Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles

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[edit] 1911 missing inline citations

It is nice to put text from 1911 Britannica in WP but since the aim is to help direct people to other resources from WP articles, it would be nice to take all the articles and add inline citations to comfort each fact given in Britannica so that this information is verified and checked. Lincher 01:00, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

It is not nice to put text from 1911 in WP because it is out of date. Rather than keeping ancient text and adding notes to it. Better to write prose appropriate to 2006. The 1911 project is already "finished" though so the point may be moot. Pcb21 Pete 09:47, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] List for the project

Hi. I'm not sure where it should be listed exactly, but I thought WP:MEA should know about this list of record labels that was taken from List of independent record labels, which seems to be on the verge of deletion.

Please sign your messages. This is to follow basic Wikipedia gudelines. --Siva1979Talk to me 19:48, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] American Senators

Down to about 100 senators in the American senators page, out of almost 2000. Any help?--Rayc 03:49, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] One new list of missing topics

I have collected a list of possible topics based on the sources I have. The list is bound to overlap with other similar lists and I'm sure some are just in need of a proper redirect. Could any interested parties have a look? - Skysmith 09:56, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

A simple thing you can do to help identify redirects is to add or modify one of the existing search templates. (Template:Search, Template:SearchCath, Template:SearchFilm, Template:SearchAlbums. It makes it much much easier to search wikipedia for existing items or as a starting point for creating articles. If you are "finished" creating the list, you can feel free to add it to another list available to the community. --Reflex Reaction (talk)• 14:37, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
Ah, thank you. - Skysmith 10:23, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Article titled Ashtapradhan

Ashta Pradhan (wp gwp g | eb 1911 co en gct sw) Ashta pradhan - available on WP as Ashtapradhan but currently on AFD. Thought it best to put a note here. --Gurubrahma 12:52, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Removal of a couple of lists

I would like to propose the removal of the following lists:

These list don't have to be deleted - (except the copyright violations), they can be userfied, moved elsewhere or simply remain. However, they have not raised the attention of any users and do not seem to be serving the function of this project, which is identification of topics. Thanks! --Reflex Reaction (talk)• 15:02, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Links that link to the article that links them?

Confusing title, I know. But I am looking for help on the Raisinets page.

See, Raisinets is a registered trademark of a relatively popular candy (apparently the original brand name chocolate-covered raisins, to be exact, and it's been in the U.S. for almost 90 years). Yet the page Raisinets automatically redirects ONLY to a page (and a stub at that) that only talks about chocolate-covered raisins in general, and only mentions Raisinets in passing, saying that it's "another word" for the candy based on the trademark. It even links to Raisinets, which is annoying as hell, because it just puts you back on the exact same page - which is, again, a stub about the general TYPE of candy with hardly any information on the Raisinets brand itself. We don't do this with kleenex, so why do it with with Raisinets?? :\

I have no idea how to undo a redirect. :( Please help! Even if this isn't the right WikiProject for it (I figured it might be, since even though it's got a circular link, it also requires the creation of a seperate article in place of the redirect), I'd appreciate so much as being pointed in the right direction! Runa27 18:54, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Just go here and write a real article :) Haukur 19:49, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 1911encylopedia.org wikified

Some time in the past 4 days, LoveToKnow (1911encylopedia.org) has been wikified, using MediaWiki software, no less. According to the explanation, anyone can log in to correct OCR errors and extend the encylopedia (in separate pieces of text). I'm not sure what to make of this - it will be interesting to see whether it gets traction. We now have the Tim Starling scans, which means we have access to the original text anyway. Any thoughts? Did anyone see any announcement? And am I the only one caring about 1911 verification any more? David Brooks 06:34, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

More: although anyone can log in and edit, they now explicitly claim claim copyright on any changes. This license text was expanded July 11 from a short statement claiming copyright on all content (although they forgot to change the copyright years; right now it says 2002 and 2003). WP editors certainly shouldn't volunteer changes, and using this as a source text is now even more likely to be tainted. Also, although the recent changes list starts July 11, the edit history of the index suggests the wiki version has been in development since August 2005.
And, while I'm on the subject, the other online encyclopedia is now accepting submitted corrections; I didn't see when that happened. They have a simple copyright claim on the entire site content, so again it may cover submissions. David Brooks 14:45, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
Hi, David, I'm working on bringing all the articles of the EB1911 to the GA status so I'm trying to help in fact-checking and rephrasing the encyclopedia to our day texts and all. If you've got any questions drop me a line or look at the first page of the EB1911 verif page. Lincher 04:14, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

IANAL (I am not a Lawyer) but US Copyright law and wikipedia itself come to the rescue. See Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp.. Summing up, "Even if accurate reproductions require a great deal of skill, experience and effort, the key element for copyrightability under U.S. law is that copyrighted material must show sufficient originality." While the case specifically applies to photographs, I am sure the translation to written works and OCR is relevant. Further, Feist Publications v. Rural Telephone Service is where the Supreme Court shifts from "sweat alot, its copyrightable" to "The court clarified that the intent of copyright law was not, as claimed by Rural and some lower courts, to reward the efforts of persons collecting information, but rather "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" (U.S. Const. 1.8.8), that is, to encourage creative expression." The findings of the court were unanimous. A good read. Attempting to copyright public domain text by just OCRing it will likely fail if tried in court. Copy and paste as needed, there is no danger of "taint," at least for US based wikipedia folks Electrawn 07:21, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

The problem, potentially, comes when and if the online sites add original and useful text (submitted or their own) directly to their versions of the articles that isn't in the printed original. That may well be contrary to their original intent, but who's to stop them, and who's to know? After all, it does say "based on". There is a related danger, that innocent people might notice the extensions and (not reading the warnings here and elsewhere) assume that they too are free. I'm being cautious here, but I think appropriately. David Brooks 16:48, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
I am a developer with three monitors. Monitor left has 1911, monitor right has the png scans on wikisource and monitor middle has the article I am working on. So I scan both. I haven't cut and pasted any text so far. I was looking at doing it for Sewerage as the 1911 is comprehensive and wikipedia is well...complete crud. Too bad the scans, tables, and formulas did not translate OCR very well. Also, The 1911 site conveinently splits new stuff on a seperate/page and tab from the original 1911 text. Users should obviously be careful, however, I strongly believe the law is on our side. Yay. Electrawn 19:46, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, I was wondering about that Sewerage thing. Is there a danger of replacing an inadequate article with an irrelevant one - has the technology really not advanced since 1911? I suppose the basic principles will be the same though; the Victorians were really enthusiastic about the idea. David Brooks 19:55, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
I doubt it has changed much in the last 2000 years. I saw blue man recently, and had to search far and wide to dig this up for you: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1E9MZli4qeU . (hee hee) I also doubt the physics formulas and assumptions have changed much over millenia. I think the only real additions would be the use of PVC and plastics in "Sewerage" Electrawn 19:59, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Hotlist of Mythology topics

Is anyone editing the Wikipedia:WikiProject_Missing_encyclopedic_articles/Hotlist_of_Mythology_&_Folklore pages to (a) remove blue links or (b) update the %complete? No one seems to have touched it in quite some time, apart from me who updated the %complete about two months ago. Is there a bot that's supposed to do that, BTW? It was a real true pain doing it in Excel... Bookgrrl 15:23, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

I did a bit of work on it. I went through and cleaned up the Zs (not actually sure why I started with the Zs...). I tried to create as many redirects as I could, I cleaned up all bluelinks that actually seemed to link to something useful, and I added notes to the bluelinks that might need more work. I didn't update the percentage though. I think I'll probably try and slowly plod my way through the whole list over the next little while. --Gpollock 17:11, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Inter-Wikiproject Cooperation?

