The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

This is a proposal for closing and/or deleting a wiki hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation. It is subject to the current closing projects policy. The proposal is rejected and the project will be kept open. Explanation by the closing Langcom member: There is no policy justification to close this wiki. There are very, very few exceptions to the rule that individual projects are free to decide for themselves how to allow content to be added. It is up to the Cebuano Wikipedia community to decide for itself what to do about bot-created content in the project.

LangCom certainly understands that there is notable concern about the bot-generated content on this project. The Committee would like to recommend to the project that it tighten up quality control, which quite possibly includes closer oversight of bot content creation. But ultimately quality control is the responsibility of the community itself. For LangCom: StevenJ81 (talk) 22:53, 7 February 2018 (UTC) Type: 2 (non-routine proposal)

2 (non-routine proposal) Proposed outcome: cleanup and closure

cleanup and closure Proposed action regarding the content: Delete bot-created articles, then move to Incubator

Delete bot-created articles, then move to Incubator Notice on the project: ceb:Wikipedia:Tubaan#Proposal to close this wiki

ceb:Wikipedia:Tubaan#Proposal to close this wiki Informed Group(s): PhilWiki Community

The Cebuano Wikipedia mostly consists of bot-generated stubs, like the Volapuk wiki did 10 years ago. There are virtually no active users other than Lsj, his bot, a few vandals, and the MediaWiki message delivery bot. I propose that the bot-created articles be deleted, and that the rest of the wiki be moved to Incubator. KATMAKROFAN (talk) 20:29, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

Comment This affects a Philippine language so notified PhilWiki Community, the Wikimedia User Group in that country. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 02:44, 24 October 2017 (UTC) Comment One of the General Objectives of PhilWiki Community is to create, organize, develop, and engage in activities that promote free, responsibly open-content resources and reference materials in English, and Philippine languages where there are existing communities. Since its formation, the User Group has conducted activities for Bikol Wikipedia (in Naga City and Camarines Sur) and Rinconada Bikol Wikipedia (in Naga City and Iriga City) which is still in the Incubator, unfortunately, and has supported activities for Waray Wikipedia (in Tacloban City and provinces of Samar and Northern Samar). In 2013, I initiated to hold Wiki Takes Cebu but unfortunately it was cancelled because my flight was cancelled. We listed in our Specific Activities (#s 2 and 4) the creation of Wiktionary in Cebuano and translation into Cebuano the interface of Wikimedia projects because one of our members knows the language. Although another user who speaks the language joined the group however both of them are now inactive. --Filipinayzd (talk) 14:59, 12 November 2017 (UTC) Comment I tried to add entries for cebwiktionary but I do not know how. It seems adding entries is not supported in incubator phase. So ended up adding some grammar stuff instead. Anyway my focus and that of the FB groupchat circle is saving cebwiki from those who want to close it. -Josefwintzent Libot (talk) 01:13, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

This affects a Philippine language so notified PhilWiki Community, the Wikimedia User Group in that country. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 02:44, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

Oppose Let's not close a Wikipedia for 21 million people, with multiple users, because there's a few too many bot-created articles.--Prosfilaes (talk) 03:55, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

Let's not close a Wikipedia for 21 million people, with multiple users, because there's a few too many bot-created articles.--Prosfilaes (talk) 03:55, 24 October 2017 (UTC) Strong oppose Inactivity alone is not a reason for project closure, as has been stated in past discussions. The main criterion for closing a project would be absence of content and/or community. Cebuano Wikipedia has a lot of content (it is the second-largest Wikipedia!) and, having 21 million native speakers (as stated above), as well as being the second-most spoken language in the Philippines, getting more native speakers on board to grow the community should not be a problem. A large number of bot-created articles is also not a reason to close a Wikipedia. In the top 10 largest Wikipedias, Dutch Wikipedia and Waray Wikipedia were also grown by using bots; does that mean we should close them too? In short, there isn't really a case for closing this Wikipedia. --DraconicDark (talk) 17:58, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

