Wikipedia talk:Mistagged BLP cleanup

Unreferenced Biographies of Living Persons

This page is within the scope of WikiProject Unreferenced Biographies of Living Persons, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of biographies of living persons on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Unreferenced Biographies of Living PersonsWikipedia:WikiProject Unreferenced Biographies of Living PersonsTemplate:WikiProject Unreferenced Biographies of Living PersonsUnreferenced Biographies of Living Persons articles

Sections

This is an excellent idea but could it be broken into alpabetical sections, both for finding & removing items. Otherwise the "A"s will get done, but not the "T"s. The initial count was 16750 btw, with a handful of redlinks. Johnbod (talk) 23:34, 27 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Refresh

I just did a refresh to purge ones that had already been done. We are down to 14087 now. Lets keep the momentum going. Gigs (talk) 14:35, 9 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

hey

Hey, what's up with this? Could someone make a status report at wt:URBLP? And perhaps explain how this works, if it is still going? Me, i tried an item here and find the article was already referenced / there's no BLP unsourced tag. --doncram (talk) 20:34, 9 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Sometimes items are updated by people not working through this page. As far as an update, the only thing I can tell you is too look at the history to see how many have been taken care of. But thanks for your interest. Maurreen (talk) 07:41, 10 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I can run the list again to refresh it. Gigs (talk) 18:11, 12 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Gigs. Maurreen (talk) 18:26, 12 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Items that shouldn't be on list?

Should we remove items from the list that don't remotely resemble having any source? If so, is there a way to make them less likely to be on the next iteration of the list?

Some I might try to fix. But I'm not remotely interested in a Honduran soccer player with a relatively common name, for example. Maurreen (talk) 06:36, 14 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I remove ones that are actually unsourced and that I have no intention in sourcing, from this list at least. Another project or effort can pick those up. When I do a script refresh, I work from the existing list, instead of generating a new list of tagged BLPs. This way ones that we leave tagged do not get put back in the list. This effort is about tag validity more than finding sources, though I do wind up getting sucked into finding sources on some of them. Gigs (talk) 13:27, 14 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

That sounds about right. The difficulty comes with articles with external links but no sources - is it best to change them in to references, or just leave them? Alzarian16 (talk) 15:20, 14 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Gigs -- Thanks.

Alzarian16, I think that could go either way. When relevant enough, it's probably useful but not necessary to change them. Maurreen (talk) 15:25, 14 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

No more A's

Gigs finished off the A's. Yay for us! Maurreen (talk) 04:08, 15 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Excellent! With Z gone as well, there's only 24 more letters to go. Alzarian16 (talk) 10:04, 15 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

That's great! Maurreen (talk) 22:04, 15 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Done all the X's also. I find it quite motivating when there is only a bite-size amount involved. Regards, SunCreator ^(talk) 14:39, 20 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Nice, thanks. Gigs (talk) 14:58, 20 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Good work! Maurreen (talk) 04:29, 21 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Making a new list

Hey guys, I'm making a supplementary list of articles that are tagged as UBLPs and use {{reflist}} and have at least one <ref> tag. Ill save it here when I am done, if that's alright. It should be in a few hours. Tim1357 (talk) 21:44, 24 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Done Tim1357 (talk) 21:51, 24 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. Maurreen (talk) 22:03, 24 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Nice. You might also look at <references /> or <references/> constructs as well. I've added section breaks to that list to make it easier to work. —Joshua Scott (LiberalFascist) 02:39, 25 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Great! Maurreen (talk) 08:31, 29 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Explination of DASHBot's edit

Hey there, I wrote a script to remove all pages that are no longer tagged as WP:UBLPs. I accidentally updated the page using my bot's account instead of my own. Very sorry! Tim1357 (talk) 19:43, 25 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

No problem, thanks for the help! —Joshua Scott (LiberalFascist) 01:18, 26 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Mistagged BLP cleanup/Articles with ref tags

I think we should make Wikipedia:Mistagged BLP cleanup/Articles with ref tags the "main" list. It's more up to date, and the rate of mistagging is much higher. It's definitely more low hanging fruit than the big list we are working from now, which includes every one tagged unreferenced that has an external link or ref section. I think we should retain the big list on a subpage, and go back to it once the tighter list is done. What do you all think? Gigs (talk) 13:30, 28 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I would agree. It does mean that we might miss articles with general references or useful external links, but it also reduces the number of articles on the list that link to unreliable or non-independent sites. Alzarian16 (talk) 14:18, 28 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