I'm just wondering how much cooperation there is between this and other Wikiprojects? I'm not sure whether this has been standard practice for the project, but I just went around the Wikiprojects related to mythology and asked for some help with our very own Hotlist of Mythology & Folklore. I mean, since we are working with such an incredibly broad spectrum of topics, I can see it being incredibly useful to try and get some help from people in more specific Wikiprojects, who might have much deeper knowledge of these topics. Has this been done? Does WikiProject Authors or WikiProject Books know about our Project Gutenberg author list? Does Wikiproject Film know about our List of notable films? etc etc etc... Just wondering. --Gpollock 22:41, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, they should. However, to get a more definite answer, I feel that you should find this out from the more active contributors in their respective Wikiprojects. --Siva1979Talk to me 19:32, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Weekly focus

So... for exactly how long is the weekly focus going to be Hotlist of Topics/O? My "original articles" list is getting a bit heavy on the O's. --Aguerriero (talk) 21:22, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

My vote is to work on the crossover lists, like Top list or List of encyclopedia topics × Music, or even General×Hotlist. All three lists put together total around 452. For the price of getting rid of one Hotlist letter, you could get rid of three whole lists.--Rayc 22:00, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
That is a very pregnent analysis of the situation, Rayce! I fully agree with you. However, who is going to change the subject matter of the weekly focus? --Siva1979Talk to me 19:30, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
The last change of weekly focus was on May 1 [1].

I guess Wikipedia uses long weeks... or is waiting for someone to be WP:BB. --Alvestrand 18:42, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Some statistics

I compiled some statistics: how many articles from non-English Wikipedias are translated into English, and how many notable topics from specialized databases are covered on Wiki so far. My conclusions: there are about 2 millions articles in need of translation, and more then 400 million of specialized topics in need of creation :) See User:Piotrus/Wikipedia interwiki and specialized knowledge test for details.-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus  talk  18:38, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Bugger. We'd better move the planned completion date back by a week or two. --Tagishsimon (talk)

[edit] Where did all the lists of bands go?

I was looking for the List of bands from North Carolina page to add some more bands and noticed its gone? so is the south carolina page, and no state i type in works. These pages weren't really opinionated, to my opinion that is. just a simple list of bands. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.71.216.138 (talk • contribs) 18:47, 5 August 2006 (UTC).

See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of United States musicians (2nd nomination). Basically they were replaced with categories. If you want to work on the red links on the list then you could ask that it be undeleted and placed in either User: or Wikipedia: space. Your best bet would probably be to ask at Wikipedia:Deletion_review/Content_review. It would be better if you signed up for a user account so that you would have a userspace for the page to sit in. --Cherry blossom tree 19:25, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Biographical Dictionary of Evangelicals

Another useful resource might be the Biographical Dictionary of Evangelicals edited by Timothy Larsen, David W. Bebbington, and Mark A. Noll, InterVarsity Press (Jul 2003), ISBN 0830829253. DFH 08:59, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Logos Bible Software produced an electronic edition. DFH 09:02, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Small question

So, if you are going through the various lists (which are amazing, quite frankly) and you see some blue links, such as here, is it ok to delete 'em? Dev920 (Tory?) 15:47, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Not really. At least you should check that the WP article is actually on the same topic as the source article. Some of us (especially in the 1911 cleanup project) are also tagging or fixing inadequate articles, so that we have equivalent coverage, not just the same list of topics. But it must be admitted that the auto-deletion of blue links has happened, including those deleted automatically when some of the source lists were originally created. David Brooks 15:55, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
Some people are in the habit of creating one-line substubs just to blue a link, and even when the length of the article in Wikipedia is the same, there is a chance that it is all trivia. Uppland 16:36, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Where did the list of high schools go?

Did we just give up on that project?--Rayc 21:10, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Anyone is free to create them, but listing them here implies that they are all "missing" and necessary for a complete encyclopedia. This is a problem, too, for portions of the General topics list which contains a host of dictionary words that are very frequently created and then soon replaced with {{wi}} as being merely dictionary definitions. —Centrx→talk • 22:13, 7 October 2006 (UTC)
That's nonsense. This project is for people interested in creating articles that we currently don't have. Your basing your entire argument on the 3-word name of the project, rather than the individuals who are likely to have an interest in the project. It hurts nothing to include the list under See Also. — BRIAN0918 • 2006-11-25 19:09Z
Is this the page you're looking for? Wikipedia:WikiProject_Missing_encyclopedic_articles/High_schools AuburnPilotTalk 04:36, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

[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 13:58, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Greetings and question

Hello there, I'm trying to improve all Uruguay-related articles through this project but I'm not sure where to get started, the amount of red links is pretty wide and I still don't understand how you guys get organised, do you agree on fixing one article at the time or something? Thanks

Wesborland 04:25, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Hello. There are a lot of articles missing on the presidents of Uruguay. See for example [2] I think there are quite important. I cannot answer you well to your question on organisation.--Youssef 14:44, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Expansions

Mataró has an {{MEA-expand}} tag on it. I have expanded it somewhat from the corresponding Catalan article (could do with a bit more work, but it's no longer stubbish): where does this want reporting? Similarly, I am about to start on Badalona, which is tagged {{update-eb}}... Physchim62 (talk) 15:05, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 1911encyclopedia.org links

Hi, is this project the one that's putting 1911encyclopedia.org links all over Wikipedia? There are over 1000 of them and I'd just put a notice about them over on the Wikispam discussion board and was ready to start cleaning them up as spam. The 1911encyclopedia.org site is commercial and claims copyright to their scan--we should use the template {{1911}} to indicate that one of our articles incorporates EB1911 text, and we should only cite EB1911 in a references section if it's an actual reference (i.e. something that was referred to while writing the article) rather than supplemental material. Unless the EB article has stuff that a WP featured article wouldn't contain once fully developed, we shouldn't extlink to it per WP:EL. Since it's public domain we should just incorporate any useful material from it directly into Wikipedia.

Really, we should be using our own scan of EB1911 (or Gutenberg's) rather than linking to some company's. I realize that the whole thing isn't yet online in such a form (either on Wikisource or Gutenberg) but it's being worked on.

