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Templates out of hand

I don't know if this is the place to write this, but it's really been striking me lately that the cleanup templates are getting out of hand. I don't know if anyone's calculated what percentage of WP articles have these tags on them, but it seems to be growing exponentially--presumably because it's much easier to point out that something needs fixing than to actually fix it. There's some justification for a tag like the neutrality one, because it serves as a warning to the user. But there's really no particular reason why users need to be warned that an article needs copy-editing or whatever--they'll notice that soon enough without our telling them.

For the vast majority of cleanup tags, if we really think it's helpful for people to point out work for other people to do, there's no reason why the tag can't be placed on the discussion page--where it can be tied to a discussion of what specifically the tag refers to, and maybe some kind of explanation/apology for why the tagger can't fix the problem themselves. The widespread use of cleanup tags in article space seems to violate one of the basic principles of WP, which is that WP is not supposed to be self-referential. Does this bother anyone else? Nareek (talk) 04:18, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

The proliferation of tags bothers me too. Just today I left the following on a talk page: "it's the whole "lighting a candle is better than cursing the darkneness" concept: how about helping make the page better like the rest of us rather than just throwing tags around?" UnitedStatesian (talk) 04:35, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

We've had this debate before (see for example the section "Proposed policy: Keep cleanup tags on talk pages" on this very Talk page). Tags in articles do have advantages: they prompt people to come in and join the editing fun; they apologise for the poor state of the article and let readers know that it falls short of our standards; and they are more visible and official - nonsense on talk pages can go unchallenged, but when someone puts a tag on an article it's more likely to be scrutinised.—greenrd (talk) 20:11, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

The fundamental concept of Wikipedia is that anyone can write and improve articles. And if that message is not clear enough, that is a concern for the overall design of this website. But if we keep putting tags on some articles and not to others, readers might feel that their contributions to articles lacking tags are less welcome. It might be a good idea to help people understand what they can do to improve an article. But such messages should go on talk pages. -- Kildor (talk) 08:09, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Reviving discussion on tagging guidelines (or, "tags as nags and tags as drags")

This section brings up an important issue that deserves more serious address given current trends, and the above remarks show considerable insight into the problem. Still, I'll make an attempt to elaborate in the interest of seeking progress on a policy/guideline end. (Please note that I'm referring in particular to the cancerous proliferation and enlargement of "multiple issues"-type tags, and not the more limited use of smaller and more informative tags that alert readers to article instability, like "Recently died" and "Current event". Also note that the philosophical perspective underlying my remarks is that of Wikipedia as gift economy.) In a nutshell: The use of tags to top deficient articles does not serve a useful purpose, and on the contrary is counterproductive, both for the vast majority of Wikipedia users, who are non-editor readers, and for good-faith editors who seek to improve articles.

1. Tags as blight. Tags are not merely ugly; they are distracting. The primary objective of any Wikipedia article needs to be to provide information about the article subject as quickly and cleanly as possible. (Corollary: The primary objective of a Wikipedia article is not to promote its own improvement or to point out its problems.) A visitor to a Wikipedia article expects, and has the right to expect, to learn as much about the subject in as short a time as possible. But a large multiple issues tag effectively supplants the article lead with a new, non-article-related lead that is negative in tone, providing the reader with the annoying stumbling block of extra text to parse. (For new or infrequent visitors unfamiliar with wiki process and protocols, this text may be confusing or off-putting: "What does all this have to do with the thing I was trying to look up? I just want to learn about widgets, don't burden me with your problems!" or "Geez, if this is such a bad article, can I really learn anything from it? Maybe I'm at the wrong place. Wikipedia is clearly not a good source of information.") When a reader arrives at a Wikipedia article, they are given the gift of the best shape the article happens to be in at the time. Tags might serve a useful purpose if they told a reader what information, specifically, they should not trust in an article, or what information they ought to ignore, or what information is incomplete and for which additional sources must necessarily be consulted. Some tags actually do this, and such tags are justifiably used when limited to article sections. In the cases I'm concerned about, tags are merely nags. In the real world, no one would tolerate a graffiti artist who used stencils and spray cans to alert the neighborhood to his displeasure with its architectural insufficiencies.
2. Tags as counterproductive to their intended purposes. All too often, when an editor adds a large "multiple issues" tag to the top of an article, the edit is followed by a revert or succession of reverts, and a protracted talk-page battle the crux of which is usually not the issues to which the tags pertain but the tags themselves. So it's clear to me that these types of tags, when used at the tops of articles, are a big energy sink for the system and have a net cost associated with them (meaning by definition that they wind up taking away more than they put in), because they are a friction on the system. The defense of one tag promoter is that placing a tag at the top of a talk page, rather than at the top of an article, is "hiding" the issue. I find this defense to be untenable (and not just because it is a bad-faith recrimination of the good-faith talk process): if talk space cannot be trusted to resolve article issues, what is the purpose of talk space? (Corollary: If talk space has a purpose, then its proper use is to successfully address article issues there.) We will do more to improve articles in the encyclopedia by limiting large tags to talk pages.

