Wikipedia talk:Special:ShortPages/Archive 2

Protected deleted pages
Most of the 15 byte pages are protected deleted pages. Is there a way to filter them out? There are also a bunch of copyright violation pages listed around 40 bytes and up. This is annoying because I want to use this tool to mark stubs. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.138.131.212 (talk • contribs)


 * Yes, I had the same problem, if possible it would be nice if these could be filtered out of the list. --Xyzzyplugh 13:02, 15 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I have found it useful to go through the protected-deleted pages, deleting ones that were fairly recently created but were as a result of a limited re-creation problem that no longer exists after a few days, and using a filler comment on the other ones to remove it from the Shortpages listing. —Centrx→talk &bull; 05:21, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

You could make a template name like deleteprotected............................................................................................ — Omegatron 03:15, 21 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I handle these regularly, by adding a large comment section to them. So they end up showing up on the list generally the first re-run of the master after they are first salted, but after that those specific pages do not show up again, because they are no longer short, once the long comment is added in.  It's not a perfect solution, and I generally have to add the comment to 1 - 3 dozen protected pages each run of the master, but it is, so far, working. - TexasAndroid 13:01, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Bot to filter entries from the list
To continue the discussion started above about filtering the list... I have spent quite a bit of time over the week-end going through the list and taking care of entries that should be removed, and came to the same conclusion. I have written a bot that could potentially read the articles listed at Special:Shortpages and filter them out; an example of possible output is at User:Schutz/Shortpages. Please don't look too much at the awful colours, this was a first try, but basically the idea is that everything written on white background should be looked at; pages listed on grey background are pages whose size increased since Special:Shortpages was last cached (likely blanking which has been reversed). Other pages should be self-explanatory.

Since this is a bot, and could potentially be a performance problem, I have asked for approval to run the script at Bots/Requests for approval.

In the meantime, what do you think ? Any comment ? Schutz 20:20, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

A new version of the page has been cached, so I parsed it again, this time with 500 entries. I thought I improved the colours, but I have clearly failed here. Oh well. At least, it should catch more templates than before, meaning that there remains less pages to look at... Oh, and a nice Year 2000 bug at the top (no consequence, fortunately). Schutz 22:54, 6 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Why did you delete this? It is really useful. —Centrx→talk &bull; 05:19, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Nevermind, it was moved to User:Zorglbot/Shortpages. —Centrx→talk &bull; 00:30, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Congratulations on finding it ;-) Yes, now the bot will generate it automatically once a day, around 2 UTC if I remember well. One thing I still have to do is write regular expressions for catching the "special" disambiguation pages (e.g. geodis); otherwise, it looks pretty good. Schutz 05:27, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Ok, I have just updated the bot with rules for disambiguation pages, and scheduled it to run at 6:00 UTC every day. Results on User:Zorglbot/Shortpages. Schutz 07:13, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Wonderful! :) - TexasAndroid 11:26, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Broken?
No update in two weeks - CrazyRussian talk/email 19:16, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Tim said the Special pages updates were stopped because one of them was taking an extreme amount of time. ...Clearly, they're running again now. —Centrx→talk &bull; 01:03, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

Updates ?
It seems that quite a few people are using User:Zorglbot/Shortpages (or maybe it is a coincidence...): all the top 500 short pages have been handled very quickly after Special:Shortpages was recreated. But since the special page is regenerated only every few days, it is rapidly useless once all entries have been handled. While it is a good idea to have this page cached (it takes some time anyway to handle all short pages), it'd be nice if it could be refreshed a bit more often than once every 4 days or so — or at least, if it could be refreshed at predictable intervals. Who's the best person to talk to about this ? Schutz 22:08, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
 * The special pages are deliberately updated at long intervals because they use server resources heavily and take a long time to complete. This is more of a problem for certain other special pages, but I don't think it is high on the developer's list of things to do. You could go on IRC (Freenode on #wikimedia-tech) and ask them about it. —Centrx→talk &bull; 22:31, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
 * There has been a few updates in a short time, so I was hopeful, but unfortunately, there has just been 4 days without update. We'll see. Schutz 23:06, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Talk pages
Has anyone figured out a way to hack the URL of this page to get it to display non-articles? On a smaller project, that would be very useful... -- nae'blis 13:02, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Family Guy
Why is this page listed? It's not a short article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by TheBlazikenMaster (talk • contribs) 15:00, June 14, 2007


