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Hi! I saw you are the uploader of Lechaeum.png in WP Commons. I would like to ask you a favor. Do you have the bare (no text at all) version of this map? I am trying to create a Greek version for it, for using it in the Greek Wikipedia. I also plan to add a few more details. It is quite bothersome to create my map from the english raster, due to the extensive cloning that is required for removing the english text, let alone the worse quality. Best regards --Dipa1965 (talk) 12:52, 19 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
My thoughts are exactly the same. I use PS too, for adding layered text but, even if Commons could accept that format, not everyone could use it. It would be nice to have an easy to translate map. Please try to send me the background via email (from WP), then I will try an svg via Inkscape. If emailing attachments via WP doesn't work (myself I have never used it), an online file sharing service like rapidshare etc would be ok.--Dipa1965 (talk) 05:38, 20 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
After digging with OpenOffice (buggy) and Inkscape (much more buggy but at least it can output a decent svg), I just uploaded Lechaeum svg with english text that can be modified. Please let me know your opinion on this work, whether it is usable etc. For making it, I used your background, after removing the embedded text. Quality didn't suffer much, except some unavoidable removal of coastline here and there and an unavoidable erasing of a portion of a brook near Loutraki. Whenever you find the original clean background, please upload it to Commons or a file service and I will embedd it in the svg.
As for the historical details of the battle, the original author was wrong: a reliable secondary Greek source I have explicitly says that this battle was NOT the first one where peltastai light infantry defeated the falanx (but it was the first one where they defeated a Spartan falanx). Tomorrow I will try to find an English reference. Thank you very much for your kind words! --Dipa1965 (talk) 23:19, 20 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Just retouched the svg map a bit, using the Corinth.png. I found (hopefully I am correct) that all previous maps (including yours) are wrong on the location of Lechaeum (it was using the modern village location), Sicyon (actually it lies about 4 km west of Kiato) and a few waterflows, including the Nemea river. I used Barrington Atlas and Google Earth as my main references. Is font size ok or should I make it a bit larger? Somehow I think I should use plain svg instead of the Inskcape svg of the current version: on Firefox, it seems that fonts are not rendered 100% as expected. --Dipa1965 (talk) 22:37, 21 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Lechaeum-en embed.png
Capital letters for Peiraion: I did that because Peiraion is, it seems, more of an area than a confined human settlement (city, temple, fortress). But, since there isn't a legend to explain all these meanings of letter formats, I have now removed the capitals.
Modern settlements: I rendered their names in black. I think it is useful to make a difference of the modern wrt the ancient epoch.
Ancient settlement location errors: that needs verification before you proceed with deletions. Unfortunately, Barrington Atlas isn't of much use here, because of the very small scale. Google Earth was one of my useful aids, because it is easy to spot the ancient port of Lechaeum (37.934039 22.884218 for its early-christian basilica, the silted port lies immediately east) and Sicyon (the coordinates I put on the article lead you to its ancient theater). As for Heraion, I want to clarify that we are talking about Heraion of Perachora.
Ancient waterflows: Demis map wasn't entirely correct, I used Barrington instead. But, again due to its scale, precision is nothing to write home about. I found another Greek source that confirmed the location of the river just south of Sicyon, so I have just move it a bit to the north.
Nitpicking: I really need this :) It's the first time I am engaged in a large scale map of a small area. I need detailed commenting in order to improve myself.
Today I uploaded the modifications but the map is rendered black on Firefox and I reverted them. I tried plain svg, to no avail. I will look for this problem later. Map fixed and uploaded, with aforementioned corrections. Battle article points to the new map. --Dipa1965 (talk) 05:42, 23 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I really enjoyed your arguments at Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/List_of_zombie_novels#List_of_zombie_novels. I think you would be a valuable member of the Article Rescue Squadron. I wanted to mention that another editor is now espousing the benefits of categories, it would be fabulous if you took the time to expand on your excellent argument about categories.
WikiProject Good Articles will be running a GAN backlog elimination drive for the entire month of April. The goal of this drive is to bring the number of outstanding Good Article nominations down to below 200. This will help editors in restoring confidence to the GAN process as well as actively improving, polishing, and rewarding good content. If you are interested in participating in the drive, please place your name here. Awards will be given out to those who review certain numbers of GANs as well as to those who review the most. Hope we can see you in April.