To sum up: Large tags are essentially talk content and we should not put up with talk going in the article space, not least for the reason that placing talk content where it belongs will be more beneficial by reducing internal resistance. Robert K S (talk) 08:31, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Your first point is undermined by your acceptance of certain "good" tags, which indicates that your problem isn't so much the strict separation of content and discussion as it is with certain tags you disagree with. Your second just doesn't make sense to me, probably because I'm one of those much-maligned editors who routinely uses tags as part of my workflow. The discussion page is for personal interaction; I'm actually opposed to including tags which pertain to the article page on them, because they distract users from the discussion.

While a cleanup tag may be the equivalent of writing "clean me" with a finger on the back of a dirty van, it's no less of a "blight" than the dirt is. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 08:54, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

My concern is that it's more akin to spray-painting the message on the windshield, given the fights that erupt over the issue. The "good" tags are good because they are content and not discussion: a "Recently dead" tag tells the reader that the article subject is recently dead; and a "this section contains disputed/POV information tag" informs the reader, watch out, political hot zone here, your mileage may vary. By contrast, "This article has multiple issues blah blah blah blah blah" isn't actually informative--it's babycry, a plea for attention rather than subject-related information. Workflow is a non-issue (lists of articles needing improvement by crack cleanup teams can be kept just as easily if long tags are placed on talk pages) and the tags need not interrupt or distract from discussion flow (they can be kept at the top). Given the amount of warring that goes on over these things, and the simplicity of the solution, this seems like a no brainer: give support to a simple guideline that says, "If a multiple issues tag is removed from the article page, it can comfortably reside at the top of a talk page, and business can proceed." Don't forget, it's a community van that everybody likes to drive, whether or not it has been recently washed, so let's not spraypaint the windshield. Robert K S (talk) 09:05, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

But sticking it on the talk page is as obtrusive to discussion as sticking it on the article is to reading the article. Frankly, I don't buy the allegation that use of tags is increasing; I wish I could find a link to the investigation which showed that articles with even a single tag are a distinct minority on the project (less than 10%). If a user wants to bring the tag to talk for discussion then that's fine, but for copyeditors who roam from article to article acting on their first instincts to clean things up it is much faster to be able to do it all from articlespace. As your content/discussion argument is flawed by your acceptance of certain types of tags, the only argument you've got is that they're ugly - but this is subjective and can easily be fixed on either a user- or project-wide basis by changes to the site CSS. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 10:16, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

"But sticking it on the talk page is as obtrusive to discussion as sticking it on the article is to reading the article." When a reader goes to an article, he deserves to have the first things he sees be informative about the article subject. When he goes to an article talk page, he deserves to have the first things he sees be informative about issues related to the article's editing status. "for copyeditors who roam from article to article acting on their first instincts to clean things up it is much faster to be able to do it all from articlespace." The recent decision to deprecate date autoformatting was based on the premise that it is more important to cater to non-editing users than to registered users, because the former make up the greater audience. While I disagreed with the decision because I enjoy having all dates in articles formatted to my preferences, I can accept it out of deference to the greater audience, for whom datelinking serves only a detractive purpose. The case here is identical. The audience for huge "multiple issues tags" is the comparatively smaller audience of (not just active editors, but) intensely proactive editors, and the encyclopedia's article space shouldn't be defaced with tons of non-informative tags for their benefit over the greater benefit of the encyclopedia (whose primary mission is to inform about article subjects, not to inform about itself). "As your content/discussion argument..."--you appear to have ignored the premise of this argument in favor of repeating yourself. Certain tags are at least in part informative about the article subject. Others consist of bringing attention to an article's problems. For the reasons I have outlined it would benefit the encyclopedia to restrict the latter category to talk space when the tags are large and come at the tops of articles. Robert K S (talk) 15:49, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