 * Special:Shortpages has been functioning in a cached mode since November 2005. As a result, the list is based upon the state of things at the time the cache run was performed instead of providing current data.  A quick look through the history for Family Guy shows the article was blanked for roughly one minute earlier today. The article appears to have been detected as being zero length between the blanking and the reversion. --Allen3 talk 15:32, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Filtered entries now in the toolserver
Just in case, I wanted to mention here that the bot that parses the list of shortpages and stores the result at User:Zorglbot/Shortpages is now available on the toolserver, either as a static web page or an interactive version. The main advantage is that as long as there is no replication lag on the toolserver, the pages are refreshed every 15 minutes (compared to every few days here !), so if you were using the bot page here previously, please have a look at the new tools. If noone objects on my talk page, the bot that updates this page will be deactivated in the next few days. Suggestions and comments are of course also welcome. Schutz 11:09, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Articles that are no longer Shortpages
These articles are no longer Shortpages. Kathleen.wright5 05:10, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
 * 1.Www.google.com Listed as 0 Bytes
 * 2.Anaconda 3 Listed as 0 Bytes
 * 3.Joshua ben Hananiah Listed as 0 Bytes
 * 4.James Crossley Listed as 0 Bytes
 * 5.G8 Listed as 12 Bytes

Anyone cleaning up the empties?
Previously, my bot was tagging all short uncategorised pages as stubs, including those that were totally blank. I've been subsequently convinced this latter behaviour is a bad idea, so now I'm simply skipping pages of length zero. That might cause a build-up of them here, if they're not being cleared up otherwise. Alternatively, I could perhaps tag them with a distinct blanked or blankpage template, or something like that. ("This page erroneously previously blank", as it were...) Thoughts? Alai 20:27, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
 * The replication lag on the Tools Server is almost caught up (from about a month behind to only 2 days now) for Schutz's Tools Server shortpages tool. When the Tools Server is not as badly lagged as it has been for the last couple of months, the tool gives a nearly real-time look at what are the shortest pages of the project, and lets them be dealt with quite rapidly.  There is really no build-up.  And even when the TS was massively backed up, the old fashioned Shortpages list is still updated every 3 days or so, and people work it as well.  So the blank pages are getting handled, right now, and will be handled even better in the next few days whent he TS finally catches up. End result, I'm not really sure that any such tagging of blank pages is really particularly needed. - TexasAndroid 21:21, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
 * I assume the TS lag isn't a huge issue, since as you say the special pages have been getting updated regularly for the last while. My concern is rather that it may have been masked by them being thrown into, and cleaned up that way.  This will no longer be happening, and people may have gotten out of the habit of using either of the short pages resources.  Anyway, for now I'll just keep an eye that it doesn't start growing radically.  Alai 17:49, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Redirects
Most of the shortest pages on the lists are redirects with a template on them, so even though most redirects are taken off the list, not all of them are. Is there a way around this problem? Someone the Person (talk) 17:30, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Work off of this report instead. It has twice as many pages, is updated a *lot* more often, is color coded for type of page, and has an interactive version that lets you ignore certain of the types that do show up. - TexasAndroid (talk) 18:32, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

What is listed here
Only pages with 200 or fewer bytes are listed here, right? Admiral Norton (talk) 14:39, 1 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Nope. It's based on the X smallest pages, not a specific page size.  X in this case is 1000. So it shows the 1000 smallest pages on the project at the time the report was last run/cached.  If you want more, and more current reports, check out the Schultz's Tool Server based report at .  This report shows the 2000 smallest pages, and is updated every 10 minutes.  Since it actually runs on the Tools Server, instead of the main Wikipedia servers, it is able to run much more frequently without stressing the Wikipedia servers. - TexasAndroid (talk) 14:49, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Adding comments to pad short articles
User:Carlossuarez46 recent edits have brought to my attention something I consider seriously flawed thinking. Special:ShortPages exists to indicate pages that are severely lacking content. Carlos has been adding " " to short articles (dab pages and non-dab pages) to unlist them from this special page.

I. Don't. Get. It.

How is adding a comment not negating the purpose of this special page? How is adding a comment to pad article size equivalent to adding meaningful content (which I contend is the point of listing the shortest pages)? Anyone looking to actually add content to short articles won't have to opportunity to these articles because they're off the list because of these comments.