Please, Grappler, just to tell you to fix your comment here. As you mistook me, your comment is not valid any more. Also, above in there, you can see "giving brief explanations", so you explanation should really be fixed. You may ask me on my talk page about my vote, as i think that we really shouldn't comment each other in there. That's just a final vote. --Tadijaspeaks09:39, 11 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
You are now a Reviewer
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I added a reference to Cicero, but I'm not versed in how to format links. The link has spaces which mess up the automatic formatting of the link on wikipedia. In his court case in defense of Cluentius, Cicero uses the exact phrase, "non liquet."
I believe Bracton may have a discussion on non liquet under older English common law. He wrote about the laws of England entirely in Latin so it will take some time to find it. I may be able to find reference to it from the 1800s by searching from the common law treatises in the public domain. Any modern use of the term will have to come from a law student with access to law review articles on the subject. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.38.31.81 (talk) 15:13, 7 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Beach sports
Ok, it's done, thanks. (I didn't put it in category:Beaches; it looked to me more like an enumeration of beaches than of beach-related activities...). --Angus (talk) 20:58, 22 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Insights
Much thanks for your insights, and historical explanation, at Wikipedia talk:What Wikipedia is not#Linkfarm. If you haven't seen it already, you might appreciate (or even have additions for) the draft RfC at User:Quiddity/Navigational pages RfC. (I too have been around since mid-late 2005, so recognized a good portion of what you had to say at WT:NOT. Much of that context is left out of the draft RfC, purely for the sake of brevity (tl;dr is an odious problem...).) Thanks again (and also for your work at fictional currency) :) -- Quiddity (talk) 18:18, 27 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think you've got something ready to take to RFC yet but you do have sufficient community interest to hammer something more coherent out. To stop it degenerating, I think you ought to try and boil it down to a simple, clear, workable proposal - there have been more than 8 years of argument over all this and anything that allows too much complexity and nuance, is going to produce an incoherent discussion with no clear consensus. We both clearly think alike - I don't like simple solutions either, I'm far more holistic, and I like to see things in their context. But unfortunately the Wiki collective decision-making process doesn't work that way! What the proposal you present should be, I'm not sure. A proposal for a well-defined Index namespace and a statement of what should be moved there would be one idea but of course it isn't the only possibility. (Until someone pointed out it was a copyvio, we actually used to have an Index to Wikipedia articles by Dewey Decimal Code! Don't know if you remember the rows about that one?)
At some point I will be brave and suggest that Wikipedia should build a Micropedia based around an article description system like on Citizendium... but not yet :-) TheGrappler (talk) 20:30, 27 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Regarding solutions, I support #1 and #2 (at the draft RfC) generally.
Solution #2 (a new "index" namespace) is fairly complicated, and hasn't been discussed much yet. #1 seems both practical, and fairly simple, if we can find consensus for it.
I was intrigued by a few of your comments of comparison (Citizendium, other language Wikipedias), and hope to have time to check them out in the following days.
Regarding CZ solutions, did you mean the citizendium:CZ:Workgroups pages, or is there something else? I would suggest that our various {{Core topics}} lists, as well as the per-WikiProject lists, and portals, are WP's counterpart to CZ's workgroups pages.
Regarding CZ's "related articles" (eg citizendium:Jesus/Related Articles), I'd suggest that our "See also" sections, and navboxes, are the WP counterpart (eg Jesus#See also, Jesus#External links, and partially also Portal:Christianity). Admittedly ours are less cohesive by not all being on the same page, but these ideas will hopefully develop further, over time. The navboxes are useful because they show structure implicitly, eg {{Anarchism}} or {{Jazz}}, rather than just "Parent topics", "Subtopics", and "Other related topics", as at Citizendium. CZ's lists aren't bloated, simply because they don't currently have many articles.
Regarding Micropaedia, we kind of already have this, via the WP:LEAD guideline: "The lead should be able to stand alone as a concise overview of the article", etc. Relatedly, if you use the WP:POPUPS gadget (or script), it will show the first paragraph. However, I'm intrigued by CZ's brief "definition" idea (eg citizendium:Jesus/Definition), and will keep that in mind for future possibilities. (They use a 150 character limit. We should definitely go for 140... ;) Actually Google results seem to use the first 150 characters as the item-summary (eg).
