This is Martin Walker's discussion page. Archives
Archive1 — Archive2 — Archive3 — Archive4 — Archive5 — Archive6 — Archive7 — Archive8 — Archive9 — Archive10 — Archive11 — Archive12 — Archive13 — Archive14 — Archive15 — Archive16 — Archive17 — Archive18 — Archive19 — Archive20
/Archive21 (Jun-Aug 2008). C-Class vote aftermath, , 1.0 (helping, version selection, 0.7 planning, etc), Dispatch, OLPC, Chemistry on Freebase, WP1.0 Bot new version, Hydrochloric acid FAR.
/Archive22 (Sep-Oct 2008). Version 0.7 consultation with WikiProjects, CAS file review.
/Archive23 (Nov 2008-Feb 2009). Article assessment developments, Organofluorine chemistry and PFOA, Version 0.7 odds & ends, IsisDraw, WPChem worklist, some assessments, Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards.
/Archive24 (Mar 2009-Jul 2009) A-Class discussion, core contest awards, the new 1.0 bot and V0.8, assessment consistency, cerium(III) chloride, boron, WP:Chemistry in the Signpost, Wikipedian of the Day.
/Archive25 (Aug 2009-Aug 2010) Wikimania, chemistry article validation/CheMoBot, Version 0.7 and Version 0.8 including indexing, Okawix, Book-Class/Wikibooks.
/Archive26 (Aug 2010-Dec 2012) Pending changes/Flagged revisions, Version 0.8, Chemistry image validation, YuviPanda's GSoC project for WP1.0, menthol elimination, WP1.0 release version tools, Wikimania 2012. Discussion
Contents
- 1 Talkback: you've got messages!
- 2 The WikiProject: Good Articles Newsletter (January 2013)
- 3 Talkback: you've got messages!
- 4 WikiProject Good Articles Newsletter - February 2013
- 5 Wikipedia:Release Version Nominations
- 6 wiki 1.0
- 7 Good Article Nominations Request For Comment
- 8 WikiProject Good Articles Recruitment Centre
- 9 June 2013
- 10 2nd Annual Wikimedia New England General Meeting
- 11 DYK RfC
- 12 Re:Polymer
- 13 Wittig reaction, Schlosser modification
- 14 Responded on my talk page
- 15 GAN December 2013 Backlog Drive
- 16 GAN December 2013 Backlog Drive
- 17 Talkback
- 18 Collaboration with PubChem
- 19 New England Wikipedia Day @ MIT: Saturday Jan 18
- 20 March 2014 GAN Backlog Drive
- 21 You're invited: Women's History Edit-a-thons in Massachusetts this March
- 22 GAN March 2014 Backlog Drive
- 23 tb
- 24 Your edits on the page count graph
- 25 You're invited!
- 26 Edit-a-thon invite
- 27 IUPAC definition quote-boxes
- 28 Adrianne Wadewitz Memorial edit-a-thons
- 29 New England Wikimedians summer events!
- 30 New England Wikimedians summer events!
- 31 WikiProject Good articles Future GAN Backlog Drive
- 32 GA Cup
- 33 WikiProject Good Articles - GA Cup
- 34 ETHIOPIA
- 35 Core Contest
- 36 RCS & ACS
- 37 WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 2
- 38 WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 3
- 39 WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 4
- 40 Invitation to join the Ten Year Society
- 41 Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Skepticism articles by quality
Talkback: you've got messages!
Message added by Theopolisme at 16:24, 31 December 2012 (UTC). You can at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.
The WikiProject: Good Articles Newsletter (January 2013)
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This newsletter was delivered by EdwardsBot (talk) 14:42, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
Talkback: you've got messages!
Message added by Theopolisme at 22:21, 3 January 2013 (UTC). You can at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.
WikiProject Good Articles Newsletter - February 2013
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Wikipedia:Release Version Nominations
Hi there, just wanted to point out there are some nominations waiting since 2011, will you take a look at them? :) Cheers, --Lester Foster (talk | talk) 06:10, 18 February 2013 (UTC). These will be done, for Version 0.9; answer on talk. Thanks, Walkerma (talk) 07:35, 19 February 2013 (UTC)
wiki 1.0
I don't see a template for adding my name to the list of editors willing to help. I'd be willing to review, edit, write legal articles. Thanks. Malke 2010 (talk) 18:34, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
- Never mind, I figured it out. Malke 2010 (talk) 00:40, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
Good Article Nominations Request For Comment
A 'Request For Comment' for Good Article Nominations is currently being held. We are asking that you please take five to ten minutes to review all seven proposals that will affect Good Article Nominations if approved. Full details of each proposal can be found here. Please comment on each proposal (or as many as you can) here.
