Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Unreferenced articles/Archive 5

November 2023 update

Happy November, party people! I hope everyone is doing well.

• Headline: We have cleared 2970 articles between September and November. The total number of articles tagged as unreferenced is below 117,000 for the first time since I have been keeping track. For perspective, there were 135,240 articles in November 2022. That's a decrease of 18,242 articles in one year - a huge accomplishment!! (As always, please clap.) If we continue on this trajectory, we will be below 100,000 by this time next year.

• Highlights: August and September 2007 are at last in the dustbin of history where they belong.

• Low-hanging fruit: October 2007 is hovering at a tantalizing 106. If anyone has a passion for Sligo Intermediate Football Championships, have I got the category for you.

• High-hanging fruit: Everyone's favourite BFC (Big Friendly Category) December 2009 is a comely 16,017 articles as of this writing - fewer calories but just as much body as the original. September 2013 and 2020 continue to vex me with the piles of mass-created stubs that likely do not mean the general notability criteria. More worthwhile, June 2019 has hundreds and hundreds of unreferenced sports articles. Is anyone involved with WikiProject Sports and would be interested in taking a look?
• Proposal - If anyone is taking a batch of articles that do not meet criteria to keep to AfD or applying a lot of PRODs at once, please make a note of it here so that other URA volunteers can either endorse deletion/merging or pitch in to shape up the article (see the work on Kerry Corner with @Tutwakhamoe for what I humbly believe is a good example of this).
• Collaboration - Our editor in arms @Thebiguglyalien has revived Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub improvement. I think this would be an excellent opportunity to have a joint campaign (assuming someone over there knows how to put together a campaign); alternatively, I think getting a little profile in the Signpost about the (active) Wiki Fix-Up Projects (see the homepage for a list) would be a great boost for both projects' project-wide profiles.
• Results: November 2013 narrowly edged out December 2013, 405 to 407 articles. Happy Scorpio season to all those who observe.
• New challenge: No ties at this update but it would be great if someone could figure out how to put a date on all those 'undated' unreferenced tags - they are really cramping my spreadsheet style. If you can do this, you will be rewarded with a rare, highly coveted picture of my cat Jellybean in a Santa hat. Wowza.

Have a fantastic rest of the year - the next update will be in 2024! Happy editing Kazamzam (talk) 23:15, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

Love it Kazamzam, thanks. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 16:28, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

Challenge

Why do we still allow unreferenced articles to exist in 2024? Enough. I challenge myself to make Category:Articles lacking sources from January 2024 and onwards empty. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 04:46, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

Greetings @CactiStaccingCrane - Thank you for doing this challenge. While the bulk of my wikipedia time is for WP:Orphan, I do like to visit this wikiproject from time-to-time.

• Within List of xxxx articles, these are generally easy to find & add sources, especially the older ones. Mainly because those lists have many wikilinked articles.

1. For a mix of old and newer articles: Category:All articles lacking sources, and select Li section
2. For old articles, Category:Articles lacking sources by month, and choose a specific month-year
3. With Petscan tool, filter for combined categories

Both WP Orphan and WP Unref project have a number of people working to tag articles, and fewer working to improve those tagged articles, hence the backlog. So thank you for helping. Regards, JoeNMLC (talk) 16:07, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

@CactiStaccingCrane: You are an inspiration! I am also in awe of what fellow Wikipedians are accomplishing during this challenge.

A few years ago, perhaps in 2019, I attempted to revive WikiProject Houston, but instead I found there was no collaborative work being done, so I petitioned to deactivate the WikiProject. What I had hoped to do as a collaboration was examine every Houston stub article, find inline citations for articles that had none, improve the sources and improve the articles to Start-Class for as many articles as possible, then repeat the process for Houston Start-Class articles. I re-started this task on my own, and I am about two-thirds of the way through the Houston stubs: removing tags and re-rating articles when appropriate, and tagging unsourced articles. Next I will find sources for those I tagged. After that, I will see how many articles I can improve to Start-Class. Where notability is difficult to establish, those are candidates for merge proposals.

Oldsanfelipe2 (talk) 17:32, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

January 2024

Happy New Year, party people! I hope everyone is doing swimmingly.

• Headline: We cleared 2784 articles between November and January! It is a less than the 2970 articles cleared from September to November 2023 but I'm attributing that to decreased editing during the holidays. Nevertheless, please clap.)

• Highlights: October 2007 has decreased by 98.11%! What!

• Low-hanging fruit: November 2007 is hovering at an enticing 22 articles left. I don't know about you, but I'm feeling 22.
• Announcements: Editor-in-arms @Altamel will hopefully be doing the annual update of the historical data in mid-February. I think we can definitely kick October and November into the dustbin of history where they belong by then with concerted effort.

• High-hanging fruit: Everyone's favourite BFC (Big Friendly Category) December 2009 is a statuesque 15,516 articles as of this writing - family-friendly but built for speed. The other high-hanging fruit are what I'm calling the Frustrating Five (name open for revision): February 2016 (1046), April 2019 (1397), May 2019 (2500), June 2019 (5201), and September 2020 (1494). As always, they vex me. Furthermore, editor-in-arms @CactiStaccingCrane has already declared a mission to get January 2024 to zero and keep it there. Godspeed.
• Proposal - The Wikipedia:WikiProject Fungi/Lichen task force folks have a newsletter that gets sent out to the project members who opt in. Would anyone be interested in receiving something like this?
• Collaboration - Trying to figure out the aforementioned pitch for the Signpost, stay tuned.
• Results: Someone got rid of all the undated tags, wow! Ask and ye shall receive! There would be a photo but a) no one claimed sweet victory and b) my cat had to go to the vet today for stomach issues and I would feel bad tormenting Jellybean further.
• New challenge: July and August 2012 are tied for 599 articles. To make up for the lack of Santa!Jellybean, the grand prize for the next challenge is a picture of Jellybean in a St. Patrick's Day hat AND bowtie. Gadzooks. This is how you adjust for inflation, Jerome.

Have a fantastic start of the year - the next update will be in March! Happy editing! Kazamzam (talk) 23:15, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

Technical error

Just a heads up here, our main page is bricked due to too many parser function (and template) calls – see WP:EXPENSIVE. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 16:53, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Now resolved. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 12:14, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

Sorting by topic

Hello, I came here because of the RFC concerning the unreferenced article. I wonder if there is a way to sort all of the articles by topics? Right now I can see articles being sorted by dates - and then by topics. Do we have an option to sort every unreferenced articles by topics and not dates? Thank you very much! ✠ SunDawn ✠ (contact) 04:28, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Greetings @SunDawn - at Category:All articles lacking sources there is a topics filter. Regards, JoeNMLC (talk) 04:51, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Thank you, this will be very helpful to me. I will add references in topics that I understand well. Have a good day! ✠ SunDawn ✠ (contact) 08:36, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

SunDawn, thank you so so much for helping with the project! After dealing with Category:Articles lacking sources from January 2024 I would focus more on citing spaceflight articles. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 11:14, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Backlog drive

Please help test out a mock backlog drive at Wikipedia:WikiProject Unreferenced articles/Test backlog drive. Your feedback on the page is greatly appreciated. Courtesy ping to @Kazamzam. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 14:41, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

@CactiStaccingCrane: Isn't the part about requiring addressing other cleanup tags a bit out of the scope of this project? ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 15:19, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

True I guess. But I think that this is usually what I will do in practice before citing, especially for content-wide issues such as adverts and spams. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 15:22, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Agree with @ARandomName123's point - addressing issues such as orphan status, copyright violations, COI, etc. is beyond the scope of a backlog drive specifically about adding one (1) inline citation. That could be worth extra points perhaps but shouldn't be part of the required criteria. Kazamzam (talk) 15:24, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for starting the backlog test. I disagree that we have to AFD/PROD the article if we can't find any source. If we can't find one, isn't it better to "leave" it to other editors who might have better way to find references to do that? Will the progress be tracked by bots or we have to self-report articles we fix? Thank you. ✠ SunDawn ✠ (contact) 15:22, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

@SunDawn - agreed that AfD/PROD might not be the best option BUT it would likely for editors to know that someone has tried and failed to find sources. After how many times do we give up?

In terms of reporting, I know that the Asian Month competition has a submission portal where articles are assessed by a bot but these have to be submitted by the user so a bit of both. Kazamzam (talk) 15:25, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

I think leaving a dummy edit might work to let other editors know someone has already tried to find a source. imo, if a second editor also can't find a source, it could probably be sent to AfD or PROD. ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 15:29, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

I think it should be sent to this talk page for centralization. If there is too many requests then we could make a new sub page for that. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 15:30, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

It's really due to an editor's judgement because a significant percentage of articles in my experience with working with the backlog will need to get PRODed. If an article has a reasonable chance for being notable then of course they are encouraged to let others in the WikiProject know. The progress bar will be tracked automatically by category count (built-in) and the result will be tallied up, ideally everyday but could be once/twice a week if we don't have enough people. That's why I have made a requirement to add a specific edit summary. Participating and maintaining the drive should be as effortless as possible. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 15:30, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

In terms of points, it is simple. Count the number of articles sourced, excluding AfDs/PRODs. Extra 0.5 points if you managed to clean up the remaining clean up templates, extra 0.5 if the article is fully cited. The extra points are significant enough to warrant some attention, but not too high so that it would distract from the drive's goal. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 15:33, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Using Twinkle to remove tags should also be allowed. It leaves a consistent edit summary, and there's no need to go back to the backlog page to copy-paste the message ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 15:33, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Something I'm concerned about is the quality of referencing. As you noted, we need to be wary of mirror sites, using the topic's official website as a source, predatory journals, sites like Lulu.com (I hate Lulu.com so much it's giving me an ulcer), etc. We can't give people points/barnstars for doing a quick, sloppy job, and I think the only way to confirm that this isn't happening is for human oversight of the references - doable, but likely those editors checking won't have much time to participate themselves.

Another annoying but smaller note is when people put the inline citation before the period - pet peeve of all time. I don't want to copyeditor guild to get on our case because people are doing a terrible job and slapping a URA banner on their edits. Maybe something similar to NPP's tutorial would be helpful here.

Final thought: there is an edit summary that I use every time for a referencing edit that would be helpful in addition to a banner on the talk page. Can we brainstorm something like this? Very excited to see this getting some motion!! Kazamzam (talk) 15:32, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

iirc, there's a bot that automatically moves the period to before the inline cite. ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 15:34, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

1. Yes, you are correct. IMO there should be more improvements toward Wikipedia:WikiProject Unreferenced articles/Hints and tips by adding a reasonably reliable source database for common unreferenced article topics and common strategies towards finding RS. Oversighting over every single edits can cause the drive's momentum to slow down, so I think we should AGF towards editors for doing the right thing and perform random checks on every editors every once a while. If Special:RecentChanges or Special:RelatedChanges can be configured for this, that would be very helpful.
2. WP:AWB or WP:JWB combined with regex can take care of that. Of course we should mention this in the detailed instructions section as well.
3. The first edit towards an article should always be "Add references during Wikipedia:WikiProject Unreferenced articles/Test backlog drive". That is good enough to advertise the drive and project.

CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 15:39, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

I'm gonna clean up a few articles in the backlog and test out the drive page to see what's missing. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 16:02, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Looking good now. There are three things we need to do now before the Great Backlog Drive:

• Actually finishing up the backlog and see if the page is ergonomic enough
• Improve sourcing tips
• Devise ways to advertise/get new editors to join in

CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 16:43, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Advertisements could probably be through the standard routes: Messages to members of the project, that message thing at the top of watchlists, etc. Depending on how long this takes to set up, we could try to get something in the Signpost as well. Also, have we decided on a way to track individual editor's progress yet? ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 16:48, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

We could probably get something to the Signpost though it is likely that we need to contact the editor-in-chief beforehand, JPxG (not pinged). The 'real' backlog drive I envision be from July-December 2023 (working from new to old because recent sources are easier for editors outside this project to find), which total up to 3153 articles.

About tracking editor's progress, I will volunteer for doing that. Because everyone is using the same edit summary (hopefully speaking) it should be easy for me to find edits that is linked to the drive. The more common way is to ask the editors to put links to the drive page but I think it might not be ideal for editors. Let's see which approach is more ideal in this test backlog drive. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 16:58, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Pertinent question for scoring - do more reference earn more points? I just finished sourcing Hadès, a French short-range ballistic missile system, with four different sources. It's a long article so there's more to work with. Should there be some consideration for the original length of the article and how much was added to it? This is also tricky because so many of these articles are 1-3 line stubs. Kazamzam (talk) 16:49, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

That's a pretty tricky question. I don't want to overcomplicate the scoring system and keep it simple, but obviously, 5 sources are much more effort than 2. We should have some way to encourage editors to do so or even develop these stubs into fully-fledged articles. IMO the best way to deal with this is not with points but with a "Hall of Fame" of some sorts for recognizing special achievements. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 16:52, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

In some cases, an uncontroversial blar/merge might be performed. Should this be mentioned in the backlog drive page, and should this earn points? ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 17:32, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

I don't know to be honest. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 17:34, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

The good thing about this backlog drive is that it will go on for a while - I'm guessing about a month. What is "uncontroversial" is subjective so I think the guidelines could suggest that editors put the merge tag on with a discussion/rationale for why they think it should be merged/deleted and after a week, make the merge. If the merge is successful (and therefore removes an unreferenced article from the tally), points are awarded. Kazamzam (talk) 17:35, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

This is after all a test drive to iron out major issues before the much bigger backlog drive, so yeah, don't feel too stressed out about awarding points correctly. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 17:38, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

I'm currently creating a systematic mailing list for the drive at Wikipedia:WikiProject Unreferenced articles/Mailing list based from Wikipedia:WikiProject Unreferenced articles/Volunteers. This mailing list is not redundant with /Volunteers because some people might want to opt-out from the mailing list. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 14:24, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

Trouble at British Oceanographic Data Centre

It has been 2 days and I still have not found an independent source that mentions the British Oceanographic Data Centre. Normally I would just PROD it but the BODC has a lot of primary source coverage in journals and it seems that I have not look hard enough. Could somebody here help find a reliable secondary source for the org? CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 08:13, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

I have added some, but I'm not exactly sure if they are independent. Jeraxmoira🐉 (talk) 09:54, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

Thanks a lot, CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 14:17, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

Added some as well + the official website. That being said, I don't think Helen Snaith is the head of BODC - she seems to be a senior scientist, or so my search results tell me. Kazamzam (talk) 14:19, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

Fresh barnstars

• 
  1 article cited
• 
  5 articles cited
• 
  10 articles cited
• 
  25 articles cited
• 
  50 articles cited
• 
  100 articles cited
• 
  200 articles cited
• 
  300 articles cited
• 
  500 articles cited
• 
  750 articles cited

What do you think about these barnstars? These barnstars are meant for the upcoming drive, where each tier corresponds to a certain level of uncited articles cited. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 16:51, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

@CactiStaccingCrane: Not going to lie, they aren't the best, though that may be because I'm not used to a hexagonal shape. The curly brackets are a bit cramped, and the markup is a bit funky.

