en Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Orphanage Archive 3

This is an archive of past discussions on Wikipedia:WikiProject Orphanage. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

December 2017

Please notice this

I have noticed the activities of Mccapra (talk · contribs) who has been tagging "att" on orphaned pages and then going back to remove the orphan tag if nobody reacted to it, saying it was a "successful de-orphanage". Personally, I am an inclusionist and do not wish articles deleted, but this individual is circumventing the system and being smug about it. I think it illustrates several issues I glanced at above. Please review. Cheers and happy editing, SVTCobra (talk) 03:13, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

This is patently incorrect. Much as I disagree with Mccapra about the workflow issue above, I see no evidence that they are acting improperly with their de-orphanings. Their recent contribs clearly come in pairs of legitimate link-adding and tag removing (see [1]&[2], [3]&[4], [5]&[6] just for a few perfectly legitimate examples). It is unbelievably rude of you to accuse Mccapra of deliberate wrong-doing without even double-checking their contribs to see that they are obviously acting in good faith. I suggest you retract this accusation. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 03:51, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

You should see my reply to your message on my talk page for a detailed explanation of what's going on. I think, due to your self-admitted lack of deep history, you are making accusations based on an incorrect understanding of what de-orphaning actually entails. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 05:11, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

I would agree. While Mccapra's use of the "attempted" tag may have been unorthodox and in my view undesirable, I have seen nothing at all to suggest that they are incorrectly removing removing orphan tags. Eno Lirpa (talk) 11:48, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

Hi thanks everyone for your comments. I'll explain what I'm doing which will hopefully provide some reassurance.

1. A few weeks ago I was criticised by other editors for tagging so many articles as 'attempted deorphan' when, with more time and effort, I could probably de-orphan a lot of them. After this I went back to the 'attempted deorphan' category and began working systematically through it again, de-orphaning articles from earlier months. Yesterday I reached October 2017, which was when I had started using the 'attempted deorphan' tag very heavily. As other editors advised, I found that with the greater experience I now have, I was able to de-orphan about fifty of them, and I'm sure that as I continue through October and November 2017 I will be able to deorphan many more that I'd previously tagged 'attempted deorphan', thereby clearing the list down to a more normal level and removing the problem that I'd created by over-tagging.

2. The article Bakhuwala is an example of one I had tagged back in October as 'attempted' and came back to yesterday. I have deorphaned many hundreds of articles on villages in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, usually by adding them to the article for the tehsil or other lowest-level administrative district to which they belong. The reason why I had tagged Bakhuwala as 'attempted' back in October is that the article does not indicate which tehsil the village is in, only the district. Yesterday I looked at Muzaffargarh District, reviewed the list of villages in each tehsil, and still could not find Bakhuwala, so decided to add it into the 'See also' section at the end of the Muzaffargarh article. There is no question that Bakhuwala is in Muzaffargargh District, so the link is related, though it would be better to link to the specific tehsil, if I knew what that was. SVTCobra has said that I made not attempt to improve the page. This is correct. I have no information about Bakhuwala and no ability to improve the content. The exercise I am doing is just deorphaning. Occasionally, along the way, I change misdirected links, add categories or correct typos, but for the most part, I am just adding inbound links. One of the purposes of doing this is that it helps bring the previously orphaned article to the attention of other editors, who may be able to improve it. I believe that having the Muzaffargarh article link to Bakhuwala is reasonable but not optimal - ideally another editor with more knowledge than me would see it and be able to put it into its correct tehsil, at which point removing the link from Muzaffargargh would make sense. Anyway, from time to time other editors revert my deorphans as they don't agree that the orphaned article should be linked to the one they are watching, and if this happens I just retag the article in question as an orphan and move on.

