User talk:Dvandersluis/Archive 3

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This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

← Archive 2 |

Archive 3

| Archive 4 →

1 GA 2nd Opinion
2 CN Tower‎
3 GAC to GAN move
4 300-page iPhone bill
5 Wikimania 2009
6 WikiProject Good Articles Newsletter for November 2007
7 In Remembrance...
8 Bot for updating Template:Wikification progress
9 WikiProject Good Articles Newsletter for December 2007
10 League of Copyeditors roll call
11 WikiProject Good Articles January Newsletter
12 Your copyedit request
13 WikiProject Good Articles Newsletter
14 CbmBOT

GA 2nd Opinion

We at the GA wikiproject are testing out a 2nd opinion request feature as mentioned on the talk page. If it is possible it would help if the bot had the functionality to add the articles awaiting a second opinion to the GAC report. Thanks. Tarret^talk 23:24, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

CN Tower‎

The CN Tower article received heavy editing today by new/unregistered users, which I noticed at WikiRage.com. The article may benefit from a good review. According to Wikipedia Page History Statistics, you are one of the top contributors to that page. If you have the time, would you please read over the article and make any necessary changes. Thanks. -- Jreferee ^(Talk) 16:32, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

GAC to GAN move

For consistency, Wikipedia:Good article candidates will soon be moved to Wikipedia:Good article nominations. A similar change will happen to the /Report subpage, which will affect one of the workings of User:StatisticianBot. Thanks in advance for your help with this transition. Geometry guy 20:29, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Any idea when this is going to happen? Obviously the bot needs to be updated for this, but not until it occurs, and between the page move and next report run, or else it will clobber the GAC/R page (assuming it is converted to a redirect). So I'd appreciate having as much advance notice as is possible, thanks. —Daniel Vandersluis^(talk) 22:31, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Many thanks for sorting out these subpages, and apologies for moving the /backlog/items page without realising that this also affects the bot. The main page move requires an admin, and I have asked one. I will keep let you know when it happens, and keep an eye on the relevant pages. Thanks again. Geometry guy 18:25, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

The page has now been moved. Geometry guy 21:07, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Okay, I've updated the bot to match. Everything should be working properly (I did a dry, non-updating test), but if something goes wrong (pages don't get updated, bad output, etc.) after the next daily run, let me know and I'll investigate. —Daniel Vandersluis^(talk) 21:21, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Thank you again. As a fellow not-entirely-successfully-Wikibreakian, I especially appreciate your work. Geometry guy 21:43, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

No problem ;) Wikibreaks are overrated anyways ;) —Daniel Vandersluis^(talk) 21:44, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, right! Geometry guy 21:56, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

300-page iPhone bill

Thanks for the detailed comments. I have addressed the changes requested, and most were completed per your recommendations. Dhaluza 03:03, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

I think the fact that so many editors do not think the article is even notable (based on the votes from the deletion reviews) should cause some alarm. IMO there should be a consensus that an article should even exist before it is considered in the top .3% of articles (i.e. one of the 5000 good/featured articles). I agree it is *approaching* a technically "good" article, but it is currently not stable. Please read some of my comments on the talk page and tell me if you agree or disagree (or if notability is not relevant to goodness, you can ignore them). Rm999 07:10, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Notability is related to sourcing, and this article cites dozens. Many editors do not like many articles, but the inclusion criteria are not based on popularity with editors. Dhaluza 11:27, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

I would agree with Dhaluza. There is no specification that perceived "notability" affects an article's goodness, or even its inclusion in Wikipedia to begin with. Notability depends on sourcing: "A topic is presumed to be notable if it has received significant coverage in reliable secondary sources that are independent of the subject," and this article is heavily and diversely sourced. As such, I do not see a problem with granting this article GA status if it is written to that level. —Daniel Vandersluis^(talk) 18:25, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but I still disagree with the article being a GA. Ignoring notability (which was my first objection to the article itself), I think it is misdirected at the topic. I can live with an article existing on the controversy, but it should be about that, not an example of it. You don't call the article on cars "Ford." This article should be renamed, and restructured to reflect the renaming. I have nominated the article to be de-listed as a GA. I'm not trying to annoy you or Dhaluza, but I have a few problems with the article as is (which other editors have agreed with). Rm999 06:13, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

FYI, it's been nominated again at AfD. Feel free to comment at: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/300-page iPhone bill (second nomination)‎ —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dhaluza (talk • contribs) 11:28, 18 November 2007 (PST)