There was a planned backlog drive for WikiProject Reliability that never really happened, so maybe we could take some stuff from there if you want? It's at User:Cremastra/drive draft. ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 17:50, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

Not that I'm opposed to new barnstars though. ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 17:51, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

I think it is better to call them badges rather than barnstars. I want to show a gradual and logical progression in the badges instead of the chaotic selection of barnstars. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 00:25, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Oh, yeah sure, that sounds fine. ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 00:28, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

I love love love the inline citation system as a badge/barnstar/whatever you want to call it. Personally I think the [1] is the best of them all and the rest gets too cluttered - I would just increase the number as needed. I like the hexagons but agree about probably not calling them barnstars because that's a very specific and well-branded image. Kazamzam (talk) 00:59, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Agreed too! I will try to make a more subtle badge system now... CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 02:30, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

• 
  1 article cited
• 
  5 articles cited
• 
  10 articles cited
• 
  25 articles cited
• 
  50 articles cited
• 
  100 articles cited
• 
  200 articles cited
• 
  300 articles cited
• 
  500 articles cited
• 
  750 articles cited
• 
  Top 1 of the drive

ARandomName123 and Kazamzam, here's my new badge design. Do you like it? CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 13:08, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

Sure, that seems better, thanks! ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 13:42, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

Definitely! My coworker said they reminded him a little of the Imperial logo from Star Wars (it's a compliment from him).

In terms of the final badge for the top 1 of the drive, what number would you imagine putting there? I might even replace the number with something like a gold star or a medal, etc. It would be a bit odd to go 1-10 and then 1023, for example. Also I think most drives have a first, second, and third place so it might be worthwhile to do something like a gold-silver-bronze badge, if possible. Kazamzam (talk) 14:32, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

Tell your coworker that I thanks him a lot for the compliment! I really do appreciate it as it is the first time I work with vector graphics.

Let me make a textured gold, silver and bronze version of the badges... CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 14:40, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

sort by page views?

There are some unreferenced articles that are consistently getting over 15000 views every month yet still being unreferenced. Is there a list of the most viewed unreferenced articles or could we get one? 115.188.140.167 (talk) 19:19, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Greetings @IP user 115.188.140.167, I ran a Pageviews request. Here are results, in a plain text format. The request defaulted to 20,000 article limit for performance and I did not want to download all those articles, so I did a simple copy-paste of the first 20 only.

https://pageviews.wmcloud.org/massviews/?platform=all-access&agent=user&source=category&range=latest-20&subjectpage=0&subcategories=0&sort=views&direction=1&view=list&target=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:All_articles_lacking_sources

Category:All articles lacking sources 12/26/2023 - 1/15/2024

• Daily average

Totals 17,391 pages 1,435,191 68,342

1. À 16,042 — 764 / day
2. List of dialling codes in Germany 12,515 — 596 / day
3. 2006 PDC World Darts Championship 7,682 — 366 / day
4. 2002–03 NBA season 7,662 — 365 / day
5. 2005 World Junior Ice Hockey Championships rosters 6,747 — 321 / day
6. 1998 African Cup of Nations 6,491 — 309 / day
7. 1982 NBA Finals 5,964 — 284 / day
8. 1999–2000 NBA season 5,942 — 283 / day
9. 2005 PDC World Darts Championship 5,485 — 261 / day
10. List of Absolutely Fabulous characters 5,352 — 255 / day
11. The Bill (series 20) 5,322 — 253 / day
12. List of barons in the peerages of Britain and Ireland 4,961 — 236 / day
13. AFI's 100 Years...100 Passions 4,905 — 234 / day
14. Anne of Green Gables: The Continuing Story 4,583 — 218 / day
15. Adult standards 4,297 — 205 / day
16. 1959 African Cup of Nations 4,275 — 204 / day
17. 2015 Pac-12 Football Championship Game 4,079 — 194 / day
18. Balumama 4,000 — 190 / day
19. Bec de corbin 3,949 — 188 / day
20. 1984–85 NBA season 3,895 — 185 / day

Using this category at Massviews/Pageviews should be what you are looking for. I do not know how (or if possible) to restrict the request to the first 1,000 instead of 20,000 default. And it's possible to "look back" to an different time window instead of the default. Regards, JoeNMLC (talk) 21:03, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Damn, I didn't expect some articles getting millions of views a day would be completely unreferenced. ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 21:57, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

@ARandomName123 - I add a Dash between the numbers above to clarify. Yes, there are two numbers, a plain text list. The first number is pageviews during 12/26/2023 - 1/15/2024. Cheers, JoeNMLC (talk) 22:13, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Oh, the numbers seem much more reasonable now. Thanks for clearing it up! ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 22:16, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Dinosaur hunting

What's the oldest article that you've found unreferenced? Not sure if it's a personal best but Hughie Critz was unreferenced since June 2005. Woof. Kazamzam (talk) 17:33, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

Oh man, I can't recal any specific ones right now but yeah I've come across cases like that too.★Trekker (talk) 21:52, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

WP:FEB24 page is finished

I just finished creating the page for our backlog drive 10 days later. @Kazamzam, how should the drive advertises itself? CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 09:16, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

@CactiStaccingCrane: Thanks a lot for taking the time to organize this drive! There are three ways to spread the word: firstly, you've already added a mention in the administrators' newsletter, which is a great start. Secondly, you can request a watchlist notice at MediaWiki talk:Watchlist-messages. They can display any watchlist notice for only seven days, so my suggestion is to request it on 22 January, and it'll stay visible until 1 February. The third option is promoting through a mass message. To do this, you'll need subscribers; you can use any relevant subscription list to send out a mass message. You can request mass message delivery at WT:MMS or simply message me. Feel free to ask if you have any questions! – DreamRimmer (talk) 12:02, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

Thank you so much for the compliment! I've already made a mailing list at Wikipedia:WikiProject Unreferenced articles/Mailing list and sorted out the names. Everyone on that list is active on Wikipedia for at least once a month. I'm not sure about what to write so that people would come to the drive though... Could you help me doing so? CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 14:06, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

@CactiStaccingCrane: I have prepared an invitation message here. Could you please take a look and let me know if any improvements are needed? I'm thinking of sending it now to get some participants before the drive starts. What do you think? – DreamRimmer (talk) 15:17, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

Wait a sec, let me adjust the theme color a bit... CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 15:19, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

@DreamRimmer Done! I made the changes so that the notice would fit the theme of the drive better. Thank you so much for your help! CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 15:24, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

It looks good. You are really skilled at HTML and CSS. Ready to send? – DreamRimmer (talk) 15:30, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

Yes! CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 15:32, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

Done, checked a few random pages, and it looks like it sent correctly. – DreamRimmer (talk) 15:44, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

You're doing good work! As a suggestion, I'd recommend using a shortcut less generic than FEB24 though. -Kj cheetham (talk) 16:23, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

Well, that's my mistake. I want that shortcut to be easy to type and memorable, and "February 2024" is the first thing that came to my mind. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 16:24, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

• I wouldn't have published this yet because I am concerned that it's not finished and there are still issues to work out. I'm disappointed that this went out before there was an opportunity for project members and affiliates to give feedback because I don't think it's ready at all. For example:

1) What is this progress tracker and why does it have a set number of articles and participants? The article number should be the total number of articles tagged as unreferenced.

1.1) The progress bar shouldn't even be visible until February 1st.

2) The categories with progress bars for July 2023 should be removed as we are not focusing specifically or exclusively on these categories and they don't represent the be all, end all of progress for the drive. Furthermore, the progress trackers do not matter until the drive begins so showing the progress since January 20th is confusing and unhelpful.

3) The "easy-to-cite" article section is not necessarily correct and should be removed. Those are the articles that get more views; this does not correlate with being easier to find independent, reliable, verifiable sources.

4) There is still a "more?" bullet-point in the 'Some tricks' section. This should have been removed before it was distributed to other editors via MediaWiki-talk.

5) No discussion about being wary of mirror sources, how to reference properly (using the reflist template; the reference section goes before the external links section but after see also; the sfn template), etc.

6) "And of course, don't try to repeatedly doing anything stupid" <-- grammatically incorrect sentence.

7) "Repeated violations of the rules will disqualify the editor from the drive." <- no rules have been listed.

8) I disagree that AfD/PRODs should count for zero points; they are an invaluable tool to helping to get through this backlog, as was repeatedly discussed in the RfC discussion that brought this backlog to see the light of day.

The WP:FEB24 page is clearly not finished and I am seriously concerned that not even 24 hours notice was given between this message being posted on the discussion page to the editor talk page messages being sent. I think this is all happening way too quickly, given that I found 8 immediate concerns and I'm positive there are others. I think we should have waited until at least March to be in a strong position but now we have less than 11 days to get this entire house in order. Kazamzam (talk) 16:28, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

The drive banner is also not obvious on the URA Project main page. Ideally this would be something that would be displayed on the top of the Watchpage tab in the same way that Asian Month and the copywriters guild drives are. Kazamzam (talk) 16:31, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

This is my fault. I tried to rush things in order to catch the momentum from that RfC, WP:NPP after its January backlog and WP:CENT. I should have given more time to flesh out /Test backlog drive. I figured that there's no way we can slay the whole Category:Articles without sources in one month or even half a year. It's just not possible. For reference, WP:NPP's January 2024 drive, with more than 125+ members participating the drive, have patrolled 9840 articles. It would be extremely difficult for us to find such a large number of editors that are that dedicated to the job. Now thinking back, I do agree that my 6-month drive range is a bit too conservative and we might need to increase it to 12-month, but honestly, dealing with the entirety of Category:Articles without sources just feels like a moonshot to me.

But yes. This is a mess that I've created. I should not have done this, and it might be too late to stop things now, considering that editors are now citing these articles and the notice has been sent out. This drive would become a disaster if these issues aren't being fixed quick. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 16:48, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

@Kazamzam Should we postpone the drive? CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 16:49, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

@CactiStaccingCrane - it's not your fault when you've been the force and heart of this entire drive, it's on us for not being more active in helping you. Wikipedia is a collaborative effort and our drives will be more collaborative in the future. This is our first (of many!) and there are going to be some growing pains. I think it's too late to turn around, especially since the notices have already been sent out. All we can do now is try our very best to correct some of the issues and make this the best drive it can be. But also some of these are very easy fixes! We can address them one by one and cross them off as we go. Chin up! We will make it work like the patron saints of desperate causes, Saint Jude and Tim Gunn. Kazamzam (talk) 16:57, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

@CactiStaccingCrane: How do we deal with the progress tracker right now? Should it be commented out until Feb. 1? ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 17:09, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

Kazamzam has already done so. Right now I need to flesh out the "advice" section CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 17:12, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

• Like Kazamzam, I'm a bit suprised at how quickly the mass messages were sent out. However, seeing as we can't recall the messages or anything, we'll just have to push to complete the page as soon as possible. There doesn't seem to be too much work, so I think we can still make it. Along with Kamzam's concerns, a few things I noticed was that the number of participants is 3121 for some reason and somebody seems to have already started. ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 17:00, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

  Sorry, didn't realise this hadn't started. I shall stop. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 17:05, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

  ditto, also accidentally started yesterday. Feralcateater000 (talk) 16:44, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

What was the point with starting advertising for the drive (posting on WP:CBB) if it hasn't started yet? — PerfectSoundWhatever (t; c) 17:15, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

@PerfectSoundWhatever: The wording at CBB is a bit misleading, I'll fix that. Backlog drives are commonly advertised before they start to attract editors. ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 17:18, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

Sounds good, thanks. — PerfectSoundWhatever (t; c) 17:20, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

WP:NPP also did so when they sent out the watchlist-notice in order to get editors to register before the drive is initiated. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 17:19, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

No comment on drive preparation: sending mass messages and advertising via other methods a week or two before it starts are standard steps to promote a drive. – DreamRimmer (talk) 17:21, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

• Instead of individual progress trackers for months, how about a progress graph for the entire backlog? Similar to the graphs at the NPP and AFC backlog drives. ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 17:28, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

  I thought that the graph extension is disabled? CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 17:29, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

  We don't have to use that graph extension. See Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation/November 2023 Backlog Drive/ProgressChart. ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 17:33, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

• What's the policy for articles that are incorrectly tagged as unreferenced, but aren't really? E.g. includes a list of references but zero footnotes. I assume just changing the tag to the correct one doesn't earn points unless also adding a footnote? -Kj cheetham (talk) 18:30, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

  That's a very good question. In my opinion addressing this with ".5 point" clause would be too much of a hassle. I will make sure to scan for them extensively by using JWB with regex, as well as possibly adding {{reflist}} in advance of the drive. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 18:36, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

  I agree probably not worth the hassle, and ideally people should be encouraged to add at least one actual footnote. I've seen articles which do have a {{reflist}} but still no footnotes too. Not sure how best to clarify this point on the page in case others wonder the same? -Kj cheetham (talk) 18:42, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

  Well, if an article only has list of references with zero footnotes, to save time, we are not going to retag it to {{no footnotes}} and instead treating it as if it is uncited. Then we can move the list of footnotes to some sorts of a "further reading" section CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 18:49, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

• Any concerns about people sending things to AfD too quickly by saying AFD the article if it is not immediately obvious that the article should be deleted.? Worth mentioning the need for WP:BEFORE? -Kj cheetham (talk) 18:42, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

  Done, though I think that "reliable source can found with the best of your effort" also emphasize on that point CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 18:47, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

What about BOLD redirects? Often, the most effective way to "delete" a non-notable article is a redirect, especially obscure one liners. Will these count for points? — PerfectSoundWhatever (t; c) 16:31, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

Yes, it should be. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 16:34, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

Cosmetic changes

Let's use this area to suggest any edits/improvements to the drive page in the next 10 days before it goes live.

• Would it be possible to add a number to each sign-up on the drive going forward and also retroactively? There are currently 14 editors signed up, I think it would show the great momentum we have (and encourage competition). Kazamzam (talk) 18:13, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

Sure, # will work, I believe ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 18:15, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

Well, you haven't joined the drive's member list, so... CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 18:20, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

Merging

Hi! Any ideas what you do if you think the article in question should be merged? I'm going to open a merge discussion, but do we still edit with the summary or not? Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 16:55, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

@Lee Vilenski - great question and thanks for the enthusiasm! We're still putting the final touches on how points will be awarded for AfDs and PRODs. Give us a little time to come to a consensus and we will get back to you soon. Kazamzam (talk) 17:08, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

Lee Vilenski, because we agreed that deletion of an article awards one point and merging is one of the possible result in AfD or PROD, merging would also be awarded one point. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 15:38, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

@Lee Vilenski well, now it shouldn't, because deletion proves to be way too contentious. Sorry, we are still working out on how to make the drive work. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 06:05, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

Check for sloppy work in the drive

This drive would address thousands of articles. We need to find a way to detect bogus tag removal and such, otherwise we could do untold damages to these articles and it would require an even greater amount of work to undo it, while keeping the project streamlined and efficient. One way I think we could do this is to perform three random check every week per participants? CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 18:05, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

The equivalent of this in NPP is e.g. Wikipedia:New pages patrol/Backlog drives/January 2024/Re-reviews. -Kj cheetham (talk) 21:30, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

I volunteer myself to review drive submissions. Add with general drive management, I probably won't be able to participate in the drive. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 06:14, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

Give points for re-reviews, like the AfC drives. — PerfectSoundWhatever (t; c) 15:04, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

Hmm, that would require a different edit summary and a different process I guess... CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 15:07, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

If doing that, why bother with an edit summary and not just have a manual tracking page like NPP? Also for awareness, NPP only gives an extra barnstar for re-reviews I believe, not points. -Kj cheetham (talk) 19:23, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

Because that will not be efficient and the number of rereviewed article would be tiny compare to the total number of submissions. The foundation of this drive is built with convenience to the participants in mind. I guess that making another edit summary like WP:FEBREVIEW might help solve this problem (new edit summary don't have "FEB24" to avoid conflict when finding submissions). CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 00:39, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

Points for deletion

I would strongly discourage this from being an official point-giving action in backlog drive. It smells ripe for abuse, especially the example of blank-and-redirect (a standard tactic for serial disruptors), and seems to be against the spirit of improving the project. It should be properly trialed and discussed first. SounderBruce 03:47, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

I'll make the disclosure that I saw this because someone mentioned it on WP:DISCORD, but I agree with the above concern. There should never be a situation where people are given points for "winning" at adversarial discussion areas. jp×g🗯️ 04:31, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

Let me clarify that I realize organizing backlog drives is a giant pain in the ass and I'm always grateful when people take the time to organize things that make editing fun and help out the project. As they say: "My pary are with" the organizers et cetera. jp×g🗯️ 08:47, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

• To be clear, since this is the general talk page for the Unreferenced articles project, the above is concerning Wikipedia:WikiProject Unreferenced articles/Backlog drives/February 2024, which rewards points for "winning" at AFDs. I too saw this on Discord, for reference. This ill-advised idea absolutely should not happen and will result in disruption that makes its way to AN / ANI, and should just be boldly removed. There is no surer way to discredit the result of an AFD as being fair than awarding "points" for the result - if several members of the backlog drive go around voting up each other's AFDs, how will !keep voters feel about it? They'd call the whole process a farce and they'd be right, and the AFDs would probably need to be procedurally closed. There are a lot of articles that probably do need deletion, but that is not a backlog drive's problem. Let those discussions (or the rare mass nominations a la the Village Pump LUGSTUBS proposals) happen on their own. SnowFire (talk) 05:05, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

• We're still ironing out the details of the backlog drive, since it came up only two days ago rather suddenly. The initial version of the drive did not include points for AFD/PROD, but that was added later when @Kazamzam brought it up earlier in the discussion. The BLAR portion was added by me, following a question from @PerfectSoundWhatever and agreement from @CactiStaccingCrane.