Hi. As you recently commented in the straw poll regarding the ongoing usage and trial of Pending changes, this is to notify you that there is an interim straw poll with regard to keeping the tool switched on or switching it off while improvements are worked on and due for release on November 9, 2010. This new poll is only in regard to this issue and sets no precedent for any future usage. Your input on this issue is greatly appreciated. Off2riorob (talk) 23:50, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Churches and Notability
I am curious as to your standards for including a separate article for a Church. Do you feel tend to feel that every church older than 100 years old is eligible for inclusion? My understanding of WP:N is that there needs to be significant (i.e. relatively in-depth), reliable, verifiable, outside coverage of a subject, with available references, in order for it to be included. I'd like to hear more about your understanding of the standards for inclusion. Thanks. --NDSteve10 (talk)02:29, 7 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
When nominating articles for deletion, please put {{subst:afd1}} at the top of the article in question. This discussion ran for 7 days and was actually deleted with nobody who read the article or had it watchlisted having any clue it was in jeopardy. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 01:04, 28 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I was using Huggle to automate my nominationn, so something's clearly gone wrong there. Thanks for sorting that out. Any idea what could have caused the problem? TheGrappler (talk) 15:47, 31 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Re: Talk:Main Page concern
I have responded to your query at Talk:Main Page. For your convenience, I'll also include the answer here. In short, no, the change would not prevent panoramas from being shown. On days where panorama are scheduled to appear, the second box could be suppressed, leaving only one box, which would leave it identical to how it appears now. Sven ManguardWha?01:11, 16 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
WikiProject Good Articles will be running a GAN backlog elimination drive for the entire month of March. The goal of this drive is to bring the number of outstanding Good Article nominations down to below 50. This will help editors in restoring confidence to the GAN process as well as actively improving, polishing, and rewarding good content. If you are interested in participating in the drive, please place your name here. Awards will be given out to those who review certain numbers of GANs as well as to those who review the most. On behalf of my co-coordinator Wizardman, we hope we can see you in March. MuZemike delivered by MuZebot23:53, 21 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Hello again. I see that you've prodded an article I created, Hucklow Primary School. Don't worry though, I'm not here to whinge. You're probably right about it's notability. After all, I couldn't even find it on Google Earth! Frankly, though, I only created the article to make a statement after an earlier version had been speedily deleted against policy. Otherwise, I have no interest in maintaining it. If the original article creator wants to save it, though, then I wish that person luck, but I suspect it'll be a while before they edit here again.
LordVetinari (talk) 13:19, 5 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Hi The Grappler. I've been impressed by the detail in your rationale in some debates. As I am interested in finding some clarity in the notability criteria (policy vs guidelines, etc) for schools in general, I would be interested to know why you PRODDDed Hucklow Primary School rather than consider a redirect. This is not a criticism - I'm genuinely interested one way or the other. I have not contested the PROD. Cheers, --Kudpung (talk) 20:30, 5 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I was working through a series of UK primary school articles I'd unearthed, and was in two minds to either redirect them or prod them. In the end I decided to go with prodding them, but I can see a case for redirecting also. In other cases I would have done a redirect or merge and redirect (hypothetical example: info about the school has been supplemented using a local history book as a source, and a few referenced sentences about its establishment and operation in the 1880s has been added; even if the school is not notable that's still useful information about the locality) , but the circumstances for string of articles I was working through dissuaded me in these cases. (It may be that, even by my own criteria, I've made some errors along the way, but I think there's a defensible case for what I did, including in this particular case!)
The articles mostly seemed to be abandoned or near-abandoned. In many cases the creators had left some time ago, and the articles didn't seem to be in a state of regular update. But I didn't know if there were e.g. page-watchers or people who would contest my supposition of non-notability. Prod gives those people a chance to contest and "automatically win", and also guarantees that even in the worst case at least one other person (an admin) will take a look at what I've done to see if I've made a particularly dumb mistake. So I felt there's a bit more oversight with the prod route. The downside is that the content is actually deleted this way, but a) only after admin oversight and 7 days of grace period to contest it; b) many an admin is prepared to restore prodded material if there's a call for it anyway; c) in the cases I prodded, there didn't seem to be very much in the way of useful, maintainable, referenced content. If anyone decided to expand and reference one of the prodded articles and make a case for it being notable, I'd be all for it!
