Wikipedia talk:Article Collaboration and Improvement Drive

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Article Collaboration and Improvement Drive Formerly, "This week's improvement drive" and "Article Improvement Drive"
April 2005 – July 2005 August 2005 – September 2005 January 2006 – March 2006 March 2006 – April 2006 April 2006 – May 2006 November 2006 – April 2007 Current Polls - a vote-only page containing AID votes Vote Archive - the poll archives
Collaboration of the week Formerly, "Article of the week"
Archive 1 Archive 2 Archive 3 Archive 4 Archive 5 Archive 6 Archive 7
Article Creation and Improvement Drive
May 2006 – August 2006

[edit] Is there a ACID Director?

Raul is a WP:FAC director, a person who does all the maintenance work for FAs. Is there a similar person in this Project? I mean a person who says, "OK, Article A has been a COTW for 1 week, now I am going to choose the next most voted article to be the current COTW."

I mean Churchill has been a COTW since March 28, last time I checked COTW=Collaboration Of The Week (not a Month).

The very first sentence says: The Article Creation and Improvement Drive is a weekly collaboration to improve articles to featured article status.

If there isn't any (director), one has to be chosen. --Crzy cheetah 06:24, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

There isnt one, IIRC, because it is maintained by the community. ffm ✎talk 15:48, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Usually, Azatoth updates it when he comes around, but usually, he comes extremely late. Keep in mind he most likely does have a life outside of Wikipedia. I've been taking a long Wikibreak, and now I am ready to come back, if only to update the ACID once a week. Diez2 13:48, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Keep WP:BOLD in mind. I did the maintenance for this last Wednesday as soon as I read your comment. Wikipedia is run by collaboration, we don't need an official director for each page that requires maintenance. — Pious7_Talk^Contribs 20:58, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

If it was updated a couple of days later than usual, I wouldn't have a problem. But...it was not updated for a month or so. Regarding the WP:BOLD, I decided to make that post above first to learn the reason why it wasn't updated for a month, then do it. Anyway, thank you Pious7 for your work. --Crzy cheetah 18:05, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Renaming of the project

Would anyone support the renaming of this collaboration to be "Article Improvement Drive"? In at least the past 2 years, we never have used this collaboration to actually create an article. Sooooo, why is it named so? Any comments or "votes" are welcome. Diez2 16:03, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

How about "Article Collaboration and Improvement Drive" so the acronym "ACID" and shortcut stay? — Pious7_Talk^Contribs 19:56, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

I would agree to Pious7's idea, it's a lot better to keep the current acronym. Is there any formal way to vote for a name change? --Razor ICE 01:22, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, finally! I'd been thinking of suggesting this for ages. The current name is inaccurate, and leads to the current ridiculous acronym instead of the perfectly suited AID. It's almost like the perfect name was leaping off the page but someone chose not to use it anyway. I'd vote for changing the name to "Article Improvement Drive" which would be more accurate, and the acronym "AID". --Daniel11 04:29, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
Agree to Pious7's solution. bibliomaniac 1 5 04:32, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
Agree to Pious7's solution. You're right, the current acronym should stay. Diez2 17:13, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

This poll is being moved to Wikipedia talk:Article Creation and Improvement Drive/votes, where you can formally vote on this. Diez2 17:16, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Do most people here just vote?

I can see 30 people vote here but it doesn't seem they actually help with the article. How is that? --Aminz 11:36, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps we need to make it a rule that people should only vote if they plan on contributing? Otherwise, being an ACID article doesn't really do anything. — Pious7_Talk^Contribs 22:03, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
- I think the best option is to ask people to make at least 4 edits to the articles they vote for. If each of 30 editors make at least 4 edits, we will have 120 edits. --Aminz 22:52, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
  - I'd have to agree. I mean, how much are we achieving towards our goal of FA's in a week? I think we should set up special areas of expertise to be covered by certain users. bibliomaniac 1 5 20:46, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
  - Careful, if we force people for a specific quantity of edits, that forgets the quality factor of it. The four edits could be minor edits, unconstructive edits, or even vandalism, and there's no way to really enforce that quota. — Pious7_Talk^Contribs 23:46, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
  - I don't think a specific number of edits will do the trick at all. It's putting the edits themselves before the quality of the edits. How about strong encouragement:

"When voting on or nominating a article, you should be prepared to contribute to that article." Gutworth 21:14, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

How about people vote by the number of edits they will commit to? So one person would say that they are willing to do 5 good-faith edits to a page and therefore they recieve five votes. This would mean that the article that won the vote was the one that people had promised to do the most editing to instead of an article that they would just like to see revised. Remember 12:23, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] May I remove nominations?

