Wikipedia:WikiProject Sweep
 | This WikiProject is believed to be inactive. Consider looking for related projects for help or ask at the Teahouse.
If you are not currently a project participant and wish to help you may still participate in the project. This status should be changed if collaborative activity resumes. |
Welcome to WikiProject Sweep! This collaboration aims to comprehensively review every article created in Wikipedia's early days to ensure basic conformity to modern standards. This page and its subpages aim to facilitate collaboration around this goal. If you'd like to help us, please add yourself as a participant to the project, inquire on the talk page, and see the to-do list for things to do. Thanks for helping us clean up old articles!
| This WikiProject is believed to be inactive. Consider looking for related projects for help or ask at the Teahouse.
If you are not currently a project participant and wish to help you may still participate in the project or its parent project WikiProject Cleanup. This status should be changed if collaborative activity resumes. |
Background
In Wikipedia's early days (very roughly prior to 2010), there were few and ill-defined notability and sourcing standards, leading to the creation of many pages that, by today's standards, should not exist or need extensive cleanup. However, because many of them are on very obscure subjects with few pageviews, they have avoided deletion or tagging with maintenance templates to alert readers about their issues. Under our prior ad hoc approach, we were unable to know how many undiscovered non-notable or otherwise deficient pages remained.
In response to this problem, a WikiProject proposal was made in November 2020, and this project was launched in March 2021.
Stages
- Build set of articles to be checked (
In progress) - Affirm community consensus for the sweep
- Build tools and templates needed to conduct the sweep
- Establish process for editors to become sweepers, including criteria and instructions
- Recruit and motivate sweepers until all articles are swept
Progress
Articles swept: 0 / Unknown
Participants
Add your name to the list at: Participants & News
Pages
Templates
- {{Swept}} – box or prefilled talk page section that will indicate that a page has been swept
Resources
- Wikipedia:Database reports/Forgotten articles
- Special:AncientPages – 100 neglected pages