There generally didn't seem to be much worth merging - in most cases it was pretty much the school address and the principal's name, and Wikipedia is not a directory. If I'd merged material to an article e.g. on the locality involved, I'd then have changed the school article to a redirect (preferably a section redirect). But if even the school article says nothing worthwhile about the school, how likely is the locality article to?
Absence of a clear redirect target - in the US, school boards usually get used as redirect targets for non-notable schools. But there doesn't seem to be equivalent use of LEA articles for UK schools (as I understand it even some public/state schools in the UK are no longer in the control of LEAs, perhaps this is why?). Redirecting to the locality is a possibility, but I'm not sure in most cases how useful that is. It gives an end-user the ability to type in the name of a school into our searchbox, and find out what place it's in, but that's really a directory-like rather than encyclopedia-like quality and they'd have better luck using a search engine for that! Springfield Primary School is just a redirect to Trafford, for instance - but probably shouldn't since there seems to be another one in Sheffield! (Hmm, is that an RfD job?) And if "Little Thingham Primary School" redirects to "Little Thingham", I'm not sure that achieves very much either! What about List of schools in Sheffield as a redirect target? (Actually that page needs serious cleanup, it currently even redlinks all the nursery schools!) That still doesn't tell anyone who typed the name of the school into the searchbox anything interesting, and nothing better than what they'd have got from a search engine.
So overall I opted for prod. Unlike AFD or CFD that isn't a medium that tends to generate constructive feedback though, so if your opinion is I've made the wrong choices here, I'll definitely listen to your opinion. TheGrappler (talk) 21:48, 5 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, thanks for your detailed reply. I'm practically the janitor of the WP:WPSCH at the moment and I've been watching school articles for a very long time. I'm prepared to restore deleted material if there's a call for it anyway, but it's a lot of mouse clicks too many. There is a very long-standing precedent per 'outcomes' (but not a policy) that nn schools of the kind you describe are simply redirected to the school district article (USA) or to the locality (UK and other regions), or to a 'List of schools in X' page. There are quite a few arguments for this: RD to the locality starts a short education section on a village stub, the page and its talk page don't don't actually get deleted, and the {{R from school}} template on the RD page give the reason; if at any time later the school suddenly becomes notable, the redirect simply needs to be reverted; it saves all the rigmarole of starting an AfD and listing it manually on the del sort pages (a bind, now that the .js script is broken); saves a lot of admin time watching the AfD and searching the comments for a consensus, then applying all the closing templates; avoids a consensus that goes against policy (often possible); a redirect will generally go as unnoticed as a PROD - most school articles are created by WP:SPA who never come back; the process keeps both the deletionists and the inclusionists happy (or should!). It's on my 'to do' list anyway to start an RfC on all this so that we get in writing what's been practiced for years. It's no big deal, because whatever the consensus turns out to be, I'll be happy to go along with it - the main thing is to get some clarity in something that often cause a lot of heavy acrimony at AfD. What do you think? --Kudpung (talk) 22:19, 5 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I was operating without guidance really - an RfC to clarify what I was meant to do would be a good thing as far as I'm concerned, so long as some form of consensus can be reached. For what it's worth:
As a rough guide for the UK, maybe primary schools in cities should be redirected to "List of schools in X" since the redirects to the main city page, or even its education subsection, seem utterly pointless to me (a small school like that won't get a mention). But if it's a village or small town for which the main article may sensibly mention the primary school by name, then redirecting to the locality might be a good idea.
Many primary schools have got the same name and its pot luck which town's primary school gets its name at a Wikipedia article. What do we do when this occurs? It's obviously inappropriate to replace that school article with a redirect (although as I noted above, it's been done before!). Should it be changed to a disambiguation page, with (hypothetical e.g.) "St Christopher's Primary School could refer to..." and then options like "a primary school in Southampton" (links to the list of schools in Southampton), "a primary school in Upper Piddlington" (link to the education subsection for that village) etc? I don't know what the disambig guidelines say on that sort of thing, any idea? That does seem to be drifting closer to directory than encylopedic territory.