3. SVTCobra has objected, I think, to my use of the edit summary 'Successfully deorphaned', which s/he feels is smug. The edit summary is the one recommended on the project page and I understand the purpose of it is to leave a trail of summaries across the encyclopedia to alert other editors to the fact that WIkipedia:WikiProject Orphanage exists and to encourage them to get involved. If I'm overusing this in some way I'm happy to stop using it. I don't mind about it. Mccapra (talk) 12:12, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

Yeah it's definitely not smug in any way. Galobtter (pingó mió) 12:27, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

Just a somewhat off-topic comment: I don't think the piecemeal de-orphaning of village articles is a worthwhile use of wikitime. Most of the time, the only related article would be the one about the higher-level administrative unit (tehsil, district..), and adding "see also" links from that one doesn't make sense. Ultimately, we need to make some concerted effort to create articles about all the villages in a given area, using a standardised source of reliable data, and when that happens we could create navboxes that solve the orphan problems. Unless this has happened, trying to solve that for individual village articles is labour-intensive and thin on results: if these articles are currently orphans, it usually means that there simply isn't any content out there to link from. – Uanfala (talk) 13:47, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

I feel like having a list of villages on each tehsil page and a list of tehsils on each district page isn't harmful, but I agree that villages probably don't belong in the district page. I also generally prefer to make navboxes or lists for villages per district, because then even if you don't have articles for all the villages, you can still de-orphan/ease navigation for the ones that do. I wonder if a bot could make district navboxes using the categories? They're mostly pretty cookie-cutter, it's just tedious to do. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 06:10, 13 December 2017 (UTC)

Yes, tehsil articles having a section that lists the villages is alright. I was objecting to the inclusion in the "see also" of a link to one or two random villages (out of hundreds). If a bot could create navboxes out of these category entries, that would be great! – Uanfala (talk) 12:20, 13 December 2017 (UTC)

We're all WP:VOLUNTEERS here so it is not appropriate to make judgements about what is worth spending wikitime on. Efforts do, however, need to make some improvement to the encyclopedia. It would be great if all these village articles were neatly tied together with a navbox system but it is an improvement, compared to current orphaned status, to tie them together loosely through see also links until such time that someone chooses to build that system. ~Kvng (talk) 16:01, 14 December 2017 (UTC)

Sorry, it wasn't my intention to pass judgements. So yes, it is an improvement to link village articles appropriately. But it is not an improvement to insert links in places they don't belong. – Uanfala (talk) 19:10, 14 December 2017 (UTC)

De-orphanizer script

Hey guys! Writ Keeper was kind enough to create a de-orphanizer script for me so I thought I would share it with you all. It adds a tab to the top bar which, with one click, removes the orphan tag from a given article and leaves a nice edit summary. It can be found at User:Writ Keeper/Scripts/deorphanizer.js, and invoked on your .js page with mw.loader.load("/w/index.php?title=User:Writ Keeper/Scripts/deorphanizer.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript");. It doesn't seem to work on IE, but works on Chrome just fine. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 23:53, 17 December 2017 (UTC)

Year/date pages

Just seeking a bit of clarification, are year articles (2000 as an example) or date articles (1 January as an example) count as incoming links? Obviously to de-orphan a page ideally there should be more than the basic information. Thanks! Nat965 (talk) 06:40, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

Generally yes unless they're disambiguation pages for some reason, but I like to try to insert links elsewhere as well, because I agree that they aren't great links. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 07:14, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

February 2009 update

As of today we're officially down to 9000 articles in this category! Every little bit helps :) ♠PMC♠ (talk) 03:19, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

AWB request to untag Feb 2009 orphans with 1 or more links

Project input is requested @ WP:AWB/Tasks#AWB Request 2. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 16:26, 6 May 2018 (UTC)

AFD

Hi,

I'm leaving a note to inform any interested parties that there is an orphan-related AFD at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Coded set.