To me it's like deleting content off of articles on Special:LongPages just to unlist them. Or watching an article from Special:UnwatchedPages (and ignoring changes), just to remove it from the list. Or making a comment, making 20 edits to that comment, then removing it on Special:FewestRevisions just to remove it from the list. Or deleting redirects on Special:BrokenRedirects and outright ignoring the possibility of fixing then, just to get them off the list.

These pages exist for a reason and I don't see how adding a comment to a short article serves this reason! Cburnett (talk) 04:28, 6 August 2008 (UTC)


 * This is based on a disagreement about what the reason for these pages is. The first line of this page has a link to User talk:Necrothesp where Carlossuarez46 explains his reason for adding the comments. I agree with him. Finding unfixed vandalism is more important than finding valid short pages that could need an expansion. Huge numbers of pages of various sizes could need that and editors wanting to expand articles can easily find work by other means, for example in Category:Stub categories where they can pick subjects they know something about. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:18, 6 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Pretty well said. I see the short pages reports as showing what pages need critical attention, not what pages need general expansion.  In addition to cleaning up vandalism, I and other short pages patrollers do basic work on valid, but badly formatted sub-stubs, etc.  But once a page is up to a point were it meets a minimum level of formatting, etc, then it is good IMHO to move that page off of the short pages reports so that other pages are reported that could/would benefit from such basic care.  Every page moved off the report means another page that will move onto the  report and potentially get needed attention.  - TexasAndroid (talk) 13:21, 6 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Wholeheartedly agree - most of our pages invite improvement and expansion; in patrolling short pages I often confont articles that have been vandalized, vanity pages, non-notables, badly formed substubs, redirects, dabs, etc. But to find the newer short articles among the forest of short ones if no long comments were added would make the process hardly worth the effort. Through the efforts of short page patrollers, we have cleared articles to 140 bytes in length, so that articles shorter than that show up - not perfect but better than having no way to highlight those needing urgent attention - as per the 2 prior comments. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 17:54, 6 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I think this issue merits a broader discussion; I happen to agree with CB that adding the comments is damaging to the usability of the report and so does not make any sense, and that there are better ways to identify vandalism than using Special:ShortPages: (like WP:NPP, flagging pages where content is deleted, and many others).  Given that there are already more than 2 editors involved, I don't think we can go to WP:3O, and so I am going to set up a RfC on this issue. UnitedStatesian (talk) 15:55, 19 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I don't see a need for WP:RFC at this point. This is not about article content, user conduct, or Wikipedia policy and guidelines. It's just about how to organize a certain type of work and it practically only matters to people actually doing that work. Cburnett's post is 2 weeks old and was never followed up after the explanations by others, so I wouldn't make assumptions about what Cburnett thinks now. The report is generated periodically, often long after a given listed page was created or became short, so it catches many problems that apparently weren't caught by other processes. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:29, 19 August 2008 (UTC)


 * One correction. Many of us short pages patrollers these days work off of the Tools Server version of the report, rather than the main project version.  The TS report is updated every ten minutes, rather than every few days as the WP report is, and includes twice as many articles on it (2000 vs 1000).  The TS report is linked at the top of this page. - TexasAndroid (talk) 03:50, 20 August 2008 (UTC)


