Wikipedia talk:Collaboration of the week

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This page contains discussion on the main Collaboration of the week page. Old talk has been archived.

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[edit] Ancient Rome

Hey,

I nominated Ancient Rome on the Article Improvement Drive. Since this is a former Collaboration of the week, and one of the more successful ones we've worked on, i thought i'd post a message here to ask people to support it on the AID. --ZeWrestler Talk 14:29, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Music Article Improvement Collaboration of the Week

I am looking at setting up a new Category called Music Article collaboration of the week.

What process needs to be followed so that this can be considered?

Capitalistroadster 10:46, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] nomination pruning

can someone prune the nominations. there are quite a few that have been past their deadline for at least a week now. --ZeWrestler Talk 21:18, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

There isn't any complicated pruning procedure; you could have done it yourself. I have updated the dates and removed failed nominations. Talrias (t | e | c) 12:13, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] update

Should this page be updates, or is it going on for more week? Newbie222 02:43, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, I'm not sure what you mean. Do you mean there are some articles which need to be removed since they haven't got enough votes? Talrias (t | e | c) 07:06, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
No, not the pruning. I'm saying that shouldn't French Intervention of been archived last Sat in history and the next COTW put up? Newbie222 19:32, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Pruning - 22nd October

I've removed the articles that didn't make their targets... but was I supposed to do anything else? Are there boilers to be removed from article talk pages? Something to be done on the nomination pages individually? If someone who knows the drill could attend to anything I missed, would be most grateful. I would say tell me how and I'll do it, but I fear this is a page I'll forget to check back to. --bodnotbod 08:52, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

Have you archived them? This is done by adding them to Wikipedia:Collaboration of the week/Removed. Talrias (t | e | c) 14:59, 22 October 2005 (UTC)
I hadn't. I have now. Thanks for the advice Talrias. --bodnotbod 01:02, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Nomination purging - 2/11/05

I purged some nominations that had missed their targets for quite a while, there seemed to be too many on the page and I thought it would clutter new nominations. But they've been reverted by User:Weirdperson11. I'm going to remove the ones I purged again. If there are any severe aggravations about this, please post here. - Hahnchen 22:11, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

My nomination was deleted List of Federal Highways in Mexico, even though it had 3 votes. I am gonna revert the purge, if you don't like it, just let my nomination fail. Weirdperson11 00:28, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
Why did you revert *all* the purges then, rather than just re-adding the List of Federal Highways one? In any case, the nomination has still failed as it needs three votes per week, which means it needed six votes by 31 October. I have rearchived all the failed nominations. Talrias (t | e | c) 01:15, 3 November 2005 (UTC)


[edit] past COTW template

I think it would be good to have a template to link to COTW from the talk pages of past collaborations. I don't understand templates very well, but I put this together - {{Past cotw}}. Could someone tell me if that will work? Astrokey44 08:12, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

I've made a couple of style changes, and added a category. It sounds like a useful idea in principle; let's see how it works out. Talrias (t | e | c) 12:31, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
good, I think its useful to see the history of an article, for instance if it would get nominated at FAC people might forget that it was a COTW. Why arent all the articles showing up in Category:Past Wikipedia collaborations of the week? Do they have to be added individually? Astrokey44 12:41, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Renominations

Can you really have a topic that has gone due to exceeding the time limit (Population) come back on and selected immediately using old votes? That seems rather unfair.--File Éireann 19:52, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

The votes were readded by rmrfstar (talk · contribs) (I don't know why). I've removed them again. Talrias (t | e | c) 21:09, 26 November 2005 (UTC)
I've removed the old votes for Global Internet Access for fairness.--File Éireann 22:29, 26 November 2005 (UTC)
readding old votes in the equivlent of giving the article an additional week. That equals unfairness.--ZeWrestler Talk 16:26, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
A minimal time limit should be added for this category. In the past when i've renominated stuff to the COTW or AID drive, i've at least waited for a minimal of a month before resubmitting the article. Just out of general curtosy (sorry, i can't spell today) --ZeWrestler Talk 16:26, 27 November 2005 (UTC)


[edit] Vote on Renominations

I hereby propose that in future a rule be added to the project page stating: "Failed nominations may not be resubmitted for one calendar month." (or similar if preferred). Perhaps Talrias or Phoenix will say how long the vote should go on for.--File Éireann 19:05, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

I vote we don't vote, but discuss (in accordance with Wikipedia is not a democracy)! I think one month is a good guideline, so let's just add it in. Talrias (t | e | c) 19:17, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Scores table

Recently I added a scores table to COTW but had it deleted. Its accomplished by adding "x votes, stays until December y, 2005" to the heading of each subsection, to achieve an effect identical to that seen in Wikipedia:Article Improvement Drive. I feel the scores table effect seen in WP:AID contents box adds to the fun of the collaboration and has led to WP:AID now being significantly more popular than COTW. Lets put it back.--File Éireann 22:32, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

