The following discussion is an archived debate. Please do not modify it. To request review of this BRFA, please start a new section at WT:BRFA. The result of the discussion was  Approved.

Operator: Wbm1058 (talk · contribs · SUL · edit count · logs · page moves · block log · rights log · ANI search)

Time filed: 03:53, Monday, November 26, 2018 (UTC)

Function overview: Remove pages from Category:Long monitored short pages, Category:Monitored short pages length 901 to 1000, Category:Monitored short pages length 801 to 900, and Category:Monitored short pages length 701 to 800

Automatic, Supervised, or Manual: Automatic

Programming language(s): PHP

Source code available:

Links to relevant discussions (where appropriate): Template talk:Short pages monitor#Need to define and possibly rethink this template

Edit period(s): Hourly, after initial run to clear the categories

Estimated number of pages affected: 2600 on initial run, then as needed when short pages become longer

Namespace(s): Mainspace/Articles

Exclusion compliant (Yes/No): No

Function details: Remove the text added by {{subst:long comment}} from pages listed in Category:Long monitored short pages; these pages no longer need this text to keep the page off the top of the Special:ShortPages listings. No reason to make this process exclusion compliant.

Approved for trial (50 edits). Please provide a link to the relevant contributions and/or diffs when the trial is complete. please post link to trial edits and summary of your trial here when complete. — xaosflux ^Talk 16:21, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Trial complete. 50 edits, no issues. Forgot to ID this as "Task 5" in the edit summary, will do that before the next run. – wbm1058 (talk) 21:43, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Wbm1058: I don't normally maintain ShortPages - can you explain a bit more why this task should be done, what is it cleaning up after - and why that cleanup is no longer needed? Opening a random short page (Lobed cactus coral) - it looks like a fairly normal page, maybe missing a template? — xaosflux ^Talk 18:16, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Xaosflux: Right. It's not particularly intuitive, is it? It took me a while to figure it out, too. This is my understanding. Some editors, at some time (I don't know who, or whether anyone else still does – I just started doing it myself recently) monitor the list at Special:ShortPages. Look at the header on Wikipedia talk:Special:ShortPages for a link to the explanation for "Long comment to avoid being listed on short pages": There is a list of short pages that people monitor regularly. Often one can find vandalism - removing text and replacing with "skahfsakfl" or such - that makes the list, or other junk that makes it past the recent changes patrol. So, when I (and others) go through the list and something is "ok" like a short dab page, we add a long comment so that it doesn't get listed at short pages, so we don't do the same work over and over again. Just making another tool to remove vandalism more efficient for those who use it. Carlossuarez46 17:05, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Looking at the top of the short pages list, I typically see pages that have been tagged for speedy deletion. Of course these will also be marked in Category:Candidates for speedy deletion. I rarely see anything that looks like vandalism ("skahfsakfl" or such) – maybe ClueBot or some other vandalism patroller takes care of these promptly. So the usefulness of this work queue seems marginal; maybe it was more useful ten years ago. In any event, the first four pages on the list are marked for speedy deletion. The fifth item on the list, Rupf, is 161 bytes long, and is the first legitimate "long page" on the list. There are a bunch of short set-indexes near the top, like Lobed cactus coral – that's 186 bytes long. So if an editor creates a new set index or disambiguation page that's less than 160 bytes long, then {{subst:long comment}} may be written to that page to make it long enough to get out of the "below 160 bytes range", i.e. whitelist it. However, as more line items are added to set indices and dabs, they natually become long enough to no longer need to be whitelisted. Editors set up the categories like Category:Monitored short pages length 801 to 900 to point these out for manual cleanup. I suppose with the highest priority for cleanup given to the longest "short" pages. The instructions on the category pages give the caveat to check that the article content is acceptable; a formerly very short article that has grown to more than 900 characters can indicate a mass introduction of text that may not belong. in which the vandalism or bad edit should be reverted rather than removing the long comment. No, my bot doesn't check for this sort of bad edit; it just removes the long comment. I've also seen where editors add the long comment to pages longer than 160 bytes, because they think it's a short page, when it really isn't by the current definition.

Last month I cleared Category:Long monitored short pages and Category:Monitored short pages length 901 to 1000 using JWB, and didn't find any "gotchas" that would indicate these cats couldn't be cleared by a bot. My October edit history showing the JWB edits

I plan on consolidating these four maintenance categories to the single category Category:Long monitored short pages after the other three are cleared, as with processing being done by a bot, there is no need for prioritizing them into various length ranges for humans. – wbm1058 (talk) 20:40, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Wbm1058: so noone is ever actually doing the "check that the article content is acceptable" - and the only reason you are making this edit is to remove the template once the pages are 'longer'? I don't see anyone discussing this, can you at least start a section at Template talk:Short pages monitor or somewhere more appropriate to see if anyone cares? — xaosflux ^Talk 22:05, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Xaosflux: Thanks for pointing me to that template talk page, which I hadn't looked at before. I've added a link to the relevant discussion at Template talk:Short pages monitor#Need to define and possibly rethink this template, which I think is what you're looking for. I think that discussion pretty much comes to the same conclusions I did. From that discussion I found that Dcirovic appears to have run an unauthorized bot that mindlessly added short-page monitoring to 4,950 pages over a span of 6 hours, 40 minutes – that was 4950 edits ÷ 400 minutes = 12.375 edits/min. But you should pardon Dcirovic as the statute of limitations has expired on that, even though they never responded after being called out for it in the talk section I just linked you to. I also added a new subsection Very short new article: edit filter 98 which notes there's an edit filter performing the equivalent function as Special:ShortPages. While I won't go so far as MZMcBride and Anomalocaris to say that "long comments" should be entirely eliminated, as some may prefer using the special page over the edit filter, or may not know how to use edit filters, I agree that the instructions need clarification, and I think a bot to manage this so as to keep it under control is essential. Hoping that after reading this, you can go ahead and approve this bot task. I'd rather not try calling in some editors who don't understand the purpose of "long comments", and either make them waste time reading to understand the issue before they vote, or take a minute and say "seems useful, make someone clear this manually" without taking enough time to understand it. I've already done my time clearing another category that was populated by a relatively "dumb" bot, that took me months to clear, without much of any help from the voters who insisted that the work should be done. I agree with the statement that Short Pages Monitor pages are no more likely to need cleanup than any other page and thus there's no rationale for making someone manually clear these categories. – wbm1058 (talk) 01:26, 1 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I left a notice of this BRFA, soliciting comments at both Template talk:Long comment (where you will see more comments from editors confused about its purpose) and Template talk:Short pages monitor. wbm1058 (talk) 03:16, 1 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

 Approved. no objections found from solicited areas, with caveat that if these projects run in to issues bot work should stop pending discussion with whomever is raising them. — xaosflux ^Talk 21:17, 16 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. To request review of this BRFA, please start a new section at WT:BRFA.