If a nomination is overdue, may I, or any other user, just remove it from the nominations and delete the tags on the article's talk page? Or does it have to be done by the ACID director (if that exists)? Thanks! Gutworth 02:14, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

You can do it, but you have to add the entry to the archive of removed nominations in the proper category. — Pious 7 10:51, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Standing lists at Wikiprojects

To facilitate throughput to GA and FA, I'm trialling this; I've listed Standing Lists of large articles with substantial content which may be within striking distance of GA with varying amounts of work WRT formatting and copyediting. Some are already being worked on but I'm seeing if this increases collaboration. So far I've done this on WP mammals talk page and WP Birds collab pages. Be interesting to see if more of these come through cheers, Cas Liber | talk | contribs 01:32, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Current article

Who updates the current article, is it done automatically by a bot? It seems that the current one has not been updated. Max Naylor 10:17, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Who updates this page?

I know it might seem an impertinent question, but does anyone know who currently updates the page. Lots of nominations are overdue, and the current collaboration hasn't been selected yet, despite it's being supposed to have been selected yesterday. John Carter 18:11, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Indeed. Anyone can update the page, but the COTW doesn't receive as much traffic as it used to. CloudNine 19:08, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Proposal

See my proposal at Wikipedia talk:Article Creation and Improvement Drive/Header(think this needs to be moved 2 new name), thanks--Andersmusician VOTE 00:07, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Updates

If I can get on a computer tomorrow (July 4th) I will do the rollover. If you beat me to it, that's cool too. Looks like CO2 is up! --BsayUSD [Talk] [contribs] 20:36, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

I've done it except for the history update page, wasn't quite sure how to do that. Spamsara 22:33, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks --BsayUSD [Talk] [contribs] 00:32, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Wait, so this was updated already? I had assumed CO₂ was the last of the old articles because there was nothing on the history page. Sorry for the delay, Diez2 messaged me on my talk page to take over for him, but I was a day late due to me being busy today. I'll revert my edits. — Pious 7 05:41, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

CO2 is the article for this week. So yes, it has been updated. --BsayUSD [Talk] [contribs] 16:01, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Selection process

I am confused by the selection process. On July 4th carbon dioxide was archived as being successfully accepted. The next week rolled by and the selected article remained carbon dioxide. Now another week has rolled by and the selection date has been pushed out to:

The next project article is to be selected next Wednesday, 00:00:00, July 25, 2007 (UTC)

yet carbon dioxide still remains the selected article. Whats going on? Is this entire project dead? Are nominations simply a waste of time? I am a new editor, so I do not understand the history, but it sure does not make any sense to me. Dbiel ^(Talk) 15:27, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

The selection process is a MANUAL process, it is not done by an automated bot. Carbon Dioxide has remained due to nobody rolling over the selection. There is still a lot of collaboration and improvements being done on CO₂, but the instructions are in the /maintinence page if you care to roll over the selection. I will likely do a rollover next week if it has not been done. --BsayUSD [Talk] [contribs] 17:19, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for the reply. I will see if I can learn more about the process. As I said, being new, there is a huge about of material to learn and apply, such as the manual process of updating the votes. It seems that most new users, including myself, tend to miss that point the first time, even though it is clearly documented, it is not always clearly understood. Dbiel ^(Talk) 19:16, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Slightly puzzled

