Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 15:05, 9 March 2011

This template was considered for deletion on 2007 September 1. The result of the discussion was "keep".

Template:Unreferenced is permanently protected from editing because it is a heavily used or highly visible template. Substantial changes should first be proposed and discussed here on this page. If the proposal is uncontroversial or has been discussed and is supported by consensus, editors may use {{edit template-protected}} to notify an administrator or template editor to make the requested edit. Usually, any contributor may edit the template's documentation to add usage notes or categories. Any contributor may edit the template's sandbox. Functionality of the template can be checked using test cases.

A list of persistently discussed material which illustrates how current consensus came to be can be found at this subpage. See also the /Archive index.

Archives

Index Archive 1 Archive 2 Archive 3 Archive 4 Archive 5 Archive 6 Archive 7 Archive 8 Archive 9 Archive 10 Archive 11 Archive 12

This page has archives. Sections older than 200 days may be automatically archived by Lowercase sigmabot III when more than 5 sections are present.

The multiply referenced unreferenced article

I've recently run across several {{unref}}-tagged articles that contain inline references, but still display a rather outdated unref tag at the top of the article.

Have we considered changing the text to say (in small type), "Any editor may remove this tag as soon as this page contains at least one reference"? (Ideally, I'd restrict the displayed text to those with |date=2008 or older, as they seem to be at the highest risk for this problem.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:45, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

I think it's tacit. Every article maintenance tag identifies an issue that needs to be addressed, and none mention removal if the tag no longer applies. I think it's obvious to most people. What makes this template different? However, there is an issue with this template that would not be obvious to most people: what to do when it no longer applies but, as is so often the case, the article remains mostly unreferenced, which still leaves the article in a mostly unverified state. Most experienced users replace with {{refimprove}}. So we can say instead something on that issue, that also implies the authority to remove. I suggest Note: if sources are added, but the article remains mostly unreferenced, consider replacing this template with {{refimprove}} rather than simply removing.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 12:37, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

This is still a problem, and there are still editors who don't believe themselves to be authorized to remove these templates. I've been cleaning through WPMED's lacking sources long list of allegedly unreferenced articles, and almost a quarter of them contain references.

Can we try adding Fuhghettaboutit's text to this template, or perhaps a simple statement like, "If sources have been added, ANYONE may remove this template"? WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:34, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

But they don't instantly become 100% referenced, so a {{refimprove}} may still be warranted as a replacement. --Redrose64 (talk) 23:15, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

I am against adding the string. What is suggested is adding editor to editor(s) communication. Such communications should be on the talk page not embedded in article space. -- PBS (talk) 10:11, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

Redirects

See the documentation - why are so many redirects needed? I count 51, of which 18 are redlinks; until yesterday, there were 16 (which I still consider excessive). Many of the additional 33 could fall within WP:R3. If some spelling/typo errors do occur often, is it necessary to advertise them, thus implying that this is good practice? --Redrose64 (talk) 09:07, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

I just came here to say this. TeleComNasSprVen (talk · contribs) seems to have gone on a spree of creating redirects. ×××BrightBlackHeaven××× 11:09, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Do we feel that the following should be taken to WP:RFD? Template:Citationsneeded, Template:Ref needed, Template:Referencesneeded, Template:Refs needed, Template:Refsneeded, Template:Unreference, Template:Cite source, Template:Citesource, Template:No sources, Template:No reference, Template:Noreference. These redirects were all created by TeleComNasSprVen (talk · contribs) and, to my mind, are mostly cases of WP:RFD#DELETE criteria 2, 4 and/or 7. In the case of criterion 2 "The redirect might cause confusion", an examination of the history for Template:Cite source shows that even the creator was unsure of its purpose. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:59, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Yes. ×××BrightBlackHeaven××× 18:54, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

I had previously planned to use the redirected templates in a different article, and I kept searching under Noreference, Refsneeded and so forth until I got the right one. It was my belief that creating these redirects would be better suited for those not familiar with the template, and I did not have the time to create new ones for the redlinks. I mainly had confusion over what link pointed to which template, as there had been discrepancies between citesource and citesource(s), and tried to categorize and redirect those with the s to the proper template. :| TelCoNaSpVe :| 03:46, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

Have asked Rich Farmbrough how SmackBot (talk · contribs) will handle these. --Redrose64 (talk) 10:30, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

Should I list this {{...}} as a redirect for Template:Expand section? :| TelCoNaSpVe :| 04:48, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

{{...}} was redirected to {{expand section}} following Misplaced Pages:Templates for discussion/Log/2010 May 9#Template:.... It wasn't just arbitrarily created as a new redirect. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 11:06, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

Fine, I'll work on the redirects and might as well remove a few from the list until someone complains; but you still haven't answered my question: Should I add this {{...}} on the list of redirects for Template:Expand section/doc? :| TelCoNaSpVe :| 19:41, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

I wouldn't because it has had more than one meaning. I don't think that the use of any template redirect should be encouraged, if such templates could have ambiguous meaning.

Further, here's a copy of a discussion that I had with Rich Farmbrough:

AWB itself does Fact to citation needed. SB gets anew list of redirects for its regexes every time I build the rule base. At the moment I'm avoiding it because there's a template redirect called "..." that breaks stuff but I can do a build sooner rather than later. Rich Farmbrough, 11:31, 15 June 2010 (UTC).

I don't necessarily want you to do a new build ahead of schedule; the thing is, there is a possibility that some of these redirects (new or existing) may have been used by people who believed that they had one effect, but the effect has been changed. The user in question attempted to alter WP:MYSPACE from Misplaced Pages:What Misplaced Pages is not#Misplaced Pages is not a blog, webspace provider, social networking, or memorial site to Misplaced Pages:Facebook, which is a huge difference of meaning. This particular case isn't a template, but it's a redirect which was altered without thought for the consequences (it has since been reverted). I don't want to see collateral damage by, say {{citation needed}} popping up in places where {{unreferenced}} was intended - or vice versa. BTW, I'm watching this page, because I like to keep threads in one place. --Redrose64 (talk) 12:34, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

Yes, when changing a redirect's meaning the least that should be done is to orphan the redirect first. Rich Farmbrough, 14:18, 15 June 2010 (UTC).

which suggests that {{...}} is one of those which are specifically not to be encouraged. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:57, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

Well, {{...}}'s old meaning was practicall the same as its present one: that's why it was redirected, after all. Still, it's not necessary to encourage it to be used further. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 09:46, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

Have we as yet decided on what to do with the redirects? Or shall I simply fix the redlinked ones? :| TelCoNaSpVe :| 03:52, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

I don't know what you mean by fixing, but do not create any more. ×××BrightBlackHeaven××× 10:21, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

Why do we even have a list of redirects on the documentation page? What is the purpose? Is there some need to advertise them? —David Levy 13:30, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

Lots of templates have redirects. To name but a few: Template:Criticism section/doc, Template:Disputed-section/doc, Template:Ref improve section/doc, and Template:Too abstract all have respective redirects lists. And right now, I have this to do. :| TelCoNaSpVe :| 06:11, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

That doesn't answer my questions.

What is the benefit of listing redirects in that manner? —David Levy 06:29, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

The intended purpose is to give you a shortcut: for instance, people might not know that {{fact}} redirects to {{citation needed}}. It would seem at some point that this was forgotten and people simply started listing them. I mean, creating lists is fun, right? Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 11:55, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

However, see the start of this thread: in the last two weeks or so, a user created several additional redirects, to this and other cleanup templates, of both the inline and {{ambox}} types. I think the new ones are all redundant, and some of the older ones may be too. Those that are not may be divided into two groups: those in common use, such as {{fact}} and {{cn}}, which may be advertised on the doc page, and those which are discouraged but retained. I'm still considering taking this to WP:TFD. --Redrose64 (talk) 12:44, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

As I say, that would seem to be the result of a misunderstanding as to why we link redirects. I'd TfD any new ones which aren't of obvious benefit workflow-wise. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 18:08, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

So take it to TFD! :| TelCoNaSpVe :| 19:41, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Ah, that makes sense. A similar misunderstanding has arisen on various project pages, with some editors assuming that a shortcut box's intended purpose is to document every shortcut in existence (as opposed to listing the most useful ones) and/or that unlisted shortcuts will cease functioning.

TeleComNasSprVen: The site's software automatically provides this functionality, and we only reduce convenience by indiscriminately bombarding users with such a list in a template's documentation. —David Levy 19:18, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

What? How'd you get there? I only got here... :| TelCoNaSpVe :| 19:41, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Under "Filters," click "Hide" for transclusions and links. —David Levy 21:59, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

I think I see what you're saying, but even if its true, whats left of the other redirects that aren't in the list? Are they of any use left if they're not one of the "often used" ones on the redirect list? :| TelCoNaSpVe :| 00:28, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

No one is suggesting that unlisted redirects are inherently useless. The point is that there is no value in advertising them. —David Levy 04:03, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Just a little note, firstly SmackBot now deals with "..." fairly happily - it's in use on fr: and deleting it might cause problems when stuff is transwiki'd. However it should be discouraged on en: because it can break "other stuff" . Secondly a lot of the lists of redirects on template docs were placed there by me, back when I built all SB's regexes manually, often I would include the regex in an HTML comment too - this particular use is now obsolete, so only listing maybe a short-cut and any commonly used but distinct (i.e. not casing, spacing, word order differences) redirects seems the thing to do. Rich Farmbrough, 03:15, 24 September 2010 (UTC).

Albanian/Shqip

Can someone make one of these for the Albanian Misplaced Pages? -Spyenson (talk) 12:32, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

Yes. Rich Farmbrough, 12:11, 25 September 2010 (UTC).

Edit request

I think that the Find sources template should be on a new line. --M4gnum0n (talk) 14:04, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

Should "Find sources" only provide Google links?

See Template talk:Find sources#Why only Google links?

