Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Central America

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[edit] Time to Begin?

Is there some other "formal step" that we need to go through to begin, or can we get this project started?

Thanks Badbilltucker Srice13 04:44, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

I took a crack at {{User WikiProject Central America}} and {{WikiProject Central America}}. I'm not emotionally connected to the icon, colors, etc. so please feel free to modify. I do like the notion of sorting the importance and quality through the project template. This seems like a reasonable way to make a quick first pass at rating articles. I realize this adds some overhead to tagging a page, but I think it reduces the overall labor requirement, as a page can be tagged and rated in a single pass.

I propose we get started with the tagging. Once we have a better idea concerning the count and quanlity of the existing set of articles, we should develop a plan of attack. Any comments? Srice13 01:58, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Good to see this starting up on a region with a lot of patchy coverage, at present.
Just to note, geographically at least there is considerable overlap between this project and WikiProject Mesoamerica, ie would include all bits of Mesoamerica not actually in Mexico, presumably. That's not a bad thing- many hands, etc- and WP:MESO has a primary focus on pre-Columbian/conquest-era history, peoples, langs, &c., while WP:CAMERICA I guess would look firstly at more contemporary topics. I'm just wondering whether in some cases, eg arch. sites or pre-Columbian cultures, it might be redundant and/or duplicative effort for both projects to tag, assess, etc certain of these articles...?
Inviting any comments or thoughts; in any case it should not be a problem to coordinate standards, guidelines and activities between the two.--cjllw | TALK 07:19, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
I agree that it may not make sense for both projects to aggressively work the same articles. There are even a few members common to both projects. As for the tagging, it still may be worth while to "double tag" for the same of completeness. I suppose we could WikiProject Central America ¬ WikiProject Mesoamerica, but we would then risk having some articles fall through the cracks. What if we set the WikiProject Central America/Assessment criteria so that articles covering topics contained within the Meso project are assigned a low priority? This would serve to ensure that articles are identified, but given much focus. I've been on a tagging spree, and don't mind hitting all of the articles. I think I will be able to complete tagging within the next week, so the extra work is not a big deal. Srice13 01:02, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
Fair enough, that sounds reasonable if you're happy to carry on with the tagging. Equally there are some generalist Cent.Am articles (eg History of Guatemala) where the pre-Columbian aspect is only a portion of the article's scope, and from a WP:MESO point of view there'd only be the need for some fact and consistency checking on the relevant paras. The rest has pretty much been left alone, and I think it would make sense for WP:CAMERICA to have priority and focus in those other topics. Combined, and with as you point out some dual participation we should have all bases covered. Speaking from experience keeping a wikiproject going particularly at the start is a lot of work, but I think keep going and it'll soon develop its own meter. Nice work so far!--cjllw | TALK 03:23, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
I think double tagging is a bad idea. It already takes an entire screen page to see those project tags and some pages now have three or even four tags already. Alternatively isn't there a small or invisible way to tag articles that have already ben tagged?·Maunus· tlahtōlli 09:07, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
I'm fine with a small tag. My interest is defining the scope and boundaries of the project. I believe there is a valid overlap between the two projects, as evidenced by the varying levels of importance between the two. I don't know enough about the software to create multiple templates that point to the same project, or a way to make the visual presentation of a banner change based on a tag variable (e.g. class=stub|importance=mid|size=small). If someone does, and the group thinks that is the right way to spend volunteer energy, then let's do it. Personnaly I don't banner covered talk pages is a big deal. Most casual users don't know that talk pages exist. Most users that frequent talk pages know how to quickly skip past banners.Srice13 16:45, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm one of the people who has their name down for both this project and the Meso-American one (although currently sitting on the sidelines of both, I'm afraid). On reading the above discussion, I thought I should chip in with a thought of my own. To quote cjllw a little way up the page:

WP:MESO has a primary focus on pre-Columbian/conquest-era history, peoples, langs,
&c., while WP:CAMERICA I guess would look firstly at more contemporary topics...

cjllw is talking about overlap between the two projects here, but in that case we had better also be on the lookout for cases of non-overlap - we don't want things slipping through the cracks and ending up ignored. One example already mentioned would be the parts of the Guatemala article covering contemporary history. Okay, but let us also not forget "pre-Columbian/conquest-era history, peoples, langs, &c." for parts of Central America not within Meso-America, i.e. basically the southern half of CA.