As of now, I believe that this drive should focus on adding references to articles and not deletions, so deletions, if awarded points, should not account for the same amount as an added reference. ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 05:52, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

Agree with above concerns. We should not count AFDs or merges. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 05:55, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

I fixed the rules and add link to this discussion. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 05:58, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

If you were going to do points for taking to AfD, it should be for just nominating it, not the outcome of it. Personally I agree with Kazamzam that AfD/PROD are useful tools to help clear the backlog, if used sensibly. I also agree with ARandomName123 it's not the focus, so reduced points is sensible, e.g. 0.5. -Kj cheetham (talk) 19:38, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

• If you merge or BLAR to an article that has referenced info on the topic, then you've solved the 'unreferenced' problem for the reader. I think that should count; many of the articles in this backlog don't meet WP:PAGEDECIDE after you remove the unverifiable stuff and we don't want to discourage people following WP:ATD. I agree that gamifying deletion is a very bad idea, though. – Joe (talk) 06:25, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
• I also support reduced but not eliminated points. Awarding no points whatsoever ultimately functions to discourage deleting spam and non-notable pages, which lowers the quality of Wikipedia as a whole. 1/2 or 1/4 point would give an incentive to reference the article if they exist, as it will be an easier way to get points, unless the person is just redirecting at random, which could probably be checked by others. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 06:10, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

  @Zxcvbnm & @Kj cheetham - while I previously supported including points for AfD and PRODs, I have changed my opinion given the high probability of this being abused and overwhelming the AfD process. The purpose is providing sources - if an article cannot be sourced, a dummy edit summary or talk page message can be added to give other drive participants a head's up and we can move onto the next article. There's over 112,000 articles to reference; no one is going to go without opportunity. Kazamzam (talk) 17:12, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

Question about wording

One of the criteria says "1 point for citing just one unreferenced section with {{Unreferenced}}" Is that meant to say "1 point for tagging just one unreferenced section with {{Unreferenced section}}"? – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:42, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

@Jonesey95: 1 point for adding a reference to a section that has the {{Unreferenced}} tag. ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 13:45, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

For each article,

• 1 point if you cite 1 section that has {{Unreferenced section}}.
• No additional point if you cite 2 or more sections that has {{Unreferenced section}}.

The main rationale here is that by allowing the latter, the point system would broke and people would divert their attention from citing other articles. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 13:47, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

How is that different from criterion #1, "1 point for adding at least one inline citation to a reliable source"? – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:48, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

Criterion #1 is meant for articles that are entirely unsourced, criterion #3 is meant for sections. I guess they are pretty similar, so I'll merge the two criterion together. ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 13:54, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

Ok, that criterion comes from my mistake. I thought that all transclusions of {{unreferenced}}, {{unreferenced|section}} and {{unreferenced section}} would put the articles in Category:All articles lacking sources, but in reality only {{unreferenced}} is applicable.

IMO we should only allow articles that are taken from Category:All articles lacking sources and ignore those with {{unreferenced section}}. Doing so would simplify a lot of checks for me because I can download the title for all of the articles belong to the category and do a Ctrl-F to check whether that article was really uncited or not. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 13:58, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

Seconded. Sry about the comment below, I didn't see yours when I posted it. ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 14:00, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

Well, we posted around the same time :) CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 14:02, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

@CactiStaccingCrane: Should we even include {{Unreferenced section}} in this drive? ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 13:58, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

Well, see above :-). Feel free to disagree with my opinion. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 13:59, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I agree this drive should focus on articles with no references at all, not ones just with the odd section unreferenced. -Kj cheetham (talk) 19:25, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

I agree. There are plenty of options for completely unsourced, and simply missing sources in one section just isn't something we need to open the drive to. Let's focus on the bigger problem. QuicoleJR (talk) 01:41, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

Backlog drive - categories

I like the backlog drive idea next month - but I was wondering, are there categories for unreferenced articles by topic, e.g. sports and/or American football? (Those are the two primary areas I work in.) BeanieFan11 (talk) 18:48, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

Hey @BeanieFan11 - yes and no. You can filter the articles by topic using the search 'articletopic:sports incategory:"All articles lacking sources" but there isn't a specific category for this. The filter appears on the top of every monthly category and on the main Category:All articles lacking sources page. It's not perfect but it will definitely pull up a lot of results (something like 15,000). Thanks and have fun! Kazamzam (talk) 18:58, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

For American football in particular, you can look at related WikiProjects' cleanup lists (e.g. [1] and [2]) and skip to the 'References' section. Many sports will have WikiProjects associated with them, and if you see the broom graphic in them, they will link to their cleanup lists. Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 20:06, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

Greetings @BeanieFan11 - another option that I use to find articles of interest. With any unreferenced category, click on the "Show SDs" button, then use browser search to find articles. For example: Category:Articles lacking sources from December 2009 (the big category), the "football " Short description search results over 20 articles on just the first page. Cheers, JoeNMLC (talk) 20:50, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

Thanks all. BeanieFan11 (talk) 20:51, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

Avoiding multiple editors working on same article

I propose including in the instructions for WP:FEB24 that when an editor initiates work on an article, they should promptly remove the unreferenced category. This will prevent multiple editors from independently tackling the same article simultaneously, minimizing time and effort redundancy. After finding sources or opting for deletion, the unreferenced category becomes unnecessary anyway. Sheriff | ☎ 911 | 21:19, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

Given the amount of articles present, I doubt this is going to be problem. Besides, multiple editors working on one article could just result in that article being cited faster and having additional citations, which is a good thing. ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 21:39, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

Well, in these kind of cases WP:IAR applies. If the two editors accidentally bump into each other, each person would get 1 point. But if two editors consistently work on the same articles, then perhaps a compromise of 0.5 points might apply. It depends on the nature of collaboration. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 00:33, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

You shouldn't remove a tag from an article unless and until you've addressed the issue. What happens if you don't come back to it, for whatever reason? It's also entirely possible that an unreferenced article can survive deletion but remain unreferenced. – Joe (talk) 08:19, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

I suggest using the {{In use}} tag, which should inform other editors that you are actively engaged on that article. It has a timestamp that indicates when the page was last edited, so if several hours have elapsed, then someone else can have a go. Could be a sticky situation, but partially solves the above issue. Regards. The joy of all things (talk) 07:28, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

Suggestion for WikiProjects

In WT:WikiProject Louisville, the talk page for WP Louisville which I maintain, I've made a curated list of priority articles included in the project which need references. It may benefit other WikiProjects to do the same as a reply to the message announcing this drive. Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 21:44, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

Bambot's WikiProject Cleanup Listings already has that feature, I think. IDK how to make the message more prominent though. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 00:31, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

Those cleanup listings are fantastic but what I've tried to do is provide some focus based on the highest priority articles in the project, something the cleanup list doesn't make easy. Since I know some things about where the work is most needed, having been with the project since its start, I thought it was useful to remove some of the legwork for editors. Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 01:04, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

Of course, I will note that fulfilling any reference needs beyond the focus list is welcome as always. Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 01:07, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

I moved that "finding articles" to the instructions section to give it more visibility. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 02:28, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

Beyond WikiProject Louisville's priority articles that need additional citations, I created a second list on the project talk page for totally unreferenced articles, to more precisely correspond to the needs of this drive. Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 10:14, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

Question about scoring points

If I were to reference an unreferenced article now, and use the edit summary, would it count or would I have to wait until February 1st to start scoring points? QuicoleJR (talk) 01:39, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

To be fair to other participants, no. But kudos to you for dealing with the backlog early! This will give you a real advantage when it's time to actually count points. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 01:44, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

That makes sense. I think I will spend the wait time putting together a couple extra sources so I don't leave the article as a stub come February. Also, thanks for putting together the backlog drive, this has really helped me realize that I should have a role in fixing the problem. QuicoleJR (talk) 01:51, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

Reviews

@CactiStaccingCrane: Thanks for creating the process for reviews. However, I feel like requiring quotes is a bit excessive. Surely we can trust editors enough that 2 editors validating the same source is enough. Additionally, I don't see a point for an edit summary requirement, or the 2 points, since the reviews will just be listed in each editor's section in /Reviews, and the leaderboard is separate from the main one. A simpler format for the reviews could just be something like: "Special:Diff/[insert diff] + Y or N" Using a diff elimnates the need for the article and citation number, making reviews easier. ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 02:17, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, you're right. Editing... CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 02:21, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

@ARandomName123 Done, and I will also put a lot of faith to the reviewers by only needing to review sources once. I still mandate the username requirement to prevent abuses and help detecting problematic editors. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 02:26, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

Better, thanks. I made a few modifications, just a colon after the username for readability, and changing the template to just y/n so it's easier to type. ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 02:31, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

@CactiStaccingCrane: To make things easier and more centralized, I think it would be best to just tally the points from citations and the reviews together. Since reviews are easier, we could just give half a point for each. This would remove the need for a second leaderboard, a second set of awards, and a second table to update daily. Thoughts? ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 02:42, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

Fair enough. I will be checking the reviews from time to time to prevent abuse.

Also, could someone here make a template with a short title for assisting with the reviews? CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 02:47, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

Newspapers.com users help

Wouldn't a good idea to notify Wikipedians who have access to Newspapers.com to maybe help with the backlog? I have access to Newspapers.com hence I'm asking. Timur9008 (talk) 02:38, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

@Timur9008: Well that'd include sending a message to everyone with access to TWL, which is a lot of people. I think the current methods of notification are sufficient, especially the watchlist notice. ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 02:44, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

I meant per the Category:Wikipedians who have access to Newspapers.com. 155 people according to that. Timur9008 (talk) 02:48, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

I just realized I didn't have that newspapers.com userbox on the correct page for registering in that category. Corrected, and thank you. I'm already signed up for the backlog effort. Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 03:02, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

BLPs in the drive

Unless there's a reason this hasn't been done, I suggest adding {{BLP unreferenced}} in addition to {{Unreferenced}} in any place relevant. Wracking ^talk! 22:46, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

Makes sense, added. That category is already in the main Category:Articles lacking sources, so I didn't make any changes to the instructions (other than including the tag). ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 23:53, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

Points for adding more references to articles?

Unless I'm missing anything, I'm unclear if resolving {{more references}} gains any points. Could somebody clarify this for me? Thanks! ❤HistoryTheorist❤ 23:30, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

@HistoryTheorist: It does not gain any points. Obviously, it's encouraged, but this drive is specifically about articles with no references at all. This is mentioned in the rules: To keep this drive focused, no points for adding additional citations to one article, though editors are encouraged to do so whenever possible. Cheers, ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 23:44, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

Oh, I didn't realize it had to be unreferenced articles only. Bummer. It seems to me that it would be helpful to fix both unreferenced and articles that ask for citations in spots, because those often apply to unreferenced sections or paragraphs. Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 23:58, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

Well, that's the ideal case scenario. In reality that would be a nightmare to tally and control for abuse, especially when there is 140+ participants in the drive. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 00:24, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

Alright, that might limit my participation a bit because I know of some articles that desperately need citation work but already have some citations. On the flip side, I won't feel obligated to wait for the drive to start so I can start doing citation work right now. ❤HistoryTheorist❤ 00:26, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

@HistoryTheorist - that's the spirit! Get cracking my friend! Kazamzam (talk) 15:23, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

Reviewers needed

Hey, we need a few reviewers for the drive to curb bad behaviors and detect submission abuses. Please do sign up at Wikipedia:WikiProject Unreferenced articles/Backlog drives/February 2024/Reviews even if you are a participant of the drive. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 14:33, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

Goal for the drive

Courtesy ping: @ARandomName123, @Kazamzam, since we are quickly reaching 200+ members, I think that a goal of 10000 articles cited is reasonable. First, it's a round number. Second, it's slightly lower than NPP backlog drive article review countl; citing sources is a bit harder than patrolling new articles but we also have a bit more member than the NPP backlog drive, so these effects cancel out. And third, that's enough impact to the backlog for everyone on Wikipedia to pay attention to the backlog, which is very important because we want the backlog to be dealt with by other editors after the drive has ended. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 14:39, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

@CactiStaccingCrane - I like this idea but I'm not holding out for any specific number. While there is a quantitative element to this because that is how we measure the backlog, I am more concerned about the quality/qualitative improvements of articles. Adding one citation to an article with 20,000 words is a start, not an end. This drive gives the ball a big shove to get it rolling but then we have to keep pushing it, without stopping. It would be encouraging for the participants to see how much progress we have made and to see the backlog number go below 100,000 but, in my opinion, the real success would be an overall change in editors' attitude around the maintenance that goes into keeping Wikipedia up to scratch. I agree with your point but I think we need to look at this drive and the URA's aim(s) holistically, rather than just the raw numbers, and that should remain the focus of the project before, during, and after the drive. Kazamzam (talk) 15:31, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

That's true. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 15:44, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

Wow, we have a lot of participants now. I feel like citing sources is easier than NPP, but I guess that's just personal preference. @CactiStaccingCrane: I second Kazamzam's point, though I agree that a goal would be helpful. It gives people a number to work towards, which I think would encourage people. 10,000 seems fine, but a simlar alternative could be reducing the backlog to below 100k, which is like 12k. If we reach 200 members, that's around 50 per person for a month, which I guess could be doable. We won't really know until the drive starts, however. ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 16:05, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

<100,000! Well done all Victuallers (talk) 09:10, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

Search function

I tried running a search on

articletopic:[military-and-warfare] incategory:"All articles lacking sources"

but got an error:

Unrecognized topic name for the articletopic: keyword: [military-and-warfare]. For a list of valid keywords, please see mw:Help:CirrusSearch/articletopic.