—Preceding unsigned comment added by Mange01 (talk • contribs) 19:42, 26 September 2010

See Template talk:Refimprove#RFC: Should a link to a commercial search engine be included in the template Refimprove the consensus was that Google should not be used in these templates. -- PBS (talk) 22:56, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

At the time the RFC was taking place notification of this debate was given on this talk page See Template_talk:Unreferenced/Archive 10#Findsources -- PBS (talk) 23:05, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

Template size

This template seems to have expanded by about 50% vertically recently. If that were for the purpose of making it more legible then that might be wise: however, the idiosyncratic use of small text and excessive line breaks makes the template less clear, especially if the user has reduced his text size. I've whipped up some test cases demonstrating the problem. I think the current sandbox code should be deployed. Feel free to ping relevant parts of the project if you think anyone in particular should weigh in here. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward: not at work) - talk 19:10, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

The small text does not seem to actually make the box smaller, which is the only reason I can see for using it. I like the find sources shortcuts; anything to streamline the process of finding references and getting rid of the tag altogether is helpful in my book. It's the shortcuts that add the extra line, but I'd rather have them anyway.--RDBury (talk) 10:33, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Actually, it's the line breaks which add the extra line (as the test cases page shows). I agree that the source links are a good inclusion, but they needn't be discarded to fix the problem here. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward: not at work) - talk 09:28, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

placement

Since this is an article-level tag, it would be better to make it only placeable at the top. In addition, I do not think all of the bots pick this up if this is in at the bottom of the page.陣内_Jinnai 05:14, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

• Unsurprisingly, that section's reinstatement was counter to a consensus that PBS didn't like. Should be safe to remove it again. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward: not at work) - talk 09:39, 30 September 2010 (UTC)
  • The edit you have given was in February before the RFC. The last one I made on this issue was on the 1 March. And reflects the current consensus. I am reverting to that guidance. -- PBS (talk) 23:12, 4 October 2010 (UTC)
    • Can you please point to where this consensus was reached? I think this notice (and its progeny) is the most important maintenance template on Misplaced Pages and that it is vital that it be placed at the top of articles, not buried in the interior and that it should never be placed on talk pages.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 23:56, 4 October 2010 (UTC)
      • It is not that there is a consensus, it is that there is not a consensus just to put it at the top of an article. The last time it was discussed is now the top section in Template talk:Unreferenced/Archive 11 -- PBS (talk) 00:58, 5 October 2010 (UTC)
        • I did some digging and the wording was changed on 7 March 2008 after this discussion Template talk:Unreferenced/Archive 7#Placement. In 2008 one editor wrote "I came here looking for this discussion, and here it is! I have recently been looking at the unsourced with no date articles (unreferenced with no date), and find quite a few are in the "references" section -" which shows that it is not uncommon. I think that before we change the wording, if it is to be done, then there should be an RFC as in both of the last two discussions there has been little participation. -- PBS (talk) 01:17, 5 October 2010 (UTC)
          • I personally favour it being right at the top, because the reader needs to be warned immediately that what they are about to read might not be true. Some people read only the lead section, after all; or read only as far as they need to in order to find the info they want. They aren't necessary going to continue down to the bottom, so if the {{unreferenced}} is down there, they won't spot it. It most definitely should not be placed on the talk page, because a number of non-editors aren't even aware that the talk page even exists. At the top of the article, per MOS:LEAD, is the only suitable place. --Redrose64 (talk) 13:30, 5 October 2010 (UTC)
            • Not everyone agrees with that. MOS:LEAD doesn't agree, for starters. (Did you read it before citing it? It makes zero mention of cleanup tags.) I certainly don't, and I shall continue my practice of several years standing when it comes to placement. Uncle G (talk) 14:08, 5 October 2010 (UTC)
              • Uncle G, your statement is correct for values of zero which are greater than or equal to 1... "Elements of the lead" states as its second point: "The maintenance tags should be below the disambiguation links. These tags inform the reader about the general quality of the article, and should be presented to the user before the article itself." I suppose that you shall continue doing whatever you are used to do until consensus is clearly against it? Or do you intend to do this no matter what the consensus is? Fram (talk) 14:19, 5 October 2010 (UTC)
                • I most certainly did read it; and the rest of the comment which I would have put here has already been stated by Fram. --Redrose64 (talk) 14:43, 5 October 2010 (UTC)
                  • Then you need to read it again, more carefully. Uncle G (talk) 14:46, 5 October 2010 (UTC)
                • Zero remains zero in this universe. You've counted incorrectly. Spell "cleanup" as "c-l-e-a-n-u-p", as it is spelled in Misplaced Pages:Template messages/Cleanup, and you will gain enlightenment as to the correct value of zero. ☺ Even what you point to doesn't support Redrose64's assertions. Read carefully. Aside from the fact that this tag isn't on the list of maintenance tags that the MOS links to as "maintenance tags"; the MOS isn't saying that maintenance tags must be placed in the lead, it is saying that any maintainence tags that occur in the lead should be placed in a specific order relative to the other parts of the lead (below the headnotes and above the lead proper). By the way, it is you that has the onus of showing that consensus supports your change to the long-standing status quo, not others. You cannot count me in that consensus, for one. Nor Philip Baird Shearer, by the looks of it. Uncle G (talk) 14:46, 5 October 2010 (UTC)
                  • I reverted PBS because he claimed that this tag shouldn't be used on stubs, which was under discussion at the time and where consensus was clear that this template can be used on stubs. Apart from that: this tag is in (a subcategory of) the category:maintenance templates. The fact that it isn't included in the linked page is an error, but doesn't mean that it suddenly no longer is a maintenance tag, obviously. Fram (talk) 15:11, 5 October 2010 (UTC)
                  • (edit conflict) OK then. On MOS:LEAD I find (as did Fram) that "The maintenance tags should be below the disambiguation links. These tags inform the reader about the general quality of the article" - "general quality", to my mind, covers such issues as the standard of referencing, and more importantly, the fact that there are no references. It goes on with "and should be presented to the user before the article itself."
                    Following that link, we reach a page which has examples of various maintenance tags, which includes a section where {{unreferenced}} could have been placed, but hasn't been - but I don't think the page pretends to list every possible maintenance tag (there are at least seventy, as a check of Template:Multiple issues/doc will show - and I happen to know that that list is itself incomplete).
                    Returning to the top, there is the note "For general maintenance templates such as Cleanup, see Misplaced Pages:Template messages/Cleanup." Following that link, we reach a page which states "Unless otherwise noted, they should be placed at the top of the article—before other templates, images, or infoboxes"; further down, we find {{unreferenced}}, which carries no information about placement, so the general instruction to place at the top applies. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:20, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

To reply to Redrose64's comment "right at the top, because the reader needs to be warned immediately that what they are about to read might not be true". If you believe it not to be true then you should AFD it, and not plonk this template on the top of the article. This should only be used if you think it is probably true, but that for whatever reason the requirements of WP:PROVIT have not stated to be met. For example an article may even have a list of general references, but those do not qualify as adequate citation as far as policy is concerned (WP:PROVIT) as they are not inline citations, so this template is often used on articles that have general references in a references section but no inline citations.

There is no agreement that maintaince tags should go in article space, (See Most maintenance templates should be placed on the talk page and User:Shanes/Why tags are evil). I think there are exceptions when a template serves a dual purpose and I think that the {{unreferenced}} -- placed in a "Reference" section at the bottom of an article, serves a dual purpose. It is a maintenance template (the second sentence is an editor to editor message), but the first sentence adds information that a passing reader of the page (who is not familiar with Wikipeda) needs to know. I do not think that it is the most important piece of information about an article's subject so I don't think it should be placed at the top of an article, and so I agree with Uncle G. I always place it directly above a {{reflist}} template where it also serves as section filler until a citation is supplied. This has the advantage of not leaving what appears to be an empty section at the bottom of the article (as empty sections are considered undesirable). -- PBS (talk) 20:35, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

Unless your in the middle of article expansion, you shouldn't be creating essentially blank sections.陣内_Jinnai 22:48, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

Have you thought through what you have suggested with regards to the requirement for citations? If one is suggesting that other should "Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed." How are they going to do that without creating a references section? If the other editors use inline Harvard round bracket cations or footnote citations they will need a WP:FNNR section, so creating a References section with this template in it is an elegant solution. It is also a useful direct check to see if this is the correct template to use (placing it at the top of an article is more likely to lead to inappropriate usage). In response to your initial posting "In addition, I do not think all of the bots pick this up if this is in at the bottom of the page" any bot worth its salt will check Category:Articles lacking sources -- PBS (talk) 23:33, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

I agree that bots shouldn't have a problem with where the tag is placed. The main reason for placing it at the top is that readers need to know that an article is unsourced immediately, before having read through the page. On longer pages, placing the tag in the ref section will make it invisible, below the fold. This makes the primary function of the tag, warning the readers, essentially useless. First is warning the readers, second is inviting them to provide sources in any form or place, and only the third apect is where and how these sources should be placed ideally. I have not witnessed any articles where the "unsourced" tag is replaced by a source at the top of the article, but I am sure that there have been such cases. But these are few and far between, and don't outweigh the first aspect. Fram (talk) 06:39, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

@PBS - you state "this template is often used on articles that have general references in a references section but no inline citations" - I would never use {{unreferenced}} for such purposes, for reasons given in the box at the top of its documentation. Instead, I would select a more suitable one (such as {{refimprove}}{{no footnotes}}) from the list given further down in the documentation. I don't AFD articles - I'm not a deletionist - if something is unsuitable for speedy deletion or merging into another, it's almost certainly capable of improvement. --Redrose64 (talk) 10:25, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

The correct tag in the case you mention would be {{No footnotes}}. --M4gnum0n (talk) 13:58, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

Its not necessarily true, citations can be other than footnotes (parenthetical referencing).The use of Unrefrenced depended on whether you think a list of general references are citations or whether in this context citations means in-line citations as required by WP:PROVEIT -- PBS (talk) 00:35, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

@PBS - You don't need a reference section to add citations. Most people don't add references to the reference section. They add them after the item cited - often as bare urls - or in the external links section. When they add them to the former, they don't go and update the {{unreferenced}} tag as they don't scroll down that far.

Also the similar tag {{refimprove}} which often replaces this once 1 reliable ref is added is always placed at the top. This would just add consistancy with that and all other similar tags.陣内_Jinnai 05:42, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

{{No footnotes}} applies to both footnotes and parenthetical referencing, so it is the right template in the aforementioned case. Should we move it to {{Inline}} (actually a redirect)?

I accidentally linked the wrong template yesterday, which I have now amended. However, we're not discussing {{no footnotes}}, we're discussing the placement of {{unreferenced}}. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:28, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

I know, I went a little astray... Back on topic, I always put referencing-type templates at the top where they are most visible. This way editors and readers are warned about possibly unverified content. --M4gnum0n (talk) 18:16, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

{{no footnotes}} is not suitable word replacement for {{unreferenced}} if there is not reference section. {{No footnotes}} is for cases were there is a list of references but no inline citations. There is currently a discussion to remove the phrase "related reading or external links" as related reading is meaningless and "external links" can not be used for "for sources that support an article" (see the next paragraph)

陣 you wrote above that "Most people don't add references to the reference section. They add them after the item cited - often as bare urls - or in the external links section." Entries in the external links section are not used for sources that support an article (see WP:EXTERNAL "This guideline concerns external links that are not citations to sources supporting article content." and WP:CITE "'External links' are used as section headings for lists of general texts that may be of interest, but have not been used as sources."). Bare urls (Embed links) are no longer accepted as citations see (Misplaced Pages:CITE#Embedded links). So whether someone uses Parenthetical referencing|Parenthetical referencing or WP:CITE#Footnotes there will have to be a WP:FNNR section.

