Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Abandoned Articles/Archives/2007/1

Disambiguation
I think that disambig pages should not be included in the scope of this project for the following reasons:
 * They are not articles that could be expected to have large turnouts of editing, even if they are high-traffic.
 * They are not articles, but rather more like redirect pages that redirect to multiple pages.  Ninety  wazup?  22:18, 31 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Ninety - I strongly suggest that we NOT do a poll on this. As the instructions on the main page should make clear, disambiguation pages are NOT to be "adopted" (as in, putting the template on the talk page).  But there is NO way to "exclude" them from being listed in a block/section of articles to be reviewed, because no one knows which articles are disambiguation pages and which are not.


 * And we DO want people at least "touch" these articles, so they drop off of the ancientpages list. Otherwise, the next time the list is generated (in a week or a month or whatever), such pages will still be there.  And they'll get listed in a block/section here, again, to be reviewed.  And editors will discover they're disambiguation pages, and skip them.  So they'll be listed again, and again, until eventually all 1000 entries in the ancientpages listing will be disambiguation pages, and this project will be over.  Which isn't what you want, I think.


 * If you're proposing that any work on disambiguation pages be optional or even discouraged, fine, let's discuss that (in a new section, below). But we can't, and we should not try to "not include" disambiguation pages - we need to deal with them at least minimally.   John Broughton  |  Talk 22:30, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Please vote below:

Restrict to non-Disambiguation pages

I vote here, for the above reasons. Ninety wazup?  22:18, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Allow Disambiguation Pages


 * (Taken from above) I don't really see the problem. I suggest "touching" a disambiguation page in some way (trivial edit) to change the last date edited, and then checking it off the list and moving on to something else.  I think it's good to have a few easy cases to handle; I suspect most old disambiguation pages are fine as is. Alternatively, someone could volunteer as a disambiguation specialist, to do a google search or two to improve such pages.  John Broughton  |  Talk 02:31, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I concur with John. Many of the articles that Stubsensor receives aren't stubs anymore by the time someone claims the section. This also causes traffic. People can touch up a disambig page, or just ignore it altogether. Sr13 (T|C) 23:45, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I change my mind, per above.  Ninety  wazup?  00:37, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks for reconsidering. John Broughton  |  Talk 14:13, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Categorising and highlighting abandoned articles
Can the lists of articles be divided into logical groups ("history", "geography" etc) so that people can find ones they are likely to be able to develop? It would then be possible to have on "certain more general pages" a "Link to list of (appropriate) abandoned articles". Jackiespeel 18:15, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Disambiguation pages
I already have seens John do this,but maybe it's a good guideline to check for incoming links and have the correct one selected.That way checking disambig pages is more usefull--Technosphere83 20:44, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Time to revisit the approach?
I suspect that most people here didn't sign up to work on disambiguation pages, but rather were looking for real articles. But the reality is that 70 to 90 percent of the oldest 1000 articles are disambiguation pages.

Another approach to this would be to create "disambiguation only" blocks (groups of pages) and "non-disambiguation article" blocks. Then those interested only in working on articles would be able to do so, and we might be able to get editors from WikiProject Disambiguation to help with the disambiguation blocks.

I'd be happy to set up blocks in this (new) way if people are interested, or we can just continue with the present approach. John Broughton |  Talk 18:37, 7 January 2007 (UTC)


 * If there will be more users participating in the project and if we are planning to increase the size of the project, I'm not sure if we should actually handpick and separate disambigs and articles. We may be able to encourage some editors from WikiProject Disambiguation to come here, considering the high percentage of disambigs in the list.


 * Editing disambigs isn't exactly my cup of tea, but we must cope with what we have. Sr13 (T|C) Editor review 02:13, 9 January 2007 (UTC)