Wikipedia talk:Community portal/Open tasks/Archive 2

All of the requests for specific article enhancements in this archive have either been filled or added to the template page itself. -- Beland 00:44, 24 July 2005 (UTC)

Add "make a suggestion" link
Add a line like
 * MediaWiki_talk:Opentask suggest a task for inclusion.

so that people can get straight to this talk page from msg:Opentask.

Queue
Moved from Main Page


 * Are you familiar with Egyptian mythology? If so, help us by writing about it.
 * Neuromodulators needs to be filled in also.
 * There is a "TO DO" in the 13th section of combinatory logic.

width
is there a reason we are making these lists so short? Seems like we have room to add one or two more article titles to each list. Kingturtle 21:01, 28 Feb 2004 (UTC)


 * It depends on what resolution screen you have. --Jiang

(what are you doing? those done need merging; if they do, then put them on the same page and add a divider; dont rm undone entries for no good reason)

Atop Republic is says needs merging. That doesn't tell the user anything, unless they are in the know. U.S.-North Korea relations and Peace movement don't even say needs merging at the top. How are users supposed to know? I couldn't tell they were two articles spliced into one. Anyway, that is not the protocol I am used to here. The articles I put up there DO need merging. I took them right off the Duplicate articles page...but I didn't check them closely.

We need to create a MediaWiki that says


 * :This article should be merged with ...

I'll give it a shot. Kingturtle 01:14, 29 Feb 2004 (UTC)


 * There's a divisor in the middle of the page. We don't add divisors unless they're meant for disambiguating. Gungfu redirects to Kung Fu. I don't see how they could be merged. Military of India and Indian Army should not be merged. India has more branches in the armed forces than the army. Peer-to-peer and file sharing are crosslinked, so I don't see the need there either. None of these say needs merging, which of course, they don't. Wikipedia:Duplicate articles is largely outdated. --Jiang 19:49, 1 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Deadend pages too short
All/most of the pages on that list seem to have been handled. Can the automagic 'pages without wikilinks' script be reactivated, or at least run again? The open tasks:wikification bit is a little useless without it. -- Kimiko 18:47, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)

suggestions
Let's add Wang Youcai &mdash; it's hot topic. Updating Politics of China would be nice too.


 * What about chinese politics needs updating? --Jiang 18:55, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)

How about having a new section for stubs and removing the "complete" after "merge"? --Jiang 18:55, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Please add Panay incident to the pages that need to be wikified. Perl 01:23, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Reorg
I'm thinking of remvoing the requested articles section since there's already one in recent changes. I'll then add stubs and cpyedit. Comments?


 * wikify
 * copyedit
 * update
 * complete
 * merge

--Jiang 19:25, 10 Mar 2004 (UTC)


 * I am against removing it. I have had recent experience that proves it is being used.  It is often a welcome entry for newcomers who may not have discovered "Recent changes".  I see no problem in adding to it with new useful entries, however. - Texture 19:29, 10 Mar 2004 (UTC)

What do you mean by "new useful entries"? We can keep it, but I'm concerned about space. How many lines are we allowed? --Jiang 19:46, 10 Mar 2004 (UTC)

So does the opentask message scare new users?
A couple of people have commented above that this message will scare new users, but the worries have been swatted away. I also have my concerns. Does anyone have evidence either way? E.g. new users actually doing the tasks... or never contributing again having seen the task list set for them? Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 16:21, 12 Mar 2004 (UTC)
 * For what it's worth, I've never seen a user reply to it on their talk page. It's way enough to use this on the Community Portal; new users who become regulars will find it. &mdash; Timwi 16:29, 12 Mar 2004 (UTC)


 * As a personal anecdote, I got this message when I first made an account in December 2003. I saw it for what it was, a suggestion. The only misunderstanding I had when I saw it was that it made me think Angela was an automated greeting script. -- Cyrius 00:50, 15 Mar 2004 (UTC)


 * I guess the messages should be a bit more personalised. One aim of the new user log is to get more information on people so the welcome messages can be a bit more customised, but for users who haven't filled that in, I still think the generic Opentask message is a good idea. Automated greeting script 21:25, Mar 15, 2004 (UTC)


