Wikipedia talk:Dead-end pages/Archive 3

No longer running my bot
Hi all, I'm taking a long wiki-break and I've requested my bot to be de-flagged which means it won't be clearing the link lists anymore. If anyone else has any programming experience, I've posted the source of my bot at User:Jayden54/WPDead Source.js. Ask on Bot Requests for someone else to run the bot. I'm sorry for the hassle. Jayden54 18:11, 13 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks for all your help — and enjoy your wiki-break! Askari Mark (Talk) 22:33, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

New layout looks nice, but eats my section edit tags
I really think the new layout looks far classier than the old one. And smaller pages are a Good Thing.

But does anyone know why I'm not seeing per-section [edit] tags any more? --Alvestrand 18:38, 15 May 2007 (UTC)


 * They're there on some sections and not on others. If I click the A-C section, they are there. (And, so are all the sections for A-K). If I click on the G-K tab, they are not there, and only the letters G-K show up. (Well, G-J, since K is done). Not having the section edit tags is a major pain... --Kathy A. 21:25, 15 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Found it (I think) - the template has a  in it. Not sure how to fix it - putting __EDITSECTION__ below it didn't help, at least. --Alvestrand 21:30, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Found a fix, involving some template-munging and using TabsTopWithEdit instead of plain TabsTop. --Alvestrand 21:39, 15 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I think A-C is goofed up. Salad Days 00:50, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I tried to fix it. Check if I goofed. I also linked the talk pages of all the subpages here. Will the next upload be in the new format? --Alvestrand 11:30, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
 * AWB just provides the letter headings; it still has to be broken apart by hand. It shouldn't be difficult to split it up this way instead. Salad Days 22:02, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Old stuff archived
This page was getting a bit long, so I put all the old (pre-April) stuff in /Archive 2. --Alvestrand 11:00, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Bot
I wanted to get some community opinion before even starting, as this relates entirely to this page.

I understand the previous bot to remove deleted pages from this list isn't running, and I am considering writing a new one. But this project is considered important, I was trying to think of other features that would make it better. Here are some of my ideas:
 * 1) Look at Whatlinkshere, and if the titles of those articles exist in the text then make them links (Excluding disambigs, redirects, and pages marked for deletion)
 * 2) Remove items that have more than 4 links Bad idea, removed.
 * 3) If there is another article with the same name in a different case, propose a redirect
 * 4) If it contains less than two headings, contains no bold text in the first paragraph, or does not contain the article name in the first paragraph then mark it as wikify as well
 * 5) Search in google for the title, and if less than 1000 results, flag as not notable (Not sure about this, need more opinions)
 * 6) Search Google News for references, if no results maybe flag as not notable (Same as above)

With all entries it would ignore redirecting/flagging if it had a merge, mergeto, or mergefrom tag, or a afd, db, prod, or other deletion template.

It would also read the notes after the item on the list, such as notability, merge, cleanup, etc. Some such as merge and cleanup would be skipped, whereas notability would have a higher chance of being flagged for being not notable (see item 5 and 6)

When commenting, please refer to the number that you are commenting on, and if possible please use a list that is numbered the same. Thanks, TheFearow 22:41, 17 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Comment on #2 -- part of the point of DEP is not just adding links, but also triage, which I'm not sure a bot could do effectively (but I'd love to be proved wrong!). For example, an article from the list I worked on today already was wikilinked by someone else, but my internal spam alarm went off when I saw the article, and I tagged it for deletion. If the article had already been removed from DEP by a bot, I'd have never seen it.--Kathy A. 00:31, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks, thats the sort of comments I want. I'll remove that item, since DEP is more than just about adding links. Any other comments? Matt - TheFearow 02:07, 18 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Comment on #1 - in some cases, I find that the page is lnked from a disambiguation page - in which case the page's title (as written in bold) would be linked by the bot. That's not useful. But the idea sounds attractive.


 * Proposal #4, #5 and #6 are actual changes to the article. I'm very conservative wrt automatic changes - there's just too much potentioal to get it wrong. But all of #1, #4, #5, #6 sounds like things it would be beautiful to have in an AWB-like "push this button to make it happen" environment. Is that possible? (Note: I don't use AWB, since I don't use IE. But I've read a bit about it and seen other people using it.) --Alvestrand 03:34, 18 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I like suggestion #4 the most. Flagging these articles as wiki is a good idea. The other options would be fun to experiment, to see how successful they are. Thanks for the offer of assistance! Salad Days 21:22, 18 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Also might be good to mark with wikify if there's no bold text in the first paragraph.--Kathy A. 20:53, 19 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Ok, i'll answer your comments. First, I will update it to not add links to disambig pages or redirect pages that link to it, as well as pages that are marked as speedy, prod, or afd. #5 and #6 are a bit advanced, I personally am a bit wary with these features but I decided to post anyway and get opinions by people involved. #4 is one of my favourites, and I will update if it contains no bold text or if it doesn't contain the article name in the first paragraph. I have updated my initial message, feel free to check out the changes, and please comment on them. Thanks! (Note: My original bot request fell through so if this seems like the community is into it I will probably implement it pretty quickly (It wasn't declined, I withdrew)) Matt - TheFearow 22:10, 19 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Could I get some more comments? I'm going to start work on this bot soon, to remove redlinks and items #1 and #4. Thanks! Matt - TheFearow 21:36, 20 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I kind of like #1 and #4 - my "separation of concerns" guessometer says "do this as a separate bot from the redlink remover", but the bot policies of wikipedia may make this hard. For #4 note that sometimes the article name is a shorter or longer version of what should be bolded in the first line - the article may be "Tom French (author)", while the bolded first line has "Thomas Alva French (1922-1944) was an English author" (example is invented). The point is - be careful. --Alvestrand 11:52, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Ok, thanks for the comments everyone. Here is a list of what I am going to write a bot to do:
 * 1) Remove redlinks from the list.
 * 2) Check the whatlinkshere for an article, and if the exact text of linking articles name appears in the text of the article, make it a link.
 * 3) If the article contains two or less headings, and it contains no bold text in the first paragraph, it will mark the article as wikify.
 * 4) Remove redirect pages from list

For all that, it will ignore articles that contain templates for any of the following: WP:AFD, WP:PROD, WP:SPEEDY, WP:MERGE

Can I get any objections here? If not, I will write the bot and put forward a request for bot approval. If you have any suggestions for those features, please say. If you have a suggestion for a new feature, mention it on my talkpage and i'll consider implementing it.