 *  Let me try to explain this again. We have different people wanting to use the reports for different purposes.  All appear to want to use them to fix vandalism, which is definitely a good reason.  But beyond that we have differeing goals that are in conflict.  But it's hard to have a good debate when one side does not understand the other side's reasonings, so I will attempt to lay things out more clearly.
 * One side appears to want to use the short pages reports to help find articles that they can flesh out. To which they can add more content.
 * The other side (which I am on) wants to use them to find articles in need of attention to bring them up to a minimum level of existance. Articles that, with a bit of attention can become decent stubs.  Mosman high is a recent example of this for me.  Format it out, add a category, mark it as a stub, and we have a useful stub article where previously we had an unformatted sentence.  Once articles have reached a certain minimum level of quality, there is no more need for them to have this attention.  So if they are still smaller than the current maximum length on the short pages report, adding the comments moves off an article that is no longer in need of such attention and opens up a slot for another article that may very well benefit from such attention.
 * There are other, non-vandalism examples of this triage type of care that is being worked, and I can go into others if more examples are needed.
 * An argument has been made that there are better ways to find vandalism. And if that was the core reason for these actions, it might be a valid point.  But the triage is, IMHO, a much bigger reason for such efforts.  And there are not any other good tools on the project (that I am aware of) for finding such pages, especially when many pages benefiting from the attention are coming from the back end of the reports. Pages that are  not new, but short, and are uncovered by the slow expantion of the reports into more articles.  Expantion that only happens because of the comments placed on other articles no longer needing triage.
 * As for the desire to find articles to add content to, there is indeed another system in place for facilitating exactly that, WP:STUB. - TexasAndroid (talk) 13:45, 20 August 2008 (UTC)
 * To your last point, I know there are numerous pages (especially dabs) to which you and User:Carlossuarez46 have added the comments that are not stubs and so can't be found in the stub categories. But how about this as a compromise: create a template that has a long enought name, say, and have that template display no text.  If you, CS46 and the other short-article commenters used that template instead of the comments, it would lead to the same result, EXCEPT (and this is important) by going to that template and then clicking "What links here," editors (like me) who wanted to browse all the articles that were still short in content (not just the stubs) could do so. Right now there is NO WAY (other than painfully going through your contributions) to see what articles you have lengthened via comments.  Your thoughts? UnitedStatesian (talk) 17:17, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
 * We would need a template with a name at least 148 characters long. And that's just for where the TS version currently reaches.  Maybe 142, because the shortest page it would normally end up on would be wi, at six more characters.  But that's not accounting for the fact that the target shifts as pages come onto and off of the list, and the number is slowly growing.  So it would need to be a bit longer than that.  And a template that's 100 or more characters long in the name is IMHO just a bad idea.
 * That said, the idea of coming up with some other way to track pages forced off the list is still interesting, and your idea is not the only possibility. Another that occurrs to me is a new hidden category dropped onto the page by long comment.  A hidden category would not show up on normal category lists, but for those who can find it by name, it would still contain all the articles that have it just as a regular category.  This would be easily enough set up.  Does this alternative have possibilities to you? - TexasAndroid (talk) 18:01, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
 * That sounds like a great approach, although it is out of my league to do, so if you could take care of it, that would be great. Let me know how you implement it. UnitedStatesian (talk) 18:58, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Maybe we could create such a long template, but to avoid having the hassle to write the long template's name, we could subst it using another template with a short name. For example, we could have a xxxxxlongtemplatexxxxx (obviously the name would have to be longer), which would contain something like  . Then we would have ShortPageTemplate that would transclude xxxxxlongtemplatexxxxx. Would someone want to mark the page with the 150-character template, he would write  to both produce a transclusion of the 150-character template and add the article to the patrolled short pages category. Admiral Norton (talk) 19:14, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
 * If we are doing some sort of two-tiered template approach (and I should be able to work something like that up) then we really do not need the inner template to have a long name. The outer template, which would still be substed, would drop a) long comment to cover the bulk of the spaces, b) the patrolable tempate, to give the "What links here" ability.  The inner template could place the hidden category on as well.  Then we have only the comment and inner template visible on bumped pages, and the inner template provides one, maybe two, ways to show everything that has been touched.
 * As for the name of the outer template, I would really prefer to stick with Longcomment. (I use long comment myself, but that's just a redirect.) If we just adapt the existing template, then those of us already dropping the long comments on don't have to learn to use a new template.
 * As for the inner template, we need to come up with a good name for it, knowing that it'll be visibly dropped on any page that has Longcomment used on it. (Visible in the editable code, at least)- TexasAndroid (talk) 19:50, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
 * What about Do not modify this paragraph? The comment part would be just whitespace enclosed by &lt;!-- --&gt;, possibly with an additional notice inside (e.g. " "). Admiral Norton (talk) 20:18, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I prefer a little more polite: Please do not modify this paragraph. UnitedStatesian (talk) 20:25, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Fine with me, as long as the notice is conveyed appropriately. Admiral Norton (talk) 21:08, 21 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Ok. I have some problems with the above.
 * IMHO we do not want to be putting much, if any, message in the template name directly. That just seems to me to be not a good handling of naming.  Names of things show up in so many other ways.  The template should be named to describe it's purpose/use, not to send a message.
 * That said, we have a nice big block of text/space just before or after the template, so any message we want to send, that's the place.
 * And with *that* said, I'm rather confused by what message is trying to be sent. "Please do not modify this paragraph"?  What paragraph?  We have a template and a (currently) short comment followed by lots of white space.  What is not supposed to be modified?  The whole thing/blob?  "Paragraph" is not the right word for the whole shebang, but I'm not sure what *is* the right word.
 * And why are we saying to not modify things? Are we saying that noone should ever modify the blob?  Ever?  If not, then until when?  Can the blob be removed by someone who adds a bunch of stuff to the article?  From my perspective, as long as the page does not drop back down onto the Short Pages reports, which would basically require a near full revert of the long comment, then I am happy.  But what are you guys looking to accomplish with your hidden message?
 * We have a good plan in the broad strokes, we just need to iron out some details. - TexasAndroid (talk) 12:38, 22 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, we oughtta do something, since the status quo is much worse, since I personally have no idea what constitutes a short page: less than 148 bytes? 150 B? 200 B? Maybe 5 KB? The comment doesn't say anything about that. The comment should say something like: "Do not remove this paragraph until the article is 296/300/400 B in size or something like that. Admiral Norton (talk) 12:59, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