Inactivity alone is not a reason for project closure, as has been stated in past discussions. The main criterion for closing a project would be absence of content and/or community. Cebuano Wikipedia has a lot of content (it is the second-largest Wikipedia!) and, having 21 million native speakers (as stated above), as well as being the second-most spoken language in the Philippines, getting more native speakers on board to grow the community should not be a problem. A large number of bot-created articles is also not a reason to close a Wikipedia. In the top 10 largest Wikipedias, Dutch Wikipedia and Waray Wikipedia were also grown by using bots; does that mean we should close them too? In short, there isn't really a case for closing this Wikipedia. --DraconicDark (talk) 17:58, 24 October 2017 (UTC) If somebody ran a bot to autogenerate low-quality articles on en.wiki, they'd probably be community-banned. On ceb.wiki, there is no community to ban Lsj, so this is the only thing I can do. KATMAKROFAN (talk) 01:05, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

Strong support for full retaliation against the people who have covered multiple language editions of Wikipedia with complete and utter rubbish, such as (going through local Special:Random) ‘Governor's Mansion Historical Marker’ and ‘Ribeirão da Onça (suba sa Brasil, São Paulo, lat -22,45, long -51,50)’. I would also argue in favour of full global ban of Lsjbot and nuking of all the ‘articles’ that were created by its owner. This is unprecedented abuse and I am frankly astonished that it took so long to start this closure request. There are no current options at the table other than to close the editions that are fully populated by bots (Cebuano and Waray Wikipedias) and move with the strictest sanctions possible against the language editions that have other content as well but are still densely populated by automatically created content (Swedish and Dutch Wikipedias). stjn [ru] 02:34, 28 October 2017 (UTC) There certainly are other options; at one extreme, we could just let Wikipedias chose how they populate their content. I certainly have no problem with the appropriate use of automatically created content; the English Wikipedia has a large block of automatically created content that has been a useful basis for expansion. Perhaps the Cebuano Wikipedia deserves a stronger response, but deleting useful Wikipedias because of excessive automatically created articles seems to go against to providing information to everyone in their own language.--Prosfilaes (talk) 06:58, 28 October 2017 (UTC) Prosfilaes: there was an active community to check in on these bot-created articles to see if there are any errors . I don’t suggest that any other project that I mentioned improved all articles that were created by bots, but at least in any other case they at least cared enough to have excessive checks at the quality of material. When I see articles such as ‘Grodno Oblast’, which has the following sentence in its text: ‘Grodno Oblast mopakigbahin sa usa ka utlanan sa Brest Oblast, Vitebsk Oblast, Minsk Oblast, Podlaskie Voivodeship, Alytus, ug 維爾紐斯縣’ , I see gross negligence first and foremost. And I can’t justify to myself that other articles do not have such blatant errors, when the rate they were uploaded at is 10,000/day. This is not the case of appropriate use of automatically created content by any measure. stjn [ru] 07:45, 28 October 2017 (UTC) ceb and war should be moved to Incubator and their subdomains should be redirected to en:Lsjbot. sv and nl should be perma-ACTRIAL'd and perma-CAPTCHA'd. Lsjbot should be perma-globalled, and Lsj himself should be indef'd from ceb, war, and sv. KATMAKROFAN (talk) 22:22, 28 October 2017 (UTC) Don’t see how some of those actions will be beneficial to anyone: sv and nl should be perma-ACTRIAL'd and perma-CAPTCHA'd − what is this supposed to solve? There are still active communities there and anons there didn’t participate in any part of this. Lsj himself should be indef'd from ceb, war, and sv – activity of Lsj was supported by active communities that agreed to these kinds of abuse, so indefinite block will solve nothing (and I think that he acted in good faith, even if there was no one to call him to order). Moreover, I don’t think that redirecting any subdomain on wikipedia.org will be technically possible or something that anyone would agree to. stjn [ru] 09:38, 29 October 2017 (UTC)

for full retaliation against the people who have covered multiple language editions of Wikipedia with complete and utter rubbish, such as (going through local Special:Random) ‘Governor's Mansion Historical Marker’ and ‘Ribeirão da Onça (suba sa Brasil, São Paulo, lat -22,45, long -51,50)’. I would also argue in favour of full global ban of Lsjbot and nuking of all the ‘articles’ that were created by its owner. This is unprecedented abuse and I am frankly astonished that it took so long to start this closure request. There are no current options at the table other than to close the editions that are fully populated by bots (Cebuano and Waray Wikipedias) and move with the strictest sanctions possible against the language editions that have other content as well but are still densely populated by automatically created content (Swedish and Dutch Wikipedias). stjn 02:34, 28 October 2017 (UTC)