I removed it, and was about to write something here to say why I removed it when I was interrupted (sorry). Here's what I wrote on my talk page:
"I agree it could be useful, however the COTW used to have them in the past and frequently they were out-of-date and incorrect, which was confusing. It also has the problem that linking directly to a nomination on the page (using an anchor) will break when the title of the section is updated. I think the potential problems outway the usefulness it would give." Talrias (t | e | c) 22:51, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Nomination of Humanities

I tried to nominate Humanities for COW, but when I entered the template in the standard format it failed to come up as a new nomination. I'm sure I've made some silly mistake, but can't see what, can someone fix this? Purging caches doesn't work, or is this a "stable" page where updates take a day to appear? Sorry for my probable blunder. Thanks, Walkerma 06:25, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

You've done half the process (adding the listing to the COTW page), but you haven't actually made the listing yet. You should follow the rest of the nominating articles guidelines by editing Wikipedia:Collaborations of the Week/Humanities (you've done the first one). Hope this helps, Talrias (t | e | c) 12:58, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, I was just tired (look at the time), I'm not used to such fancy templates! Walkerma 01:50, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Replace new articles with CotWs

How about replacing the requested articles on Special:Recentchanges with the current CotWs? Since anons can't create new articles anymore, it makes sense to do something that they can more easily participate in -- there'd be a lot of general copyediting and tweaking. Wikipedia has an article on everything notable that is not obscure, I think, and the vast majority of people have no inclination and/or resources to do the required research. CotWs tend to be general subjects that a lot of people can help out in (and that interest a lot of people). We could have the general Wikipedia:Collaboration of the week and one or two of the more specialized ones (and active ones, as a bonus, this would be an incentive for more active CotWs) on a rotating basis. Tuf-Kat 07:41, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Discuss at MediaWiki talk:Recentchangestext

[edit] Century articles

Please don't nominate any more century articles. They're not stubs and they're supposed to adhere to a strict layout (Wikipedia:Timeline standards#Layout for century pages). Thank you. --Brunnock 21:21, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

What century articles have been nominated recently? Talrias (t | e | c) 21:36, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
19th century --Brunnock 21:53, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
Duh, that's why I couldn't find it in the archives, because it was the previous COTW *slaps self*. However, I don't see what's wrong with nominating and improving century articles. Yes, they aren't stubs, but only nominating stubs is a consideration, not a rule. And if the strict layout prevents the century article from being a useful overview of the century, then I say ignore the layout and have a good article. If you look at 18th century at the moment, it's just a list of events and famous people, pretty much like 19th century was before it became the collaboration. But now it's got a lot more useful information. I think it's a great improvement - the decade articles, history articles and now this century article have been some of the COTW's post successful collaborations in my opinion. I think we should do more. Talrias (t | e | c) 22:15, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
Agreed. There's nothing "strict" about a style guide. — 0918BRIAN • 2005-12-18 22:28
Could you point out to me what useful information has been added that wasn't already in the list of events? To me, the new additions are an incoherent mess. For example:
Although the romantic influence is present throughout the Victorian Era, there is a visible decline by mid-century: many scientific discoveries in part effected by the industrial Revolution, as Darwin's evolutionism (The Origin of Species, 1859) and French philosopher Auguste Comte inaugurate a new rationalism (positivism), whose literary spinoff is naturalism.
Before you tell me to remove that paragraph, I already tried that. My deletions have been reverted. By making this article a COTW, I think you're telling people that this article is so bad, anything is an improvement. --Brunnock 23:40, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
If that's the impression that you are getting from articles being nominated as COTWs, then I apologise. If an article is nominated as a COTW, it's not because it's so bad that anything is an improvement, it's just that it can be expanded. And 19th century has been. It's got an overview of the 19th century in Europe, in Americas, it's clarified the events which took place into decades (and added a few events not previously in the list), it's categorised the notable people, and introduced each category of famous people (e.g. scientists, religious figures) with a brief overview of developments in the field. You might feel it hasn't improved. I think it has. You definitely can't say the article has got worse. Talrias (t | e | c) 00:08, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
The example that I posted is incoherent garbage. Again, could you please point out what useful new text has been added that wasn't already in the list of events? --Brunnock 00:18, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
Thank you for your complaints. Next time, consider taking part in this collaboration. Or, simply follow this useful link. — 0918BRIAN • 2005-12-19 00:24
I did participate. If you look at Talk:19th century, I participated more than anyone else. I'm surprised that you didn't participate considering that you made the nomination. --Brunnock 00:31, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
I am not complaining about the article, so why are you complaining about me? — 0918BRIAN • 2005-12-19 03:15
I think it made a great COTW and more centuries should be chosen. Having an article with text should always be preferable over a series of lists. -- Astrokey44|talk 03:07, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Meat packing industry