However, military-and-warfare is listed as a valid topic. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 00:31, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

Greetings @Hawkeye7 - when I ran, the search shows as articletopic:military-and-warfare incategory:"All articles lacking sources" without the brackets; and it runs Ok. Regards, JoeNMLC (talk) 01:45, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

D'oh! Hawkeye7 (discuss) 23:44, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

What about unreferenced articles that haven't been tagged?

Presumably they count? — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 23:31, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

@Rhododendrites: Yes. As long as you leave FEB24 in the edit summary, it'll be counted. ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 23:39, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

MassMessage at the start of the drive

The drive will begin in less than 24 hours and it is possible that some people that have registered early on have forgot about the drive. Should we send a small message to everyone that the drive has started, or is it too spammy? CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 00:35, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

@CactiStaccingCrane: I don't think we need to send another mass message. I don't think any other drive has done that before, so we probably don't need to do it now. Anyways, I didn't notice how quickly Feb.1 would arrive, hopefully the beginning goes smoothly! ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 00:54, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

Drive has begun

The drive has now begun. Let's cite some articles! CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 00:17, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

Is there a way to see all articles that have been tagged with WP:FEB24? Going through every users tally to find articles to review is annoying. Tooncool64 (talk) 00:51, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

@Tooncool64: I don't believe there's an easy way to go about this. The only options I could find are to manually Ctrl+F feb24 in the recent changes feed, perform a SQL query at Quarry or request one at Wikipedia:Request a query. ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 02:16, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

Review workflow

The reviews page is organized by reviewer, not participant, so what mechanism is there to tell which submissions need reviews and which have been reviewed? Surely something better than opening a tally, copying the name of an article, opening the review page, CTRL-F, paste name of review? That'll get difficult before long. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 00:53, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

@Rhododendrites: Well if we organized it by participant, they same problem would occur. I can't think of any better solution of the top of my head, but I don't think this is going to be much of a problem, given the massive difference between the number of editors adding references, and the number of editors performing reviews. I'm open to suggestions, though. ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 03:58, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

Whether or not it's organized by participant, what we need is a list of all the diffs and a way to mark whether each has been reviewed. That could be all on one page or each participant could maintain their own list. Then, a reviewer would just open any of the participants' pages and see which still need reviews. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 04:01, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

Well that sounds similar to what the AfC backlog drive did, and it worked out fine for that. Having each participant maintain their own list seems a bit tedious, but the content of the edit summary search website is conveniently formatted so that we can just copy-paste it in VisualEditor, and not need to make any changes. ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 04:10, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

How will we prevent editors from re-reviewing the same page? — PerfectSoundWhatever (t; c) 07:03, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

In one scenario we have a non-interactive list with no indication about what's been reviewed. Someone who wants to review must then cross-reference an edit on that list with another page to see if it has already been reviewed. If it has, go back to the non-interactive list and try again ... as many times as necessary until you find one that hasn't been reviewed. Imagine 90% of the edits have already been reviewed, and you're just opening these lists and checking each one until finding one out of ten that still needs a review. There's no way to see at a glance what still needs a review. If I maintain my own list of edits, anyone can just open my page, see which haven't been reviewed, do the review, and mark it as such. It's a lot more efficient. Of course, if some enterprising volunteer coder wanted to whip up a bot, they could perhaps generate these lists automatically. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 14:05, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

We'll definitely need these lists done automatically if we want a reasonable number of articles reviewed. The AfC backlog drive had an auto-generated list and still the vast majority of reviews were not re-reviewed. -- asilvering (talk) 01:22, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

Total number of cites added

Thought I let you know that the "Currently, the drive has cited X articles" may not be 100% accurate. For example, I removed the unreferenced tag at Ubik (song) cause it already had 3 refs. For my tally, I'm not including any I find that have cites but are still tagged as unreferenced. Maybe this could be reworded to something like "Currently, the drive has removed unreferenced tags on X articles". However, this would include tag removals of people who are not in the drive. How can this be fixed? Thanks! MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 03:18, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

@MrLinkinPark333: I think the wording you provided is fine. Including tag removals of people who aren't participating in the drive isn't going to be too big of an issue (hopefully). Comparing the current number of points to the number of articles, they're roughly equal, so it seems that most people removing tags are also signed up for this drive. ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 04:02, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

Okay. Hopefully the other unreferenced tags I removed that aren't for the tally won't make a huge discrepancy either. Thanks! MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 04:13, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

I've moved your wording into the page. Thanks! ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 18:16, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for looking into this! MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 18:38, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

Drive leaderboard updating

What's the process for updating the leaderboard? Is a bot handling it? Or the coordinators doing it manually every so often? Or are individuals expected to update their own entries? Or a combination? Thanks. (A bot seems easiest if possible, a la the NPP ones.) -Kj cheetham (talk) 19:46, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

@Kj cheetham: So far I've been updating the entire thing manually, but yes, a bot would be ideal. I'm looking into it rn. Ideally, it would count the amount of edit summaries by a user with FEB24, and remove any duplicates. ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 20:10, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

Would the counts then be adjusted manually after the contest is done to remove ones that don't qualify for the drive? So far, I have found 2 that don't qualify in my reviews. MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 21:03, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

@MrLinkinPark333: I'm not anticipating many unqualifying edits, so yes, they would be manually adjusted at the end. ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 21:06, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

ARandomName123 your best bet is probably going to WP:BOTREQ and/or talking directly to one of the existing bot operators, if you haven't already. Even if not for this drive it would certainly save time and reduce human error for the next one of these drives! -Kj cheetham (talk) 22:35, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

For posterity

Here is a list of all articles in Category:Articles lacking sources sorted by month. I ran the Quarry (with the help of some borrowed code) shortly after the drive started yesterday. By comparing this baseline with the articles that remain at the end of the drive, we could analyze statistical outcomes, such as estimating how many articles were successfully referenced versus being deleted/redirected. Altamel (talk) 01:13, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

Deletions

Should there be a tally to see how many articles get deleted as a result of the drive? Just to track how many unreferenced articles don't end up be salvageable? GamerPro64 03:04, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

It would be very difficult, but this might be possible to monitor by searching PROD and AfD in the edit summary. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 10:12, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

Most of the articles I've seen in this drive should not be on Wikipedia. There are a lot of articles with 1-2 sentences about inane things like areas in neighborhoods, subway stops, or remote villages with unreliable transliterations. It would be a nice companion action to this referencing project to work on getting rid of these nanoarticles.Trumpetrep (talk) 20:23, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

See section "Points for Deletion" above. If we awarded points for deletion of articles it could be ripe for abuse. Feel free to PROD/AfD any articles you come across and feel should be deleted however. Tooncool64 (talk) 20:28, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

Im not even suggesting deletions. I just think we should keep track of how many were deleted from this drive. GamerPro64 04:11, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

Sorry, I was directing that comment at @Trumpetrep . Tooncool64 (talk) 05:06, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

Precisely my point. MOST of the articles I've seen are already tagged for deletion. Hence, a follow-up campaign would be helpful.Trumpetrep (talk) 22:38, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

Iskar, Afghanistan

The Google preview of the source that Noorullah21 provided doesn't convince me of what Iskar, Afghanistan claims, so I've marked as verification failed. I found this book from 1906 but it is also unclear about the name of the settlement and where it is. A nomination for deletion is called for. Chris Troutman (talk) 03:57, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

Agreed. The reference seems tenuous at best. Tooncool64 (talk) 05:49, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

@Chris troutman See [3], the source provided by you describes: "Below Doab-I-Mekhzari the combined river is called the Surkhab (not to be confused with this surkhab river). -- It runs north-east for about 45 miles in a deep narrow valley at the foot of the Hindu Kush to Dahan-I-Eskar. You can see the river on the map and Eskar as located in Baghlan province above Parwan province. Noorullah (talk) 05:49, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

So we're assuming the word dahan means "village" in the local language? Both books only say that a road to this village runs by this river valley, it doesn't establish for me that the village is in Baghlan. The maphill.com link provided (which you did not cite) doesn't show me a map. The citation has to source the claim in the article; what you seem to be doing is drawing an inference, which is essentially OR/SYNTH. Chris Troutman (talk) 15:32, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

Not sure what you mean that it doesn't show you a map. Linking it again: [4]. The map shows Eskar on a political map in Baghlan province, above Parwan. Noorullah (talk) 17:50, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

The source (the one cited in the article and not the 1906 one you posted as I quoted above) -- also describes Kalan Guzar (a locality in Baghlan) [5] Noorullah (talk) 17:55, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

The map loads for me now; before it was blank. With the map, it makes more sense but I still think this is borderline synthesis. Chris Troutman (talk) 18:36, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

Are Eskar and Iskar, Afghanistan the same place? The Iskar article mentions that it's also known as Eskar, both are in the same province, and the coordinates a pretty much the same. ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 19:15, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

According to Geonames (I know, not reliable for many countries) yes, they are the same village https://www.geonames.org/1142430/iskar.html. Should we redirect one to the other? Broc (talk) 21:50, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

Since neither is sourced properly and we have no proof anyone lives there, the subject fails GEOLAND, so we could delete both. Chris Troutman (talk) 22:08, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

So far I redirected Iskar, Afghanistan to Eskar. Probably there is no English source for a remote Afghani village, one would have to look in documents in Persian. Broc (talk) 22:24, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

What if...

...somehow, miraculously, we end up providing references for every single article that is and ever will be unreferenced within a single month? TWOrantula^TM (enter the web) 04:36, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

That would be amazing, however highly unlikely. At the current progress we are making, if we keep the same pace, we should have ~20,000 articles cited by the end of the drive. Tooncool64 (talk) 05:48, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

@TrademarkedTWOrantula: If you're referring to completing a months worth of uncited articles, we've defnitely crossed that mark already. There's only around 600/700 in each month's category on average. ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 15:42, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

Popular

The list of popular articles could use instructions on what to do when one is completed: remove it, strike it, or leave it alone. Preferably one of the last two to avoid hunting for one that still needs to be done. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 15:15, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

@Rhododendrites: I've added an instruction to remove entries once they have been completed. Thanks. ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 15:37, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

Will new articles get added to the list as we go along too? -Kj cheetham (talk) 15:44, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

@Kj cheetham: I've been updating the list daily, so yes. ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 15:46, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

Perhaps something else to consider automating with a bot for future drives, if it's possible? -Kj cheetham (talk) 17:46, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

Yes, that would be nice, but it's not particularly hard or time consuming. It only takes me a minute or two to copy-paste in the updated list once the pageviews analysis is complete. ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 17:50, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

How Much Is Your Iron?

I started to edit this: ''How Much Is Your Iron?'', but some sources are not in English. Anyway, will I get credit? Bearian (talk) Bearian (talk) 15:50, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

@Bearian: Yes, as long as FEB24 is included in an edit summary. There's no restriction on using sources in other languages, as long as you can understand them. ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 16:08, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

Is this Wikipedia policy? If so, it's the first I've heard of it, and I don't see no square brackets denoting such. I've just used two English citations and one Hindi one ―does this make me a bad person? kencf0618 (talk) 14:06, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

WP:NONENG is policy. -Kj cheetham (talk) 14:08, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

Tally update?

Hi, is there a bot that updates the tally? Otherwise, I think I could write a simple (but probably not perfect) one. Broc (talk) 18:44, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

@Broc: A bot would be extremely helpful. Currently, the tally is manually updated, usually by me or @Tooncool64. Some ideas about what a bot should do can be found at the bot request I filed at Wikipedia:Bot_requests#Backlog_drive_leaderboard_updates. Many thanks for looking into it! ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 18:59, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

@ARandomName123: I unfortunately have no bot experience, but I wrote a little Python script to update the table. you can find it at User:Broc/update table FEB24.py One needs to save the "Leaderboard" section in a text file, then paste the updated one. It's not very elegant but it does the job. I tested it now and it seems to work quite fine.

I will try to run it once or twice a day during the drive. Feel free to use it as well (certainly better than updating manually!)

I would be happy if more expert bot owners would pitch in, but I guess for now it's better than nothing ^^ Broc (talk) 21:30, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

One note, I realized some counts are quite different. That's because the script only counts edits in Mainspace, and removes duplicates from the list. In case you were wondering where the discrepancies came from. I think it's more accurate than the manual count performed until now, but if you find issues let me know. Broc (talk) 21:39, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

Does this script count reviews or does that still need to be done manually? Tooncool64 (talk) 21:59, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

It doesn't yet, but that shouldn't be too difficult. If it's useful I can try to find some time in the next couple of days. Broc (talk) 22:18, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

@Broc: Tested it out, works great! Many thanks for creating this! Would it be possible to format the output so it's copy-pastable straight into the source editor? Currently the output is something like

User: Example

New N1 line: | [number of articles] ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 22:33, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

@ARandomName123: the output on screen was just for debugging. It saves a new text file "updated_table.txt" with the full table, you can just copy that back in the source editor. :) Broc (talk) 22:37, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

Found it! Thanks a million for making our lives much easier! ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 22:57, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

No worries :) I just ran it a second time and checked the output again, it seems to work just fine. Please ping me if you run into any issues! Broc (talk) 23:00, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

@Broc: I was able to adapt your script to a mw:pywikibot, which removes the need to create files or copy paste or anything like that. All you need to do is press run, and it automatically edits and updates the page for you. It seems to work when I tested it on my sandbox Special:diff/1202597921 and Special:diff/1202604604.

It currently needs to be manually operated, but I'm hoping I can get it on Toolforge so it runs by itself, hourly or so. ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 04:01, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

@ARandomName123: If you need assistance, feel free to reach out. I'm here and ready to help with my bot. – DreamRimmer (talk) 07:59, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

@DreamRimmer: Thanks for offering! A few questions: Toolforge is what is used to host automated bots, right? If so, how difficult is it to convert a script that runs locally to a bot that runs hourly on Toolforge? ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 16:24, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

@ARandomName123 Toolforge is for continuous bot tasks, and you will need to create a separate bot account for it, IMHO. I would say it's easy to set up, but it will take time. First, you'll need to create a developer account and then submit a Toolforge account request. After approval, you'll need to create a tool and set up everything related to your task, such as uploading scripts and setting up cronjobs, etc. – DreamRimmer (talk) 16:53, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

@ARandomName123 very nice! Would you mind sharing the source code? It's a good learning project for me :) Broc (talk) 08:21, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

@Broc: I've copied the code into User:ARandomName123/update bot. Please let me know if you think anything needs fixing. Thanks! ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 16:21, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

Thanks! I just managed to run it by myself, it is surprisingly simple. I plan to add the review count later tonight (Central Europe timezone), I'll let you know how that goes. Broc (talk) 16:30, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

Yea, all that needed to be done was replacing the code for files with the page.text stuff. Quick question, how long did it take to run? As in, from pressing run to the edit being completed? ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 16:35, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

I have also adapted this in Pywikibot and did some testing in my sandbox, and it worked fine. – DreamRimmer (talk) 16:58, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

@ARandomName123, @Broc: Please note that since the leaderboard is in the project space, you will need to submit a BRFA to run automated scripts. If you prefer to run it without a BRFA, you can do so in your user space and then transclude that page into the leaderboard section of the drive page. Also, if you need my bot to update the leaderboard automatically, feel free to ping me anytime. – DreamRimmer (talk) 17:19, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

@DreamRimmer: Sure, could you set up your bot to automatically update the leaderboard? I was originally thinking of trying it out myself, but the toolforge stuff is probably going to take a few days. Thanks! ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 17:45, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

@ARandomName123 Should it be hourly, daily, or twice per day? Also, I have to use my userspace for this and then transclude it onto the drive page. Please add all the participants' entries to the table whenever you have time. – DreamRimmer (talk) 17:54, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

@DreamRimmer: Every one or two hours should be fine. Could you link the page you're going to use so the entries can be added? Thanks! ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 17:58, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

User:BaranBOT/FEB24DriveLeaderboard – DreamRimmer (talk) 18:02, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

It's time for bed. I will set it up in the morning – DreamRimmer (talk) 18:36, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

kk. Goodnight. ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 18:36, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

@DreamRimmer: I am running this script locally for the moment, it updates the full leaderboard (refs and reviews) every hour. If you start a task on toolforge, let me know when I should stop my local one. Broc (talk) 22:59, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

@Broc: I have set up the bot; it will update the leaderboard every hour. – DreamRimmer (talk) 02:35, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

Broc, I can see your bot is still updating the leaderboard. — DreamRimmer (talk) 04:16, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

@DreamRimmer Thanks a lot! It looks like it's running smoothly :) Broc (talk) 09:35, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

Broc, all credit goes to you and ARandomName123 for your amazing work. — DreamRimmer (talk) 09:48, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

Does your bot update the review count? I see minor discrepancies in the counts. Tooncool64 (talk) 23:23, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

@Tooncool64: I don't believe the bot does, but the updated version of the python script by Broc does. ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 00:23, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

@DreamRimmer could you please update the bot to run on the latest version of the script, which also updates reviews? Broc (talk) 10:33, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

Broc, The current script is already making a high number of requests per hour, so I believe we shouldn't include reviews. We can run this latest version either twice a day or once a day to update reviews. Please let me know if I am missing anything. — DreamRimmer (talk) 10:56, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

@DreamRimmer The review part only makes one single additional request (fetching the full wiki page with the reviews) and runs a few regex on the text, I think the difference in performance would be minimal.