Here's my 2 cents as a technical person in my volunteer capacity, I'm not reflecting position of any of my employees (WMF, WMDE), These articles has put lots of pressure on the whole infrastructure of Wikimedia. Here's an example directly caused by this mass import: phab:T171263 and tens of thousands of dollars (and probably way more) donor money is spent on this (in matter of server, bandwidth, database as it's putting pressure on other s3 wikis and it needs a dedicated shard, human software engineering time, etc.) which is okay if anyone reads these articles. I think this wiki has lost the idea of what means to be a Wikipedia Amir (talk) 12:59, 4 November 2017 (UTC)

I totally agree. This is what might happen: a Cebuano speaker clicks "random article" a few times, reads the LSJBOT pages, is astounded by their low quality, and decides to create his or her own CC-licensed Mediawiki-based Cebuano-language encyclopedia. KATMAKROFAN (talk) 16:23, 4 November 2017 (UTC) I fail to see how closing the Cebuano Wikipedia is a solution to that.--Prosfilaes (talk) 08:48, 5 November 2017 (UTC) Let's hear a solution. Closing a Wikipedia of 21 million speakers is not a solution.--Prosfilaes (talk) 09:30, 5 November 2017 (UTC) I guess it's a solution that you don't like, but it is a solution. Do you have a better idea? Mx. Granger (talk) 10:41, 5 November 2017 (UTC) Not doing anything. If the only option is to close or not close, the status quo is better.--Prosfilaes (talk) 15:24, 5 November 2017 (UTC) Here is alternate (compromise) solution: removing all bot created articles except those from List_of_articles_every_Wikipedia_should_have/Expanded and from lists like "all years" and "all centuries".--EUvin (talk) 19:50, 5 November 2017 (UTC) I reviewed Lsjbot created articles in ceb.wki, and do agree that indeed it poor comprehensibility. However, I also discover that the issue of comprehensibility is actually easy to resolve under a supervision of a native speaker of Cebuano. I am trying to collaborate now with the bot creator to address this. So please do not anymore close down ceb.wikipedia.org -- Josefwintzent Libot

I see that a lot of people seem to be under the impression that creating 5 million articles in 5 years would seem like a piece of cake and bot-created articles could be fixed in no time. Let me show you this: Hayward (lungsod sa Estados Unidos, California), Al Wakrah (munisipyo), Zhejiang Sheng. Bot uploads full lists of interwiki links in its articles in 2017. Bot creator did not notice this at any stage of his work, maybe he’ll even come up with a fancy excuse for this. The fact is, when you look at the scope of missteps and errors made by this bot, that there are no general checks at any point. There is a lot of trying to make it look like it is a respectable source of information by putting a lot of information about climate and terrain around the place in articles about airports, mountains (notice the name, this name pattern is so frequent it hurts), islands (notice that Swedish interwiki removed this information and provided an actual one that is at least related to an island), parks that are actually just nameplates (there are 4150 of them)... If I can nitpick this much of bogus information spread out across the entire wiki, then it is Lsj’s fault alone, not of the people that are disappointed by it. stjn[ru] 22:19, 12 November 2017 (UTC)

