Template talk:Cleanup

Template-protected edit request on 16 March 2025

Could someone please cleanup (pun intended) this template so it displays properly inside the {{multiple issues}} template? See Draft:Manish Shah (film producer) for an example of how it does not display properly. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 13:49, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

 Not done for now: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the {{Edit template-protected}} template. This incompatibility seems almost intentional. Per Template:Multiple issues/doc: {{Cleanup}} is very vague and so should be replaced with a more specific template whenever possible. —⁠andrybak (talk) 16:32, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

Agree with editor Andrybak. This template will display correctly in the {{multiple issues}} template when it is included in mainspace. In any other namespace it transfers from using {{Ambox}} to {{Mbox}}, and Mbox does not yield the desired result like Ambox does (in mainspace). Here is a list of other cleanup templates that might be useful. P.I. Ellsworth , ed. ^{put'er there} 19:58, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

@Paine Ellsworth: I was surprised to see it display improperly on the draft, as I haven't seem anything display improperly in articlespace in a long time. Thanks for the explanation of the difference. GoingBatty (talk) 16:59, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

Happy to help! Paine  17:29, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

"Template:Cleanup-since" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect Template:Cleanup-since has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2026 January 23 § Template:Cleanup-since until a consensus is reached. Jay 💬 07:20, 30 January 2026 (UTC)

Proposed new icon for the broom

Proposed brush

I know, I know, the little cartoon is a classic seen all over with derivative templates, if it ain't broke don't fix it, etc, but hear me out: This practically-unused one is newer without looking like an ultra-minimalistic eyesore. It's slightly 3D (reaches to the weary user of our age) without looking tacky. Slightly more eye-catching colors to reel attention for concern, yet not garish. Amber-orangey-yellow signals caution yet welcoming/hope. Consistent. inb4 "It's a paintbrush not a broom"; I think it looks more like a square dustpan brush (non-cherrypicked example).

Ultimately not only should Wikipedia look pretty-ish if feasible, but if it nudges users even 1% somehow to look closer at the template too, I think that's in spirit of it all. What do we say? ~Sıgehelmus♗_(Tøk) 04:28, 4 April 2026 (UTC)

That's a paintbrush. Do a web search for "magimate thick paintbrush with rectangular base" and you'll see a variety of these. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:16, 7 April 2026 (UTC)

Rewrite

@Jonesey95 I'm happy to explain my changes. The MOS link is unhelpful as it is extremely unspecific – nobody has time to read the entire MOS to figure out what's wrong with a particular article, least of all a new editor. It is also not what cleanup is about. We have TM:Copy edit for pages that need copyedits. A quick look at WP:Cleanup#Posts shows that most requests for cleanup are either copyedits (which should use the copyedit banner) or completely unrelated issues, like requests to add tables, improve citation formatting, or fix broken templates. None of that is MOS-relevant. Let me know if you have questions about the other changes I made. Toadspike [Talk] 15:23, 10 July 2026 (UTC)

I find that cleanup is often MOS-relevant, dealing with improper use of formatting, capitalization in headers, tables and lists with dates in reverse order, and much more. Yes, MOS is large, but explaining what specifically is wrong with a page is what the reason parameter is for. Removing the MOS link entirely removes helpful guidance for editors who may not know that it exists; we don't want people cleaning up pages in ways that conflict with MOS.

If there are cleanup templates or requests that call out specific problems with an article's prose or grammar, you are welcome to tag those to copy edit templates, and the WP:GOCE will take care of them. I sometimes do the reverse in patrolling articles for the GOCE, for example when a page has a copy edit tag asking for references to be formatted correctly. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:17, 10 July 2026 (UTC)

An example: in the Cleanup Posts for March 2024, I see "Abakhel (Pashtun tribe) - Problems with punctuation and spacing, capitalization, clarity and paragraph structure." That article can be tagged with a copy edit template, with the reason parameter reading "Problems with punctuation and spacing, capitalization, clarity and paragraph structure", and then you can mark the request as "tagged for copy editing" and strike it. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:20, 10 July 2026 (UTC)

I find it very difficult to believe that you find a link to the entire MOS "helpful". It is 13.5 thousand words long, so long that my page size tool struggles to measure its length. Linking to it is not only unhelpful, but counterproductive and discouraging for the vast majority of editors, who have no idea what to look for when handed a page the several times the length of a typical short story. It is also incorrect to say that the MOS forms our "quality standards" – correctness of formatting is largely irrelevant to the actual quality of an article, which depends on the clarity of its prose and the robustness of its sourcing.

