Wikipedia:Responsible tagging
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This is an essay; it contains the advice and/or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. It is not a policy or guideline, and editors are not obliged to follow it. |
We have to admit that many Wikipedia articles have serious problems which require painstakingly careful and time-consuming editing to fix, and which render their content quite unreliable even for the most error-tolerant applications. It is necessary to clearly tag such articles, preferrably with a shrill color, until someone comes along who has both the time and inclination to carefully edit the article and solve its most pressing problem. For example, if an article relies heavily on unreliable sources (such as blogs), then readers need to be alerted to that fact, until an editor can introduce more reliable sources, such as academic journals.
It is much easier and less time-consuming to identify and label an article's problem than it is to actually fix the problem. But this is not to denigrate the importance of identifying and labelling problems. In fact, the identification and labelling step is so often botched, resulting at best in a long delay in fixing the problem, and at worst in an edit war in which several people revert the tagger, who refuses to explain the reason for the tag.
With responsible tagging, the person identifying the problem clearly labels the problem with the appropriate tag and leaves clarifying information on the talk page, without consuming too much of his valuable time but without causing confusion for others.
This essay will give advice about specific tags, but the general gist of it is this:
If you are going to put a tag on an article that proclaims it as seriously faulty, you should really leave an explanation on the talk page of that article, even if the reason seems plainly obvious to you.
In some cases, the explanation might be short enough to fit on an edit summary. Writing brief but complete edit summaries is always encouraged. However, it's still a good idea to include it on the talk page, preferably with a heading saying something like "Reason for grammar clean up tag (cleanup-grammar)." The problem with edit summaries is that after the tag is placed there could be a lot of edits to the article which don't address the concerns stated in the tag, making it hard to find the reason. By including the explanation on the talk page with a suitable heading, it becomes easier for others to find an explanation for the tag. Putting the reason in an HTML comment next to the tag is another available option, but it doesn't hurt to duplicate this on the talk page.
Another important thing about the explanation: it needs to show to others that you actually read the specific article and you honestly believe it has the deficiency indicated by the tag, it shows that you're not just tagging on a whim. It also shows you did not just copy and paste from a similar explanation for a related article with the tag in question.
This essay is not about current events tags nor future tags, nor is it about deletion tags. The Articles for Deletion tag directs people to a separate page to ponder the reasons, while the proposed deletion tag requires a reason to be given within the tag itself. This essay will give fictionalized examples, but they are actually not exaggerations of the sort of thing that happens when an article's problem is incorrectly labelled.
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[edit] A quick word about citation needed tags
Citation needed tags are not really the main topic of this essay, but a quick word about them is in order, as they support some of the proclamation maintenance tags. Take this fictionalized example:
| In the third issue of 1998 of the Canadian Quarterly Journal of Integer Sequences, starting on page 347, Helmutz showed that the Schmuckelberg theorem can be extended to complex integers only if the Riemann hypothesis is true.[citation needed] |
The person who placed this tag isn't a complete idiot. He just was in too much of a hurry to notice that a citation is in fact given. Granted, it needs formatting (such as italics for the journal title), and a concluding page number would be nice, but the citation needed tag is just plain wrong. A "refimprove" tag at the top of the page would make more sense.
[edit] Clean up tags
[edit] The catch-all clean up tag (cleanup)
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| A bronchial contuberance is a surgical operation in which a long, thin tube is inserted into the bronchial aperture and a reading is taken.[1] Since 2002, bronchial entuberances are preferred for patients with kidney conditions.[2] ... |
This is of course a fictional example, so we're assuming that there really is such a surgical procedure. What's wrong with the article? There are no misspellings, no informal language, no off-topic digressions. The general clean up tag provides both a link to the talk page and a link to a list of more specific clean up tags. If you don't have the time to look at the more specific clean up tags, at least take a minute to write a few lines in the talk page as to what kind of clean up you think is necessary.
This tag used to have a link to help users find more specific clean up messages. For some reason, this has been removed, making it harder for responsible taggers to find the appropriate specific tag.