Was meat packing industry supposed to be removed? It had six votes before Dec 19th. Rampart 23:57, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

You're right; I've readded them to the listing. Talrias (t | e | c) 00:13, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
Thanks. Rampart 00:15, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] question about the collaboration of the week process

i notice there are, in italics, expiration dates for each entry. what decides how many articles are required for it not to expire? is it automatic, or changed, or what?--Urthogie 21:53, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

A nomination requires 3 votes per week to remain an "active" nomination. It's updated by anyone who wants to update it. Talrias (t | e | c) 22:00, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Silent Spring

It's very difficult to follow the directions given on this page to add an article as a proposed collaboration of the week. I tried to add Silent Spring (the Rachel Carson ecology book) as a proposed collaboration of the week, and it didn't seem to work properly. Can someone fix this for me?

Killdevil 01:00, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Same for me. The directions indicate that a "new red link" should appear. Where ? And why such a process - please someone explain. --DLL 22:10, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] notastub

created a useful template, {{notastub}}:

The Collaboration of the Week is for stubs and non-existent pages. Consider nominating at the Article Improvement Drive instead.

Enjoy.--Urthogie 08:55, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Where does one use it? If it's on the nomination page, it's very big and bright and is going to draw focus away from the nominations. Simply saying "This is not a stub and is ineligible ..." is sufficient. Talrias (t | e | c) 09:42, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
OK I made it less blaring, so it can be used on nomination page.--Urthogie 10:14, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
It still seems rather pointless, seeing as it's simple to say "Not a stub, ineligible". Perhaps if you changed it into a single line of text so it can be subst'd in? Talrias (t | e | c) 10:18, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
How's that?--Urthogie 10:30, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
I still don't really think the border and image are really necessary. Talrias (t | e | c) 10:38, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
K I'll get rid of those too. How's that--Urthogie 13:08, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
There's still a border. What this needs is just a sentence, no fancy markup is necessary IMO. Talrias (t | e | c) 18:04, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
I disagree about the border. A floating light red space doesn't contrast enough on a white border. Visually unapealling.--Urthogie 18:55, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Collaborations / Collaboration

Since we went back to one collaboration, the subpages for the nominations should say Collaboration and not Collaborations. --Revolución (talk) 01:58, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

I disagree. All the previous nominations using subpages are using "Collaborations of the Week/" as the page they are under. It's best to maintain consistency. If you want to rename all the other subpages to "Collaboration of the week/" then I would support this, but I think having them all subpages of a common page is useful for doing maintenance work. Talrias (t | e | c) 03:13, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Who cares? Doesn't matter one bit. The less work the better on this issue.--Urthogie 10:13, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Renominations

the instructions do no have guidelines for renominating articles. in particular, what should we do with the old votes if the article has been nominated before?--ZeWrestler Talk 02:30, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

I'd say you should throw them out, because people (and articles) change over time.--Urthogie 07:55, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
Well in general, stuff like that tends to get archived.--ZeWrestler Talk 19:39, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
I thought you were asking if the old votes should be counted (my mistake?..). Anyways, yeah, archive that. It might make sense to also inform users who voted that there is a new vote taking place.--Urthogie 21:52, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Updating COTW

No-one seems to have changed Male and Female, described as COTW until Sunday 6 February 2006, 16:00, and it's now Monday. So I'll have a go at updating it following the instructions at the bottom of the page. I'll try and follow those, but never done this beore so if I make any mistakes please let me know and I'll fix them/have a go at making the instructions clearer. Petros471 19:20, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Updating selection process section

I propose adding the following to Selection process:

  • The article with the most votes at selection time will become the next COTW.
  • Articles that fail to receive 3 votes per week from the time of nomination will be removed from this page.

If this is wrong please let me know, however if no-one objects within a couple of days I'll add it- it can always be reverted/improved upon! Petros471 20:41, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Approval voting

OUW! The wikipedia namespace needs more patrolling. Why is Wikipedia:Straw polls absolutely impossible here? Else it's time to switch. Kim Bruning 21:29, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

How would the straw poll format differ from the way it is currently done? Talrias (t | e | c) 21:34, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
How is it the same? Kim Bruning 21:46, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
Because someone puts forward a nomination, then people support it if they agree. They can also leave comments. What are we changing if we use "straw polls" rather than what we use here? Talrias (t | e | c) 21:52, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
I don't understand what you're trying to say here Kim. Could you rephrase? – Quadell (talk) (bounties) 21:39, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
Hmm, because currently it applies approval voting? Voting is typically problematic. Not nescesarily in the wikipedia namespace (though we've had some bad experiences), but people start copying it to namespaces where it's not appropriate.  :-/ Kim Bruning 21:46, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
I really wouldn't switch to straw polls. COTW has a weekly deadline and straw polls are slow and indecisive. They're too namby-pamby and are just plain incompatible with COTW. Juppiter 08:58, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Decline in Popularity