Сириус ли? Some user of EnWP has a fire on its seat because ceb-wiki will become bigger then his dear project? Большинство статей в шведоботопедиях имеют достаточно неплохой формат: пара слов о предмете статьи, заполненная карточка, открываемая карта и ссылки на АИ. Не каждая статья в "нормальной" Википедии дотягивает по качеству до них. В будущем боты поумнеют и смогут писать ещё более подробные статьи на самые разные значимые темы. Можно сказать, что себуанская Википедия - тестовый полигон. Всё равно как энциклопедия она никому не нужна - вряд ли кто-то в мире пользуется себуанским языком - но как полигон вполне сгодится. Всё равно никому не мешает. А в шведской Википедии идёт заливка лишь наиболее подробных статей из того, что может бот, причём все ботостатьи обрабатываются так, что никому не мешают (в т.ч. исключены из Special:Random по кнопке -bot). Фред-Продавец звёзд (talk) 23:13, 12 November 2017 (UTC) Going to translate this mildly xenophobic rant: Most articles in Swedo-botopedias [botopedia is a term used in Slavic communities for WPs populated mainly by bots] have a pretty good format: some words about the topic, filled infobox, a map that can be opened and links to reliable sources. Not every article in ‘normal’ Wikipedia has the same quality. In the future bots will smarten up and would have the ability to write the content that is even more detailed on the many different topics. You can say that Cebuano Wikipedia is a test site. No one needs it anyway, it’s unlikely that anyone in the world uses Cebuano language, but it comes in handy as a test site. Doesn’t harm anyone. But in Swedish Wikipedia you can upload only the most detailed articles that were written by bot, and they are treated in a way that doesn’t interferes with anyone (e.g. they are removed from Special:Random with a -bot button). stjn [ru] 14:08, 13 November 2017 (UTC) Языком очень даже пользуются, а вот Википедия на себуанском, судя по отсутствию сообщества, которое могло бы пресечь эту профанацию, в настоящий момент самим носителям не нужна. И смысл тратить на неё ресурсы Фонда? The language is very used, but native speakers do not need the Sebuan Wikipedia, if we taking into account the lack of community that could stop this profanation. So why the WF should spend resources on this?--Soul Train (talk) 14:55, 13 November 2017 (UTC) Фред-Продавец звёзд, у себуанского вдвое больше носителей, чем у шведского. Это второй по распространённости язык на Филиппинах. Le Loy 01:05, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

Some user of EnWP has a fire on its seat because ceb-wiki will become bigger then his dear project? Большинство статей в шведоботопедиях имеют достаточно неплохой формат: пара слов о предмете статьи, заполненная карточка, открываемая карта и ссылки на АИ. Не каждая статья в "нормальной" Википедии дотягивает по качеству до них. В будущем боты поумнеют и смогут писать ещё более подробные статьи на самые разные значимые темы. Можно сказать, что себуанская Википедия - тестовый полигон. Всё равно как энциклопедия она никому не нужна - вряд ли кто-то в мире пользуется себуанским языком - но как полигон вполне сгодится. Всё равно никому не мешает. А в шведской Википедии идёт заливка лишь наиболее подробных статей из того, что может бот, причём все ботостатьи обрабатываются так, что никому не мешают (в т.ч. исключены из Special:Random по кнопке -bot). Фред-Продавец звёзд (talk) 23:13, 12 November 2017 (UTC) Support , because I believe moving it to Incubator would create a more focused environment for gathering active community members and planning, with a "soft" deadline of some months ahead for expected re-launching. Tony (talk) 00:55, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

, because I believe moving it to Incubator would create a more focused environment for gathering active community members and planning, with a "soft" deadline of some months ahead for expected re-launching. 00:55, 13 November 2017 (UTC) Strong support for deleting the bot created articles (which are rife with errors as others have highlighted, and as I've seen myself on Australian topics), mild Support for moving to Incubator per Tony's suggestion above. This is an editing community that's been destroyed from the outside and needs a chance to rebuild out of the limelight. Once it has done so, I'd hope any application to return under indigenous casre and management would be viewed favourably. Orderinchaos (talk) 02:16, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

for deleting the bot created articles (which are rife with errors as others have highlighted, and as I've seen myself on Australian topics), mild for moving to Incubator per Tony's suggestion above. This is an editing community that's been destroyed from the outside and needs a chance to rebuild out of the limelight. Once it has done so, I'd hope any application to return under indigenous casre and management would be viewed favourably. Orderinchaos (talk) 02:16, 13 November 2017 (UTC) Oppose There are 21 million people who speak this language, I don't know what proportion currently have internet access, and of those how many have been on the internet long enough to start editing Wikipedia (editing Wikipedia is clearly not an entry level task for new netizens). But Internet access is rapidly expanding in many areas like this and we can expect an influx first of readers and hopefully later editors for this language. There is an underlying issue of bot creation of articles in small Wikipedia communities, I suspect that a proposal to set some rules for bot creation in languages that don't yet have a large enough community to self regulate would be an interesting debate. Hopefully by the time we have such a debate we will be able to say whether the Cebuano experiment was a success or a failure at kickstarting a language version. WereSpielChequers (talk) 07:48, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