Any thoughts what to do about all these links? Thanks. 67.117.130.181 03:50, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

I don't think so. Certainly not anymore, since there are no more 1911 articles to add to Wikipedia, but even when we were working on that list the instructions were to use {{1911}} (see Wikipedia:1911 Encyclopedia topics.) I don't have any problem with switching these links to the standard template. --Cherry blossom tree 12:13, 25 December 2006 (UTC)
I'm not sure which links to change. If there's a link in the reference section of some WP article, that means one of:
  • it was actually a reference to the article (somebody referred to it while writing the WP article) and the WP article incorporates WP text; this should be changed to the standard template; or,
  • it was purely a reference for the article (somebody referred to it while writing the WP article but didn't incorporate actual text); in this case the 1911 template isn't accurate and we should use some other kind of cite (but what?); or,
  • It wasn't really a reference (nobody referred to it while writing the WP article), in which case it is spam and should be removed, not changed.
I think there are many instances of each of the above. My question is how to tell which is which. Any thoughts? 67.117.130.181 12:32, 25 December 2006 (UTC)
The only way to tell is to read the two texts. It's pretty easy to find a DNA match, and if there is one, it deserves the {{1911}} tag. If not, and there is interesting material in 1911 that isn't appropriate for inclusion in WP (that'd be a rare case) then I would put it in an unlinked Further Reading section, possibly with a comment "for an early 20th century perspective, see...". Don't try to guess whether an earlier author has referred to 1911; just let it go. I agree linking to the copyrighted online versions is not right. Happy Christmas to all. David Brooks 07:28, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
I really want to get rid of these links more than I want to read hundreds of WP articles and compare them to the corresponding 1911 articles. My current idea is to replace every 1911encyclopedia.org link that points to a 1911 article with a new template call, like {{1911 title|article title}}. That could start out as an empty template but it would still be possible to find all the occurrences in the wiki by template search. Then later over some long period, these calls could be checked out and cleaned up or replaced with visible 1911 references. How does this sound? 67.117.130.181 23:06, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
I agree on the replacement suggestion. The "some long period" could be until the sun melts; I think I'm already the only person doing 1911 cleanup, so your checking out project is likely to have few volunteers! David Brooks 07:45, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
As I see there is just a couple of these ext links now. Am I missing something or someone already did a cleanup? `'mikka 01:37, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
The links are still there search. 67.117.130.181 10:30, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
There is a full set of free 1911 Britannica scans at wikisource. Physchim62 (talk) 01:59, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia Day Awards

Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 18:59, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Catholic Encyclopedia

JASpencer has added 100's (thousands?) of template links [3] asking for expansion from the Catholic Encyclopedia {{Catholic-link}}. This is controversial for a number of reasons. Is there any policy about blindly doing mass updates like this? Many of these articles don't need expansion from the 100-year old CE, and many of the CE articles are not appropriate for WP. -- Stbalbach 19:48, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't see this harming wikipedia, having a PD resource for expanding articles is good (with a direct link even better). I think it should be left for the editors to evaluate, if the CE articles (content, relevance) are not appropriate for WP, before adding or using it here. I'm not aware of any "policy about blindly doing mass updates". If You think, that an article doesn't need expansion from the 100-year old CE, then remove the template and mention this in the edit summary? feydey 20:08, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
I don't like inviting expansion on the article page - it seems a clear self reference - but there's no problem with listing the link on the talk page. --Cherry blossom tree 22:10, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Template:Catholic-expand has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. --Stbalbach 22:56, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Hm. Some of the arguments here would also apply to {{update-eb}}. I guess it should only be used in talk pages, but I included it in a main article page here. It just seemed the right thing to do; the talk page is too easy to overlook when you come at the article other than through the template or associated category. One difference is that we haven't been adding it automatically; in fact it's only been used for 13 articles so far. David Brooks 00:39, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] DYK

Just a reminder to project members: if you think you have a good fact from a DYK-qualified article that you made within the last five days, I strongly urge you to submit to T:DYKT. I have already had nearly 20 of my articles featured on DYK, and it's a wonderful incentive for making non-stubby articles. Thanks, Nishkid64 00:05, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] SFNI?

Are people a little too hasty with casting entries to the "SFNI" basket? I notice under hot/O that "Online music" has been dubbed SFNI "dicdef". Presumably that means that we could never write an article about "online music" that was not a one line dictionary definition. Clearly this is nonsense - at the very least it should be a redirect to some long article about online music delivery, iTunes etc. Actually it should probably redirect to Online music store. Why are articles being dumped in the SFNI basket so hastily? Stevage 15:03, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wall newspaper

That article is on WP:DEAD, but it provides a link to a well-developed Britannica article. Could your WikiProject take a look? YechielMan 03:59, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Revitalization of project?

I've noticed that there are now projects relating to most of the specific field article lists as well as a number of others. Would anyone be interested in maybe helping these other projects create or develop lists of articles for themselves, possibly from subject-specific encyclopedia? I think the other projects would very likely benefit from having such lists, and it might also help in the revitalization of this one. If anyone does think it might be a good idea, I would be very happy if you could perhaps indicate to me how you think it might be done. John Carter 19:22, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

I have gotten favorable response for this idea elsewhere. Are there any other members out there who would be willing to help produce the specific article lists for given projects? I think that there are probably too many for me to be able or qualified to do them myself. John Carter 23:39, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Expandable Articles

I've been trying to set up templates for articles that I think are "expandable" from other sources. That is that the article in Wikipedia has substantial gaps that could be filled by another on line resource.

I've not handled it well, to say the least, partly because it grew out of my involvement in WP:CATH so it had more Catholic Encyclopedia articles than anything else (indeed it started as a Catholic Encyclopedia template). This meant that a lot of people who showed enormous hostility would have been less hostile if it was another source.

However there is a serious point here, what do we do once we have started a corresponding article? Is this where our responsibility drops off? Perhaps insert a link to the online encyclopedia to meet with verifiability rules and then delete it from the project page? This would be fine if it was consistently applied. Alternatives are:

  • Leave it hanging around until it is at an "acceptable" standards (whatever they are), perhaps with a note on the project page as to what is not "acceptable".
  • Have a seperate page(s) on the project for "expandable articles
  • Have a link on the talk page to a category or template. I've tried this and it has met resistance, although the reasons for this resistance change.
  • Put text within the Talk page.
  • Text dump articles and wait for them to be cleaned up. Although suggested as a joke, this is quite a common approach which I was keen to avoid.

If there is any policy or settled rule laying out what the exit criteria should be from these projects I would be grateful. Otherwise can we see if we can get some concensus?

JASpencer 10:30, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

A supplementary point would be that we should look at areas where this would stop being expandable. Perhaps when a subject moves beyond a stub (although there will still be areas where Wikipedia's coverage is very poor compared to the online source). Another area to think about would be where and where not the Encyclopedia can be regarded as a reliable source. JASpencer 15:11, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
For what little it might be worth, I would think the best thing to do would be to try to find if any WikiProject out there deals with the specific kind of article and place that project's banner on the article talk page. One disadvantage we will often have is not necessarily knowing exactly how important a given article is to a given project, or whether some of the material we have just put in the article can already be found in a related article. Also, any given editor who works particularly with missing articles of a specific given type, maybe s/he could consider joining the project relevant to the subject. Then one could reasonably follow up and expand articles important to the project. Lastly, of course, you can always add the {{todo}} template to the talk page and indicate there that there is additional data from another source. I do think that this is a very important question that I hope to see others address as well. John Carter 15:44, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
The template {{MEA-expand}} seems to do something along these lines but there is no real guidance on how it should be used, and there does not seem any facility for adding links, etc. JASpencer 16:05, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

