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The following discussion is an archived proposal of the WikiProject below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the project's talk page (if created) or the WikiProject Council). No further edits should be made to this page.

The resulting WikiProject was not created

Note - This project has generated enough interest to become a Project. The Project page will be generated shortly

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WikiProject - The Clean Team (The Team to cleanup Wikipedia)

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Mission & Purpose

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The mission of The Clean Team is to provide a focused effort towards addressing Wikipedia clean up tags in order to increase the quality of Wikipedia and reduce backlog.

Objectives

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Current Progress

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  • Every month (or week) The Clean Team will update its progress in a table

For example:

Month Total Change in %
July 2009 56,100 % changed
June 2009 ~56,300 NA

Member Goals

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  • Members will state their goals on the The Clean Team's website and work towards cleaning that many pages per week. A record will be kept by the team in the form of a table that tracks each team member's progress towards their goal.

For example:

Username Goal cleaned per week Total Number cleaned so far&
Member Username 1 3 26
Member Username 2 2 14

& indicates the number of "Clean Up" tags removed

Incentive

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Members will receive honorary team awards and team ranks for their participation in this team. In additional, relevant barnstars will be awarded after a pre-determined contribution.

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Sign-up (at 5, we setup a site)

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Discussion

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Support

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Oppose

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  • Worthy aims, but I think this is best done at the individual project level, i.e. I think prospective members might consider cleaning up articles on subjects that they have an interest in, rather than 'cold' editing a subject in which they have no previous experience. --Kleinzach 03:27, 15 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • I agree with you in principle, but I think the scope of the project is just the cleanup tag which should act more as a simple triage and cleanup tool rather than expansion of a given article. If an article does require additional information as opposed to just a cleanup, part of this project should be ensuring it gets the proper tag through the Wikipedia:Requests for expansion tag, the stub tag or another appropriate tag. I point you to this description (Wikipedia:Cleanup_process#Where_do_I_report_my_problem.3F) on what the appropriate scope of cleanup should be:

      Examples (Cleanup Categories):

  1. You aren't sure whether something should be merged, deleted, or expanded. (The Clean Team could discuss and triage into one of the appropriate categories or leave this as is recognizing that it does not have the knowledge to appropriate triage)
  2. Needs formatting, proofreading, or rephrasing in comprehensible English. (The Clean Team could do this - no additional content or knowledge should be required)
  3. Multiple overlapping problems. (The Clean Team could triage with the proper tags and cleanup recognizing that some of these problems may fall into Category 1)
  4. The article is very short and might need removal or merging with a broader article. (In some circumstances, this is very similar to Category 1. In other circumstances, a triage to Category:Wikipedia categories in need of attention may suffice.)

I agree with you that we should recognize that there will be articles that we simply will not be able to cleanup given the esoteric nature of the article. I hope this has been recognized through the goal of reducing the tagged articles to under "1,000" and not to zero. A bigger number may be (will likely be :)) required if we find more articles in Category 1 than we expect.