General remark: perhaps we should move to a 3-hour interval if the bot is too resource-intensive? Alternatively, I can look into possible optimization. Broc (talk) 11:05, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

Three-hour interval looks good to me too. — DreamRimmer (talk) 11:34, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

I've tweaked the bot to keep track of review counts and adjusted the job to run every three hours. I made this change because the previous frequency was causing an overload of requests, and we need to be mindful of our resources. Thanks, Broc, for the review count function. — DreamRimmer (talk) 12:49, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

Soon we will hit the 500-edit limit (I wouldn't have expected editors to be so invested!). There are two ways of handling it:

1. making an additional request for 500 more edits
2. writing 500+ once the threshold is reached

What is your preference? I can adapt the script accordingly. Pinging DreamRimmer and ARandomName123. Broc (talk) 15:11, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

Broc, first option seems good to me. Who is the maintainer of this tool? — DreamRimmer (talk) 15:20, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

@DreamRimmer I guess myself, given I wrote it ;) I'll see what I can do. Broc (talk) 15:24, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

Broc, Haha, I was talking about Sigma tool. BTW, please check you mail box. — DreamRimmer (talk) 15:26, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

Pinging Σ who maintains the sigma tool. A summary for you: I created a tool to maintain the leaderboard for this drive; it counts, for each participant, edits containing WP:FEB24 in the summary using your tool on Toolforge. Is summary.py source code available? It would probably be best to integrate the tool directly, avoiding the additional page rendering and scraping. Broc (talk) 15:47, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

Broc, emailed you repo link. — DreamRimmer (talk) 17:26, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

@Broc: First one should be fine.

@DreamRimmer: The tool is maintained by Σ, I believe. Quick question, since you're running the bot on toolforge, is the source code the same as the one provided by Broc? ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 15:43, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

@Broc, DreamRimmer: The tally has now stopped updating for one of the participants. Any updates on a fix? If not, we could just use the "([number] remaining)" as a stopgap measure. It won't deal with duplicates, but should be good enough for a while. Thanks. ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 17:08, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

We could also just manually update the ones past 500, it doesn't look like there's going to be many. ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 17:09, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

@ARandomName123 I'll try to get to it tomorrow. Tonight I'm watching Sanremo Music Festival 2024 ;) Broc (talk) 23:23, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

kk. Have fun! :) ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 23:25, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

@ARandomName123 the updated script seems to work fine, see my tests on User:BroccoliBot/sandbox. It was pointed out that my unauthorized bot should not be editing other bots user pages, so I didn't run it on the official leaderboard. I shared the code with @DreamRimmer. Broc (talk) 14:36, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

Special:Diff/1206230172 updated script is live and seems to be working fine. Thanks @DreamRimmer :) Broc (talk) 15:52, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

Looks great. Thank you all very much for writing and implementing updated script! ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 16:45, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

Question

I removed the unreferenced tag from Pectinivalva anazona, but all I really did was add one new reference and source inline the sources in the "External links" section. Really, it was just adding footnotes (the page was slightly mis-tagged). This doesn't count, does it? 🌺 Cremastra (talk) 21:41, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

I would say it counts! You did remove the unreferenced tag and added inline citations. Thank you for your effort! Tooncool64 (talk) 21:57, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

It does seem a bit unclear in the rules how to deal with when Template:Unreferenced has been incorrectly used, especially when general references rather than inline ones. -Kj cheetham (talk) 16:58, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

I think if substantial content wasn't verified by the general refs, and more citations were added, then it should count, but this shouldn't. 🌺 Cremastra (talk) 18:15, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

Move leaderboard to a subpage

I think that the leaderboard should be moved to Wikipedia:WikiProject Unreferenced articles/Backlog drives/February 2024/Leaderboard, which should then be transcluded at Wikipedia:WikiProject Unreferenced articles/Backlog drives/February 2024#Leaderboard.

Do you agree with me? GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 22:37, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

Seems sensible. Easier to see on watchlists when something other than the leaderboard actually changes on the main drive page then. -Kj cheetham (talk) 22:40, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

Makes sense to me as well. Broc (talk) 23:01, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

 Done. Thanks, ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 23:17, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

List

I think my review list is getting a bit too long. Should I place it inside of a collapsible box using Template:Collapse? TWOrantula^TM (enter the web) 04:14, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

@TrademarkedTWOrantula: Sure, that sounds fine. Thanks for all your work! ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 04:37, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

Footbridge across a Ditch

Here's an interesting unreferenced article: Footbridge across a Ditch, a Vincent van Gogh painting. Surely, a van Gogh will have plentiful discussion in the art history literature, yet... I couldn't find anything online myself! Per this auction listing, it appears the painting may be more accurately known as Sloot en kleine brug. There may also be relevant discussion in this book. Best of luck! Suriname0 (talk) 04:41, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

User:GranCavallo wins! Thank you!! Suriname0 (talk) 20:13, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

Alphabetise the February reviews?

Any objections to putting the list of editors in the Februray review section in alphabetical order? Regards, Goldsztajn (talk) 11:30, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

Sorry, if I've missed this, but are articles marked in some way once they are reviewed, or is it just a manaual search to check an article has not been reviewed already? Regards, Goldsztajn (talk) 11:40, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

source standards

I was surprised to see some additions marked as ineligible on the review page due to using a primary source, then I read the "tips" section of the page. So, to be clear, the bar for this contest is higher than the bar for removing the unreferenced template? It's not just adding a reliable source which verifies the content; it also has to be independent of the subject and contribute to notability? Primary sources are often reliable sources, after all, and "count" as far as verifiability (and thus the unreferenced template) goes. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 15:19, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

@Rhododendrites I marked some pages as ineligible because of this reason. In my opinion, adding a link to an association's website to verify its own claims does not provide any added value in terms of verifiability. I thought the goal of this drive was to add good reliable sources, not just a link to the first website that comes up in Google, but of course I might be wrong. Broc (talk) 16:36, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

WP:PRIMARYNOTBAD after all. As Rhododendrites said, this is about verifiability rather than notability. Sources can be reliable and not independant. Template:Unreferenced is for when there are no sources at all. -Kj cheetham (talk) 16:57, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

two examples you disqualified on the basis of primary sourcing were a school website to verify the date it was founded and an author interview to verify who the protagonist of a novel is. These are both acceptable uses of primary sources. They don't help notability but are sufficient to verify basic, uncontroversial facts. Indeed, for basic plot elements we even accept the book itself. That said, neither contributed to notability and neither is independent, so they don't meet the requirements I referred to above (thus your rejections were correct). I'm trying to make sure the organizers' intentions are reflected in those rules (that they've set a higher bar than adding a reliable source and removing the unref tag). — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 17:01, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

I didn't write that part, but given that it's in the tips section and not the rules, I think they should be fine to use as long as they're just verifying simple non-controversial statement of facts. Courtesy ping: CactiStaccingCrane. ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 17:55, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, I think in this case it is fine. However it is encouraged to find third party sources to establish notability in some way. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 03:11, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

Also, is "lack of specific page citation" a valid reason to not award points? Given the instructions only say For recent books, ISBN and page numbers are strongly recommended. and again it seems to go beyond the usual bar for just removing the template. Thanks. -Kj cheetham (talk) 20:00, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

@Kj cheetham I have some concerns on verifiability of that one. I borrowed the book from Internet Archive library and could not find a mention of "John Forrest" in it. Having not read the whole book, I can't say the verification was failed, but the editor did not make it easy to actually verify the information. Hence my failed review, let me know if I'm being too strict. Broc (talk) 21:34, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

BrocNot sure if that's too strict, and I'm relucentreluctant to suggest using {{?}}, but it's probably worth in your comment making it more clear you couldn't verify it, rather than it was automatically rejected just because it had no page numbers. -Kj cheetham (talk) 10:01, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

@Kj cheetham Updated accordingly, thanks for the input. Broc (talk) 10:27, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

ISBN requirement is needed in order for the citations to be actually tracable and usable. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 03:12, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

CactiStaccingCrane This I do object to. It clearly says for "recent books" it's only "strongly recommended". I don't think even Good Articles have that as a requirement... -Kj cheetham (talk) 10:01, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

It's worse than that -- at least one reviewer marked a diff ineligible claiming it used a primary source, despite that source not actually being a primary source (something that was reaffirmed on the Reliable Sources noticeboard just a few weeks ago). Gnomingstuff (talk) 21:37, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

Yeah... Could you give me a link to that review? CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 03:19, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

One of @TrademarkedTWOrantula's reviews, I replied to it on the page Gnomingstuff (talk) 04:50, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

Yeah this is what happens when I enter a Wikipedia competition; I always get ahead of myself. I'll try to be more careful. TWOrantula^TM (enter the web) 04:53, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

Sorry :( TWOrantula^TM (enter the web) 04:54, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the note, and no need to apologize, just wanted to point it out -- in this case it's an extremely common source in book articles so it will come up a lot. Gnomingstuff (talk) 05:24, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

I've clarified in the rules that primary sources are permitted, as long as they comply with WP:PRIMARY. Pinging editors who have disqualified diffs: @Broc. ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 22:36, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

I updated my reviews accordingly.

@ARandomName123 What about notability requirements? The page Republican National Coalition for Life is in my opinion absolutely non-notable and I PRODded it. Should the review be positive anyway, because it added a source?

@Gnomingstuff which one? I can't fix it if I don't know where I messed up ;) Broc (talk) 22:48, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

@Broc: Thanks. As long as it verifies what's in the article, it's fine. Determining the notability of articles is out of scope for this backlog drive. Editors may choose to PROD/AfD articles if they want, but that isn't required. ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 22:51, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

@Broc Not one of yours -- I replied to the comment in question on the page. Gnomingstuff (talk) 23:43, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

Increase reviews to 1 point?

IMO the last few days have proved that verifing citations is much harder than finding these citations. We should encourage others too perform reviews as well, plus our leaderboard is de facto counting reviews as 1 point. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 03:22, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

? How could it take longer? To both add and review, you have to look at the source to see if it verifies the content. The only difference is there's the job of finding that source to begin with (and potentially reading through a bunch of sources that don't verify the content) that's already been done for the reviewer. I was thinking the opposite -- that reviews should be more like 0.25 points. In addition to the time difference, finding one subpar source for every ten good ones just doesn't contribute as much value to Wikipedia as adding 11 sources to 11 articles. YMMV I guess. I just did a couple reviews, and each took about a minute, compared to 5-20 minutes to find sources. I didn't document them on the reviews page, however, because that's where all the time would come in (open the diff, copy the diff id, open the review page, unhide all the sections, search the page for the diff, go do the review, create a standardized diff link, and add it to the reviews page -- per the section above, as time goes on and more and more edits have already been reviewed, this will eat up more and more time). — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 03:47, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

Oppose For the reasons given by Rhododendrites. I also would object changing (not just clarifying) the rules part-way through the drive, especially when it potentially changes the goal of the drive. The majority of additions not being reviewed as part of the drive should be expected. Sounds like a bug in the leaderboard calculations if anything. -Kj cheetham (talk) 10:03, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

Oppose per above.

@CactiStaccingCrane the leaderboard should be counting reviews at 0.5 points each. As I wrote the script that updates it, let me know if you find a bug. Broc (talk) 10:29, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

Clarification

Referring to this exchange above:

What about unreferenced articles that haven't been tagged?

Presumably they count? — Rhododendrites talk \\ 23:31, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

@Rhododendrites: Yes. As long as you leave FEB24 in the edit summary, it'll be counted. ARandomName123 (talk)Ping me! 23:39, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

In view of some of the reviews, which don't agree, can you please confirm whether this is correct, i.e., that unreferenced articles without the {{Unreferenced}} tag will not be disallowed? Ingratis (talk) 03:52, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

@Ingratis: Unreferenced articles without the template are allowed, as long as the article originally contained no citations. Could you please specify which review you are referring to? Thanks! ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 04:29, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

@ARandomName123: Two of these. Ingratis (talk) 05:51, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

@Ingratis: Both of them already had citations beforehand. ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 17:11, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

@ARandomName123: - fine, but that wasn't the reviewer's reason for challenging them, so there is obvs scope for misunderstanding.Ingratis (talk) 17:57, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

While I'm asking stupid questions, is it mandatory to use the "cite" templates? Thanks, Ingratis (talk) 05:59, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

It certainly shouldn't be, since they are not mandatory on Wikipedia in general. -- asilvering (talk) 08:01, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

I'd agree but better not to take anything for granted. Ingratis (talk) 11:58, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

Hopefully things like this can be used to put together an FAQs or clarify details for the next drive. -Kj cheetham (talk) 12:01, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

In that spirit, then, I'd also like to raise the point referred to above by ARandomName 123: "Unreferenced articles without the template are allowed, as long as the article originally contained no citations." I can't however see that in the Rules: all I can find is this (in Rule 1): "...no points for adding additional citations to one article, though editors are encouraged to do so whenever possible" - unless I've completely missed something. I've been understanding that to mean that after adding one citation for the WP:FEB24 tag, no extra tags are to be gained from adding additional citations. However, it's apparently intended to mean that if an article, even if marked {{Unreferenced}}, contains some kind of cite, whether identified as a Source, External link, Further reading or anything else, then the WP:FEB24 tag can't apply (even though it is still a Good Work to improve the article). It would be helpful (and would have saved me quite a lot of wasted time) if this could be expressed more clearly, in future drives if not this one. If it is there already, please point me to it. Ingratis (talk) 15:23, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

@Ingratis: Right, that should have been clarified, sorry about that. I wasn't expecting many incorrectly tagged articles, or untagged articles, so I didn't think of that. Thanks. ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 17:13, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

@ARandomName123: Right... what we're apparently finding then is that the tagging is as unreliable as everything else. Probably still not too late to make some clarifications, since it looks as though a lot of people haven't yet started on the drive? Ingratis (talk) 17:57, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

@Ingratis: Clarified rules. ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 18:57, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

Thanks Ingratis (talk) 15:15, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

@ARandomName123 A whole lot of people think that "unsourced" means "does not have a little clicky footnote" somewhere, and a huge number of these tags are from a bot run in Dec 2009 that just found anything that didn't have any footnotes and slapped the tag on it. (fwiw, I think this was a perfectly fine way to go about the problem back in the day, since the idea obviously was that human editors would come through, observe the incorrect tag, and remove or change it.) In advance of the drive, I started going through a set of articles that I knew would almost entirely be incorrectly tagged as unsourced in the hopes of clearing a bunch of these out (books - most book stubs are just "here is a book, it's about X"). I wasn't expecting a high hit rate of actual unsourced articles in WP:BOOKS, but it's really surprised me how many incorrectly tagged articles I'm coming across now that the drive has started and I've been hitting the "random unsourced article" button. But that's one way to reduce a backlog, I guess! -- asilvering (talk) 01:02, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

Stub Fu

Inasmuch as many of not most uncited articles are stubs, what is the policy, if any, of removing that template once we've a) properly referenced such an article and b) have expanded it, cleaned it up, and otherwise brought it up to speed? My initial thought was to leave them, but now I'm thinking to remove them by way of (possibly) giving someone an itch to scratch... kencf0618 (talk) 14:28, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

@Kencf0618: Well if it has been expanded fivefold and contains at least 1500 characters of prose, you could nominate it as a WP:DYK. It's a bit out of scope for this project, so I don't think points need to be awarded for that, but I'm open to suggestions. ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 17:28, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

Beyond adding a valid reference, I don't see how it would be in scope for this drive at all? But it's a good thing to do nonetheless. -Kj cheetham (talk) 17:32, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

Honestly, if there is another drive we should consider awarding points for this, because the entire rationale behind this drive is to provide evidence that we should not, in fact, nuke every unreferenced article from Wikipedia for a perceived lack of notability. If an article is notable enough to be expanded beyond stub length, then I think that should be encouraged and showcased as often and as prominently as possible.