 * How are people supposed to let whoever updates this know when they are done? Thanks, Mark Richards 21:23, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Post here! Maybe we should add a link. I also think this should be unprotected because I would rather be editing some other page than this one. --Jiang 01:24, 25 Mar 2004 (UTC)


 * I object to it being unprotected as I explained above, but I don't use this in my messages very much anymore so I won't protect it myself, but if anyone else wants to, I would support that. Angela 22:40, Mar 27, 2004 (UTC)

We should also have a queue of articles to add for each category so updates can be done more quickly. --Jiang

Deadend pages revisited
(Put this at the bottom so it doesn't get lost in the shuffle, above...) I completely agree with the call for the update of the Deadend pages. We really need to find a way to ensure that it is kept updated more. Our wonderful contributers have managed to plow through the short list in its entirety within 3 weeks.

Furthermore, if we are to use Opentask properly, we need to ensure that all those meta pages which deal with the four categories in Opentask are continually updated. I realize that it puts a strain on the server, but surely we can run these once a week at non-peak times? --Wolf530 04:28, Mar 30, 2004 (UTC)


 * These might be back on next week when the Geoffrin server is back next week. Angela. 03:12, Apr 2, 2004 (UTC)

Backlog
Ok... finally get to edit this page now that I'm an admin. Whee! :) Ok. Ok. Calming down. Heh. Is there any backlog list to fill in as tasks are completed (and removed from the message)? Or is it just by ad hocery? - UtherSRG 17:20, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)


 * There's no queue as such, but there are plenty of replacements to choose from at Requests for page expansion, As of, Duplicate articles, Requested articles and cleanup. Angela. 20:10, Apr 16, 2004 (UTC)

Yup... knew of all of them. Wasn't sure if there was any organized thought to what to use for replacements. Ok. I'll do as I will. *grins* - UtherSRG 19:00, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Article of the Week
Can we add this to the opentask box in some way? I am not sure where it would fit... Anyone have any ideas?--Oldak Quill 09:56, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)


 * Shall we 'revive' this idea ? Where should we put it ? -- PFHLai 20:07, 2004 Jun 30 (UTC)

"Opentask" is FROZEN !

 * I think Article of the Week  deserves its own line.
 * But first, we need to get this Opentask Template fixed up before anything is done here. It has been frozen for a week now.  Maybe we need to delete this 'Template' and start from scratch in order to get Opentask to run properly ....
 * -- PFHLai 04:29, 2004 Jun 16 (UTC)

It can't be deleted using the normal method. If it's going to take some time before this gets fixed, I think we should go ahead and make Template:Opentask-temp. --Jiang 00:51, 17 Jun 2004 (UTC)


 * Jiang, just an FYI in case you are going ahead with Template:Opentask-temp: I've rewritten Lector, so no need to put that on the 'Wikify' line as you have previously tried; but Leroy Chiao still needs to be wikified. -- PFHLai 02:41, 2004 Jun 17 (UTC)


 * I changed Canarian Wrestling to its proper spelling of Canadian Wrestling. WayneRay 13:15, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)WayneRay

Can't edit Template:Opentask
I've tried at least a dozen times today to edit Template:Opentask. Everytime, the page won't load after I his "save page" and after a few minutes has passed, I get ''Database error: A database query syntax error has occurred. This could be because of an illegal search query (see Searching Wikipedia), or it may indicate a bug in the software...from within function "Article::updateArticle". MySQL returned error "1205: Lock wait timeout exceeded; Try restarting transaction".'' I want to chage the "wikify" line to: Wikify: Antioch, Pisidia, Euthymia, Candaba, Pampanga, Lector, Leroy_Chiao, Deadend Pages Anyone else getting this problem? --Jiang 23:57, 10 Jun 2004 (UTC)


 * There seem to be more such problems recently - see the above section Delete problem and even more similar Trouble editing template namespace. andy 11:36, 11 Jun 2004 (UTC)


 * And another article which cannot be edited anymore: Flat-clawed Hermit Crab. There seem to be serious database problems developing. andy 14:50, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)


 * The Template:Opentask page is still un-edit-able. I have been trying to replace the 'blue' requests with new 'red' ones the past few days, and I keep getting the same error msg.  Rather frustrating.... :-( -- PFHLai 20:32, 2004 Jun 13 (UTC)