In general you will find most people on Wikipedia would prefer not to have templates, categories and other forms of solicitation used to canvass one users opinion about which source should be used in writing articles. Every article on Wikipedia can be expanded as a matter of course, but the devil is in the details on a per-article basis, it is not possible to codify it and say "all articles of X type can be expanded using Y source". You will find a general sentiment against mass solicitation in a number of places such as Wikipedia:Canvassing - we don't have a policy on Canvassing sources, yet, but I suspect we may need one soon that lays down some guidelines on this type of activity. -- Stbalbach 18:02, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Serious question, do you regard an "expand" tag mass solicitation by definition? JASpencer 18:13, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Another debate? That's interesting. I agree with Stbalbach. I strongly object to any template or category soliciting expansion from a specific source, especially from obsolete and unreliable public domain encyclopaedias. If someone knows a good source for expanding a particular article, they can write it down on the talk page. --Folantin 19:24, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Well as this has no time limit, then this can rumble on until there's a consensus. Any way on the main subject why is a category on a talk page any worse than text on the talk page. The only reason I can see (albeit a big one) is that there is more of a chance to comment on the suitability on the talk page. On the other hand it will (together with comments) be archived, it's not centrally trackable and it can't be removed when it's no longer relevant. JASpencer 19:46, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Stbalbach, more or less. Frankly, I don't spend much time worrying about whether someone else will come along and improve articles. If they want to, they will usually do it without someone else trying to tell them how. If nobody does, perhaps the article truly isn't important. Having said that, working on EB1911 verification, I have used {{include-eb}} template a few times when I really think I'm not competent to judge whether the 1911 information is any use (or when I was too tired to go through it all) as a hint that it should be left to an expert. It's more important to tag potentially archaic articles with {{update-eb}} though. David Brooks 06:32, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

David, are you saying that the responsibility for the articles from the Missing Encyclopedic articles project ends when the article has been entered? I'm not against that idea, by the way. JASpencer 09:46, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
I'll have it both ways: it depends on the goals of the sub-project. Wikipedia has always had a tension between breadth and depth editors, with the breadth writers always behind, especially during the insane rush to one million articles. If we agree that the goal of a sub-project is depth, then spend time on that, otherwise I don't see a problem with a stub, so long as it is properly tagged. Even if the hope of a subsequent breadth editor coming along later is forlorn, it's a useful note to the reader. Nobody pretends that Wikipedia will ever be uniformly comprehensive. David Brooks 16:46, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
"it depends on the goals of the sub-project". Fair enough, but what about WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles? Where does the responsibility for an article stop with that project? JASpencer 17:21, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
Maybe I'm not experienced enough to really have a well-informed opinion, but I would think that this project's "responsibility" (and I don't think that anyone has a "responsibility" for articles) would probably end when we have more or less ensured that all the relevant information from a given existing encyclopedia article elsewhere is more or less included in the wikipedia article. However, given the length of some articles, that's probably unrealistic. Maybe it should be two responses: (1) when the existing stub-to-B class wikipedia article contains most of the relevant information from the other encyclopedic source, and (2) for longer articles that could/should be GA-FA class, like say Spain, maybe we should just ensure put in all the bassic data, and let the existing subject-related project carry on from there? They'd probably have a better idea of sub-articles and what not than us, anyway. John Carter 19:57, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
Welcome to the debate, John. Are you saying that subjects should keep in the article until all the up to date bit of the articles are included? I can see this meeting a lot of resistance. JASpencer 21:39, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
Not really. Just that (1) our "responsibility" might end when we get the bulk of the content from the other encyclopedia entered in (then the other more specific subject-based projects can deal with the articles) and (2) if it's a large article, maybe not even all the content from the other encyclopedia. In those cases, maybe we can just add a comment to the talk page (i.e. "A lot of content relating to Portuguese royal history can be found here. I dunno where you guys in the Portugal Project are putting this stuff, so I won't include it here, unless you reply and tell me where you think it should go.") Of course, if they never do reply, or reply to the effect that they don't want to include it, fine. John Carter 22:35, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
So in a small article (say three paragraphs) including all of it that wasn't obviously out of date or POV? (I'm not sure that this would work but we'll get to why once we've clarified that point.) JASpencer 16:02, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Expandable article lists - Proposal

Would dedicated lists as part of the project be a way of dealing with these expandable articles? This has been suggested before by some of the opponents of templates.

Personally I don't like them, but it may be a way of removing the expandable articles from the missing articles pages.

JASpencer 15:19, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

What do you mean exactly. Please give an example. -- Stbalbach 14:57, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
Essentially setting up seperate pages and putting the "Expandable articles there". I'll do a mockup if that would help. JASpencer 15:53, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
OK, essentially to set up a main page off the Projects page that would look something like this: User:JASpencer/Expandable. On each of the letters you would have a sub project page like this: User:JASpencer/Expandable/B (the suggested rules are a sample - but there will need to be rules to stop pages hanging around for too long). JASpencer 16:12, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
Disagree. The purpose of this project is not to wring information out of old encyclopedias. It is just to make sure that every article title in other encyclopedias has a corresponding article title on Wikipedia. That's it. You've taken it to a new level of "expansion". If there was a project whose purpose was to expand articles using old encyclopedias it would run afoul of many people, and that is what this proposal is trying to do. -- Stbalbach 17:56, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
What Stbalbach said. The purpose of this project is quite clear. It certainly isn't to ensure that articles are expanded until "The Catholic Encyclopedia article has no useful information to add". --Folantin 18:01, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
The purpose of the project is not to wring information out of old encyclopedias, agreed. But what I'm trying to understand is just when is an article considered created. There seems to be a belief that some articles are expandable - hence templates such as {{MEA-expand}} and comments about articles needing more information (see this Talk page for examples of that).
I think that there is some confusion when I said "the suggested rules are a sample", in that these can be hammered out later. The idea is that we take the "expandable" articles - however we define them - off the missing articles lists. (And please let's try to keep WP:CIVIL).
JASpencer 18:24, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
Presumably an article is considered created when it's at least a stub. We already have a wide range of stub templates which ask users to expand such articles. Given the nature of Wikipedia, there is no way of assessing whether an article is "finished" or not since a page can be edited potentially infinitely. However, once an article is no longer considered a stub then the stub template can be removed.--Folantin 19:22, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
So does that mean it "defines the meaning of the article's title", to quote from WP:STUB. That would seem workable, and I would not have too much of a problem with this - as long as it's consistently applied.
There are some issues I'd have. Firstly this would need to be either a consensus (or preferably a previously agreed policy). There is certainly a feeling that there should be some expandability, I think it may be an idea to get some opinions on this.
Secondly, the article should cover the subject. This is obvious when talking about two different subjects, but it is not so clear cut when talking about a subset of an existing article, for example a CE article about a diocese and a WP article about a town.
Lastly there's an issue of good housekeeping - not particularly expandability but items such as does it have a stub category, is it in a category and does it comply with WP:V? Another thing that can be hammered out later.
JASpencer 20:37, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
I'm not sure I understand what you are getting at. As far as I can tell, these problems are already covered by existing policy and practice. For instance, we have plenty of editors who watch new pages and do stub-sorting (assigning such articles to the correct stub category). --Folantin 21:26, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
Well that can be hammered out later. I'll need to go around to get some comments from some editors who've been on the Missing articles project for some time. JASpencer 21:45, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] User pages in Category:Wikipedia missing topics

There's a stack of user pages in Category:Wikipedia missing topics (despite my attempts at clearing some out). If they're useful to this project, can they be moved into project space please? If they're not, please decat them. --kingboyk 20:48, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