陣 you wrote above that "Also the similar tag {{refimprove}} which often replaces this once 1 reliable ref is added is always placed at the top." no it does not have to go at the top.

M4gnum0n I understand you argument. But taking it to its logical conclusion one would have to put the reference section at the top of all articles to inform people how well the article is referenced before they read it. The thing is that we do not verify everything only those bits that need it as we assume a certain amount a basic knowledge among our readers, and I think that also includes knowing that references and footnotes come at the end of the page. I think that issue of not enough references is a references issue and it should be mentioned under that heading and while I respect you opinion on this issue not to want to insist that this template is always placed a references section. I would hope that you are tolerant enough to realise that others can hold a different valid opinion on this issue and realise that there is no consensus on placement. -- PBS (talk) 22:56, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

Well this discussion is becoming odder as it goes. I don't know what to say, seems like I am being questioned about knowledge of {{no footnotes}} (which I thought I already showed) and tolerance out of nowhere... Or is this another misunderstanding? --M4gnum0n (talk) 23:23, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

OK, let's take the general case of cleanup/maintenance/call them what you will templates (the ones that produce a box with a coloured stripe up the side, and a message to the effect that "This article and/or section is not as good as it might be. Please help improve this article by dealing with the issues"). The documentation for most of them suggest that if the tag applies to a single section, that it be placed in that specific section; also that if it applies to the whole article, that it be placed at the top (after any hatnotes, although not all state that). To permit flexibility of wording, most allow one positional (ie unnamed) parameter, and suggest that this be set to |section| if the tag applies to a single section, or that this parameter be omitted if the tag applies to the whole article. Some of them even have section-specific versions; but often, these are merely alternative forms of the article-specific template.

Now, {{unreferenced}} is one which has such a positional parameter; it is also one which has a section-specific version. However, careful inspection of the latter shows that {{unreferenced section|date=October 2010}} is exactly equivalent to {{unreferenced|section|date=October 2010}}. So, since {{unreferenced}} conforms to the majority in the matter of "this template can be configured to indicate whether the problem applies to the article, or just to a section", and the only possible place for {{unreferenced|section}} is in the actual section itself, why should the whole-article form be treated any differently from the majority as regards placement? --Redrose64 (talk) 00:23, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

This template existed years before the ambox was added and various discussions that have been held before and since have always agreed that it can be placed in the reference section (see for example Template talk:Unreferenced/Archive 1#Straw poll on placement). See my comments higher up this section maintenance templates and that this is not just a maintenance template. -- PBS (talk) 03:25, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

Pre-existence does not set something in stone: WP:CCC. Looking at the archived straw poll, and discounting the !votes (i) for main page which don't state a preference for position; (ii) those that effectively state "top" or "bottom", without giving a reason; and (iii) those for placement on the talk-page, I see that the number for "top" just about balances the number for "bottom". However, I also get the clear impression that the "top" voters give better reasons than the "bottom" voters - whose only reason seems to be "because it's where the references would go". I would therefore conclude from that alone that the top was the best place. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:03, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

There is no consensus here for mandating one style, I count eight people in total in the discussion with two definite definitely opposed and some others not clear. Besides eight people is hardly enough to mandate placement for such a widely used template. -- PBS (talk) 05:41, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Not a badge of shame

When the dust settles above, would someone please add the usual "not a badge of shame" announcement to this page? Apparently we still have some editors who think the purpose is to "warn the reader" rather than to encourage improvements by identifying a specific type of improvement that the article needs. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:08, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

Not "rather than", it is both a warning and an encouragement. And a badge of shame is a third, separate thing, not a warning to readers or a call to editors. Would you call a "warning: contains small parts: not suitable for children under three year" indication a "badge of shame"? Fram (talk) 07:35, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

If it were only to "encourage improvements by identifying a specific type of improvement that the article needs." then it ought to be placed on the talk page, not in article space. However I think this template fulfils a duel rule. -- PBS (talk) 01:10, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

Pre-article-rating, banners, and wikiprojects I had a lot of sympathy for the "box tags should go on talk pages" school of thought. Now every article has a talk page, the blue discussion tag means nothing. Perhaps someone could write some js to make it green if there are only templates on the talk page. Rich Farmbrough, 22:06, 19 October 2010 (UTC).

Fram (and others): Do you really think that a "warning" is necessary? Don't you suppose that anyone who can read will be able to quickly, in a single glance, figure out that articles like this one contain no references?

I am not happy with systems predicated on a belief that our readers are too stupid to see what's on the screen if it doesn't come with an orange box. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:29, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

The problem is that as an insider you look at an article and compare it with other Misplaced Pages articles. But think about a person who is using a search engine to find a topic. Now the chances are that first article returned, thanks to Google, is a Misplaced Pages article. If the person is not familiar with Misplaced Pages articles they have no way to judge whether the article is good bad or indifferent. They will not know whether Wikipeida usually provides references. A warning that an article has no references is useful and pertinent information for the causal reader. Particularly as articles with no references are likely to be less accurate than those with. If there is no warning and the article contains a major mistake or bias that does not appear in other articles found in the same search, next time, is the reader likely to click on the Wikiepdia article first or go to another site that (s)he think is more reliable? Other templates that are only editor to editor communications {{orphan}} in my opinion are clutter and should not appear in article space.

personally I do not like {{Unreferenced}} on stubs (but the consensus was they were suitable) and I do not put the template at the top of the article but in the references section at the bottom of the page. -- PBS (talk) 22:05, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

I am confused. In #The multiply referenced unreferenced article you want the warning on the talk page. In #placement you want it at the bottom of the article, and also want the article taken to WP:AFD. Here, you want the "causal reader" (assume "casual") to be warned that an article has no references, but you want that warning to be at the bottom.

The casual reader, who has found the article in a search site, is surely more likely to start by just looking at the top of the article, if only to see if it's the topic that they really want, rather than go all the way through. How many are likely to be so thorough as to examine the references section? If they do need to be warned, such warning is surely better early than late. They might be a school student reading up on whatever their homework topic is. They read through the article, paragraph by paragraph, making notes (or even writing their essay, it does happen). Then they reach the last paragraph of actual text, and think "Good, I'm finished", whereupon they see the {{unreferenced}} not far below.

It's like being given a shopping list by your mother, which begins "6 eggs", working through it at the supermarket, filling a basket with dozens of items (all of which you can find apart from the eggs) - only to find a message at the bottom saying "if they don't have eggs, don't bother buying the flour, sugar, butter, currants ..." Arghh! The eggs warning should have been at the top of the list. --Redrose64 (talk) 23:26, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

I think that most of the information contained in maintenance templates should be placed on the talk page because they are editor to editor communications and these should not be placed in article space (Good examples of this are {{Orphan}} and {{Uncategorized}}). A few of these maintenance templates serve a dual purpose because they carry not only editor to editor maintenance information but also information that is pertinent to the reader of an article. {{Unreferenced}} is one of those. The first sentence is useful for readers as well as editors. The second sentence in small could be removed in my opinion, but it is not something I think is worth the effort. I am however against any expansion of the maintenance component (hence the comment in the section #The multiply referenced unreferenced article). The AfD comment is self explanatory and I will not repeat it, and given that explanation of when to AfD an article, I consider this template to be a warning, that should be made in the appropriate place, and I think that appropriate place is in the WP:FNNR section, not as a banner at the top of the article. -- PBS (talk) 21:30, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

External Links

Can I safely remove an {{Unreferenced}} tag if an article has an External Links section? --vgmddg (look | talk | do) 22:22, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

No. While we allow general references in articles, we have to tell the reader in some way that we have actually used a source to verify content. The most transparent way to do so is to use an inline citation next to a statement that is verified by the citation. With a general reference listing we are at least saying "this was used as a source", albeit, not in a targeted way. An external link says no such thing. External links sections are generally places to post links to recommended external websites that may contain information that a person reading the article might wish to also look at, which contain additional information to that which is in the article; websites generally which have not been used as references and should not appear in such section if they already appear in a references or notes section. Of course, if you come across a user who actually used the external links in an external links seciton as sources, the section header should be changed. Also note that in many instances, unreferenced should be changed to {{refimprove}}, {{One source}} and the like rather than simply removed.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 23:26, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

You can't always do this, but if the webpages actually support the content of the article, then yes -- and please rename the section "References" or "Cited works" or some such, so that future editors will instantly recognize them as WP:General references rather than true WP:External links. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:24, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

If it's a biography, and the only ext link (whether in the "External links" section or not) is to IMDb, and there are no other references, you could use {{BLP IMDB-only refimprove}}. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:27, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Template:Unreferenced stub

This template redirects to this one, but isn't visible on the article page - why not? Lugnuts (talk) 15:04, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

I believe that it is only invisible when "auto=yes" is added, which means that it was added to the page by a bot, not by a human, and needs checking by a human before being made visible. Fram (talk) 15:08, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Correct: you'll find that {{unreferenced|auto=yes}} is also invisible. I believe that there was a TfD some time ago along the lines of "all stubs are poorly referenced (if they are refd at all), therefore to mark an article as unrefd when it's already marked as a stub is unnecessary". --Redrose64 (talk) 21:34, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

A TfD because it was a duplicate of unreferenced (no need to have a separate one for an unreferenced stub: they were merged afterwards), and an RfC because the stub instructions said that if an article was tagged as a stub, it shouldn't be tagged as unreferenced as well, since that was implied in the stub tag. The result of the RfC was that only "expand" is implied by a stub tag and is therefor not wanted on a stub-tagged article, but that all other maintenance templates, and certainly unreferenced, can live happily next to a stub tag. Fram (talk) 08:19, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

So all stubs are unref'd?! And therefore all unref'd articles must be stubs.... With it not being visible I don't think it helps in getting a reference for the article. Lugnuts (talk) 18:37, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

This is also part of the history of User:Erik9bot. It was done because people said the tag would overwhelm the page,if it was a stub. The fact that many stubs already had the tag was ignored. Basically - a compromise to keep the anti-tag lobby happy, and get rid of the Erik9Bot category (which itself was a compromise and fudge). Rich Farmbrough, 12:57, 1 January 2011 (UTC).

Rich and Fram pretty well sum up what is going on. Not all stubs are unreferenced, and often the unreferenced template has more content then the article (was an argument). The hidden tag, is an option that has been applied on some stubs, it marks the article as unreferenced so it can be worked by WP:URA and simular projects. I personally would prefer that the tag be visible, but I don't know if the tide of opinion has shifted enough (it is moving that way) to remove the option and make them all visible. JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 12:03, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Internal References

I'm very puzzled by the use of this template on nearly every one of the years pages e.g. 74 BC.