 * I tried to fix this once, and only succeeded in crashing the whole site. Apparently it's impossible to fix while there's a backup running, which is a fair proportion of the time. -- Tim Starling 04:05, Jun 14, 2004 (UTC)


 * Thank you for trying, Mr. Starling. I hope you can catch the backup taking a break soon. :-) Good Luck. -- PFHLai 06:07, 2004 Jun 14 (UTC)

After almost a week, Template:Opentask is still frozen. Sigh .... Is it possible to start a new Template, delete the old template, then rename/move the new template to take up the void ? Will this solve our problem ? I ain't an Admin. I can't try it out it myself. I don't even know if this is a good idea or not, so I shouldn't try it, I suppose ..... -- PFHLai 05:22, 2004 Jun 16 (UTC)


 * Make that almost three weeks.  I did a workaround on Community portal by just copying the entire template onto the page.  Poccil ([[User Talk:Poccil|Talk)]] 06:54, Jun 29, 2004 (UTC)

'''It's working now ! :-) ''' Thank you, Mr. Starling, I think you fixed it. Thank you !  -- PFHLai 04:03, 2004 Jun 30 (UTC)

meenas
I've copyedited meenas to the best of my abilities... I'm still new, so I'm not sure if it's okay for me to edit the opentask page to take it off. Or even if it's been fixed enough to take off yet! That article was quite a bear. Miss Puffskein 21:30, Jul 12, 2004 (UTC)
 * Meenas was listed on the Template:Opentask a few hours ago. You are welcome to edit the 'template:opentask' and replace 'meenas'.   But I'd let it sit there for a while longer in case someone else wants a stab at editing it. -- PFHLai 22:47, 2004 Jul 12 (UTC)

New line: Categorization... What shall we do with it ?
Hmmm... we have a new line here on Template:Opentask: Categorization. Cool. What shall we do with it ? First, let me 'populate' the line .... -- PFHLai 13:11, 2004 Aug 3 (UTC)

Definition of "Copyedit"
What _is_ Wikipedia's definition of copyediting? I thought copyediting was spelling, grammar, and continuity editing. However, there's a bunch of pages in the "copyedit" category that have nothing wrong with them aside from lacking information. StellarFury 21:04, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)
 * Poor formating, too ? -- PFHLai 21:50, 2004 Aug 4 (UTC)
 * That is true, but, if that's it, then we shouldn't have people putting pages that simply lack content in the copyedit section. Or we should have notes about what needs to be done on the page. StellarFury 21:51, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)
 * Pages with multiple problems won't be listed on multiple lines at the same time. Sometimes, a problematic page gets bounced around the Opentask template depending what problem still needs attention .... at least this is how I deal with these things.  Hope this helps... -- PFHLai 03:24, 2004 Aug 12 (UTC)
 * BTW, User:StellarFury, please feel free to post articles that need copyediting onto the template. :-) -- PFHLai 03:57, 2004 Aug 13 (UTC)

Article of the Week (again) --> Template:Opentask getting too large ?
No offense to this noble project, but I think it should be removed from the template. The template is getting to be too long, and the Article of the Week currently has its very own section on the Community Portal, so putting a link here as well is overkill. --Michael Snow 22:26, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)
 * Yes, I also think the Opentask template is getting too large. However, I'd like to point out that this template is not only found on the Community Portal.  It's also on the Userpage of many Wikipedians (try "what links here".)  It's sometimes used in the greetings to newbies as well.  AOTW is not right next to the template for the overkill in these cases.
 * I think AOTW can stay. However, I would not mind taking off
 * - "Categorization" : new, i don't quite know what to do with it,
 * - "Update" : ignored by wikipedians, and
 * - "Merge" : a link to Duplicate_articles would be sufficient, as jobs posted here don't get done more often.
 * Just my 2 cents... -- PFHLai 02:38, 2004 Aug 5 (UTC)


 * Now we have yet another line added: "Substubs" ! -- PFHLai 02:32, 2004 Aug 6 (UTC)

I agree that categorization can go, but I think update and merge should stay since those are urgent tasks. We can also remove the article captions. The wikiproject is a good thing, but what it does is neither urgent nor vital. --Jiang 04:02, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Okay, categorization is now gone, since nobody seems to have issues with that. I also removed substubs, because quite a few people object to using the concept of substubs at all. Jiang, did you mean image captions? I suppose we could live without it, but it's sort of nice to work in something image-related with all the text stuff. And on the Article of the Week project, I know it's not overkill when the template is used elsewhere, but I still would prefer to remove it. --Michael Snow 16:39, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)