I randomly browsed 100 articles, and 56 had some kind of tag on it (cleanup, warning, stub etc.). 16 articles had a cleanup tag.... I think all tags should be removed, or at least be moved to the talk page. Or be converted to something less obtrusive, like FA/GA icons. --Kildor (talk) 11:40, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

I repeated this experiment with a sample size of 200, and found 30 articles to have (non-subject-informative) tags at the top (15%) and 10 articles to have cleanup/multiple issues tags (5%). (For more on my methodology, see here.) More interesting research would investigate how long article-topping template tags hang around on an article or how often they result in edit wars, but that reasearch is more involved than I have the tools or time for. Robert K S (talk) 17:53, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

• I very much agree that tagging does not work well at the moment. It is like red-pencil annotations in traditional paper-based editing and does not belong in the main online version which is, de facto, our current best effort. Ideally, there should be a system feature to control this such as a preferences setting which, by default, would suppress editing tags so that ordinary readers are not bothered by them. In the meantime, large header tags should be avoided since, as Robert says, these comments are better as a section on the talk page. There are already systematic templates for use on the talk pages such as to-do lists and project ratings. These ought to be used in preference. Colonel Warden (talk) 13:42, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

• Sorry but some tags are appropriate to the main article. Cleanup is vague and perhaps not needed. Original research, neutrality, citations, etc. Are appropriate to the main space. It lets the reader know that at least one editor has disputed content that is currently on the page and it might be worth their time to visit the talk page to find out why. Things like ref-improve, aren't that big of a deal to a reader. The reader deserves to know if there is some controversy or discussion about content on the page that may or may not be correct. Many people will take the article at face value and not necessarily run to the talk page to check it if there is nothing on the main space indicating any concern over any content. All "clean-up" tags should be moved to the talk page. Any dispute tags should remain on the main page. Editors need to stop looking at this tags as something bad. Just because the article you like has a tag on it you consider bad isn't some reason to edit war. Its a reason to discuss the issue and either fix it or form a consensus.--Crossmr (talk) 01:02, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
  • I largely agree. "Disputed content" and the like say "This content is fundamentally wrong and cannot stand", which is different from saying "This content needs improvement for all these standard various reasons." "Disputed content" tags should be limited to certain individual sections unless the disputed content is in the lead or the article has no sections. For the most part this is how they have been used, and further these tags are actually informative about article content, so these are not the types of tags I'm disputing. My problem is when we have a set of tags that do not speak to article content, tags that essentially say, "This article needs a lot of work"--as if that weren't true for most articles on Wikipedia--"somebody else do it". This type of message is appropriate to the talk space. Somewhere in the proliferation of tags (and their subsequent re-consolidation into the multiple issues tag) the spirit and intent of tags was lost. Tags are now used as a way to make an article scream and to punish the article until it is improved. (How many times does a tag-placer say in talk, "Don't remove the tags until the issues are addressed!") The worst are the tags that state the obvious: "This article needs to be wikified." Really? "This article needs copyediting." You don't say? There is no excuse for placement of such messages in the mainspace rather than in the talk space. It's time to get back to basics. Robert K S (talk) 19:17, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

I agree with the OP. If an article needs tagging to show other editors a particular deficiency, we should do so on the talk page to avoid distracting the reader. There will remain a few cases (e.g. where the article is in serious breach of a major wikipedia policy e.g. WP:NPOV) where we need to alert the reader by tagging the article itself, but for most minor issues the reader would be best served by not being confronted with tags pointing out these issues while they're reading the article itself. It is true that convenience for editors will be slightly diminished, but editors are not the primary audience for an encyclopedia article. --VinceBowdren (talk) 13:03, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

the ones that seem the very must intrusive to me & my first choices to remove would be "orphan"--a bot placed category for articles with three or fewer incoming links that is of no use whatever to any actual reader, and "deadend" for ones with no links to other articles--something which is obvious enough. Sure, these things need to be worked on, but they are not of key importance to understanding. — Preceding unsigned comment added by DGG (talk • contribs) 2008-10-04T22:56:06

To respond to some of the points raised:

"Geez, if this is such a bad article, can I really learn anything from it?" - Yes, that's exactly what we want them to think. We don't want people to think Wikipedia is always right because it isn't. An article with lots of style problems may also have content issues as well. The reverse of this thinking, if we move the tags to the talk page, is: "Wow, this article really sucks, is the whole site like this?" If we have tags indicating we realize the article is crap, people will hopefully realize that crappy articles are not the norm (or at least not supposed to be)

"when an editor adds a large "multiple issues" tag to the top of an article, the edit is followed by a revert or succession of reverts, and a protracted talk-page battle" - Besides the fact that this isn't at all the norm (tags cause unrelated revert wars? what?), moving the tags to the talk page won't solve this, even if it is a problem, though I don't believe it is. I don't think I've ever seen a case where adding a cleanup tag triggers an edit war over something completely unrelated to the tag.