Almost every line on those pages is a wikilink to a[REDACTED] page. Those pages are essentially indexes, or despatch tables (like, e.g. List Nottingham (disambiguation) Archers.

Surely there is no expectation that the references on the linked pages be replicated on the years pages? pages like 944 do have references where there is no main article.

I suspect the majority of these banners are bannerspam, and should be removed--Robert EA Harvey (talk) 23:01, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

It looks like it was added by a bot. If you don't think that it helps the encyclopedia, then you should boldly remove it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:24, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

And it will probably come back? And there are an awful lot of year articles! well over 2000!--Robert EA Harvey (talk) 23:39, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Smackbot added {{unreferenced}} as a direct replacement for Category:Articles lacking sources (Erik9bot), which was added with this edit. The cat itself was deleted following this CfD. If anything, the fault lies with Erik9bot (talk · contribs), who has been blocked for well over a year now, as the bot account of a confirmed WP:SOCK. Thus, I don't think that bold removal will ruffle feathers. --Redrose64 (talk) 10:05, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Grand. So we need someone handy with a bot to clear all the year articles, decade articles, and centuries. I've done 8, and got fed up. Robert EA Harvey (talk) 11:12, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

You might try talking to User:Rich Farmbrough (smackbot's master).--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 12:35, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

There's 2656 year (or year-like) titles, which is not a huge number. Moreover it looks like about 2/3 don't have the tag. I'll look at the centuries and decades presently. Rich Farmbrough, 12:14, 1 January 2011 (UTC).

2263 total pages would need editing. I have invited User:Ludde23 here since he seems to have reverted Robert. I will file a BRFA. Rich Farmbrough, 13:06, 1 January 2011 (UTC).

I'm the one who has added the Unreferenced template (or the Refimprove template, as the case may be) to all year articles from 499 BC to AD 1700, so there are about 2,200 articles that have it. Now, why shouldn't they be there? Could somebody please show me the Misplaced Pages policy that says year articles should not be referenced themselves but only rely on the references in the articles of the events and/or people they link to? This seems rather odd to me. Why doesn't there need to be references on year articles? /Ludde23 13:34, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

There is no need for everything to be referenced. The only requirement is "This policy requires that all quotations and any material challenged or likely to be challenged be attributed to a reliable published source using an inline citation". In the case of year articles it would be more helpful to add {{citation needed}} where appropriate to specific sentences that need them rather than an unhelpful article wide request, as the many internal links to main articles makes it probable that most of the material in a year article is unlikely to be be challenged. --PBS (talk) 14:21, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

FYI, there is a related discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Verifiability#Verification_of_lists. Rd232 19:55, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

To which I've added my opinion, thanks.--Robert EA Harvey (talk) 10:51, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

Proposal

Remove auto parameter. Not helpful. Rich Farmbrough, 13:00, 1 January 2011 (UTC).

 Done Rich Farmbrough, 19:01, 3 January 2011 (UTC).

The point of the parameter was that there wasn't consensus for a bot to post these in a visible way on lots of articles (see Misplaced Pages:Templates_for_discussion/Log/2010_February_5#Template:Unreferenced stub). The tags have already been posted, so rather than removing the parameter here, we need people to go through and manually check the bot edits. That means adding a tracking category. I'm going to revert and add that category. — Carl (CBM · talk) 19:14, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

And who is going to check those articles in the category? And why are the instructions designed to perpetuate the category for ever? If it is checked then the value of having "auto=yes" so that it can be checked is zero. If you see an article with "unref" on it and there's a ref- remove the template. Doesn't matter who what or why it was added. Moreover I would lay odds that the tagging is more conservative than those articles without the "auto=yes". So please, if you want "people to go through" 51,000 articles just to check that they really are unreferenced, first be a little convincing that there will be volunteers for such a pointless task, and secondly allow the mechanism for approving the individual tags - removing the auto parameter from them. Rich Farmbrough, 06:49, 8 February 2011 (UTC).

Moreover people are, of course, adding references to these items and not removing the tag because it is invisible. Which was a big part of the reason for using a tag rather than just a category in the first place, even though about 25% of the items were stubs and were tagged invisibly at the time. Rich Farmbrough, 06:58, 8 February 2011 (UTC).

In the vast majority of cases where I came across articles with this template auto-added, it was done correctly. I support any solution that makes these auto-added tags visible. I have no objection if people want to be able to track them at the same time and want a category for it, but to hide the unreferenced tags on those pages is not helpful. Fram (talk) 08:06, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Invisibility leads to this sort of nonsense. Rich Farmbrough, 10:08, 8 February 2011 (UTC).

Here's another example 1987 United Kingdom general election result in Essex - someone added pasted another unref tag - since the first one was invisible, they both stayed. Rich Farmbrough, 10:15, 8 February 2011 (UTC).

It's not very hard, once the tracking category is in place, to do a scan of all the articles looking for obvious references like external links, ref tags, and citation templates.

The other issue, which I remember now that I looked at the category page, is that these "auto" templates were often added to stubs. There was a compromise that although the tag would be added, it would be invisible, because the tag is visually out of proportion on very short articles. That's why the category page says not to remove the auto tag. This was a compromise worked out in the community discussion about the original "unreferenced stub" tag that was later merged into this tag.

If someone adds a template to an article that already has it, the solution is to give that person a trout, not to change the pattern for every article that was tagged by whatever bot that was. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:03, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

The current consensus is that stubs can (and should) have the unreferenced tag just like every other unsourced article, that's why the unreferenced stub tag is no longer used. The compromise you mention is a thing of the distant past, and no longer applicable. Fram (talk) 12:24, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Needless to say, I disagree with that assessment of the situation. There was consensus to merge the unreferenced-stub tag to the main unreferenced tag, but the consensus at the time was also to keep the tag hidden when it had been added automatically (see the comment by RL0919 (talk) 17:27, 19 February 2010 (UTC) in the TfD). Evidence: that's what was actually done immediately after the close. The only change since then was when R.F. unilaterally edited this template to remove the auto parameter, because he felt the auto parameter was "not helpful". However, it is helpful, as it improves the appearance of stubs that were tagged as unreferenced. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:33, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

The consensus then was to keep it hidden when it was added by the bot, not to keep it hidden at all times. Unreferenced tags on stubs are visible. The proposal now is to make it visible as well even when it was autoadded. Your claim that "it would be invisible, because the tag is visually out of proportion on very short articles." was incorrect. Fram (talk) 15:05, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

The bot put {{unreferenced stub}} on stub articles. That later became {{unreferenced|auto=yes}}. The point was that there was no consensus to make the unreferenced tag visible when it was added to stubs by the bot; there is no reason to think that that consensus has changed now. You were the one who nominated {{unreferenced stub}} for deletion, so I'm sure you're aware of that. The result of the TFD was that the unreferenced-stub template was merged here with the same invisibility property, which was implemented via the "auto" parameter. The fact that "auto" was not named "originally-added-to-a-stub-by-a-bot" is neither here nor there; that's the meaning of the parameter, and the invisibility should be maintained for the same reasons that it was implemented originally. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:12, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

The error here is to think that this is about trouting people. It's not. It's about making things simple, making it easy to do the right thing, not hard. We can all play gnomic if we want complexity, here we should strive for simplicity for three reasons:

1. less goes wrong
2. it is more welcoming to new users
3. it is empowering.

Rich Farmbrough, 01:50, 9 February 2011 (UTC).

New users will not put "unreferenced" on an article in the first place; that's a later stage of development. Nothing really "goes wrong" if a second tag is added, it's just silly to add one if there is already one. That's why it just desreves a trout for not looking more closely before editing. — Carl (CBM · talk) 01:58, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

If something is invisible it doesn't matter how closely you look... remember people use Twinkle and Friendly to do this sort of thing. And it is not the point where on the learning curve tagging may sit, new is a relative term, and source obscurity is bad for everyone - not just taggers, the point is making it complicated is a bad idea. It should be as simple as possible and no simpler. A second tag at the very least results in double counting, likely in mis-categorisation too, at some point, neither of which are big problems, but as a side effect of suppressing something which the second addition shows would be added by a human, in the first place they are not a "cost of doing business" - they are problems which we can dispose of simply and effectively. Rich Farmbrough, 11:08, 9 February 2011 (UTC).

A second tag won't cause double counting, there will still be only one row in the templatelinks table for each template/article pair and only one row in the categorylinks table for each page/category pair. Unless you "count" by scanning the source code of every article, you won't notice the template used twice on an article.

If people are using Twinkle or Friendly, they need to look at the categories before they add the tag; not very hard to do. The categories are not invisible. This is why I said they just need a friendly reminder if you see them add two tags, reminding them to review articles when they edit them. The problems with making the tags visible are still the same as in all the previous discussions. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:37, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

The article will be listed once in the "unsourced from December 2009)" cat (by bot), and once in the month added by the visible tag, so yes, it will be double-counted. Fram (talk) 12:52, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

But it will only be in the "All articles" category once, which is what you would use to "count" the number of unreferenced articles. In any case, if someone adds the tag twice that's their responsibility, not the tag's. Whoever makes the edit is responsible for it.

In any case, my point here is that the consensus when the tags were merged was to keep the tag invisible on stubs, and that merge outcome needs to be respected. If we wanted all thes tubs to be just tagged with the main "unreferenced" tag, that's what the bot would have done in the first place, but there is not consensus for doing that, and the same objections for the bot doing it apply to doing it by disabling the "auto" tag now. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:42, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

(unindent). So, basically, we have a proposal to remove the auto parameter, which you oppose because one year ago the consensus was different. Ignoring the fact that there was basically a consensus to merge, and a consensus that unreferenced templates are acceptable on stubs, and considering that the hide-when-auto discussion was basically tangential and not really decided there, and most importantly considering that consensus can change: what are your current arguments to keep this hidden? Fram (talk) 15:27, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

There was consensus to merge, and consensus that stubs can be marked as unreferenced so they appear in the maintenance categories. However, there is also a significant opinion in all the discussions, including the original bot requests and the TfD, that the size of the unreferenced template is out of place on short stubs because it overwhelms the text. In each discussion, the consensus has always been that the tag would be hidden on these stubs.

