Wikipedia talk:Cleanup resources

creation of a clean up tag for use after mergers
I would like to have a tag for use specifically in reference to articles which have just been merged and require som clean up work. Don 20:13, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

How to mark articles for cleanup
These instructions appear self-contradictory. Should the tag go on the article itself, or its talk page?


 * It is easiest for editors if you mark your pages with an appropriate cleanup tag by adding that tag to the talk of the article's talk page (or elsewhere, if appropriate).
 * [...]
 * 3. Add the appropriate tag(s) to the article.

Mostly my emphasis. (Also, I assume the first "talk" should be "top".) -- JTN 17:53, 2005 Mar 9 (UTC)


 * I've removed the first line, as it makes little sense. Cleanup tags should be placed at the top of articles so it will be immediately obvious to future editors that the articles have outstanding issues.  Other reasons for placing the messages in the articles:


 * Many people do not check talk pages for comments, and may not see a tag placed there.
 * The highly visible boxes provide incentive to fix pages so the tags can be removed.
 * Cleanup messages indicate to visitors that Wikipedia is aware of its shortcomings and is making an effort to correct them.


 * A stub tag, on the other hand, belongs at the end of an article: stub messages provide very little information, and an incomplete article often needs much more work than one which simply isn't written well. It's also fairly intuitive to place the tag where text is most likely to be added.  --&#8227; &#5339;&#5505;  [[Image:Venus symbol (blue).gif|&#9792;]] [ &#5200; ] 23:56, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Duplicated content
This Table of remedial cleanup tags appears to have been copied from Template messages/Cleanup. It should be merged back into the latter (if they've diverged) and be replaced by a reference to it, like this:  , as is done, for example, on the huge page Template messages/Stubs. That way there's only one copy to be maintained. - dcljr 18:45, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Some of them also appear at Template messages/Disputes, and there they're listed as being intended to go on talk pages rather than article pages. --bjh21 17:50, 17 May 2005 (UTC)


 * The attention tags that you are referring to, I think, have since been moved to Template messages/Maintenance. --Joy &#91;shallot&#93;   14:10, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

"Cleanup" for length?
Would there be any support for a "cleanup-length" tag for articles that stubbornly remain well over the "preferred" length for lengthy periods? Or would that be over-specific (or even inappropriate)? Alai 19:10, 6 May 2005 (UTC)


 * Cleanup seems to be something more "quick" or "essential" in nature. Most articles with length issues could make use of attention or verylarge templates, because this is a more nuanced issue of information presentation and categorization. --Joy &#91;shallot&#93;   14:23, 21 July 2005 (UTC)


 * verylarge is for categories; verylong is for articles. -- Reinyday, 01:56, 6 September 2005 (UTC)


 * Good man, yourself! Now, what was it I wanted it use it on, I forget...  Alai 23:39, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

Disputed split tag
Would it be possible to create a disputed split tag? I suppose I could make one based on the disputed merge tag, but I suspect there's some step and authority I'd skip. -Acjelen 20:42, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

classification by date (moved from article)

 * Don't bother classifying your tags by date; this will be done by an automated process. Actually, leaving your tags unclassified by date will mark them as "new" for editors actively looking for the freshest articles to fix (which are often the easiest).

whatever does this mean? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Eequor (talk • contribs) 00:21, 21 March 2005

Should I use the date tag and the specific tag?
The page is unclear on whether or not I should use in addition to a more specific tag such as. (It says to use "cleanup-date" or the general tags unless it says otherwise, but doesn't say to do otherwise when using the specific tags.) I looked at a few pages and they do not seem to do this, but it would seem to make sense to. What's the proper way to do it? - furrykef (Talk at me) 06:43, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

Articles without categories?
Where do articles that have no categories go? I'd hate to put an article in the wrong category. Is there any tag which can be used to mark such articles? --Gaurav Arora Talk 17:28, August 15, 2005 (UTC)


 * At Template_messages/Maintenance, there is CatNeeded. --Joy &#91;shallot&#93;   21:14, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

Cleanup-autobiography?
PotentialVanity seems to be intended for markedly non-notable pages which are to proceed directly for userification or deletion. But what about articles that are either, marginal in importance, or notable, but actually or suspectedly largely self-authored? Should there be a separate cleanup/warning bell tag for those? This is seemingly what Notable Wikipedian and Wikipedians with articles are for, but those seem to be rather easily defeated by the autobiographer choosing not to confirm, or indeed outright denying, their identity, which is nonetheless suspected by others. Alai 23:44, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

Cleanup tag for external links?
There are some pages with horrendous external links sections (eg Yerba mate), and I think there is value and potential in having external links experts who know what should be in there and what should go. Thus, being able to mark a page's external links section with a special clean-ext-links would be useful. Any agreers? --jnothman talk 11:27, 3 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Definitely, positively, affirmatively, yes, we need something to tag that stuff. Not sure about a separate template though. I used Cleanup-spam at rabbit; it's not 100% appropriate but this template could easily be expanded to refer not only to spam but also to nonnotable links in general. Another thing one can do is to add a "Discuss links here" section to the article talk, per WikiProject Spam, which I just did on talk:rabbit. Let's see what happens. Femto 15:41, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica
Is there (or could there be) a specific cleanup tag for dealing with articles which contain large amounts of very out-of-date and often POV material pasted in from this and other copyright-expired sources? I've found a few cases of this in bad need of cleanup but don't have the resources to update all of it - MPF 11:31, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