At this time, Proposal 1, 3, and 5 have received full (or close to) support. If you have questions of anything general (not related to one specif proposal), please leave a message under the General discussion thread. Please note that Proposal 2 has been withdrawn and no further comments are needed. Also, please disregard Proposal 9 as it was never an actual proposal. |
WikiProject Good Articles Recruitment Centre
Hello! Now, some of you might be wondering why there is a Good article icon with a bunch of stars around (to the right). The answer? WikiProject Good articles will be launching a Recruitment Centre very soon! The centre will allow all users to be taught how to review Good article nominations by experts just like you! However, in order for the Recruitment Centre to open in the first place, we need some volunteers:
If you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact me. I look forward to seeing this program bring new reviewers to the Good article community and all the positive things it will bring along. A message will be sent out to all recruiters regarding the date when the Recruitment Centre will open when it is determined. The message will also contain some further details to clarify things that may be a bit confusing.--Dom497 (talk) This message was sent out by --EdwardsBot (talk) 01:26, 4 June 2013 (UTC) |
June 2013
Hello, I'm BracketBot. I have automatically detected that your edit to Copolymer may have broken the syntax by modifying 2 "{}"s. If you have, don't worry, just again to fix it. If I misunderstood what happened, or if you have any questions, you can leave a message on .
- List of unpaired brackets remaining on the page:
- }}
Thanks, BracketBot (talk) 14:07, 26 June 2013 (UTC)
2nd Annual Wikimedia New England General Meeting
You are invited to the 2nd Annual Wikimedia New England General Meeting, on 20 July 2013 in Boston! We will be talking about the future of the chapter, including GLAM, Wiki Loves Monuments, and where we want to take our chapter in the future! EdwardsBot (talk) 09:29, 16 July 2013 (UTC)
DYK RfC
- As a listed GA participant, you are invited to contribute to a formal Request for Comment on the question of whether Good Articles should be eligible to appear in the Did You Know? slot in future. Please see the proposal on its subpage here, or on the main DYK talk page. To add the discussion to your watchlist, click this link. Thank you in advance. Gilderien Chat|Contributions03:15, 1 August 2013 (UTC)
Re:Polymer
Dear Walkerma; first of all, let me apologise for this belated reply to User talk:Vanischenu#Polymer (I failed to notify). Since I did not know IPA, I requested help from the language reference desk (here) and got some helpful answers. They also corrected the IPA (diff); is it okay now? Thanks and regards.···Vanischenu「m/Talk」 19:15, 18 September 2013 (UTC)
Wittig reaction, Schlosser modification
Hello homie, great to see your work in chemistry articles here! Could you perhaps have these images in a high-resolution PNG or in an SVG?
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Corey_Schlosser_Wittig.gif https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Schlosser_Wittig.gif
Although it would perhaps mean drawing them yourself.
But if you're busy with academic stuff, don't worry; I can put them under https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Chemistry/Image_Request.
Hope you have happy days in the university! Cheers.
Georginho (talk) 22:36, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
- I have had a lot of marking this weekend, but I'll try to do a higher resolution PNG this week - somewhere I should have the original files. I'm puzzled, though - why aren't the existing resolutions high enough? Surely they're big enough for the articles in which they appear? Please ping me here if I don't get them done by Friday. All the best, Walkerma (talk) 03:48, 7 October 2013 (UTC)
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- Apparently according to the style guide, they want them to be PNG or SVG. I personally don't bother redrawing GIF and JPEG images that are already clear enough. But I do message the creators if it's possible to convert the images in case they have the original files. It's because I think it's quick enough to open the file and save it in PNG.
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- But like I said, don't worry if you're busy. Wiki isn't a job. You can do it when you have free time. I personally agree that your images are clear enough. I'm just listing images in chemistry articles to convert per the style guide.