There are 21 million people who speak this language, I don't know what proportion currently have internet access, and of those how many have been on the internet long enough to start editing Wikipedia (editing Wikipedia is clearly not an entry level task for new netizens). But Internet access is rapidly expanding in many areas like this and we can expect an influx first of readers and hopefully later editors for this language. There is an underlying issue of bot creation of articles in small Wikipedia communities, I suspect that a proposal to set some rules for bot creation in languages that don't yet have a large enough community to self regulate would be an interesting debate. Hopefully by the time we have such a debate we will be able to say whether the Cebuano experiment was a success or a failure at kickstarting a language version. WereSpielChequers (talk) 07:48, 13 November 2017 (UTC) Strong oppose . The project can (and will) be used as educational base for this 21-million community if properly promoted among them. This can be done in a great number of ways, most of all by massively teaching people how to improve Wikipedia. Government can do this (in many countries they do). This can drive up national intellectual growth, can somehow distract Philippinean people from abusing drugs which is, AFAIK, a big problem there nowadays. Of course it is needed to clean up senseless machine content, but it is unacceptable to completely destroy a draft knowledge base for a whole nation. --Ssr (talk) 11:16, 13 November 2017 (UTC) Speaking of government, WMF may initiate discussion with Philippines authorities to handle this situation. This will be a profit for all. --Ssr (talk) 11:52, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

. The project can (and will) be used as educational base for this 21-million community if properly promoted among them. This can be done in a great number of ways, most of all by massively teaching people how to improve Wikipedia. Government can do this (in many countries they do). This can drive up national intellectual growth, can somehow distract Philippinean people from abusing drugs which is, AFAIK, a big problem there nowadays. Of course it is needed to clean up senseless machine content, but it is unacceptable to completely destroy a draft knowledge base for a whole nation. --Ssr (talk) 11:16, 13 November 2017 (UTC) Strong oppose . The cebwp community is already conducting a major discourse within and outside wikimedia channels about this issue and how to move on from here. Let us respect their consensus building process in whatever course of action they want to pursue. JinJian (talk) 12:08, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

. The cebwp community is already conducting a major discourse within and outside wikimedia channels about this issue and how to move on from here. Let us respect their consensus building process in whatever course of action they want to pursue. JinJian (talk) 12:08, 13 November 2017 (UTC) Strong support for closing this Botopedia and banning the author of this absurdity.--Soul Train (talk) 14:39, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

for closing this Botopedia and banning the author of this absurdity.--Soul Train (talk) 14:39, 13 November 2017 (UTC) Strong support Strongest ever possible support for, at least, globally blocking the bot and deleting all those absurdic bot-created articles, which are filled with errors, contain Chinese and other non-Cebuano text and are generally unusable spam at best. Then, after the clearance, move the Cebwiki to incubator and allow it to thrive and survive normally, like a neonate on a mother's milk, not on steroids. Роман Беккер (talk) 20:00, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

Strongest ever possible support for, at least, globally blocking the bot and deleting all those absurdic bot-created articles, which are filled with errors, contain Chinese and other non-Cebuano text and are generally unusable spam at best. Then, after the clearance, move the Cebwiki to incubator and allow it to thrive and survive normally, like a neonate on a mother's milk, not on steroids. Роман Беккер (talk) 20:00, 13 November 2017 (UTC) One wikipedia trashed by bot, listed on English Wikipedia's main page. Other wikipedia trashed by bot, request for deletion. Oh, wait: Spoken by white people. 174.22.237.26 20:17, 13 November 2017 (UTC) If this request will go through, I can assure you that we can expect the investigations in form of RfCs about the other bot-filled Wikipedias, even those that are in languages that are spoken by white people. No one closes Waray for now, but it will be needed to be dealt with, with Swedish and Dutch, after this request succeeds. stjn [ru] 20:21, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

Support Nothing against Cebuano enthusiasts who are willing to maintain their language by writing a serious WP version; but this farce with bot-generated "articles" definitely has to end. At least, the mess should be deleted. --A.Savin (talk) 21:01, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

Nothing against Cebuano enthusiasts who are willing to maintain their language by writing a serious WP version; but this farce with bot-generated "articles" definitely has to end. At least, the mess should be deleted. --A.Savin (talk) 21:01, 14 November 2017 (UTC) Community should've been contacted first, rather than this out-of-surprise Request for wiki closure. This doesn't sound like a good way to go. (See the above comment.) — regards, Revi 10:30, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

