Wikipedia talk:Special:AncientPages/Archive 1

nostalgia.wikipedia.org
Some of the people who have posted here might be interested in nostalgia.wikipedia.org. It's a permanently frozen version of English wikipedia as it existed on Dec. 20, 2001. At that time the article count was 19,000. Looks kinda different today.
 * Regards, Codex Sinaiticus 02:51, 26 August 2005 (UTC)


 * Thanks. Sure it looks different, but i think the design at that time wasn't so bad at all. Wiki213ip 14:15, 11 September 2005 (UTC)


 * If you really like it, you can always choose the "nostalgia" skin from the "preferences" button up top! Codex Sinaiticus 22:05, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

Please increase output site
1000 is just not enough. The results are dominated with old disamiguation pages and other pages that were obviously loaded in batch mode (dozens of Latvians mythology pages, etc.). Please increase the output to 20,000 or so (50,0000, if possible). That is no big deal, right? Please do so.

Also: I noticed that really old pages with the "stub" tag do not show up on Category:Stubs. Something is inconsistent there. Fplay 06:51, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
 * There is a technical problem which happens when you add a category to a template after adding the template to an article. The article will not show up in the category until the next time it is edited. At the moment, there do not appear to be any stub articles which have this problem.  These days, stubs are sorted into topic-specific categories (using topic-specific templates), and Category:Stubs is kept mostly empty. -- Beland 07:47, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Dis-ambiguation pages
Has anyone proposed a way to change the way this works so that dis-ambiguation pages cannot be on this list. Even with only a few pages updated before June 4, 2004, there are now still hundreds of pages in this list for that day, which appear to be mostly dis-ambiguation pages. Georgia guy 19:54, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Baron articles
Past June 4, 2004, there is now another day, June 28, 2004, where there are lots of articles not edited since. They start with the word "Baron" and I think they're just stubs. Anyone know what to do with them?? Georgia guy 23:42, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

Results?

 * Why zero results?


 * There was a minimum age, and anything which appeared was edited.
 * How can I fix my view so it doens't do this? -KalevTait 00:56, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * What is the minimum age? Brianjd 09:35, 2004 Dec 22 (UTC)


 * Are these pages going for some sort of record, or is it encouraged to update these articles and kick them off the list? - Mo 06:34, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * Updating these pages is strongly encouraged. - SimonP 23:06, Nov 29, 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia's manipage says that Wikipedia was started in 2001, but these ancient pages begin at 2002. Were the oldest pages from 2001 deleted or something? Jaberwocky6669 02:09, Mar 28, 2005 (UTC)
 * Pages are listed by the time since the last edit, not the creation date, so I'd assume that there aren't any articles in the database that haven't been edited since 2001. CDC   (talk)  22:52, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * Unfortunately it seems you are wrong. Just go to the history of the #1 "Oldest page" (from 2003) and see that it has been edited in 2005. Indeed, history older than 2 years seems unavailable. It would be nice, though, to be able to access et least the history log, even if the corresponding versions are no more available (for evident reasons). Or, some versions should be kept indefinetly long (e.g. the very first one, and then the version from the same day every following year.) &mdash; MFH: Talk 9 July 2005 05:44 (UTC)


 * No, Cdc is right. Pages shown as having  been edited recently will be kicked off the list next time it's updated. 19:39, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

How often is the list updated?
 * I, too, would like to know how often the update runs, since an article listed as 2003 had been previously edited in 2005 (before me), implying that the script has not been run at all so far in '05. Can anyone run it? Admins only? It would be nice to have an update. MCB 20:19, 30 September 2005 (UTC)


 * Hello, I'm a statistics fanatic and I'd like to know what the first articles on Wikipedia were. Where can i find those? Yours, Wiki213ip 15:36, 21 August 2005 (UTC)


 * Just to clarify, there haven't been any pages that haven't been edited since 2001 since...February 2002. Wikipedia changed software in that month, so a conversion script had to convert all the articles to the new software.
 * The last article not to have been edited since 2002 was Metropolitan School District of Perry Township. It remained unedited from the 15th December 2002 to the 14th March 2005. BillyH 19:02, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

disambigs and stubs
It would be nice if there was some more information about the articles listed. At least whether they are disambigs or stubs, maybe the first of their categories. --MarSch 14:50, 11 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I advise putting "popups" in your .js file... then by simply hovering over each link on the list, the popup will tell you all of the above and more...! Regards, ፈቃደ (ውይይት) 15:23, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Deletion?
Anyone else think this page should be removed? I mean, it's extremely out of date, and nearly all of these pages have been updated since that time. Kind of defeats the whole purpose, no? --Xertz 17:05, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Special pages cannot be deleted, and this may work again sometime. —Centrx→talk &bull; 21:32, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
 * I've updated most of the 1000 available - about 40 of them I've got deleted. --Montchav 16:30, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

BUg??
There says that Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Performance is the oldest article, but its first edit was made on August 23, 2004. The Evanescence article first edit was made in May 11, 2003...so there is a problem or bug or something... Armando.O talk • Ev 16:50, 21 April 2007 (UTC)