 * Hmmm... I agree with the cuts. I just didn't expect to see changes so quickly .... I posted a question about the recent "hypertrophy" of this template at the VillagePump just last night .... -- PFHLai 17:25, 2004 Aug 6 (UTC)


 * I'd like to see WikiProject Writing Captions stay since it's a relatively simple way to contribute: pick an article and write good captions for the images in just a few minutes. Perhaps the approach can draw more contributors to Wikipedia.  (Perhaps the "ImageCaptions" link should go to Captions - thoughts?) -- ke4roh 17:00, Aug 6, 2004 (UTC)


 * I support "Captions" to stay. Articles listed there are actually edited (according to "Related changes". Don't know if the captions were being edited, though.) -- PFHLai 17:29, 2004 Aug 6 (UTC)


 * Yes, I meant image captions...
 * We could add the article of the week link at recent changes to compensate for removing it here. I would like the substubs to stay. The objection is over the terminology, not listing those articles here. We could call it stub line no. 2 if there's really a problem--Jiang 04:33, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Yes, but do we want stub line no. 2? The point is that this template is too big, particularly in the context of the layout on the Community Portal. It's not a place for everyone to cram in their pet project. --Michael Snow 03:25, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)


 * substubs need to be displayed somehow. the objection, if any, is over terminology. --Jiang 04:47, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)


 * Do the Stubs and SubStubs lines have an overlap in function on this Opentask template ? It's a little redundant to have both lines there, right next to each other.  We can certainly have SubStubs included on the Stubs line. We have been listing Substubs there long before the category of Substubs was created. -- PFHLai 08:14, 2004 Aug 9 (UTC)


 * The objection here is to having an additional line for them. As PFHLai says, it's quite simple to include "substubs" in the Stubs line, and this has been going on well before any attempts to group substubs separately. --Michael Snow 16:56, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)


 * I don't mind having two lines, as long as there are clear rules what to do with the listed items -- they are the same to me. However, JanSport is now a 'substub' instead of a 'stub', while Hypertime and Hill Hook are now 'stubs' and not 'substubs'.  They got changed while listed on the template.  Am I supposed to move these items up and down the Template:Opentask ???  I am not moving them now, unless any of them gets expanded, in which case I'll remove them from the template. -- PFHLai 21:32, 2004 Aug 9 (UTC)

I think the "update" and "merge" lines could be replaced with links to as of and duplicate articles. The stubs line could merge with the substubs one since there is a link to the substubs category anyway where they can all be found. Angela. 21:18, Aug 11, 2004 (UTC)


 * Horrendously outdated articles don't necessary link to "As of". Judging from what I've seen, they usually don't at all.


 * The requests can go since theyre already linked at RC, while everything else is not... --Jiang 00:39, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)


 * Is the Template:Opentask still being used as greetings ? I thought the red links are meant as 'easy tasks' for newbies. .... RC = Recent Changes ?  I never understood why a yet-to-be-created page is listed there. Who updates that list of red links there ? Any way to hook up both lists ? -- PFHLai 04:14, 2004 Aug 13 (UTC)


 * We could start Template:article requests and link it at both...but then are we allowed to link a template within a template? ...i dont think so. You can update RC at Recentchanges. --Jiang 04:31, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)


 * Thanks, Jiang, I'll move unattended red links there. -- PFHLai 12:34, 2004 Aug 20 (UTC)

Appearance in text browser
I made a few changes yesterday to improve the appearance of this template in a text browser (actually, I was using a graphical browser with images disabled). PFHLai asked the following question on my talk page, and I'll reply below. &mdash;AlanBarrett 10:06, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)


 * Hello, AlanBarrett, I don't understand the codes you've added to the Template:Opentask, but I like the way the frame keeps it neat and tidy. Thank you.  I've widened it a little bit (I think that all I've done) so that the lines don't get truncated.  May I ask how you decide on the dimensions ?  I hope the template is not too wide now. -- PFHLai 21:59, 2004 Aug 28 (UTC)

Short answer: I did not decide on the 25px overlap between the left column (containing the icon) and the right column (containg the text). All I did was add compensating 25px spaces or anti-margins to balance that overlap.