When voting, please state which number you are voting for, such as:

 Support (1)  Reason ~

 Oppose (1 and 4)  Detailed reason ~

Support

 * Support 1-4 (while having misgivings, it's better to WP:BB and learn from experience). --Alvestrand 07:49, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Support 1-4 All seem useful, and don't have too much potential for unintended mischief.--Kathy A. 12:21, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
 * It is better to try and fail, then to not try. Also, octopuses 04:46, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Oppose
Thanks for voting! Matt - TheFearow 01:29, 22 May 2007 (UTC) (Note - Even though this appears below the oppose header, it is not an opposition! If i opposed to my own idea, I wouldn't do it)

RBA
Code is almost complete, and bot has been approved for trial on WP:RBA. Matt - TheFearow 05:18, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Update
I have created a new version of this listing based upon the directions given upon it. I have posted it to User:Also%2C_octopuses/Userboxes/Sandbox. If you would choose to include it in your efforts, I would be most happy. Thank you. Also, octopuses 05:08, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Just wondering if anyone has a reason for Also, octopuses not to post the updated list? Or is everyone else taking the summer off? --Kathy A. 18:19, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm here, and I wouldn't mind - "my" T section is almost empty. --Alvestrand 20:29, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

DeadBot
DeadBot completed its first trial run on G-K, see for the diff. If there are any comments from anyone here, see my RBA. Matt - TheFearow 22:48, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Instead of adding just the tag, you might want to add  . That will save SmackBot from having to follow behind and add the date info. Same for other tags that might take a date.--Kathy A. 16:15, 3 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I'll implement that on the next update. Matt - TheFearow 04:41, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Nit: please use - I believe the non-date form also works for wikify, but people are trying to be consistent using the date form, I believe. --Alvestrand 20:30, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Good point. I copy/pasted from the tag AWB places, so I assumed that was the most current method.--Kathy A. 21:31, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Bot has been approved, and I am now starting running it. For now, only the removing of list functions work, Wikify is not currently enabled (needs to be approved seperately, I am not going to bother for now). Thanks for the comments! Matt - TheFearow 05:31, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Seems to be a bug here - it removed all the manually-inserted comments from P-T. --Alvestrand 09:40, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Some ideas

 * 1) Some web sites periodically do maintenance to their site, e.g. close on Saturday to Sunday/everyday 3am-6am/2 weeks for big maintenance(some may be so unlucky hacked or forget to pay internet fees and take 1-2 month to recover.) They may be 'temporary' dead. Should we save them and take a 2th/3rd test in different days before delete them?
 * 2) There is a "www.archive.org" backup some webpages some time b4, should we replace the dead link with links to backups in this site?(This site also have several mirrors, some pages are found in some mirrors but not other mirrors. But it may not be good all links change to this site, that would make too high traffic to the site as the site have already many volume of backups.
 * 3) Some links have mirrors, or copies in other sites, and as may have caches in Google, MSN, Yahoo...etc, can we see them and use keyword "selected short word phrases in the search engine cache" to search alternative links to replace the dead links?

Some dead links may be good links and should not delete simply. But when more and more links one day there may be too much links in a page.Gaia2767spm 17:10, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I think you're looking for another wikiproject - this one is about pages that have no outgoing links, not about external links that can't be looked up... --Alvestrand 20:53, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Thx. Post to the page Wikipedia:Dead_external_links. u may remove the above ideas.:)Gaia2767spm 13:38, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Bot Proposals
Hey everyone, could I get your opinion on the following changes?
 * Bot updates comments to use a standard format (The format # ArticleName - Comment ) as part of the process
 * Bot adds comments to articles that have certain tags (such as AFD, Merge, SPEEDY, Uncat, Notability, Cleanup, and Advert)

Thanks! Matt - TheFearow 09:20, 11 June 2007 (UTC)


 * I'll run this through anyway - it's non-controvertial and doesn't cause it to make more edits than usual. Matt - TheFearow 09:30, 11 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Suggestions: 1) don't add/change comments if comments are present unless it's clearly one added by the bot itself; 2) for dated tags like "notability", pull out the "date=" value into the comment. Would increase the value to me, at least. --Alvestrand 05:09, 12 June 2007 (UTC)


 * It already wont add any comments if they already exist, and it would be much harder NOT to change them to a dash ( - ) style. Also, the date value should be easy enough, I'll work on that next. :) Matt/TheFearow (Talk) (Contribs) (Bot) 01:27, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Template
What do you guys think of this? If you have any suggestions please comment on it's discussion page, not here. Thanks! Matt/TheFearow (Talk) (Contribs) (Bot) 23:37, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

More tags to not list
It seems that articles that only consist of a wi or wiktionary tag also need to be omitted from the listing. They're redirects to Wiktionary for articles that used to be just a word definition. --Alvestrand 19:34, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
 * They are omitted from the listing if they don't contain the wiki tag at the time of the database dump. Also, octopuses 23:57, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Shall I have my bot remove pages consisting of only those templates? (Which is what I assume you meant) Matt/TheFearow (Talk) (Contribs) (Bot) 00:15, 21 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Implemented now. This will work on next run (sometime in next half hour). Matt/TheFearow (Talk) (Contribs) (Bot) 04:16, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

bot error?
The bot added dead-end template to Cohomological dimension. Is this a bot error? How many more links does one need? Arcfrk 04:35, 25 June 2007 (UTC) $$Insert formula here$$

Archived
I have archived all the posts to Archive 3, as this page was getting long. Matt/TheFearow (Talk) (Contribs) (Bot) 06:49, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

DeadBot Control
I am moving DeadBot to a dedicated server, and with it, I am adding a new method of control to it. This will allow anyone to get the bot to do various tasks, including the DEP list tasks. It is based on an IRC bot. Anyone interested should read User:DeadBot/irc. Ask me on that pages talk page, with your irc nick (you must be registered), and I will add you to the Approved group so you can run the dep part of the bot. Thanks! Matt/TheFearow (Talk) (Contribs) (Bot) 06:52, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Pages Still On List
I noticed many pages are still on the dead-end pages, only now they're marked as something like "unreferenced", or whatever else is still wrong with it. Are these remaining issues not the object of another project? The main page mentions to "Please remove from the list any pages which are no longer dead-end." Dead-end_pages, but if this many people aren't, I'm thinking maybe there's a good reason for it -- so I won't remove anything else from the list unless I'm certain it's still the right thing to do. Spazure 04:57, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
 * A cleanup template on a page doesn't really count as a link... Also, octopuses 05:00, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I didn't think it did. I'm talking about stuff that has had wikilinks added into the text, but still needs to cite some sources, add a photo, or perhaps other wikification. See Andy_Lee_%28footballer/_manager%29 for an example. Spazure 07:18, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Feel free to remove, as long as it is tagged with the appropriate cleanup tags. This is the project exclusively for dead end pages. Matt/TheFearow (Talk) (Contribs) (Bot) 09:49, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Holdovers
I've cleared out most of Whitejay's holdovers. If anyone wants to take a stab at what's left, I'd appreciate the help. --Fabrictramp 18:41, 11 July 2007 (UTC) (formerly Kathy A.)