To be fair, when dealing with state primary schools, the odds of any of them becoming notable are not worth worrying about in your effort calculations. It's just incredibly unlikely. They are too small, too homogeneous, too burdensome to keep maintaining with the latest principal change, government inspection grade, league table position, intake demographic... anything that is genuinely important or distinctive about them, can usually be written elsewhere. Dunblane Primary School has produced two internationally important tennis players (one of them world-class) and been the scene of a notable massacre that got its own article. But the school name itself is, quite correctly, just a redirect! Because if it had an article, then besides the content already covered elsewhere, the only things the article would have to say, would be utterly mundane. A better case of a school being notable in its own right, might be a primary school that has an unusually long or distinguished history, or been at the forefront of radical educational studies and experimentation - something getting lots of citations in research papers. Such a school would be exceptional and it's not really a case of waiting for a school to become notable by something happening there. Almost nothing can happen at a primary school, that requires the creation of a difficult-to-maintain article.
The bigger issue with schools on the threshold of notability is likely to be minor private schools, in my opinion. Elite private schools, especially with long histories, are very likely to be notable, including the historic UK prep schools and top US private middle schools. But these obviously lie on the upper end of the spectrum, and there will be a gray area in the middle - particularly for good or mid-level private schools that may be "well-known names", but for which little useful can be written (particularly if they are relatively recent and don't have distinguished alumni lists). There's a degree of fuzziness about when such a school can transition itself over the point of notability, as they build up prestige and lengthen the list of alumni achievements.
Once a primary school or a middle school has been redirected, it will never need maintaining - at les not until it becomes a school again, and as you say, that's rather unlikey. I don't quite see the problem with the redirects needing a dab page. If the school page did not need a dab, then its RD won't need one either. I've done this RD hundreds of times and never come across a problem just to add in a village article somewhere: "Primary education is provided by XYX Primary School which as of 2011 has approximately 98 pupils aged 5 - 11."<ref>Ofsted</ref>. It's a copy and paste job I have ready on my hard drive. Kudpung (talk) 23:25, 5 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
In general what happens is that the school page should have been a dab, but wasn't - it's pot luck what school will end up listed at a given school name, if lots of schools share the same name, and this appears to be a fairly common occurrence. My point about dab pages was whether it's considered good practice to make one to disambiguate things we don't actually have articles for? (Or even, in most cases, article sections.) The copy and paste job you suggest sounds a reasonable idea - in general the articles I prodded were inappropriate for Wikipedia as they were directory-like and boiled down to "X is a primary school in Y" once transient or trivial information was removed, but including "Y has a primary school called X" in the article about Y, or in "list of schools in Y" if Y's too big a place for each school to get a mention, sounds reasonable. I may go back and de-prod and redirect on the strength of that, I previously didn't regard it as mergeworthy information. TheGrappler (talk) 23:38, 5 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
How about redirecting each NN article to List of schools in XYZ with each such list being in table format (number of students, co-ed status, established, etc. If a school's entry has too much info for a list, then it's time to recreate it's own page. Or is this already happening and I've just stated the obvious? LordVetinari (talk) 00:35, 10 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks - does it actually make any difference in the rendered article whether {{commons}} or {{commons category}} is used to link for a category? Obviously the latter allows easier entry (one less parameter) but I can't see that it makes any functional difference, once the template processes the parameters? TheGrappler (talk) 16:08, 16 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
It doesn't at the moment - indeed, {{commons category}} pushes its parameters through {{commons}} with very little changed (whitespace stripped from the category name) - but that might not always have been the case, and it may well change in future. The documentation for {{commons}} does state "To link to a Category, use {{Commons category|catname}}, where catname is the name of the category." Long experience as a computer programmer has shown me that it's best to use functions [templates] for their intended purpose, even if there are two differently-named functions [templates] which have the same end result. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:37, 16 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
An article that you have been involved in editing, Ipse dixit , has been proposed for a merge with another article. If you are interested in the merge discussion, please participate by going here, and adding your comments on the discussion page. Thank you. SteveBaker (talk) 16:02, 19 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Roman Catholic Church in Mongolia
In 2006 you wrote that a photo of the cathedral in Ulaan Baatar in the article Roman Catholicism in Mongolia would be nice. I added one a few weeks ago. I visited Mongolia in July and August 2011 and saw the Cathedral which looks like a large ger.