[edit] Articles with too many links (overlinked)
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| A bronchial contuberance is a surgical operation in which a long, thin tube is inserted into the bronchial aperture and a reading is taken.[3] Since 2002, bronchial entuberances are preferred for patients with kidney conditions.[4] ... |
Not every case of overlinking will be clear. When every word is a link the problem is obvious. If you tag an article as "overlinked," no one expects you to actually review each link (as you probably don't have the time to do so, and if you did it would just be easier for you to cut down some of the links). But it would be very helpful to others for you to leave on the talk page one example from the article where you don't think the link is terribly helpful or relevant. For this example, you might say something like "I don't think the links to either long or thin are all that helpful, there are probably other links in this article we could do without."
[edit] An example where responsible tagging prevents an edit war
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| Archimedes of Troy (Ancient Greek: Ἀρχιμήδης) (c. 384 BC – c. 312 BC) was a Greek mathematician, and astronomer. Although few details of his life are known, he is regarded as one of the leading scientists in classical antiquity. Among his advances in astronomy are the foundation of a planetary measurement institute and the explanation of the principle of the retrograde. He is credited with designing innovative astrolabes, including one that bears his name. As a mathematician, he was overshadowed by Archimedes of Syracuse, whose mathematical discoveries turned out to have more applications in modern mathematics than those of the Archimedes of Troy. However, one mathematical discovery of the Troy Archimedes which is still sometimes used by mathematicians today is a recurrence relation for hexadronic templates. ... |
This example is not as badly overlinked as the previous example. So when User ABC1A placed an overlinked tag on it, User 123A1 reverted him immediately. Instead of getting angry, ABC1A wrote the following on the Talk page:
| ==Reason for overlinked tag== |
| It seems to me that some words that occur in the text more than once are linked every single time they occur. In my humble opinion, it is only necessary to link each word the first time it appears. User ABC1A at 5:07 PM |
Then he restored the overlinked tag and put "See Talk page" in his edit summary. So when 123A1 saw this in his watchlist, he decided to read what the Talk page said before reverting ABC1A. And he found that he agreed with ABC1A's assessment.
| ==Reason for overlinked tag== |
| It seems to me that some words that occur in the text more than once are linked every single time they occur. In my humble opinion, it is only necessary to link each word the first time it appears. User ABC1A at 5:07 PM |
| :I see what you mean. The word "mathematician" is linked the second time it appears, and then the link for "mathematicians" is quite unnecessary because it redirects to mathematician anyway. Likewise, mathematical redirects to mathematics, so it's not necessary to link it if the word "mathematics" has occurred before and is itself linked. I'm going to have to review the entire text of the article and I don't have time for that today, but I promise to take care of it tomorrow. I will not remove the tag again until I have carefully reviewed the article. User 123A1 at 5:12 PM |
[edit] The copyedit clean up tag (copyedit)
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| John Reedparrot (1753? - 1809?) was a British pirate, best-known for commandeering Royal Navy ships. Reedparrot was the inspiration for the fictional character of Jack Parrot in Pirates of the Pacific 2: Destination California. | ||
| ... [nine paragraphs omitted] | ||
| in 1953, a plaq was fuond in Hawaiii wit teh inscription "j. reedparrot here lies, but alas, wihtout his tresure!" tihs has led historiands to speclate that reedparot went to hawai to dei, andnot california as msot biograhpers wrote. furtermore, and withuot belaboring the point, it apears in 1960 wit digging up of teh hms chloroform a reasesssment is needed of reedparrot's reptation. | ||
| ... [ten paragraphs omitted] | ||
| The Reedparrot Museum in New Jersey opened in 2004, to coincide with the release of Pirates of the Pacific: Talking Man's Curse. |
In a few rare cases, it will be clear that the entire article is filled with misspellings and grammatical mistakes. But it will happen more often on Wikipedia that the two or three offending paragraphs are buried somewhere in the middle of the article. Also, given that the current wording of the tag is quite vague, it is necessary to give some guidance as to what the problem is. In this example, then, one might say in the talk page something like "The spelling of the paragraph beginning "in 1953, a plaq was fuond..." is completely atrocious. The grammar seems to be OK, but the misspellings could be obscuring the grammatical problems." Or if an article's problem is grammar, and not spelling, then the talk page should say so. For example: "The final paragraph is one long run-on sentence. A few periods would help, and maybe we could even break that paragraph up into smaller paragraphs."