Two pages complete
This is fantastic! There must have been a big boom to the number of people working here lately (maybe because of a great ad someone made...), and both G-K and D-F are empty. I just finished off the D-F, and i'm going to be doing some work on U-Z. I'm going to try and get A-C done by the end of the day. What's next? U-Z has just over 100 entries, L-O is about 450, and P-T is about 800-900. What's the next page to be worked on? Matt/TheFearow (Talk) (Contribs) (Bot) 01:43, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
 * A-C done. Now there is only 3 pages to go, we have L-O, P-T, and U-Z. U-Z is the smallest, followed by L-O, and P-T is the largest. I'm going to do some work on U-Z tonight. Matt/TheFearow (Talk) (Contribs) (Bot) 02:07, 16 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I did quite a bit of work on A-K with AWB. Once I figured out all the great things it can do by right-clicking, the speed really went up. :) --Fabrictramp 13:54, 16 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Ahh, that explains it. I'm thinking of getting AWB soon, so then it should really speed up. (By any chance, could you tell me what you were right-clicking, and where that was? I've never seen a function for DEP) Matt/TheFearow (Talk) (Contribs) (Bot) 22:08, 16 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Nothing really DEP specific, but lots of generally useful tools. Right-clicking in the edit window brings up a menu with lots of options (fix whitespace, add DEFAULTSORT & wikify tags, etc.) It also brings up a "paste special" drop down, where you can have a list of 10 or so things to paste in. I throw in my most used tags (primarysources, uncat, notability, refimprove, context etc.), so with about a half dozen mouse clicks I have an article tagged to the gills. Throw in a few links, make the subject bold, and use the find feature to get rid of the more common formatting issues.
 * The other tool I use a lot for DEP is Twinkle. Makes the prods and AfDs fast and easy. Between the two, I can make quite a bit of progress on pages in short order.--Fabrictramp 00:07, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Hmmm, that seems like a great idea. I already use Twinkle, which does make AfD's and especially speedies quite easy. I also have a tagger script that allows me to click a button, and type in a tag to add to the top or bottom. Makes addings tags so much easier. AWB is of course ideal, but I don't have the necessary 500 mainspace edits. Matt/TheFearow (Talk) (Contribs) (Bot) 00:26, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
 * It is possible to make proposing for deletion too easy.-- it is the last resort for articles that cannot be merged or improved.DGG (talk) 03:48, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Header template
I have changed the complicated header code on each page to a template:

It is located at Dead-end pages/Header.

I created a template so merging/splitting pages (the L-O and P-T are huge) in the future should be easy. Any comments/etc are welcome. Matt/TheFearow (Talk) (Contribs) (Bot) 22:21, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Schedule
DeadBot is running on a temporary host, and will run every 12 hours. It will run at 6 AM and 6 PM NZST (GMT+12). Is this fine, or does anyone have any complaints/concerns/suggestions. Thanks! Matt/TheFearow (Talk) (Contribs) (Bot) 05:34, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Is it therefore still necessary to remove items manually from the list?DGG (talk) 03:49, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Not redlinks, redirects, or pages moved to wiktionary. Anything else is still necessary. Matt/TheFearow (Talk) (Contribs) (Bot) 10:49, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
 * After getting edit conflicts with deadbot twice in a day, I wonder if once a day is enough... --Alvestrand 20:44, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Hmmm, i'll change it over tonight and see what happens. It shouldnt make much of a difference. Matt/TheFearow (Talk) (Contribs) (Bot) 21:25, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for verification
Please see: Requests for verification

A proposal designed as a process similar to prod to delete articles without sources if no sources are provided in 30 days.

It reads:

Some editors see this as necessary to improve Wikipedia as a whole and assert that this idea is supported by policy, and others see this as a negative thing for the project with the potential of loss of articles that could be easily sourced.

I would encourage your comments in that page's talk or Mailing list thread on this proposal WikiEN-l: Proposed "prod" for articles with no sources

Signed Jeepday (talk) 14:11, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
 * As Jeepday's friendly opponent on this, I'd encourage discussion there too. No point in opening the debate at another place as well. DGG (talk) 02:19, 19 July 2007 (UTC)


 * You realise this would affect a huge proportion of stubs? Many of them have no sources. Although I do believe this should be implemented, it should be made to only affect non-stubs. Matt/TheFearow (Talk) (Contribs) (Bot) 23:15, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

New database dump available.
There's a new database dump out, from about a week ago. I've tried for a couple of days to extract it, but I just don't have the room on my computer. Anyone want to take a stab at regenerating the list?--Fabrictramp 21:35, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Third day was the charm, apparently. I've got it extracted now, and will run AWB on it tonight. --Fabrictramp 16:05, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Or not. Multiple extraction efforts have given me a bad end of file each time -- AWB gives up and complains after 4 - 60 articles found.--Fabrictramp 18:41, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Are you using bzip2? Also, octopuses 03:27, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Yeah, and it finished with an I/O error. Tried again in Safe Mode, just to make sure nothing running in the background was causing trouble, and I got the same error. Several other programs failed also. At this spot I'm chalking it up to running on a 5 year old machine that probably doesn't have enough oomph to get it done.--Fabrictramp 14:30, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Since no one has stepped up and regenerated the list, I've been going through some of the new pages and added maint tags, including. Anyone who wants to keep working on the project can find them in Category:Dead-end pages --Fabrictramp 15:39, 6 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Are there really nobody who has disk for a dump and AWB installed who can do this? I would, but I don't run IE on my fast systems... --Alvestrand 11:31, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
 * I couldn't get the latest version of AWB to run.... it's too bad there's not an easier way to do this. Also, octopuses 12:51, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
 * I did (finally!) get the file extracted without errors on my Mac. (It decompresses to 11.6 Gb, if any one is interested.) Now I need to think of a way to transfer it to a PC at work, then cross my fingers and hope I have enough oomph for AWB to process it. If only I'd waited a couple of months for the Intel machines to come out before buying this Mac, and I could run AWB at home. sigh --Fabrictramp 19:17, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
 * I was surprised to find that AWB actually ran on my Windows laptop. Am currently generating the list - so let's see where we end up in this turtle race :-) --Alvestrand 09:09, 10 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Uploaded (as one page, 6100+ entries) to User:Alvestrand/DEPdump. Some sorting weirdness - Aa sorted at the end of the alphabet.... now back to work; I'm happy if someone else does the copy/paste. --Alvestrand 10:15, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Never mind - I did it. Now it's deadbot's turn. --Alvestrand 11:24, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Lists of personal names
Some may not be aware of this, but lists of names in various languages which also provide their meanings are eligible to be transwikied to Wiktionary. This should be accomplished before they are deleted from Wikipedia. Askari Mark (Talk) 21:52, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

New database dump uploaded
I've uploaded the pages with the July 17 database dump.

This means that we need to do a scan to remove all the pages that have been fixed between July 17 and now - sorry 'bout that, but it seems hard to avoid it.

