Hope everyone is doing well. Many of us have probably seen the banners for WikiConference North America 2025, which is going to be held in New York in October. Since this project seems to be bucking the trend of declining WikiProject activity and has made substantial progress on our target goals (overall backlog clearing, unreferenced BLPs in particular) and some high-visibility successes (turning unreferenced stubs into DYKs), would anyone be interested in pitching some kind of discussion/talk to the WCNA organizers? I've never been to a conference but I think I'll be able to make this one and if we continue at the good clip we've been maintaining, I think it would be cool to spotlight our successes, discuss challenges (paywalls, language barriers), and maybe get some new members. If anyone has either the interest or the experience to get involved, I would much rather do this with someone else than fly solo. And if anyone has been to one of these events before, please share your vast wisdom. Cheers, Kazamzam (talk) 15:02, 11 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I searched the lists in the Progress section for food and drink articles, and didn't find any in any of these, so I checked here and still came up with zero. Which unless someone has been systematically working on that category seems unlikely. Did I screw up the search, or is it actually true there are no food and drink articles that lack sources? Valereee (talk) 12:15, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think it wold be possible. Each one would probably need doing individually because it's working on subcategories, and the choice of category depth and starter category affect what is included and left out in rather arbitrary ways, due to factors like different nesting depths and the fact that they are not strictly hierarchical. At least it's easy to see how it works, unlike articletopic, and to tweak it if needed. There's a few already prepared, labelled 'Petscan query (Category)', on this now-archived discussion from last year. (On a side note, it would be interesting to see what progress has been made on those topics! [Edit: it was not interesting]) Turtlecrown (talk) 15:26, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Appreciate that you did this anyway. We can all appreciate the uninterestingness, together (I wonder why the total # of article in the categories consistently decreases significantly, though -- are articles being deleted, or just recategorized? Categorized more deeply? That is interesting.) Mrfoogles (talk) 03:21, 25 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Speaking only for myself, I've gone through probably the first 100 of the 518-article depth 5 food and drink petscan. A very large portion weren't actually food related (for instance, a fishing village and dinnerware items got caught), or were tangential (a Canadian food ministry) or just not really in my interest/skill set (commercial producers/products), but for the ones that were actually about food and drink, I've fixed a few articles by finding sources, but I think I've converted to redirects more than anything else. The petscan now has 492 articles, so I've done something with about 25. When I spend a session on the list, I can get through about 30-35 at a time, so I'm thinking after another ten or twelve sessions, I'll come back here and get advice on whether I should do a depth 4 or a depth 6 next. :) I don't really understand category depth very clearly. It's a nice little to-do list for when I feel like this kind of work. Valereee (talk) 13:26, 25 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Category depth is how many sub-categories of Category:Food and drink the PetScan looks into. For example, at depth 5: Food and drink (0) -> Drinks (1) -> Non-alcoholic drinks (2) -> Tea (3) -> Tea varieties (4) -> Green tea (5) -> Japanese green tea (6). Then repeat this for all subcategories. Which means you also unfortunately get, for example, Food and drink (0) -> Food politics (1) -> Agrarian politics (2) -> Peasant revolts (3) -> Popular revolt in late-medieval Europe (4) -> Tudor rebellions (5) -> Nine Years' War (Ireland) (6). Maybe starting from a food and drink subcategory more specific to your interests would be more useful, but it's never going to be a perfect solution due to how the categories are structured. Another useful tip is to add negative categories (eg Politics) if the same ones keep popping up and 'polluting' your list. Turtlecrown (talk) 08:16, 27 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Mrfoogles The reduction in the number of unreferenced articles per category since the last time they were counted is in line with the average reduction in the unreferenced article total (about 27%) since then. I think this is largely due to the work of this group, considering that there was about a 11% net reduction during our last backlog drive, despite us referencing more than that (due to the constant influx). However, articles in these particular categories have actually become a larger proportion of the articles that are tagged as unreferenced. That might be a caused by a greater influx of new articles/tags in popular categories than the average, or by less work being done in these categories (eg due to waning enthusiasm for referencing endless villages and albums). Turtlecrown (talk) 13:33, 25 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The project on the french-speaking side of the Wikipedia world is going very well, and we just discussed yours.
Currently, we only have around 2,000 categorized articles with the template. In fact, we need to track uncategorized articles (is "untemplated" a verb?) that effectively have no sources. Two months ago, our query identified about 200,000 uncategorized articles with a high probability of lacking sources. Now, that number is down to around 160,000, thanks to a nice little bot (a cute turtle) that checks whether these articles in the query have useful items in Wikidata to automatically link them. We manage to process around 1,000 articles manually per month.
We're still trying to find new ways to automate or semi-automate the process. For example, our tech team is planning to test a "soft" sourcing method, where the bot would add references in the article’s Talk page, so verification and integration remain human-driven.
So, when I see that nearly 67,000 articles are categorized here on EnWiki, I'm truly impressed—kudos to all of you! I have a few questions:
Are all unreferenced articles categorized? (By that, I mean: are there any missing templates?)