Even if the entire article is entire misspelled, or whichever problem it may have throughout its entire length, it doesn't hurt to say so on the Talk page. That way, someone else could perhaps inform the others of something like "I cleaned up the first two paragraphs but didn't have time to go through the rest of it."
[edit] The rewrite tag (rewrite)
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| Archimedes of Troy (Ancient Greek: Ἀρχιμήδης) (c. 384 BC – c. 312 BC) was a Greek mathematician, and astronomer. Although few details of his life are known, he is regarded as one of the leading scientists in classical antiquity. Among his advances in astronomy are the foundation of a planetary measurement institute and the explanation of the principle of the retrograde. He is credited with designing innovative astrolabes, including one that bears his name. ... |
The rewrite tag is frustratingly vague. Its canned text does not point to a specific problem (unlike copyedit tags like the grammar and spelling tags). The canned text also says that the Talk page "may contain suggestions." It better, or probably no one else will know why you tagged it. In our fictional example, the tagger put only the rewrite tag and no others, and the article had no other tags whatsoever. If someone removes a rewrite tag you place, you'd be very well advised to look for a more specific tag, instead of simply slapping the vague rewrite tag back on.
Before placing a rewrite tag, please look long and hard for a more suitable tag. If you honestly can't find one, then follow the canned text's link to the Talk page and leave a concise but detailed message explaining what in the article needs to be rewritten.
[edit] Tags calling for references
[edit] Unreferenced tag (unreferenced)
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| A bronchial entuberance is a surgical operation which replaces bronchial contuberancesor patients with kidney conditions. Bronchial contuberances have a 53% chance of success in patients with no other respiratory ailments,[citation needed] and is not at all recommended for patients with low blood calcium, as in indicated in Dr. Brown's study in the first 2005 issue of the Petorian Journal of Medicine. As with contuberances, local anesthesia is generally used to perform this procedure. |
By placing an unreferenced tag on a page, you're representing that you have actually read the article and found no references whatsoever of any kind. The article lacks Wikipedia's preferred hyperlinked footnote citation format, but you couldn't find any citations in any other format. If you don't actually have the time to read the article to make sure it really has no references, consider using a less severe references needed tag, or better yet, leaving it alone.
But let me be clear on one important point: while placing an unreferenced tag does not obligate you to find references for the article, it does obligate you to make an effort to point people in the right direction. You must think that references can be found for the article in question, you just might not have the time to dig them up yourself. In the example, you might suggest "Try medical journals for surgeons." If you honestly think no one will be able to find any references to support this, then nominate the article for deletion. Don't waste people's times with requests you think are impossible to fulfil.
[edit] Additional references needed tag (refimprove)
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| A bronchial contuberance is a surgical operation in which a long, thin tube is inserted into the bronchial aperture and a reading is taken.[5] Since 2002, bronchial entuberances are preferred for patients with kidney conditions. Bronchial contuberances have a 53% chance of success in patients with no other respiratory ailments,[citation needed] and is not at all recommended for pregnant women.[citation needed] Local anesthesia is generally used to perform this procedure.[6] |
It would of course be silly to place an "unreferenced" tag on this page. The talk page ought to give some kind of idea as to what additional references would be helpful. For example, "It would be nice to use references from journals other than the Petorian Journal of Medicine." If you have the time, you should also flag with citation needed tags one or two statements not supported by the references already in the article.
[edit] Meta-information problems
[edit] The uncategorized tag (uncategorized)
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| In mathematics, more specifically in number theory, a natural number n is a Jacobson-Lopez number if n = pq where p and q are distinct prime numbers congruent to 7 mod 8. That is p and q must be of the form 8t+7, for some integer t. This means that the factors of a Blum integer are Gaussian primes with no imaginary part.