Thanks,

StraussInTheHouse (talk) 15:15, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

Deprecating the =few parameter

Since the de-orphaning criteria is now only a single incoming link rather than many, does anyone have any opposition to deprecating the "few" parameter of {{orphan}}, and the associated Category:Low linked articles? If there's consensus, I'll figure out how to technically go about that. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 05:26, 12 July 2018 (UTC)

Agree. If it has one link, then sure, it is technically deorphaned but still pretty lonely. Rap Chart Mike (talk) 12:13, 12 July 2018 (UTC)

I don't disagree, but nonetheless the de-orphan criteria is now only one link, so the "few" parameter, which keeps the orphan template on something that's no longer technically an orphan, is a bit redundant. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 20:04, 12 July 2018 (UTC)

Support (t) Josve05a (c) 17:37, 13 July 2018 (UTC)

So I was just checking what links to Category:Low linked articles and found this new discussion. This after I just edited the sandbox. Feel free to vet my changes. One of the problems with this project is the redundancy of talk pages; I hang out more at Template talk:Orphan since I've been so involved in the maintenance of that template. But this page is better for the meta-issues, I suppose. Pinging @Traveler100:, who created the parameter and this monthly cleanup category. Removal of the parameter from {{Orphan}} is all but a done deal; Category:Low linked articles could be saved if we create a new {{Low-linked article}} to populate it, but we need to define better criteria for populating such a category if it's to be kept. Considering the weak support project-wide for {{Orphan}} and the ongoing huge backlog in Category:Orphaned articles, personally I'm OK with putting the project to resolve low linked articles on the back burner for now. Unless there is a better-defined rationale for it. – wbm1058 (talk) 00:36, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
Support deleting the parameter as it contradicts WP:Orphan that 1 link is enough for removal which was reaffirmed at a Village Post discussion late last year, thanks Atlantic306 (talk) 19:26, 16 July 2018 (UTC)

Done : I've removed this parameter from the template, per consensus. Category:Low linked articles may still be manually populated at this time, but better criteria for populating this category should probably be developed. – wbm1058 (talk) 13:27, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

Heh well that was easy, thanks. I might take that to CfD at a later date if it doesn't wind up ever being manually populated. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 14:00, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

Articles with titles in Basic Cryllic Script

I accidentally found a wiki page with article name in Basic Cryllic Script via the Random page in this category link for Category:Orphaned_articles_from_February_2009 and the page is up for deletion at WP:AFD, nomination at here.

There might be a lot of similar orphans which could be deleted. Kadane (talk) ran a query for Cryllic so probably can ask him for a list or for other scripts as well. --Xaiver0510 (talk) 01:46, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

Copied to Wiktionary

Hi I’ve just come across Stepfather-in-law which has an orphan tag from Dec 09 but the talk page shows it was copied to Wiktionary in January 2008. I’m not clear what we do with articles that have been copied to Wiktionary. Do we leave them alone? Try to deorphan them as per usual? PROD them? Something else? Any guidance much appreciated.Mccapra (talk) 05:45, 16 August 2018 (UTC)

AWB request

Can someone help in requesting AWB to scan all the orphaned pages to see whether are they really orphans? I am going through Orphaned articles from May 2014 from the back and noticed quite a few pages are not orphans as of now.

If it is not possible to scan all, consider the large amount of orphans now, perhaps can we target those categories that have more than 1,000 items inside? Thanks --Xaiver0510 (talk) 07:23, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

Xaiver0510, see this discussion. Galobtter (pingó mió) 07:43, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

@Galobtter:, I do agree in principle for possible flagging out articles which are problematic in nature since there are some human eyes checking but they could have been ignored or not recognised, I am probably guilty of both things. I guess since there is a consensus which is not that long ago, I stay by that decision. Thanks for pointing that to me! --Xaiver0510 (talk) 08:04, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

Orphan template at TFD

Hi, there is a discussion taking place at Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion/Log/2018_November_30#Template:Orphan proposing deletion of the Orphan template, thanks Atlantic306 (talk) 23:27, 1 December 2018 (UTC)