(My horse in this race: Whenever I can, I've been doing this expansion. I don't care about the leaderboard, the discourse around this is motivation enough for me, but I assume others do and might be motivated by the proverbial numbers going off.) Gnomingstuff (talk) 21:48, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

I'm not in it for the numbers, but as a random page patroller. Articles being properly cited is necessary but not sufficent for a DYK nomination. There may be a few which we can kick that way from obscurity, but I doubt it. kencf0618 (talk) 11:02, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

I personally have expanded four previously unreferenced articles to the point where they appeared on DYK. The main reason that number isn't higher is because I haven't done much writing lately, but already in this drive I've found one article that could be a good candidate (Sha-Mail, needs juuust a bit more citation). Gnomingstuff (talk) 15:35, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

FEB24 vis-à-vis FEB28

This caught me out (because February is so weird), as in correcting a "mistake" was a mistake. The attractive nuisance should be spelt out more explicately. kencf0618 (talk) 14:46, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

@Kencf0618: Do you mean accidentally leaving FEB28 as the edit summary? I think it's a bit late to change the edit summary people use, but you could go back and make dummy edits to add FEB24. Or, we could just add on the few with FEB28 at the very end of the drive. If many people are accidentally leaving this edit summary, we could add it into the bot that updates the leaderboard, but that doesn't seem to be the case. ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 19:35, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

Yes, inasmuch as February has 28 days. I'd only made handful of contributions, so it was a quick fix. kencf0618 (talk) 10:52, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

Adding a source after removing unambiguously unreliable sources?

I just came across List of disco artists (F–K), which was tagged as unreferenced. On inspection, it did include three citations, but all three were to rateyourmusic.com, which is unambiguously unreliable. I removed those, then added a reliable source and removed the template. I used the FEB24 tag, but figured I'd ask here -- does that count? Making it "first reliable source" may be a slippery slope for the purpose of rules, but if the existing sources are so bad they obviously need to be removed first, that seems like it could be within the spirit? — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 17:07, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

Seems like scope creep for this drive to me (though it's a good thing to do more generally). -Kj cheetham (talk) 17:27, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

Which is scope creep? To articulate a rule that adding a source to a page with no sources doesn't count if the page previously had terrible sources that had to be removed? Or to articulate a rule that adding a source counts even if there had been unreliable sources that didn't serve to verify anything in the text? — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 17:59, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

I don't see how this is scope creep -- it is, quite literally, adding an inline citation to a reliable source to an article tagged as unreferenced, thus removing it from the backlog. Gnomingstuff (talk) 21:43, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

Apologies, I must have misread the first time, striking my comment. -Kj cheetham (talk) 19:07, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

Kush (mountain)

To editor SheriffIsInTown: The citation you provided for Kush (mountain) does not verify what the article claims. Finding two different words on the same printed page is not sufficient. Chris Troutman (talk) 19:34, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

Failed reviews

Are failed reviews being subtracted from the point total if the person reviewed failed? Why don't we add a "failed reviews" column so this can be made easier. — PerfectSoundWhatever (t; c) 03:48, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

I think if we waited until the end of the drive it would be better, so editors have a time to fix their failed reviews. Tooncool64 (talk) 04:03, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

There are also several "failed" reviews that should not be failed reviews. Though I don't know what the alternative would be - reviewing the reviews? Gnomingstuff (talk) 04:47, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

@Gnomingstuff I guess it is in the interest of the editor to address the issues raised by the reviewer (so they don't lose points). And if editor and reviewer are in disagreement, issues can be discussed here. I think that should be enough, no? Broc (talk) 09:23, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

Problematic user?

Hi, I would like to discuss here low-quality editing and potentially disruptive behavior by editor SheriffIsInTown. I just noticed that in their last edits they are using PoliticPK as a source, a site that looks like a blog, whose author describes themselves as I finished my study duration and now i am in a professional (sic) and i am working as a employee in a company.. This source has been added to countless pages of Pakistan towns (Special:Diff/1203519246, Special:Diff/1203509814 among others) despite not meeting the requirements for verifiability.

Other edits I reviewed, not related to Pakistan, completely failed verification (see my reviews, as well as Chris troutman comment above).

The user has been repeatedly asked to look for reliable sources (See also Altamel comment in the user's talk page), yet this is not being done and the sources added are dubious at best, or completely made up at worst. This affects a significant portion of the user's contributions to the drive (but not all of them, as in several cases reliable sources have been used).

I am not sure how to address the issue given previous warning directed to the editor have not been successful, I am therefore raising it here. Broc (talk) 09:46, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

As per WP:NGEO, these places are legally recognized populated areas, and therefore, they cannot be deleted as they are documented on maps and in census records. In Pakistan, the census is conducted by the statistics department, and PoliticPK has published detailed census results on their website. This is the most reliable information available for small villages and towns in Pakistan. The data on PoliticPK is authentic and cannot be fabricated. I am simply adding their population figures from PoliticPK as a source, which confirms the existence of these places. So, what, if data publisher finished their studies and working for a company, people do finish their studies and work for companies. Please at least do not label me as a problematic user; I am only trying to help. Sheriff | ☎ 911 | 11:18, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

I found a better source which just published 2023 census records, I will start using that instead. Sheriff | ☎ 911 | 11:27, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

Just to make sure: I never said these pages should be deleted, and I never questioned their notability. I am questioning a behavior I see in your edits, which looks like adding the first Google result as a source without any additional verification, which results in adding dubious sources or, even worse, sources that do not verify the facts in the articles. I have pointed this out several times now.

In this specific case, I am questioning the use of "PoliticPK" (some random person's blog) data. There is an official source of census data for Pakistan, which is the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics. Why not spend a couple more minutes looking for a good source and use that one? Broc (talk) 12:02, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

@Broc Your perspective may differ, but the reality is that I didn't simply settle for the first available source. The issue with PBS is that they lacked historical census records on their website, and despite having all other categories of the 2023 census published, the rural population data was missing. While I could locate older census records from more reliable sources, I aimed to incorporate the latest available data, which was from 2017. PoliticPK was the sole source I found for the 2017 census. The data seemed credible to me, and it appeared that PBS had delegated the publication of the 2017 records to that website, implying they may only possess the 2023 records. Given the unavailability of the 2023 data at the time and my confidence in the integrity of the available data, I considered the source reliable. I couldn't fathom anyone fabricating census data for every small village in Pakistan, hence my decision. However, I now realize that PBS has rectified their oversight by publishing the 2023 rural census records on their website, which I can utilize going forward. Additionally, I've addressed all the other concerns you raised as well. Sheriff | ☎ 911 | 13:01, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

While I do not think "anyone would fabricate census data", a blogger might easily introduce mistakes (copy/paste errors, for instance) which would not be spotted due to the lack of editorial oversight. There is a significant difference in reliability between a blog post and the official census statistics. Per WP:RSSELF, Self-published expert sources may be considered reliable when produced by an established expert on the subject matter, whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable, independent publications. which is clearly not the case here.

All other concerns (including the one right below this comment and the one above regarding the Kush mountain, as well as the many failed reviews) have not been addressed. Broc (talk) 15:02, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

I also have concerns regarding the use of the Indian Railways Fan Club as a source for the pages on Pakistan railway stations. A fan club is not a reliable source, see WP:RSSELF. Broc (talk) 12:12, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

As mentioned above, I worry that the work being done is with haste and lacks the quality we need. The rail fan club represents many of SheriffIsInTown's citations added. To reuse a source like that so many times and not even ask on the WikiProject talk page about reliability indicates a lack of discretion. I'd suggest more Wikipedians review SheriffIsInTown's contributions; hopefully SheriffIsInTown discerns that this backlog drive is not the best fit for their editing. Chris Troutman (talk) 15:21, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

@SheriffIsInTown now without correcting previous pages – even if several editors have pointed out issues – you started sourcing new pages. In Special:Diff/1203779574 you add data supposedly according to 2023 census, yet the page you link clearly says 2017 in the URL.

Please, please, stop for a moment, gather consensus, figure out if what you are doing is correct: several users here are telling you that it isn't.

I am asking the organizers to consider disqualifying this editor from the drive. Sloppy work should not be rewarded. Broc (talk) 19:50, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

If you look at the editors other contributions to Wikipedia, they seem to be in good standing. I feel like this is a slight overreaction to a small number of mistakes. As long as the editor is listening to critiques, I don't believe they should be disqualified. Tooncool64 (talk) 20:04, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

@Broc They are just using the wrong number inside the url, this is 2023 data, check it yourself here, url states 2017 but the page states Census 2023, they are just reusing the old urls, as for the correction, I corrected all the pages which you identified on the reviews page, this discussion was still ongoing. Sheriff | ☎ 911 | 20:38, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

@SheriffIsInTown Apologies, this was my mistake. Thanks for the explanation. It would be great if you could update the other pages on Pakistani towns with this official census data.

Note that the question regarding the Indian railways fan club is still open. Broc (talk) 20:43, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

I will do that but I am not here for the reward or competition. This is my passion. Sheriff | ☎ 911 | 20:52, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

Call it a poor management or whatever but they handed over 2017 data to PoliticPK and they are reusing 2017 URLs for 2023 data. Now, honestly, we can trust PoliticPK data for 2017 because PoliticPK themselves do not have an ability to conduct a country wide census, they are sourcing their data from PBS which is a reliable source so in a sense we will be souring to RS, just in an indirect manner. I know Pakistan and the way Pakistanis work like my fingertips. Sheriff | ☎ 911 | 21:06, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

The fact you know Pakistan does not make any difference, PoliticPK is a self-published source, published by someone who is not a subject matter expert. I honestly think that PoliticPK just copy-pasted the 2017 data from the official census website at a time when said data was available online, but this is not even the point.

It's really not hard to see that a personal blog and the official statistical office of a country are two very different types of sources, and if both of them are available, you should always choose the second one. Broc (talk) 21:46, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

Please remove me from the leaderboard

Continuous stress given by the reviewers on trivial matters isn't worth the time and energy; I could allocate my time more effectively elsewhere. Sheriff | ☎ 911 | 23:43, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

I'm sorry that you feel this way. In my opinion you have been a great contributor to the backlog drive, despite a few missteps. I would like to hear from @ARandomName123 and @CactiStaccingCrane , two editors who were involved in the creation of the drive, about this situation. Tooncool64 (talk) 00:07, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

SheriffIsInTown, you mean a lot to us. We all make mistakes, so don't feel discouraged. Embrace criticism positively, and keep doing the great work you do. Thank you! — DreamRimmer (talk) 01:40, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

 Done. SheriffIsInTown, I regret that it has come to this, and the stress caused by this drive. Your efforts are appreciated, and I wish you well in the future. Thanks for your contributions. ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 02:27, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

Same here. What matters is the efforts to cite the article and not those points. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 03:09, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

@SheriffIsInTown FWIW, I appreciated your collaborative approach in the discussion above and your latest efforts in improving the quality of sources. I sincerely apologize if this discussion has caused you unnecessary stress, that was never my intention. Broc (talk) 06:49, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

Does Wikipedia need an article on Moisture?

This may be a silly question, but I'm currently looking at the short, un-sourced article for moisture, and I'm wondering: does Wikipedia really need an article on this subject, or would it be enough to simply redirect users to the many other related articles (e.g., humidity, water content, condensation, damp (structural), dew)? The term moisture strikes me as a very vague term (more of a dictionary definition than an encyclopedic subject), and I'm not finding many sources that discuss it in detail except in relation to much more specific water/condensation topics. Just wanted to raise the question. Thanks, Alanna the Brave (talk) 16:15, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

I'd say it's a subject that can possibly still be covered - remember that there are heaps and heaps of sources out there. For a topic as commonplace as moisture, even with intensive searching one will only discover a fraction of a fraction of everything that's out there. Some sources are locked behind paid access, in physical libraries, are only discoverable with the right knowledge, or aren't tagged correctly with the subject matter. There's no harm in setting an article aside for a person who can find some of these later. ― novov (t c) 00:47, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

If anything, I'd say a Moisture article should be a top level overview article with sections that briefly discuss those other subjects you've mentioned and main article template link to them. Silverseren^C 01:04, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

Rough Magic

Probably a dumb question - this article on a movie [6] had the 'unreferenced' tag added in 2018, then a Rotten Tomatoes citation added last year. Is it correct that RT counts as a good enough source and the tag just needs to be removed? Per$1$tenceofv1$1on (talk) 23:38, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

It appears to be used in the correct context as a cite for the review score, so yes it would count as a source. While you don't get points for incorrectly tagged articles (so don't include FEB24 in your edit summary), removing it still helps clear the backlog and make actual unsourced articles easier to find. ― novov (t c) 23:43, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

Thanks! Per$1$tenceofv1$1on (talk) 00:15, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

There's quite a lot of articles that potentially have citations cited but are still tagged as unreferenced. Though there are articles like Hochelaga (electoral district) that have citations but are showing up as unreferenced as there is an unsourced template tag. MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 00:27, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

Aside from articles that shouldn't be on Wikipedia in the first place because they are just one sentence long and are already tagged for deletion, this is the second most common problem I've encountered during the drive: articles that have sources that are not properly cited. Quite often, the "External Links" section has appropriate sources, but they are not used as references. Seems like the kind of thing that a bot could fix.Trumpetrep (talk) 20:56, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