Why is COTW suddenly declining in popularity? Is there anything we can do to promote it? Juppiter 05:34, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

"Suddenly"? Are you new here? -Silence 07:59, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
I remember the popularity of COTW was so that at one point that last summer we started doing two collaborations per week. Please, please, behave like your username. Juppiter 01:38, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
In a way, Silence is right, though. I had this problem the first time I was in charge of the AID. Our system was that the two articles with the most votes got the workover for the week, and at the beginning an article could win with three noms. Interest in these things seems to wax and wane, and I have no idea why. -Litefantastic 02:20, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
Yes, I'm right; both this page and AID receive very little attention. Don't let even the vote-numbers fool you: only a very, very small fraction of the number of people who vote on AID and CotW actually contribute to the articles that win. However, while I can appreciate disagreement, Iuppiter, I certainly don't appreciate you again, a second time, telling me to shut up—after I already told you that I find it offensive and inappropriate on this page a mere four days ago. Please review WP:CIVIL (or, if you prefer, meta:Don't be a dick) and find less antagonistic and hateful ways to try (and fail) to wittily voice dissent, even if you are only saying it in jest. That, or at least find funnier ways to insult me. I've had this name for almost six years now; most puns and jokes based on my name are just profoundly tiresome at this point, rarely holding even a grain of wit or subtlty. Just a note for future reference.
As for the matter at hand, one major problem is that most editors probably don't even know CotW exists. In my view, the way to remedy this is not to plaster even more random pages with advertisements of this (i.e. using the articlespace rather than talkspace to note articles that are nominees for CotW, which is sadly rather close to vandalism in all but intent), but by linking to both CotW and AID (which also suffers from inactivity much more than you'd think (often an entire week's worth of working on an AID candidate will consist chiefly of only about two editors making significant changes!), though much less so than CotW does) on many more Wikipedia-space pages. At least noting what the current AID and CotW article of the week are on a lot more pages would give us a huge boost to activity. For example, when I first found these pages, I even briefly entertained the idea of showing the CotW and/or AID for each week in a corner of Wikipedia's Main Page, though obviously Wikipedia wouldn't want to showcase its deficient articles on the main page for all to see. We're too much like politicians for that. :P -Silence 08:29, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Merge with AID?

Perhaps the problem is that AID and COTW seem too similar. Maybe the existing COTW could be merged into AID and the existing COTW could be relaunched as a project for articles that have not yet been created.

Thoughts on this? Juppiter 04:02, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

The problem is that AID is currently far, far too clogged with articles (to the extent that there's an ongoing debate as to whether we should raise the voting requirement from 3 votes to 4 votes per week, which would make it even more difficult for newly-nominated articles to get any support if they don't have huge name-recognition factor), whereas CotW is far, far too lacking in activity. What we need isn't to make AID even more clogged (with stubs) and CotW even more deserted (lacking its stubs), but to find some way to balance out the field more: to shrink the scope of AID and increase the scope of CotW. And to do this, yes, while making clearer the distinction between the two—ideally. -Silence 04:10, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
COTW + AID should be merged. St jimmy 14:36, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Tie this week