It was GREAT to see all the pages so empty! --Alvestrand 11:25, 10 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Awesome! Thanks!! However, this brings up a question. The dump I downloaded yesterday was from August 5. Should I continue to work on getting that one processed? --Fabrictramp 14:26, 10 August 2007 (UTC)


 * What?! You mean we can't rest on our laurels ... for, say, oh, about a year? ;-) It does sure feel good to see the lists empty rather than growing steadily larger. Askari Mark (Talk) 16:16, 10 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Laurels aren't too comfortable to sit on. The branches stick you in all the wrong places. ;-) --Fabrictramp 16:42, 10 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Last I looked, the August 5 dump hadn't completed, which was why I went for the July 17 one. If you can get the August 5 dump processed - go for it! (BTW - this dump is considerably shorter than past dumps... we're making progress against the flood...) --Alvestrand 22:52, 10 August 2007 (UTC)


 * The August 5 dump is still in progress, but the file we use is done and available. I'm making turtle-speed progress on it, but if any one wants to beat me in this race, feel free. :) --Fabrictramp 16:44, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

I was thinking of assisting here as next to each page it said what needed to be done, but now it does not, so how does one know what needs to be done? Trainra 02:35, 11 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Did you mean the comments on each line like "notability", etc? If so, give Deadbot a couple of days to add them back in. --Fabrictramp 16:42, 11 August 2007 (UTC)


 * A further thought. The main goal (as I understand it) of this project is triage -- the comments just show what an article is already tagged with, not what it really needs. So the best way to see what needs to be done is to click on the article and take a look at it. After a dozen or so you'll get really fast at evaluation.--Fabrictramp 16:47, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Got the August 5 dump uploaded. Turned out the problems I had before were from bad sectors on my external hard drive. A reformat put everything right. --Fabrictramp 16:02, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Great. DeadBot is also back online, and should be operating fully now. Matt/TheFearow (Talk) (Contribs) (Bot) 06:39, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Page regeneration
I've regenerated the list from the most recent database dump, and I've got the preliminary list up at my sandbox. Any reason not to move it here? (I'm still removing redlinks manually, as deadbot is taking a wikibreak last I checked.) --Fabrictramp 16:08, 17 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Update on the regen: I finished removing all the redlinks as of last night (more have popped up, but that's just less work for us, right?) This regen has 3687 pages after redlink removal -- about a thousand less than last time. Good work! Since deadbot is on wikibreak, if I move the regen here, we'll lose the comments deadbot put in. Is that enough of a problem to prevent the move? Thoughts? --Fabrictramp 15:29, 18 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Deadbot's around - its edit summaries seem to say that it's not updating anything, though. Just upload the stuff! --Alvestrand 17:16, 18 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Will do! --Fabrictramp 17:23, 18 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Looks like you're right, Deadbot is indeed on the job. Whew! --Fabrictramp 20:24, 18 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Deadbot update: it looks like Deadbot isn't looking at P or later for some reason. That explains why I didn't think it was working -- it wasn't removing redlinks there. I left a note for TheFearow, but he's on wikibreak so I don't expect a change soon. We'll just have to remove redlinks manually from the last few letters for now. --Fabrictramp 22:38, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Category Killing
Mind killing the June category? It has been cleared. July should be able to be killed soon. Thanks! Spryde 10:59, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Has June been empty for four days yet? For some reason I had in my head we couldn't request a deletion until tomorrow, but I could be wrong. :) --Fabrictramp 14:11, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Oh, didn't know about that policy. I am just going through the categories cleaning things up and as soon as it is clean, I ask for deletion. I am new to this particular project so I am not too sure of the rules. Spryde 14:29, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
 * I would assume we wouldn't roll back if we linked it in correctly to other articles. Spryde 14:29, 21 September 2007 (UTC)


 * I just tagged June with a speedy tag, then I cleaned out the last entry in July and put a comment in to speedy it on 9/26 (yeah, that's more than 4 days, but I miscounted, and it's not a big enough deal to go back and change it.) --Fabrictramp 20:17, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Updating this page
What is the procedure for updating this page when a list page has been moved thus making the current list page simply a redirect page. Example Medical universities in the former Soviet Union Dbiel (Talk) 04:25, 17 October 2007 (UTC)


 * DeadBot will delete the redirects. If the new page still doesn't contain links, the next database dump will pick it up again. I'd say "don't worry about it" - there's plenty of other articles to work on, and it WILL come back if needed. --Alvestrand 05:32, 17 October 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the reply. Since I was the one that moved the page, I needed to clean up the double redirects (which I did) and was checking the other pages linking to it, which brought me here. I will simply leave it to the Bot to remove the link to the new redirect page. Dbiel (Talk) 05:40, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

November 2007 regeneration
I've been working on the latest database dump to regenerate the pages, with only limited success. After multiple tries on multiple computers, I'm thinking there's a flaw in the dump. (Always stops at the same spot, and the first time the dump was posted it had a status of "failed".) However, I did get about 4000 articles on the list, despite the problems.

I've combined the new (partial) list with the current one so that we don't lose articles on the current list that really shouldn't drop off. The down side to combining is that the few that should drop off won't, but those are easy to deal with. I'll start posting the combined list in a few minutes. Enjoy!--Fabrictramp 14:49, 3 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks - well done! --Alvestrand 06:12, 5 November 2007 (UTC)


 * You're welcome! Looks like Whitejay251 is on wikibreak, so I also took the liberty of putting up a holdover page here. Not as fancy as Whitejay251's, but very fast in AWB. :) --Fabrictramp 00:00, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Second November update
Thanks to User:Stwalkerster for doing the Nov 25 update!

One thing this showed up was that a number of entries with wi (redirect to wiktionary) showed up (bad), but also a number of entries with wikify (cleanup needed) that had apparently been missed on previous scans.

Do we need to update the suggested regexp in the instructions, so that we catch the wikify but not the wi? Can anyone suggest a better pattern? --Alvestrand (talk) 21:55, 26 November 2007 (UTC)


 * And if we don't want the pages that have, we'd need to figure out a way to exclude those articles that have wikify as part of an  template. One possible way would be to use the list comparer in AWB to exclude anything in   , using the recursive feature to catch all the monthly subcategories. That's a lot of articles, however, and might take a bit of time depending on the servers here and the speed of the processor it's done on.


