User:Swliv/Minupg

All edits made under this proto-policy back to 22 July 2014 have, I believe, been reversed and there will be no further editing under the proto-policy. Swliv (talk) 21:07, 29 September 2016 (UTC)


 * Editing under this proto-policy was suspended except for the and  options, per discussion  below. Please contribute thoughts at bottom of  if one wishes.  from me are there, too. I've left the accumulated body of the proto-policy text pretty much intact, starting immediately below, for the time being. Thanks. As of 18 November 2015, 19 November 2015, 25 April 2016, 8 May 2016: Swliv (talk) 17:39, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

UPDATE: Having put the proto-policy I think completely out of its misery (with much more detail below), I've moved on to a productive post-MinUpg life of, among other things, doing unromantic, manual cite upgrades one at a time; usually as an adjunct to a substantive edit to the same page.

I return here today because I've just encountered a template which, had I learned it a couple-few years ago, could possibly have diverted me from MinUpg altogether. In short,. One can place the template -- this is it:  -- at the head of a References section which has WP:Bare URLs showing. That simple step can draw further editors to help out. Neat. Cheers. Swliv (talk) 01:13, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

This was for me a first time experiment to reduce the cumbersome citation process of a proto-policy, I'll call it. The proto-policy I characterized as 'first-round cleanup' of so-called naked or bare URLs in Wikipedia-article footnotes.

The proto-policy, as I've formulated it so far, is linked to here.

The page name is a shortening of minimal upgrade, my name for my usual action under the proto-policy. An earlier somewhat broader term I used in Edit summaries was "citework" (which if it is in red means it hasn't been pursued but if it's in blue with no update here means it's probably been used by another) ; from here I'll consider it for another proto-policy. Swliv (talk) 13:29, 25 March 2015 (UTC)


 * Sorry for all the verbiage. Will be trying to whittle it down. Feel free.
 * But it does work, basically. One may see investment firm (View history), my first run with minupg. Swliv (talk) 15:27, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Citing sources is the policy spot where Minupg could be integrated. I'm still not convinced Minupg is a good long-term 'policy'. It does relieve the stress of seeing naked URLs and doing nothing, for me. Swliv (talk) 17:36, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

Full upgrade
'Always leave the campsite better than one found it': An old Boy Scout invocation.

A full upgrade is of course preferred over a minupg and is the ultimate goal of this proto-policy.

I do not expect at the present time that it will be me, near term, that accomplishes the full-upgrade goal in most instances. Yesterday's two-step process was a first. I'd love of course to see "1 per wp:minupg "-type Edit summary postings -- like this one -- from other editors.

Now with some months more experience with this proto-policy, I do believe more than ever that even a minupg does leave the 'campsite' (article) better than it was before the minupg. One can see a fair smattering of minupgs in my Contributions list -- eight or so in the most recent 50 edits as of today; lots more in lists accessible there covering more history -- for reference and judgment. Cheers. Swliv (talk) 14:58, 10 July 2015 (UTC)

Execution of MinUpgs
A shortcut for finding naked urls in an article is to search (Command F) the page, when it is opened for editing, for ">h". The search will quickly find the candidates for MinUpg. The shortcut was used, for instance, here, and a 'practice search' can be executed on that page to find the six naked urls in the 'old' (left-hand) column of copy. The six were upgraded as part of the edit, one can see in the right-hand column. Swliv (talk) 19:18, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

Minor variant: The '=[' search
I've not encountered this too often but it happened several times here and in a series of edits either side of that one, same article. The editor had single-bracketed each URL as the publisher of the citation, reducing it, in the footnote, to a bracketed number. It may have been the editor's intent but it didn't seem the best way for the footnote to look; so my MinUpg in this case was to remove the single brackets and italicize the web address. I traced the location of the incidences of the practice by searching for '=['; the '=' sign being from the 'publisher=' component of the footnote template. Swliv (talk) 22:26, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

Minor variant: Dates and titles retrieved from URL
When dates and article-titles can be retrieved from where they are embedded in URLs, as in some of this (massive; 26-item) cleanup, I'll do it. Still not usually 'pretty' but, again, leaving the article better than it was before and would have been without this extra step. Swliv (talk) 04:54, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

Pages in need of MinUpg or, better yet, Full Upgrade
'''This section, as per the announcement up top, is being wound down. Of the three currently below, two have been completed (Abdul-Jabbar, Gunshot locator) and one was checked and found to be OK from the perspective of Minupg's I may have executed (Currency Wars). One other 'to do' at the bottom of the page (Baron Wormser) has also been attended to.' Swliv (talk) 02:46, 16 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Please note "Done-Min" or "Done-Full" and sign after the item if a minimum or full upgrade is accomplished:


 * Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Swliv (talk) 22:57, 18 September 2015 (UTC) Done-Full Swliv (talk) 02:46, 16 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Currency Wars. Swliv (talk) 21:44, 5 September 2015 (UTC) Done-Min (9 cites) Swliv (talk) 21:55, 18 September 2015 (UTC) Done OK Swliv (talk) 02:46, 16 May 2016 (UTC)

continued
Though will be proceeding, I'm going to continue to collect 'Pages in need' here for the time being. First of these:
 * Gunfire locator. Swliv (talk) 20:49, 23 November 2015 (UTC) Done-Full Swliv (talk) 02:46, 16 May 2016 (UTC)