Just wanted to say that we'll go back to one collaboration next week, but I didn't want to extend Meat another week to break the tie because I think we need to keep COTW rolling so it doesn't lose the recent popularity boost it's had. Thus I decided the least *bad* thing to do was to simply have two this week. Juppiter 06:59, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm glad to hear that. Doing two per week was a big part of what nearly killed the COTW last summer. NatusRoma 22:41, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
I am personally deeply offended by this decision and believe that it will be to the great detriment of both articles, which would probably each have been CotWs for an entire week if another few hours had been given to break the tie. I personally would have gladly re-added my vote to or "English Interregnum" or removed it from "letter (alphabet)" to break the tie, as the only reason I removed my vote from "English Interregnum" (when it was 1 vote ahead of "letter") was, knowing that both articles would probably get a whole week as the Collaboration eventually, to get "letter"'s out of the way faster because it's the more urgent topic. This decision was way out of line and a huge error.
I'm even almost tempted to assume (deduce?) bad faith on this issue, considering that Juppiter, the person who unilaterally made this decision, was the person who had nominated English Interregnum and hadn't even voted for Letter (alphabet), implying that he went for a double-collab when Interregnum lost a vote to ensure that his article choice wouldn't lose out to Letter this week. Also worth considering is that Juppiter didn't vote for or help contribute to meat during its week-long stay on CotW, implying that he would also have personal reasons to get it off this week's CotW . Though I don't dispute that Juppiter's primary motive was a good-faith attempt to keep CotW efficient and not let it get bogged down momentarily by a tie, I can't help but think that his lack of interest in both last week's CotW and the CotW competing with English Interregnum factored in to his very hasty and unnecessary action; the fact that he's contributed significantly (along with one other editor) to English Interregnum since its CotWing, along with having been its nominator!, really sets off alarm bells for me. I really dislike attributing selfish motives to other editors, especially ones as valuable and dedicated as Juppiter, but it's just too obvious here to ignore. Even if Juppiter felt that declaring a tie for this week was vitally important to speed things along, he shouldn't have personally made the change himself without at least a discussion on the Talk page, simply because he was too personally involved in one of the nominees! (For the same reason, I myself wouldn't have closed the vote because I was personally involved, having voted for all three CotWs: meat, letter (alphabet) and English Interregnum. But better to be closed by an editor who likes all the articles, and thus would favor and be biased towards each party in the matter, than by one who explicitly and strongly favors a single one of the relevant articles and has zero interest in the other two!) Very poor form.
But I'm more worried about the missed opportunity for both articles than about conspiracy theories or a CotW-closing faux pas. The fact that English Interregnum has barely changed at all even though its CotW-hood is almost halfway through (and letter (alphabet) is. come to think of it, in just as bad a shape: the main thing that's changed dramatically for it has been its images, with only two content edits over the last four days!) over shows the consequences of these actions, whereas waiting a little longer surely wouldn't have done any harm (I don't see what would have been tragic about giving meat a little more time, either, considering how much more there is to improve on the topic!). In the future, please do not be so hasty to nominate two tied articles together rather than waiting slightly longer for a tiebreaking vote; dual nominees was only done speedily for male and female because a simultaneously collab worked so perfectly for such closely-tied articles, not because two articles a week in an already-rather-inactive project is a good thing. I am very disappointed; hopefully some significant good will come to these two articles over the rest of the week despite being forced to compete against each other for editors' attention. Otherwise, it may even be a good idea to renominate one or both of these articles for CotW so they can get the proper attention in a future week; we'll see. -Silence 13:54, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
Silence, then next time don't remove your vote. It was a stupid thing to do. I made a quick decision to keep COTW rolling which was necessitated by your dumb-ass move in taking your vote off. Jeez, there's no winning with you. Nothing is done right unless you do it personally. And remember that little was done on "History of Art" until late in the week and that ended up being quite a successful collaboration. I'm sorry you wasted your time writing this long shpiel instead of actually contributing to the article, but next time don't be such a namby-pamby voter. Next time, if you're gonna remove your vote don't bother voting. Sorry Silence, but I have no patience for you. Juppiter 20:36, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
  • It was not a "stupid thing to do", it was the practical and correct thing to do, considering that human written language and its component letters are more important than a brief period of English history; both were inevitably going to be CotWs, considering how many votes they had and how little competition there was on CotW, but "letter" was a more important topic to get out of the way, so I removed my vote from two of letter's competitors to give it a chance to be that week's CotW. Anyone else could still have voted for "Interregnum" and had it be successful, or they could have voted for "Letter" and it would have won; if no vote came for either, I would simply restore my vote and have "Interregnum" go through. A perfectly reasonable action to take, and they were my votes to use as I wished. I'm afraid that your bias has negatively affected your reasoning a second time. Because you personally don't find "letter" to be an especially important CotW topic, you find it inconceivable that anyone else would disagree, and are offended that I would (temporarily) remove a vote from a topic you were very personally involved in. Shockingly poor form on your part again, to attack someone just because they (temporarily) didn't vote for a CotW candidate you nominated and were invested in. Corruption looms.
  • "I made a quick decision to keep COTW rolling which was necessitated" - A "quick decision" was in absolutely no way necessitated. Ties are not an unusual occurrence on CotW, nor are they a desperate situation; they are very easily to properly handle, and a brief discussion on the matter can inevitably come to a satisfactory way to resolve it for all parties. For example, if you'd requested that I restore my vote in order to "keep CotW rolling", I'd gladly have done so. Instead, you unilaterally and hastily pushed your personal CotW nominee into CotW-hood to suit your own personal interests, ignoring what would most benefit the articles in question and abusing your editor privileges on Wikipedia:Collaboration of the week in a kneejerk reaction to my perfectly reasonable act.
  • "And remember that little was done on "History of Art" until late in the week and that ended up being quite a successful collaboration." - Correct—though I wouldn't call it very successful (it had countless errors, POV problems, lack of citations, massive gaps in knowledge, inconsistencies, etc. when the CotW ended: and still does, as you can see by its article page, adorned with "Needs sources" and "Needs NPOV" as it is!), and that was only due to the specific habits and random actions of one or two involved editors, so it can hardly be relied on as a guide to the pattern all CotWs will fall under. It varies wildly based on what editors happen to be around and when. However, I agree that it is premature to call either CotW a failure; there's still plenty of opportunity to improve both tremendously. I just feel that both would have gotten a much, much better treatment if you hadn't abused the CotW system to promote your specific nominee, Interregnum, more quickly. But I apologize if I exaggerated the damage done to both articles by the dual-nom.
  • "Jeez, there's no winning with you. Nothing is done right unless you do it personally." - Not at all true. You are fabricating a strawman character-sketch of me in lieu of actually addressing any of the points I made. Many of the things I do are wrong, and many of the things other people do are right; you have made plenty of good decisions and judgments in the past, and in this case you have made a remarkably poor decision and have let your personal involvement in the English Interregnum topic and article outweigh your common sense and neutrality. This is not a hideous, unforgivable crime, and it can happen to any editor; but what is key is to not let it happen twice, and to minimize the damage caused by your error in judgment in this occurrence.
  • Also, though I'd hoped it wouldn't come to this: Please review WP:CIVIL (I'll avoid referring you to WP:DICK, that would itself be uncivil :)). "Stupid thing to do", "dumb-ass move", etc. are phrases that will only escalate the conflict, and are clearly unwarranted. An apology would be appreciated, though if you don't feel up to it, I understand; just don't do it again.
  • "I'm sorry you wasted your time writing this long shpiel instead of actually contributing to the article, but next time don't be such a namby-pamby voter." - Again, WP:CIVIL. I don't like quoting Wikipedia policy pages in lieu of arguments and discussion, but you seem to really need it. "If you criticize me you're a bad person because you should have spent that time working on articles instead!" is a tremendously weak argument, and a red herring; likewise, "namby-pamby voter" is a clear mischaracterization and personal attack (and hence a violation of Wikipedia policy), when in fact all I did was cast my votes for the articles I thought would make good CotWs, as is my right in straw-poll-run areas of Wikipedia like this. Attacking my voting practices or personal strength of character will not make your own actions any more acceptable; whether I should or shouldn't have removed my vote (and I see absolutely no reason why I shouldn't have), you still made a grave error by taking decisive, undiscussed action on a vote which you were so very personally invested in. I'm not saying that your action was some villainous, dastardly plot to manipulate the CotW results or anything melodramatic like that, but it certainly was a mistake and a needless rush-job. Such errors in judgment are the worst thing for CotW right now.
  • "Next time, if you're gonna remove your vote don't bother voting." - That doesn't make any sense. I removed my vote temporarily because I personally preferred to have "letter" CotWed this week and "English Interregnum" in the next week or two; as I said when I removed my vote, I planned to re-add it the very next day to ensure that Interregnum would win the next one, either way. Arguing that your actions were justified as a sort of "punishment" for my own "mistake" is completely irrational and disingenuous; this discussion is about your abuse of the CotW system, not about the namby-pambiness (or lack thereof) of my voting preferences. Your taunts and jabs are getting quite silly, in fact; what is this, a confrontation with a playground bully? Come now. If you believe you acted in the right and that I am incorrectly deducing personal involvement and motives where there are none, then defend your actions and explain them more fully and I could very well change my assessment of your action in this case. If my assessment is accurate, then explain that you didn't mean any harm and that you won't make such rash decisions in the future and we'll shake hands and agree to make the best of what we've got. But don't just waste our time with this posturing and these attacks. Please, please.
  • (And sorry about the long comments; I like to be thorough in disputes like these, to avoid potential misunderstandings. Don't worry that I'm wasting too much time when I could be editing articles, incidentally; I'm a much quicker debater than article-editor, since I don't have to worry about WP:NOR when I'm not editing articles. :)) -Silence 22:46, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
    LOL, you know what? You're cool. I apologize (for everything.) Friends? Juppiter 03:49, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
    Heh. Sure, why not. Probably more interesting than being bitter enemies anyway. -Silence 13:18, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
    And let me be perfectly honest and say that I despised meat and really wanted to get it off of there before anything else. I knew you probably wouldn't add your vote back to English Interregnum until Monday, and I didn't want to wait that long (and I wasn't 100% you would.) The last thing I wanted was another week of meat, and it was more about getting rid of that than promotion English Interregnum Juppiter 06:06, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Placement of the COTW template