Responded on my talk page
Hi, just a quick ping that I got around to responding to your comments on my talk page about the A-class articles. I'm really curious to learn more about the stories around assessment in Wikipedia, so that's partly why I got in touch again. Cheers, Nettrom (talk) 16:44, 22 October 2013 (UTC)
GAN December 2013 Backlog Drive
Hello! A GAN Backlog Drive will begin in less than 4 days! In past Backlog Drives, the goal was to reduce the backlog of Good article nominations. In the upcoming drive, another goal will be added - raising as much money as we can for the Wikimedia Foundation. How will this work? Well, its pretty simple. Any user interested in donating can submit a pledge at the Backlog Drive page (linked above). The pledge should mention the amount of money the user is willing to donate per review. For example, if a user pledges 5 cents per review and 100 nominations are reviewed, the total donation amount is $5.00. At the time this message was sent out, two users have submitted pledges for a total of 8 cents per review. All pledges, no matter how much money, are greatly appreciated. Also, in no way is this saying you must make a pledge. |
GAN December 2013 Backlog Drive
Hello! Just a friendly reminder that the GAN Backlog Drive has begun and will end on December 31, 2013! If you know anyone outside of the WikiProject that may be interested, feel free to invite them to the drive! |
Talkback
Message added 14:27, 5 December 2013 (UTC). You can at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.
Collaboration with PubChem
Hi Martin, I would appreciate your comments on a potential collaboration with PubChem. Thanks! -- Daniel Mietchen (talk) 22:46, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
- Martin, you may also want to check the ChemID page as they are considering include CAS numbers, it seems. Egonw (talk) 22:50, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
New England Wikipedia Day @ MIT: Saturday Jan 18
NE Meetup #4: January 18 at MIT Building 5 | |
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Dear Fellow Wikimedian, You have been invited to the New England Wikimedians 2014 kick-off party and Wikipedia Day Celebration at Building Five on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus on Saturday, January 18th, from 3-5 PM. Afterwards, we will be holding an informal dinner at a local restaurant. If you are curious to join us, please do so, as we are always looking for people to come and give their opinion! Finally, be sure to RSVP here if you're interested. I hope to see you there! Kevin Rutherford (talk) |
(You can unsubscribe from future notifications for Boston-area events by removing your name from this list.)
March 2014 GAN Backlog Drive
It's that time again! Starting on March 1, there will be another GAN Backlog Drive! There will be several changes compared to previous drives:
- This drive will introduce a new component to it; a point system. In a nutshell, older nominations are worth more points than newer nominations. The top 3 participants who have the points will be awarded the Golden, Silver, or Bronze Wikipedia Puzzle Piece Trophy, respectively.
- Unlike the December 2013 Backlog Drive, earning an additional barnstar if you reached your goal has been removed.
- The allowance to have insufficient reviews has been lowered to 2 before being disqualified.
- An exception to the rule that all reviews must be completed before the deadline has been created.
Also, something that I thought I would share with all of you is that we raised $20.88 (USD) for the WMF in the December 2013 drive. It may not sound like a lot but considering that that was raised just because we reviewed articles, I would say that's pretty good! With that success, pledges can be made for the upcoming drive if you wish.
More info regarding the drive and full descriptions regarding the changes to this drive can be found on the the drive page. If you have any questions, feel free to leave a message on the drive talk page.
I look forward to your participation and hope that because of it, some day the backlog will be gone!
--Dom497
--MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:58, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
You're invited: Women's History Edit-a-thons in Massachusetts this March
Women's History Edit-a-thons in Massachusetts this March - You are invited! |
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New England Wikimedians is excited to announce a series of Wikipedia edit-a-thons that will be taking place at colleges and universities throughout Massachusetts as part of Wikiwomen's History Month from March 1 - March 31. We encourage you to join in an edit-a-thon near you, or to participate remotely if you are unable to attend in person (for the full list of articles, click here). Events are currently planned for the cities/towns of Boston, Northampton, South Hadley, and Cambridge. Further information on dates and locations can be found on our user group page. Questions? Contact Girona7 (talk) |
GAN March 2014 Backlog Drive
The March 2014 GAN Backlog Drive has begun and will end on April 1, 2014! Sent by Dom497 on behalf of MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:01, 1 March 2014 (UTC)
tb
You can at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.