For your entertainment

I'm sure others are running into complicated situations that go far beyond not having a citation. Here's one I ran into: Talk:Dietrich IV, Count of Cleves#Serious problems here. This is a little bit above my current abilities to fully deal with but I'm going to take a stab at it in the interest of learning. Novellasyes (talk) 16:19, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

Yes, there's a "Deletions" discussion further up this talk page because of precisely these kinds of problems. Most of the articles I'm seeing don't belong on Wikipedia.Trumpetrep (talk) 02:42, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

Quick question

(About the backlog drive) Does the source need to be significant coverage of the subject to count? E.g. would adding Pro-Football-Reference.com (top football statistics tool) links to unsourced NFL players count, or would I need to add in-depth articles of them? BeanieFan11 (talk) 19:36, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

@BeanieFan11: No. As long as it verifies content in the article, it's fine. This drive isn't about notability, it's about references. You could choose to AfD/PROD it if you can't find anything, but that's not required. ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 20:28, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

The tips section says the opposite, that those reference sites wouldn't count. Clarification might be needed, since I could fly through these a lot faster if I'm just plastering a sports reference page instead of a newspaper. Wizardman 22:50, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

@Wizardman: imo, it depends on how reliable the reference site is. This one seems fine per this question at RSN. I also didn't write that part of the tips ( Courtesy ping: CactiStaccingCrane), but I believe the intention was to disallow sites like IMDB. Sorry about the confusion. ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 22:58, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

Gotcha. I'll probably still add in the stronger sources anyway just to be on the safe side, but at least I know now. Wizardman 23:52, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

Duplicate name

@Endrabcwizart: Your name is duplicated at Wikipedia:WikiProject Unreferenced articles/Backlog drives/February 2024/Participants (#23 and #263). The leaderboard also has your name twice. I thought I should let you know :) MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 03:57, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

Yes, I noticed that there is a duplicate in the username. Please remove the duplicate one Endrabcwizart (talk) 07:33, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

 Done ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 13:28, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

ʼNakʼwaxdaʼxw

To editor Trumpetrep: The source you provided on ʼNakʼwaxdaʼxw fails verification. Chris Troutman (talk) 21:36, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

Remove me from this drive

Hi, I'd like to request to be removed from the drive. I felt like I have contributed early on but as time passed, I felt I wanted to work on other projects instead. Good luck and happy editing. Noorullah (talk) 18:47, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

@Noorullah21: Thanks for your work! If you don't mind, I'm going to leave you on the leaderboard for tracking purposes. There's no need to notify us that you've stopped participating; no one is obligated to participate or continue. Good luck on your other projects! ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 19:13, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, all good. I just thought per the above instances of people requesting to leave the drive I'd have to ask as well. Noorullah (talk) 20:09, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

Why remove categories done 100%?

I see that the counter for articles lacking sources since january 2008 was removed. Wouldn't it be nice and motivating to have something showing that it's possible to get to 100%? I know linking to the deleted category would be useless, but it could at least be added it to the milestones in some other way then. It also confused me because at first I thought the top category just had a lot of articles restored. //Replayful (talk | contribs) 21:05, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

@Replayful: How about leaving it in a collapsible box? ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 21:08, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

If we do end up doing that, two categories have been completed since the beginning of the drive, December 2007 and January 2008. Tooncool64 (talk) 21:10, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

Sounds fine by me! And I had thought Dec07 was just a figment of my imagination... //Replayful (talk | contribs) 21:18, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

 Done. Suggestion implemented, thanks. ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 16:49, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

Anyone else want to chime in? If not, I'll implement the change in a few hours. ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 22:37, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

Historical data

As today is February 11, Wikipedia:WikiProject Unreferenced articles/Historical data is now updated with the latest counts for each month in Category:Articles lacking sources. One year ago, we had 129,706 unreferenced articles. Today, we have 104,881 unreferenced articles remaining, meaning that this WikiProject reduced the backlog by a net 24,825 articles over the last year, almost 20% of the backlog at the time. We emptied out nine monthly categories, a record for the highest number of categories we have erased within a single year, and a tenth category teeters on the precipice of oblivion. Great job, team. Altamel (talk) 02:34, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

@Altamel - I love the annual update. Thanks so much for doing this every year. Hoping we can break that record in 2025! Kazamzam (talk) 14:51, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

Notes

The Faith Instinct

I went to add a reference to this article [7] and found that an editor had removed the 'unreferenced' template at the start and replaced it with a notability one. I've added a source anyway. No idea if this edit is eligible for the February 2024 drive, or if one source makes a subject notable, or even if I've got into an edit war with someone. Per$1$tenceofv1$1on (talk) 11:51, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

These templates aren't mutually exclusive - the other editor should have retained the unreferenced one when adding the notability one. And it's perfectly fine to add a source when another editor has questioned the article's notability; if you get into a disagreement, that is what the article's Talk page is for. As to whether the article is notable, the guideline for this is WP:NBOOK (note that notability is determined by the existence of sources, not just the ones that are currently in the article). ― novov (t c) 00:31, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

Use of Encyclopaedia Britannica?

There's no community consensus ([1], [2]) that Encyclopaedia Britannica is reliable - should use of Britannica be accepted for the purposes of this drive? (I've come across its use during a review and wish to hear others' views). Regards, Goldsztajn (talk) 00:54, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

@Goldsztajn: I think it should be fine. ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 01:56, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

Perhaps I should have put my colours to the mast ... I'm not so comfortable with its use. I think given that we are dealing with articles without referencing whatsoever, if we are using sourcing which the community has discussed in depth, we should be aiming for those that have consensus for reliability. Regards, Goldsztajn (talk) 04:23, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

In my opinion, it depends on whether it is used to support a controversial statement or not. WP:RSP suggests to consider its usage on a case-by-case basis and I would suggest to do so. Who are the editors of the Britannica article? Are they subject matter experts? If not, I would probably tag it with {{better source needed}}. Broc (talk) 06:23, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

It seems like the yellow is largely due to a small subset of the articles being crowdsourced/community-written, and that authorship of the entries would need checking. Gnomingstuff (talk) 07:33, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

Some entries are written by named authors and their general expertise can be evaluated, and entries should be evaluated on an individual basis. The guideline suggests checking the credentials of each author, even for non-community-written articles. Goldsztajn do you want to discuss a specific page/edit? Broc (talk) 16:01, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

Thanks @Broc and others for the responses. The specific item I was concerned with is not at all contentious, it doesn't require further review. Regards, Goldsztajn (talk) 03:17, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

I miss-tagged an edit, what now?

I accidentally used the wrong tag when making a change to an article to which a reference was added by someone else (see Special:Diff/1208397224). I meant to use "[[WP:FEB24REVIEW]]", not "[[WP:FEB24]]". Sincere apologies, and does anyone know how I might go about fixing this? Betterkeks (talk) 11:38, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

Hi Betterkeks, I created the leaderboard update script and I can tell you I have no way to "fix this", your edit will be counted in the leaderboard. It will be probably removed manually at the end of the drive if an editor reviews it as a fail. My suggestion: add a reference to another page and don't tag it with WP:FEB24 ;) Broc (talk) 13:25, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

Hi Broc, I followed your suggestion for Special:Diff/1208441455. Betterkeks (talk) 14:40, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

@Broc: I noticed others make similar mistakes; see here as an example. In future drives, the script may need to be extended to detect and compensate. Betterkeks (talk) 00:55, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

I'm not appearing in the leaderboard

Am I doing something wrong? --Lenticel ^(talk) 00:04, 18 February 2024 (UTC)

@Lenticel: Hi, I have the participants subpage on my watchlist, and I usually add new entries to the leaderboard when people signup, but I must've missed it today. It should be fixed now. Sorry about that! ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 00:32, 18 February 2024 (UTC)

I'm in the leaderboard now. Thanks! --Lenticel ^(talk) 00:51, 18 February 2024 (UTC)

Hooray!

Congratulations everyone! We've referenced 10,000 articles within three weeks. Great job, and let's bring down the total number of articles to less than 100,000. TWOrantula^TM (enter the web) 16:45, 18 February 2024 (UTC)

Won't be long! I'm just wondering if the popular articles will ever reach those starting with d... //Replayful (talk | contribs) 19:27, 18 February 2024 (UTC)

I've been working the K field. kencf0618 (talk) 22:32, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

If we take a baseline of 300 articles per month, it would take around less than a year to make this backlog disappear. I think we need to strategize on how to deal with Category:Articles lacking sources and we need to get people to stick on this WikiProject for the long term. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 11:22, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

Maybe, uh, get people from certain WikiProjects to help out? Like me, for example: I'm interested in referencing California-related articles. TWOrantula^TM (enter the web) 16:06, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

I promoted this drive at WikiProject Organized Labour where I'm active. We use User:CleanupWorklistBot to generate a clean up list which includes a section on unreferenced articles. I've noticed a number of organised labour project editors participating. Regards, Goldsztajn (talk) 03:46, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

Not a lot of reviewing goin' on

Perhaps it might be worthwhile to create separate barnstars for the reviewers, pour encouragé les autres? Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 21:36, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

I was thinking an extra week only for reviews like some other drives, but I'm open to other suggestions. ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 22:43, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

Agree on extra week for reviews. Also fine with reviewer barnstars to motiviate more reviews. --Lenticel ^(talk) 01:29, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

Camaldolese Priory, Kraków

To editor Moriwen: For a monastery in Poland you cited a 234-page book about the natural history of Brazil and you didn't even provide a page number. Surely you've made an error. Chris Troutman (talk) 16:35, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

Nope! Unfortunately no page number on Google Books, though.— Moriwen (talk) 16:36, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

That's a pretty weak cite; the preview shows me almost nothing. Chris Troutman (talk) 16:39, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

@Chris troutman, Moriwen: It's open access from the link you provided. Seems to be page 190, which reads

Copy 2: Collection: Księgozbiór Kamedułów. Shelf mark: BJ Cam. L. XV. 2. Binding: Parchment. Complete: Lacks frontispiece. Provenance: From the library of the Camaldolese Priory in Bielany, Kraków.

ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 17:02, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

So it's a footnote? Chris Troutman (talk) 17:05, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

Pretty much. ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 17:25, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

Oh, nice, I didn't notice it was open access on that link! Thanks so much.— Moriwen (talk) 17:06, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

I agree it's pretty basic and there's definitely room for more!— Moriwen (talk) 17:08, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

What is the threshold for failing?

If a citation has a correct, functioning link - is this all that is necessary for a pass when reviewing? In undertaking a review, the added citation fails to mention the name of the publication and misnames the author of the linked article. I'm assuming this is because of an autogenerated citation... nevertheless, the citaiton is technically incomplete and incorrect. Personally, I don't mind doing the clean up, but just for the purposes of reviewing is this a or ...? (Just to be clear, in the case of the latter, I would ping the editor). Regards, Goldsztajn (talk) 00:36, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

@Goldsztajn: imo, if the citation verifies a statement in the article, it should pass. However, it would be best to give the editor a quick message asking them to double check autogenerated cites. ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 01:04, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

Self-assessment

What I mean by this is specifically that whether we can declare instances (where we're aware of them) where we've added references to an article which already had one (or more). I did this several times at the beginning of the drive when the instructions weren't clear to me, and once or twice since by nodding off mid-edit. I'm not suggesting that we attempt to evaluate the quality of our own referencing - as is clear above, views can vary hugely on this. Ingratis (talk) 11:23, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

I'll answer my own question, which is usually the best way to get a sensible answer :) I've reffed enough extra articles to cover the errors, although I would rather not have had to take the time. Ingratis (talk) 06:24, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

Proposal: Pass reviews for mistagged articles if sufficient work was done

Editor Engineerchange has been doing exemplary work for the drive by incorporating historic newspapers from newspapers.com. Unfortunately, some of the articles on which the editor has worked were mistagged articles (e.g. Franklin J. Maloney): although there was an unreferenced tag, at least one source was included already in the article, but any such sources were notably poorly-formatted or lacking in-line citations.

I've also personally come across some mistagged articles on human settlements which have included a source merely for the population statistics in their infobox, but nothing in the article main body. Sometimes, I haven't noticed that the article was mistagged until after publishing my edit (thanks, VisualEditor). For most of these articles, I've tagged my edits to those articles; on other occasions, I've just swapped the tag to More citations needed and moved on.

I think it's against the spirit of the drive to fail reviews for mistagged articles if sufficient work was done for them, and it risks encouraging editors to swap the tag without improving the article. In some examples I've seen, the difference between a mistagged and correctly-tagged article is whether the source was under "References" or "External links".

Thus, I propose that reviewers be allowed discretion to pass reviews if:

1. The article was tagged as unreferenced despite including sources.
2. Any sources in the mistagged article lacked in-line citations or concerned a minor aspect of the article.
3. The article was not purposefully mistagged to "game" the drive.
4. The editor has sufficiently improved the sourcing of the article by adding at least one new source and one new inline citation.
5. The editor has removed the unreferenced tag.

IgnatiusofLondon (talk) 15:30, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

As the offender, I would concur with this proposal (lol). A few of the ones I've touched have been cases where the congressional bioguide made the article in an automated fashion and moved the congressional bioguide template to "External links". As far as I can tell, there aren't that many left in the unreferenced bucket of these, but I am diligent in confirming the details are in-line cited appropriately (and cite needed where necessary). But, on every one that I've touched, I've always added an additional source (or photo) to meet the nature of the drive. Apologies for being a rule breaker, but I did miss the detail about there being so many inappropriately tagged unreferenced articles. Given each article takes me ~30-90 minutes, I'm not expecting to be close to "placing" in this competition. Cheers, --Engineerchange (talk) 16:01, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

Could we simplify the five criteria? Maybe something like "Any mistagged article without inline citations"? ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 16:21, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

That would exclude the example of settlements with population statistics cited in the infobox. IgnatiusofLondon (talk) 16:23, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

"Any mistagged article without inline citations in body text"? Regards, Goldsztajn (talk) 01:14, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

Seems reasonable to me. ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 14:50, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

+1 IgnatiusofLondon (talk) 13:07, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

I just stumbled onto an adjacent issue doing reviews: @Exp691 has at least dozens, possibly more, reviews of train station articles where the official website is in the info/external links section, it's tagged as unreferenced, and they add an inline citation to that source and remove the tag. Example: Special:Diff/1208644690. Do I count these? If not, someone is going to need to go through a whole bunch of their reviews manually, I only checked enough to be reasonably confident that the pattern applied to all of their X Station article reviews. Rusalkii (talk) 00:38, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

A skim through the rest of their contribution history (without detailed checks) suggests this might represent pretty much all of their source additions to this drive. (To be clear, I don't think they're trying to act in bad faith here, just that this was a sort of confusing edge case where the instructions weren't fleshed out.) Rusalkii (talk) 00:45, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

I would count those. As long as an inline ref is added that results in the tag being replaced/removed, it's ok (imo). ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 00:49, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

So long as the external link supports the text, I would pass these examples. The spirit of the project is to remove the tags; this strikes me like a legitimate (if easy) way of doing so. IgnatiusofLondon (talk) 20:40, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

I'm going to take it that this also applies to external links in Authority control boxes. Ingratis (talk) 06:28, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

Goal reached!