Given n = pq a Jacobson-Lopez number, Qn the set of all quadratic residues modulo n, and a ∈ Qn. Then:
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...This is a tag that I would suggest should be used only in very extreme cases. Such an extreme case would be when you don't have even the foggiest idea what the article is talking about. Because if you do have at least a general idea of what the article is talking about, is it really that hard to type "[[Category:" the category you think applies and then close it with "]]"?
Suppose that you have no idea what the example is talking about. You could try clicking on one of the links. If you click on the "Gaussian prime" link, you're taken to Gaussian integer; that article is categorized under Cyclotomic fields, Algebraic numbers, and Lattice points. So you're not sure if any of these categories apply to our example article, that's OK. By now you should have some idea that all this has something to do with math. In fact, the first line of our example says "In mathematics"! You should go ahead and put in "[[Category: Mathematics]]." This might be too general, and there is certainly a more precise category. But an overly broad category is a thousand times more helpful than some vague tag, because the overly broad category increases the chances that someone with knowledge of the broad topic will be able to categorize the article in a narrower category. With the uncategorized tag, it is likely that the article will languish for a long time before anyone even looks at it.
[edit] Viewpoint problems
[edit] Neutrality disputes (POV-check)
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| The Massachusetts infieffment act of 1993 reforms infieffment laws in the state and brings them into line with federal infieffment laws in the U. S. Code. Infieffment laws in the state have been in effect since colonial times. ... |
The talk page should explain, to those unfamiliar with any of the sides in the argument, what the sides are and try to point to some neutral language that all sides might agree on.
[edit] Globalization issues (globalize)
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| A zdroplaksczie is a pastry usually eaten on the 3rd Monday after Lent, generally filled with strawberry jelly. You can buy some from Mikolaj's on the way to LaGuardia, though the A & P supermarkets make decent zdroplaksczies. ... |
Some topics just don't span the whole world. However, in some cases, the persons editing a particular article have focused entirely on one small corner of the globe to the exclusion of other parts of the world where the topic also applies. In such a case, one ought to leave on the talk page a list of places one thinks the topic might also apply (or if it's worldwide, say so). In our example, the writer seems to have limited himself to a Polish enclave in New York, ignoring the Eastern European country where these pastries were probably invented.
[edit] In-universe (in-universe)
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| Joe Calcarone is a fictional villain in Gumbel 2 Gumbel: Beach Justice, a police drama on NBC the content of which is entirely fictional. Calcarone is recurring fictional character on the show, and the first season episodes with him in them showed ratings higher than those of other episodes.[8] The fictional character of Calcarone is played by the actor Roberto Mazzetti, who was cast in the rôle after the show's creator saw him in a New York pizza stand. According to the back story of the show, Calcarone went to college and at first did not want to join the family business. The second season story arc for the fictional character has him rethinking his decision to join the family business. The show's writers have remained silent on third season developments for the fictional character. Did we forget to mention that Joe Calcarone is fictional? |
The tagger refuses to explain the tag on the talk page, and the other contributors are tripping over themselves to point out that Joe Calcarone is fictional so that no one could possibly miss this fact. What would it take to satisfy the tagger? The other contributors have no idea.
[edit] Original research (original research)
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| Bronchial contuberances were first studied by Dr. Hartman at Quahog Hospital. Dr. Hartman published his findings in the Rhode Island Journal of Pediatrics. |
How's this original research? The talk page might explain that the author of the article has "DrHartMan" for his username, or that there is in fact no such journal as the RIJP. (In the latter case, there might be a better template, I think).
[edit] Articles that should just be deleted
The tags discussed above represent that the tagger believes the article could actually be improved if the deficiencies listed are addressed. But if the tagger honestly believes the article can't be improved at all and doesn't believe it even belongs in Wikipedia, if he's a responsible tagger he will then nominate the article for deletion, and not play games by putting irrelevant clean up tags on.
[edit] Incompatibility with timed mass harassment techniques
Responsible tagging is incompatible with timed mass harassment techniques, such as placing a tag on several dozen pages without reading any of them. A responsible tagger would read each page before applying any tags, and then leave on the talk page a message that shows that he indeed read the page, honestly believes it applies, and is not acting under a whim or worse, in a sinister plot to wear down those who disagree with him.