10:30, 15 November 2017 (UTC) Strong oppose . As we at svwp has analyzed the bot generated articles from Lsjbot I also want to share our findings. On the 1,2 m on species we have elaborated manually on the ones on birds and mammals, where the seed articles that had been generated was found to be of great value. For the rest we have also found them to be of great value and representing no real problem. Bot generated articles on species also exist on many other versions like Vietnames (I calculated 8 last time). For the 1,8; that was generated från Geonames before Lsjbot was closed on our site a year ago, the situation is not that clear. A lot of quality issues was raised and after the closure a group of around 20 users has worked with this set. Around 16000 has been deleted and more then that has been redirected also to undo a bad article. So at least 5% of the bot generated has ben seen as as bad to best being deleted. We have fixed manually some 10000-20000 articles mostly in countries close by, as Finland and Estonia, but also in countries like Nicariagua, Swiss and Canada. A test sample today of a limited number of articles, showed noone really bad and just few % of questional quality (like swamps in Mexico-swamps are complicted to define ). Yger (talk) 12:36, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

. As we at svwp has analyzed the bot generated articles from Lsjbot I also want to share our findings. On the 1,2 m on species we have elaborated manually on the ones on birds and mammals, where the seed articles that had been generated was found to be of great value. For the rest we have also found them to be of great value and representing no real problem. Bot generated articles on species also exist on many other versions like Vietnames (I calculated 8 last time). For the 1,8; that was generated från Geonames before Lsjbot was closed on our site a year ago, the situation is not that clear. A lot of quality issues was raised and after the closure a group of around 20 users has worked with this set. Around 16000 has been deleted and more then that has been redirected also to undo a bad article. So at least 5% of the bot generated has ben seen as as bad to best being deleted. We have fixed manually some 10000-20000 articles mostly in countries close by, as Finland and Estonia, but also in countries like Nicariagua, Swiss and Canada. A test sample today of a limited number of articles, showed noone really bad and just few % of questional quality (like swamps in Mexico-swamps are complicted to define ). Yger (talk) 12:36, 15 November 2017 (UTC) Strong support With all the bot-generated articles, which constitutes over 99% of the total article count, Cebuano Wikipedia has gone from being an encyclopedia to a database, and therefore, it's not meeting its purpose anymore. Most of the articles will not be read by a human within the foreseeable future, which is a deeply unfortunate development and nothing worth striving for in our encyclopedic creation. Quality before quantity. / Reddarn (talk) 21:17, 15 November 2017 (UTC) Comment An argument based on a capacity of any human to read all those articles actually does not hold substance. That same argument is applicable for any language wiki with over a couple thousand article. Shall we close them too just because " no single human is capable of reading all its articles "? -Josefwintzent Libot (talk) 01:27, 16 November 2017 (UTC) Comment : You misunderstood the argument. Reddarn do no mean that one human have to be able to read all articles. Reddarn means there is high probability that any randomly selected article in Cebuano never ever will be read by a human. I still do not think that is a valid argument, as the value for having an article when it is read, and searched for, is so great that it is worth having every "waste of space article". What is valid is if the articles have a notable subject, have good quality in sources and correctness and describes the subject.--LittleGun (talk) 09:00, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

With all the bot-generated articles, which constitutes over 99% of the total article count, Cebuano Wikipedia has gone from being an encyclopedia to a database, and therefore, it's not meeting its purpose anymore. Most of the articles will not be read by a human within the foreseeable future, which is a deeply unfortunate development and nothing worth striving for in our encyclopedic creation. Quality before quantity. / Reddarn (talk) 21:17, 15 November 2017 (UTC) Oppose There is nothing inherently wrong in having a bot-only encyclopedia. While some guidance to potential newcomers is always welcome, hopefully one or more people will eventually join and bring some real UGC.--Strainu (talk) 12:51, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

Comment I'm worried about the effect of the articles in other projects as stated by Amir above, which oddly enough hasn't been mentioned again. I also think it's important to share Josh Lim's thoughts back in 2016, where he answered why there were some many articles in the project:

The roots of how the Cebuano Wikipedia got so many articles today date back a decade, to a time well before Sverker Johansson and Lsjbot. In late 2006, we noticed that there was a really big jump in the number of articles on the Cebuano Wikipedia. This was a time when the Tagalog Wikipedia only had a few thousand articles, the other Philippine-language Wikipedias only had a few hundred or a couple thousand, and the vast majority of Filipino Wikipedians at the time were contributing only in English. When we tried to pinpoint the cause, we discovered that the leading Wikipedian on the project, User:Bentong Isles, wrote a bot to dump articles on all the communes of France (over 50,000) on a Cebuano Wikipedia that back then only had a couple of thousand articles. There is a (kind of) precedent for this: Rambot, written by Derek Ramsey (User:Ram-Man), did this for U.S. towns on the English Wikipedia back in 2002 and 2003. But French communes on a Philippine-language Wikipedia? The effect was immediate: the Cebuano Wikipedia went from having that couple thousand to becoming the largest Philippine-language Wikipedia in terms of article count. I’m sure Bentong’s motives were and are noble, and although he’s no longer active on Wikipedia we continue to keep in touch, keeping him in the loop on goings-on in the community. However, there were a couple of problems with the massive dump that worried me and a lot of other Wikipedians. These were: Local content was drowned out. Basically, every time you clicked “Random article”, you got an article about a French commune most of the time (if not all the time), and not about a topic relevant to a Cebuano speaker. In Wikipedia circles, the Cebuano Wikipedia was called “the Wikipedia of French communes”, to the local community’s embarrassment (particularly when meeting other Wikipedians abroad), and the Indonesian Wikipedia at one point had a monitoring mechanism for random articles to ensure that there was a variety of articles showing instead of several articles about a singular topic in one sitting. It sparked a numbers war among local Wikipedias. Philippine-language Wikipedias started outdoing one another in terms of chasing number counts, with Waray (something that I explain in more detail here) and Tagalog being the most egregious culprits. Thus there was a focus away from quality towards quantity, with massive numbers of one-line stub articles flooding these three Wikipedias. Luckily for us, the problem was less acute on the Kapampangan, Chavacano and Pangasinan Wikipedias, and Bikol and Ilokano managed to escape it entirely. Lsjbot’s arrival on the scene didn’t change things much, but it did change the calculus of how articles were added. Before Lsjbot arrived, on the three Wikipedias I mentioned one-line stubs were added by hand, tens or hundreds at a time. Now you had a bot capable of dumping thousands of articles in one sitting, like toys coming off of a fully-automated assembly line, and the community (by then no longer led by Bentong) said yes to it. A couple of years ago, I and a number of other Filipino Wikipedians asked Sverker Johansson off-wiki (well, on Facebook) as to why he made Lsjbot in the first place. His argument basically boiled down to a pretty simple premise: to entice people to edit with content that is already there. I think that Lsjbot’s premise is noble, and I really think that Sverker really wants to help the Cebuano and Waray Wikipedias in any way he can. That said, as someone who has been trying to figure out why so few Filipinos contribute to Wikipedia — and even more so why so few Filipinos contribute in languages other than English — I have major issues with how it relates to the reality on the ground, and even more so this obsession with quantity over quality. The biggest problem I have with the “build it and they will come” approach is that it can be very taxing for small communities to maintain all that content. The Tagalog Wikipedia has the largest community of all the Philippine-language Wikipedias, but we have nowhere near the numbers the English Wikipedia has in terms of manpower. Thanks to a number of dumps over the years, we today have around 65,000 articles, but many of the articles dumped onto the project haven’t been updated and probably won’t be touched until we grow the community beyond its current size. We are looking at ways of addressing this problem, including expanding stubs when we see one, but one upside to avoiding the dumping on the Cebuano and Waray Wikipedias is that we have a higher depth count: a feat only outmatched by the Ilokano Wikipedia (which has one super-prolific editor who takes his time writing articles). Imagine what would happen if we had over three million articles, as is the case with Cebuano today, and only ten editors to maintain it all. It would be a gargantuan task, with us being overwhelmed with all the new articles that we’d have to maintain. This would take away our capacity to expand on topics relevant to local speakers (ergo, topics related to the Philippines), and it’s a very big reason why we refused to sign on to Sverker’s project or the dumps by other Wikipedians that have preceded it. (At one point, we nearly held a vote on whether or not all the stubs should be deleted to “normalize” the situation.) This may sound selfish, but who ultimately has to deal with the mass of articles being left behind? The core community does. Anecdotal observation over the years has led me to conclude that the Cebuano Wikipedia never really got the mass of editors Lsjbot promised would come once it did its work. Now Sverker to his credit has also led editing workshops in Cebu (with and without support from Wikimedia Philippines), but one thing that I and others have come to grapple with over the years is how we can make Wikipedia editors stay and actually become Wikipedians. Is it a cultural thing that Filipinos don’t want to contribute? Do they think the learning curve is too steep or that Wikipedia’s rigor is too much for them to handle? Must we resort to giving them incentives (short of paying them, as paid editing is anathema for the Wikimedia movement) so they can stick around? We’re still trying to find answers to these questions. That said, I’m sure of one thing: dumping millions of articles to attract editors hasn’t worked and isn’t working. There has to be a better way, and we have to work together to find that way forward, come hell or high water.[1]