Regards, --Torbenbrinker (talk) 21:10, 30 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Mongolia
Dear TheGrappler, I suppose that you are interessted in reading articles about Mongolia. I added some information and photos to some English articles, e.g. Jargalant, Khövsgöl, Mörön (city) and Erdenedalai, Dundgovi. As English is not my mother tongue, I ask you to correct the sentences I added. I intend to write more articles in English about Mongolia in the near future. Mongolia is a fascinating country with very hospitable people. I had learnt some Mongolian in self-studies before the trip (using a book from former GDR) and the people were very pleased to hear me trying to speak their language. I want to continue learning Mongolian to travel there again. Regards,--Torbenbrinker (talk) 21:26, 1 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
As this request's sat for nearly 5 years without being looked at, and there's no real definiton of what this settlement area is, could you provide some clarification about what you would like to see for this photo? Thanks Hasteur (talk) 16:15, 4 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
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WikiProject Good Articles Newsletter - October 2012
There are currently 15,862 Good Articles listed at WP:GA.
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Good Articles of the Month
Each month, 5 random good articles will be choose to be featured here as the good articles of the month.
Having references included in articles is one of the most important aspects to a good article, let alone Wikipedia! Without them, no one would ever know what is true and what is false and Wikipedia probably wouldn't be where it is today. So this month, I will talk about how to check for references, how reliable they are, and so on and so forth.
The first thing to do when reviewing an nominee is to do a quick scan of the article. One of the things to look for is if the article has references! If you don't see a list at the bottom of the article page, quick-fail it.[2] For newcomers, quick-failing is failing an article when you spot a problem before actually conducting a full review. If you do find a list of references (and in most cases you will) make sure to look through each and every one. If you want to save some time, use this tool as it will tell you if there are any problematic references in the article you are reviewing.
Next, check the reliability and type of the references/sources. In terms of the type of reference, check to see how many primary and/or secondary sources are included. Primary sources are the ones published by the subject of the article. For example, if the subject of the article has to do with the iPhone 4s and the source is published by Apple, it is considered a primary source. Secondary sources are those not published by the subject of the article (or in close relation to it). Newspapers are examples of secondary sources and considered one of the better types to include in the article (not saying primary sources are bad). If you find that most/all of the references are primary sources, notify the nominator about this issue(s) and place the article on hold once you have completed the review. Only in the event that a secondary source can't be found as a replacement, then the primary source can remain. If there is a good mix of primary and secondary sources, that is perfect and no references need to be changed.
Now, reliability. Forums are generally not considered reliable and some blog's may not be reliable either. Newspapers, most sources published by the subject, some blogs, etc. are considered reliable. If you don't know wether the source is reliable, ask for a second opinion. For more info about how to identify wether a reference is reliable or not, visit this article.
Finally, one of the more basic things to look for is that every statement in the article has at least one reference! The only case that a statement doesn't need a reference is when it is common sense that the statement is defiantly true and/or in the case where the statement can't be challenged, as per what Wikipedia says, "All quotations and any material challenged or likely to be challenged must be attributed to a reliable published source using an inline citation."
From the Editor
After a long 18 month hiatus, the third volume of the WikiProject Good Articles newsletter is here! Please leave any comments or feedback regarding this issue of the newsletter here or on the editors talk page.
Also, Happy Halloween...in advance!!!
PLEASE READ: If you do not wish to receive future WikiProject Good Articles newsletter's on your talk page, please remove your self from this list. If you are viewing this newsletter from the WikiProject Good Articles page or on someone else's talk page and want to receive future newsletters on your talk page, please add your name to the list linked above.
^Before quick-failing the article, verify that one of the several referencing templates is correctly placed at the bottom of the article. If the template is not placed, try to place it to see if references are displayed. If this proof returns no references, then proceed to quick-failing.
Improving Wikipedia one article at a time since 2005!