 * As for me, I don't really care if the s are included or not, but I don't think we need the articles tagged for moving to wiktionary on the DEP list. --Fabrictramp (talk) 23:21, 26 November 2007 (UTC)


 * A little more information on the overlap. Of the 3295 articles currently in the DEP list, 1243 are also in  or one of its subcategories, out of a total of 14,772 mainspace articles in  (or one of its subcategories). On my old, slow computer, it took about 15 minutes to find the overlap, start to finish. Most of that was loading the list of articles to be wikified and filtering out duplicates and non-mainspace articles.--Fabrictramp (talk) 23:54, 26 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Apparently no one has any thoughts on the subject, so I'd say be bold and do whatever you want. *grin* One bright spot -- with the new page patrolling marking system on new pages, there's a lot fewer deadend stuff I'm finding when I load new pages in AWB. Hooray!--Fabrictramp 00:56, 1 December 2007 (UTC)


 * A very belated opinion.... I like having pages with wikify included in the DEP list. But I think we should continue to exclude wi, if we can. --Alvestrand (talk) 19:33, 23 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I was bold and updated the instructions to (hopefully) accomplish that. (Looks like the wikify project could use the help, given the length of their backlog). I also took out the part about the regex's being optional, as no one seems to want those items in the list. Looks like we might get a new update sometime shortly after the first of the year, so we'll see how the instructions work out.--Fabrictramp (talk) 22:22, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

January 2008 update
Alvestrand asked for details, so here they are. The update is generated from the January 3 2008 dump. Regexes used are exactly as described in the instructions, shouldn't be anything special we need to know (except that the regexes are no longer excluding articles tagged or with wikify in an  tag.) Looks like DeadBot's been down for a couple of days, so we'll need to remove redlinks manually until it comes back up.--Fabrictramp (talk) 17:01, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Deadbot
Deadbot's been down for three months now. I sent Matt an email over a month ago, with no reply, so I've made a bot request for a new version of deadbot. --Fabrictramp (talk) 17:47, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Dycebot has done its first run as a replacement for Deadbot. I took a look at a random sampling, and everything looked great. Dycebot will run once a day, which should be plenty.--Fabrictramp (talk) 01:52, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

DyceBot temporary downtime
Just a heads up: I'm on spring break at the moment and have no access to my desktop. I'd left it on, but some idiot school officials appear to have shut it off yesterday. Thus, DyceBot will not run until I'm back on campus on Sunday.-- Dycedarg  &#x0436;  19:32, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

March regeneration
I just finished regenerating the listing from the March 15 database dump, and I'll post the new list throughout the day today. Nothing unusual about this one: 2949 pages (including redlinks), of which 157 are holdovers from the previous list.--Fabrictramp (talk) 13:43, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

placement of the template
This is an editing template, and is not needed to warn user about inadequacies in articles. It should therefore go on the talk page, not the article page. It's a distraction there & I think we would want to minimize the number of templates there. DGG (talk) 00:35, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
 * But if it goes on the talk page, the link to nickj's tool wouldn't work any more.--Fabrictramp (talk) 13:47, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Cannot the tool be revised to match? DGG (talk) 20:43, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Beats me -- I stink at templates. But my main concern is that the casual user won't see the template (which I do understand is your goal). We get a lot of new editors fixing the deadend pages because they see the tool, see a link to fix it, and do it. is a part of the article issues template, so if there are a lot of templates on a page, that's always an option. --Fabrictramp (talk) 23:29, 14 May 2008 (UTC)


 * My opinion: It's needed to warn the user about an inadequacy in the article. The English Wikipedia is doing a ton of these things, all in article space, not talk space. Let's go with the flow. --Alvestrand (talk) 22:32, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
 * disagree, this is a trivial inadequacy, as compared with things like NPOV & COI. The enWP has a great deal to much of this in article, space, and the flow is towards getting it elsewhere. The presence of these notices interferes with the attention to the important ones. DGG (talk) 04:25, 17 May 2008 (UTC)
 * I could make a good argument that as it's used, COI is much more trivial than deadend. COI tends to get permanently slapped on any article that's been edited by a user with a name similar to the article, and rarely removed. :)
 * I have to disagree that tags like deadend distract from other tags. Different editors enjoy (and are good at) different tasks. Many wiki-gnomes, myself included, are not comfortable with rewriting major sections of prose. But tag an article saying it needs wikifying, links, or refs, and I'm there. So did those other tags take attention away from NPOV? No, because I wouldn't have tackled that work in the first place. But if those tags got moved to talk pages, I would never have seen them in casual browsing. And probably never gotten sucked into heavy editing -- it was tags like wikify and orphan that got me hooked on editing, and I'm sure I'm not alone.--Fabrictramp (talk) 15:07, 17 May 2008 (UTC)


 * A further thought. Right now this template is on 1,597 pages. My guess is about 1/4 of those shouldn't have the template, which I had already been planning on working on this morning. How big of a problem is this for you, really?--Fabrictramp (talk) 15:13, 17 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Update. After going through the oldest 200 articles, about 2/3 are already linked and the deadend tag has been removed. I'm sure this percentage will go down as I move to newer articles.--Fabrictramp (talk) 18:43, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Can We Link This down?
I haven't been able to reach the "can we link it" tool at http://can-we-link-it.nickj.org/ for 2 days. Is the site down? --Alvestrand (talk) 07:16, 20 May 2008 (UTC)
 * I haven't tried in the last couple of days, but it's been hit and miss for me for a while. I'll go a couple of days without being able to connect, then have no problems for a week, then I can't connect again.--Fabrictramp (talk) 14:21, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

June 1 regeneration
I've regenerated the pages based on the May 27 database dump. This time I did a second pass to get rid of more of the wiktionary redirects. There have been some changes to the AWB database scanner, and some pages in the DEP category seem to have been missed. I'm working through a list of pages with the tag that should be added into this list, so the lists may get slightly larger over the next couple of weeks as I manually add those lines.-- Fabrictramp  |  talk to me  17:58, 1 June 2008 (UTC)


 * As it will take me a good while to work through all the entries that were left off, I've added them as a new section of User:Fabrictramp/DEP-- Fabrictramp |  talk to me  23:54, 2 June 2008 (UTC)


 * After a good night's sleep, I figured out a more elegant (and faster) way to incorporate the extra pages. They're all in the main list now. I didn't preserve any Dycebot comments, because Dycebot will happily re-add them tonight, but I did preserve manual comments.-- Fabrictramp |  talk to me  14:23, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Just a note: DyceBot did not edit properly last night because you added colons to the beginning of every article name. I changed the regex to ignore colons if they are there, so it will not be a problem in the future.-- Dycedarg  &#x0436;  21:05, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I wish AWB was consistent in the way it makes lists. (One module adds the colons, another doesn't). Thanks for figuring it out and making the change!-- Fabrictramp |  talk to me  21:15, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Could someone regenerate the list? There's a whole lot of non-deadend pages on it. --Samuel tan85 (talk) 03:56, 17 June 2008 (UTC)


 * The list can only get regenerated when wikipedia does a database dump, which probably won't be for another six weeks or so. However, feel free to remove items from the current list which aren't dead end. Thanks for the help!-- Fabrictramp |  talk to me  14:09, 17 June 2008 (UTC)


 * I've checked A-C and taken out all the linked articles from that page.-- Fabrictramp |  talk to me  00:08, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

July 2008 list regen
I've downloaded the current data dump and have started running the list regen. Knock on wood, I think I've figured out a regex to eliminate all the silly soft redirects that have been clogging up the list.-- Fabrictramp |  talk to me  23:54, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Stubs and short articles
I've recently started working on the deadend pages project and was wondering what to do with very short articles like this one. Should these be removed from the list after adding links or should i leave them on, considering that they might get expanded in the future and may end up on the list again. (If offcourse they don't get deleted for lack of content) Same question goes for the deadend tag on the article itself. Erebus Morgaine (talk) 14:21, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, definitely remove them from the list once you've tagged and linked them. You've got a stub tag on it, so that will flag for people who like to work on expansion. And since you've linked it as much as possible, remove the deadend tag. Great work -- thanks for the help!-- Fabrictramp |  talk to me  16:49, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Alright, that's a clear answer, Thank you :) Happy to be of help here! Erebus Morgaine (talk) 17:50, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

List regen
Great job on plowing through the list, everyone!

