Category talk:Pages containing citation needed template with deprecated parameters

Link to category creation discussion

This category appears to have been made according to this discussion. Jason Quinn (talk) 19:30, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

Category needs accurate explanation

There's no explanation in the category regarding what causes articles to appear here. Yes, it says "deprecated parameters" but what deprecated parameters? I think the answer is that uses of citation templates with unnamed parameters is what causes articles to be placed here. Is that correct? Perhaps a category rename is in order. Jason Quinn (talk) 19:43, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

I think so too. I've added an example to the cateogry page. -- WOSlinker (talk) 20:21, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

Great thanks. Jason Quinn (talk) 20:28, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

Why single out the "cn" and "fact" redirects for mention in the cat desc?

I'm about a third the way through emptying this category. I've already fixed about 400 entries. In that time, I have only come across the "fact" and "cn" redirects, no others; so not all redirects are equal here. I would reinstate the line perhaps with a link to the list of other redirects. Jason Quinn (talk) 03:19, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

Ah, I see your link now. Nevermind. Jason Quinn (talk) 03:20, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

Sudden appearance of article which hasn't been edited for almost a year

Just recently, the article Environmental terrorism started being listed in this category. I had already cleaned out all the "E" entries many days ago so at first I figured that a new edit was responsible. But the page hasn't had an edit since 21:02, 24 June 2012‎. What's odder is that inspection of the source doesn't even find any misuse of {{citation needed}} tags that would cause it to appear. I supposed that perhaps it was a server issue but a purge didn't result in any edits showing up. Any ideas? Jason Quinn (talk) 21:55, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

An edit now shows up as occurring at 20:23, 12 April 2013. As you can see, there was at least an hour and half delay before the edit started to appear in the page history. Strangely, however, I can still identify no reason why the page is being put into the category. Jason Quinn (talk) 01:32, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

Which page is now showing an edit at 20:23, 12 April 2013? I don't see one for Environmental terrorism. --Redrose64 (talk) 09:34, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

Environmental terrorism. There were two edits to that page by User:Auric in quick succession: one at 20:23, 12 April 2013‎ and one at 20:24, 12 April 2013‎. And then afterwards, there was one by me at 21:38, 12 April 2013‎. I still don't see why the page was added to the category (albeit temporarily). I fixed "cite" templates, not "citation needed" templates in my edit. Jason Quinn (talk) 13:18, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

I don't see those times. I see two by Auric at 00:23, 13 April 2013 and 00:24, 13 April 2013 and one by Jason Quinn at 01:38, 13 April 2013‎. Since all these are exactly four hours different from the times you quote, I suspect that your time zone is UTC-4 - which would be either Atlantic Standard Time or Eastern Daylight Time (probably the latter). Either way, the three edits in question were all made after your original post here, which was 21:55, 12 April 2013 (UTC) or 17:55, 12 April 2013 (UTC-4). --Redrose64 (talk) 13:38, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

Yeah. I could have swore I was using the UTC default but my preferences were set to local time; so the 4 hour difference makes sense. But yeah, the problem is that there's a serious lag occuring between the edits and the time they are visible. I don't know what would have happened if I had made an edit before the others had been visible to me. Jason Quinn (talk) 20:22, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

This is a wider problem affecting other categories too. See the discussions false negatives in category:Pages with missing references list and Articles randomly showing up in categories currently on Village pump (technical), and also bugzilla:46978. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 15:02, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

Great thanks. I'll look into that. Jason Quinn (talk) 20:22, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

Cleared out almost 1500 entries (mid March-mid April 2013)

It wasn't easy but I managed to nearly empty this category. I'm going to try to get rid of the last 8 but they are annoying discussions about the {{citation needed}} template and requires extra care (wanna help?). There's still a few bizarre entries, e.g. Nicholas Purcell of Loughmoe, which appears to suffering from the category bug discussed above. It suddenly appeared in the category despite no new edits in its history... last edit shown many months ago... and there's nothing in the article to place it here. But like the other articles under this bug, an edit probably WAS made that introduced an error that would place it into the category but for some reason the article and its history aren't updating. Anyway, it's a useful category again. Can now be used to spot people using the template incorrectly and mention it on their talk page. Jason Quinn (talk) 04:36, 16 April 2013 (UTC)