With the scope more clearly defined and acknowledging the limitations of addressing "Category 1" type cleanups, do you still think previous topical knowledge/experience is required to undertake this goal? Thank you for your feedback - I appreciate your help! – tunecedemalis Talk 06:08, 15 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately I think this project would bureaucratize copyediting (a better name for clean up) and cause friction with content projects.
All the bad issues I've seen in the past four years have been systemic conflicts between content and non-content editors. If four or five editors are working on an article and there is a disagreement, it's usually easy to resolve it. However if a content project, used to handling a certain category of articles in a certain way, have a conflict with a group of non-content editors routinely correcting some minor coding, style or layout issue across large numbers of articles, it's often impossible to resolve because positions are so entrenched, and the two groups, eventually speaking two different languages, become mutually incapable of understanding each other's point of view.
Working within a content project with people who know and trust you would be potentially more productive.--Kleinzach 07:09, 15 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I'm wondering if we could rework our goal to doing a single run through of ~50,000 cleanup tags and ignoring those articles that are contentious. Cleaning up for "Category 2" items shouldn't be bureaucratic. If we recognize our limitations to leave content type updates alone (to those content specialists), then this group should be alright. If a content specialist comes along later on and decides to add the cleanup tag once again, then we could just keep it there. With this revised goal - of going through it once and then stopping (being a project with a defined beginning and ending) and recognizing that content specialists would have the final say, do you think it would work? Thanks again for your feedback - it's helpful in refining what would work and what we should avoid. – tunecedemalis Talk 01:14, 16 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Mmm, I'm sceptical. In practice, I don't think this would work because cleanup tags are not specific. Usually a editor finds a problem article that requires more time than he/she has available, and he/she sticks a cleanup tag on it as a quick fix. The tag is used inconsistently, one editor will use it, another will tend to use another similar one like 'Wikify' or 'multiple issues' or whatever.
Some bot owners identify specific errors, spelling mistakes etc and correct them en masse. This works well if and when the bot script is set up properly and the operation well defined. I'm wondering if your operation (using AWB?) may be like a bad bot run identifying the wrong problems and applying the wrong solutions because it's not based on a well-defined operation. --Kleinzach 01:49, 16 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
It is a true that a bad bot can cause havoc if given the wrong parameters for an inconsistently used tag. I also agree that the cleanup tag is used inconsistently. Both are reasons why a human would need to go through (and thus the value of this team) and provide some level of intelligent triage to determine whether a) there is cleanup that could be done by him/her (reviewing previous discussion, previous editor comments, contacting previous editors to gather clarity) b) a different tag would be more appropriate (I am sure there are many) or c) nothing can be done by him/her and thus that tag should be ignored. I suppose in this way, the project is a meta-cleanup. That is, a cleanup of the cleanup tags. Considering that this is different than a bot (in that there is evaluation of a higher level of complexity), do you still disagree that this project would provide value? – tunecedemalis Talk 04:02, 16 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Well, a human (not AWB/bot process) cleanup of the cleanup tags sounds like a good idea to me. Would you consider calling it a 'service' rather than a 'team'? To be offered to individual projects, rather than imposed on them? I think that kind of approach could generate the kind of goodwill essential for the success of the idea. --Kleinzach 00:31, 17 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I'm glad you see some value in this project and I certainly appreciate all the constructive feedback you've given to help shape and form this project into a workable solution. Your experience helps mitigate some of the anticipated problems so I Thank You! I'm certainly open to calling it a 'service' although I chose the word 'team' because it is catchy. I'm wondering if we could describe the team as a 'service' in the description of the team so as to help generate the goodwill you are describing. What do you think? Thanks again for all your help - it certainly has helped set this team up for better success. – tunecedemalis Talk 01:38, 19 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Responding to your concerns Kleinzach, I think that the vast majority of articles with cleanup tags are articles without anyone actively working on them, often without anyone watching them. Provided that editors in this project are guided to defer to subject experts, the largest dent in the backlog would probably attract no attention whatsoever, let alone controversy. If editors with the Clean Team need expertise to edit a particular article, at the very least they can do what they can with it and then put a more specific tag on it and notify the appropriate wikiprojects. --Gimme danger (talk) 20:41, 16 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
As I've written above, checking and replacing the tags could be done successfully given the right approach. The more I think about it, 'The Cleanup Service' seems the right name for this. --Kleinzach 00:36, 17 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
How about 'The Cleanup Crew'? – tunecedemalis Talk 01:40, 19 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
No, i don't think so. This isn't a TV show. Accuracy is more important than being cute. --Kleinzach 04:28, 25 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Neutral

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  • Comment One way of doing this in a way that both tackles the backlog and allows content specific editing is to encourage editors to use watchlists or categories to find articles in their areas of interest that also have cleanup tags. This is especially helpful if you have contributors with large watchlists. There are also topic specific categories at Articles needing attention.--Gimme danger (talk) 06:07, 16 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, that is new to me. Thanks for the tip! That's a great idea for recruitment. – tunecedemalis Talk 01:41, 19 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Also, Wikipedia:Cleanup volunteers is a great place for new recruits. -- Ϫ 18:41, 16 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Suggestion I suggest reviewing all of the Wikiproject Directory's maintenance groups, and seeing how many inactive and semi-active ones could be merged into a single group. There may be more that aren't listed in the directory: I don't remember seeing Wikipedia:Gnome Week before. And the Cleanup Taskforce shouldn't be marked "historical": it's just {{inactive}}. There's no reason these editors couldn't simply revive it without needing to bother with creating new pages. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:11, 16 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]


The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the project's talk page (if created) or at the WikiProject Council). No further edits should be made to this page.
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