Take (southern) Central American indigenous peoples and languages, for example. Since there is already a "mainstream" attitude in Central American society generally (apart from Guate, maybe) in which most people care f**k all (excuse me) about the indigenous people's present or past culture, languages and identity (except for "folkloric", "token" and largely insincere purposes), I emphatically hope that such an attitude is not going to be simply repeated and reflected by the set of interests and general focus of WP:CAMERICA because of a decision to "look firstly at more contemporary topics". By the way, I consider that indigenous peoples ARE a "contemporary" topic, but anyway... Any comments? Cheers, Alan--A R King 06:58, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Even is we're overlapping with WP:MESO in terms of tagging, there is a LOT of actual page editing to do before we have to worry about any turf wars. Not to put down the important organizational work you guys are doing, but I'm eagerly awaiting some help on some of our top priority articles that need to be heavily edited, sourced, and expanded. Feeeshboy 17:14, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
Agreed!!! Instead of a battle between Meso and CA, we should unite[1] against our common enemy. Oops, I meant to link to our real enemy. Srice13 17:18, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
LOL. The Judaean People's Front!?!?Feeeshboy 02:50, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

I officially declare (at least in my own mind) this entire talk section to be wiki-closed, and the Meso / CAmerica overlap thread to be wiki-moot. For better or worse I have wiki-tagged more than 4,000 articles in the name of WP:CAmerica, and I am wiki-tired. As I mentioned on the Assessment talk page, if you disagree with my assessment of an articles quality or importance, please feel to change it. If you have quastions about my rationale or think that I would benefit from some additional education or points of view, please feel free to contact me (here or on my talk page). If you just want to complain or tell me that I suck, please start a new thread here.SRICE13 (TALK | EDITS) 17:18, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Well done on a good effort, SqueakBox 17:18, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Gracias SRICE13 (TALK | EDITS) 17:19, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] What's Next?

Now that the start-up stuff is done (populate /Articles page, & tag articles), it is time for some real WikiProject magic. Where should we begin? SRICE13 (TALK | EDITS) 17:18, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Our top-priority pages need a lot of work, so why not start there? Of the main pages for the nations of Central America, not one is rated higher than a B class (and Panama is listed as a start class article). Also, Central America itself is listed as a start class. These pages need a lot of clean-up, but most of all, they need referencing. Some of that work would be best done for multiple pages at a time, i.e. good sources on the Mayans are needed for several different articles. We also would do well to translate some content in from the Spanish wikipedia versions of some pages, as they are generally far more developed than ours. I don't speak Spanish, so I'm going to be wikiworthless on that front.
Many wikiprojects use a "collaboration of the week" (or of the fortnight or whatnot) format to concetrate efforts on one page at a time, and I have seen that work well. An organized wikiproject is a motivated wikiproject. If the collaoration of the week is agreed upon, I suggest that our flagship page, Central America, should be the first area of focus. Feeeshboy 22:36, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
Sounds good to me. The Collaboration of [Time Period] concept is certainly worth a shot. A week may not be enough to get much done, but a month seems as though it would only limit the number of article that recieve focus. Perhaps a Collaboration of the Quincena? SRICE13 (TALK | EDITS) 00:36, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
I have invited the readers of Talk:Central America to weigh in on this discussion. Based on the early returns, the vote regarding Feeeshboy's nomination appears to be a landslide. If there are not any dissenting opinions by the end of the week, I think it is safe to say that silence = consensus. SRICE13 (TALK | EDITS) 05:17, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Head of State Request for Input

After looking at some of the head of state articles for other countries and saw a couple things that could be done to improve the HOS artcles for central american countries. I would really like to get some feedback before I put more effort into this, as it was more time consuming that I originally thought :-p.

1. Develop and include a navigation template appropriate for each country. I created a sample version for guatemala that can be found here: User:Srice13/Template:GuatemalanPresidents. It is based on a similar template used for US Presidents

Questions for the group:

  • Does this seem like a reasonable thing to do?
  • The US template uses last names only; should the same be done for Central American heads of state?
    • If so, could someone please check my usage, and either correct the names that I butchered, or leave me a message and I will do it?

2. Update of the infobox templates on the few articles that use it, and add one for the pages without a box. I created one here for Óscar Berger using the InfoBox President format (a derivative of Infobox Officeholder). The one on the Berger page is already using that template, so the effort would be focused on spreading to the rest of the templates.

3. Add sucession boxes / migrate existing boxes to the format supported by Wikipedia:WikiProject Succession Box Standardization e.g.