Thanks for the notification, I've commented on the AfD. —Daniel Vandersluis^(talk) 14:23, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Wikimania 2009

Support TORONTO in its bid to become the host city of WIKIMANIA 2009 Visit m:Wikimania 2009/Toronto for TORONTO's MetaWiki page and help build a strong bid.
Toronto Candidate City for Wikimania 2009

-- Zanimum 15:59, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject Good Articles Newsletter for November 2007

The November 2007 issue of the WikiProject Good Articles newsletter has been published. Comments are welcome on this, as well as suggestions or offers of assistance for the December 2007 issue. Dr. Cash 01:10, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

In Remembrance...

--nat ^{Alo! Salut! Sunt eu, un haiduc?!?!} 00:16, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Bot for updating Template:Wikification progress

Hi, Dvandersluis. I was wondering if either CbmBOT or StatisticianBot could be used, modified or copied to automatically update Template:Wikification progress for WikiProject Wikify. I noticed that StatisticianBot was proposed for updating Template:Copyedit progress, but this was never carried out; Template:Wikification progress is virtually identical to the copyedit progress template. It would be a great help to the wikiproject to be able to have the template updated automatically. Please let me know what you think. Cheers. – Liveste 05:52, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

I could definitely do this, and StatisticianBot was created with adding more similar tasks in mind. What I would need from you is a complete write up of exactly what you want the bot to do, in full (ie. how the page tracks the stats, etc.). However, I must point out that I am not sure at the moment when I will have time to program another task for the bot, as I have another task already waiting to be added, and my time is quite short at the moment.

In any event, if you would like me to add your task and are prepared to wait, I don't mind taking it out. The process would be something like this: I would add the code for your task to the bot, at which point the task would be listed at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval. If they accept the task, it would go into a limited trial, at which point it would then be approved (and started as a regular process) or denied. —Daniel Vandersluis^(talk) 14:27, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Sorry for the delay in replying. I've just posted a discussion at the WikiProject to see whether or not the template's format should be changed. I'll get back to you within a week (or two). In any case I'll give you information on how the template should be updated then. (By the way, I do have your talk page watchlisted.) Thanks for your help. – Liveste (talk) 06:53, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject Good Articles Newsletter for December 2007

The December 2007 issue of the WikiProject Good Articles newsletter has been published. Comments are welcome on this, as well as suggestions or offers of assistance for the January 2008 issue. Dr. Cash 00:59, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

League of Copyeditors roll call

Greetings from the League of Copyeditors. Your name is listed on our members page, but we are unsure how many of the people listed there are still active contributors to the League's activities. If you are still interested in participating in the work of the League, please follow the instructions at the members page to add your name to the active members list. Once you have done that, you might want to familiarise yourself with the new requests system, which has replaced the old /proofreading subpage. As the old system is now deprecated, the main efforts of the League should be to clear the substantial backlog which still exists there.
The League's services are in as high demand as ever, as evinced by the increasing backlog on our requests pages, both old and new. While FA and GA reviewers regularly praise the League's contributions to reviewed articles, we remain perennially understaffed. Fulfilling requests to polish the prose of Wikipedia's highest-profile articles is a way that editors can make a very noticeable difference to the appearance of the encyclopedia. On behalf of the League, if you do consider yourself to have left, I hope you will consider rejoining; if you consider yourself inactive, I hope you will consider returning to respond to just one request per week, or as many as you can manage. Merry Christmas and happy editing, The League of Copyeditors.

Melon‑Bot (STOP!) 18:14, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject Good Articles January Newsletter

Happy New Year! Here is the latest edition of the WikiProject GA Newsletter! Dr. Cash (talk) 03:57, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

The Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles Newsletter

The WikiProject Good Articles Newsletter
Volume I, No. 3 - January 2008

December issue | February issue

Project News

There are now 3,301 Good Articles listed at WP:GA. With 1,789 current featured articles, that brings the total of good and featured articles to 5,090!

The most recently promoted articles are: Hurricane Daniel (2006), Tarbosaurus, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, Wicca, Seth MacFarlane, Stanley Internment Camp, Hurricane Karen (2007), Interstate 155 (Illinois), Tropical Storm Ingrid (2007), Brian Sings and Swings, Winston Churchill, Mzoli's, John Kefalas, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

The backlog at Good Article Nominations has recently exploded to 236 unreviewed articles! Out of 264 total nominations, 17 are on hold, 10 are under review, and one is seeking a second opinion. Please go to WP:GAN and review an article or three as soon as you have a chance!

