Wikipedia talk:Special:ShortPages

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Explanation for "Long comment to avoid being listed on short pages": User talk:Necrothesp/Archive 4#long comment

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This page is a good tool to find nonsence articles that clutter the mainspace. But unfortunately most of it (actually, almost all of it) right now consist of setindicies for lastnames, making it far less useful for finding actual vandalism. I initially started to add {{subst:longcomment}} to these legitimately short articles, but gave up when I realize the sheer scale of my undertaking.

I'm trying to speculate if we can somehow hide them from the list. Disambiguation pages are clearly hidden, so the functionality seems not that remote. Is there somewhere I can read this special page's algorithm to speculate a solution? (Of course, to be implemented only after establishing consensus.) Gaioa (T C L) 18:49, 19 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I'm feeling the same problem, and I 100% agree with you. It would be extremely helpful for there to be a distinction between lists/set indices and regular articles. — Avelludo 14:29, 14 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Gaioa:@Aveelludo: Its been a few months, I'm noticing the same thing you two mentioned. How would we change that? I considered adding dab category as a category to the {{tl|Surname}} template but Should we ask for consensus at that template page first? Signed, I Am Chaos (talk) 16:00, 1 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I believe the special page excludes pages containing the magic word __DISAMBIG__. ― Qwerfjkltalk 16:16, 1 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@I Am Chaos @Qwerfjkl Both those solutions could work, but it would be a bit clunky programming-wise. Surname lists are set index pages and not disamb pages, so labeling them as disamb through means of code is a bit of a circumvential bodge and not a reliable solution for a website this large. I think it'd be better to propose a change to the underlying MediaWiki code that spawns the specialpage, to make it exclude {{Surname}} completely, alternatively a new magic word to put into that template. If it's done for disambs, it could and should be expanded to other needed functions. Gaioa (T C L) 20:35, 1 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Good point, this is a relatively secluded talk page, should someone move this to WP:VP/T? or is there a better place? Signed, I Am Chaos (talk)

Damn, I missed that conversation (and this reply!) until just now.

I feel like long comment is a really poor solution to this. I can think of at least 3 main points against it:

• We're too far gone for manual labor: There are literal thousands of short index pages already. Even if one were to use that fancy scripting method @Tamzin described (which includes acquiring a new user permission, and understanding how to use a third-party script (that, from my understanding, could be prone to human error and potentially cause mislabeling)), it would still take a lot of man-hours – and, frankly, I don't think there's a lot of people willing to give that away for such a niche, seemingly unimportant cause.
• It doesn't solve the issue long-term: New disambiguation pages and indices will continue to be created, forever, and requiring someone to manually monitor for them to add the template (again, forever) doesn't sound like a great long-term solution to me. Even assuming one or two ShortPage warriors start templating every index today – keeping in mind that, for the last many years, there have been none –, what's to say they'll still be around and willing in, like, a decade? Fifteen years? What then? The list just deteriorates again until we get new pure-hearted souls with too much time in their hands?
• It doesn't even solve the issue at all!!: The long comment template page states pages going over 550 bytes will automatically have it removed. Per my counting, the comment has 272 characters, meaning articles with more than (550 − 272 =) 278 characters cannot use this solution. (Articles with 279 characters start at position #3288 in the list, as of writing; see my first point.) I checked the first 100 articles with 279 characters (and then got tired) and, as of writing, they are all list indices, save for one, Nosurahu. This means that, even if we got through the huge barrier of templating the over 3 thousand shorter indices, we'd still have the exact same issue on our hands! ShortPages would still be cluttered!!

I don't intend to be mean or ungrateful – I appreciate the help and input from other people. This is just my 2¢ of using long comment as a permanent solution. I undersand it would take time to figure out and implement a proper solution – but we have been at this for 3 years already, so time isn't much of a worry, and it would no doubt be better for the website long-term. The way it is currently, the usability of the ShortPages list is severely diminished, and makes it actively discouraging to check.

If there really is no other option but long comment, then so be it – but you can't say I didn't try! Cheers — Avelludo (Talk / Contribs / Log) 02:24, 7 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]