- Dank (push to talk) 13:28, 13 March 2014 (UTC)
Your edits on the page count graph
Hi Walkerma; Your edits related to this page count graph suggested you might know how it was created. My interest is to prepare some data for a new edit for the "Wikipedia" page on trends in the growth of Pages for each level of quality assessment. Could you let me know if there is an easy way to make this chart print out its results for 2013, 2012, 2011, etc, for end of year. If you could show me how to do 2010, for example, then I should be able to do the rest. I only need the last 7-8 years. Any comment would be an assist! Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Statistics (The graph comes out with double curly brackets placed around the linked Page name.) FelixRosch (talk) 19:29, 17 March 2014 (UTC)
- Thanks for your note. Since the comment above, I have found a Page for "Featured_article_statistics" and one for "Good_article_statistics", yet none for the other rows in the graph table which you help to maintain. You mentioned reminding you if you have any thoughts on getting the history of the data stats for the edit I described to enhance the "Wikipedia" page. FelixRosch (talk) 20:27, 25 March 2014 (UTC)
You're invited!
NE Meetup #5: April 19th at Clover Food Lab in Kendall Square | |
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Dear Fellow Wikimedian, New England Wikimedians would like to invite you to the April 2014 meeting, which will be a small-scale meetup of all interested Wikimedians from the New England area. We will socialize, review regional events from the beginning of the year, look ahead to regional events of 2014, and discuss other things of interest to the group. Be sure to RSVP here if you're interested. Also, if you haven't done so already, please consider signing up for our mailing list and connect with us on Facebook and Twitter. We hope to see you there! Kevin Rutherford (talk) and Maia Weinstock (talk) |
(You can unsubscribe from future notifications for Boston-area events by removing your name from this list.)
Edit-a-thon invite
IUPAC definition quote-boxes
Did anything ever come out of this: User talk:Amr94#Adding IUPAC definitions? I just removed a few where they seemed especially off-topic (not really chemistry) or non-universal (not in agreement or over-reliance when multiple organizations are relevant) before seeing this attempt to discuss. DMacks (talk) 17:29, 3 May 2014 (UTC)
Adrianne Wadewitz Memorial edit-a-thons
Adrianne Wadewitz edit-a-thons in Southern New England | |
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As you may have already heard, the Wikipedia community lost an invaluable member of the community last month. Adrianne Wadewitz was a feminist scholar of 18th-Century British literature, and a prolific editor of the site. As part of a worldwide series of tributes, New England Wikimedians, in conjunction with local institutions of higher learning, have created three edit-a-thons that will be occurring in May and June. The events are as follows:
We hope that you will be able to join us, whether you are an experienced editor or are using Wikipedia for the first time. If you have any questions, please leave a message at Kevin Rutherford's talk page. You can unsubscribe from future notifications for Boston-area events by removing your name from this list. |
New England Wikimedians summer events!
Upcoming events hosted by New England Wikimedians! | |
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After many months of doubt, nature has finally warmed up and summer is almost here! The New England Wikimedians user group have planned some upcoming events. This includes some unique and interesting events to those who are interested:
Although we also aren't hosting this year's Wikimania, we would like to let you know that Wikimania this year will be occurring in London in August: If you have any questions, please leave a message at Kevin Rutherford's talk page. You can unsubscribe from future notifications for Boston-area events by removing your name from this list. |
New England Wikimedians summer events!
Upcoming events hosted by New England Wikimedians! | |
---|---|
After many months of doubt, nature has finally warmed up and summer is almost here! The New England Wikimedians user group have planned some upcoming events. This includes some unique and interesting events to those who are interested:
Although we also aren't hosting this year's Wikimania, we would like to let you know that Wikimania this year will be occurring in London in August: If you have any questions, please leave a message at Kevin Rutherford's talk page. You can unsubscribe from future notifications for Boston-area events by removing your name from this list. |
WikiProject Good articles Future GAN Backlog Drive
Hello everyone! Hope you've all been having a great summer!
TheQ Editor recently proposed the idea of having another Backlog Drive in either September/October or November/December of this year. For those of you who have participated in the past two drives you know I was the one who organized them, however, come September, this will be my most important year in school so I will not be able to coordinate this drive (if it happens). TheQ Editor has volunteered to be a coordinator for the drive. If any of you would like to co-coordinator, please notify TheQ Editor on his talk page.
If you would be interested in participating in a Backlog Drive sometime before the end of this year, please notify TheQ Editor. Also, make sure to specify what month(s) work best for you.
At the time this message was sent out, the backlog was at 520 nominations. Since May, the backlog has been steadily increasing and we are currently near an all time high. Even though the backlog will not disappear over one drive, this drive can lead to several others which will (hopefully) lead to the day where there is no longer a backlog.