The oldest unreviewed articles are: Attachment disorder, Byzantium under the Palaiologoi, Byzantium under the Angeloi, Wowowee, Tyrone Wheatley, Mina (singer), Jon Burge, Mercury Hayes, William Lowndes Yancey, and Toni Preckwinkle.

The top five categories with the largest backlogs are: Sports and recreation (47 articles), Film and cinema (25 articles), Television and journalism (16 articles), Art and architecture (15 articles), and Politics and government (14 articles).

The backlog at Good Article Reassessment currently stands at 17 articles up for re-review.

If every participant of WikiProject Good Articles could review just one article in the next week, the backlog would be almost eliminated!

Reviewer of the Month

Dihydrogen Monoxide is the GAN Reviewer of the Month of December, based on the assessments made by Epbr123 of the number and thoroughness of the reviews made by individual reviewers each week. Dihydrogen Monoxide hails from Brisbane (which, incidentally, is almost a GA, kids ;)) and has been editing Wikipedia since August 2006. He mostly likes to review articles relating to music, Australia, or anything else that takes his fancy! He also has two articles waiting, and notes that there's still a huge backlog,... so get cracking!

Other outstanding reviewers recognized during the month of December include:

Member News

There are now 166 members of WikiProject Good Articles! Welcome to the 7 new members that joined during the month of December:

This WikiProject, and the Good Article program as a whole, would not be where it is today without each and every one of its members! Thank you to all!

GAReview Template

Lots of you that frequent WP:GAN have undoubtedly seen the articles under review, marked with "Review - I am reviewing this article. ...". The articles have been marked as being under review by an editor using the {{GAReview}} template. The purpose of this template is essentially to prevent two editors from reviewing the same article at the same time, so it's essentially a common courtesy notice to other editors so that they don't pass or fail an article while you're in the midst of collecting and writing comments. However, just because an article is marked, shouldn't preclude another editor from contributing to the review. If you'd like to review it, go ahead; simply collect your comments and write them down on the article's talk page – but don't pass or fail the article – leave that to the other reviewer.

To use this template yourself, simply write "#:{{GAReview}} ~~~~" on the line immediately following the article's nomination at WP:GAN. You can even leave additional comments as well (e.g. "#:{{GAReview}} I will finish my review in the next 24 hours. ~~~~"). Reviewers marking articles with this template should also observe some common etiquette; please don't mark more than 1-3 articles as being under review at a time, and please try and finish your review within 3-5 days of marking the article.

GA Sweeps

After openly requesting the community for more participants into the Sweeps, we have 3 more members on the board. They are (in no particular order) Canadian Paul, VanTucky, and Masem. Canadian Paul will be sweeping "Middle East and the World" articles. VanTucky will be sweeping "Religion, mysticism, and mythology" and "Literature" articles. Masem will be sweeping "Television episodes". We're still looking for more reviewers. Interested individuals should contact OhanaUnited for details.

At this moment, participation in the sweeps project is by invitation only, as we desire experienced reviewers who have a thorough and extensive knowledge of the criteria. This is to ensure that articles that have "fallen through the cracks" would be found and removed, and that additional articles don't fall through the cracks during the sweep.

Currently, there are 16 members working on the project, and we have reviewed 74 articles in December 2007. Of those that are swept, 275 articles are kept as GA, 126 articles are delisted, and 5 promoted to FA.

Did You Know,...

... that the total number of good and featured articles is now over 5000?
... that GA was formed on October 11, 2005 and was formerly called "Half-decent articles"?
... that there is a bot (StatisticianBot) that gives a daily report on GAN?
... that many discussions were made over the years on whether GA should have a symbol placed on the main article space, yet at the end always removed?
... that there was a proposal to change the GA symbol to a green featured star?

From the Editors

Happy New Year, everyone! I'm just filling in for Dr. Cash as he's busy (or away) in real life. This explains why I wasn't prepared for a full-length article on GA process, and instead I resort to a tiny DYK for GA.