The most recent dump is from July 27, just two weeks after the one that generated our current list. I'm currently running that dump through AWB to find things that are still deadends, but there aren't enough to make it worthwhile to regenerate off that one. Looks like we won't have a new one for a while, as the dump has been stuck on the same file for ages. :(

My thought is to regenerate the list off Category:All dead-end pages. While it won't be as comprehensive as a list from the dump, it also won't include 2000 pages we've already take care of. Comments?-- Fabrictramp |  talk to me  15:11, 15 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Meta says dumps are currently halted pending some hardware issues. Since no one has expressed an opinion here, I'll start repopulating from the category and putting the holdovers at User:Fabrictramp/DEP.-- Fabrictramp |  talk to me  22:36, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

October 2008 list regen
Regenerated the list off the October 11 dump. Nothing unusual that I can see; about 2800 entries (including redlinks) this go around. I'm running through the list tagging with right now; when I finish that I'll use AWB to removed linked articles. Enjoy!-- Fabrictramp |  talk to me  22:00, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

A Categorized or Aged List
Could we produce a view "by category" or "by Age". I find a great number of these have categories at the bottom. I also tend to "care" about DEP's in categories that I watch. Secondarily, I wish to focus on pages that have been on the DEP list for awhile (I.e. maybe about to die?) So an "by month" view would be cool...? Last item: Any complaints to putting at the top?Mjquin_id (talk) 22:40, 24 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Replies in no particular order... :)


 * Talkpage? Go for it.


 * There are a couple of age-based "views". Pages that are from the previous iteration of the list (in this case, the September list) are found at User:Fabrictramp/DEP. Also, Category:Dead-end pages has month-by-month listings. Not all of the pages on this list have been put into Category:Dead-end pages yet -- help is always appreciated on that score. But anything not yet in the cat would be October (ie recent).


 * If you have access to AWB, you can make as many custom lists as you want and put them up in subpages of your userpage, just like I do with the holdovers. (Be sure to link here in case someone wants to help!) If you don't have access, give me a list of the categories you'd like, and I can run a list of the intersection in AWB and post it wherever you'd like. (That offer applies for anyone).-- Fabrictramp |  talk to me  22:54, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

You can help!
Concerning the people going around and removing the deadend tag, please note that unlike what the project page says for this, it is not for "no" other pages. The template is for "few" or no other links. So removing the template from an article with 2 whole WLs without adding more does not address the problem. Aboutmovies (talk) 07:32, 13 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Is this a general problem, or with a specific editor? If it's a specific editor, you might want to talk to them directly, preferably with an example. -- Fabrictramp |  talk to me  14:09, 13 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I have seen it once, the bigger problem is the discrepancy between this project and the tag. The project page says dead-end pages have no links, thus the editors could reasonable believe they are doing the job right. But the tag says differently. Aboutmovies (talk) 21:32, 13 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Then they should be brought into alignment one way or the other. It doesn't really matter to me which one gets altered, as long as they're consistent.--Aervanath lives in the Orphanage 06:16, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
 * If anything gets changed, it should probably be the tag for several reasons. One is the size of the DEP list -- we're averaging 2500 - 3000 entries each regen as it is. Going to 2 links or fewer, just to choose a number, would make the list huge (I can run the number if anyone wants/needs it), with a much larger number of pages that reappear each time because 1 or 2 links is all they will ever have.


 * Another reason to change the tag is that there is another tag that serves the purpose of "this page has some links but needs more" -- Template:Internal links. However, it might be useful to add NickJ's tool to the internal links template like someone did to the deadend template.-- Fabrictramp |  talk to me  16:32, 14 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I agree with everything you just said. Support changing the tag, for list size and because some pages (e.g. lists of things that don't have their own articles) don't have a place for more than 2 links.  --Alynna (talk) 16:49, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

First pass
I made a first pass at linking one of the articles: Bio-fermentation technology. I'm not sure if that's the direction folks want things to go. Yes, it does read like an advertisement of some sort for traditional chinese medicine. I don't know if y'all think it needs more incoming/outgoing links or not. I'm not 100% confident that the "orphan" tag should be removed or not. I'll let someone else decide that. Tangurena (talk) 22:50, 1 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Great job on a first pass! Boy, that article needs some TLC, doesn't it. *grin*.


 * I added a few more internal links, which you can see here. I also removed the deadend tag and added an uncat tag. I'm not an expert at the orphan tag by any means. I see there's just one article linking to this one, so it's probably a judgement call on that. WikiProject Orphanage says they think an orphan has fewer than 3 incoming links, so you might want to leave the tag for now.-- Fabrictramp |  talk to me  23:53, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

OK, I tried another clean up on aisle orphan on the Erie Yacht Club. The history section was copied directly from the club's website history page, so I chopped it down (maybe too much). Added categories, some outbound links and one inbound link. As before, I'll let another set of eyes decide whether to remove the orphan tag (or not). It still needs a little cleaning up. Tangurena (talk) 01:23, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

Archives
I've boldly set up the talk page here for auto archiving. Miszabot will archive automatically, keeping anything less than 90 days old and at least 5 section of talk. Any problems or concerns?-- Fabrictramp |  talk to me  00:29, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Proposed unification of deadend and internal links
There is a discussion here on the subject of merging two templates that have nearly identical goals but wildly varying levels of quality in their doc pages, their category assignments, etc. I believe the change to be a non-controversial one, but I'm not bringing in a changerequest just yet/might as well give it a day and see if anyone sees a reason I haven't predicted to block a merge. Thanks! MrZaius talk  02:13, 26 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Now that the templates have been unified, some of the old Category:Dead-end pages by month are populated with articles that had been tagged with internal links. I'm going through and restoring the populated categories as I find them -- if any of you clear them out, feel free to add a speedy deletion template or drop me a line and I'll delete them again.-- Fabrictramp |  talk to me  15:43, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