Long answer: Previously, the open tasks section on the Community Portal looked very ugly without images. There was a wide column that was almost blank except for the text "Image:Evolution-tasks.png", and narrow column (with four or five words per line) containing all the tasks. To see what I mean, try loading the version from 19:08 27 Aug 2004 in a browser window with images disabled, and re-size the window to approximate the width that is available on the Community Portal page. (You need a browser that displays alt text when images are disabled.

Just adding empty alt text to the image wasn't sufficient, because of the way CSS positioning attributes are used to make the two columns overlap. The left column is the image, with a width of 48 pixels, or the alt text, with a width of zero. The right column has all the words, but the words were positioned 25 pixels to the left of where they would naturally have appeared if the "left:-25px" CSS code had not been present. Moving the text left by 25px to overlap the 48px image seems fine in a graphical browser (it's almost as if the first column containing the image was narrowed to only 23px instead of 48px). However, when images are disabled and the left hand column has a zero width (due to the alt=""), there is no space to absorb the overlap.

The workaround I chose was to add an invisible spacer with a width of 25px and a height of zero. This makes no difference when images are displayed (a 48px-wide image just above a 25px-wide ivisible spacer behaves just like the image alone. But with images disabled, it makes a big difference: a 25px-wide spacer just below null alt text creates a left-hand column that is 25px wide, and this provides enough space to accommodate the way the right hand column overlaps the left hand column by 25px.  The result is in the version of 18:47 28 Aug 2004.

After I had done that, I realised that the way the right hand column was moved led to the appearance of a 25px-wide margin at the right hand side. My next edit was to remove that (by adding a -25px right margin), and the result is in the version of 19:39 28 Aug 2004.

By the way, it's very easy with Opera to see how all the spacing works. Just select "Debug with outline" from the drop-down stylesheet menu (which is typically just to the left of the URL box), and you will get a black outline around the table, and a red outline around the right hand column. &mdash;AlanBarrett 10:06, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the detailed explanation. -- PFHLai 17:23, 2004 Sep 2 (UTC)

Categorization
So I made the link for "parenting" go to Category:Orphaned categories, which is for parenting of categories. I added text at the top of that page to point to the homepage for categorization of articles.

My reasoning is this: Thanks to some automation, we recently expanded the list of orphaned categories a great deal; we are now up around 800. Unfortunately, hardly any progress is being made on this project, due to a lack of volunteer attention.

The alphabetized list of articles to be categorized is extremely long, and rather intimidating to a newbie. Though there are vague "projects" to categorize broad swaths of article space, there is scant documentation on how to do so. In contrast, the list of orphaned categories is viewable on a single page, and it's nicely sorted. Helpers have a choice between finding homes for the "popular" but hard to place categories, and cleaning out the sparsely populated dreck at the bottom of the barrel. And there are some friendly instructions to help newbies get started.

In the long run, I intend to build a system to cluster uncategorized articles by looking at their "see also" links and related articles in the existing category structure. I think this will help make the article-categorization process more approachable for random volunteers. However, this quasi-automation would probably work better if category space is as clean as possible. And, of course, a clean category space helps future categorizers land articles in the right places. So I'm thinking once Category:Orphaned categories gets back down to a reasonable size (containing mostly orphans created in the past week or so), the "parenting" link can go directly to a place that can help newbies get started on categorizing articles. Hopefully with the "suggested cluster" feature up and running.

Thanks.

-- Beland 04:05, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

This link was deleted by Jiang with the reason given as "those are categories, not articles". An automated scan on the latest database dump showed a rate of about 60 orphaned categories per day. When the orphaned category link was posted to Template:Opentask, we started getting random visitors who were especially useful in fixing the hard-to-categorize but "popular" categories at the top of our list. There's nothing in this template that I can see that specifies "articles only", so I'm wondering why this link shouldn't be put back in. Thanks. -- Beland 08:26, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)

FYI, Auto-categorization now contains requests for categorization of specific articles. The lists are automatically generated, sorted by topic, and supplied with advice for newbies. The first collection of topics is the 50 states of the USA, since these were the most numerous among uncategorized articles. (The bulk of US State-related articles are actually being automatically categorized; only the leftovers are presented for manual categorization.) -- Beland 06:51, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)

A number of people have started to work on Category:Orphaned categories, and with their help, we've cleared the backlog there. I'm changing the parenting link to point to Auto-categorization so that new recruits will be directed there first. As I mentioned above, there's a large number of pre-sorted articles there awaiting manual categorization. -- Beland 22:26, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Getting far too large
When I created this template I wanted it to be a friendly list of a few things people could do. Now, imagine you're a newbie and you get this huge block of text as your first welcome message - that does not look very friendly at all.

