Wikipedia talk:Database reports/Forgotten articles

Update?
I think it's time to update this page, no? Liz  Read! Talk! 17:13, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

So the longest time ago no article was edited was in 2013? I've seen pages last edited before then...
I find that hard to believe as I have found some that the last edit was before 2013-yet this only shows 3 years ago as the earliest. (and I'm not talking about redirects/DAB pages) Wgolf (talk) 06:04, 6 April 2016 (UTC)


 * It does seem a bit unlikely :) I'll have a look at the SQL and try to figure out what's going on (or rather, not going on). Thparkth (talk) 00:12, 16 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Do you happen to have any examples of articles that were last edited before 2013 that I can look at? Thparkth (talk) 04:45, 16 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Okay looking around on http://tools.wmflabs.org/catscan3/catscan2.php and putting in some random searches (for articles under a certain number of bytes, which you also have to do a keyword or a template for), Here are some I've found, used Possibly Living People (tried living people but it kept on freezing for some reason), I also found some for notability tag as well: Svatopluk Skýva, Franjo Fröhlich, Kalyan Das Jain. All 3 of those were before 2013. Wgolf (talk) 04:52, 16 April 2016 (UTC)
 * It looks like the "page_touched" time for those articles is much more recent than 2013. For example "Kalyan Das Jain" has a page_touched value of two days ago! To be fair the current report does say that "Articles are 'touched' by any action that invalidates their cache. This includes editing, permission changes, creation or deletion of linked pages, and alteration of transcluded templates."
 * I guess the underlying issue is that relying on page_touched just doesn't give very useful results. My feeling is that we do actually want to report on last edit time. Would you agree with that? Thparkth (talk) 05:12, 16 April 2016 (UTC)
 * I don't get it at all to be honest. Wgolf (talk) 05:14, 16 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Hi - I've now updated the page to report based on "last edit date" rather than "last touched" in the database. "Last touched" is used by the wikipedia web servers to figure out if their cached copy of the page is still valid, or if they need to rebuild it. It changes for a lot of reasons other than someone editing the page.
 * Can you check and see if it looks more like what you expect now? One thing I notice is that a lot of the oldest forgotten articles are set index articles which are officially not disambiguation pages, but between you and me they seem a lot like disambiguation pages so I'm wondering if we should filter them out of the report.
 * Thparkth (talk) 17:18, 17 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Yeah a lot of them do seem like it, granted I've seen some DAB pages not updated since a certain amount of time, some of them I think might of not had the DAB tag added to them. Wgolf (talk) 18:02, 17 April 2016 (UTC)

Note to future generations
Note that this report, for performance reasons, now only looks at articles created before Dec 2008 (now that we're looking at actual last edit date instead of last touched date, which is a more expensive query). Once this list has fewer than 500 articles listed, we'll need to adjust the page ID set at https://github.com/Niharika29/database-reports/blob/master/reports.py and redeploy. Kaldari (talk) 20:11, 17 April 2016 (UTC)
 * And a personal note from me to future generations: "Sorry". Thparkth (talk) 21:19, 17 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Well I have touched some 2009 articles just now by adding some tags that were never added for years! Wgolf (talk) 00:59, 6 May 2016 (UTC)

I enjoy this list-maybe it should be expanded to 1K?
Was wondering if it should be expanded to 1K? (Which I even just found one article that was vandalized in 2009 and part of it was never changed...till now!) And amazing how many articles were missing a unreferenced tag for years! Wgolf (talk) 00:54, 17 May 2016 (UTC)

Some of the surnames listed might be tougher to update then others
So I've been updating the forgotten articles that are DAB's for surnames, but 2 I found listed I can tell you are bound to have more not listed-Stables (surname) (not the most common last name, but might take a while due to the common use of the word stable) and Vines (surname) (much more common last name, another one that will take a while due to the use of the word vines). While a couple of them only seem to have just 2 names at all (like Shunk for example). Wgolf (talk) 05:31, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

Looking over this again
I have not looked over this in a few months for some reason-but some more surnames pages have came up it seems. Some pages have broken el's like this one CTC Bank of Canada (which I put a dead link but not sure what to say since the domain is for sale-who knows how long it has been also!) Wgolf (talk) 03:08, 31 October 2016 (UTC)