List cleared, new dump soon
I think the few pages that are left are all AfD or PRODs. The enwiki dump has started to chug along again, so I'm guessing we'll have a new list in a couple of weeks. In the meantime we can all just work off Category:Dead-end pages.-- Fabrictramp |  talk to me  01:29, 25 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I couldn't stand it... I've generated a new list from the category. :) This will get replaced with a more complete list once the dump is done.-- Fabrictramp |  talk to me  15:15, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

New dump
Yeah, new dump is done! I'm downloading, and should have a new listing up by the end of the weekend.-- Fabrictramp |  talk to me  22:45, 13 March 2009 (UTC)


 * New listing is up, total of 4094 articles before DyceBot takes out redirects tonight. Not sure why the big jump, except that it has been longer than usual since the last dump, and we've lost some of the more active DEPers.-- Fabrictramp |  talk to me  21:56, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

WikiProjects
Is there anyway to sort these by WikiProject...if they have one attached? -- Mjquin_id (talk) 19:17, 14 March 2009 (UTC)


 * If you're interested in one particular WikiProject, probably the thing to do would be to use AWB to find which pages have both the Wikiproject template on the talk page and are on this list -- would take under 5 mintues to generate if I knew which project. If you're looking for a listing by all WikiProjects, that would probably be best for a bot (but simple enough to do).-- Fabrictramp |  talk to me  21:54, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

are there bots that go around fixing dead end pages? CallMeAndrew (talk) 18:30, 17 March 2009 (UTC)
 * No, they're all "fixed" by editors like you and me. The reference to bots above is that bots could easily make a complete list of what pages are in what project. They can't add links very well, because if "Birmingham" is mentioned in an article, the bot can't tell if it's the one in England, the one in Alabama, or some other Birmingham.-- Fabrictramp |  talk to me  18:49, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

ok, im gonna be a mojor dead end fixer. im gonna help a bunch of people out. i did like 10 so far. CallMeAndrew (talk) 02:09, 18 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Woo hoo! Thanks for helping to improve the 'pedia!-- Fabrictramp |  talk to me  13:43, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

New dump
New dump just finished yesterday and I'll download it tonight. Should be able to process it tomorrow sometime, and post tomorrow or Sunday. This one will be a big list, because I'll add all the pages at Untagged Deadend Pages.-- Fabrictramp |  talk to me  22:53, 15 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Duh, just realized with Jason's tool, I didn't need to download the dump. List is regenerated, and will be posted in a few minutes. 6774 total including 1330 hold overs.-- Fabrictramp |  talk to me  23:08, 15 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Heh, the new criteria seem to catch pages that the old ones missed. Type 351 Radar is now included on the list, and it hasn't been significantly edited since 2006. --Alvestrand (talk) 02:43, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

Ah Ha!
I'm a new user. I was wondering why all the articles on the DeadEnd list appear to have been tagged after January 2009. Now I Know. The Talk-page tells all. WQUlrich (talk) 02:01, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

'Twould also be why some articles aren't tagged and why they don't automatically delete, the way that the ones on the CopyEdit list do. So...a.) Will that change when the current list is finished? and b.) Is there any way to assist, other than creating thousands of links? (which I enjoy doing) WQUlrich (talk) 18:27, 19 June 2009 (UTC)


 * To answer in no particular order...


 * The basic ways of assisting are creating thousands of links, tagging thousands of articles, or removing linked articles from the list. The list at WP:DEP will probably never automatically update, but we have Category:All dead-end pages which semi-automatically updates (ie it updates when people add or remove deadend from articles), and we now have the toolserver list which automatically updates with a list of untagged deadend articles. I personally work from all three sources depending on my mood, and I always encourage people who want to help to work from whatever source they like best. Thanks in advance for any and all help!-- Fabrictramp |  talk to me  14:45, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

Lots of progress!
Thanks to the people who made the massive push to clear out the cat, we have about half as many items on the new list as last time. Thanks, all!-- Fabrictramp |  talk to me  19:11, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Another regen
3394 pages, less than 400 hold overs. Yay! -- Fabrictramp |  talk to me  20:55, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Future regens
I'll be losing access to the computer where I run AWB soon, so I won't be able to do future regens of the list for the foreseeable future. Feel free to pick up the slack.-- Fabrictramp |  talk to me  23:34, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Latest regen
Egad, not much activity on the talk page! AWB is back and should stay that way for a while. The database dumps are down, and all the listings here are linked, so I'm working on a regen from Jason's list.-- Fabrictramp |  talk to me  15:34, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
 * 1271 pages this time, after eliminating pages with links and deleted pages. -- Fabrictramp |  talk to me  16:16, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks, but where are they? -- Ja Ga  talk 20:46, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Which DEP lists are which? Already confused by the arrangement
I wandered in here today for a change of pace from WP:UNCAT and WP:UNREFERENCED, as well as the ongoing fight against ludicrous POV in India/Pakistan caste and religion articles. Looking at the main project page, I'm a little unclear as to which lists are which. There's a huge alphabetical list that appears to be manually updated, there's a by-month list which is presumably bot-populated, and there's FabricTramp's list, which reminds us to "but also remember to remove them from the DEP list too". So which list is which, and what's the priority?

If I had to guess, I'd think the manual one was some older list, and that now a bot is updating them by month. However, the manual alphabetical list seems to have relatively recently-tagged articles. Again, I'm an outsider, so not trying to step on toes, but why are folks spending time updating manual lists when there are bot-made by-month lists? Why not just finish up any holdovers from the manual list, or use a bot to date-rank them so the oldest ones can be taken out, and then just let a bot file all the new ones by date? And I'm completely unclear as to why the FabricTramp list isn't just incorporated into the main list instead of being standalone.

Again, not to step on toes, but as an experienced Wikipedian dropping by this project I'm already slightly confused by the mainpage. MatthewVanitas (talk) 03:00, 20 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Could I get some update as to how this project works? I'm clearing out the alphabeticals, hoping it will become obsolete and just go by the auto-populated by-date lists once we clear the backlog.  I really don't like the idea of having to manually update such lists; seems horribly inefficient.  I don't mind doing it, but I don't like now knowing how this works.  If I clear out an entire section and a bunch of new stuff gets dumped in there manually, I'll be a bit put out.  Anyone currently running this project? MatthewVanitas (talk) 06:45, 30 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Fabrictramp normally runs the show, but that person has been busy lately. I don't work on the project so much as create Toolserver reports to aid tagging. Would you be interested in doing a re-org? In its current state, I can't understand the main page either. -- Ja Ga  talk 06:01, 31 December 2010 (UTC)


