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Welcome to the project discussion page for WikiProject Wikify! Please use this page for discussing how to wikify articles or for proposing improvements to the project. Older discussions can be found through the archive links above; discussions about the wikification drive prior to the establishment of the WikiProject can be found in the archives of Category talk:Articles that need to be wikified.

[edit] Wikifikation Request Template

Long story short, I put together a quick template (mainly copied from the invitation template) to be used when an article needs to be wikified, but has really only one main contributing editor. (example: Bangladeshi garments) There are a huge number of articles backlogged that only have one person contributing, which is usually the main reason for the lack of cleanup. If we were to notify the authors that their article needs some cleanup, hopefully it can help reduce the number of new articles that need wikification.

{{subst:User:Bvlax2005/wikirequest|John Doe}}

would produce something like this:

Hi there! The article John Doe has been tagged for wikification. I noticed that you have been a main contributor to the article and felt you might want to help out. If you need any help wikifying the article, please see our guide to wikification or feel free to speak with me.
Bvlax2005 (talk) 00:23, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Comments? Improvements? Love it? Hate it?

Bvlax2005 (talk) 05:28, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

Seems useful enough. When providing a link on how to wikify an article, it's probably better to link to the project page (please take a look here) – it'll allow users to find out more about the whole process, and perhaps join the project. I'd also recommend replacing the first part of the last sentence with something a little simpler: e.g., "If you are unsure of what is necessary for wikification please take a look here..." → "If you need any help wikifying the article, please see our guide to wikification..." (or something similar). I just wonder how successful this template will be: there are many articles in the backlog that are written by editors who start an article and then promptly leave, never to be heard of again. But we should be able to get at least some positive responses from it. Every bit helps :) Cheers. – Liveste (talk • edits) 03:43, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

If it really does help in reducing the backlog, then it's worthwhile. I suspect that many of these types of articles aren't being looked after by the primary contributor. A review of the edit history would show if the article has had sustained work over time. Even then, the editor may not log into wikipedia much and not see the message. However, this is all conjecture. Using the invitation, and measuring its effectiveness would give us actual data to gauge eeffectiveness. And a little more conjecture... The invitation might be more useful when the wikification tagging is recent, and the primary editor is still likely on the job so to speak. -- Whpq (talk) 20:45, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

I really liked your wording change so I made an update to the template! Bvlax2005 (talk) 00:24, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure how well it will do with relieving the backlog. If an article was made more than a year ago and hasn't been wikified it is unlikely the editor is terribly motivated to do it now (is is even still active). But I think this might be a great tool for recently tagged articles. A number of the newly tagged articles I have seen come from editors that are new to Wikipedia. So all in all I'm hoping it helps relieve the addition of more articles. At 14,000 articles, every little bit helps! Bvlax2005 (talk) 22:52, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Inter-Project Collaboration?

I was going through a number of articles and I tend to find a LOT of articles that fall under other WikiProjects. I had the idea of somehow trying to get other WikiProjects involved in wikifying articles. It would help with the backlog and help the other projects improve their own articles.

I put together a message that I could add on other WikiProjects talk pages. Right now its linked as a template, however I'm no expert with templates and with the current model article names would have to be entered (and linked) manually. So in all it would just be easier to copy and past the code, adding article names as necessary. I tried to get across what wikification is and how they could help out. I tried to be as friendly as I could without sounding too overbearing. So far I have this:

Comments? Suggestions? Love it? Hate it?

Bvlax2005 (talk) 13:46, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

I'd love to see what kind of a response this gets. This template would probably be most useful for WikiProjects with no established cleanup listing, but I pity the poor person who has to populate the Articles section of the message (sounds like a job for a bot). We could give it a trial run with a friendly WikiProject and see what happens.