That was originally achieved by just putting the stubs into a category, by Erik9 bot; then that was replaced by the {{unreferenced stub}} template; then that was replaced by the "auto" parameter here. All of these are a continuation of the same bot project. There has never been consensus to put a visible "unreferenced" tag on the stubs tagged by that bot, and certainly not in the TfD discussion. It's not as if the objections to the tag have changed since then: the unreferenced template is still the same size, and still has the same visual problems on short stubs. So it needs to continue to be not displayed on these articles. The categories, however, can still be used for maintenance (hypothetically). — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:49, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

The tag is not hidden on stubs, only the "automated" tag is hidden. Why that distinction? There is no "visual problem" with the tag, it is supposed to be a clear indication for readers that the article is unreferenced, and an invitation to do something about it. Whtther the rest of the article is a stub or not is irrelevant for these considerations. Fram (talk) 20:13, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

The "visual problem" is that they're all mostly 1 or 2-line stubs and it looks disproportioned. The stub tag is supposed to be the "clear indication for readers" that the article is incomplete (which includes being unreferenced), and the "invitation to do something about it". It already conveys this.. adding an unreferenced tag to a one-line stub is redundant and unnecessary. (sorry for butting in mid-thread btw) -- œ 13:01, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

The auto tag corresponds to the articles that were marked by Erik9 bot, which were by and large stubs. Many people do find that there is a visual problem with the unreferenced tag on short stubs, which is why the bot didn't just go through and put on the {{unreferenced}} template in the first place – there has never been agreement to do that. The agreement when these articles were tagged was not to put a visible template on then. During the TfD, the exact same concerns were raised, which is why the misnamed "auto" tag was added here. The auto tag, despite its name, means "articles that were tagged by Erik9 bot". The same concerns about appearance still apply, which is why we don't want to just turn off the "auto" tag now. I'm sure that I have said this already, so I'm going to avoid responding if you just ask me to say it again. — Carl (CBM · talk) 20:29, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

• There is a small tag option too.
• Consensus in the BRFA was not to hide the tags, compromise was to hide the tags. That is very different.
• In the deletion debate the merging of the auto parameter was suggested by User:RL0919 in the penultimate comment, and mentioned by no-one else. RL0919 did the actual merge, there was no consensus to preserve the parameter. Rich Farmbrough, 21:38, 9 February 2011 (UTC).
  
  • Right - the compromise that we actually went with was to hide the tags. The fact that that is what actually happened demonstrates that it was, in fact, the outcome that everyone was willing to accept - the consensus outcome. The person below RL0919 seconded those comments, and I also raised the space issue. It had previously been raised in the BRFA for Erik9bot. Removing the "auto" parameter now has the appearance that you;'re just making an end run around the the TfD. All the reasons that the auto tag was included here still apply. — Carl (CBM · talk) 21:44, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
  • Also, I don't believe the template accepts a "small" parameter. — Carl (CBM · talk) 21:46, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
    • Ambox supports it.
    • On another point unref stubs were actually a minority of the unref articles Erik9bot tagged, as far as my memory serves, less than 1/3. Rich Farmbrough, 11:39, 10 February 2011 (UTC).
      
      • We're not talking about ambox, though, we're talking about removing the auto parameter from this template, which does not have a "small" parameter. IIRC the "small" ambox has the same height as the regular one, so it would have the same problems. Of the articles with the "auto" parameter, more than 20,000 are under 1000 bytes; more than 34,000 under 1,500 bytes; and more than 41,000 under 2,000 bytes. The articles that Erik9bot went for were not well-developed articles that didn't have references, they were mostly very short articles. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:09, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

• I Oppose the removal and support Carl's position on this. -- PBS (talk) 21:58, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
• I oppose removal, and to answer Rich's (quite reasonable) question about who checks the category, I have done so, by way of the toolserver listing of cleanup cats for WPMED. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:52, 10 February 2011 (UTC)
  • Can you explain that? With links preferably. Rich Farmbrough, 11:33, 10 February 2011 (UTC).
    
• Oppose removal of auto parameter. Agree with Carl/CBM. -- œ 13:01, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

• One of the things we tend not to think about, is that every view of an article is not through Misplaced Pages. Compare Baroness Bomburst and http://uk.ask.com/Baroness_Bomburst with Julius Ebbinghaus and http://uk.ask.com/Julius_Ebbinghaus both are known unreferenced articles copied from the best and most up to date encyclopedia in the world. but only one indicates it's known short comings. We have standards and we know we don't meet these standards, we as Misplaced Pages have an obligation to not hide the short comings from the public. Every consumer of Misplaced Pages content is a stakeholder in our project, every entity has an obligation to keep their stakeholders reasonably informed, showing the unreferenced tag is part of that obligation. JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 17:51, 11 February 2011 (UTC)
  • Could you point to the "standard" you mean? There is no policy that every article has to have references listed (WP:V does not require it, in particular) and we generally do a good job of eliminating non-notable topics. I don't think we really need to worry about ask.com. The lack of references on a very short article is immediately apparent upon quick inspection, it's not hidden. On the other hand, all of our articles are works in progress, and we are willing to accept articles that still require major work. We have an aspiration to eventually have sources on every article, but if some articles are not there yet that's no worse of a shortcoming than the fact that the articles don't include all the relevant content, or don't have images, etc. References are just one of many ways in which short articles can often be improved. — Carl (CBM · talk) 18:40, 11 February 2011 (UTC)
    • Here "There is no policy that every article has to have references listed (WP:V does not require it, in particular)" we have a difference of opinion, that would be out of scope for this discussion. We should probably agree to disagree, or bring it to my talk page for discussion. JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 12:00, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
  • @Jeepday: On articles like that where it's more than just a couple sentence stub and there actually is content that requires referencing then yes, I absolutely agree that the unreferenced tag should be visible. My argument is that it's completely unnecessary and redundant (not to mention an eyesore) to have an unreferenced tag on an article that consists solely of "<blank> is a village in <blank>" followed by a stub tag. That's what a large amount of the 'auto' parameter tagged articles are, and it's good that they're still being categorized as being unreferenced, but the tag itself really does not need to be visible. -- œ 19:51, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

This article needs references.

Does not seem to be an eyesore. And many of the tagged articles were not single line stubs. In fact since the tags were added in December 2009 over 1000 have ceased to be stubs and over 1800 additional articles had obvious references added without having the tag removed. Rich Farmbrough, 09:35, 12 February 2011 (UTC).

(1) Of the "auto" articles, 20,000 are under 1000 bytes; more than 34,000 under 1,500 bytes; and more than 41,000 under 2,000 bytes. Many of those should be marked as stubs, they just aren't. Unfortunately Erik9Bot didn't do that, it just added unreferenced tags.

(2) That "small" box is not what you proposed or what you implemented. What you proposed and implemented was to simply ignore the auto parameter so that the full sized box would appear. I don't think we need to change the template to show the box at all (small or large) for these "auto" articles. The fact that a short article has no references is usually painfully obvious, it doesn't need a box to point it out.

(3) People routinely add references even with the tag is visible without removing it. I see it all the time. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:24, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

(1) Erik9bot (talk · contribs) didn't add unreferenced tags; it added Category:Articles lacking sources (Erik9bot); one of the last such edits was this one. If you check the very next edit to that page, you'll see that the {{unreferenced}} was added by one of the above users, to replace Category:Articles lacking sources (Erik9bot).

Yes the remaining category invocations were replaced with tags by SmackBot in December 2009. Rich Farmbrough, 17:54, 12 February 2011 (UTC).

(3) I don't think it's a problem for users to add refs without removing {{unreferenced}}. After all, they may not have reasonably fully refd the article, and may not realise that the {{unreferenced}} should therefore be replaced by {{refimprove}}. --Redrose64 (talk) 17:40, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Well indeed, however the chance of them seeing that is greatly increased if the tag is at least visible. Rich Farmbrough, 17:54, 12 February 2011 (UTC).

@Carl: Re your point (2): Fully agree. The only thing we need to do with these "auto" articles is to remove the tag entirely if references exist, leave it alone if they don't. In the meantime they are purposefully being categorized in a tracking category. Re your point (3): So do I. The problem is the users, not the auto parameter. And people failing to remove a visible tag is one thing, but keeping around an invisible line of wiki-code is a considerably minor concern.. the important thing is that the article got referenced, the extra bit of invisible text along with its hidden category can be removed whenever, it's causing no harm. The only drawback even worth mentioning is that there would be a slight inaccuracy in the category numbers, but even that would be negligible amount, and anyone patrolling the unreferenced articles category can very easily just remove the tag if they come across this situation. -- œ 17:51, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

The distinction is this:

This is a tracking category for articles tagged with {{unreferenced}} using the auto parameter. These should be checked manually:

• If the article is unreferenced, remove the auto parameter from the template
• If the article is referenced, remove the {{unreferenced}} template entirely.

which was a vaguely reasonable position, based on some hand-wavy idea that the combined filtering by the two bots might have left some significant amount of referenced stubs amongst the unreferenced - which, by the way, has never been shown to be the case, and certainly not at the 6% level of wrong tagging that making them invisible (and not checking them periodically) caused, and the new-found keep the tag invisible at all costs philosophy.

I am quite prepared to suggest additional solutions if it is ugliness rather than accuracy that is the problem, I see nothing wrong with that. And the lack of references does need to be pointed out for short articles just as much as for long ones. Once again the trap is looking at this as a Wikipedian rather than a casual browser - just as pages jump out at us as overlinked, needs copy edit, needs sections, no lead, inline external links, bad header hierarchy; we see "unref" "wikify" - those not immured in the mysteries may not. Rich Farmbrough, 17:54, 12 February 2011 (UTC).