I propose the following: --Eloquence*
 * that wikify/copyedit are merged into one line
 * that "image captions" is removed
 * that "substubs" are removed (substubs may be added to the list of stubs)


 * I agree that "image captions" serves no vital purpose and should go. I also think the link to "translation" at the bottom is really something for advanced editors on meta and should be removed. Wikify and copyedit arent quite the same so I don't think we should merge them. --Jiang 20:27, 18 Sep 2004 (UTC)


 * I think something image-related is nice to include, but haven't really followed how much activity that line generates. If it's not that significant, perhaps we can do without it. I agree with Jiang, wikify and copyedit should not be merged. But I still support getting rid of the extraneous substubs line. --Michael Snow 03:43, 19 Sep 2004 (UTC)


 * I second. -- PFHLai 08:59, 2004 Sep 19 (UTC)


 * We could also remove article requests since that's covered in Recent Changes (or we can switch off at Recent Changes between article requests and stubs) --Jiang 05:00, 19 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Tasks on the 'Updates', 'Merge' and 'Captions' lines are usually not well attended. Losing these lines would not be a great loss, even though these tasks really need to be done. I would just mention them at the bottom, next to 'CleanUp'. BTW, should the whole Opentask be at the top of RC, after the 'About Us' line ? -- PFHLai 08:59, 2004 Sep 19 (UTC)

Process for updating the requested articles list?
Hi I moved out a few that were done and replaced them with some that were in wait. But it seems from the history there is more I should do. Can someone clue me in? - Taxman 17:19, Oct 5, 2004 (UTC)
 * It's helpful if you mention the name of the article (with a link) in your edit summary. Also, if it's still a stub or needs to be wikified or copyedited, you should move it to the wait list for the appropriate category.
 * It's also smart to preview your edits. All of the lines should be about the same length. If they aren't, either pick something else to add as a replacement (you don't have to go straight down the wait list if the next one on the list doesn't fit) or add something else. At least, this has been my impression of how it works. [[User:Aranel|Aranel ("Sarah")]] 17:19, 8 Oct 2004 (UTC)

How long to leave after merge complete
How long should an article be left in the "merge" section after a merge is completed? -- Alphax 00:34, Oct 20, 2004 (UTC)
 * I would think it should be removed immediately, to be replaced with another article in need of merging. -Beland 22:06, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Line needed?
I don't know much about whatever it is this is written in (is there some text on this language in Wikipedia?), but I'm trying to put Opentask inside a colored box for a welcome message (as shown here) and there seems to be a problem. In the first line, is style="background:transparent;" needed? It seems to me that the background would automatically be transparent, and that line seems to be messing up what I'm trying to do. So, is that line needed? Would we be able to take it out? pie4all88 00:59, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Where should I put these links, then?
I recently added more links to the list of "more tasks" at the bottom of this Template. (See this historical version) They were reverted, with no explanation. While I have no problem putting them elsewhere, this appeared to be the right place for them, and if it is not, I would like to know where else to put them, and/or why this is not right. Any comments appreciated... JesseW 21:56, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * The issue is resolved. JesseW 22:21, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * I'm just going to remove the ones that are already listed in the template. There's no need to include them twice. -[[User:Aranel|Aranel ("Sarah")]] 00:10, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * Very good. I've just done various formatting, ordering and other small changes (including linking cleanup to Leftovers (till we get that clean, we should encourage people to work on it) JesseW 00:27, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Period of rotation for pages on here.
It seems to me that with the large number of pages on Wikipedia that need copyediting, destubbing, etc... there's no reason for pages to stay on this template as long as they do. A week seems more than enough time for anyone who may be interested in improving an article listed here and regularly checks Opentask to take notice of it. If no one feels differently, i'm going to make an effort to make sure no page stays on this template for longer than a week. -&#8472;yrop (talk) 02:28, Dec 27, 2004 (UTC)