Moving forward section break

 * I'm not suggesting doing nothing. That's what my last sentence was meant to convey.  We have the overall idea figured out of how to move forward, we just need to iron out the details.  At this point I think it's a sure bet we'll put *something* into the Longcomment template to assist with tracking bumped pages.  The remaining questions just have to do with exactly how to do it.
 * To refresh, we have the existing Longcomment template, which already gets substed onto pages to bump them. To the substed content we add a new template, something like Short pages monitor.  The new template will mostly exist to place the article into a new hidden category.  Then the bumped pages can be tracked by either the new category, or by doing "What links Here" on the new template, whichever people prefer.
 * I think we may need a little bit different approach in the message. Currently we have:
 * ''A long comment added to the page to prevent it being listed on Special:Shortpages. Generated via Template:Longcomment.
 * A new version could be something like:
 * ''This long comment was added to the page to prevent it being listed on Special:Shortpages. It and the accompanying monitoring template were generated via Template:Longcomment. Please do not remove the monitor template without removing the comment as well.  And please do not remove either until ...
 * I'm a little stuck on the "until" part. I think we would not want to specify specific numbers.  But for the monitor guys, what in general do you view as a good point for the monitoring to stop?  What level of effort would you want to request from yourselves before you felt a page could drop out of monitoring?  And then we word the "until" in a general way to get that idea off.  We're setting up a request here, more than a limt or requirement.  - TexasAndroid (talk) 14:51, 22 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm gonna start working up the internal template and the hidden category. I've been holding off using Longcomment, waiting for more conversation, but the conversation appears to have died off. :(  I cannot hold off forever, so I'm going to get done what I can, and I may just leave the exact wording undecided in order to get something in place soon. - TexasAndroid (talk) 17:32, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Category:Monitored short pages and Short pages monitor have been created. Any comments/edits to them are welcome.  If noone comments/responds I tentatively plan to edit Longcomment sometime tomorrow to install them. - TexasAndroid (talk) 17:48, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Ok. It's installed.  I still was at a loss for how to complete the "Do not remove" comment above, so I just left that phrase off for now. - TexasAndroid (talk) 18:26, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I guess they weren't as worried about it as they made out :-/ Good job, TA, even though I fail to see the point of it all. --Closedmouth (talk) 14:00, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Coming to this as someone who has a lot of well-formed little dab pages on my watch list ... is it not possible for you to exclude tagged dab pages (and perhaps surname and similar) from your Shortpages listing? For you to look at them and add the "long comment" wastes your time: it also wastes time of everyone who has the page on their watchlist, and clutters otherwise straightforward pages. A page with one of those tags is likely to be well-formatted rather than short through vandalism, however short it is. (The latest irritating example, which inspires me to find you here and make this comment, is Hexagon Theatre). PamD (talk) 06:54, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