I ran a quick PetScan and found 30 articles that appear in both your category and ours. How can we help you the best ? Because we’ll have sourced them within about six months at most. I think there's more and my PetScan query is bad. I'll also ask our tech team to check the query—there are probably more articles to be found.
Following my second question, with Battle of Khankala (1994) as an example, i did some "hard" sourcing showing that the old version contained few wrong information. I won't try to translate it into a non-native langage. I applied a trad template... But maybe there's a better way to help you ? Nanoyo88 (talk) 09:21, 27 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Nanoyo88, putting the {{expand language}} template on the enwiki article after you have done the hard work finding references in frwiki is very helpful. If you were feeling especially keen, you could also put {{refideas}} on the Talk page; this is a way to actually list out the references you found. Cheers, SunloungerFrog (talk) 09:49, 27 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
First, terminology: I'm going to assume that when you say 'categorized' you are referring to articles tagged with the {{Unreferenced}} template, and therefore added to an unreferenced maintenance category. And 'uncategorized', therefore, means unreferenced articles that don't have a tag (or as you say, 'untemplated'). This might seem like a picky clarification, but on en.wiki we also have the uncategorized taskforce for generally uncategorized articles, which might be what most people first associate with the word. For simplicity, I'll use tagged or untagged.
Second, my questions: Is the fr.wiki project responsible for referencing the fr:WP:Atelier de relecture, or is there a more specific one? And do you need to track untagged articles that effectively have no sources in order to tag them, or for some other reason?
Third, to your questions:
Question 1: Are all unreferenced articles tagged? No. Tags are added by editors by hand or using semi-automated tools, usually not by us. Several hundred tags are added each month. Predecessors of this project seemed more involved in adding the tags, whereas our current WikiProject is mainly involved in resolving them. 111,000 unreferenced articles were found and tagged by a bot in December 2009 (see notes under Historical data).
Question 2: How can the French language referencing project support the English language one? Adding {{expand French}} as you did at Battle of Khankala (1994) is probably the easiest way. It lets us know there is more going on at the French page and that we might want to look for sources there. There are also many other unreferenced English articles that are perhaps easier referenced by someone who can speak French (I often do this!) such as those found in this (again, imperfect) Petscan.
Thanks for the terminology clarification. Let's use tag and untagged. The Wikiproject "Atelier de relecture" does not aim on referencing. It's the same as Wikipedia:Peer review. The french project i'm talking about is Projet:Articles sans sources (also nammed PatASS for "Patrouille des Articles Sans Sources [Unreferenced article patrol]"). You can see here it's quite young but growing. Btw, i see you're using a bot for your stats, it may interress us (ping @Mr Tortue, our "turtle tech"). For the track question, see below.
Q1 - thanks for the data. That's huge ! We also had a long history of tagged article with no real project handling them since november 2023. We have managed to handle all the banners so that the oldest category is now from August 2024. In addition to that, we have untagged articles that we manage to find with a long query (see here), the widest (with few false result) is around 160K. We use a bot on these query to directly find in the wikidata if items can solve the unrefferenced problem (the bot did 40K+ referrencing in a month). I hope you don't have too much untagged articles. So to answer your question on why we track them : because there was no project like yours in 2009 in the french-speaking WP. The unrefferenced french template was only created in 2015 ! So we track them to tag them because we're actually referencing 10x quicker than the "natural tagging" by the community (around 100/150 per month without our tags).
Q2 - Ok. I'm not sure everyone will put the template as i did, but helping with the subject of the petscan could be a good idea. Nanoyo88 (talk) 10:33, 27 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
You probably know this already but PatASS is a good name for a project, if you might not be able to get away with it in English. Mrfoogles (talk) 05:14, 29 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
We have a template "Liens" that automatically put links from wikidata based on items linked (such as dictionnaries, encyclopedia, thematic ressources, authority, etc.) See for example in french Osei Tutu I. In the bottom, you can see "Liens externes" which links to BlackPast, Britannica, etc. All those links are from the template "Liens". The bot is just looking in the query of untagged articles without the template "Liens" if they have a usefull item in wikidata for referencing. If yes, it simply add the section + template... And voilà :) Nanoyo88 (talk) 09:34, 31 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I just graphed the number of articles in June 2009 over time -- see File:June 2009 unreferenced articles graph.png, and there's a fairly constant slope until about February 2025, when the slope (rate of referencing) massively increases. This is the exact time when it became the oldest unreferenced articles category -- May 2009 was deleted on January 31st. So, it looks like people really do focus on the oldest category. Mrfoogles (talk) 01:18, 30 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, that graph has an error. All the data points after the first one should be shifted two months to the right. But it's mostly the same. Mrfoogles (talk) 01:26, 30 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Interesting. I tend to focus on the oldest categories (month/year) but then sometimes choose by subject too, as I think you need to also keep the search for references interesting to you. Great to see all this progress being made. Coldupnorth (talk) 07:19, 31 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Well done to all who contributed citations to articles tagged as Unreferenced last month. Here are the editors who made it into the Top 10 in March 2025:
@Silver seren continued to dominate the leaderboard in March, but @Cakelot1 was not far behind. @Turtlecrown came in a respectable third, with a strong performance for the second month in a row. In an exciting development, @Mrfoogles debuted with a leapfrog into fourth place, while @Coldupnorth bested February by joining the ranks of the monthly 100+ pointers in March.