WikiProject Good Articles - Participant Clean-up (Second Call)
You are reciving this message because you have not added your name to the list of active WikiProject Good Articles participants. Though you may have recived the first message sent out in September, some users may have had that message archived before coming online to read it and therefore never saw it. If you are deeming yourself inactive with the WikiProject please disregard this message as your name will be moved to an "inactive participant" list at the end of the clean-up. If you are still active with the WikiProject, please be sure to include your name on this list. The current deadline to add your name to the list (if you are still active) is November 1, 2012. A third and final message will be sent out during the last week of the clean-up before the deadline. Thank-you.--EdwardsBot
WikiProject Good Articles - Participant Clean-up (Final Call)
You are receiving this message because you have not added your name to the list of active WikiProject Good Articles participants. Though you may have recived the past two messages sent out in September and October, some users may have had that message archived before coming online to read it and therefore never saw it. If you are deeming yourself inactive with the WikiProject please disregard this message as your name will be moved to an "inactive participant" list at the end of the clean-up. If you are still active with the WikiProject, please be sure to include your name on this list. The deadline to add your name to the list (if you are still active) is November 1, 2012. This will be the last message sent out before the deadline which is in 2 days. Thank-you.--EdwardsBot
Newsletter delivered by EdwardsBot · 12 February 2012
Good Article Nominations Request For Comment
A 'Request For Comment' for Good Article Nominations is currently being held. We are asking that you please take five to ten minutes to review all seven proposals that will affect Good Article Nominations if approved. Full details of each proposal can be found here. Please comment on each proposal (or as many as you can) here.
At this time, Proposal 1, 3, and 5 have received full (or close to) support.
If you have questions of anything general (not related to one specif proposal), please leave a message under the General discussion thread.
Please note that Proposal 2 has been withdrawn and no further comments are needed. Also, please disregard Proposal 9 as it was never an actual proposal.
WikiProject Good Articles Recruitment Centre
Hello! Now, some of you might be wondering why there is a Good article icon with a bunch of stars around (to the right). The answer? WikiProject Good articles will be launching a Recruitment Centre very soon! The centre will allow all users to be taught how to review Good article nominations by experts just like you! However, in order for the Recruitment Centre to open in the first place, we need some volunteers:
Recruiters: The main task of a recruiter is to teach users that have never reviewed a Good article nomination how to review one. To become a recruiter, all you have to do is meet this criteria. If we don't get at least 5-10 recruiters to start off with, the Recruitment Centre will not open. If interested, make sure you meet the criteria, read the process and add your name to the list of recruiters. (One of the great things about being a recruiter is that there is no set requirement of what must be taught and when. Instead, all the content found in the process section is a guideline of the main points that should be addressed during a recruitment session...you can also take an entire different approach if you wish!) If you think you will not have the time to recruit any users at this time but are still interested in becoming a recruiter, you can still add your name to the list of recruiters but just fill in the "Status" parameter with "Not Available".
Co-Director: The current Director for the centre is me (Dom497). Another user that would be willing to help with some of the tasks would be helpful. Tasks include making sure recruiters are doing what they should be (teaching!), making sure all recruitments are archived correctly, updating pages as needed, answering any questions, and distributing the feedback form. If interested, please contact me (Dom497).
Nominators, please read this: If you are not interested in becoming a recruiter, you can still help. In some cases a nominator may have an issue with an "inexperienced" editor (the recruitee) reviewing one of their nominations. To minimize the chances of this happening, if you are fine with a recruitee reviewing one of your nominations under the supervision of the recruiter, please add your name to the list at the bottom of this page. By adding your name to this list, chances are that your nomination will be reviewed more quickly as the recruitee will be asked to choose a nomination from the list of nominators that are OK with them reviewing the article.
If you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact me. I look forward to seeing this program bring new reviewers to the Good article community and all the positive things it will bring along.
A message will be sent out to all recruiters regarding the date when the Recruitment Centre will open when it is determined. The message will also contain some further details to clarify things that may be a bit confusing.--Dom497 (talk)
As a listed GA participant, you are invited to contribute to a formal Request for Comment on the question of whether Good Articles should be eligible to appear in the Did You Know? slot in future. Please see the proposal on its subpage here, or on the main DYK talk page. To add the discussion to your watchlist, click this link. Thank you in advance. GilderienChat|Contributions02:55, 1 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
In past Backlog Drives, the goal was to reduce the backlog of Good article nominations. In the upcoming drive, another goal will be added - raising as much money as we can for the Wikimedia Foundation. How will this work? Well, its pretty simple. Any user interested in donating can submit a pledge at the Backlog Drive page (linked above). The pledge should mention the amount of money the user is willing to donate per review. For example, if a user pledges 5 cents per review and 100 nominations are reviewed, the total donation amount is $5.00.