Supreme Court Cases
I don't know if this is itself forgotten, but right now most of the table is dominated by supreme court cases. Of course, they also need some reformatting: it looks like someone made a template for them, SCOTUStable, but did not apply it to all. SO now we have an immense number of articles that need fairly standard parsing into a template. It should be straightforward to code an offline assistant to do it, but right now I don't have much free time, so someone else might want to take care of it. Thanks! Calumapplepie (talk) 02:24, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
 * if you can make an edit or 2 and link the diffs, I have time to run through them now DannyS712 (talk) 02:25, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
 * I can try, but the annoying part is you have to do it to the whole article. There is somthing like 40 cases per page, and each one has to have parts of its unformatted entry plugged into a template.  The needed swapping is pretty simple, but its tedious.
 * Here are two examples: with the with the template and without the template  Calumapplepie (talk) 02:52, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
 * with regex, I got Special:Diff/900051217 - is that what you wanted? --DannyS712 (talk) 03:16, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
 * You got it in one, thanks!Calumapplepie (talk) 11:49, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Noting that this change would apply to 360 pages (those 363 minus Lists of United States Supreme Court cases by volume, List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 2, and United States Reports, volume 1) DannyS712 (talk) 03:29, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
 * AFAIK, that is the preferred formatting. I didn't come up with this: I just noted the discrepancy.  Thanks for your time! Calumapplepie (talk) 11:49, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
 * So I just remembered this, and realized that I meant to ask a month ago - should these pages all be converted to this format? If so, would this be a good task for a bot? DannyS712 (talk) 04:05, 23 July 2019 (UTC)
 * I mean, that would be ideal, but I don’t know if this requires a bit. Like you said, it’s only a few hundred pages, so copy-paste and regex’s should be able to handle it.  But I’m still a pretty new editor: don’t ask me! Calumapplepie (talk) 02:01, 29 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Comment-that and the set indices seem to be the case here. As well as things like "list of roads named". Heck even surnames seem to be a bit too much here. (At least we don't have DAB pages-that would be the entire list). But I do agree the list does seem to be the case here. Wgolf (talk) 02:31, 3 June 2019 (UTC)

Has this been forgotten?
Okay sorry about that pun, had to say that, but on a serious note-what has happened to the updates on this? Is the bot down I am guessing? Wgolf (talk) 20:45, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
 * This has happened before. I think at that time, i posted on community bot's talkpage. Cant recall the exact talkpage though. — usernamekiran (talk)  22:28, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
 * ,, it's back! Looks like we're in business again. Ganesha811 (talk) 13:57, 26 August 2019 (UTC)
 * yes, I had to post many messages. special:diff/911564592, and like these: special:diff/911567775. But it is responses like these which make me worrid. — usernamekiran (talk)  17:18, 26 August 2019 (UTC)

Deprecate in favor of Special:AncientPages?
Does this do the same thing as Special:AncientPages but more slowly? It seems like both pull up lists of pages that have gone the longest without being edited. If they're the same (and I'm not entirely certain they are), should we just switch to one? It looks like this one is being maintained irregularly, so perhaps Special:AncientPages is the way to go? Thoughts from anyone? Ajpolino (talk) 16:57, 10 November 2019 (UTC)
 * , I agree we don't need two pages with the same function. I'm unsure as to why the two pages return different content - the articles listed only overlap in what looks to be about 25% of cases. Any idea why? Ganesha811 (talk) 18:28, 10 November 2019 (UTC)
 * I had wondered that too. I assume it's because Database reports/Forgotten articles shows information as of October 7, while Special:AncientPages is information as of November 7? If I click on the first few articles in Database reports/Forgotten articles, they've all been edited since October 7 (but before November 7). I haven't exhaustively checked though; I only looked at the first few. Ajpolino (talk) 18:46, 10 November 2019 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 5 November 2020
Remove the following articles due recent edits and no longer fitting page criteria:

Sun Factory 2

Sun Factory 3

Supersoul Records

Supersymmetry breaking scale

Symbol level

Syndicat Mixte

Pepscan

Stavanger Air Traffic Control Center

Task Management Function

Stockton Hill

Concurrent overlap

Washington Georges

La Crisi

MacGillonie

West End Cares Awards

HMS Dover Prize (1693)

Engelhardt Ice Ridge

Equator Music

Espiche

Toreccadae

Frequency compatibility

Fulbrook, Texas

Industrial Relations Act (Mauritius)

Japanese neighborhood

Jura-Sternwarte Grenchen

Kakonda

Kani Ladies

Legget

Makiling (band)

Maospati

Material dispersion coefficient

Memetic institutionalism

Michelbach, Saarland

Milwaukee Golf Course

Montgomery Tahsil

Motion to strike (United States Congress)

Mount Low

Mount Sulivan

NASA Acquisition Internet Service

National ITS Architecture

O'Connor Nunataks

Pacemaker action potential

Peace feeler

Petrovouni, Messenia

Pfaffian constraint

Program Supervisor

Publishers Association of the West

Ranney Index

MV Renasa

Ridge Meadows Speed Skating Association

Runs per nine innings

Satz (SAT solver)

Save Zimbabwe

Šećerana, Zrenjanin

Second Tunisia Plan

Shango (Peter King album)

Soken tester

Spatial tense

Sussex Mountains

Synchronizer (algorithm)

Tagar

Visiting Forces Act 1952

Thumbe, Sri Lanka

TIG1

True Performance Index

Ultzama valley

UniquePhones

Uu-a-thluk

VB5 interface

Villagómez family

Waldheim (Hanover)

Yenne Saastra

Ytstenut Peak

Mount Zeigler

Zhelannaya Mountain

Town Serjeant

RSUA Silver Medal

Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Act 2006

Syntactic methods JHobbs (talk) 04:14, 5 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: This page is updated by a bot, so when it next edits this page, those pages will be removed. It was last edited on 2 November, and looks to be updated about once a week, so should be updated soon.  Seagull123  Φ  17:28, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

What is the intent of this page?
Just some questions; First, what is the intent of this list? I found the link at WP:MERGE, which suggests listing here is a reason to merge; Is that the case? The measure of whether an article has been forgotten is lack of page views, not lack of edits, surely? Second, the note at the top of the page says it ignores dab pages, but set index pages seem to be included; is that intentional? Is there a difference? Third, it isn't clear what happens if pages listed here do get edited: Are they deleted by the Community Tech bot mentioned in the lead sentence? Or are editors who come here and make changes to listed articles supposed to delete them themselves? Or is the list to be preserved as it is? Also, if someone comes here, then reviews a page but doesn’t find anything wrong with it, it’ll remain unedited; So (assuming editors start at the top) the same old pages will get checked again and again, while those lower down remain unchecked. I’ve tried resolving this by making null edits on such pages, just to bring some slightly less old pages into prominence, but I've no idea if that is the right thing to do. Thoughts? Moonraker12 (talk) 16:09, 10 August 2021 (UTC)

Most of these are set index articles
Such as Mountain pink and Ostrovsky District. These are effectively disambiguation or lists and don't have a need to be edited for long periods of time and take up slots that could otherwise be filled with articles in need of updating. As noted above this also causes confusion as to the purpose of this page and as they take up most of the slots now they do diminish the purpose of this page. DogsRNice (talk) 18:34, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

"Dusty articles" listed at Redirects for discussion
A discussion is taking place to address the redirect Dusty articles. The discussion will occur at Redirects for discussion/Log/2021 November 16 until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. <b style="color:#034503">MB</b> 18:31, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

2023 issue - list dominated by single user bot / Polish geography
For several months now, this list has been of little use because it is taken up almost entirely by imports from the Polish language wikipedia by Deactivated bot User:Kotbot. Previously, it was useful to check old articles for notability / possible improvement across a range of subjects, but these brief geographic articles offer little avenue for improvement except perhaps for a small group of Polish-speaking and Poland-located editors. Would it be possible to purge Kotbot created articles from the list?Dialectric (talk) 19:09, 23 April 2023 (UTC)