As for the rest, you seem to have come to the same conclusion that I did, which is that this template is often misused to request copyedits – hopefully removing the MOS link will discourage this. (Ideally the template would throw an error if no reason were specified, as without a reason it's pretty useless, but I don't have the template-editing finesse to spin that up.) Toadspike [Talk] 05:09, 12 July 2026 (UTC)

Well, believe it, I guess. I find the MOS very useful. It is easily searchable with the browser's Find command. If a cleanup tag says that there is a problem with italics, I can do a Find for "italic", and the first hit is the TOC header that takes me there.

And please do not put words in my mouth. I did not conclude or say that this template is often misused. I said that I sometimes find copy edit tags that should be cleanup tags, and that you are welcome to mark cleanup tasks with the copy edit tag if appropriate. I do agree that the reason parameter should be required; it looks like the template was trying to do that but was not programmed correctly. I fixed the template so that the reason parameter is required. See also Category:Cleanup tagged articles without a reason field (10). – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:15, 12 July 2026 (UTC)

Thank you for fixing the reason parameter! Apologies if I came across as putting words in your mouth; I merely hoped to point out that we seem to agree that there's a better banner for copyedits than this one.

Do you have any objections to the rest of the rewrite, aside from the removal of the MOS link? I'm happy to hold off on that pending a broader discussion, but I think the other changes helped simplify the language used. Also, if the MOS link must be retained, it shouldn't be linked from the words "quality standards", as that isn't accurate and probably violates the MOS (MOS:EGG), ironically enough. Would you agree to let me change that to "style guide"? (This does change the meaning of the banner somewhat to exclude non-style issues, which is why I hoped to remove the link entirely.) Toadspike [Talk] 01:53, 13 July 2026 (UTC)

I've requested a 3O on the MOS link question. Toadspike [Talk] 02:01, 13 July 2026 (UTC)

I recommend that you put your proposed changes in the /sandbox, as the documentation instructs for any high-use template. I'll be happy to take a look. If you can find a way to get the error message into the body of the ambox without breaking the ability to subst this template, that would be good too. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:18, 13 July 2026 (UTC)

Change proposed in sandbox (I think? my first time trying), unfortunately I have no clue about error messages :) Moritoriko (talk) 23:36, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

Nice work. I adjusted it a bit more to make the two different mboxes match, and I made the links a little less WP:EGGy (IMO). Take a look at Template:Cleanup/testcases and let me know what you think. I tried to move the reason parameter into the template, but that's going to have to wait until I've had some sleep. – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:44, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

not sure what an mbox is, but i don't mind writing out manual of style for the link. Have a good rest. Moritoriko (talk) 04:09, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

Response to third opinion request:

Hi y'all, here from 3O and I've had a look around at a variety of pages tagged clean up and read through this discussion a couple times. To start, I heavily agree with Toadspike's opinion that linking to the MOS under the words quality standards is confusing. I'd expect something like Wikipedia:Featured article criteria from those words. I am not opposed to the MOS being included but I am aware that its long and in my sample, the clean-ups that needed something MOS related linked it from the reason so I don't feel like it is necessary. Moritoriko (talk) 00:59, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

As I said above, I am open to constructive changes, proposed in the sandbox, per the instructions in the template's documentation. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:58, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