  • Concerning that Kingboyk just recently told me to remove my pages from the Category:WikiProject Biography (and I did), he probably wants me and couple of others out of here as well. he has also altered various other pages of this project apparently in his own volition. So; does our pages offend the other participants and do you want us to remove them? I'd like to know beforehand - Skysmith 22:15, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
Don't take things personally mate. User pages don't generally get categorised. If they're useful to others, move them to WikiProject space. If they're only useful to you, don't categorise them. It's nothing personal and not getting worked up over.
The only reason I came across this was that the WPBio category was full of user pages making it hard to find the most important Project pages. I created a new subcat for "missing articles" lists which as you know you're quite welcome to use. --kingboyk 22:27, 18 February 2007 (UTC) PS Doing things of one's own volition is called "initiative" around here. It's a wiki. I'm also an admin. So, I make no apologies for trying to clean up some stray categorisation.
Whilst I understand that Category:WikiProject Biography relates to Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography and so arguably should not be used to categorise pages falling outside that project, I cannot see the same issue with Category:Wikipedia missing topics. Skysmith's pages look unimpeachably like lists of missing topics to me, and the categorisation is thus appropriate, and not "stray". That leaves us with the question of whether the lists should be in userspace or projectspace. I can't see a policy reason why categorisation should lead to a presumption that the pages should be in projectspace; equally I cannot see a point in categorising them if they are being held in userspace to cordon them off from general use. Beyond that, I cannot see any strong arguments for changing the status quo. --Tagishsimon (talk)

[edit] Appletons

I have found Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biography a good resource for 19th century bios. Would every person with an article in there be someone we would eventually want an article on? Thanks. ++Lar: t/c 21:47, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

Did you read the external link Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biography - it reads like one of the most unreliable encyclopedias ever written. There are so many high quality sources available why would we potentially populate Wikipedia with hoax entries. -- Stbalbach 21:54, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
I don't think we should populate Wikipedia FROM Appletons per se, but I do think it's a source of potential candidate articles. If nothing other than Appletons information can be found however hard one searches, sure, that's probably a hoax, but I thought the idea of this project was to identify missing (or potentially missing) articles. I may be confused though++Lar: t/c 02:54, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] source categories deletion

This Wikiproject might be interested in Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2007 March 24; I'd point to a specific discussion there but must of the first half of the nominations are related. — coelacan — 01:12, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Just following up on Coelacan's timely heads-up, the CFDs all relate to categorisation by source. One editor has asserted that these categories are widely used by this project, but has not explained how they are used. At Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2007_March_24#Category:World_Factbook there is a proposal to refactor the categories to be applied to talk pages, and it would be helpful to have input from this project on the viability of that method, which (if I understand correctly) is already used by WikiProject Biography. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 03:34, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Status of 1911 verification project

I'm surfacing to report from the EB1911 verification project, where I seem to be toiling alone. I have found some articles that are unedited dumps of the OCRs, resulting in poor layout and in some cases spelling errors or missing diacritics. I've also found some obviously out of date material. But my main point is: I started on the B's on July 2, 2006, and just reached the end of the Ba's on March 29. At that rate, and assuming nobody else joins in, the entire set will take until June 3, 2043. I'm not sure what to do to speed it up. I'm not looking for sympathy; just reporting in, as I said.

Admittedly I was, until recently, doing more than necessary on the grounds that many of these articles will probably not get much attention from anyone else, so recently I was doing the minimum acceptable and getting through it a little more quickly. To my mind, the minimum set of actions are:

  • Assess for non-inclusion and move to the "wrong-uns" list.
  • Create a redirect to a correctly named article if warranted.
  • Check for OCR errors: non-English characters (accents, Greek) in particular.
  • Handle POV evaluations (esp in biographies) - use "According to..." or remove completely.
  • Check for strange layout.
  • Remove {{1911}} if the 1911 text has been supplanted.
  • Tag with {{1911POV}} {{update-eb}}, {{wikify}} (in the article), or {{include-eb}}, {{ni-eb}} (on the talk page).
  • Add {{1911}} where there is actual 1911 text present, and make sure the tag is in a ==References== section.

The "additional work" was:

  • Do any obvious style cleanups.
  • Improve the flow and add section headings.
  • Put in extra 1911 text if it seems to add to the article
  • Check links: add some if the article looks bare, look for targets for redlinks (often there under another name), and snap redirects
  • For bios, check dates and occupation are provided as categories.
  • Add other appropriate categories and interwiki links.
  • Look for and add images.

David Brooks 05:47, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Nice! Sounds like you've got it down to a science. Haukur 08:48, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
Kudos to you, David, for keeping on keeping on verifying 1911s. I had intended to join the project last year, but there was a prominent "do not start verification" notice on Talk, and I didn't manage to get any responses to my "can we start now" messages. So I wandered off & did other things. --Tagishsimon (talk)
Good job man...Would like to join you but I allready have my hand's tied on the A's of Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles/Missing diseases... i dont see why this can't be more "honestly" advertised on the project page? Kind of like, right let's verify all this and modify it propelley so we can then go on to the 12th edition hehe... speaking of which.. (i have no idea of the status of the 11th edition and it's copyright) but when did it actually come in the public domain? As such when will the 12th 13th and eventually 14th edition go into the public domain? Isin't it something like 50 years after the person who wrote it/contributed to the encyclopedia pass away? So if it's a long way away, we can say something like: So and so till the 14the edition gets put in the public domain... Let's finish 11 of!? well thats my 2 cents n a bit... Later. petze 15:38, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
Well I did some research and saw that under american law anything published before 1923 is automatically in the public domain...Therefore shouldn't there be a 12th edition version lying around somewhere on the internet? As such there might be a possibility for all of the editions to be eventually in the public domain as apart from the later additions of the 15th edition, they were all published before 1973(though the mater is complex tho?), which after 1973 makes a very long period before copyighted works go into the public domain... So is wikipedia governed by american law or? petze 11:51, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
The point about the 11th is that it is still regarded as one of the finest editions of Britannica, despite the problems with editorial approach (which we have come to understand and can address). Furthermore, it's useful in practice because of the availability of the CD edition and its electronic derivatives. David Brooks 00:57, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

One change of heart: I have been deleting entries from the list as I verified them, but I think it would have been more useful to other editors, and a proof of good faith, to leave them in the list, but tagged. Page A1 has a few symbols, but I don't understand them. I think the following would work: replace the search tag with one of:

  • ok (article is acceptable, although some may still be archaic to some degree)
  • up (article has been tagged for update or POV)
  • no1911 (article has no 1911 text and no 1911 template)
  • lk (article was linked to another one)

plus any more I come up with. Then, if it feels right, I'll spend a bored Sunday afternoon tagging all the lines in B1 I deleted. David Brooks 01:15, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] gallium trichloride

I have just edited the gallium trichloride article and noticed it was flagged to this project--I have left the flag on. Hope this helps. Cheers. Axiosaurus 12:00, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Lists of Asia-related topics

There are currently 27 articles that list entries in The Encyclopedia of Modern Asia (ISBN 0-684-80617-7). You may find them at List of Asia-related topics. I believe these articles should be moved to a subpage of a WikiProject. As there is no WikiProject Asia, is this project willing to accept them? If not, could you please point me toward the appropriate project? Thank you, Black Falcon (Talk) 18:23, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

There are arguments on both sides of the issue of moving the articles into the wikiproject space. Meanwhile I've listed the main page from the table of Lists on the project page, under Specialized encyc.. --Tagishsimon (talk)

[edit] Missing articles from ODNB

Of the top 2000 ODNB entries (measured by article word count) 75 are missing in wikipedia. I've listed them on my userpage; where and how should I list them to be most useful to people in this project? Dsp13 00:16, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Just because other encyclopedias have them, does that automatically make the subject notable?