But there has never been consensus to go through and put a visible "unreferenced" tag on every unreferenced article - that's my point. Erik9 wanted to do exactly that, but there wasn't consensus to do it. The idea that the lack of references "needs" to be pointed out is far from clear, and certainly can't be used as a justification for editing this template. — Carl (CBM · talk) 17:58, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

• There is no content in the Misplaced Pages main space that is exempt from having references. If any main space content has been marked as needing references it should be visible to all readers. If you want to use {{Unreferenced small}} instead of another choice, that is fine. No one is arguing that adding references to these articles is wrong or would be a bad thing. Articles with visible tags are inherently more likely to get references added, which is good for the article and Misplaced Pages in general. Lets give these articles every chance to improve. JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 11:46, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

  Yes there is content that is exempt from having references -- only content that is a quote or is "challenged or likely to be challenged" need have references, and in practice we do not place references on disambiguation pages, or on many lists and summary articles that act as disambiguation pages, or on redirects, ... (enough already). I will argue that there is no need to add unreferenced to a stub, the stub tag itself implies that. There is a difference between adding references to these articles and adding unreferenced templates. There is no need to add unreferenced templates to a stub. Indeed in a larger article as WP:V requests in-line citations, there is a good argument that {{citation needed}} fulfils the policy requirement better than a general template like {{Unreferenced small}} -- PBS (talk) 20:15, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

• Do you have any evidence for the "more likely" claim? Based on the huge maintenance categories that go back for years, and based on my personal experience, I don't think that it's true. But maybe my experience isn't typical. Of course the articles can be improved regardless whether there is an unreferenced tag on them, the lack of a tag doesn't prevent me from adding references. I don't think that making yet another template (unreferenced-small) is a solution. The articles are already in the maintenance categories, there's no need to poke them all again. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:07, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

• Is it just me or does it seem like this is all becoming a re-vist of the TfD arguments? JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 11:47, 16 February 2011 (UTC)
  • Yes, I think it has been from the start. The TfD ended with a merge that made the tag invisible, and my position here is that we should simply maintain that position, since there are no new arguments for making the tag visible on these articles than there were during the TfD. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:50, 16 February 2011 (UTC)
    • I was talking about Misplaced Pages:Templates_for_deletion/Log/2007_September_1#Template:Unreferenced for deleting {{Unreferenced}} not Misplaced Pages:Templates_for_discussion/Log/2010_February_5#Template:Unreferenced_stub that merged {{Unreferenced stub}} here. JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 17:01, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

PBS (and others), there may be no need to add an unreferenced tag to stubs, but there clearly was consensus that it is a perfectly allright thing to do, as decided through an RfC: Template talk:Unreferenced/Archive 11#RFC: should this tag be allowed on stubs?. I note the same people opposing that RfC (you and Carl) are now here the most vocal opposers again. The RfC has made it clear that tagging stubs as being unreferenced (where appropriate) is supported. That

There was consensus that the tag could be added to stubs, but it has been added to these stubs. The auto parameter does not mean that the articles are untagged (that would be paradoxical). Most importantly, the articles are in the appropriate maintenance categories which will let editors find them with category intersections. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:50, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

As Fram is pointing out it seems like those opposed to this suggestion, are those who are against this tag in general, which continues to enjoy support on Misplaced Pages. In my work at WP:URA I have had occasion to visit about 40 other language Misplaced Pages's and they all seem to be using the template. It seems more like a voicing of opinion against current global consensus then like creative contributing to a discussion. JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 17:01, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm not talking about using the template in general; we are talking about a particular set of articles, which were tagged by Erik9 bot, which now carry this template with the "auto" parameter. Articles that were manually tagged by other people aren't in the scope of the discussion. On the other hand, while there is definitely consensus to use the template, there is no consensus to automatically stick it on every unreferenced article. Erik9bot was doing essentially that, blindly marking about 50,000 articles. So the case of Erik9bot is not the same as the general use of the template by individual editors. — Carl (CBM · talk) 20:08, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

The tags where not applied blindly, they were applied where the article was unreferenced or references were on the article in format that was not recognizable. We did considerable checks for accuracy, but there will of course be some error, where the bot tagged articles that had references. Same as there are some articles with a human applied tag on top of the bot applied tag. JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 17:16, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

1. Indeed, Erik9Bot's original checks were pretty rigorous, and I added a layer of additional checking when I moved the crazily named category (which had been to pacify exactly the same IDONTLIKEIT cadre) to tags. No one as far as I know has said that any of the articles were incorrectly tagged (we had plenty of of hypothetical "it might be that someone references thus and so" generally with a claim that what was a simple regex extension was an AI complete problem) but no actual examples, and certainly no post facto claim that there was a significant proportion mis-tagged. On the flip side of the coin hiding the tags has led, in just over a year, to at least 6% of the articles under consideration being wrongly tagged. While that 6% has been fixed if the tags stay hidden more will occur, and other less obvious cases will be there now.
2. Category intersection does not work on transcluded categories last time I looked.

Rich Farmbrough, 10:15, 20 February 2011 (UTC).

The current situation was done to pacify everyone - it was the compromise, consensus outcome. Changing that would go against the consensus that worked out. There were two concerns: the possible inaccuracy of the bot, and the fact that the tags are widely thought to be visually out of place on small articles. They still apply.

Category intersection will work for any categories that are actually in the categorylinks table. If it's hard to tell when some article is both "auto" tagged and manually tagged, that seems like an ironic consequence of getting rid of the custom manual category, which would have made that very easy to detect. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:55, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Consensus is not written in stone. Something that seems obscure to many. The first concern backfires on itself. Thousands of articles were incorrectly tagged because of hiding the tag. The second, was not widely thought it was, as I said a small group. And I have proposed a smaller tag, which was effectively ignored - that is still a good solution as far as I can see.

I'm not aware of any "manual" category. Rich Farmbrough, 16:20, 20 February 2011 (UTC).

Not that my opinion carries much weight these days but I also support this proposal. --Kumioko (talk) 18:41, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

The usual justification for having unreferenced in article space and one I agree with for non stub articles is that it give important information to the reader of the article, (as opposed to say {{Orphan}} for which I see no justification for placing in article space). But Rich you have not suggested that placing a small visual tag in article space of a stub is for the elucidation of readers, instead you are proposing if a form of convenient inter-editor communication. Such editor to editor communications should be placed on the talk page of articles. Why not put a message the bottom of the talk page in a suitably named section? -- PBS (talk) 23:47, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

LOL - Because Rich has not said the tag "is for the elucidation of readers". therefore it is not? JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 11:47, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Indeed. Anyone coming to WP is likely to place some faith in "X is a village in Y". An unref tag is good reminder to treat with caution, whereas a ref can be followed. Moreover distinguishing between editors and users is not necessarily helpful, the normal unref tag encourages any reader to find references not just "editors". Rich Farmbrough, 22:03, 25 February 2011 (UTC).

• Rich is there an easy way for me to identify them, if there is opposition to having a bot remove the "|Auto=Yes" I will go through an remove them manually. I am catching them one at a time now through normal happen across, might as well just knock them all out at once. JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 16:24, 25 February 2011 (UTC)
  • They are all in Category:Articles automatically tagged as unreferenced. There are about 48,000 articles, which is about 5.5 days of editing at 6 articles/minute. Anyone who wants to do that many edits of the same kind needs to put in a bot request. The size of the category is also why we need to keep the parameter here. We're not just talking about 15 articles or something like that. — Carl (CBM · talk) 18:24, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

I also would have advocated to do this but as my recent ANI shows, removing garbage or deprecated parameters such as this one has little support and violates the AWB rules of use. I don't like it, but thats what the rules state. CBM also indicated to me that doing a bot request for something like this would probably not receive approval as it is a minor/trivial edit and would unnecessarily clog watchlists and waste server resources. Not trying to be a spoilsport becsause I agree that this would be beneficial I just thought I would drop my 2 cents before you waste the next month trying to get a bot request only to have it be denied. --Kumioko (talk) 19:26, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

• • Yes, the cat CBM indicated is the key. It is a very large task to do manually, especially with the need to check for strange added references. Rich Farmbrough, 22:03, 25 February 2011 (UTC).
    
• There is no requirement that a human check for reference prior to adding or updating a {{unreferenced}}. Anyone is welcome to follow along behind me and check for references. I have no intention of applying for a bot request for purely manual edits, one edit per minute or how ever fast it goes. JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 11:37, 1 March 2011 (UTC)
  • That's an interesting idea: when you can't get consensus to do something, just do it anyway? I wonder why everyone doesn't just do that. I guess, following your lead, someone could just remove the tag from these articles entirely, and let someone else follow up to see if they're actually unreferenced. That manual follow up was what we agreed to when Erik9 ran the bot originally. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:00, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

CBM lets try and keep this civil here. The snide comments don't help and I know I have been guilty of that too. Also, you seem to be the only one strongly opposed. Everyone else seems to be putting effort into how to best make the idea work rather than dismissing it as nonsense. I think that for the most part it should be fairly easy to program something that would recognize if the article had a reference or not based on the <ref></ref> tag. If the tag contains something then its got references and the unref tag could be change to refimprove and or removed from the category, else its unreferenced and it skips to the next article. Also, in regards to the bot. A bot would be good I agree but as I have stated before if a user wants to use their time doing this task then we should let them. We shouldn't be forcing users to use bots if they prefer the manual approach. And as for the bot flag allowing these edits to not appear on users watchlists, I am not sure if we would want that anyway based on the type of change. It might be useful and beneficial for the users to see them on the watchlist in case of false positives. --Kumioko (talk) 21:12, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Inline references do not necessarily use the <ref>...</ref> tag. Some have inline refs which on the outside look quite normal - - but which are generated using the {{sfn}} template (see, for example, GCR Classes 8D and 8E) - this template produces <ref>...</ref> using the {{#tag:}} parser function. Others use parenthetical referencing, perhaps utilising {{harv}} (see B-tree). --Redrose64 (talk) 22:06, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

I occasionaly come across articles that still use older methods of footnoting and there is also (WP:CITE#Parenthetical referencing#Parenthetical referencing) but Kumioko's proposal would catch a lot of cases where the wrong tag was in use. -- PBS (talk) 23:23, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Hate to be a wet blanket (or is it the bearer of good news?) but that exercise has already been done. I also did maybe another 20 that had a "Cite" template but no ref tags. I can easily check out harv and sfn tomorrow/Thursday - but basically the chances of there being more than a few with foot-notes when they are manually cleaned is small. Rich Farmbrough, 01:41, 2 March 2011 (UTC).

Just a small observation, but since |auto= is still presently tested in the template, then if we do remove it from this template(*), Category:Articles automatically tagged as unreferenced will not depopulate. This is because the job queue is down, and has been for several days now. Nobody seems to know how to restart it. Some guy at Meta told me that the sysadmins are working on it, but I see no evidence of that.
(*) nb: removing the |auto= parameter from the template transclusion in any article will remove that specific article from the cat. It's just general template changes that are not going through. --Redrose64 (talk) 17:14, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Thank you thats good to know. --Kumioko (talk) 17:19, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, we would have to null-edit all the articles I suppose. But of course the category is only for the purpose of tracking the parameter, so we could just tag the cat, "delete when empty" and walk away, letting it take care of itself. Rich Farmbrough, 20:47, 2 March 2011 (UTC).

Incidentally there were a grand total of four articles with the sfn or harv templates. Rich Farmbrough, 03:07, 3 March 2011 (UTC).