I was wondering if it was really necessary to place the COTW template on the article's main page itself. Visitors to the site would not be interested in knowing whether this is the current COTW or not. Moreover, the template has nothing to do with the article. If the article is a stub, then there already will be a link near the bottom requesting it to be expanded. So, I suggest we move it to the talk page instead. I'd like to hear your comments on this. thunderboltza.k.a.Deepu_Joseph |TALK

If you're referring to the "CotW nominee" templates, I agree 100%: they should all be moved to the Talk page, as they are relevant only to editors (and on a meta-level), not whatsoever to readers. Branding articles with it is crass page-spamming advertisement for this Wikipedia project, almost amounting to Wikipedia-sponsored page-vandalism by the fact that it degrades the quality of the pages while the box is there. However, if you're saying that we should remove the templates for this week's current CotW, I disagree: there are sufficiently few articles CotWed and it is sufficiently noteworthy enough (unlike merely being nominated, which can happen to any article), that having the template up for one week (unlike the nominee-template, which could end up being there for months) is a good idea. The exact same logic should be applied to WP:AID, but whenever I've tried to in the past, users have opposed it because they've wanted to utilize the article-page noticing to help generate more publicity and votes for their cause, clearly an abuse of the system and rather backwards in terms of priority (the article's current condition and keeping it intact is more important than generating votes for some bureaucratic nonsense; what happens if some newspaper or scientific journal decides to review an article that's got a meaningless CotW or AID notice plastered on it?). -Silence 15:38, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Efficiency?