How short is short
Why was a longcomment added to a dab page of 5,939 bytes How short is short? -- PBS (talk) 21:36, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Blank pages going unnoticed?
I've noticed that sometimes, blank pages go unnoticed for long periods of time (by WP standards, at least). For example, Catherine D'Mailly (I've requested a speedy; the original article was no more than an infobox) was blank for almost four days ! This may be what happens when poorly written newpages "slip through the cracks". At least some people have to be patrolling this category, so why does this happen?  Intelligent  sium  01:15, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Short page, showing as redirect and Disambiguation?
I am not impressed with the crossed out red links that we do not need to see. I clicked on ten blue links and found redirects and disambigations; the actual page I'm redirected too is not short! I am simply trying to find stubs (short pages for expansion???). This probably comes over badly, but I'm just disapointed.. --  Piandao   21:28, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Try Category:Monitored short pages. --Closedmouth (talk) 09:49, 24 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Consider stubs on particular subjects that may be of interest to you. There are plenty of them. --DThomsen8 (talk) 14:25, 6 September 2010 (UTC)
 * There may well be other pages where work can be found, but the point really is (1) what use is this page in its current form, (2) why is it promoted in places like Template:Resources_for_collaboration when in fact it is likely do nothing other than discourage editors to collaborate. See also Village_pump_(miscellaneous) for a longer rant about unhelpful pages. -- Derek Andrews (talk) 13:22, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Chaure Bazar
Khiddirpur Village. Chaure Bazar Bikapur. Faizabad Uttar Pardesh.(224209) As of 2001 India Khiddirpur had a population of 1100 Males constitute 51% of the population and females 49%. Khiddirpur has an average literacy rate of 60%, lower than the national average of 59.5%; with 58% of the males and 42% of females literate. 18% of the population is under 6 years of age. Khiddirpur is situated on Faizabad-Allahabad highway,Chaure Bazar 3K.M which is one of the most revered Village of the region of erstwhile Awadh. Access. Khiddirpur is well connected with Faizabad-Allahabad. Air. Nearest airports are that of Lucknow (120 km). Rail. The Indian Railways network connects Faizabad to Allahabad. Road. Khiddirpur Chaure Bazar has good road connectivity with Faizabad (35 km), Sultanpur (28km), Education. Khiddirpur Chaure Bazar Many schools and colleges are also situated in Chaure Bazar. T.N Inter College Bharhukhata Chaure Bazar Faizabad. B.G.N Inter College Majha Sonora Chaure Bazar Faizabad. Banks. Khiddirpur Chaure Bazar has the modern banking facilities also. Many Banks such as BOB the convenience of others having private bank accounts. Tehsil Panchayat Panchayat Khiddirpur comes under tehsil Bikapur. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kailashgupta180 (talk • contribs) 06:46, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

True redirects don't need Long comment, right?
is adding Long comment to true redirects. That is not needed, right?

I know many of the short pages entries are redirects currently at rfd, but that is a different issue. Mark Hurd (talk) 04:35, 28 September 2011 (UTC)


 * I started doing this because, whenever I edited a redirect or closed an RfD and removed the RfD tag (or removed/changed the category of redirect) from the page, a bot (or maybe it was another editor?) would quickly come along and insert the template themselves, so I thought I was doing something wrong by not including it. I can stop if you so wish, but my watchlist was being flooded at one point with additions of long comment to redirects I modified so I assumed I was doing it wrong by not including it. --Taelus (talk) 09:50, 28 September 2011 (UTC)


 * Also, if it is not needed, could someone please update the documentation of the template to make it clearer? At the time I noticed other users were adding long comments to redirects I had edited, looked at special:shortpages myself and saw several redirects listed on it that I had already closed at RfD (thus this page was just out of date I guess), looked at the template page and thought: "Ah right, it stops that from happening, so I will do that in future to prevent my RfD closures clogging up this list." - I doubt I am the only editor confused by this as there is no real information easily found. --Taelus (talk) 10:02, 28 September 2011 (UTC)


 * IMHO the bot was wrong to do that (It should have checked if the page was a real redirect by the time it was about to edit it), but I agree the documentation is lacking or hard to find. Purely attempting to check a number of the pages on the list shows all of the likely redirects to be currently subject to rfd. I'd guess the bot was basing its work only on the content of an out-of-date version of the Short Pages list and not checking the page before editing it. Mark Hurd (talk) 10:35, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