I like the headings and the friendly tone. I've also made a couple of minor changes to the wording (feel free to revert them). As above, it's probably best to link to the project page rather than a user subpage. I'd also recommend simplifying the "simply put" explanation of wikifying. Would you mind making a separate page for the template, perhaps as a subpage of the project page (you're welcome to do this for the wikirequest template if you like)? Cheers. – Liveste (talk • edits) 03:43, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

I actually do have the template located at User:Bvlax2005/InterProjectWikify. Feel free to make any changes you think would improve it! My biggest fear is that this message will get posted on dozens of WikiProject pages but barely get looked at. Wikification is simple and helps out other projects also so I think this might be a productive venture. I'm actually trying to work with User:B. Wolterding. He's created a bot that sorts tagged articles and creates a subpage on the appropriate WikiProject pages, which can be found at Wikipedia:WikiProject_projectname/Cleanup_listing. It turns out he had a similar endeavor for his own WikiProject Notability. —Preceding undated comment was added at 23:00, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Bot to help with internal links

Consider the following sentence:

This is a page for requesting work to be done by bots per the bot policy. This is an appropriate place to simply put ideas for bots. If you need a piece of software written for a specific article you may get a faster response time at the computer help desk. You might also check Wikipedia:Bots/Status to see if the bot you are looking for already exists, in which case you can contact the operator directly on their talkpage.

If i need to find out whether there is an article on "bots" i have to:

1)select "bots",
2)go to the search bar (i use firfox),
3)copy into the search bar and
4) press "enter".

Is there a way to automate this process? atleast a semi automation will speed up the process.

ajoy (talk) 10:12, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Another modification of the Wikify template

Another request has been made to change the wording of the {{Wikify}} template, mainly to emphasise that there is more to wikification than just adding internal links (e.g., sections, formatting and wiki markup). I agree with the idea in principle, but I'm a little stuck on the wording. I'd appreciate hearing other editors' thoughts and suggestions there. Cheers. – Liveste (talk • edits) 03:40, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Rapid progress?

Does anyone know how the total backlog was reduced by eight or nine hundred articles in a matter of days? I'd like to think that the project is making progress, but I've never seen this kind of progress before. It's also possible that the articles were wiped from the backlog by someone simply removing {{Wikify}} tags, or by removing a wikification category from a particular cleanup template. Thoughts? - Liveste (talk o edits) 07:53, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Haven't a clue. But I've always wondered if there was a way to track the wikification efforts. Right now, we can't tell what articles were processed out of the backlog, or who has made a major effort in pushing the backlog down so that they can be recognized for their efforts. I'm going to guess that there was template that got the category removed. -- Whpq (talk) 11:09, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

That was my first guess. I've already checked {{Wikify}}, {{Articleissues}}, {{Sections}} and {{Internallinks}}, as well as two rather curious templates, {{Wiki-uc}} and {{Review Wikification}}, but none of them have had any relevant recent changes. There could be another template that incorporated a wikification category, but I wonder what kind of template could have added eight or nine hundred articles to the backlog in the first place without our knowing about it. There have also been no recent changes to any wikification category. I suppose there could be a problem with the category count on Cat:All pages needing to be wikified (no, I am not going to count those pages manually).

Of course, we can't discount the possibility of rapid progress. In regards to identifying who has made a major effort in pushing the backlog down, I remember that the Guild of Copy Editors filed a bot request in September to set up a list of most active contributors (request filed here, subsequently relisted here). Their idea would have been useful in determining if a group of articles simply had their tags removed. Unfortunately, no-one responded to either request. This idea might still be useful, though. The only other option I can think of is for someone to watchlist all 14,600+ articles. Cheers. - Liveste (talk o edits) 02:57, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Barring the heavy-handed use of CWLI on articles, I doubt rapid progress was made. I agree that a manual page count is not a solution. Thanks for looking into the bot request issue. That answered the question I had about notification. --Aarktica (talk) 15:48, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Tool to remove redlinks?

Is there a tool to removed red links? Most articles need links added, but in a few cases, the article is heavily sprinkled with red links that shouldn't be there. The Melbourne Knights article needs to have the red links trimmed back in a big way (amongst other problems). Doing it manually would be very time consuming. -- Whpq (talk) 17:18, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

The AutoWikiBrowser has a function that will remove red links. All you have to do is download it and set it to "bad link repair". Gaia Octavia Agrippa ^Talk | _Sign 18:06, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the information. I'll take a look. -- Whpq (talk) 22:06, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Tagger

Can I join the project as someone who tags articles for wikification, but doesn't actually wikify them? Jonathan321 (talk) 21:15, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