It seems like the picking on Sundays never gets done on time (same with the Article Improvement Drive, though the Collaboration's pick for this week took way longer than the AID - days? I didn't follow exactly). It also seems like this week's (technically last week's already) got barely any edits at all. Dan1113 01:25, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Dan1113's concerns. I'll update the collaboration now, as I did last week. (The paucity of edits on last week's winner, Lipovans, might be explained by a comment by VKokielov to the Lipovans nomination.) I hope that no one is counting on me to perform the update every week; I'm not an administrator, and I may not be here on a given week. Dan1113 or another member of the community might want to try it instead, once the week's deadline has passed. We could also ask an administrator to swing by once a week, to update the collaboration if no one else has. -Scottwiki 03:02, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Voting only for articles you will personally improve?

EncycloPetey made an interesting addition on 25 April 2006: "Only vote for articles that you will personally help to improve, either with research or with writing." Should this be the rule? I don't believe that it should. What if a person agrees that the article needs editing and expanding, but feels incapable (e.g., due to insufficient subject knowledge) or reluctant (e.g., due to relative experience on Wikipedia) to do it personally? What if the person doesn't have time to work on the article during the particular week when it is COTW (which might one among several weeks after the person submits a vote)? Accordingly, I'll remove the addition, but notify EncycloPetey, who can restore the rule and reply to my view here if he wishes. -Scottwiki 05:49, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

The articles already had the statement: "Do not vote for all of the nominations. If you do, your votes will be discounted, as people can't expect you to work on all of them." This implies strongly that votes are from people who will actively improve articles, so I only added an explicit statement of something that was already implicit. The alternative is to accept voting for articles that "should be improved" by a cabal of people of have no intention of improving the article (as with the Lipovians, where a huge number of people voted for the article, but none of those people improved it.) I added nothing that was not already implicit in the voting criteria. --EncycloPetey 10:00, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
The rule would ineffective, and would discourage involvement so I would oppose it. It would be ineffective cause it is impossible to enforce, and it would discourage some people because they feel that they are comitting themselves to contribute to something they may or may not be able to do. But thats just my guess as to what might happen as a result. I could be completely wrong, and rule might might be beneficial. Falphin 02:40, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
The point is that it's not a new rule -- It was already part of the existing voting scheme. My making the rule more obvious is the result of how the Lipovans process went. Although fifteen people voted for selecting Lipovans as Collaboration of the Week, only one of those people did anything to improve the article. In other words, people are voting but not collaborating. This is supposed to be a collaboration of the week, not most-voted-for-stub article. When people select an article they have no intention to work on nor ability to expand, we end up wasting a week of collaborative effort, as we did last week. It is this that discourages people because they have been forced to work on an article selected by others for them, and for which they will not receive assistance in developing. This is not just a guess about what might happen; this is in fact what happened last week. --EncycloPetey 08:56, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
I agree with ScottWiki. That rule would just discourage people from participating and be damaginf to the COTW project. St jimmy 11:46, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
How do you mean? Do you mean that it will discourage people from voting, or that it will discourage people from collaborating on the weekly project? You don't have to vote for an article to collaborate on it. As it is we have dozens of people voting, but usually six to eight people collaborating during any given week. --EncycloPetey 13:16, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
I mean both. St jimmy 13:28, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] New Collaboration

Could someone update the nominations. There is talk of taking both Fauna(animals) and Flora(plants) as a joint collaboration of the week. I do not know how to do this. If someone could update it. It should have been done yesterday. --Francisco Valverde 11:01, 1 May 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Template on Article or Talk page?

Oleg Alexandrov has raised the issue on Wikipedia talk:Collaborations of whether the template for the current winner of a collaboration should go on the article or the talk page. You might be interested in taking part. Pruneau 00:19, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Does COTW work?