Trying to fix misordered div endtag
(Update: my fix appears to have been stored, despite what the edit conflict, apparantly with myself, tells me!) I'm trying to fix the misordered div endtag in the template, but the server is returning errors and I'm losing out to edit conflicts. Here is what needs to be done in case anyone has more luck than me: The last in this line: should be moved to after the as here: (this may have been fixed already, but the server is giving me grief) -Wikibob | Talk 18:50, 2005 Jan 19 (UTC)

Merge -> Expand ?
There's not a very large list to draw Merge items from, perhaps this line could be replaced with items off Requests for expansion? 119 00:24, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Dead end pages
Could someone please update the Dead End Pages list? It hasn't been done in a long time and many pages have already been categorized (or vfd'd). Radiant! 18:17, Feb 14, 2005 (UTC)


 * SimonP updated it today. -- Beland 05:52, 24 July 2005 (UTC)

Background color
It might just be my eyes, but it looks to me as if the background color for Open tasks is white while the standard WP color is something like a light blue. Perhaps it would blend better if they were made to match. That is, unless the box is supposed to stand out, in which case we should probably put a black line border around it. Any ideas? --Dmcdevit 02:02, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * I like having it stand out... --Smooth Henry 00:45, Mar 5, 2005 (UTC)
 * Okay, just checking. Do you think a box around it would make more sense.?--Dmcdevit 20:34, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Capitalization/Categorization switch
There's reportedly a problem with the capitalization page, so I'm temporarily changing that link to the orphaned category page. It would actually be nice to clear out the orphaned category backlog because in order to fix the capitalization problem, I should probably do a new database dump analysis, which means it's time to add another orphaned category dump. But that page was pushing 700k earlier today, and I don't have enough time to get things down to a reasonable level all by myself. -- Beland 08:01, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * The capitalization project has pretty much folded for now, so I'm leaving the pointer to Category:Orphaned categories in place. -- Beland 03:11, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Soundgarden Request
wanted to see Soundgarden expanded Jobe6 23:47, July 17, 2005 (UTC)

Automatic Update
How are you getting these articles? If they're from a category, can MediaWiki pick a random member? That would make things easier. Otherwise, at least make a category people can get them from.

Superm401 22:19, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

All Right
Okay, I looked at it, and the page has always been done manually, but right now, there are lists or categories referring to each of the problems. i.e. wikification, stubs, updates.

P.S. I changed the link for more stubs form one to Category:substub to Category:Stub categories. Substubs are needlessly restrictive.

P.P.S. There used to be a dedicated substub section of this template. If you want to reinstate, feel free. I don't.

I'm going to look into automating this. Superm401 23:20, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Requests
This is now on two lines each starting with Requests: I think this should be be turned into one line. Does anyone agree? TAS 12:59, 1 May 2005 (UTC)
 * I'm not partial either way. I can see we may not want soo much red in one place, but I do think the requests are the most likely ones to be fulfilled and need the most exposure. In any case, we should somehow get rid of the repeated "Requests" at the beginning of the second line, and maybe just have an indented asterisk. --Dmcdevit 16:26, 1 May 2005 (UTC)
 * I agree with that. TAS 18:46, 3 May 2005 (UTC)
 * What is a YubNub??????--Zxcvbnm 03:34, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I think requests should be extracted from the EB 2004 missing list, the highest priority missing articles writing project.

lots of issues | leave me a message 11:13, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * Currently they come from The articles requested for 2+ years, the most wanted articles (by links) list, and random submissions by contributors. I'll certainly look there in the future now that I know about it, but I encourage you to add what you think are the most important (or at least most likely to be created) to the standby list. --Dmcdevit 21:13, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

NPOV line
The categories full of accuracy and NPOV disputes are getting excessively large. In an effort to get more publicity, I've added a line here for NPOV disputes. Fact-checking usually requires either familiarity with the subject or the willingness to do research. NPOV disputes are a little easier for random people to help with. Often all that's needed are fresh perspectives, or neutral parties to help move the discussion forward. I expect a lot of random people will be enticed to click on the listings here, either because the topics are controversial. Sometimes it is surprising to see seemingly innocent (or just plain weird) topics listed as having an NPOV dispute, and it's tempting to read the talk page to find out what all the fuss is about. As usual, these will need to be rotated as they are fixed (which is easily checked by whether or not the NPOV tag has been removed from the top of the article page). -- Beland 06:08, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

Automatic updates
I'm getting tired of manually checking whether any of the articles here have been fixed today, and adding new ones. It would be nice to spend less time doing that and more time actually fixing articles. I'm also a bit worried about the slow turnover here. Some of the lines are simply fed, more or less at random, from categories - NPOV, copy editing, wikification, mergers.