Sorry to arrive late to this discussion. I'm one of the major users of the Long Comment template, so I can leave a few comments from my POV. 1) I used to place it on RFD active discussions quite frequently. More recently I've stopped.  2) It serves no useful purpose that I can think of to place it on true redirects. It's main purpose is to keep pages off of the short pages lists. This one, and the Tools server one. True redirects are excluded from those reports already, or else the reports would be totally worthless. :) 3) Personally I rarely even look at this report. The tools server version (linked at the top of this talk page) shows more results, and is updated more frequently than this one. 4) I have no idea what page the bot in question works off of, sorry. - TexasAndroid (talk) 22:52, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Ho-ly Crap....
My goodness. I like the new changes with the newly installed version of MediaWiki. Live, on-demand results (no more cached results). At *least* 2000 pages shown. (I've not gone further than that to see just how deep the rabbit hole of short pages now goes.)

About the only complaint I would have is that there is no longer a link to this talk page. I had to dig through my contributions list to find it myself. And that's a minor quibble in comparison to the awesomeness of the other changes. - TexasAndroid (talk) 15:22, 1 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Header issue fixed, with a little assistance from someone at the Village Pump pointing me in the right direction. - TexasAndroid (talk) 17:13, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Hmmm...
Very few entries are less than 141 bytes, then there are over 1,000 that are 14X bytes. Perhaps the list is having problems with articles less than 141 bytes... Anyone know what is going on? Us441 (talk to me) (My piece) 13:37, 26 August 2012 (UTC)
 * The counts are perfectly correct. What's going on is that I have very slowly, over the months, pushed back the point at which there are unchecked short articles.  Several times a week I go through the report, and process all articles that are shorter than the current unchecked point (142 characters presently.)  I do *something* with almost every article below that point.  It may be deleting bad short articles, fixing broken redirects, reverting vandalistic blanking, or just adding long comment to bump the item way, way down the list.  The last is done as a sign that the article (most often short disambiguations) meets a number of basic criteria for existing as a valid short article.  If those criteria are met, I long comment tag it to move it out of the way, in order to bring into view more short articles that may actually need attention/clean-up.
 * I also process a few of the ones from the unchecked point, in order to continue to slowly but surely push back that threshold.
 * Others are welcome to do similar, and at times they do, but it's mostly me.
 * End result, anything present that is under the current threshold is in need of attention in one way or another. - TexasAndroid (talk) 14:13, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

Short pages monitor template
While adding to the List of bridges in Guyana, I noted the presence of the template, followed by a long comment. I used Page size in the Toolbox, and I see:

List of bridges in Guyana

Document statistics: (See here for details.) File size: 20 kB   Prose size (including all HTML code): 43 B    References (including all HTML code): 0 B    Wiki text: 564 B    Prose size (text only): 36 B (8 words) "readable prose size" References (text only): 0 B Reading Wikipedia talk:Special:ShortPages, I discover that actually there is only an issue with short pages below 141 Bytes, and reading further, I learn that there are categories of short articles less than 1000 Bytes. I am not sure what number to use from the Page size tool, so I am unsure whether I should remove the Short pages monitor template and the filler text from the List of bridges in Guyana.

I would appreciate knowing what number in the Page size tool report is the one used in these categories. I would also like someone to consider adding more information on the category pages and/or the template pages to help experienced editors decide when to remove the templates and associated filler text. I would expect newbies to leave well enough alone. --DThomsen8 (talk) 14:34, 20 September 2012 (UTC)