OhanaUnited

Happy New Year as well! I'm still here, and haven't totally disappeared. I had to cut back on editing and reviewing during the month of December as I made the transition from Flagstaff, Arizona to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. But I should be about settled in the Keystone State, so I'll be contributing more to Wikipedia again in the new year. Thanks to OhanaUnited for putting together much of the content for this newsletter! He's been working hard with the Sweeps, and the 'Did You Know' section is also a great idea, so I think that will become a regular feature now! I also figured out how to have a collapsible newsletter, so that will change our delivery options a bit. Cheers!

Dr. Cash

Contributors to this Issue

Dr. Cash (Lead Editor, Distributor)
OhanaUnited (GA Sweeps correspondent)

Improving Wikipedia one article at a time since 2005!

WikiProject Good Articles: Open Tasks This project identifies, organizes and improves good articles on Wikipedia.
Nominations: Choctaw • One Night Stand (2007) • Impalement arts • Backlash (2007) • Sam Cowan Reassessment: Madonna (entertainer) • Sweeps / List: references (All Categories), image tags (All Categories), article quality (All Categories) Possible GAs Needing References: Clarinet • Carleton University • Appalachian Mountains Task forces: Project quality • Unreferenced GA
Good article criteria \| Statistics \| GAN Report \| Changes log Nominations queue: 209 articles (45 of them are on hold) as of 08:00, 9 June 2008 \| edit

Your copyedit request

On 20 March 2007, you made a request to the League of Copyeditors for a copyedit of Supreme Commander. Because of a heavy backlog and a shortage of copyeditors, we have been unable to act on your request in a timely manner, for which we apologize. Since your request, this article may have been subject to significant editing and may no longer be a good candidate for copyediting by the League. If you still wish the League to copyedit this article, please review this article against our new criteria and follow the instructions on the Requests page. This will include your request in our new system, where it should receive more prompt attention. Finetooth (talk) 03:58, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

WikiProject Good Articles Newsletter

The February 2008 issue of the WikiProject Good Articles Newsletter is ready! Dr. Cash (talk) 05:31, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

The Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles Newsletter

The WikiProject Good Articles Newsletter
Volume I, No. 4 - February 2008

January issue | March issue

Project News

There are now 3,485 Good Articles listed at WP:GA.

The backlog at Good Article Nominations is 206 unreviewed articles. Out of 251 total nominations, 37 are on hold, 7 are under review, and 1 is seeking a second opinion. Please go to WP:GAN and review an article or three as soon as you have a chance!

The oldest unreviewed articles are: Johan Derksen, Trafford, J. Michael Bailey, Greg Skrepenak, Paleolithic-style diet, Alan Dershowitz, Natalee Holloway, Slovenian presidential election, 2007, San Francisco Municipal Railway, and Marcela Agoncillo.

The top five categories with the largest backlogs are: Sports and recreation (57 articles), Theatre film and drama (34 articles), Music (19 articles), Transport (17 articles), Politics and government (16 articles), World history (13 articles), and Meteorology and atmospheric sciences (13 articles).

The backlog at Good Article Reassessment currently stands at 8 articles up for re-review.

If every participant of WikiProject Good Articles could review just one article in the next week, the backlog would be almost eliminated!

GA Sweeps Update

During January, 57 Good Articles were reviewed. Including those articles that were under GAR or on hold, 35 were kept as GA, 20 delisted, 9 currently on hold or at GAR, and 3 were exempted as they are now Featured Articles.

Reviewer of the Month

Ealdgyth is the GAN Reviewer of the Month for January, based on the assessments made by Epbr123 on the number and thoroughness of the reviews made by individual reviewers each week. Ealdgyth, known in real life as Victoria Short, hails from Central Illinois, and has been editing Wikipedia since May 26, 2007. In this short time, she has made significant contributions to 9 Good Articles, including Baldwin of Exeter and Hubert Walter. Her interests in editing are in the areas of the Middle Ages, History, and horses. Outside of Wikipedia, she is starting her own photography business, and owns three horses. She likes to read science fiction, history, and geneology books. Congratulations to our GAN Reviewer of the Month for January!

Other outstanding reviewers recognized during the month of January include:

Member News

There are now 176 members of WikiProject Good Articles! Welcome to the 15 new members that joined during the month of January:

This WikiProject, and the Good Article program as a whole, would not be where it is today without each and every one of its members! Thank you to all!