Much of the content that is missing is subject-specific, jargon, etc. Many of these could be redirected. The problem with this project is that it really requires expert attention.--h i s s p a c e r e s e a r c h 11:56, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Category for deletion

The Category:Missing Encyclopedic Articles requests for expansion is being considered for deletion. I figured the editors of this project would like to know because the cat seems to relate to this project.-Andrew c 03:20, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

  • I do have a question for the project. Does anyone remove the template after it is expand sufficiently? I checked a few articles in the category and they seem like good articles and the specific reason for expansion is not provided. So I wonder if the category is needed. Best to join the discussion mentioned above if this category is actually serving a valid purpose. Vegaswikian 05:35, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Requests for verification

Please see: Wikipedia:Requests for verification

A proposal designed as a process similar to {{prod}} to delete articles without sources if no sources are provided in 30 days.

It reads:

This page has been listed in Category:Requests for verification.
It has been suggested that this article might not meet Wikipedia's core content policies Verifiability and/or No original research. If references are not cited within a month, the disputed information will be removed.

If you can address this concern by sourcing please edit this page and do so. You may remove this message if you reference the article.

The article may be deleted if this message remains in place for 30 days. (This message was added: 11 June 2008.)

If you created the article, please don't take offense. Instead, improve the article so that it is acceptable according to Verifiability and/or No original research.


Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. (help, get involved!)

Some editors see this as necessary to improve Wikipedia as a whole and assert that this idea is supported by policy, and others see this as a negative thing for the project with the potential of loss of articles that could be easily sourced.

I would encourage your comments in that page's talk or Mailing list thread on this proposal WikiEN-l: Proposed "prod" for articles with no sources

Signed Jeepday (talk) 14:10, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Citizendium

Shouldn't we include Citizendium into this project as well. They have articles like Telephone newspaper and Brown Institution that Wikipedia has little or no counterpart. As they are GPL licensed, should I be bold and copy these articles? It would be nice if there was a bot generated list for finding candidate articles for import. -- þħɥʂıɕıʄʈʝɘɖı 00:36, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

My understanding was that Citizendium's licensing was indeterminate, and that with the exception of Wikipedia-sourced articles (necessarily being under the GFDL), there isn't actually a license yet, although they do have aspirations to eventually choose some Free license. So right now Citizendium articles shouldn't be copied over. --Gwern (contribs) 02:11 5 August 2007 (GMT)
It would be worth drawing up a list of articles covered in C~ which are not in W~, to provide a list of redlinks for further consideration. Clearly, if anyone has the energy, we can write the article based on information from C~, so long as we do not breach their copyright. --Tagishsimon (talk)
List now created at Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles/Citizendium list of missing articles. Telephone newspaper is now a stub. --Tagishsimon (talk)
I gotta say, my limited experience of Citizendium so far has failed to impress. Despite their extensive coverage of ancient economics and Nepalese journalism, they don't have articles on topics such as: North America, Europe, the Earth, or human beings. Oof. --Gpollock 16:17, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
By the way, Citizendium's licensing is now CC-BY-SA 3.0, except articles copied from Wikipedia, which are licensed under GFDL, so we can copy text from it.--RekishiEJ (talk) 06:52, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
Not quite. See the discussion at Citizendium list of missing articles. --Tagishsimon (talk) 22:50, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Big objection

To "Biographies - 97.5%". Unless it's 97.5% missing. A year ago I stated that almost all entries from Polish Biographical Dictionary are missing from en wiki, noting has changed since then and there is no reason to believe that Polish coverage is less represented then others (in fact, I am pretty sure it's above average).-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk  12:44, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Biographies refers to one specific list (details on that page.) It does not imply that once that list is exhausted there will be no need for any further biographical articles to be written. If you want to give it a more specific name then please do, or even better a list of missing Polish biographies would be useful in filling the gaps, if that is technically feasible. --Cherry blossom tree 14:15, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
I have uploaded the most comprehensive academic list of Polish biographies to Wiki: User:Piotrus/List of Poles. I am not sure how to further integrate it with the project; last year nobody replied to my announcements and questions about that.-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk  14:21, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
There's probably little more to do (at a minimum) that signpost your lead page from the table of sources in the project page (which I'll do in a second ... done). And possibly to reword the User:Piotrus/List of Poles page slightly, for instance to advise users to delete Poles who have articles. As per other missing this & that pages, we could then start keeping a score. If there was anyone who wanted to do more work on the list, implementing use of the template {{search|}} and implementing links to the Polish wiki (which might have better coverage) would assist editors. --Tagishsimon (talk)
With 25,000 entries, we need a bot - this is how the list was created in the first place... -- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk  14:42, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Text (criticism)

I was trying to clean up the article paratext (which I came upon while working on something else — isn't it always the way?) and discovered that as far as I can tell, Wikipedia has no article on "text" in the cultural studies/literary criticism sense of the word. (We've got a disambiguation page at text, but none of the pages linked there seem to be about the usage in academic criticism.) That meaning of "text" is discussed at hermeneutics, which is defined as the study of such texts — but we don't seem to have an article on that which is studied in hermeneutics. I'm not an academic, or an expert on cultural studies/literary criticism/critical theory, so I'm not really qualified to start the article myself. I'm not even certain what the best name for the article would be: text (criticism), text (hermeneutics), text (critical theory), text (cultural studies) or something completely different. I've dropped a note at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Critical Theory, but I'm not sure how active that WikiProject is, so I thought I'd give you good people a heads-up as well. Anyone feel qualified to give it a go? —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 03:24, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Magdeburger Biographisches Lexikon

The University of Magdeburg has an encyclopedia of notable people somehow related to the city of Magdeburg. It is located at http://www.uni-magdeburg.de/mbl/ . I think having a list of entries of theirs we do not have corresponding article for would be nice, so I was wondering if someone with a bot could create such a list.--Carabinieri 01:56, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] 1904, The Twentieth Century Biographical Dictionary of Notable Americans, Vol III, Cowan through Erich

Seems to be in the public domain? Available on Google Books...Useful for mining? jengod 08:36, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

As with many books on google, the full text of this book is available only to USians, and not the rest of the world - at least, not to the UK. Which sucks. But yes, it would be useful for mining. If you want to make it into a project, steal the index and make a page of links out of it, and people can start going through it. --Tagishsimon (talk) 09:04, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
This is the first that I have heard the Google Full View text is not accessible worldwide. In Australia I have no problem accessible most Google Books. I have been writing a GreaseMonkey user script that simplifies scraping the text from Full View books[4]. John Vandenberg 02:24, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] List of health topics

Is List of health topics: Si-So worth dragging into this project? (see Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Medicine#List of health topics) John Vandenberg 02:28, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] GeneralxHotlist

With only two articles left to be created for the better part of 3 weeks, can we just shelve those and move on to a new list? Mbisanz 04:11, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Taking "Expandable" articles off the article lists

Question 1. Is the policy for "expandable" articles, stubs in Wikipedia that have large and relevant articles in other encyclopedias, to delete them from the Missing encyclopedic articles WikiProject? Is the policy that as long as there is a corresponding article, no matter how large, that the encyclopedia article is no longer missing?