 * No, this lists the "oldest" articles that haven't been changed, going by the date of the most recent change. All other articles on the wikipedia have been changed more recently than GAfBIP is what it means. ፈቃደ (ውይይት) 17:09, 21 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Of course, now I see that the last update was in December and the page has been disabled. So they may as well delete it, I guess.  ፈቃደ (ውይይት) 17:13, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Exclusion
Is it possible to modify this so that it excludes both minor edits and bot edits? It might be interesting to see what the most "truly" dormant pages are - I dare to say that doing this would probably also turn up a large number of potential AfDs. Girolamo Savonarola 03:32, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

L.U.U.S:AP.
--Let Us Update Special:Ancientpages. 01:22, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Disambiguation pages
I noticed that Tewodros of Ethiopia is part of this list -- but it is a disambiguation page, which I doubt will ever be updated, other than to revert vandalism. aren't disambig pages excluded in the query that generates this list? -- llywrch 18:39, 10 September 2007 (UTC)


 * No, in fact, perhaps half of articles on the list are disambiguation pages. And the majority of those are very badly written (meaning that they don't follow the standards for disambiguation pages).


 * For example, for items 501 through 600 are on the list, 46 of 100 were disambiguation pages - see WikiProject Abandoned Articles/Section 6.  -- John Broughton  (♫♫) 00:49, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Dusty articles
An updated and editable version of this page is now available at Dusty articles, courtesy of the Database anaylsys WikiProject. --Sapphic (talk) 01:06, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

WikiProject Abandoned Articles
Just a reminder that anyone interested in working on ancient/dusty articles can find a sorted list (disambiguation pages, lists, real articles, etc.) at the WikiProject page, grouped for easy reporting of work accomplished. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 02:20, 2 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the notice; I hadn't realized that project was still active until you pointed it out. The list you mention is from 2006 though, whereas the one at Dusty pages is from the 2008-03-12 Database XML dump.  If people want more than 100 articles, I can generate more.  I can also add disambiguation pages back into the report (they're currently left out) or put them in their own report entirely.  Just let me know.  --Sapphic (talk) 05:05, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Update
Is this ever gonna be update? It hasn't been updated since December 2006.  TJ   Spyke   02:47, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
 * The pages don't get any more ancient... — xaosflux  Talk  04:35, 23 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Who is responsible for updating S:AP anyway? --Let Us Update Special:Ancientpages. 07:15, 24 December 2007 (UTC)


 * No they don't get any more ancient, but this special page is not about which is the oldest page on Wikipedia. Some pages have been updated since Dec '06 and therefore shouldn't appear on this special page any more.  Astronaut (talk) 03:26, 1 January 2008 (UTC)


 * I've just realized that many of the pages on here HAVE BEEN DELETED!!! This list needs to be refreshed... —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kivar2 (talk • contribs) 19:17, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Rename this page
This page should be renamed - "Oldest articles" implies the earliest articles by date of creation, not the earliest articles by date of most recent edit. I propose calling it "long-dormant articles". -- BD2412 talk 17:53, August 21, 2005 (UTC)
 * I agree. I had thought this page was for the very oldest articles here at WP, but now it appears as if I was mistaken. --Lord Voldemort (Dark Mark) 20:16, 23 August 2005 (UTC)
 * I like "Dormant articles". -- Reinyday, 21:34, 5 September 2005 (UTC)
 * I also made the same "mistake". Can something be done about it?  Silverhelm 22:54, 25 October 2005 (UTC).
 * I agree. -- Gray  Porpoise Phocoenidae, not Delphinidae 20:26, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Agree. I had to come here to find out for sure what it was. Danski14 03:22, 18 January 2007 (UTC)]
 * agree
 * Continuing agreement. How can we change the name? Can only a Developer do it? -kotra (talk) 19:35, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

"Grandaddy of all Wikipedia Articles"?

 * Agree, came here looking for the grandaddy of all wikipedia articles. Any different views out there? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Tt 225 (talk • contribs) 17:15, 27 February 2007 (UTC).
 * Yeah, Amen to that. It should be renamed as I did the same. Where can I find the 'grandaddy of all wikipedia articles' anyway? Ikiwi 09:25, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Interesting question you just now asked, Ikiwi! Apparently, the first article at NuPedia was on Jan 10, 2001, then the first article on WikiPedia accessible to the public was Jan 15, 2001.  The oldest GFDL here I have been able to find so far is PitcairnIsland 5:42 on 21 Jan '01.  It's now a redirect, but if you look at the redirect history you can still see NuPedia's Larry Sanger's first Wikipedia edit.  I'm trying to see if I can find anything even older by nosing around the nostalgia website; unfortunately, a lot of the very oldest records seem to have been lost or deleted. Til Eulenspiegel 17:47, 28 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Okay, just found one that would seem to be older still: EncycloPedia (now a redirect), 20:52, 16 January 2001... Til Eulenspiegel 18:04, 28 April 2007 (UTC)