That being said, and for the reasons mentioned before, I vote with a Strong support the deletion of the bot created articles, as it seems very unlikely that their quality will ever be improved, but I also ask to be careful with the deletion of the project per se.--Jamez42 (talk) 04:24, 4 January 2018 (UTC)

Strong support to close this Wikipedia, because Cebuano Wikipedia is beaten by English Wikipedia and so on in the future. Why the admin beat the English Wikipedia for record the Philippines? Tagalog Wikipedia is 2nd highest Wikipedia in the future. I am the Filipino user. -- cyɾʋs ɴɵtɵɜat bʉɭagɑ!!! ( Talk | Contributions ) 01:43, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

to close this Wikipedia, because Cebuano Wikipedia is beaten by English Wikipedia and so on in the future. Why the admin beat the English Wikipedia for record the Philippines? Tagalog Wikipedia is 2nd highest Wikipedia in the future. I am the Filipino user. -- ( | ) 01:43, 7 January 2018 (UTC) This argument makes no sense. You want to close Cebuano Wikipedia because you think Tagalog should be larger? That is no valid policy reason. DraconicDark (talk) 14:55, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

not, (it is the Philippine Wikipedia), regards, -- cyɾʋs ɴɵtɵɜat bʉɭagɑ!!! ( Talk | Contributions ) 01:18, 8 January 2018 (UTC)

Oppose --Holder (talk) 19:52, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

Comment This discussion has somewhat lost focus. What started out as a discussion about closing the Cebuano Wikipedia has become a discussion about what to do with the bot articles. I still oppose closure per my statement above (closure is too drastic an action for this situation), but here are my thoughts on the bot articles:

The articles created by Lsjbot can be grouped into two categories: articles about species and articles about geography.

The articles about species are mostly fine, with their only problem being that they are stubs. I would leave those alone, but if we must delete those, perhaps we can consider moving them to Wikispecies? After all, someone above did say that Cebuano Wikipedia is nothing but a "database," which is what Wikispecies is - a species database.

The geography articles, however, are a mess. You have articles about non-notable geographical features (random dams, rivers, parks) and duplicate articles (for some reason, every German city has separate articles for it as a state/district capital and as a municipality, or as a city and a municipality). Here is really where something has to be done. For this, I would recommend deleting every geography article that does not exist in other languages (i.e. has nothing under "Languages" on the sidebar). That way, the stubs that do exist in other languages can be expanded with translations.

Despite the problems that exist with the bot articles, the community at Cebuano Wikipedia is already discussing a solution, so even if external action needs to be taken, that action should not be closure. DraconicDark (talk) 15:22, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

Proposer's vandalism on the Cebuano Wikipedia [ edit ]

The proposer User:KATMAKROFAN has been discovered to be vandalising talk pages on the Cebuano Wikipedia. The vandalism has been dealt with and deleted. The user has also been admonished on the user's talk page not to engage in vandalism or personal attacks --Harvzs (talk) 08:49, 27 November 2017 (UTC) If proposer is stupid enough to do like this, it does not mean we should be just as stupid as him and close the proposal just in spite of him. Wikisaurus (talk) 11:06, 28 November 2017 (UTC) Unfortunatelly the Special:CentralAuth/KATMAKROFAN told me that this user is only blocked indefinitely at jamwiki hence something like global ban isn't suitable, consider finding their parents or brothers/sisters to disencourage its "stupid" actions? --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 12:03, 28 November 2017 (UTC) see en:Ad hominem ~ Чръный человек (talk) 07:56, 30 November 2017 (UTC)



if you go here, and go to the bottom, a staff member said he was blocked on numerous wikis. unfortunate. --Artix Kreiger (Message Wall) 16:00, 25 January 2018 (UTC)