 * I'd hate to press ahead without FabricTramp, but if he doesn't show for a bit and we get a quorum I'm not opposed to a re-org. The "FabricTramp list" I don't really understand the purpose of, and I'm unclear how the alphabet filing and the by-date filing interact.  And the alphabet filing implies it's manually updated, but there's also a bot running all over it.  Just my vote, but I'd be way happier if it were just like WP:UNCAT where there's purely a chronological listing, which also makes it easier to tackle the backlog from the oldest articles.  Thoughts? MatthewVanitas (talk) 06:33, 31 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Following the UNCAT model would be good. BTW in my experience there aren't a lot of people watching this project, so once we hear from FabricTramp, I'd say the quorum is reached :) -- Ja Ga  talk 08:51, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Cool, I just want to knock out this backlog and remove any listings other than the bot-by-date. Can you recommend any editing tool which will speed up my adding of links and zipping from article to article? MatthewVanitas (talk) 05:52, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
 * User:Nickj/Can We Link It was a great tool, but he had to shut it down. I don't think it's been replaced. -- Ja Ga  talk 21:54, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Sorry all. Been massively busy at work and school (getting a second degree), and that's not likely to change soon. :(


 * The "Fabrictramp list" is just holdovers from previous generations of the list. Some people prefer to work on stuff that's been on the list longer. Feel free to revamp anything you like to revamp -- I'm just happy someone is interested enough to want to improve it.-- Fabrictramp |  talk to me  02:19, 9 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Ah, glad to see you here; didn't want to make any decisions without your input. The main question:  is the alphabetical list just partially-bot'ed, or is it going to suddenly replenish itself before I can clear out all the alphabetically-listed DEs?  I had thought to clear out your list and the alphabeticals, and then have the by-month bot-driven listings being the sole listing on DEP, much as it is (generally speaking) on WP:UNCAT.  Do you see any downsides of that?  I just think that the current 3 lists is a bit confusing for anyone dropping by to help. MatthewVanitas (talk) 05:19, 9 January 2011 (UTC)


 * The lists (both the main alpha and the subpage of my user page) are manually updated after being generated by AWB. If you don't want anyone doing the regen, a comment in the lists should be sufficient. Bot-driven listings would be much more efficient, assuming the bot can get it close to right. --Fabrictramp(public) (talk) 22:35, 19 January 2011 (UTC)


 * EDIT: there are about 820 articles left in all the alphabetical listings, as I've wiped out probably over 1000 or so over the last couple weeks. So are we good to try and wipe out that backlog and fall back to just the by-month bot-populated listing? MatthewVanitas (talk) 04:13, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
 * You have my support. -- Ja Ga  talk 22:28, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Like moral support for simplifying the project to one listing, or support in wikifying the 820 articles left? :) MatthewVanitas (talk) 22:39, 11 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Heh, you got me there - moral support, I'm afraid. I'm more of a WP:DPL man. -- Ja Ga  talk 00:12, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

Any objections to wiping the alphabetical?
All that's left of the alphabetical listings is the Ns, and the P-T. Totalling around 700-some listings. Rather than keep the whole huge alphabetical multi-page list, would anyone object to my lumping it all together into one page, similar to what was done for User:Fabrictramp/DEP? That way we'd have one single backlog list, and then the current bot-driven by-month list. Objections? MatthewVanitas (talk) 01:56, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Admittedly, my brain is fried after doing physics all day while battling a head cold, but which bot-driven list are you thinking will replace this? tia... --Fabrictramp(public) (talk) 22:37, 19 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Category:Dead-end pages, and its little infobox at the side that lists out the various months and totals. Am I incorrect in assuming that a bot wanders around tagging dead ends, they get filed into cats by date, and then listed in the cat and its infobox on the main page of this project? MatthewVanitas (talk) 23:47, 19 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Some are added by a bot or two, but most are manually added, either by people working from the DEP list, finding pages at random, or working off the toolserver list (which is incomplete).-- Fabrictramp |  talk to me  20:39, 20 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Okay, so the DEP by-month categories are somewhat manually populated, check. But is it not still the case that, once the alphabetically-listed tabs are cleared, there won't be any need for any DEP filing system except for the by-month categories?  I messaged the guy who runs the alpha-tab DEP header, and he has no objections to closing out that filing system if other methods work just as well.  Having just the by-month would make the process neater, maintain the listings which best allow us to tackle chronological backlog, and help make DEP look more like the other maintenance projects. MatthewVanitas (talk) 21:55, 20 January 2011 (UTC)


 * So how would new dead pages get added to the category from the latest dump?--Fabrictramp(public) (talk) 23:16, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Where are the latest dumps currently going? Is there no way to have the dumps filed by date? The bots who add dates to and other tags show up within moments to add "=January 2011", is  that not the case for ? MatthewVanitas (talk) 23:23, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes, the bots add dates to quickly. The problem is getting the  added in the first place.--Fabrictramp(public) (talk) 20:40, 23 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I've always hoped we'd abandon dumps altogether and have a bot use this report to tag articles. -- Ja Ga  talk 06:27, 21 January 2011 (UTC)
 * A bot would be my preferred solution, too. Someone wrote one a few years back, but it was shut down very quickly due to bad tagging. (IIRC, it couldn't tell if links were in a template.) I might look into writing a bot that could tag the most obvious cases, but I definitely won't have time until at least June.--Fabrictramp(public) (talk) 20:40, 23 January 2011 (UTC)
 * This is not a problem in principle. AWB will do the actual tagging, the tool-server picks up most(?) cases, and the dumps are currently dead but can be used too if they are working. As Matthew says the monthly scheme is fine, any lists can be feed to AWB to tag and date.  I'll review my BRFAs and see if I have one for generic tagging, I think I applied for it. Rich Farmbrough, 04:40, 24th day of January in the year 2011 (UTC).

Tagging
The templates for dead-end and orphaned articles differ only in the order of words. Could the two be merged together as one so there is only one template and set of categories for articles with very few or no links from other articles? Hugahoody (talk) 17:39, 13 February 2011 (UTC)


 * As I understand it, the two cover opposite sides of the issue: "orphan" means nothing links to this article; "dead end" means nothing links from this article. MatthewVanitas (talk) 18:26, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

Lack of tags
I've looked at the talkpage, and by my reckoning, the only problem is turning the toolserver list into a load of tags. Sinces I have nothing else to do, tomorrow I'll start at the top of the list, and work my way down. One question though: should I leave out the stubs and the articles without enough stuff in them to be wikified? Jangofett287 (talk) 22:05, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

I don't get it!
What is this? In puzzlement, GeorgeLouis (talk) 05:36, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

Long List
There isn't a long list. There's no list at all! Alphius 04:23, 15 May 2011 (UTC)
 * The list was last updated in July 2010. I don't know how to regenerate the list and have never used AutoWikiBrowser.--Koppas (talk) 17:28, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

Question about dead end template wording
There seems to be a discrepancy between the definition of a dead end article here versus the definition on the documentation for dead end. Input at Template talk:Dead end would be appreciated. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 16:52, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

@GoingBatty: Good to meet you here: I've just arrived after pondering the discrepancy too, seeing the statement on your bot's page that "Dead-end pages are defined as those that have "no internal links to other Wikipedia articles."" which agrees with the definition in Pam  D  09:55, 23 February 2012 (UTC)