 * The 141 number is current, but temporary. The actual number will never be constant.  Currently, it is slowly increasing.  Currently every time I clean up pages 141 or shorter, I also clean up at least a few pages 142 or larger.  Sometimes I make a concentrated push to clean up all of the pages on the current threshold.  Either way, the threshold slowly moves up.
 * On the other extreme, there have been times when I got burned out and stopped doing Short pages cleanup altogether. I stopped for a couple of years at one point, and the threshold moved way, way back down.
 * The categories for too many characters on monitored pages is also mostly me at this point. Someone else first added the 1000+ character category, but didn't clean it out.  I later found it, cleaned it out, and added the 900-999 and 800-899 categories to also clean out.  I've had those mostly cleaned out for a few months now, and have been debating adding a 700-799 category to continue the clean-out.
 * As for what number in between 142 and 700/800 is the point at which the monitor should be no longer needed, it's far from an easy answer on a specific point. I would say that articles should generally be bumped into the 200-300 range at least, as that's where the current Short Pages template puts them.  But as for when the template should come off...   that's harder to say.  For now, anything 800+ will show up in the current categories, and I clean those out once a month or so.  I see no urgency for too much effort for cleaning out too far below that, thus my internal debate on whether or not to bother with a 700-799 category.
 * As for the question about what puts pages into the longer size categories, check out the coding at undefined. The template uses the PAGESIZE attribute to do the determinations of what category to place on the pages. - TexasAndroid (talk) 16:10, 20 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Thank you for that information. I would appreciate knowing what number in the Page size tool report is the one used in these categories. That is specifically what I want to know. Is the PAGESIZE attribute one of the numbers produced on the Page size tool response above? --DThomsen8 (talk) 13:07, 21 September 2012 (UTC)
 * I do not really know. Any answer I gave would be only guesswork.  I know that the PAGESIZE attribute gives the number of characters in the page, before any transclusion is done.  This ends up being the same number that is used on the Short Pages report itself.  This may relate to one or the other of the "Prose Size" attributes in your snippet, but I do not know for certain.  You're getting into a technical question that is beyond my knowledge, and is actually more general than just a Short Pages question.  Let me point you towards Village pump (technical) as a next place to ask the question, because I'm unable to give you a solid answer, sorry. - TexasAndroid (talk) 17:19, 24 September 2012 (UTC)
 * What you have told me above is sufficient for my purposes. The PAGESIZE tool give the number of characters, which is, as you say, the number used on the short pages report. Therefore, if the PAGESIZE is more than one thousand characters, I conclude that the the template can be removed, and the page treated just like any other mainspace article. Thank you for your patience and information. --DThomsen8 (talk) 18:03, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

Option?
Is there an option to only display non-dab pages? --  Toshio   Yamaguchi  13:04, 29 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Not on the main page. I'm not sure if its still running, but for quite a while there was a toolserver based version that ran several times a day.  It's linked somewhere near the top of this talk page.  That version was a little better in that it classified the results, and allowed you to filter based on the different classifications, including disambiguations.  The big drawbacks to it were that 1) it's cached data, not live, and 2) it only collected the first 2,000 or so short pages, including disambiguations.  For me, I stopped using the toolserver report when the main report went to live data, a bit under a year ago.  The ability to clean up some pages, hit refresh, and see those pages drop from the report at once is just too useful. - TexasAndroid (talk) 14:14, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

A new patrol?
Recently, I've taken a break from my usual task of patrolling new pages and I've been going through short pages and expanding stubs and creating proper redirects and disambiguation pages and all that. But I've been wondering: should we form a patrol for this? You know, like recent changes and new pages patrols? Any ideas? Revolution1221 (talk) 18:50, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

What's listed here
For some reason pages with over 40,000 bytes show up http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:ShortPages&limit=500&offset=4220000 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.104.108.86 (talk) 17:00, 11 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Compare the current last page of Special:ShortPages and the current last page of Special:LongPages (same page number!), and you'll see the reason: now that the restriction on the length of both lists has been removed, both are essentially now simply a list of all pages in Wikipedia, listed by size. There used to be a size limit resulting in showing only the 2000 shortest and longest pages or so respectively. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 13:57, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

Summary of previous discussions

 * The Special:ShortPages is a list of short pages arranged by length, as tagged by a bot. As of 2012, the list was cached every four days or so.
 * The special page includes disambiguation pages; however, a list without disambiguation pages can be found by using the tool at User:Zorglbot/Shortpages. The bot that was running with the tool is inactive. The list has not been updated since March 2013
 * There is no patrol, although a proposal has been briefly mentioned.  KJ  click here  04:12, 7 February 2014 (UTC)

Version w/o disambigs?
Will that come soon?
 * Outstanding Bugzilla on this issue. The report is over 6 years old, though there was conversation on it as recent as last year. - TexasAndroid (talk) 15:07, 7 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Now at https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T53124 All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 09:02, 10 January 2018 (UTC).

Soft redirects
Is there a way to exclude soft redirects from appearing on ShortPages, much like actual redirects are excluded? It can get annoying to apply long comments to soft redirects every time one shows up even as the first item in the list. Jalen Folf  (talk)  17:24, 22 September 2019 (UTC)