Articles that seem to be deorphaned on lists

I looked at the 2/09 and 11/18 lists (only 5 articles) and everything I looked at had 3 or more wikilinks. Should I just assume that someone has deorphaned articles like this and delete them from the list? Thanks Aurornisxui (talk) 23:43, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

Can you give some examples of which articles you mean? ♠PMC♠ (talk) 23:50, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

Confianza, Digital magnetofluidics, Sarah E. Diamond, Those were the only articles I looked at, I wanted to make sure I was doing the right thing taking off the tag. Aurornisxui (talk) 23:12, 1 December 2018 (UTC)

Digital magnetofluidics and Ivan Jakovlevich Fojnickij are linked from other mainspace articles - Index of physics articles (D) and Saint Petersburg Imperial University, respectively - so both of those qualify to have their orphan tag removed.

However, Confianza and Sarah E. Diamond are not linked from any other mainspace articles, so they do not qualify to have their orphan tag removed. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 23:18, 1 December 2018 (UTC)

Thanks very much! Aurornisxui (talk) 01:40, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

No problem. I want to make sure we're on the same page here before you start de-orphaning though - an article is an orphan when no other mainspace pages link to it. It has nothing to do with any wikilinks on the article itself.

You can check what links to a page using Special:WhatLinksHere. There's a link to it on the sidebar on the left under "Tools". There's a drop-down box that lets you pick what namespace you're looking at. It's normally set to "all", but you can change it to "(Article)" if you want to just see mainspace. If there's at least one mainspace page that links to the article, as long as it isn't a disambiguation page, it can be de-orphaned. Does that make sense? ♠PMC♠ (talk) 17:04, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

deOrphan script

Hi all. Just wanted to let everyone know about a new script I made to easily remove orphan tags from articles that have them. Documentation is available at User:DannyS712/deOrphan, as are installation instructions. Feel free to ping me with any questions, or bring them up on my talk page. --DannyS712 (talk) 02:40, 23 December 2018 (UTC)

February 2009 Orphans now <5,000

4,999 as of this morning. Mccapra (talk) 12:46, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

So close, yet so far. Congrats everyone who's been working on it! ♠PMC♠ (talk) 14:57, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

A new newsletter directory is out!

A new Newsletter directory has been created to replace the old, out-of-date one. If your WikiProject and its taskforces have newsletters (even inactive ones), or if you know of a missing newsletter (including from sister projects like WikiSpecies), please include it in the directory! The template can be a bit tricky, so if you need help, just post the newsletter on the template's talk page and someone will add it for you.

– Sent on behalf of Headbomb. 03:11, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

February 2009 Orphans now <4,000

3,999 as of this morning. Mccapra (talk) 06:02, 28 April 2019 (UTC)

Do we want a concentrated effort to bring February 2013 articles below 4000? The only category that is above 4000 articles now. --Xaiver0510 (talk) 02:23, 3 May 2019 (UTC)

Does anyone has AWB access?

Noted an editor tagging non-orphaned articles as orphans (mostly footballer articles with names starting with A onwards). I have actually left a note to ask him to adjust his AWB settings (which is set to the old definition of minimum of 3 incoming links) and just asked him to revert the orphan tagging. About 150 articles are affected so AWB might be faster to fix it... --Xaiver0510 (talk) 02:17, 24 May 2019 (UTC)

We should ask the AWB people if they can adjust that default, too. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 02:31, 24 May 2019 (UTC)

I think it was adjusted but there are those who downloaded AWB with the old defaults and then starts to tag non-orphan articles as orphans... --Xaiver0510 (talk) 02:36, 24 May 2019 (UTC)

Membership lists

Wikipedia:WikiProject Orphanage#Active members lists many editors who haven't edited at all for years. I marked a couple for you, but perhaps you'd like to consider moving to Wikipedia:WikiProject X's more automated membership system? I think that User:Harej runs a bot to archive inactive users, and then you'd never have to bother with outdated lists again. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:25, 27 May 2019 (UTC)