On Hold versus Failing an Article

This month, I thought I'd focus on a less technical and more of a procedural issue at WP:GAN – determining what the appropriate course of action to take when reviewing an article. Currently, there are four options to decide what to do with an article:

Passing – it meets all six of the good article criteria; add it to WP:GA and add {{ArticleHistory}} or {{GA}} to the article's talk page.
Failing it – it does not meet the criteria; remove the article's listing from WP:GAN and add {{ArticleHistory}} or {{failedGA}} to the article's talk page.
On Hold – The article meets most of the criteria, but might fall short in a few areas; keep it listed at WP:GAN, add #: {{GAOnHold|ArticleName}} ~~~~ below the listing and add {{GAonhold}} to the article's talk page.
Second Opinion – Similar to the on hold option, except an editor is either inexperienced or not knowledgeable enough about a given topic and asks another reviewer to offer another opinion before passing or failing; add #: {{GA2ndopinion|ArticleName}} ~~~~ to WP:GAN below the article's listing and add {{GA2ndoptalk}} to the article's talk page.

So how to you know when an article fails outright, or fails initially, but meets "enough" of the criteria to be placed on hold? The answer to this question probably varies by about the same amount as there are reviewers of Good Articles! Everybody treats this slightly differently. The most important thing to consider is that articles should not be on hold for longer than about one week. Although there is no hard and fast time limit for this, most editors would probably agree that five to seven days is enough time to address any GA-related issues with the article to get it to pass. Some editors have extended this a few days in the past, due to other extenuating circumstances, such as an article's primary editor being very busy with school or work, so they have asked for extra time. But as a general rule, a GA nominee that is placed on hold should meet enough of the criteria to be able to be passed within five to seven days. Some examples of articles that might be placed on hold would be:

the article is mostly complete, but might be missing one topic (subcategory).
minor copyediting is required (needs a few minor manual of style, spelling, or grammatical fixes.
mostly well sourced, but missing maybe a handful of references.
a couple of images need to be tagged with appropriate copyright tags.

On the other hand, an article should be failed if it:

is missing several topic categories, or there are several sections which are very short (1-3 sentences per section).
contains numerous sections which are just lists of information, as opposed to written out as prose.
there's entire sections of text that have no references, or there are a lot of {{cn}} or {{unreferenced}} tags.
has evidence of an active edit war in the article history.
has major neutrality issues.
has any {{cleanup}} or other warning tags in various places.

Did You Know...

... that on July 19, 2007, 1,548 good articles that have not been categorized at all were categorized in 15 days?
... that in Chinese Wikipedia, articles need to have at least six net support votes before they are promoted to GA?
... that the English Wikipedia has the most Good Articles, the German Wikipedia has the second most (at over 2000), followed by the Spanish Wikipedia (at over 800), the Chinese Wikipedia (at over 400), and the French Wikipedia (at over 200)?
... that Simple English Wikipedia has zero Good Articles?
... that "Sport and games people" category has the most Good Articles?
... that Virginia Tech massacre (which is now a featured article) was promoted to GA just only about one month after the shooting incident, but took more than seven months to reach FA status?

From the Editors

Originally, I wasn't planning to do "Did you know" other than as a fill-in for Dr. Cash. However, I decided to continue writing this section until I ran out of ideas.

OhanaUnited

Please leave any comments or feedback regarding this issue here.

Dr. Cash

Contributors to this Issue

Dr. Cash (Lead Editor, Distributor)
OhanaUnited (GA Sweeps and Did You Know correspondent)

Improving Wikipedia one article at a time since 2005!

WikiProject Good Articles: Open Tasks This project identifies, organizes and improves good articles on Wikipedia.
Nominations: Choctaw • One Night Stand (2007) • Impalement arts • Backlash (2007) • Sam Cowan Reassessment: Madonna (entertainer) • Sweeps / List: references (All Categories), image tags (All Categories), article quality (All Categories) Possible GAs Needing References: Clarinet • Carleton University • Appalachian Mountains Task forces: Project quality • Unreferenced GA
Good article criteria \| Statistics \| GAN Report \| Changes log Nominations queue: 209 articles (45 of them are on hold) as of 08:00, 9 June 2008 \| edit

CbmBOT

CbmBOT seems to have taken an error and placed an empty chart of articles remaining for cleanup. (Not critical but the statistics are much appreciated). RJFJR (talk) 13:54, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

I've fixed the problem and reran the bot manually. As usual, let me know if there's every any problems and I'll take a look. —Daniel Vandersluis^(talk) 15:16, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Thank you. RJFJR (talk) 19:20, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

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