Proposal for cleanup tagged articles without a reason field

Hello. Following a discussion here, I have a proposal for what to do with the cleanup tagged articles from before we started requiring a reason field to be included in cleanup tags (around 400 remaining, from 2010 to 2012). These were until recently allowed to remain without said field, but now they generate an error (see above discussion). I have recently been going through the backlog of articles tagged with {{cleanup rewrite}} (which goes back to around the same time). As one would expect from these old tags, some of them have been cleaned up in the interim period, some of them are still a mess, some of them have different issues now; I have been sorting them and/or rewriting them systematically/chronologically. I would suggest mass transferring all the remaining cleanup tagged articles without a field to {{cleanup rewrite}}.. I took a look through a bunch of them and generally they are similar quality to those with the Cleanup rewrite tags, with quite similar problems. I'm happy to keep working on them as part of the same backlog, and it's easier if they're in the same place. And it deals quite neatly with the problem of the error message. I presume there is a way to mass convert them non-manually? (Sorry I'm not well versed in the technical side of Wikipedia). Jdcooper (talk) 13:18, 13 July 2026 (UTC)

I am fine with this plan, especially if you are willing to take on the backlog. If there is consensus, we can submit an AWB editing request and an editor should be able to change the cleanup template to cleanup rewrite pretty easily. – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:47, 13 July 2026 (UTC)

{{Cleanup rewrite}} documentation says This template should be used on articles which need so much cleanup that rewriting them completely may be necessary to comply with Wikipedia's guidelines on style and content. I don't think all of these, or even most of them, need a complete rewrite. I'm OK with just transferring only the articles where a substantial rewrite is arguably called for. I just transferred Cosmopterix galapagosensis. I think that wall of text might be rewritten to look more like a list, but then someone else might say, {{prose}}. On the other hand, I don't think "Boku no Taiyō" needs much of a rewrite, so the template's just been removed from that article. The remaining backlog is short enough that these can be sorted out this way in an expeditious manner. – wbm1058 (talk) 10:23, 17 July 2026 (UTC)

On the other hand, someone already "listified" Cosmopterix floridanella in the manner I was envisioning that Cosmopterix galapagosensis could be changed, so I just removed the {{cleanup}} template. – wbm1058 (talk) 13:36, 17 July 2026 (UTC)

I've revived a script developed 14 years ago to help expedite cleaning up the cleanup, with help from its developer. See User talk:This, that and the other#Category:Cleanup tagged articles without a reason field. – wbm1058 (talk) 14:26, 17 July 2026 (UTC)

I don't think all of these, or even most of them, need a complete rewrite. No, for sure they don't. And after 15 years of interim improvements, many of the articles tagged for rewriting don't need that either. That's why I'm going through them and exchanging those tags for more specific ones. I'm trying to solve the problem of the very vague "cleanup" tag, for those without a specified reason. I'm OK with just transferring only the articles where a substantial rewrite is arguably called for. All my proposal does is put them all in the so they can be worked through systematically. These articles have been tagged for so long that the tags can reasonably be described as useless. The articles in both categories need to be looked at one by one and given more specific tags, for the most part. Some need PRODding, some need TNT treatment, some need copyediting, only the occasional one needs a "complete rewrite". Why not just put them in the same place, solving the "without the reason field" error in the process? Jdcooper (talk) 18:05, 17 July 2026 (UTC)

Look, I'm just not going to put a "complete rewrite" tag on an article which, in my view, doesn't need a complete rewrite. I am, in response to your comments, taking more time with these than I might have otherwise. I am cleaning up the minor and obvious things that I usually clean up. Removing red links without possibilities. Section headings in sentence case rather than title case, and subheadings instead of boldface. Proper syntax for citations. Here's a case where I specified a specific reason. Many of these have multiple issues and I'm usually leaving the tags for the other issues. I've been taking time to find the edits that placed these tags. Often they were placed using Twinkle within a day of the article's creation. These days such articles might be moved to draft space instead. Sometimes they TW-tagged it with both "cleanup" and "wikify" (another vague, and long-deprecated tag). I've got it down under 300 now, and expect to finish the rest within the next few days. Feel free to check my work, if you like, by reviewing my recent edits. If you want to PROD something, OK, but I'm generally more of an inclusionist, I guess, I don't know where to begin to PROD all the pop-culture trivia I see all the time. – wbm1058 (talk) 14:34, 18 July 2026 (UTC)

Ok no worries, I was just trying to help streamline the sorting process. If you'll be done with them that soon, then all good. I'll stick to clearing the {cleanup rewrite} backlog. Have a good day! Jdcooper (talk) 18:23, 18 July 2026 (UTC)