 * This page is 24 minutes older than the last one above; but it no longer exists on this wiki, so presumably would not count as the oldest living GFDL. Til Eulenspiegel 18:24, 28 April 2007 (UTC)


 * I have just found a more extensive discussion of this same questione here - Wikipedia's oldest articles. Til Eulenspiegel 19:16, 28 April 2007 (UTC)


 * So, the correct answer is, the very first Wikipedia edit can now be seen in the GFDL history of UuU. Til Eulenspiegel 19:18, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Transport was the first encyclopedic article, dated this revision is actually from Jan. 16 2001. &larr;Ben B4 11:50, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

First Article
So what is the first article ever written on Wikipedia? Kenallen (talk) 01:25, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
 * The first edit was WP:UuU. Den sock | Dendodge in public 10:30, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
 * This is not accurate, it is the first surviving edit; the edit itself shows that previous ones were made. Cheers! Scapler (talk) 02:22, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

June 4, 2004
How come there are so many Wikipedia articles that haven't been edited since June 4, 2004?? Georgia guy 18:31, 3 December 2005 (UTC)


 * It looks like someone went through with a bot on or a day before that date, and created a whole slue of articles for every township in states that have townships, like PA and MI... Not being very controversial, they have mostly been sitting intact since then... ፈቃደ 18:54, 3 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Actually, many of the township pages listed here are actually disambiguations. I would think that this page should exclude disambigs. older&ne;wiser 00:31, 4 December 2005 (UTC)


 * This thread is very old, but for anyone who is curious, it is because Template namespace initialisation script converted thousands of articles to use the then new template namespace. Before that time, all templates were in the MediaWiki namespace, and they were called with the syntax rather than the current syntax of  . Graham 87  13:33, 9 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Interesting! -- &oelig; &trade; 08:46, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Disambig Pages?
It has been suggested here in a few places that disambiguation pages be excluded, and I agree, disambiguation pages only get old as new articles are added, so its sort of ridiculous to include them.--Matthew 04:56, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
 * I second -- Dom th  e  dude  0  0  1  00:09, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
 * I just cleaned up an old disambiguation page listed here. I think all pages should be listed. Aside from needing cleanup attention, new entries can be added by a simple search of Wikipedia for articles with that name. —Centrx→talk &bull; 00:05, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Disambiguation pages should be included. Just now I edited 10 of them because I had to change Template:Disambig to Template:Geodis. &mdash;  Ed Gl  02:32, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
 * There should be an option to hide them, similarly to hiding redirects on WhatLinksHere. I added a Phabricator task for that. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 13:15, 30 November 2014 (UTC)

The title should be changed
Note: It would be interesting to have another page with a real list of oldest pages (date of FIRST edit, not last)... Thanks, AlainR345 TechnoWikiGeek 23:32, 29 September 2009 (UTC)
 * As many people have already observed, the text title of page Special:AncientPages should be changed from Oldest articles to Ancient pages or Dormant pages.
 * The first phrase after that (before the techno babble) should describe what it is.
 * It should then warn that it is NOT a list of oldest pages.
 * The text of the link to it on page Special:SpecialPages should be changed accordingly.
 * A nice idea but difficult in practice. We already had well over 10000 articles by the time we switched from UseModWiki to MediaWiki in Jan 2002. Over 90% of the history records prior to that are permanently lost. Eg. If you look at the history for Scientific method you'll see the first entry is Dec 01, whereas that article was one of the first ever created and dates back to at least Feb 01.Manning (talk) 18:18, 30 September 2009 (UTC)


 * ✅ I've changed the title to "Dormant pages" however I couldn't find the MediaWiki page that has the text of the page.. -- &oelig; &trade; 05:46, 30 September 2009 (UTC)
 * "LUUSDP" is not so easily pronounceable though. Right now, there's no list. What happened? Would somebody please put it back? --Let Us Update Special:Ancientpages. 14:45, 10 November 2009 (UTC)


 * , this thread is really old and I'm not sure if you're on here anymore, but this thread inspired me to create WP:First 100 pages using Tim Starling's archives. – John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 22:39, 6 July 2019 (UTC)

Special page is empty
Somebody please refill that page. I wish I knew how to myself. Thanks. --Let Us Update Special:Ancientpages. 05:26, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
 * ...after a year and a half, I think we can remove the "unanswered" template... It ain't happening. EVula // talk // &#9775;  // 04:07, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
 * No idea why it was that way years ago, but it seems to be working now. DMacks (talk) 12:58, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

Quaint, Real Soon Now, Gongoozle, and others
Quaint, Real Soon Now, Gongoozle

(Oh for some reason, there's also an article named Real soon now with a lowercase n)

_______________

I know that maybe the template might be more useful than a regular "No Article Exists (redlink)", but do these really count as an article?

Plus, even though no pages in the (Article) namespace link to "Real Soon Now", it's not listed as an orphan.  AltoStev Talk 22:41, 11 June 2020 (UTC)