New database report

The wikiproject may be interested in checking out Wikipedia:Database reports/Orphans with incoming links. Thanks, --DannyS712 (talk) 02:23, 9 August 2019 (UTC)

August 2010

A day ago there were 574 orphan articles from August 2010. Ten hours ago this had dropped to one. Now it’s back to 574 again. Does anyone know why? Mccapra (talk) 09:06, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

List of cathedrals in the United States

The article is listed as an orphan but I do not see an orphan tag on the article. Any idea why is it so? --Justanothersgwikieditor (talk) 03:55, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

Justanothersgwikieditor, somebody made it so that List of cathedrals in Florida was transcluding into the main list, and List of cathedrals in Florida was tagged as an orphan, which was also transcluding onto the main list. I've un-transcluded Florida and will be de-tagging that momentarily. This...is one reason why constructing lists by transcluding smaller lists can be disastrous. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 05:46, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

@Premeditated Chaos:Ah, learned something new again! Thanks for the clarification! --Justanothersgwikieditor (talk) 07:33, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

JL-Bot

There is a new bot, JL-Bot, that automatically removes the orphan tag from articles with three or more incoming links. Mccapra (talk) 05:31, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

Orphaned articles from February 2009

Feast your eyes on this! ♠PMC♠ (talk) 01:57, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

Fantastic! Mccapra (talk) 03:15, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

Wow! ~Kvng (talk) 16:15, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

BRAVO! :D -- œ^™ 06:15, 16 January 2021 (UTC)

Possible increase of orphaned article resulting from AFD

I noted that there is an AFD ongoing for Index of Country-related articles and if the result is to delete the indices, there maybe a huge increase of articles being marked as orphaned if they have a single incoming link from such indices. Note this is not WP:CANVASS but just a heads-up on consequences if the result is to partially or fully delete such indices. --Justanothersgwikieditor (talk) 05:24, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

De-orphaning by WikiProject

I have in mind a WikiProject framework, which, if it works out as I hope, may result in reducing some of the enormous backlog here by decentralizing the orphan problem and enlisting WikiProject members to work on it for the subset of orphans that belong to their project. WikiProjects with a particular topic focus tend to be active and motivated to improving backlogs of various kinds in their topic area, usually Category-based, but I don't see them reducing orphan backlogs, perhaps because no framework for it exists at the project itself. A few active projects have very motivated members, who, if a framework existed for it, might start actively working on the orphan backlog. One of the most active, imho, is WP:WikiProject Military history. (Another is WP:MED.) I think introducing those projects, and perhaps a few others, to the orphan problem may result in major improvements reducing overall orphan backlog. I've started by creating a pilot within the WP:MIL project, to see if this generates any interest there. You can follow the discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history#De-orphaning articles to see how it's going, or join in if interested. If this works out at the MILHIST project, it would be quite straightforward to introduce it to other WikiProjects. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 00:48, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

Category:Orphaned articles from March 2022

Category:Orphaned articles from March 2022 might have a lot of non-orphaned articles as there are 350+ articles out of 1300+ (roughly a quarter) which has 1 or more incoming link. Noted that the likely 200+ articles are tagged orphans by AWB on the old settings of requiring 3 incoming links. This will be a quick fix to reduce the number of orphaned articles. Justanothersgwikieditor (talk) 08:01, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

Add me

Please add me as i don’t know how to. 2006toyotacorrola (talk) 10:53, 31 October 2022 (UTC)

Done Welcome! Thanks for volunteering to help out. Happy editing, Perfect4th (talk) 12:39, 31 October 2022 (UTC)

Article page proposal, written for new and returning members

Hi, Today I added a proposal here on the Orphan article talk page. Discussion is welcome there. Regards, JoeNMLC (talk) 21:38, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

