Wikipedia talk:Special:ShortPages/Archive 1

Old, unsectioned comments
There is a shortpage warning for 'Heck' that just leads to a wiktionary entry. Is that a legitimate shortpage and should be left alone or is it something subject to deletion?

I note that all these "shortpages" are redirects, unstarted files, or revisions in process. Wouldn't it be of more use to have a file that lists the shortest files with actual content? I know that there's the substub list, but not everyone puts the correct stub templates (or any stub templates) onto their articles. Grutness 07:31, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Frequency of updating
How often is this(Special:Shortpages) page updated? What about same pages from other languages? --A5b 15:43, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Filtering out Redirects
I wish that there would be an option to filter them out if you want to search for page-blanking type vandalism. --Alphachimp 01:56, 27 May 2005 (UTC)

Something wrong
There appears to be something wrong with this page - it is showing pages that were deleted in June as blanks. -- Francs2000 00:43, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
 * I too have just noticed this. Seems rather odd.  I just recently found this special page and I have been using it to help revert page blankings.  My appreciation to whomever fixes it.  -- malo (talk) 07:41, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
 * A bug report, 3945, has been opened on this issue. If you have a bugzilla account, or are willing to create one, please feel free to add your vote to the bug. --Allen3 talk 18:00, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
 * I think it's a bit more than just showing deleted pages and redirects. It's not showing any useful information on true page lengths.  What was a very powerful tool for vandalism fighting is now useless. :( - TexasAndroid 14:30, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Ok. They appear to have fixed the problem with deleted and redirect pages showing up.  But now we see what the change appears to have wanted to see.  A cached page, instead of a live generated page.  I can understand the reasons for this, the page always did take a while to generate, and I suspect was slowing down the system.  but I lament the loss of a very powerful vandalism fighting tool.  The page allowed for the rapid discovery of blanked and otherwise vandalized/shortened pages in a timely manner.  Now, cached, it's mostly a curiosity.  Currently it's not been updated in over 24 hours.  All pages showing as blank have been long dealt with.  When next updated, I'm sure that there will be another slew of blanked pages.  Pages that have no way of being detected until the next update, unless someone happens to stuble across one.  Anyway, since I can understand where the old way was likely clogging the system, I can understand the need for the change.  But still, I lament the loss of a useful tool. :( - TexasAndroid 14:25, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

Page not updating
Is it just me, or is this page not updating? I see things I've fixed days ago here... -- Vile Rage  ( Reply  |   C  |  Spam Me!   *   ) 08:45, 25 November 2005 (UTC)


 * It seems developers have switched this back to cached mode. That change makes this page relatively useless for vandalism fighting. Would it really be too much for servers to have this updated at least few times every hour? jni 08:34, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

20 February 2006
I believe it's been a day or two since Special:Shortpages has been updated... several helpful Wikipedians have already gone through most of the entries and reverted them. I've tried using the link http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Shortpages&action=purge to clear the cache, but that didn't work (=P) Any suggestions? Kareeser|Talk! 16:06, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Not sure how this gets updated. I'm now an admin, and I still don't have access to update the page.  The cache that it's talking about is cached on the WP side, not on your browser side, so someone with such access needs to update the server-side cache.  Wish I could give you more information, but I'm still mostly in the dark as to how this gets updated. - TexasAndroid 16:24, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
 * A developer has to update it (whenever they get around to doing things like that). – ABCDe ✉ 05:23, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

Search in short page
Is there any way to search within shortpages for a specific word? Mahanchian 23:07, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Not directly, but you can query a database dump. The database dumps are only done once a month (or about) so timliness can be an issue, but it can be an effective tool. You either need to download a copy of the database or use http://www.wikisign.org (I'd suggest the second). See Database queries for more details. Database queries provides an example of the query you'd want (just change the text length - 50 in example - and word being serached for - "see" in example). -- JLaTondre 23:17, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

0 bytes WTF
I see pages like this: 1. (hist) Cache conflict (0 bytes) 2. (hist) Gideon (0 bytes) 3. (hist) United African Company (0 bytes) It shows these pages as shortest pages although there's a lot written under them :S. I'm confused. --sverde1 11:21, 9 April 2006 (UTC)


 * The listing is cached. So it's generated at one time, and then left until it's next generated.  I don't know exactly how often it's generated currently, but when last I was following it, it was something like once a week or so.  So once it's refreshed, people start working on it.  And it doesn't take long to deal with all the zero length pages, often just reverting the blankings.  After that point, and until the next refresh of the list, all the zero length pages will no longer be of zero length.  Make sense? - TexasAndroid 13:47, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

Separate listing or marking of pages that only contain a link to other WikiProjects
To use this Specialpage more effectively, it may be a good thing to see in the list whether the page contains only a link to another WikiProject with an article on that topic (as it says on some "WikiPedia has not currently an article on this topic. You may find more information in Wikitionary (or other...)"). I don't know whether that is possible from a programmer's point of view, as it would probably require the whole page in question to be read through to decide whether it needs to be marked as link page or not, but it's just an idea. Habemus pampam 08:12, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
 * As I just noticed, this also applies to pages saying "This page has been deleted and should not be recreated for a good reason." Habemus pampam 08:15, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
 * I have gone through both and substed in the first case, and added long comment tags in the second. This should preclude detection here. - CrazyRussian talk/email 04:13, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Redirects
I've noticed that there are redirect pages listed on the shortpage list. There ought to be a software feature to remove redirects from Special:Shortpages. --Gray Porpoise 17:41, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
 * I don't see any redirects there. Probably what happened was, there were broken redirects, someone came along before you got there and fixed them, but the list only refreshes every few hours, so you got the redirects. --Xyzzyplugh 15:04, 9 August 2006 (UTC)