OK, I've done it. It's kind of sad to see the A and Z categories come back, but the work should go much faster on this new list with less false positives. When this list is done we can purge the big list and restore it here. I left the history on this page so that we can keep all the work history in one place. Gigs (talk) 00:34, 29 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Great idea. Thanks, all. Maurreen (talk) 08:31, 29 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This is much better! I just did 27 and found only one false positive in the whole lot (plus three where the tag had already been removed). With this in place we should deal with this much quicker. Alzarian16 (talk) 11:27, 29 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

194!

I just fixed Otto Vogl. It had the "no refs" tag, although it had 194 references. Maurreen (talk) 06:19, 30 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This must be a record! One thing, though: a lot of those 194 are to other Wikipedia pages. Alzarian16 (talk) 09:37, 30 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, I didn't look that closely. Maurreen (talk) 13:05, 30 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There was no references when the tag was applied. It looks like with these new database lists and the activity of many willing editors this unreferenced BLP task is now working nicely. Regards, SunCreator ^(talk) 13:16, 30 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I expect "no refs" is usually true when put on. But I'm amazed sometimes when it is left on. Maurreen (talk) 23:30, 30 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Well, related point here perhaps is that it maybe left on because there is nothing to indicate it can be removed. I even get editors ask me if it should be removed. Regards, SunCreator ^(talk) 00:13, 1 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that a lot of users don't know about removing the tags. However, the link you posted refers to {{BLP sources}}, which is slightly different as it's more subjective whereas the unreferenced is fairly clear cut. Alzarian16 (talk) 14:45, 1 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Not bio

I just removed a tag from Brantford Collegiate Institute. Maurreen (talk) 19:38, 2 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Just took one off Walter W. Waters, who died in 1959. — Joshua Scott (LiberalFascist) 00:51, 3 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

That's funny. :) Maurreen (talk) 06:40, 3 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Getting there

Josh has finished off several sections in the past 24 hours. :) Maurreen (talk) 08:46, 3 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Now I've actually started using AWB to find them. I got the full list of unreferenced BLPs from the category, then started a find-replace for {{BLP unreferenced}} -> {{BLP sources}}, while auto-skipping the ones that don't have a <ref> tag. I review the references to see if there are any reliable ones, and then I execute the replace if I find at least one reliable source. I'm finding about 1-2% of the articles in the category are tagged incorrectly, so I anticipate removing the tag from about 2-3000 articles that way. Only about half the articles I fixed are actually on this list, so I think there are a lot of new editors adding references, and not removing the tag. I've removed about 100 tags using this method in the last 2 days. I anticipate the hit rate increasing after I get out of the A and B articles. — Joshua Scott (LiberalFascist) 15:40, 6 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The problem I have with that method is that you encounter many that have poor sources? What do you do in such a case as Ralph Brill? Do you {{BLP unreferenced}} -> {{BLP sources}}, leave it, or something else? Regards, SunCreator ^(talk) 16:18, 6 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I wouldn't change that one (I wouldn't find it either, since there's no ref tag). To clarify, I'm still checking the sources before making the change, I'm mainly just using AWB to find possibly mis-tagged articles. If there are only primary sources, I skip it - no need to make controversial changes with AWB. — Joshua Scott (LiberalFascist) 16:33, 6 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Feel free to review the changes I've made, and provide feedback. Most of the recent ones are the AWB changes I mentioned above. — Joshua Scott (LiberalFascist) 16:39, 6 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Gigs has finished off the "A" section! Maurreen (talk) 20:19, 7 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Nicely done! --Joshua Scott (LiberalFascist) 05:08, 8 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The C section is done, thanks to Alzarian16, and all the others who contributed! 33,262 left in unreferenced BLPs. --Joshua Scott (LiberalFascist) 12:25, 13 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Weird tags 1

Carl Oglesby is one of my favourite mis-tags yet. A full {{BLP unsourced}} tag for one unsourced section! Alzarian16 (talk) 13:01, 5 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]