Why do different articles need different numbers of votes? For example, North Sea needs 28 votes, but Anarchist's Cookbook only needs 8. How is this decided? Totnesmartin 14:46, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean. Basically, by the end of a given week, any article to remain on the list needs to have recived (# of weeks on the list X 4) votes to remain on the list. Any article which has been on the list longer would thus need more total votes to remain active. The article with the greatest numerical total of votes is the one that ultimately becomes the next collaboration. So, the one that was nominated first would have to have a greater numerical total to remain active than a more recent nominee. I doubt that's particularly clear, but I hope it makes a little sense. John Carter 14:56, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

That does make a little sense. I thought the situation was that someone would announce "this week's winner is North Sea" (or whatever), and we'd all troop off there to edit it, after which it would come off the list. I see how it works now, thanks. Totnesmartin 15:15, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Monthly instead of weekly?

Having observed the recent update process, it seems this is a de facto monthly project. :-D Why don't we officially have it as monthly? Just one week is often insufficient for any significant improvement anyway, in my opinion. --BorgQueen 22:37, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Actually very few articles have been selected for a whole month. Fortnightly might be a better choice. Dbiel ^(Talk) 02:12, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Agree with Dbiel's fortnight proposal. --Shark face 217 19:51, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] North Sea/Heart Disease?

On the community portal, it shows both Heart disease and North Sea. Is this a fluke? --Freiberg, Let's talk!, contribs 01:30, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Newbie friendly

I've been wondering whether the goals of the phrase,

To vote or nominate you have to be a registered user with at least one contribution that is not a vote

could be achieved in any way that allows more participation and is more open. It's not entirely clear to me what the purpose of the restriction is. If repeat voting is the concern, surely it's obvious enough that you can register several usernames, do a few edits with each, and then move to vote. Also, such incidents by either IPs or registered users are usually easy to spot. IP edits have the added benefit of immediate verification through geolocation. So why restrict them? Surely it's up to each person to choose a level of privacy that they feel comfortable with, and we don't need to ram this down their throats (in which case, they may not bother and just leave - ask yourselves what purpose A(C)ID serves in the community, and how to maintain the purity of this purpose).

If the restriction exists for some other reason, please enlighten me. I can't think what a registration and single edit would say about a user. We have many IP editors who make valuable contributions; some of them register, some haven't yet, and some edit for months or years using just their IP. Hence, there are IP users who have made much more formidable contributions than most registered users with a single edit. But please, do explain it to me.

Regards,

Samsara (talk • contribs) 15:54, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Modified per above concern. 199.125.109.50 16:53, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

An IP address has no right to give IPs a vote. Zginder 22:57, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

It's a silly restriction. Take it off yourself. 199.125.109.50 19:41, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

No, it is not. Otherwise, one person could potentially move from IP to IP and give his/her favorite article as many votes as they wanted, which should not be permitted. John Carter 19:43, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Actually that would be what you call using sockpuppets, which applies equally to IP users and registered users. There is also the opposite situation, where multiple people are using the same IP address, and wouldn't be able to vote unless they like added a note saying something like, not the same as the above. In practice most people do register a username, but it would be especially good to welcome everyone to help improve articles, not just the registered users. I remember seeing a registered user voting at AFD, 10 minutes after they registered, and that vote was the only edit they ever made. How likely is that? 199.125.109.72 05:52, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

I believe a constructive solution is possible. Samsara (talk • contribs) 01:16, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Still Active?

Is this collaboration still active. There hasn't been a new selection in a few weeks. By now, both atom and geo of nj should have won and been worked on. --ZeWrestler ^Talk 13:37, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Nomination ideas

FYI, Category:Start-Class Vital articles is an excellent place to find nominations for this page, or to find articles of high importance to the encyclopedia which need work and might be of interest to you personally. -- Beland 16:29, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

This is a great suggestion, however if the purpose of the project is to promote articles to feature status, going from start to feature in one week might be a stretch. Is there a category for former feature articles, or good articles that are vital articles? Those might be easier to work on and actually get them to become feature articles. The project could use more visibility as well. I don't see anyone working on this weeks selected article. 199.125.109.72 00:31, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Bizarre nominations removal