Input and help
Introducing the proto-policy on my user page today, I wrote "I would certainly welcome input and help on the issue and the proto-policy" and I would. Swliv (talk) 17:29, 20 September 2015 (UTC)
 * First negative (or any) outside (non-User:Swliv) input: "Undid revision 690916145 by Swliv (talk) Bad idea. It's elss infomrative" (sic). I disagree but for now I'm leaving the undone revision there and probably halting use of MinUpgs. One is needed at MSCI in my opinion, meanwhile. Swliv (talk) 18:18, 16 November 2015 (UTC) And one at Blunderbuss. Swliv (talk) 20:43, 16 November 2015 (UTC)


 * See refill REFILL - it parses the article title. It has been made to work with archive.org links. -- Callinus (talk) 11:48, 18 November 2015 (UTC)
 * This seems like a bad idea. It doesn't address the primary problems listed at WP:bare URLs - link rot - and by turning it away from being a bare URL, it turns off some of the automatic systems used to detect URLs in need of fixing. And the result is less informative than the bare URL, which will generally have some aspects of the file name that will suggest what the link is about. If the long URL is ugly, it's better to leave the ugly in to encourage at least the page title being included than to simply pare it down to the less-informative domain name. --Nat Gertler (talk) 16:55, 16 November 2015 (UTC)
 * I appreciate the followup User:NatGertler. You had definitely slowed me down after I'd had quite a stretch of no attention. Current neatening v. longer-term fuller improvement is certainly a bad tradeoff if in fact there is a regular "squad" willing to do the fuller job. I wasn't ready to join such a squad and I was getting annoyed with the level of occurrences and this was something I COULD do; regularly. If I DO just abandon this initiative or if User:Callinus (who (coincidentally?) came in when I tried ONE MORE TIME) comes up with an alternative (and I abandon this) .... Well, that will be that. Maybe I'll commit to work my way back through the Minimals and make them Fulls. (Harder to imagine going back and just reversing them all. Aarg. We'll see.) If you have any way to have the URL-auto-tagging systems pick up on Minupgs, of course then I'd be happy as a clam; but I expect it's unlikely. Relative to your link-rot point: In your understanding, am I right to say the only way full citations fight rot is that, if the associated citation info is gathered and recorded, then that info can be used to try to track down an alternative link (or provide at least a non-linked but still substantive citation) if the first link rots? Thanks. Swliv (talk) 17:22, 18 November 2015 (UTC)
 * I appreciate you taking my reaction seriously, and your general desire to improve things. I won't claim to be an expert at link-rot, but yes, having full information allows the tracking of an alternative source for the same page... or, barring that, a better understanding of what was there so that an equivalent source can be better found. And one doesn't actually need to do a full entry in order to fight link-rot; if, instead of putting the domain in as you have been, you put the title of the page, then we have useful information. Even a simple title like "About Us" can be used in conjunction with the name of the website to find where they moved their "About Us" page to. Fuller titles, like "The Symbology of Pinball in the Works of William Saroyan" can, of course, be used to find if the same document is on some other domain. The amount of time it takes to put the domain into a link rather than putting the page title is small, and the disadvantage is real. This is not a path I would encourage. --Nat Gertler (talk) 17:49, 18 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Finding the page title means going to the actual web page; my system to date at its most minimal requires only manipulating the info on the Wiki page. But I do see your point (unless you can find your way into the auto-URL-systems and help me) and will I expect suspend regular usage of Minupg (unless I find some way better forward). Thanks again. Swliv (talk) 23:21, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

Reversal
Per above and further consideration, I'm proceeding to reverse the Minupg's I've made. I've identified about 75 instances of use from March 19, 2015 to the present. The most recent three instances have already been reversed; the rest in reverse-chronological order I will reverse (lots of 'reverse') unless someone else volunteers here or I run out of steam. No guarantees about schedule. I will, I expect, be moving to s of some sort; or other appropriate format including just back to bare URLs. (One was a Dead link in Julian Robertson; I reverted it to bare and then tagged it as dead.) I'll go from 3/19/15 back to earliest use after completing this first tranche. I'll be marking Edit summaries with a link to this paragraph, as in: 'via wp:minupg'. It seems maybe overly ornate but it's what I can work out as a methodical plan for now. Any other thoughts please add them here. Thanks. 23:41, 19 November 2015.
 * If curious, one can see how far I've gotten, working backwards through the list, at my Contributions page. Swliv (talk) 00:36, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

Updates
Another round of thinking on 'next steps here' at User_talk:Swliv. Swliv (talk) 20:49, 23 November 2015 (UTC)
 * An update: I'm working slowly backwards through the Minupg's. On Jan. 14 I made it back to Ron Nessen which I'd worked on, originally, in July '15. I look to be about 1/2-way done: The oldest I have on my list is 19 March 2015 edits to Maria Altmann (several per Wikipedia talk:Bare URLs#Minimal upgrades; & 'ref name's+).15:18, 26 January 2016 & Swliv (talk) 21:37, 25 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Another update: I'm more than 2/3rds through, estimated. Today I made it through an edit I did 21 May 2015 at Meg Whitman, "3 per wp:minupg" with reversals/full upgrades. Swliv (talk) 21:37, 25 April 2016 (UTC)
 * I am done with updates and various to-do's on this page per statement at the top and above. I don't know what's next with this 'former proto-policy'. I am open to suggestions. It's been a useful channel and learning experience for me and I think helpful to the encyclopedia from Day 1 to now. I see no great need for immediate specific succession. Edit on! Swliv (talk) 02:46, 16 May 2016 (UTC)


 * Another list: Pages in need of attention for 'naked URLs' (for me, after the Reversal list is finished):
 * Baron Wormser Swliv (talk) 15:18, 26 January 2016 (UTC) Done-Full per above Swliv (talk) 02:46, 16 May 2016 (UTC)