Question 2. If it is what should be done with stubs with larger corresponding articles?

JASpencer 14:34, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] EB1911

A list of "easy" missing encyclopedia articles can be found here:

s:Wikisource:WikiProject 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/WikipediaCrossCheck

Find a red item on the list, copy the EB1911 article and paste it here. Enjoy. John Vandenberg 19:41, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

Not entirely sure where this comes from. Just glancing at the list:
  • "Abeyance: w:Abeyancer does not exist" - but Abeyance does exist and is a copy of EB1911. Why does the s: article say "See also Abeyancer on Wikipedia"?
  • "xxx does not mention EB1911" - usually because the article xxx already existed and was better (more comprehensive, more up to date) so there was no point in importing any EB1911 text
  • "copy the EB1911 article and paste it here" - not only that, please. Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles/1911 verification was created to address problems caused by people who had performed uncritical pasting. Paste by all means, but then inspect for transcription errors, POV, glaring anachronisms, and at the very least wikify and categorize.
Certainly the job of absorbing EB1911 will never be done, but if you want to help it would be more valuable to pick a page of the verification project. I finished the first set of B's recently. David Brooks 05:15, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

My primary objective at the moment is to ensure that the EB1911 articles on Wikisource all point to valid Wikipedia articles, so EB1911 readers know where to go for updated information. As a side benefit, I am finding irregularities - there are articles that exist on Wikisource but dont exist on Wikipedia.

s:1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Abeyance was pointing to Abeyancer, which I have just now created as a redirect to Abeyance (and I have updated the EB1911 page so it points directly to Abeyance).

However, 1911 s:Encyclopædia Britannica/Ablatitious doesnt exist here: Ablatitious and Special:Search/Ablatitious has zero results. It does exist on wikt:ablatitious, but it is worth looking into.

Even more problematic, s:1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Accolti, Bernado is a biography of a person who was notable enough to appear in EB1911, and so is an obvious candidate for copying (and fixing) to Wikipedia, as Special:Search/Bernado Accolti returns zero results.

Regarding "xxx does not mention EB1911", yes it is possible that the article was written without anybody copying from EB1911, however that message appears in my log when the Wikipedia article doesnt link to Wikisource at all. That means the Wikipedia article doesnt even use {{sisterlinks}} or {{Wikisource1911Enc}}. I wont be pushing to have those log messages fixed, unless it is clear that the EB1911 article was copied, in which case attributing using {{1911}} is good form.

FInally, your suggestions on how to improve an EB1911 article once it lands here are good. I had not considered transcription errors; please if anyone finds one of those, please also make the correction on Wikisource. Wikisource has the entire EB1911 available as TIFF files to assist in verification. John Vandenberg 13:00, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

I don't doubt that there are still missing EB1911 articles. Back when the "missing articles" subprojects started, a volunteer took the EB1911 index and removed those titles that already appeared in WP, just to make the project manageable. We know there were some (many?) WP articles that are about a completely different topic, and there are some that existed at the time but were since deleted due to claimed non-notability. The more improvement we get overall, the better! David Brooks 13:45, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Ablatitious was listed in our original list as Ablatitioua (probably an OCR error). Ablatitious probably doesn't belong in Wikipedia anyway, as it is more appropriate for Wiktionary. You'll find that a lot of EB1911 articles that are absent on Wikipedia were added to Wiktionary instead. Our original list did not include Bernado Accolti at all, but did include Pietro Accolti (his brother). We also have Benedetto Accolti (their father). Looks like Bernado Accolti was a legitimate oversight. No idea why he didn't make the original list. Kaldari 17:06, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Bernardo Accolti? Haukur 17:10, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
Right you are! Looks like Wikisource made the error on that one. Kaldari 17:12, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
So, would it make sense to link wikisource articles to wiktionary entries where appropriate? Appropriateness is a judgment call, of course, and there are not that many pure dicdefs in 1911. David Brooks 20:40, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
From my memory it seems that we referred quite a few of the missing EB1911 articles to wiktionary. Kaldari 21:37, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Based on the above comments, I have updated s:1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Ablatitious to only point to Wiktionary, and will update the bot to also include wiktionary in the checking process.

Thanks to everyone for helping find and fix "Bernardo Accolti". Another case that looks like it warrants a Wikipedia article is the Santa Laura abbey, described in detail as a section of the "Abbey" article of EB1911 (with a picture). John Vandenberg 00:31, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] 1911 verification: page B1 done and some musings

I'm surfacing again to report on the 1911 verification projects - or at least what I've discovered remains to be done. Incidentally, I'm picking up all sorts of useless information by reading the encyclopedia, but probably won't be writing a book about it.

As I said before, I worked through the list, checking for grievous errors and OCR misses, usually caused by uncritical dumping by some over-enthusiastic editor. I always used the scanned copies on wikisource to crosscheck. There are plenty of articles that are pure EB1911, a considerable number that have the original text subsumed in a larger article (which is good) and a few more that were written independently. Gratifyingly, most of these independent efforts seemed to me to be more comprehensive than, and at least as high-quality as, the EB1911 version. Very few articles turned out to be a completely different topic from the EB1911 arcticle.

The majority of the articles themselves are fine, with one exception: the References sections obviously have a pre-1911 cutoff, and I have no idea how to add post-1911 scholarship to the lists. In general I have left them in. So this project doesn't result in a high rate of improvements to Wikipedia, although I find it personally gratifying. And, as I said earlier, at this rate it would occupy me up to almost my 100th birthday.

So, I finished the first B page. After some discussions with others and some discoveries, here's what I did with each article:

  • Assess for non-inclusion (despite its presence in EB1911, should this really be a Wikipedia article? Is it maybe a portmanteau article, where we already deal with the separate topics?)
  • If Wikipedia has the article under a different name, create a redirect. Redirects are free.
  • Check for OCR errors. You might even export to a program that has a spell-checker if it feels necessary. Check non-English characters (accents and Greek alphabet) in particular.
  • Handle POV evaluations (esp in biographies) - move them to an "According to the Encyclopedia Britannica 11th Edition..." section or remove.
  • Check for strange layout.
  • Remove {{1911}} if the 1911 text has been supplanted by completely rewritten text.
  • If appropriate, tag with {{1911POV}} {{update-eb}}, {{wikify}} (article), or {{include-eb}}, {{ni-eb}} (talk page). One day, someone else may come along and deal with the problem.
  • Add {{1911}} where there is actual 1911 text present, and make sure the tag is in a ==References== section.
  • Add {{1911 talk}} to the talk page if it's not already there.

Additional work if I felt generous:

  • Do any obvious style cleanups.
  • Improve the flow and/or add section headings.
  • Put in extra 1911 text (ie. execute on {{include-eb}}).
  • Check links: add some if the article looks bare, look for targets for redlinks (often there under another name), and snap redirected links.
  • For bios, check dates and occupation are provided as categories.
  • Add other appropriate categories and interwiki links.
  • Look for and add images.

