User blog:Jack Pistol/Wiki Clean Up!

Not too long from now, our third spotlight will be coming up! I have noticed that we have far too many spam articles, stubs, futuristic pages, pages marked for deletion and pages that should be blogs. I think it is time we do a bit of a clean up.

All admins, rollbacks, mods and users can help and it would be greatly appreciated!

To find any of these articles or parts of the wiki that need neatening there are a few categories and special pages that you can look through.
 * Special:Specialpages - This will give a complete list of all the special pages.
 * Special:Categories - This will give a complete list of all the categories.
 * Special:BrokenRedirects - This will give you a list of all broken redirects.
 * Special:ShortPages - This will give you a list in order of the wiki's shortest pages.
 * Special:UncategorizedPages - This will give you a list of all the uncategorized pages.
 * Special:UnusedCategories - This will give you a list of all the unused categories.
 * Special:UnusedFiles - This will give you a list of all the unused photos.
 * Special:UnusedTemplates - This will give you a list of all the unused templates.
 * Special:WantedCategories - This will give you a list of all the non-existant categories that have been linked to.
 * Special:WantedPages - This will give you a list of all the non-existant pages that have been linked to.
 * Special:WantedFiles - This will give you a list of all the non-existant photos that have been linked to.
 * Special:WantedTemplates - This will give you a list of all the non-existant templates that have been linked to.
 * Special:RandomInCategory - This can be used to look up random pages in a specific category.
 * Category:Pages that Should be Blogs - A list of pages that have been marked to be changed to a blog.
 * Category:Candidates for deletion - A list of pages that have been marked for deletion.
 * Category:Candidates for speedy deletion - A list of pages that have been marked to be deleted quickly.
 * Category:Article stubs - A list of stub pages ( very short pages ).

General Neatening
Many pages are unneat, have a few spelling or grammar errors, have coding errors or in some way need touching up.

What Can We Do?
 * The Special:Random and Special:RandomInCategory can be used to take us to a number of random pages that can be inspected for neatening up and maybe some other issues that need fixing.
 * You can look at some of your old pages to see if there is anything you can neaten up.
 * When you come across a fairly long page, that would too long to fully inspect, you can copy the content to Microsoft Word and do a spell check and then correct the errors it picks up. Obviously words like Andaba and Sudoron will not be recognized by Word, so you will need to ignore those.
 * If there is something not within your ability to fix, like coding or it is a protected page, try find somebody who can or ask an admin.
 * Make sure pages have correct spelling and grammar.
 * Make sure pages have correct categories.
 * Make sure page titles have correct spelling and grammar, and capitilization in correct places.

Spam Articles
There are loads of spam articles that should be blogs or just deleted! Spam articles are any pages that: are extremely short, are full of nonsense, should be blogs or should not be pages.

What Can We Do?
 * The Special:Random, Special:ShortPages and Category:Article stubs can be used to find spam articles.
 * If you find one, mark it for deletion or to become a blog with or.
 * An admin will then assess if the page should be deleted/made a blog and then take action. The page should be inspected by the admin before deletion to ensure that deletion is the correct thing to do.

Stubs
There are hundreds of stubs cluttering our wiki that haven't been edited in ages. I propose that all stubs that have not been edited fairly recently be either added to or deleted.

What Can We Do?
 * The Special:Random, Special:ShortPages and Category:Article stubs can be used to find stubs.
 * If you find a stub add to the page.
 * Check the page's history to see the date it was last edited ( the edit on top of the list will show the most recent date ) to see whether it has been edited recently.
 * If it has not been edited recently, mark it for deletion using.
 * An admin will then inspect the page to see whether it is in fact an unedited stub and if so, delete it.

Futuristic Pages
We have a rule forbidding the creation of these. All pages created before the rule was made are allowed to stay but must have added to the top of the page. Futuristic pages are any pages that: have content from a time after the 1700s or futuristic images.

What Can We Do?
 * The Special:Random, Special:RandomInCategory and Category:Futuristic Content can be used to find futuristic pages.
 * If you come across a page that is in any way futuristic add  to the top of the page.
 * Check the page's history to see when it was created ( the date at the very bottom ) to see if it was made after the rules was created.
 * If the pages was made anytime after July 7 2011 then mark it for deletion with.

Pages Marked for Deletion
These pages are cluttering the category and need to be sorted out.

What Can We Do?
 * The Category:Candidates for deletion and Category:Candidates for speedy deletion can be used to find any pages marked for deletion, or new pages that need deleting can be marked.
 * If you come across a page that needs to be deleted add.
 * If you come across a page that was previously marked for deletion, but you feel it no longer needs to be, comment and state your reason. Then link an admin to the page.
 * An admin will then inspect and decide whether it should no longer be deleted or not. If it no longer needs deleting, the template will be edited out of the comment or page and a message in italics such as "This page is no longer marked for deletion ~ Admin Team" can be left in its place.
 * An admin will go through pages that have been marked for deletion to see whether they need to still be deleted. If they do, they will delete it and if not, the message will deleted as show above.

Pages That Should Be Blogs
Many pages have been marked for changing into blogs, that either need to be changed, deleted or the template must be removed. Pages that should be blogs are any page that: are not based on content, are discussions or announcements, are off-topic.

What Can We Do?
 * The Category:Pages that Should be Blogs, Special:Random and Special:ShortPages can be used to find pages that should be blogs.
 * If you come across a page that should be made a blog add.
 * If you come across a page that has been marked to be made a blog, but feel it should not become one then comment with your reason and notify an admin.
 * An admin will inspect the page and decide whether it should be a blog, deleted or left as it is. If it is made into a blog, the template should be removed and replaced with a message.
 * Please remember after moving pages to blogs to re-open the comments.

Uncategorized Pages
Uncategorized pages are unneat and make the wiki seem unorganized.

What Can We Do?
 * The Special:UncategorizedPages can be used to find uncategorized pages.
 * When you find an uncategorized page, read the page and decided what category it falls under. If you have trouble finding a suitable category look at Special:Categories. Be sure not to create new categories, because that requires admin permission.
 * Often uncategorized pages are stubs, need to be blogs or just plain spam. If so, do the appropriate thing for each respective situation.

Unused Categories, Files and Templates
What is the point of having any of these? Perhaps some of the files or templates may come in handy, but all the unused categories should be deleted.

What Can We Do?
 * The Special:UnusedCategories, Special:UnusedFiles and Special:UnusedTemplates can be used to find these unused items.
 * When one is found, report it to an admin so that they can decide whether or not to delete it.

Wanted Pages, Categories, Files and Templates
These are a bunch of dead-end links, which are also very unneat.

What Can We Do?
 * The Special:WantedCategories, Special:WantedPages , Special:WantedFiles and Special:WantedTemplates can be used to find these dead-end links.
 * To get rid of the dead-end link you can unlink the page if it doesn't exist or has been deleted, correct the link if it has been misspelled or you can create a page that will satisfy the link ( ask an admin before doing the latter ).

Categories
Several categories have not been approved by admins, are not needed or were accidentally created. These are any categories that: have less than two pages, do not have a category page, were not created with admin permission or are no longer needed.

What Can We Do?
 * These will be harder to find, and you might have to go through some categories or pages to find them.
 * If you find one, report it to an admin for them to make the decision.

Conclusion
If you have any other suggestions to clean up the wiki, please share below. You can report your finds in the comments below, on admin's talk pages or to someone on Chat. I doubt we will get through all the unorganized stuff, but the little bit we can do will be great and prevent the unorganized stuff from increasing in the future. Keep these things in mind for the future, we don't need to stop cleaning up after this.

Thank you all!