Wikipedia talk:Cleanup sorting/History

The 4 comment sections below came from Wikipedia talk:Cleanup sorting and were moved here since they apply to material moved to this /History subpage.

Changing the cleanup tag?
I like what you have here so far. I find in working on cleanup articles that it is not always clear what should be done to cleanup an article. Sure, I can usually tell, but if I can't, I have to go to the talk page which may have no rationale or many possible rationales. For this reason, and to aid in the implementation of this project, I think that two changes should be made to the tag:

1. The tagger should be required to put a rationale onto the tag when they add it, similar to the proposed deletion rationales that currently exist.

2. There should be a message indicating that if an editor feels that an article has graduated to the  stage, he or she should change the tag.

These changes would help to implement this policy and add some sense to the current vague system. --Danaman5 06:20, 20 March 2006 (UTC)


 * I was going to propose something similar. More often than not, I stumble across articles that look perfectly fine with a cleanup tag on them and not a single word about it in on the talk page or even in the edit history. I usually just remove the cleanup tag then, seeing no reason what should be cleaned up about the article. People should really be forced to actually say what in the article needs cleanup in their opinion. --Conti|&#9993; 15:59, 20 March 2006 (UTC)


 * I have created a quick mockup for a change I think would be appropriate. See User:Danaman5/New cleanup-date template--Danaman5 17:07, 20 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Looks a little too wordy to me, Danaman. Could you tighten up the language? Alba 18:46, 20 March 2006 (UTC)


 * I was thinking the same thing myself. I have changed it to be much more simplistic but still convey the same ideas.  Please examine it again and let me know what you think. --Danaman5 20:09, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Cleanup tag: formatting
The basic ideas look great, but the visual impact can be improved a lot, I think. Take a look at User:Alba/Workspace/Cleanup tag proposal. Alba 21:40, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
 * The third attempt is too all-inclusive. The tag should be big enough to be noticeable, but I think that's too big.  If nothing else, the space in between the bullet points should be minimized.  The rationale idea is definitely a good idea, though. bcasterlinetalk 22:47, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
 * I shrunk both the wording and the notices. What do you think now? Alba 01:09, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Looks good. A few suggestions: I'd switch the "be bold and fix it" and "specify the problem", tho. People should first think about fixing a problem IMHO. I'm also not sure about the suggestion to put on the page instead of the cleanup-tag. It sounds a bit like a page needs the expert-tag when it is cleaned up. Otherwise it looks quite good. --Conti|&#9993; 01:41, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
 * I added in a fifth alternative, in which I retained Alba's small sized text, which I like, but also retained my "for the following reason:" over Alba's "needs include:" because I prefer the former. I think that the sentence flows better with "specify the problem" before "be bold and fix it", but it is certainly negotiable. The idea of mentioning the expert tag is to spur users to move to the next phase of the new cleanup plan that is now being proposed, so it fits in this situation. --Danaman5 01:59, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
 * The fourth and fifth look good to me, too. Instead of "needs include:" or "for the following reasons:", just "...this article or section may require cleanup:" (colon at the end) is probabably sufficient to convey the point that the rationale follows. As long as understandability isn't compromised: the fewer the words in the template, the better. bcasterlinetalk 02:16, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Good idea, I've added that as #6 on the same page. --Danaman5 02:32, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Cleanup tag: more opinions and transition
Gentlemen, we seem to have options that are at least discussable by the larger community. I propose to move #4-#6 onto the cleanup sorting proposal page; we can ask people to vote/discuss them.

On larger topics: how are we going to handle transition? We have thousands of articles tagged with the old tag. A bot can move them to, but it can't insert rationales. Do we let them all display ? I don't think it's a good idea.

Here's a possible plan:


 * Have User:Pearle or another bot migrate all current  to.
 * Deprecate.
 * Insert our chosen template (from #4-6 or other proposals) as the new.

After that, Cleanup will require date and reasons. Please note that we will have to teach people to use the new cleanup, just as newbies need very clear instructions for submitting to AfD (which also uses the pipe format).

Perhaps we should rearrange, and let field #1 be the reason and #2 be the date? That way, dating can still be automated... Alba 03:50, 21 March 2006 (UTC)


 * I support moving them onto the proposal page for discussion. I had intended our new tag to replace the cleanup-date tag originally, anyway, so it is fine if we replace that with this. Our proposed tags all mention the date anyway.  Finally, rearranging the #1 and #2 fields seems like a good idea as well. --Danaman5 04:26, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Some thoughts
The reason why cleanup doesn't work is that it involves expecting other people to do the work. This is not how Wikipedia works. If you're not willing to clean up the article yourself, what makes you think someone else is going to do it?

I often see articles where someone has slapped a tag on it, when all it really needed to make a perfectly good stub was to bold the subject in the opening and add an appropriate category; this wouldn't have taken much more time than to add the tag. Gdr 10:49, 11 April 2006 (UTC)


 * While undoubtedly there is an element of truth in what you say, it isn't a core problem with the cleanup process, IMO. Cleanup does work, it just doesn't work fast enough to keep up with the flood of crap being entered into Wikipedia.  More people are interested in posting their own piece of prose than are interested in repairing the defective prose of others.  In general one can spot and flag problems a lot faster than repair them, but that doesn't mean flagging shouldn't be done.  Eventually the community may come to see a need to limit the addition of crap, perhaps by instituting a procedure for new article creation (a major source). -R. S. Shaw 20:56, 11 April 2006 (UTC)