Cleanup-Summarization?
Some articles around Wikipedia are full of text and may hold a page size warning. Is there anything that states an article/section should be summarised? --Anthony Jake La (Tetsuya-san; talk : contribs) 02:03, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Reverted edits by X to last version by Y

 * I'm unable to find the shortcut that produces this summary result quickly. I would much appreciate any assistance you can give. Thank you, Pattersonc 17:33, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Template:Discrimination sidebar
Was Discrimination sidebar a template that got deleted? If so, it should probably be removed from this page. I don't know anything about it, but it's just showing up as some redlinks right now. The Vulgarity template is doing the same thing. --Aquillion 06:15, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Why are we trying to get people to sort by date when a robot does it better?
The wikify and cleanup template examples both have attempts to have people sort the articles by month. However, this is done by robots, so there is no need for people to do this. Not only is it extra work, but people tend to get it wrong. I've come across many articles were people tried to do it manually, but they made a typo or they put it in the wrong month or year. If people put in the wrong month or year, it might just get done out of order or it might get placed in a non-existent category (because that month's articles were completed and the category was deleted or it is in the future and does not exist), where no one will see it. I've been periodically checking nonexistent months to fix these articles.

Another benefit to letting the robot do the work, is being able to see the articles that were just tagged for wikification or cleanup. Some people work on these out of order when they are tired of slogging through the dregs in the oldest month or if they're newbies looking for some easier articles to work on. I do that sometimes and I also watch for articles that have been tagged inappropriately, which lets me catch people before they fill a whole "wikify month" full of articles that should be sent to copyright problems, general cleanup or AfD.

Does anyone have a reason that this should be kept? -- Kjkolb 11:19, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Ritual for adding a new template?
I'd like to add a new cleanup template, one that says something like thie following:

This article or section may contain buzzwords and tautologies, and may be written in an excessively abstract style. Please improve the article, attempting to remove buzzwords, tautologies and obvious statements, and make it more concrete; or discuss the issue on the talk page.

Reference copy of source code:

This article or section may contain buzzwords and tautologies, and may be written in an excessively abstract style. Please improve the article, attempting to remove buzzwords, tautologies and obvious statements, and make it more concrete; or discuss the issue on the talk page.

This template will categorise tagged articles into Category:Wikipedia articles containing buzzwords and tautologies. This template is a self-reference. This template is not useful for Subst.

Specialist and technical terms tag
There seems to be a need for a tag which requests that specialst terms in an article be properly defined. At the moment I can only find the "technical" tag, and this can only be used on the talk page, rather than the main article. I am new so I may be missing something. Any suggestions? Misspenny 00:48, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Shortcut change proposal
I've added the shortcut WP:CUR, to match WP:CU. Is there any objection to changing the shortcut WP:CR to point to Copyrights? That seems to be the most logical mnemonic for CR, and the most likely one for someone who is trying to guess the shortcut to copyrights. --The Transhumanist (AWB) 23:58, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Distribute links to Cleanup resources: proposal
Is there a reason for there being no way to easily find the Cleanup resources? I suggest adding links to Cleanup resources on  Cheatsheet,  Tutorial (Wrap-up and more info) and  How to edit a page.

Maintenance messages should be external, too
The messages on the cleanup maintenance tags are primarily directed at WP editors. Shouldn't they also communicate to readers the specific concern? For example, the cites-needed tags should more clearly alert the average reader that the article or section contains unverified and unsourced statements and the reader should take that into consideration. Jim Dunning | talk  20:22, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Reorganization/restructuring
What's the difference? Peter jackson (talk) 11:53, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Creation of new tag
I created a new tag Template:Disputed section for the purpose of taging a particular section of an article where the facts are disputed. I felt this tag was needed because sometimes an article is mostly accurate and only one specific section is in dispute. I want to add this to the cleanup resources list but I wasn't sure on how to do it or if it was even ok to add to a page like this. I would appriciate some help. Thanks. Nrswanson (talk) 22:15, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Templates needing documentation
I've just looked at a few of the lunar eclipse templates (e.g. Lunarsaros133 db, Lunarsaros125 db others in Category:Lunar eclipses), none of which have documentation. Is there a cleanup template and/ or a category, which can be used to highlight this short-coming? Andy Mabbett (aka Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy Mabbett; Andy Mabbett's contributions 21:58, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Contradiction with Wikipedia:Cleanup
The section on this page about de-listing cleaned articles appears to contradict the Wikipedia:Cleanup page which says "Please remember to remove the appropriate tag(s) off the page after cleaning an article, then just strike-out the entry on this page using, which produces: (sample text). Please do not strike the user signature and timestamp. This retains the listing for historical reference regarding accomplishments of the project." Mtnbikerjoshua (talk) 08:42, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

"Wikipedia:CR" listed at Redirects for discussion
A discussion is taking place to address the redirect Wikipedia:CR. The discussion will occur at Redirects for discussion/Log/2021 April 14 until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. —  Newslinger  talk   11:58, 14 April 2021 (UTC)