Recent updates

At WP:Orphan article, I updated Step 1 - Finding an orphaned article with details here. Also, I discovered within Category:All orphaned articles at the TOC, going to "Lj" then (previous page) to display many "List of ..." articles. There are over 600 of these to de-orphan and may be easier for new WP members. JoeNMLC (talk) 00:47, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

For the Petscan tool, I created subpage Petscan documentation, then added Wikilink at Step 2: Finding related articles section. While Petscan can filter any category, it is particularly helpful for De-Orphaning. JoeNMLC (talk) 15:26, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Project-independent quality assessments

Quality assessments by Wikipedia editors rate articles in terms of completeness, organization, prose quality, sourcing, etc. Most wikiprojects follow the general guidelines at Wikipedia:Content assessment, but some have specialized assessment guidelines. A recent Village pump proposal was approved and has been implemented to add a |class= parameter to {{WikiProject banner shell}}, which can display a general quality assessment for an article, and to let project banner templates "inherit" this assessment.

No action is required if your wikiproject follows the standard assessment approach. Over time, quality assessments will be migrated up to {{WikiProject banner shell}}, and your project banner will automatically "inherit" any changes to the general assessments for the purpose of assigning categories.

However, if your project has decided to "opt out" and follow a non-standard quality assessment approach, all you have to do is modify your wikiproject banner template to pass {{WPBannerMeta}} a new |QUALITY_CRITERIA=custom parameter. If this is done, changes to the general quality assessment will be ignored, and your project-level assessment will be displayed and used to create categories, as at present. Aymatth2 (talk) 19:34, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

Announcement - Invitation template

Greetings, Over at Wikipedia:Requested templates, I requested an invitation template for WikiProject Orphanage. The next step is adding to the Project page (Templates section). I am uncertain of the exact wording to explain 1) Please check "Participants" section first to insure not already a member here. 2) Can be added to a user's Talk page. 3) Ideas to shorten length, make less wordy?

Use the following code: {{subst:WikiProject Orphanage invitation|ts=~~~~}}

WikiProject Orphanage invitation

WikiProject Orphanage
Dear WikiProject Orphanage,

We would like to invite you to join WikiProject Orphanage, a group of Wikipedians helping improve articles on many topics. An orphan article has no links from other pages in the main article namespace. If you are new to Wikipedia, de-orphaning articles is a great way to learn a wide variety of useful skills, such as how to navigate within Wikipedia, how to format wikilinks, and how to utilize cleanup tags. If you're interested, consider adding yourself to the list of participants. For the how-to page, see WP:ORPH. Thank you! -- JoeNMLC (talk) 20:58, 1 February 2024 (UTC).

Any suggestions are welcome. Regards, JoeNMLC (talk) 20:58, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

This could be more specific about what improvements we're focused on. WP:ORPH doesn't link where you think it does. Here's an improved version for your consideration.

You have been invited to join WikiProject Orphanage, a group of Wikipedians working to improve connections between articles by creating links to orphan articles. If you are new to Wikipedia, de-orphaning articles is a great way to learn a wide variety of useful skills, such as how to navigate within Wikipedia, how to format wikilinks, and how to use cleanup tags. To get started see WP:DE-ORPHAN. Also consider adding yourself to the list of participants. Thank you!

~Kvng (talk) 01:44, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

@Kvng - Thanks for the above shorter version, and improved. The only thing I would change is "You have been invited" to You are invited. Cheers! JoeNMLC (talk) 15:49, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

Yes, that suggestion is an improvement. ~Kvng (talk) 12:40, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

@Kvng - Just wondering if there will be more discussion? JoeNMLC (talk) 06:29, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

Not from me. It's as good as I can get it. ~Kvng (talk) 00:36, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

ω Awaiting - any additional Discussion here? Cheers, JoeNMLC (talk) 02:15, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

Looks good to me (other than perhaps a comma or so). Perfect4th (talk) 04:08, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Orphanage/Archive 3