In the index lists, replace the {{search}} tags with:
redir = redirect or disambig, needs another tag
ok = decent article
no1911 = no EB1911 text left; tag taken off
tag = one of the attention tags left on it
Articles moved to the bad 'uns list can be deleted from this list

It is useful to actually remove the {{search}} tags. Each original index page contains 503 templates to expand and, by my count, 5,081 hyperlinks, which can take a loooong time to render. David Brooks (talk) 22:21, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Good work, David; thanks. Good to read these progress reports. Carry on :) --Tagishsimon (talk) 22:32, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] useful tool

Perhaps you don't know this tool: http://tools.wikimedia.de/~joanjoc/sugart.php?uselang=ca. You can put the code of any wiki and see which articles are missing in english version but present in many other languagues (so relevant) --62.175.77.111 (talk) 11:16, 5 January 2008 (UTC)


[edit] Dictionary Def?

I'm working on the Art and Architecture list...there are some titles there that don't need anything more than a wiktionary entry...is that ok?

Yup. You might want to create a wikipedia article, and use {{Template:Wi}} to point to the wiktionary entry. --Tagishsimon (talk) 02:42, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

I've been going through and putting notes on the titles partly to ask for help and partly to keep track of where I am...help? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Legotech (talk • contribs) 02:37, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Help may be a long time in coming. But annotating the list items is generally a good thing. --Tagishsimon (talk) 02:42, 7 January 2008 (UTC)


Help again...I did the wiktionary template thing and someone marked it for speedy delete...what did I do wrong? Addorsed —Preceding unsigned comment added by Legotech (talk • contribs) 09:30, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Probably nothing wrong. Perhaps some users do not support the idea of a page with that template on it. I'd be inclined to contest the speedy, and write a note on the talk page asking potential deleters to explain their deletion w.r.t. policy. --Tagishsimon (talk) 15:00, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Missing topics list

Hello,

I recently created a missing topics list for use by this project via WP:AFC. However, as I'm informed this is for the creation of mainspace artices only, it seems it will most likely be rejected. Would it be possible that a member of this project could look at the list to see it if might be appropriate for this or a similar project such as Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography ? Thank you. 72.74.195.146 (talk) 08:22, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Template?

Is there a template we could be including on the talk page of articles we generate as part of this project? I.e. to advertise the project and request further expansion of the article.—RJH (talk) 21:50, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't think we'd want to disfigure our articles with adverts for WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles. You might want to include a link to the project from the subject line or a new article. --Tagishsimon (talk) 17:07, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
By extension then, we should remove WikiProject templates from all article talk pages since they essentially serve a similar purpose. I don't think that would be acceptible. —RJH (talk) 19:59, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
The original proposal was for a TALK PAGE template. This does not "disfigure the article", since it is on the talk page, not the article page. This plea for help is a lot less intrusive than other talk page templates, and it gives us a good way to track the page status. In this sense it's a lot like other project templates on talk pages. This is an ideal way to alert the "missing page" community of the status of the article relative to alternative sources, without modifying the mainpage article. Within this template, we could asses the article with respect to many alternatives: e.g., complete with respect to 1911, but not with respect to DNB or Britannica 2007.-Arch dude (talk) 02:50, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] {{Template:Inferior article}}

How about an inferior article stub? The stub would need to have a way to tell what source contains the superior article for effectiveness. Samples of the text entered might look like these:

{{inferior-article-stub|[[Encyclopedia of Life]]}}

{{inferior-article-stub|[[Encyclopedia Brittanica]]}}

{{inferior-article-stub|[[Microsoft Encarta 1994]]}}

It might look something like this:

This title has a more superior article in Encyclopedia of Life, yet only has a stub in Wikipedia. Please help expand it!

The category for the stub would be something like "Articles Inferior to Other Encyclopedias"

Thanks, Bob the Wikipedian, the Tree of Life WikiDragon (talk) 06:32, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

If left blank, the superior reference name would be something like "an alternate source" Bob the Wikipedian, the Tree of Life WikiDragon (talk) 06:35, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
Stubs are sorted by topic, and this would cut right across that. You can use {{MEA-expand}} for this purpose. Note that said template was created as "mea-stub", but renamed for exactly the above reason. Alai (talk) 12:18, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
I think this would work better as a talk page boiler plate message. Stubs are good for navigating your way around a topic. A talk page message for this would furnish editors of the article to find more sources. SeveroTC 13:09, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
Is there a boilerplate creation standard? Such as getting them approved prior to creation? Bob the Wikipedian, the Tree of Life WikiDragon (talk) 14:29, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
Please note that the stub has been created, not by myself, but by a vandal. The stub's only contents are the name of the person who created it, and it has no other revisions to which I can revert it. Can someone please delete it? Thanks, Bob the Wikipedian, the Tree of Life WikiDragon (talk) 14:32, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
Done. AFAIK there's no such proposal process, but very often they're associated with a Wikiproject. In this case, coordinating with the MEA people would seem appropriate. Alai (talk) 14:53, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
Please note that the above 7 posts of this conversation have been copied from Wikipedia:WikiProject_Stub_Sorting Bob the Wikipedian, the Tree of Life WikiDragon (talk) 16:53, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
I have reposted this conversation here. I am no longer looking to create a stub, but a template now, hence the renaming of the topic. Please read above to get a general idea. Because I designed it in stub format, it needs to be boilerplate-ified before it can be made...does anyone know how to do this? Bob the Wikipedian, the Tree of Life WikiDragon (talk) 16:56, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
At the risk of repeating myself: I'm not recommending that you assist in the creation of the above, but that Bob use the existing template, instead. Having two resources to do essentially the same thing seems to me to a fundamentally poor idea. Alai (talk) 18:26, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

"more superior"??? Come on guys! Kaldari (talk) 20:28, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Agree that this would work better as a Talk Page notice. Kaldari (talk) 20:30, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Monthly focus: hotlist letter S

I think this focus has stayed on long enough (4 months?) and should be changed to a new focus. May I suggest someone that has looked at the hotlist letter S page (and has done a few of those articles perhaps) to remove all the blue links that are the correct article and then we can talk about adding something else as a monthly focus. If anyone happens to have some general knowledge and knows the accuracy of those articles are fine, then they can remove the blue links as well.

Any thoughts of a new focus? Another letter perhaps? Any projects near completion? Oh and by the way, I would have pruned the page myself, but I am unable to determine if the articles are indeed created for that page and not for something else (or it's redirecting to somewhere else for example) Calaka (talk) 04:29, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

I have decided to place OBI Biographies as the monthly focus. My reasoning is that at 98.1% the project is almost complete and in about 1 month (maybe 3 haha) it will be complete! Any thoughts? Cheers!
Oh and PS. Great job on removing all the blue links in the previous monthly focus. Keep up the great work! Calaka (talk) 08:50, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Bot?

I don't know if this is already happening, or has been suggested before and there are good reasons not to do this, but I thought I'd put the idea out there. What if there were a bot to fill the Wikipedia redlinks from the public domain encyclopedias?--Aervanath lives in the Orphanage 18:42, 10 June 2008 (UTC)