I'm sure you can but it is very easy to wikify articles. Gaia Octavia Agrippa ^Talk | _Sign 21:44, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

This project is a cleanup project. Our goal is to improve the formatting layout and linking in articles. We all tags article that we see that need wikification. But more importantly, we edit the articles to format them and correct the deficiencies. As Gaia Octavia Agrippa has already mentioned, it's easy. I encourage you to give it a try. Pick a few small stub article to start with and you will get the hang of it pretty quickly. Cheers. -- Whpq (talk) 21:54, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Technically speaking, yes. There is a roster of project members based on their level of contributions in support of the project. As has already been mentioned, this is a cleanup project to improve formatting layout and linking (a.k.a. wikifying) in articles. You may join and add your name to the list, but the rate at which one wikifies articles determines who really is a member of the project. --Aarktica (talk) 15:43, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Another proposed change to "Wikify" template

Another change has been proposed for the {{Wikify}} template, basically restoring most of the original first sentence and expanding the second one to include improving layout. The format is also proposed to be changed. Comments from editors in the wikification drive would be appreciated. Cheers. – Liveste (talk • edits) 01:17, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

The template has been changed according to the abovementioned discussion. But now the word "wikified" in the first sentence links to the glossary definition rather than to the main project page. I'd prefer to have the link to the main project page, because it has more comprehensive instructions and allows people to join the project more readily. Agree or disagree? I've started yet another discussion to change the template, this time to redirect the "wikified" link back to the main project page. Hopefully this will be the last proposed change for some time ;) Cheers. – Liveste (talk • edits) 22:59, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

[edit] WikiProject Coordinators' working group

Hi! I'd like to draw your attention to the new WikiProject coordinators' working group, an effort to bring both official and unofficial WikiProject coordinators together so that the projects can more easily develop consensus and collaborate. This group has been created after discussion regarding possible changes to the A-Class review system, and that may be one of the first things discussed by interested coordinators.

All designated project coordinators are invited to join this working group. If your project hasn't formally designated any editors as coordinators, but you are someone who regularly deals with coordination tasks in the project, please feel free to join as well. -Drilnoth (talk) 00:30, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Where are the articles that need wikifying?

"Category:Articles that need to be wikified contains all the articles in the wikification backlog." But when I go there, I can't see any articles that need wikifying — just a bunch of zeroes. Can you explain? Sincerely, GeorgeLouis (talk) 07:07, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Hm, the count is wrong and is showing zeroes as you say, but if you click on each month's link you'll still see the actual articles needing wikification (or at least, I do). Not sure what's gone wrong with the count, though. Gonzonoir (talk) 08:48, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

I think the number in brackets after the category is the number of immediate sub categories and not the number of pages in that category. Rich257 (talk) 09:21, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

*facepalm* You're absolutely right. I must have been confusing this with the (depressing) progress chart at Category:Wikipedia articles needing copy edit. Do we keep information anywhere about how many pages have the tag by month? Gonzonoir (talk) 09:50, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Template:Wikification progress shows the number of articles in each monthly backlog; the template is shown on the main project page. Otherwise, if you click on a "Wikify from <month>" category, the number of pages is displayed under the "Pages in category" heading. Cheers. – Liveste (talk • edits) 10:14, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Ah, so. Very clever. I added some clarification to the instructions (which I hope is correct), although I do not understand the part that says, "The articles in this category need to be sorted by a bot. Once they are sorted, they will be placed in one of the subcategories below." Are these sentences necessary for an editor to do his or her job? Can they be deleted or rewritten for clarity? Sincerely, GeorgeLouis (talk) 14:40, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

I've tried to rewrite the sorting information to make it easier to understand. Let me know if it's still confusing. For the moment, I've also removed the information explaining the sub-subcategories: these bracketed numbers are shown in all categories on Wikipedia, to show the number of subcategories within a particular subcategory. This is a (fairly recently added) feature of the MediaWiki software. Cheers. – Liveste (talk • edits) 23:00, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Are stubs worth tagging for wikification?