  1. Template:s-start to start the wikibox
  2. Template:s-bef to list predecessor
  3. Template:s-ttl to show politcal office
  4. Template:s-inc to show incumbent status
  5. Template:s-aft to show successors
  6. Template:s-non to show fields lacking predecessor and / or sucessor
  7. Template:end to end the wikibox

sample for Óscar Berger:

Political offices
Preceded by
Alfonso Portillo		 President of Guatemala
2004-present		 Incumbent

Questions:

  • Does this format seem reasonable?
  • How should we handle interruptions in the flow of leaders (e.g. President of Guatemala has 3 lists or Presidents interrupted by juntas)?

4. Attempt to break apart the Head of State with a List of Heads articles into seperate articles. The current articles are:

The President (PM) of X articles would begin as stubs with the information currently posted, but there should be plenty of good information to add regarding the office itself. Questions:

  • Does this idea seem reasonable?
  • Is there a preferred structure for President (PM) of X articles?

5. Update the List of (Insert Country) (Insert Title) pages to use a common list format. I'm a fan of List of Presidents of the United States and created something similar for Guatemala here. The sample is missing a lot of information, specifically party affiliations, Vice Presidents, and images; therefore it would require more work before it is ready for deployment.

Questions:

  • Does this format seem reasonable?
  • Is there a better one out there?
  • Are there columns that should be added / removed / altered?
  • How should we handle interruptions in the flow of leaders?

Just a few thoughts in my spare time. Feedback is greatly appreciated. I don't want anyone to think that I am pushing an agenda, just following my interests. Srice13 22:36, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Vandalism and Recent Changes

Just a heads up to the group, please check recent changes from time to time. I haven't been able to monitor the page faithfully, but every time I do I find a fair amount of vandalism that is not caught by the standard vandal monitors. I would guess that most of the vandalism is sponsered by the CIA in an attempt to keep this project from making any real progress. Srice13 14:58, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

I found some vandalism on the Costa Rica National Anthem page, someone added the lyrics to Kelis' song Milkshake, removed them and took a screen cap. I didn't know where to post it so I posted it here. Here's a link to the screencap. http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b167/Ogrim_Doomhammer/milkshake.jpg

Avyfain 04:45, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] San José de Colinas

I copied over the text from the Spanish language version of the article on San José de Colinas and ran it through a translator. Most of it came out as garbled nonsense but I took what I could and made it into the beginnings of page with some information. Needs a lot more work, however. --Ozgod 23:16, 14 February 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Indigenous peoples of central America

Almost all of the articles on central american countries south of Guatemala lack any kind of information about indigenous groups and their cultures and languages. And no thats not because they don't exist. I would appreciate it very much if some of all our project members would help me add articles on indigenous peoples and languages and add sections about indigenous peoples to the relevant articles such as the main country articles and articles about culture, history and demographics of the central american countries. ·Maunus· ·ƛ· 17:13, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Antigua Guatemala

I know in thelate 1980's there was an event called "The Rose Parade and arathon de Volcan de Auga. Can you find out more about it please? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.9.7.195 (talk) 22:27, 7 March 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Someone who is familiar with El Salvador government ministries

A new article, Conculture is AfD at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Conculture. From the article, it seems to be refering to the culture ministry in El Salvador, CONCULTURA, which stands for Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes. Stop by if you have an interest in helping out or have an opinion. Thanks. Smmurphy(Talk) 07:42, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] 2001 El Salvador earthquakes

I was awed to see an article about that was missing. So I created 2001 El Salvador earthquakes, please join in editing --TheFEARgod (Ч) 19:29, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] WP:ACID nom of Simón Bolívar

Hello WP Central America, I just realized I never alerted the relevant WikiProjects to the fact that Simón Bolívar is a current ACID nominee. I'm not trying to votestack, I just want all of you to be aware of this and those that are interested can help out. Best, Fbv65edel / ☑t / ☛c || 02:20, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:WikiProject El Salvador

Please visit Wikipedia:WikiProject El Salvador. Chris 22:36, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Sorry to remove the tag, but it's backwards: WPES is within the scope of CAMERICA, not the other way around. --Groggy Dice T | C 00:49, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Request for input re Central American Crisis

I've just opened up a discussion regarding the scope & title of the new article Central American Crisis, and I just want to be sure that folks who are interested in participating know it's happening. Cgingold 20:43, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Category:Nature reserves of Costa Rica

I have nominated Category:Nature reserves of Costa Rica at CFD for renaming to Category:Nature reserves in Costa Rica. The discussion is at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2007 April 5#Category:Nature reserves of Costa Rica. Hopefully uncontroversial! Angus McLellan (Talk) 12:54, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

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