Tags are supposed to be an invitation for readers to improve the article. Despite the text on the main page and the edit button on every page, many people really don't know that they can edit. We need new editors. It would be interesting to know what percentage of editors started editing to fix a problem in an article.

This proposal seems to be almost entirely based on editors' assumptions of what readers are thinking, with no actual data behind it. We should not do such a massive change based on guesses. Mr.Z-man 21:00, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

The proposal is based on a desire to address a blighting trend that counter to its aims does not in most cases improve articles. I disagree with statements like "If we have tags indicating we realize the article is crap, people will hopefully realize that crappy articles are not the norm" and "many people really don't know that they can edit". The main page perpetually shows examples of excellent content and displays visibly the notification that anyone can edit the encyclopedia. The problem isn't that people who want to edit aren't editing. The problem is that editors are placing tags on articles as a lazy substitution for editing. If we want actually good articles, the solution is not to create tags that permit, perpetuate, or prolong bad articles that make excuses for themselves. Robert K S (talk) 17:26, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm afraid I don't understand why we would want to do this. Nobody goes direct to entry Talk pages, they go to the entry page. If I'm looking at an entry and see a template for cleanup on it, that might spur me to want to clean it up, but if the template is on the Talk page, I'll never see it. Little Red Riding Hoodtalk 19:50, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

The primary purpose of a Wikipedia article is to present information about an article subject. Promoting its own improvement should only be a secondary objective of an article, and a message that an article needs improvements, which in virtually all cases are obvious upon reading the article, should not supplant the lead of the article. Robert K S (talk) 17:02, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Are you advocating not putting "citation needed" tags inline, as well? Little Red Riding Hoodtalk 20:52, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Not at all. Robert K S (talk) 04:24, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

My take on this: This all seems to be one editor, Robert K S, who has an absolute hatred of any tags on articles at all. I see in his example here that he is opposed even to the tag inviting readers to contribute sources they may know of. While there may be some tags that are useless on articles ({{COI}} comes to mind), I don't see this discussion actually going anywhere due to the radical views of the proposer. I don't find tags to be a blight, or counterproductive (hint: edit wars are a problem with editors, not tags), and hiding them where no one will ever see them (be it at the bottom of the article or on the talk page) would be counterproductive. Anomie⚔ 10:53, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

No, I am also suspicious of how useful such tags really are. And while I agree with you (Anomie) that I myself don't find tags to be that much of a blight, I think that my perspective (and that of most contributors to this debate) is skewed because we are all active wikipedia editors. I have plenty of experience (from my job as a software tester) of the user's perspective being quite different from a developer's perspective, and I think the same thing is true in this case and it is contributing to misunderstanding of the problem. I'll put the case in a deliberately over-simplified way:

* Wikipedia editors are engaged in the task of improving wikipedia; as such, they find tags useful.

* Wikipedia readers are engaged in the task of finding information in wikipedia (not information about wikipedia); as such, tags can be useful (for example when alerting them to unverified claims) but can also be 'harmful' (irrelevant, ugly and distracting).

* Wikipedia must allow both editors and readers to do their different tasks, through the same interface. It is also important to invite readers to become editors.

* There are many more readers than editors.

* Wikipedia has structures in place to hide editor-related stuff from the reader e.g. each article's talk page.

* Wikipedia has structures to show editor-related stuff to the reader e.g. the citation needed tag, stub warnings.

* Editors often have particular enthusiasms preferences e.g. when members of a particular wikiproject.

* Being an editor can make it difficult to see things from the point of view of a reader.

* Tags placed on an article can be useful to editors but harmful to readers.

* The more prominent a tag, the more effect it has - either useful or harmful.

* Adding a single tag to an article is not all that harmful to the reader.

* However, the more tags there are on an article, the more harmful the effect is to the reader.

* The editor's perspective can easily make an editor amenable to adding a further tag to an article.

* Editors are often willing to add tags to articles, noting the usefulness to editors but not realising the harmful effect on readers.

* Editors actively voice their opinions on wikipedia.

* Readers do not voice their opinions on wikipedia.