Just a <small> bug_bug-2011-02-12T23:04:00.000Z">

The close of the small tag has been accidentally made conditional (which breaks the template). It's a simple fix. {{#if:{{{date|}}}|''({{{date}}})''</small>}} needs to be replaced with {{#if:{{{date|}}}|''({{{date}}})''}}</small>. -- BlindWanderer (talk) 23:04, 12 February 2011 (UTC)_bug"> _bug">

It's OK if a date is given. For those cases where no date is given, SmackBot (talk · contribs) normally adds a date soon enough. However, to cope with the cases where SmackBot hasn't yet arrived, I've applied the above patch to the sandbox version, so that when Rich has finished testing his {{DMCA}} → {{TDMCA}} change, it'll go live alongside. --Redrose64 (talk) 11:19, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

Sounds good and thanks for the timely reply. I mostly work on a different (smaller) wiki and I don't follow Misplaced Pages development closely enough for it to have much meaning for me. I only found the bug while porting the template, I thought it was something wrong with my wiki at first :) -- BlindWanderer (talk) 23:16, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

For those of you who can not spot the difference (I used edit move the second one on top of the first one and used show changes). In the replacement the </small> has been moved to the right of two "}}" which means it is outside the if statement. -- PBS (talk) 06:15, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

Challenged or likely to be challenged

FYI - Misplaced Pages:Village_pump_(policy)#Challenged_or_likely_to_be_challenged, JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 12:00, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Request for better example for description parameter

Could someone please come up with a better example for the description parameter? Shouldn't {{Unreferenced|article's section called "Childhood"}} instead be an {{Unreferenced section}} template in the "Childhood" section header? GoingBatty (talk) 02:32, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes. If you are from the "many templates" school. If you are from the "few templates school" (which is having some success recently - until "expand" was deleted, orphaning Expand section, Expand list etc... ) then the parameter can be used to drive the template categories, unref {section|table|caption|lead|paragraph|quote} ... Rich Farmbrough, 01:29, 2 March 2011 (UTC).

Remove "auto=yes|"

Manually removing "auto=yes|" from Category:Articles automatically tagged as unreferenced,

Started March 1, 2011 with 47,945.

March 8, 2011 46,611 remaining

You are welcome to help. JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 17:20, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

If anyone plans on doing these at a rate of speed high enough to suggest they aren't manually reviewing the articles, they need to get bot approval first. Especially given that there is no consensus above to actually remove them all, this looks like just a WP:POINT being made. — Carl (CBM · talk) 17:23, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

There are occurrence like A307 road where there are references on the article, but as {{unreferenced}} now says "does not cite", simply removing the "auto=yes|" is sufficient as the references are not cited. JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 17:28, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

The template has said that for years but the correct usage is to replace it with {{refimprove}} if there are any sources at all, even if there are no inline citations. Notice the docs say, "This template should be used only on articles that have no sources at all. Don't add this template to articles that contain even one general reference, parenthetical reference, or citation-containing footnote." This is one reason that the articles need to be manually reviewed. — Carl (CBM · talk) 20:00, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

That comment is out of date, the general consensus is that a list of general references are not citations (meaning inline citaitons) or if one prefers adequate citations. I would suggest that the wording is altered to reflect that. That this template should be used until there is at least one inline citation. -- PBS (talk) 20:21, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

No: other templates already exist for precisely such situations. See {{Citations missing}}, {{More footnotes}}, {{No footnotes}}. Template:Citations missing/doc#Alternative templates has a neat little summary chart. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:30, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

I agree with PBS that just having a link to a website or a book title in a references section is not sufficient to call the article referenced. It needs to have at least 1 inline citation whether using the Cite template or manually done. Otherwise the article is still unreferenced. The term general reference I believe was discussed a while back and left because some editors would put only the link/book/news article/etc with no page numbers and therefore it constituted a "general" reference because it didn't specifically identify where the information was located in the source. I do agree though that we should try and clean some of these up and if possible a bot would be useful but IMO if a user wanted to spend their time doing this manually with AWB or a script its their time and that would be fine with me. --Kumioko (talk) 21:05, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Maybe a rename to {{Unfootnoted}}? Rich Farmbrough, 01:36, 2 March 2011 (UTC).

Isn't {{no footnotes}} clear enough? That's a different template than this, with a different meaning. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:48, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Nope. No footnotes also says that there is a general reference. Unfootnoted would merely say that there are no footnotes. Rich Farmbrough, 05:30, 2 March 2011 (UTC).

And unreferenced becomes void if there are Parenthetical referencing so it applies to more than footnotes. I think the name is fine, all we need to do is to alter the talk page so it is clear it means inline citations of whatever type. --PBS (talk) 06:01, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

<joke>Maybe a rename to {{Unfootnoted}}?</joke> Rich Farmbrough, 15:10, 2 March 2011 (UTC).

Well when they were added that was true. The reactionary forces however.... <bzzt> line dropped Rich Farmbrough, 01:23, 2 March 2011 (UTC).

Huh? — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:48, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

"This template should be used only on articles that have no sources at all. Don't add this template to articles that contain even one general reference, parenthetical reference, or citation-containing footnote." That was true when the templates were added. Yay! But the tags were invisible, so it ceased to be true very rapidly, people adding refs didn't know they should replace the tag with refimprove. How could they? So the blood sweat and tears which went into ensuring a quality level where not one article ever got reported as mistagged, was sabotaged by filibuster at the BRFA resulting in at least 3500 mis-tagged articles. Boo. But I thought I'd said all this already. Rich Farmbrough, 05:27, 2 March 2011 (UTC).

People often leave the unreferenced tag when adding references, even when it's visible. Someone else has to remove it, or update it, later. There's nowhere to "report" mistagged articles, someone just has to edit them. I would guess most of the Erik9ot articles are still unreferenced; the problem is the very short ones, where the size of the template visually overwhelms the actual text. For those, even when they're unreferenced, the agreement was to hide the tag but keep the maintenance categories. It's true that the bot job was not well thought out to begin with, since it left us with this collection of 47,000 articles. But they will get fixed over time as people work on them, there's no reason to rush to change things. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:18, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

The reason to hide the tags was because with automated tagging, we weren't certain enough that the tag was correct (though it usually was). If the "overwhelming" effect had been the reason, there would have been no reason to do this only for the bot-added ones and not for manually added ones. That the tag overwhelms the article is not a problem but a feature. Fram (talk) 12:35, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Both concerns (the automatic tagging, and the visual effect) have always been present, at the BRFA and at the TFD. There's not consensus to make all these tags visible en masse; on the small stubs they should still be hidden. Following JeepDay's lead, people could also just go through and remove the tags entirely from those articles. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:52, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

The concern for the visual element was last discussed at the RfC of last year, and there are "no restrictions on the use of this template on stubs" (conclusion of the RfC). The TfD touched on this as well, but no conclusions about the auto=yes were made there. This template should not be hidden on any article, not even the tinyest stub, as long as the check of its correctness has been done manually (so I do oppose rapid semi-automatic or automatic removal of the auto=yes). Removing the tag entirely (indiscriminately) from these articles would be disruption. Fram (talk) 13:07, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

The concern for the visual element was last discussed in the section "Proposal" directly above, where there was no consensus to remove the "auto" parameter indiscriminately. I can count 4 editors (maybe there are more) who opposed the proposal, so it's not just me. This is why it's inappropriate for Jeepday to remove them en masse. The overall compromise that everyone can respect on these articles was for them to be taged by Erik9bot, but for the tags to be hidden. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:38, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

"The tag to be hidden"... until a human actually checks the validity of it, and either removes/replaces the whole tag, or removes the auto=yes part. Fram (talk) 14:01, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

"There's nowhere to report mistagged articles" well I have asked on several occasions with that and other automated markers in tags if anyone has ever come across a reason that the marker should be used to show the bot was wrong. No one has said yes yet. And people are usually pretty happy to report bot problems to the maintainers.

It would be great if people went through and removed the tags. That can be done by the simple expedient of referencing each article, something we believe is more likely to happen with a request on the page - which is why we have tags. The extra complexity of auto= is not worth the candle, we really do need things to be simpler not more complicated. Rich Farmbrough, 15:17, 2 March 2011 (UTC).

Personally I agree with Rich's proposal on the above suggestion to remove the Auto parameter. I also think that this proposition would have a better chance at the village pump or somewhere other than this template that few are going to see. This is not the right place to have a discussion of consesnsus for something like this. Besides that, the suggestion that a human editor needs to manually check 50+ thousand articles is ridiculous and unrealistic. --Kumioko (talk) 15:31, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Removing the parameter was discussed in the "Proposals" section above; at least 4 editors objected. The manual review was part of the proposal from the beginning: the point of the Erik9 bot request was that people would review the articles over time. Of course there is no deadline, and no hurry to force people to do it. But that was the point of the bot run in the first place: to give the unreferenced articles project a list of articles to manually review. — Carl (CBM · talk) 16:23, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes its true that some articles will need to be manually reviewed but we should be able to use a bot to eliminate at least some of the 47+ thousand articles so that the task isn't so daunting. Assuming that will will be continuously adding to the list with new articles they will never be able to get through that list. And keeping the Auto parameter doesn't do anything to help that. It is basically just a wasted field. --Kumioko (talk) 16:54, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Again, see the section above. — Carl (CBM · talk) 16:58, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes yes I have read it thouroughly. So what your saying is even though we have the ability to eliminate some of them with a bot, leaving the ones that need to be reviewed manually, we can't because a couple editors that aren't working on the task don't like it. Is that about right? Then I recommend that the ones who want the task to be done 100% manually do a few of the reviews to help out. That seems reasonable. What also seems unreasonable is for 1 user to oppose a change because they don't agree with it and then say see look there are users that oppose it so there is no consensus. --Kumioko (talk) 17:06, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