However the system for nominations selection is set up, it is not working sensibly. I notice that Seed was removed from the list, despite having the most nominations. The second runner-up Abuse will expire before the date set for the next selection, unless it gets 3 more votes for some unspecifed reason. I think I know why more people don't participate in the ACI Drive. They get discourgared by the bizarre selection process when articles they voted for are removed for no discernable reason other than the fact that a mysterious red "Expired" has appeared with no explanation of where it has come from. --EncycloPetey 02:59, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

The system is not bizarre; it is quite logical. The problem is nominators do not plan as to when the best time to nominate is. Zginder 12:42, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

The fact that the system requires strategic timing of nominations is bizarre. It is more competitive strategy than "collaboration". --EncycloPetey 22:05, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

I agree with you. The article for this week got selected with only 4 votes. It is nonsensical that other nominations with far more votes didn't make it. We need to change the system. --BorgQueen 06:04, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

The reason old nominations are removed is so that new nominations have a chance. If they are not removed then an article with 50 votes will win, but it will take six months for a nomination to win. Zginder 19:07, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

Whether it takes six months or sixteen months, if more people will work on this project, then we have every reason to change the system. I have been participating in this project for quite a while now but I've never seen anything like this. Do you seriously think the project is going well? --BorgQueen 19:58, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

Reforming the process does not have to mean leaving articles indefinitely. The concern is that a nomination can be removed because it's received "only" seven votes in a two week period, leaving a nomination with only 3 or 4 votes as the default winner because it's only been a nomination for one week. That's a silly way to pick a winner. --EncycloPetey 22:23, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

We could have a rule like x votes per week if there are more than x nominations. Y votes per week if there are more than y nominations etc. Zginder 22:59, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

For now I would suggest a requirement of 2 votes per week to stay on the list. This can be adjusted whenever needed. More complicated rules are not needed. 199.125.109.72 05:59, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Multiple nominations

8 of the 10 current nominations were nominated by the same nominator. Only one or two are likely to be chosen. I recommend that one parson can have only one nomination that they started at a time. Zginder 22:52, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

That will severely limit the number of nominations we will have. Please note that only a small number of editors participate in this project now. --BorgQueen 00:19, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

It will greatly increase the approval percentage, and reduce the rate at which nominations are removed. Zginder 00:37, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

I am not certain what you mean by "approval percentage". One registered account can vote for as many nominations as they want. The advantage of having multiple nominations is diversity; the likelihood of getting approval votes is higher since each person has a different criteria about what type of article should be chosen for the project. --BorgQueen 00:47, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

The chance that an article will be worked on is slimmer the more nominations. Zginder 19:05, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

That conclusion doesn't follow. --EncycloPetey 22:24, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

That makes no sense whatsoever...surely it would get more attention the longer it remains here? WeBuriedOurSecretsInTheGarden (talk) 21:16, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Only one article is chosen a week, so how can nominating 6 articles have all of them chosen? Zginder (talk) (Contrib) 23:25, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

I don't think it matters how many articles are nominated by the same person, as long as they make at least one edit to the currently selected article for each nomination they make. The purpose of the project is to improve the articles. Just nominating and voting does nothing if no edits are made. 199.125.109.72 (talk) 01:52, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] IP nomination

Why can IPs not nominate? 129.215.149.98 00:40, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Vandalism. _{WEBURIEDOURSECRETS}_INTHEGARDEN 21:41, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Is this still useful?

There seems to be very little going on on this project any more. Wouldn't it be better to change the concept (and advertise it some), or otherwise just stop it? The amount of articles up for nomination has dropped drastically since July, when I worked on some of them. The same is true for the amount of response. Twerbrou (talk) 10:40, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Maybe merge or replace by Vital Article colaboration

More than with other articles, the length and complexity of many of these articles lend themselves to a collaborative effort to get to Featured Status rather than by a single editor. Maybe it's time to have a Vital Article collaboration of the month? cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 03:40, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

I would support a rethink or retirement of this project. I've only worked with it a couple of times over the years, and found the "collaborations" I've been involved with lacking in direction and participation. --jwanders^Talk 07:26, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

