User talk:Mukkakukaku

Welcome to the fourth issue of the Birds WikiProject newsletter. It's been a good month for article improvement, with six new GA articles, and one new FA article. And we managed to save the featured status of List of birds in Canada and the United States, which had been threatened with delisting. There's still plenty to do on all fronts, of course...

Articles of note

New featured articles and lists:

1. Cattle Egret (May 8)

New good articles:

1. Pamela C. Rasmussen (May 8)
2. White-winged Fairy-wren (May 17)
3. European Robin (May 19)
4. Common Treecreeper (May 24)
5. Puerto Rican Amazon (May 26)
6. Flammulated Flycatcher (May 30)

Welcome to our newest members

• Kirkmona (talk · contribs)
• Pamela Gardiner (talk · contribs)
• PrehistoricManiac08 (talk · contribs)
• Sting au (talk · contribs)

Bird article statistics

Bird articles		Importance
		Top	High	Mid	Low	None	Total
Quality
	FA	2	11	16	17	5	51
	GA		6	15	6		27
	B	16	52	81	78	2	229
	Start	20	156	518	1568	148	2410
	Stub	6	53	517	2817	6203	9596
	List		19	9	9	63	100
	Assessed	44	297	1156	4495	6421	12413
	Total	44	297	1156	4495	6421	12413

Collaboration efforts

• We improved our April collaboration (Cattle Egret) all the way to FA status! Help us to do the same with this month's project collaboration. The White Wagtail is a very variable species (or is it several species, as some authorities insist?) found throughout much of Europe, Asia, and northern Africa, and in small numbers in westernmost Alaska.
• Be sure to vote for July's collaboration, which will be chosen on 21 June. We could use a few new nominations...

Domestic pigeons task force

We have our first official task force, covering articles related to domestic pigeons; new project member OnorioCatenacci (talk · contribs) started the group in May. If you're interested in helping with that suite of articles, drop by the new task force page at WP:PIGEONS.

Project news

• The ongoing drive to improve our bird family articles continues; there are still at least 36 bird family articles currently rated as stubs. If you'd like to help improve one or more, the list of those needing work is here.
• A change in Wikipedia's taxobox setup has meant the removal of the IUCN status scale image from all articles. To re-display the scale, add "| status_system = iucn3.1" to the taxobox parameters in any article for which it is appropriate.

Got a suggestion? A correction? Something you'd like to see included in a future issue? Drop a note at the Tip Line with your ideas!

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Project news

• Editors needed for Tag & Assess 2008. To coincide with the summer holidays, it will be gearing up from 15 June. As usual, barnstars galore!
• Partner peer reviews: for a thirty-day trial period, we'll be running joint peer reviews with Wikiproject Video Games. The idea is simple: we help with their reviews; they help with ours. This way both wikiprojects benefit from new reviewers and new ideas!
• We're notable: A new book, Simon Fowler's 2007 Guide to Military History on the Internet (UK:Pen & Sword, ISBN 9781844156061) rates Wikipedia as "the best general resource" for military research (p. 7). Of the military pages, he says: "The results are largely accurate and generally free of bias" (he also suggests people join the wikiproject). When rating WP as the No. 1 military site (p. 201) he says "Wikipedia is often criticised for its inaccuracy and bias, but in my experience the military history articles are spot on."
• A-Class reviews: the usual four-day review period may now be extended by up to three days (ie seven days in total) in the following circumstances:

1. the article has no opposes but has insufficient support for promotion or
2. the article's nominator requests more time to resolve matters arising during the review.

The full text is here.

• The special projects department has opened. It will focus on specific ad-hoc high-priority tasks and implement them with informal, short-term groups of editors.
• The Contest department has completed its fourteenth month of competition, which saw 16 entries. The top scorer this month is Cam with 21 points, followed by Redmarkviolinist with 11 points. Woody, Dreamafter, Kyriakos, Nousernamesleft and Outdawg also fielded entries. Blnguyen remains the overall leader, with 188 points in total. You are encouraged to submit articles you're working on as entries.

Articles of note

New featured articles:

1. Battle of Tassafaronga
2. Funerary Monument to Sir John Hawkwood
3. HMS Cardiff (D108)
4. Krulak Mendenhall mission
5. Le Quang Tung
6. Operation Passage to Freedom
7. Paul Nobuo Tatsuguchi

New featured lists:

1. List of Texan survivors of the Battle of the Alamo
2. List of Victoria Cross recipients of the Royal Navy
3. List of Victoria Cross recipients of the Indian Army

New A-Class articles:

1. Battle of the Kalka River
2. Battle of Verrières Ridge
3. Brian Horrocks
4. Byzantine navy
5. Erich Hartmann
6. Montana class battleship

Current proposals and discussions

• A discussion has been opened into the structuring of top level operational categories, starting with Category:World War II. All interested editors are invited to help establish a consensus.

Awards and honors

• Congratulations go to Hlj, who has been awarded the WikiChevrons with Oak Leaves in recognition of his many consistently fine and valuable contributions to military history articles within the American Civil War task force.

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