I'm thinking it might be a good idea to have these lines updated on a regular basis - say, daily, by a bot. Instead of only moving out an article after it is fixed, why not have the bot just display an entirely new set of articles every day? Different people have different interests; perhaps this would make it more likely that some article featured here will catch someone's eye. I'm thinking to keep things simple, the bot could just pick articles from the appropriate category at random, without bothering to keep track of them. If an article is stubbornly broken, it will statistically get listed more often. I wonder whether it's worth looking past the first 200 articles in a category, if it's that badly backlogged.

Thoughts? -- Beland 14:09, 7 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Asking for permission on Wikipedia talk:Bots. -- Beland 09:37, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

OK, I implemented this idea. Enjoy. -- Beland 03:37, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

How long till links go away?
I wrote the lightface analytic game page recently, and removed it from the Opentask template. But if I hit "What links here" from "lightface analytic game", I still see about 200 user pages. Does something need to be purged or something? --Trovatore 02:34, 8 September 2005 (UTC)
 * I think those link will remain until the next time those user pages are edited. (Yes, this is a bug.) -- Beland 00:28, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

Converting cleanup to auto-update
So the old theory with the cleanup category was to take some of the oldest cleanup requests and feature them on this page for a week or two. If they weren't cleaned up at the end of that time, I would assign them to someone on the Cleanup Taskforce.

I'm thinking that it would be a lot better to pick five or six articles at random from a list of 50-100 cleanup articles from a given month, and feature that list for a day at a time. That will give a lot more articles exposure here, increasing the chances that someone will become interested and clean them up. Once a month has too few articles in it to provide a diverse pool of cleanup candidates, we can move on to the next month for this page. The Cleanup Taskforce can still get the oldest requests, since now they are all sorted by month. We can just assign it all the articles from months which are older than the current "featured" month here (and thus have a smaller number of more difficult articles to clean up).

To implement this change, I will now add cleanup to the list of lines that Pearle automatically updates. -- Beland 01:46, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

Requested Article: Elvin Marsalas
As far as I can tell, there are no links to Elvin Marsalas other than from transclusions (and maybe some substs:) of this template. Nor does googling for the term return any real hits. It went into to Most Requested category in this change; I hesitated to jump in and remove it since I might be missing something. Bunchofgrapes (talk) 02:07, 9 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Not everything on that line comes from Most wanted articles. Some of them are requested directly, and some of them, including Elvin Marsalas, come from Articles requested for more than two years.  Though people there seem to agree that he's not notable, so I'm removing that request. Thanks for checking, Beland 13:34, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Thanks. My obsessive-compulsive little mind can rest easy now ;-) Bunchofgrapes (talk) 14:54, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

Automatic updates
FYI, I'm putting Pearle on a cron job to update this template daily, so that should happen at the same time every day now. Sorry about the underscores, by the way; they should be fixed on the next automatic edit. -- Beland 04:22, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Widening
I've removed the non-informative clip art to make more room for listings. I'm increasing the number of characters allowed on the automatically-updated lines, and the other ones will grow to match as they are updated. If this template gets too wide for any particular page, please let me know, and I'll lower the character limit. -- Beland 21:54, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

New friends
The updatedness, factual accuracy, and style cleanup categories are fairly large, so I thought they should get featured on this template. We have other templates that better track active projects, so replaced project listings with links to those other templates to make room for the new article lines. I hope you like the result. -- Beland 05:29, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

On the road
Automatic updates might be get done every day for the next week or two, as I'm taking my laptop on the road. Feel free to update by hand if necessary. -- Beland 08:13, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

Stubs
Stubs are now being updated automatically, because I got tired of doing it. -- Beland 02:39, 10 February 2006 (UTC)