Congrats, we've successfully brought the backlog down to below 100,000 - a week ahead of schedule! Thanks everyone, for all your hard work! ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 23:01, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

Double plus good. Regards, Goldsztajn (talk) 00:17, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

Hurray! Per$1$tenceofv1$1on (talk) 00:43, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

Are we extending the goal to 95k or so since we still have a week to go? Davidindia (talk) 09:28, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

Congratulations! --Lenticel ^(talk) 23:33, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

GG gamers TWOrantula^TM (enter the web) 14:29, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

Power to the People (Transnistria)

To editor Victuallers: - the citation from the State Department is ambiguous. It indicates that a party called "For Power to the People--For Social Justice" had an earlier decision to disband the party upheld, however, the party which won a seat in the December 2000 election is mentioned as "Power to the People", transliterated as Vlast Narodu (eg p.629). There's no clear indication in the sources these are the same. Regards, Goldsztajn (talk) 00:34, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

• of course they would say that. Its a point maybe worth adding to the article, but if the Republican party in the USA was made illegal and another party was started called The R-publican Party then I'm sure they would say that there was no connection... still thats OR (maybe) Victuallers (talk) 08:23, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

  Hi @Victuallers The State Department source you cited for the existence of the party doesn't unambiguously indicate "For Power to the People--For Social Justice" and "Power to the People" are one and the same. The replication of political parties with similar names in the same jurisdictions is a very common phenomenon and without mention in the State Deptarment source of key people involved the ambiguity remains. The source I linked to unambiguously matches the article's name and confirms the electoral results. I'm happy to change my review, the article just needs a less ambiguous source - let me know if you wish to update, otherwise I don't mind doing it myself. Regards, Goldsztajn (talk) 01:17, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

• The now article says "There is no indication in the sources that these two are the same except for the similarity of name." and your point appears to be "There is no indication in the sources that these two are the same except for the similarity of name." ???!. Please be bold @Goldsztajn. My level of interest is very low and I only made the update to please you - based on and attributed to your words... it makes no sense that you are creating long explanations of edits that you think I should make when the whole point of a wiki IMO is that you could can just do it. Victuallers (talk) 08:55, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

  Hi @Victuallers - I've been bold, cleaned it up and will amend my review. Sorry if I wasn't clear, I was only trying to offer you the chance to claim the points. Regards, Goldsztajn (talk) 11:14, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

Is this drive encouraging bad edits for the sake of a badge?

I have just come across yet another bad edit (Special:Diff/1210035243) resulting from this drive. In this instance, a sentence with an inline citation was added into an article, but the inline citation did not support the sentence at all! It seems the source was not read properly and the edit was rushed. OK, stuff happens, we all make mistakes, and that most certainly includes me. We’re all human.

But I have noticed some editors (and not necessarily this editor, this isn’t about picking on anyone in particular) with hundreds of edits making at times low-quality, and sometimes blatantly incorrect, edits ... and these are just the ones I happened to have looked at and bothered to finish reviewing. So the question arises: did this drive just result in a lot of poor contributions because of rushing for the sake of a few badges?

To counter this in future drives, perhaps awarding more points to spotting bad edits than adding them should be considered? A lot more points, to be at tension with those badges, to encourage quality edits? Betterkeks (talk) 07:07, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

I think lower edit quality is kind of intrinsic to a drive. Incentivising negative reviews is not a good strategy, as reviewers would become overly zealous. In my opinion a carrot and stick system where contributions that fail reviews are awarded negative points (say, -1 instead of +1) is probably a better solution to ensure edit quality stays high. Broc (talk) 08:56, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

@Broc: The degree of 'zealousness' is mostly a function of the number of points you’d get for finding them, and even if high, zealousness by itself cannot create a flood of negative reviews because you can only find a bad edit if it exists – and if they do exist you kinda do want to find them.

That carrot and stick system you mention depends on bad edits being found, and right now there is a negative incentive to do that because it slows down reviews. A good review can be done in a few minutes. A bad one can take hours.

I’m not suggesting 100 points but maybe 3–5, although the exact number is open for discussion. Just enough to encourage discovery and entice reporting. Betterkeks (talk) 10:56, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

Finding submissions to review

Is there an easy way to find unreviewed drive submissions that need a review? I tried picking random ones from the Tally lists on the drive board and the first 10 that I checked had already been reviewed (In fact, I noticed one submission which had been reviewed by two different reviewers). – Reidgreg (talk) 19:34, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

What I do is open a user's tally in one window and the reviews page in another window. I ctrl+f the name of the last article they reviewed on the reviews page, and keep inserting article names from their tally list until I find those that haven't been reviewed yet. It's the most efficient way I could come up with for finding reviewable edits, though it does tend against the review page's recommendation that you spread out your reviews to many participants.

Just some friendly feedback for the organisers: I'm sure there are good technical reasons for this, but I wish the reviews section had been organised by reviewee rather than reviewer for this reason, with also clearer instructions for reviewers/what counts as a pass or fail (per above discussions). It would have been quite helpful, especially seeing as reviews have been somewhat neglected so far. I still really loved this drive, so much so that I have joined the WikiProject! IgnatiusofLondon (talk) 20:47, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

Yes, the review process hasn't exactly been the best, but we'll probably have a different system if we do another backlog drive. Regarding the number of reviews, we're currently at just over 1k, which is a bit under 10% of edits, which isn't that bad, but could be better. There was a bit of discussion about ways we could improve the number of reviews somewhere above. ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 21:07, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

I think the suggestion of organising the reviews by reviewee is a good input.; technical reasons should not be an obstacle. I think it was just the first time this kind of drive was done, and a learning is that the review process should be improved next time. Broc (talk) 13:47, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

Future

I'd consider the February 2024 Backlog Drive to be an overwhelming success. We've had a bunch of people provide references for articles that needed them, and honestly I'm glad of the work everyone has done here. With that being said, will there be another backlog reduction drive? TWOrantula^TM (enter the web) 00:39, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

Not for a couple months, I think. We could make it a yearly thing though, if other editors agree. ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 03:45, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

I think we could do sth like this as a four-month until the backlog is slayed. This would give people enough time to cool down while not losing the momentum of the WikiProject. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 14:37, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

I'm open to this kind of reduction drives every now and then. I think it should be milestone based, such as when its close to 75,000 or 50,000 articles without references. D-Flo27 (talk) 11:18, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

I really liked this drive. It got me working with stubs, which I don't often do, and I found some interesting and notable articles for expansion. I've already taken two of them to DYK. Much thanks to the drive coordinators! – Reidgreg (talk) 03:05, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

Through this drive, I rediscovered a local band whose article was a stub, and in the process of finding references found out they were putting out their first album in 17 years, in just a few days. What timing! Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 03:37, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

This is the peak "why we should cite unreferenced articles instead of deleting them" moment. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 14:33, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

I think we should hold the drive more often to prevent the backlog from growing and reducing our progress. Perhaps every two or three months? I do agree with D-Flo27's idea of milestones. Reducing the backlog to a specific number is more encouraging than trying to eliminate years of backlog in a month. MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 06:13, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

That's a great idea. I like working towards goals. TWOrantula^TM (enter the web) 06:31, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

IMO I think it is a good idea to organize another smaller and chiller effort that tackles Category:Unreferenced BLPs in-between drives. I think that we should shift our focus to building a "source-first" culture on Wikipedia and encourage people to tackle the backlog when they feel like it. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 14:35, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

Just want to say as someone who is new to this particular project I've been truly blown away by the scale of this effort. Referencers, reviewers, organizers, everyone should be proud this is no joke. Would love to be part of it again <3 Waterfelt (talk) 00:24, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

Maybe something you haven't noticed, but I think one of the side effects of this drive is that Category:Articles needing additional references from February 2024 now contains a whopping 12,600+ pages (monthly average ~3-5k). Broc (talk) 12:43, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

Hey, if there's references, at least we know it exists. TWOrantula^TM (enter the web) 14:23, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

Can't wait for someone to run us through the surge in AfDs and PRODs that this drive has created! But I was surprised to count the reviews claimed in the leaderboard sum up to 13,000, so these might be less than I would expect (unless the reviews include untagged articles, which I know certainly contribute to my number). IgnatiusofLondon (talk) 01:02, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

{{One source}} is our arch-nemesis... CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 13:39, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

Leaderboard not updating

Hi, it seems the leaderboard bot hasn’t updated in over 24 hours, any idea what’s going on? pinktoebeans ^(talk) 06:49, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

@Pinktoebeans, I appreciate you bringing this to my attention. The bot has been fixed now. I apologize for any inconvenience caused by the delay in updating the leaderboard. – DreamRimmer (talk) 10:37, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

Blunder

I made an edit by accident and reverted it, but I think I got a point for it which is showing on the leaderboard: Special:Diff/1210521255 BTW I've made a few other mistakes that I reverted and the points aren't showing. I don't know if this will get noticed at the end of the drive, but I currently have one point I haven't earned. Per$1$tenceofv1$1on (talk) 19:37, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

No worries, a few miscounted points won't make that much of a difference. If you want to correct for it, you can do as Broc suggested above, and add a reference to another article, but don't add FEB24 in the edit summary. ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 03:12, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

Thanks! Per$1$tenceofv1$1on (talk) 15:06, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

Unreferenced template necessary?

So while I was skimming over mistagged articles, I've found that most articles about Canadian politicians and elections have an unreferenced tag. However, I'm doubtful they're even necessary; there's many similar election templates in these types of articles, and they don't seem to have an unreferenced tag. Should we remove the tags? TWOrantula^TM (enter the web) 01:25, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

I did see ones, such at L'Islet (federal electoral district) has an unreferenced template. The article is tagged as an unreferenced article but has two references. Maybe these tagged election results can be swapped to Template:Unreferenced section. Otherwise, maybe a separate category for unreferenced templates could be made. There's 171 of them. --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 06:35, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

I've already replaced a bunch of them with the section template earlier, when I was going through and fixing incorrectly tagged articles. ― novov (t c) 03:54, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

Awarding the barnstars

Sorry for not being active on the drive, real life unexpectedly get in my way and unfortunately I couldn't participate in the drive as much as I've wanted to. However, I can help with awarding the barnstars to participants once the drive ended. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 14:31, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

(to myself) here is a checklist of things that needs to be done:

• Awarding barnstars
• Archive the drive
• Keep the progress chart/milestones somewhere in the main page for motivation
• Tackle the BLP backlog (~1.7k articles)
• Encourage other WikiProjects to clear out their unreferenced bambot listings

CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 14:43, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

I can help out with a few of those items. Also, some editors mentioned eariler up that we don't have many reviews. What do you think about extending the drive by an extra week, but only for reviews? ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 15:53, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

I think a good idea to extend a week only for reviews - however, perhaps it could be a "review and repair" week? That is, we encourge the original editors to fix references which are found to fail. Regards, Goldsztajn (talk) 02:57, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

That's a great idea! CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 12:06, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

Actually, I'm going to be headed on vacation for march break, so I don't anticipate I'll do much editing during the next week. @CactiStaccingCrane, do you mind handling everything needed to close the drive? Thanks! ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 03:37, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

@ARandomName123, I’d be happy to help with barnstars if you all are okay with it. – DreamRimmer (talk) 04:01, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

Sure, thanks! ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 13:54, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

 Doing... – DreamRimmer (talk) 16:02, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

 Done – DreamRimmer (talk) 19:01, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

Thanks! ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 22:58, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

Thanks! CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 03:04, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

Final leaderboard update

@DreamRimmer As I understand it, the drive still runs today and tomorrow. Could you please schedule a final leaderboard update on 1 March, 23:59 UTC? Broc (talk) 07:31, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

Sure. – DreamRimmer (talk) 07:38, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

@Broc: The bot will stop updating the leaderboard in the next two or three hours and will make a final update at 23:59 UTC on March 1st. – DreamRimmer (talk) 14:06, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

@DreamRimmer: Would it be possible to have the bot continue updating for the next week, but only reviews? We're extending the review period by an extra week. Thanks! ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 14:18, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

No problem! – DreamRimmer (talk) 14:53, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

@DreamRimmer I assume you can handle the necessary script changes to only run for reviews, right? Broc (talk) 15:07, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

Done, just tested in sandbox. – DreamRimmer (talk) 15:10, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

@DreamRimmer: 23:59 (Feb.29) as in a few minutes ago, or 23:59 (March 1) as in in 24 hours? ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 00:08, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

@ARandomName123, I think it's scheduled for about 13 hours from now. – DreamRimmer (talk) 11:22, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

That's fine, thanks! ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 13:43, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

@ARandomName123 The drive began on February 1 and runs until March 1 sounds like March 1 is included, no? I feel the wording is a bit ambiguous. Broc (talk) 11:42, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

Yes, I was thinking March 1 was included as well, but I got a bit confused when DreamRimmer mentioned the bot would stop updating the leaderboard. Anyways, I understand now. Thanks! ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 13:44, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

Bot underreporting reviews

Hi @DreamRimmer: I'm sorry to say that I think the bot may have been broken by this good-faith edit by @ARandomName123. In that edit, it seems like ARandomName123 manually changed my edit count to 158, having wanted to record the final values for the drive at 23:59 29 February (rather than 23:59 1 March). In published updates since then, the bot hasn't updated my edit value with subsequent edits. At 18:01 today, it should have recorded 160 edits, but instead it still recorded 158, and at 22:01, it should have recorded 175 edits, but instead it still recorded 158. None of my edits have failed reviews. I wonder if other users are affected. IgnatiusofLondon (talk) 22:37, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

@IgnatiusofLondon: The bot was set to only update reviews for extended reviewing period, so it stopped updating references. Since March 1 is supposed to be included, I'll make another final update somewhere around 23:59 today. Thanks! ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 22:44, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

The bot seems to have been updating other users' edit counts for today: those of Engineerchange, Dan arndt and Cielquiparle. IgnatiusofLondon (talk) 22:51, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

Oh, didn't notice that. I'll update it the old way, for now. Might take a few minutes. ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 22:58, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

Any problems you need me to address? – DreamRimmer (talk) 14:38, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

Seems fine now, thanks! ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 00:03, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

Hello @DreamRimmer: Does the bot automatically disqualify any articles that landed at AfD? How about articles that were at AfD and subsequently kept? Cielquiparle (talk) 06:54, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

@Cielquiparle, no, the bot did not automatically disqualify any articles that landed at AfD. It only disqualified articles that were at AfD and subsequently deleted because the tool that the bot used for counting reference points was Sigma's summary tool, which cannot count edit summaries of deleted pages. – DreamRimmer (talk) 13:50, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

@DreamRimmer I'm wondering why the bot has subtracted 3 points when it should have only deducted 2 from me. (I mistakenly posted "WP:FEB24" twice in two articles, so was happy to see that it automatically caught that.) The only thing I could think of was that one of the articles I had added citations to was Luke Duke which was at AfD but subsequently kept. Cielquiparle (talk) 15:13, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

Tool for unreviewed edits

Hi, per a few threads above, checking if an edit is reviewed or not is a bit of a hassle, so I made a (extremely) barebones tool to find unreviewed edits. The website lists all unreviewed edits, up to a max of 500: https://arandomtest123.toolforge.org/ I've tested it on a few people, and it seems to work fine. It's a bit barebones, but seems to work fine. Please lmk if you have any issues/suggestions. Thanks! ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 01:52, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

Good job with the tool, @ARandomName123. Keep it up! – DreamRimmer (talk) 13:52, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

This is sweet, makes thing way easier, thanks! ¿VØ!D? ✨ 13:54, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

Edit 92

I made review edit 92 and I agree the placement of the citation does not support the sentence before it. I would like to move the citation to support this statement instead. "is situated in Mangalore taluk of Dakshina Kannada district of Karnataka, India." with citation needed before that statement. i am not concerned about getting credit for the drive, just want to remove unsourced and having needs more citations. There wasn't a reply function so I thought I would message here. Kiwatts (talk) 11:39, 8 March 2024 (UTC)