It strikes me as somewhat uneccesary (at least distracting) to call up stubs tagged for wikification. To me, "stub" says it all - turn it into an article, then worry about wikification. What do others think? If there was agreement, then I would suggest amending section 2 of the project page to include stubs under articles not to be tagged. Perhaps even call on a bot writer to write a bot that detagged stubbs.Heds (talk) 06:45, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

An unformatted stub is still unformatted. I'd say a wikification tag is still applicable if it needs that sort of cleanup. -- Whpq (talk) 10:01, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

I'll take the lack of response (but thanks, Whpq) as an indication that the status quo re stubs should remain just that. Heds (talk) 02:56, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Getting ahead of the game

Follows somewhat from previous section...

Watching the number of articles requiring wikification rise over the last month (I should acknowledge my lack of contribution of late), I'm left of the view that: 1. more people seem to tag than actually wikify; and 2. those writing new articles need help to get formatting right to begin with.

Is it time for the community (possibly again) to look into these issues and seek to deal with them? It strikes me that an aim of the communitity should be to do away with this project through it no longer being needed (ie new articles are well formatted to begin with). Grateful for your thoughts. Heds (talk) 03:00, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

It would be great if more articles started life well formatted. I think this doesn't happen for a number of reasons:

Some editors don't notice that there's a house style to be followed
Some editors would like to format their contributions but don't know where to go for help (there is a blizzard of help pages and guidelines after all)
Some editors don't understand the codes and hence are simply confused by the formatting and prefer to leave it to someone else to do (as usually happens)
Some editors assume it's someone else's job to do formatting, or indeed that it's done automatically and not by hand

There's the Adopt-a-User program though it may not be well known. How do you ensure well formatted articles without biting (new) editors? I don't have any answers. Rich257 (talk) 12:43, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

I take your point, Heds, that it would be great if newer users created better articles straight off the bat, but I don't feel too bad about the likelihood that this project will never be redundant. That we don't enforce formatting standards for new articles is part of what makes the bar to participation in Wikipedia so low. Having that low bar seems to me like a net good: you can start playing straight away, and learn the rules as you go along. That's what keeps us open to new contributors, what lets us grow so fast, and what helps us fight the systemic bias to which more organized projects can succumb.

Plus, personally, I love to wikify and don't want all my fun taken away from me :)

This is a philosophical position, not a constructive suggestion, so let me know if you were looking for responses more focused on the practical... Gonzonoir (talk) 16:25, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Wikification check

I believe a wikify tag was incorrectly placed on Eagle Summit (Alaska), but I'd appreciate independent verification. If someone could take a look at it and remove it or confirm it for me, it'd be appreciated. Thanks! JKBrooks85 (talk) 07:20, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

The tagging looks erroneous to me, but I'd suggest asking User:Dethlock99, who placed the tag, if there was anything specific s/he was thinking of. (Btw, might also be worth checking whether this edit has preserved the intended meaning: it reads unclearly to me both ways.) Gonzonoir (talk) 08:50, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

The latitude/altitude switch is definitely incorrect; the phenomenon of midnight sun is related to latitude, not altitude. I've reverted it. -Sketchmoose (talk) 15:44, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

In this case, it's related to both. The higher your vantage point, the further away you can be from the Arctic Circle and still have 24-hour daylight. JKBrooks85 (talk) 02:22, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

I reverted it because with the word as "altitude" there was no mention at all of latitude, which made it sound as if any high-altitude place in the world would have midnight sun. Perhaps both should be mentioned in the article. -Sketchmoose (talk) 13:03, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] The linking of common terms

Hi, good Wikiproject doing valuable work. However, may I ask whether members, especially new members, are adequately briefed about the "relevance test" for the linking of items? Yesterday I had to unlink words such as "milk" and "bird" from an article about a church building. There has been a movement at WP over some years towards treating wikilinking as a skill, like writing good prose, that involves good decision-making about what to link and what not to. Too few and we don't take sufficient advantage of the functionality; too many and we dilute the high-value links. This may be a helpful resource. Tony (talk) 08:11, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the headsup, Tony1. We do link to the "Make only links relevant to the context" guideline in our front-page instructions on wikification, but perhaps we need to make this more explicit. Did the person who did the overlinking come from this project? Which article had the overlinking problem? (I tried to figure it out from your contrib history, but you were quite prolific yesterday!) Gonzonoir (talk) 09:01, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Gonzonoir, luckily, I remember I'd put "milk" in the edit summary, so it was searchable on my contribs list. Here's the diff. Any feedback on my edit? Prolific, yes, because I'm having a gnoming binge about my pet hate, "in order to", which 97% of the time should be "to". Ah, and the subject was a religious order, not a church building, sorry. Tony (talk) 14:16, 16 June 2009 (UTC) PS A few low-value ones added a while ago to the mention of "wikilinks" (including some good edits, I must say); may or may not have been connected with this project. Cheers.

