List of Wikipedia's "bad pages" categories - for purposes of filtering

[Jesse Weinstein]

Wikipedia, while hosting vast piles of steaming c**p, and while currently too unbalaced between new content coming in and people reviewing it, has made a lot of efforts to at least mark lots of the less than good content that it still hosts.  Below, I list many of the Categories (present on CZ, too) that classify this mess.

My proposal is that, at least for many of these categories, we make a single decision on whether to keep or delete everything in the category, then implement this decision in the refresh software, so it simply won't refresh pages marked with those categories.  That will help us a lot in filtering out much of the bad stuff currently in the dumps.  If people are interested, we can copy this list the pilot wiki and discuss it there.  I'll make regular edits to this post to update it from any changes.

*[[Category:Wikipedia_cleanup_categories]] - a good overview of these categories.

*[[Category:Possible copyright violations]] - this should probably be *delete in full* - it's not worth our time to go through this.
*[[Category:Suspected hoax articles]] - also, probably delete; not worth our time
*[[Category:Articles which may be unencyclopedic]] - if a Wikipedian thinks it's unencyclopedic, I doubt we want it; in any case it's a pretty small category (64 when I checked just now)
*[[Category:Biographies without real biographical information]] - small, but probably deletable
*[[Category;Uncategorised films]] - depending on our film standards, we could probably toss most of this category.

*[[Category:Articles which may contain original research]] - we'll have to look at this one.  It's big, so if we can get rid of all of them, that may be good...
*[[Category:Wikipedia articles incorporating text from the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica]] - the ones from 1911; sadly ,we do need to look through these, because many have been fixed, but many have not.
*[[Category:Wikipedia articles needing factual verification]] - this may be hard for us to deal with without the necessary experts...

There are lots more, but here's a sampling... Let's get decisions made on thise, and get the things removed.

[Zachary Pruckowski]

Thanks Jesse, that's a major help to us.

Insofar as the 1911 (and also most other PD-sourced) articles go, I'd almost want to aim to redo a lot of them straight from the source, unless the WP improvements are very good.

[niais]

Can I make a suggestion? I think we should put the above list out on the CZ-l list for  - maybe not a vote, but for comments. I think it's about time that we at least start trimming the things which are really just filler. Otherwise, when we go "public" we'll have some very small number of CZ improved articles lost in the sea of WP copy. Which at least if I pretend to be an outsider just seems silly. If the comments are supportive, then I think we should incorporate it into policy and go ahead. Of course, it isn't obvious how things get incorporated into policy so maybe we should just give it a try. Comments on CZ-L, then a posting on the notice board about what the consensus seems to be. What to you guys think?

Sarah Tuttle

[Oliver Hauss]

I'd warn about being too quick deleting suspected hoaxes. A lot of them probably are, but I've seen plenty of articles on German Wikipedia being submitted to AfD as a suspected fake solely due to the submission being done by someone without the hint of an idea of the topic at issue in the article. Be it that it was a drug with their sometimes ridiculous-sounding names, be it that it was something like theoretical physics which to the layperson can sound like Star Trek technobabble posing as something real.

[Zachary Pruckowski]

I'd warn about being too quick deleting suspected hoaxes. A lot of them probably are, but I've seen plenty of articles on German Wikipedia being submitted to AfD as a suspected fake solely due to the submission being done by someone without the hint of an idea of the topic at issue in the article. Be it that it was a drug with their sometimes ridiculous-sounding names, be it that it was something like theoretical physics which to the layperson can sound like Star Trek technobabble posing as something real.

This is why we have experts.  I'd hope a physics expert would be good at diagnosing hand-waving and actual science.  Either they may have heard of it, or they can make sense of it after casting an augury (a Google search).

[Oliver Hauss]

This is why we have experts.  I'd hope a physics expert would be good at diagnosing hand-waving and actual science.  Either they may have heard of it, or they can make sense of it after casting an augury (a Google search).

Yes, but Jesse suggested they are not worth our time and should be dealt with summarily. In fact, I've been arguing for quite some time to have stuff like AfDs being handed over to people with at least some interest in a topic, such as Wikiprojects, on de:Wikipedia for some time.

[David Goodman]

Anyone can put anything in a Wikipedia category. I could put [[Category:Articles which may be unencyclopedic]] on about half of Wikipedia, including many articles we might want to use as a basis for something real. Some Copyright tags are added by a bot. I would not base anything on a decision by a WP bot. The 1911 EB, and the old Catholic Encyc, etc have generally been partially modified, and are, as you say, non-trivial.

If we decided not to cover some subjects, however, then we could certainly go by categories.