To track where we are for the year to date, see the WikiProject Unreferenced articles leaderboard for 2025. You have to add references to at least 5 different articles before your stats will show up in the yearly view; however, if you click on "Apr" you'll see the full list of editors who have been active this month, with links to their edits.
And I do still mean to distribute barn stars this weekend to the 14 editors who hit 90 by March 31 (equivalent of 1/day in the first three months of the year). Cielquiparle (talk) 09:44, 3 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Wow. What a month. Well done to all who added citations to articles in April. Your contributions helped us get the total number of Wikipedia articles tagged as Unreferenced under 64k.
Why are there 11 editors listed in the Top 10, you ask? First of all, it was nearly a tie for 10th place. Secondly, for anyone following the competition in April, it was hard to ignore that things got a little...spicy.
There were a whopping 7 editors with 100+ points. Those were fighting words indeed from Someonefighter, who topped the leaderboard several times but just could not hold onto the lead for very long, as the mighty Silver seren kept clawing back and finally blew past everyone at 500+, a monthly URA record for 2025. Between these two editors with the initial "S", they logged 952 points in April. Simply staggering. (The next best first-initial cohort, the three editors whose names start with "C", including Cakelot1 in fourth place, Coldupnorth in seventh place, and yours truly, delivered an aggregated 419 points.)
New joiner LastJabberwocky worked all the way up to an impressive third place finish, while Thefallguy2025 who joined the action in March jumped to eighth place in April. Also pleased to see many familiar editor names up and down the board, including JoeNMLC who placed sixth for the month, but remains in fourth place overall for the year.
What's next? There is a lot going on in May. Lots of ways to get involved, and lots of opportunity to climb the leaderboard while other editors are doing other things. :) Remember, you need at least 5 points for May for your results to be displayed in the main yearly leaderboard (but you can track everyone's progress in detail if you click on "May").
A few insider tips for URA fans:
Log at least 61 points total for April and May 2025 and you'll receive a barnstar (as that's the equivalent of 1 citation a day in Q2 minus the backlog drive).
It's been a great deal of fun working on this project, I went far and hit a little bit of a roadblock: I've been through the entire books category, and have added citation to every book that exists in https://isbndb.com/ , the self proclaimed "biggest book database in the world"
@Cielquiparle I don't know if you have trackers for specific categories, but I've managed to get the books category from around 680+ articles to about 230+ articles. The remaining are going to be more time consuming, as some only exist in WorldCat, and some don't even exist there. I don't know if the books that aren't listed there are ever going to get citations. Additionally, I've stumbled upon many articles that are misplaced (for example, articles about authors, TV shows and other unrelated stuff). If anyone knows how to fix this, please tell me and I'll go over the category again and fix categorization. My goal in the project was to get the books category to 0, since I love reading books.
Honestly, I joined this project when I was a very new editor, and it taught me a lot about the essence of wikipedia. Specifically: verifiability and what sources are considered good. This helped me by a great deal now that I'm transitioning into editing articles in topics I am more knowledgeable about. But fear not! As long as I edit wikipedia, I will be a major participant in this project
p.s: I planned to make about 150 citations from worldcat and win the competition. But due to recent events, I'm locked to a VPN network, which worldcat blocks. I hope someone can continue my mission and finish the books category! Please contact me if you know about other big reliable databases Someonefighter (talk) 08:50, 2 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Cielquiparle - one thing that does irk me about the leaderboard is that it is, as far as I'm aware, based on the removal of existing tags from article; this excludes when editors add articles to untagged, unreferenced articles which I have found quite a few of (biographical articles of medieval Japanese women are plagued by this, for some reason). Not quibbling over points - frankly I am thrilled to see this project stand on its own without me being the only person posting on the talk page - but just noting that it's an area that is overlooked. We've discussed the issue of getting an "accurate" count of unreferenced articles but it is quite a challenge.
At least as someone that's a part of this effort, you could purposefully add the unreferenced tag in one edit and then remove it in the next (while adding the reference you were planning to add in the removal edit). That should make it be counted properly. Doesn't help for those not a part of this group though, unfortunately. SilverserenC16:05, 2 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I honestly didn’t expect to end up in the Top 10, but I’m really grateful to be part of this project. Working on unreferenced articles has taught me a lot about sourcing and the importance of verifiability, and it’s been surprisingly rewarding to see the difference even small edits can make. Huge respect to everyone who contributed this month — especially Silver seren and Someonefighter, your work was incredible. I’m looking forward to continuing in May and doing my bit to help chip away at the backlog. — Thefallguy2025
Thanks for the update! Absolutely incredible work by Silverseren and Somonefighter. That's a combined nearly 1000 tags between just you two! ARandomName123 (talk)Ping me!16:54, 2 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