Ah ha. Yes, that delinking was certainly sensible. And with an editing habit like that, this Wikiproject needs you!

The linking of "milk" got in there four years ago. It was added by an IP at a school, who didn't leave an edit summary; no one's edited from that IP for more than two years. So I don't think there's any indication from this episode that this Wikiproject's current guidelines are leading people astray. My hunch is that the people who work through this project are the ones who take an interest in problems like overlinking anyway, but do you think we need to beef up the warning against it? Gonzonoir (talk) 15:59, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Hand Held Computer

The above article that I created needs to be wikified according to an administrator who says "its still a mess". Ive seen some messes, so I don't agree but I'm willing to learn whatever it is that he wants. Let's start with Wikify. Can I get some assistance. Thank You..--Buster7 (talk) 23:27, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Useful links: Wikify

There is a web-tool with the same name "Wikify" which is a web-service allowing everybody to enrich their arbitrary text with links to Wikipedia.org. In other words, it make hypertext from your plain text. I'm not sure if it may help you with what you're doing but at least it's worth knowing about. 79.220.234.91 (talk) 19:47, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

No, it doesn't help because it is meant for links in HTML pages external to wikipedia and it links indescriminately. -- Whpq (talk) 19:53, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

And please, let's not lead editors down the path of indiscriminate linking! Tony (talk) 01:32, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

[edit] New tutorial on building your linking skills

Editors who wikify regularly may be interested in visiting this page. Tony (talk) 03:26, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Do we wikify templates?

I came across this template tagged for wikificaiotn, among other things. Do we wikify templates? Heds (talk) 23:31, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

That's an odd template as it's a template just for the help. Since the page is hard to read in its current format I would say it needs formatting, but then someone able to create complex templates should also be able to format the documentation tidily so I would tend to ask the author to improve the layout. Rich257 (talk) 12:28, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

I now see this has separately been raised with the author. Will leave it there. Thanks. Heds (talk) 22:22, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] What the?

About 15000 articles appear to have lost their wikify tag since yesterday. Anyone got any idea why? Sounds like a bot getting excited, but I don't know how to trace what happened. Heds (talk) 01:19, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm guessing that you're referring to the much smaller numbers in the {{Wikification progress}} template. It displays article counts from the various "Wikify from <month>" categories. User:Rich Farmbrough has begun migrating the wikification categories from "Wikify from <month>" to "Articles that need to be wikified from <month>", in an effort to standardise cleanup category names (the original notification is at Template talk:Wikify#Cats).

Articles tagged with either {{Wikify}} or {{Articleissues}} now display the new hidden categories, but for some reason the articles tagged with {{Articleissues}} are still being placed in the old "Wikify from <month>" categories. I've changed the progress template to indicate the new categories, but even so the article counts are still incorrect.

For the moment, the correct article counts can be found at Category:Articles that need to be wikified, by adding together the numbers in the left and right tables (RF seems to be creating new progress templates as well, so I doubt that my edit to the original template will make much of a difference). However, given that such a large change has happened in the space of about 24 hours, I'd expect the categories and templates to fix themselves within a week or so – similar problems have occurred before. Cheers. – Liveste (talk • edits) 08:34, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for that. Heds (talk) 11:59, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

The problem has now been rectified. {{Wikification progress}} is showing the correct article counts on the project page, and Category:Articles that need to be wikified has a single table that shows the correct numbers too. – Liveste (talk • edits) 04:10, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Dead Link

I was browsing the Wikify page and found a dead link

Under Wikification, the "Can We Link It?" link is dead. I don't know what to do, I hope that someone else does. Thanks Riverpa (talk) 16:26, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

The author of the tool stated he would have to take it offline as he was no longer able to host it. I've removed the link. -- Whpq (talk) 17:03, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

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