At the time this message was sent out, two users have submitted pledges for a total of 8 cents per review. All pledges, no matter how much money, are greatly appreciated. Also, in no way is this saying you must make a pledge.
It's that time again! Starting on March 1, there will be another GAN Backlog Drive! There will be several changes compared to previous drives:
This drive will introduce a new component to it; a point system. In a nutshell, older nominations are worth more points than newer nominations. The top 3 participants who have the points will be awarded the Golden, Silver, or Bronze Wikipedia Puzzle Piece Trophy, respectively.
Unlike the December 2013 Backlog Drive, earning an additional barnstar if you reached your goal has been removed.
The allowance to have insufficient reviews has been lowered to 2 before being disqualified.
An exception to the rule that all reviews must be completed before the deadline has been created.
Also, something that I thought I would share with all of you is that we raised $20.88 (USD) for the WMF in the December 2013 drive. It may not sound like a lot but considering that that was raised just because we reviewed articles, I would say that's pretty good! With that success, pledges can be made for the upcoming drive if you wish.
More info regarding the drive and full descriptions regarding the changes to this drive can be found on the the drive page. If you have any questions, feel free to leave a message on the drive talk page.
I look forward to your participation and hope that because of it, some day the backlog will be gone!
WikiProject Good articles Future GAN Backlog Drive
Hello everyone! Hope you've all been having a great summer!
TheQ Editor recently proposed the idea of having another Backlog Drive in either September/October or November/December of this year. For those of you who have participated in the past two drives you know I was the one who organized them, however, come September, this will be my most important year in school so I will not be able to coordinate this drive (if it happens). TheQ Editor has volunteered to be a coordinator for the drive. If any of you would like to co-coordinator, please notify TheQ Editor on his talk page.
If you would be interested in participating in a Backlog Drive sometime before the end of this year, please notify TheQ Editor. Also, make sure to specify what month(s) work best for you.
At the time this message was sent out, the backlog was at 520 nominations. Since May, the backlog has been steadily increasing and we are currently near an all time high. Even though the backlog will not disappear over one drive, this drive can lead to several others which will (hopefully) lead to the day where there is no longer a backlog.
As always, the more participants, the better, and everyone is encouraged to participate!
Hello everyone! We hope you have all been having a great summer!
As we all know, the recent GAN Backlog Drives have not had any big impact on the backlog. Because of that, me (Dom497), Figureskatingfan, and TheQ Editor have worked on an idea that could possibly finally put a dent into the massive backlog. Now, I will admit, the idea isn't entirely ours as we have took the general idea of the WikiCup and brought it over to WikiProject Good Articles. But anyways, here's what we have in mind:
For all of you that do not know what the WikiCup is, it is an annual competition between several editors to see who can get the most Good Articles, Featured Article's, Did You Know's, etc. Based of this, we propose to you the GA Cup. This competition will only focus on reviewing Good articles.
For more info on the proposal, click here. As a FYI, the proposal page is not what the final product will look like (if you do go ahead with this idea). It will look very similar to WikiCup's page(s).
The discussion for the proposal will take place here. Please let us know if you are interested, have any concerns, things to consider, etc.
WikiProject Good articles is holding a new competition, the GA Cup, from October 1, 2014 - March 28, 2015. The Cup will be based on reviewing Good article nominations; for each review, points will be awarded with bonuses for older nominations, longer articles and comprehensive reviews. All participants will start off in one group and the highest scoring participants will go through to the second round. At the moment six rounds are planned, but this may change based on participant numbers.
Some of you may ask: what is the purpose for a competition of this type? Currently, there is a backlog of about 500 unreviewed Good article nominations, almost an all time high. It is our hope that we can decrease the backlog in a fun way, through friendly competition.
Everyone is welcome to join; new and old editors! Sign-ups will be open until October 15, 2014 so sign-up now!
If you have any questions, take a look at the FAQ page and/or contact one of the four judges.
To receive future GA Cup newsletter, please add your name to our mailing list.
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If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. LizRead!Talk!20:03, 13 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. LizRead!Talk!17:05, 2 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. LizRead!Talk!18:44, 7 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. LizRead!Talk!18:48, 16 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. LizRead!Talk!17:13, 25 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
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If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself. LizRead!Talk!17:35, 20 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
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Wank Week has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. Spinixster(chat!)13:18, 17 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]