No one is changing the article and I do not want to do it when no one has worked on the last one. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Zginder (talk • contribs) 01:25, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

A long time ago this worked really well. There used to be a Bot that informed people who voted for a article that their choice had won. Think it was User:AzaBot. I think the lack of this has lead to the decline. GameKeeper (talk) 23:07, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Proposal to close

Discussion moved to Wikipedia talk:Article Collaboration and Improvement Drive/Closure discussion

[edit] Closure Discussion

I'm wanting to start a discussion on closing ACID, that is, putting a {{Historical}} tag at the top and removing the links from Community Portal and similar pages. I expect this suggestion will garner a fair amount of discussion, so won't actually take any action for at least two weeks.--jwanders^Talk 00:53, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Support

Support I have discussed this above. Zginder ^{(talk) (Contrib)} 02:57, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
Support I hate to say it but this once active project has slowly degraded. In fact, I do not think this discussion will even get much attention since nobody goes to this page. Parent5446^{(Murder me for my actions)} 23:28, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
Support - It was really great in its heyday, but now it seems to do nothing much. Judgesurreal777 (talk) 02:18, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
Support - Seems to have been replaced by more topic-specific collaboration projects. Kaldari (talk) 21:46, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
Support A lot of Wikiprojects and Portals are running their own improvement drives. This isn't really needed any more, and the lack of activity confirms that - • The Giant Puffin • 22:49, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
Support For the last 6 months there has been very little activity with improving the chosen articles, and even on nominating them. Nergaal (talk) 23:36, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
Support with condition Tag it as historical but if a large amount of interest shows up later (who knows, 5 or 10 years from now) and wants to revive it, then just remove the historical tag and start it again. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 04:31, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
Support. Seems to be inactive now, but leave the option to revive it later on if any users become interested. --TBC !?! 00:28, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Oppose

[edit] Neutral

[edit] Discussion

Maybe instead of choosing an article every week, we select an article only when X no. of votes are reached. In that way, we can have enough people to actually call it a collaboration.--165.21.154.90 (talk) 12:43, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

If this is closed, I would like a message placed near the top of the page mentioning the other collaborations and that work still needs to be done on many of the articles that were collaborations here. Zginder ^{(talk) (Contrib)} 17:44, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

I think that we should close it right after this week's article since it has already been changed over. Parent5446^{(Murder me for my actions)} 20:50, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Has it been tried to advertise this project and the need to save it? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 18:59, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

This project has its own space on the Community Portal. There has been a request at the Signpost for a report on the project, but it has never gone through. The problem is that editors prefer to stick to their own articles instead of randomly going from article to article. For those who do, though, even they usually stick to one topic by switching from article to article within one WikiProject. There is little hope for the revival of this project. Parent5446^{(Murder me for my actions)} 19:41, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Some of the other collaboration projects are not in much better shape. Topics are getting selected with a consensus of 1-3 editors, so naturally there is little participation. Collaboration may be going out the window.—RJH (talk) 18:41, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

With the closing of ACID the Golden age of Wikipedian Collaboration comes to an end. Zginder ^{(talk) (Contrib)} 19:21, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Amen.--TBC !?! 00:29, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Here here. Who know's what the future will bring as collaborations go. --ZeWrestler ^Talk 05:14, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

The end of the Golden Age, eh? I'm glad to have been part of it. Some day, historians who study Wikipedia will look back to a marvelous time where people took time out of their busy lives and contributed to this project. A time when collaboration was active and vital to Wikipedia. A time when editors were jack-of-all trades, fighting vandals by day and improving Wikipedia by night. While I am sad to see that the time has passed, I look with hope towards the future of this project. --Shark face 217 23:43, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Possible revival

A proposal to potentially revive this page with slightly different parameters can be found at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Possible revival of Article Improvement and Collaboration Drive. Any interested editors should feel free to take part in the discussion there. Thank you. John Carter (talk) 14:47, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Discussion yield no effective results, has been archived into Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 20#Possible revival of Article Improvement and Collaboration Drive. --Kubanczyk (talk) 09:40, 5 April 2008 (UTC)