• Kumioko I like your idea, we should be able to remove auto on any article updated by a human since it was tagged. If person edited the article without removing the tag it is appropriate or they would have removed it. The person does not need to be part of any particular project. Carl seems to believe that any editor editing an article should have the ability to correctly address tagging. If someone adds a template to an article that already has it, the solution is to give that person a trout, not to change the pattern for every article that was tagged by whatever bot that was.. Unless he has some other criteria, this would meet his request that the article be reviewed by a person prior to the auto being removed. JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 11:58, 3 March 2011 (UTC)
  • People edit articles for all sorts of reasons; you can't *assume* they are worried about random templates when they make an edit. Especially because so many people make essentially-unreviwed edits already. What I said in that quote was that if someone explicitly adds an unreferenced template when one was already present, we should point out they are not properly reviewing the article first. The point is that if you want to review the templates, you have to actually review them, you can't just edit blindly like a bot. Of course there's no deadline to get them done. But the idea when Erik9bot ran was that the unreferenced articles project wanted to go through and check the articles individually; there was never consensus to just add {{unreferenced}} to all the articles, and there still is not. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:17, 3 March 2011 (UTC)
    • I know that there are some that could not be done by a bot. But certainly there should be at least some that we can do in an automated fashion. I find it impossible to beleive that there is absolutely zero occassions in which we can reasonably assume that the thing can be removed. I just don't buy that argument. --Kumioko (talk) 14:52, 3 March 2011 (UTC)
      • If we wanted to show the templates, we wouldn't use a bot, we'd just disable the auto parameter here. That's what was discussed above, and didn't get consensus. There's a reason that the original bot did not go through and just put the unreferenced template on all these articles, which is what you seem to be saying we should do now. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:10, 3 March 2011 (UTC)
        • Not exactly. Even in my limited programming ability I could and have crafted some code that could tell if the article has references and change the Unref template to Refimprove and eliminate the Auto= parameter. If the article does not have references, which is a bit harder but still not an impossible task then we should remove the Auto= parameter (because its been verified). I would suggest this as a semi automated task rather than a full on bot but what I am saying is that if we can determine through some type of clever coding if the article does or does not have references we should allow that task to be run if possible. There is IMO no need to force editors to manually remove 45000+ parameters manually just because 1 might be missed. With all that said though it takes so long to get a BRFA approved that the task even at moderate editing speeds will be done before the BRFA comes back with approval (or disapproval). Especially when a member of the BAG is so opposed to the idea so unless the BRFA is approved in under 2 weeks which is unlikely, the task will be completed or close to it by the time it was approved at the current rate of editing being done. --Kumioko (talk) 15:22, 3 March 2011 (UTC)
          • Nobody is "forced" to do anything. If nobody removes the auto parameters for a long time, it's not a problem. There are two different problems that the auto parameter addresses: short articles, and manual review. If there was consensus to just get rid of the parameter, we would do it by editing the template, not by running a bot. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:29, 3 March 2011 (UTC)
            • Carl Please describe fully the parameters you would find acceptable for the auto parameter to be removed. As I recall at one point your criteria was that they had to be a member of WP:URA (which I am) then you objected because I was removing them to fast. Every time you layout a criteria and some one say's ok. You have another criteria... JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 16:54, 3 March 2011 (UTC)
              • You're free to go through and manually review the articles, that's why I added the tracking category in the first place. At some point, I expect people will go through and re-add the parameter to extremely short stubs, since for those there is consensus to have the maintenance categories, but there's not consensus to have the entire template visible. In other words, there's not consensus that the "auto" category will ever be completely empty. However, if you want to manually remove the parameter from unreferenced articles, you're free to do so, and other people can worry about re-adding it to any articles that are extremely short from which it was inadvertently removed. — Carl (CBM · talk) 22:02, 3 March 2011 (UTC)
• Given that Carl is in essence arguing the same anti tagging arguments that were unsuccessful argued at Misplaced Pages:Templates for deletion/Log/2007 September 1, I propose that we use the suggestion of Kumioko and have a bot remove the auto parameter from articles that a human has edited (i.e. reviewed) since the were applied. Does anyone have any suggestions for other criteria to include? I have reviewed and manually removed "auto=yes|" from a few hundred of these articles in the last few days. I do not recall a single article that would be considered inappropriately tagged per PBS's definition of appropriateness (which is fairly extreme) and only a few where {{refimprove}} or {{primarysources}} was more appropriate. In any case, I found no examples where {{unreferenced}} or one in the family would be inappropriate. JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 11:53, 4 March 2011 (UTC)
  • You don't have to go back to 2007 - the idea of just removing the parameter from every articles was proposed by Rich Farmbrough in the section "Proposal" just above. The proposal when the pages were tagged was that humans would manually review that parameter for appropriateness. Other people editing the pages for other reasons might not have worried about the unreferenced parameter (particularly if they were doing semi-automated editing for some other perceived problem); we can't use the existence of an edit as evidence that someone looked at the unreferenced tag. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:01, 4 March 2011 (UTC)
    • Your missing the point, all of the "auto=yes|" are going to be removed, at the current rate should be in a month or so, I am not the only one removing them. The point is should a bot remove some of them so editors can spend time doing more constructive edits in Misplaced Pages. JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 16:39, 4 March 2011 (UTC)
      • As I was saying, everyone is welcome to work on them. If other people think that the parameter should stay on a particular article (e.g. because of length) they are also free to restore it (WP:BRD and all). If the consensus was to simply remove the parameter from every article, it would already be done, and it wouldn't take a bot. That sort of blanket removal is what Rich Farmbrough proposed above. I feel like you're ignoring the lack of consensus in that section, and also ignoring the argument at the TfD when {{unreferenced stub}} was merged here. — Carl (CBM · talk) 16:54, 4 March 2011 (UTC)
        • The point is that "auto" was brought up right at the last minute - and implemented by the person who brought it up I think - effectively that was the end run around the TfD. Rich Farmbrough, 23:04, 4 March 2011 (UTC).
          
          • DRV is that way ←. But it seems a little late now to complain that TfD closure from a year ago was improper. You participated in the TfD - why didn't you bring it up then? The suggestion for the auto parameter was made on Feb 19, 2010, and the TfD was closed on Mar 1, 2010 - there was more than a week to bring it up if you disagreed, and you and Fam had both already commented on the TfD, so you were aware it was ongoing. Someone else responded on Feb 27 to agree with the auto parameter. Nothing happened at the last minute. — Carl (CBM · talk) 20:02, 6 March 2011 (UTC)
            • Carl can you show where there is consensus to hide {{unreferenced}} on any unreferenced article? Everything I can find say's it was originally added to avoid confusion on referenced articles where the stub articles were wrongly tagged by a bot. The fact that it was carried over from {{Unreferenced stub}} durring the merge does not create consensus that {{Unreferenced}} can be hidden due to article length. 16:05, 7 March 2011 (UTC)
              • The original consensus came from Misplaced Pages:Bots/Requests for approval/Erik9bot 9 where the objection was raised by Antandrus and discussed at great length. The consensus was to use an invisible category and not a visible tag. The same issues came up at the TfD, and again the consensus was to keep the tag hidden. The idea of a bot job to put a visible unreferenced tag on 40,000 articles never had consensus. The articles tagged "auto" are the same articles tagged by Erik9bot originally, so the original Erik9bot consensus is very relevant. I didn't even comment on that BRFA, the objections all came to others, and they worked out a consensus way to move forward. — Carl (CBM · talk) 17:25, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

So Carl, what your trying to say is that editors should remove the invisible tag when the edit the article, but because most editors don't know that its there, they don't delete it? But we can't use a bot or AWB to remove them because we need to check them all manually. And if we do them too quickly then that constitutes an unauthorized bot, so we have to do it very very slowly, is that about right? Sure, there is a better way to edit 40, 000 articles than a manual method! --71.163.243.16 (talk) 23:31, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

IMO, there shouldn't be anything wrong with manually using AWB for this, as long as the AWB user reviews each proposed change and makes any corrections before saving it (like they should for any other edit). GoingBatty (talk) 02:22, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

The problem is that there is not consensus to simply empty out the category. The issue with excessively short articles was raised from the beginning of the Erik9bot process and still applies. If there was consensus that every unreferenced article should be tagged unreferenced, we would just have a bot do it. But there has never been consensus for that. The Erik9bot solution was intentionally a compromise: it put the articles in a maintenance category, but didn't make the template visible. The idea was that people would add references over time and remove the maintenance categories - not that a bot would just make the templates visible. I'd recommend starting a discussion on the village pump if you're proposing to change our practice so that every unreferenced article is tagged. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:27, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

• All of these articles are tagged, thought the tag is hidden by Auto=yes, Carl wants to keep the tags hidden, and would also like to hide tags placed by humans. He has made this clear throughout conversations here, particularly on short article for visual reasons. There is no consensus to hide tags so he continues with this argument. Apparently in the belief that if Carl does not agree then there can be no consensus to unhide these tags. Does anyone other then Carl have a position on keeping the Unreferenced tags on these articles hidden? Misplaced Pages:Consensus does not require agreement of all parties in a discussion. There is no doubt that articles are appropriate for being tagged as unreferenced, nor that that the will all be unhidden, the only question is how long can Carl impeded the un-hiding. JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 12:05, 8 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Look at the original bot request and the TfD. There are also others in the section "proposal" above who disagreed with just turning off the parameter. It's far from clear that there is consensus to tag every unreferenced article with a visible tag, which seems to be the argument you are proposing. The difficulty is that you (and Rich Farmbrough, and a few others0 are arguing here for that policy change, although this template talk page is far from well watched. The bot request for Erik9bot is done, and the agreement was to hide the categories. If you want to get a broader consensus, you should take it up on the village pump. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:05, 8 March 2011 (UTC)
    • The bottom line here is we need to go through these regardless of how it gets done, manually, assisted with AWB or via bot. To force folks to do it manually if it can be done at least in a semi automated fashion is just dumb. We should be using technology to help us make the pedia better not shoving it to the side. You seem to be the only one here advocating that it be done CBM. You work on a lot of math articles CBM so surely you can see that one user doesn't make a lack of consensus. --71.163.243.16 (talk) 01:48, 9 March 2011 (UTC)
      • Again: look at the section "proposal" above, or at the original BRFA, or at the TFD. The same issue has been raised by quite a few editors (I didn't even participate in the BRFA where the consensus was not to show the tag). This section was apparently started with the premise of ignoring all the previous discussion. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:15, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

OMG

I finally found one with a real reference! . After looking at and removing "auto=yes|" from about 1,000 articles . I finally found an article that had a source for the article content, and it has been there since Erik9bot. Though when I look for the book "Eibl H et al., Prog Exp Tumor Res 1992, 34, 1." I think that the actual source was probably an abstract not the actual book listed. JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 18:19, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Great job cleaning up these articles! Regarding the article you found with a real reference, does a two sentence article really need an inline citation? GoingBatty (talk) 03:55, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes, it does. When new content is added to the article if the trend of listing sources at the bottom in bibliographic format is continued it will prove difficult for future editors to validate the source of the original work. Due to the short hand nature of the title of the work, I strongly suspect that the actual source was an abstract of the work, which if that is the case should be correctly listed in the citation. In any case, "Generally the combination of both the in-body citation and the bibliographic entry constitutes what is commonly thought of as a citation (whereas bibliographic entries by themselves are not)", by applying the inline citation at the time the content is sourced allows it to be correctly identified once the article is expanded. Back filling inline citations is and extremely painful task, Road is a good example the challenges in the task. JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 12:00, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Or rather, does an article already tagged with a stub template also need an unreferenced template? It's a waste of time IMO to remove the auto parameter from all those stubs. It just adds a redundant tag. -- œ 11:42, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Yep, been discussed a bunch. JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 12:00, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Im not sure I agree with that completely. In most cases your right that adding a Cleanup tag such as Expand really isn't needed on a stub article however I would argue that an exception would be Unreferenced. If the article doesn't have a reference (even a weak one like IMBD of Find a Grave) then it really should be marked. I still don't think that the Auto parameter is needed though. --Kumioko (talk) 15:05, 9 March 2011 (UTC)