* Disagreements between editors are often resolved by a compromise acceptable to all editors in the debate, without particularly taking into account the readers. One example of such a conclusion is the addition of further tags.

* Adding tags can have a harmful effect, but this is rarely taken into account by the editors proposing/adding such tags, nor questioned by other editors.

* Some editor-related information is best placed on the talk page.

* The harmfulness of tags can outweight their usefulness (depending on the subject matter, the relevance of the problem to the reader, the prominence of the tag and other factors).

* Editors naturally have difficulty taking a balanced view of the usefulness/harmfulness of tags they are proposing/adding.

In conclusion: In some cases editor-related information would be better on an article's talk page even though the tag is indeed more useful on the article page. This seems paradoxical, but only from the editor's point of view; once the reader's aims and needs are taken into account it is less mysterious.

This can seem a bit like a cheating argument ("if you disagree you must be misunderstanding it") but it's not meant to be. I do genuinely believe that as editors we have difficulty stepping back from our enthusiastic wiki-editing to see the broader picture which in this case is necessary because of our intrinsic bias. --VinceBowdren (talk) 14:23, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

I can see where these tags would seem unprofessional and a distraction to readers, and have seen several sardonic references to them in the press (ie el Reg) but still value them for their occasional effectiveness as a prod to editors. That said, I've seen a fair number of 6-12 month old ones recently - If they're not going to be acted upon.....

Well, it might make sense to limit the tags in mainspace to just a modified {{cleanup}} and time-sensitive deletion templates, if this does go through. I'm not at all sure it should, or endorsing the concept, but I do want to ask that at least one template in mainspace be retained to point to cleanup messages in talk-space and that deletion templates stay right where they are. Time-sensitive things like {{currentevent}} and (possibly) {{notability}} belong in mainspace as well, for the same reason that the deletion templates quite plainly do (and for the reason that the latter template is often a precursor to deletion). That said, it is too much of a PITA to ask editors to add two tags where once they added one. If you do this, it must be preceded by making a recentchanges bot that adds a modified {{cleanup}} indicating the presence of talk-page cleanup tags to the LEAD of the article in mainspace. Wouldn't hurt to rattle off the names at the bottom of that template in a curt shorthand. MrZaius^talk 01:42, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

• We need the templates to stay on the article pages. WP:Wikipedia is not finished, and where articles aren't as well cited, or complete, or clear, or whatever, as we think they should be, we should warn our readers. It's fair to them, and it takes better care of our reputation. --HughCharlesParker (talk - contribs) 14:09, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

• Kind of funny someone started an statistical analysis of the problem when we have the relevant population at hand. Template:Ambox is, if you will agree, the only such "cleanup box". At present, there are approximately 400k pages which use of the template: Out of ~2.5 million, that is less than 1 out of every 6 articles which have such a template. That is the best number in support of the proponent's position. While MostLinkedTemplates no longer functions (it was turned off), I would suspect that the percentage hasn't risen any due to the number of articles being added, etc etc. Furthering the position that it is unlikely that most articles have these tags on them, the next most-used maintenance template is Template:Fix, which, you seem to be confirming would not be removed. The very first instance that I found (I may have missed one) of a box-template is Template:Unreferenced, with a gracious 150k usages, 6% (1 in 16) of articles. Perhaps you will bring up the case that people use redirects, to which I will reply that there is a bot which dates the tags, and which also changes the tags from their redirect forums to their non-redirected forms (Ie, Template:Unsourced -> Template:Unreferenced).
  The best way I feel, to remove the boxes, is to fix the articles in question. If you think this impossible in some way (that's a lot of articles), then get some help doing it. Or go and help out — I'm willing to bet most articles with a box-tag have a WikiProject about them. I personally and vehemently disagree that they are getting in the way of the content: They are not printed, and I very much doubt they are going on the hard-copy of Wikipedia known as version 1.0 (which, if an article has big problems, it doesn't go on the disc at all, so that's a non issue). Either way, I think you're looking to change something which really doesn't need to have time spent on it changing. Instead, go edit and fix an article with a box on it! --Izno (talk) 02:01, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

• • "Wikipedia is not finished" and "so fix it" are actually arguments against adding tags. If this is not obvious, I can elaborate. Robert K S (talk) 03:23, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

However, that wasn't my entire argument. Further, 'So fix it' and 'WP isn't done' can be used to support both. I merely linked So fix it because that was most appropriate to my overall message of "Fix the pages that have the tags" rather than trying to get the tags removed. --Izno (talk) 03:39, 12 October 2008 (UTC)