 March 2007 (UTC)