Recently there hasn't been much movement in COTW. Japanese robotics is still the COTW second week running... and no one is updating the candidates and very little votes or comments are done. Does this mean that COTW has ended??? --Francisco Valverde 21:06, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

I'll go ahead and roll it over, but after two weeks, Japanese robotics didn't see much improvement. We'll see if we can salvage the COTW. PDXblazers 02:09, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

The nomination process here is too hard to use. I suggest we make it less edit-heavy - like AID. Davodd 03:12, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
COTW may not work every week, but that's not the important thing. It may depend on a lot of things but we shouldn't hang on to our "failiures", but go on to new collaborations. (Look at the history, there is a broad, broad variation of success. And article size is not everything) ❝Sverdrup❞ 12:35, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
Perhaps the drop in interest is a sign that WP content has matured enough so that there are fewer stub articles on topics that would draw in collaborators. On the other hand many of the collaborations by topic aren't doing very well either. Maybe collaboration has run it's course... — RJH (talk) 19:34, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
I think it's exactly what many of us predicted when all the little collaborations started to splinter off. We've stretched the concept very thin. Davodd 02:01, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
I remember times when there were lots of COTW participants. Now it's slowly dying. It is probably because of the topics people propose for COTW. How many people would know what to write about cocoa butter or open space? We have to maybe restrict COTW to topics on history, geography, music, something like that. Otherwise, it'll only get worse. IMHO, cocoa butter may remain a stub, no harm in that. There's more important stuff out there that is still poorly covered. KNewman 18:37, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
A lot of the specialized collaborations are pretty close to dead as well. Some of them keep the same page up for more than a month or more, but only have a few minor edits. In quite a few cases the only way I've seen a collaboration change to a new topic is when a person went in and finally added some new content. — RJH (talk) 19:49, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] week and new COTW

Since School didn;t get promoted until Tuesday, UTC 03:00, I set the new COTW selection to be chosen NEXT tuesday at 03:00 - in an effort to give the new COTW a full week's worth of attention. - Davodd 03:06, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Overhauled nomination/Voting procedures

I changed the voting/nomination procedures for this project to be in line with the way it was back in 2004 and to be almost identical to WP:AID process. I eliminated the sub pages due to the clunky instruction creep nature. We really no longer need the sub-pages since the traffic on this page is quite low. Also the easier editing may encourage more folks to nominate articles. Davodd 23:03, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Stubs?

Are Visual arts and Landform short enough to qualify as stubs? Maurreen 05:05, 16 July 2006 (UTC) And Personal life? Maurreen 06:12, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Mere opinion: The first two definitely qualify, since they are little more than undeveloped leads. Lists don;t qualify as prose here. The third article is too developed to be a stub. Davodd 21:18, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Question regarding Wikiprojects related to nominations

Is it okay to announce that a topic is nominated for WP:COTW on a Wikiproject page or Portal that is directly related to that project? Would this be considered spamming? Em-jay-es 23:52, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Moving template to talk page

I started a discussion a long time ago to move the COTWnow template to the talk page. My reasoning is that meta-data templates which provide no information to the reader belong in an article's atalk page. Joelito (talk) 19:22, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] WikiProject Biography

Let us know if you happen to pick an article on a person and we'll alert our members! plange 05:43, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Taking a Wikibreak

I will be taking a WIki break for the next few months being that law school has started back up and I need to make that my No. 1 priority. Due to this, I will be unable to maintain this project. I will be proposing a merger of this project with WP:AID. - Davodd 18:33, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Proposed merger: WP:AID and WP:COTW

WP:AID split off months ago from WP:COTW, as WP:COTW was focused only on filling in major gaps in Wikipedia. Being that the English project has very few major topic stub/missing articles, it appears that WP:COTW has fulfilled its mission and made itself unneeded. Case in point - the dwindling of nominations and participants of WP:COTW. Finally, I have stepped up and volunteered to maintain WP:COTW for the past few months, but am heading-into a forced Wikibreak due to law School starting back up. It seems the time has come to congratulate COTW for a job well done and and send it off into the WP Archives, allowing the participants of COTW and AID join together in a single project once again. - Davodd 18:33, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

  • Agree. See my talk at the AID. -Litefantastic 18:57, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
  • I disagree. The AID is for the average article on Wikipedia. COTW is for stubs and underdeveloped articles. They're for 2 different things. Green caterpillar 01:11, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Merger

I think I'm going to start the AID/COTW merger now. Operating under the "be bold" school of thought, I think (given the above enthusiasm here, and the lack of complaints at AID) I'll start this as soon as I'm sure I won't really, really mess things up. -Litefantastic

[edit] Project directory

Hello. The WikiProject Council has recently updated the Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory. This new directory includes a variety of categories and subcategories which will, with luck, potentially draw new members to the projects who are interested in those specific subjects. Please review the directory and make any changes to the entries for your project that you see fit. There is also a directory of portals, at User:B2T2/Portal, listing all the existing portals. Feel free to add any of them to the portals or comments section of your entries in the directory. The three columns regarding assessment, peer review, and collaboration are included in the directory for both the use of the projects themselves and for that of others. Having such departments will allow a project to more quickly and easily identify its most important articles and its articles in greatest need of improvement. If you have not already done so, please consider whether your project would benefit from having departments which deal in these matters. It is my hope that all the changes to the directory can be finished by the first of next month. Please feel free to make any changes you see fit to the entries for your project before then. If you should have any questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you. B2T2 13:32, 26 October 2006 (UTC)