As always, the more participants, the better, and everyone is encouraged to participate!
Sent by Dom497--MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:52, 16 August 2014 (UTC)
GA Cup
Hello everyone! We hope you have all been having a great summer!
As we all know, the recent GAN Backlog Drives have not had any big impact on the backlog. Because of that, me (Dom497), Figureskatingfan, and TheQ Editor have worked on an idea that could possibly finally put a dent into the massive backlog. Now, I will admit, the idea isn't entirely ours as we have took the general idea of the WikiCup and brought it over to WikiProject Good Articles. But anyways, here's what we have in mind:
For all of you that do not know what the WikiCup is, it is an annual competition between several editors to see who can get the most Good Articles, Featured Article's, Did You Know's, etc. Based of this, we propose to you the GA Cup. This competition will only focus on reviewing Good articles.
For more info on the proposal, click here. As a FYI, the proposal page is not what the final product will look like (if you do go ahead with this idea). It will look very similar to WikiCup's page(s).
The discussion for the proposal will take place here. Please let us know if you are interested, have any concerns, things to consider, etc.
--Dom497, Figureskatingfan, and TheQ Editor
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:29, 31 August 2014 (UTC)
WikiProject Good Articles - GA Cup
WikiProject Good articles is holding a new competition, the GA Cup, from October 1, 2014 - March 28, 2015. The Cup will be based on reviewing Good article nominations; for each review, points will be awarded with bonuses for older nominations, longer articles and comprehensive reviews. All participants will start off in one group and the highest scoring participants will go through to the second round. At the moment six rounds are planned, but this may change based on participant numbers. Some of you may ask: what is the purpose for a competition of this type? Currently, there is a backlog of about 500 unreviewed Good article nominations, almost an all time high. It is our hope that we can decrease the backlog in a fun way, through friendly competition. Everyone is welcome to join; new and old editors! Sign-ups will be open until October 15, 2014 so sign-up now! If you have any questions, take a look at the FAQ page and/or contact one of the four judges. Cheers from NickGibson3900, Dom497, TheQ Editor and Figureskatingfan. --MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:04, 15 September 2014 (UTC) To receive future GA Cup newsletter, please add your name to our mailing list.
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ETHIOPIA
ETHIOPIA — Preceding unsigned comment added by 197.156.77.79 (talk) 14:56, 27 November 2014 (UTC)
stop what about copyrights violations p-2-p — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.44.168.98 (talk) 19:10, 15 February 2015 (UTC)
Core Contest
Hi Martin, I'm writing a piece on the history of the Core Contest (which is running for a sixth time at the moment) and have written up a draft at User:Casliber/sandbox#Core_Contest_blurb. I was wondering whether the prizemoney ever eventuated for the 2007 running and who ended up providing it. Also, any other discussion at the time about it would be good to point out/flesh out etc. cheers, Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 02:53, 7 March 2015 (UTC)
- Hi - I must confess I can't remember, sorry! I do seem to recall calling (by phone) the person who set up the contest (who I won't name here, you know who) and there being a problem with it with good reason, but they really wanted to provide the money. I have a vague recollection that someone did pay in the end, not sure if it was the original person or not, or whether I'm just imagining it, and it was just a promise that never materialized. Sorry, it's quite a while ago now! I do recall spending a LOT of time doing the judging, looking at many diffs, etc. It's nice that it's continued, thanks for working on it. All the best, Walkerma (talk) 05:03, 7 March 2015 (UTC)
RCS & ACS
Thanks for the invitation to speak in Boston; I'm consulting with my RCS colleagues. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:13, 10 March 2015 (UTC)
- Still waiting to hear. I'm assuming, as you invited me, that I don't need to submit a pitch/ abstract? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:26, 29 March 2015 (UTC)
- Submitted; had to fake your email address. No idea yet whether I will be funded to travel, and am on a plane tomorrow, so can't check. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:32, 29 March 2015 (UTC)
WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 2
For this month's issue...
Making sense of a lot of data.
Work on our prototype will begin imminently. In the meantime, we have to understand what exactly we're working with. To this end, we generated a list of 71 WikiProjects, based on those brought up on our Stories page and those who had signed up for pilot testing. For those projects where people told stories, we coded statements within those stories to figure out what trends there were in these stories. This approach allowed us to figure out what Wikipedians thought of WikiProjects in a very organic way, with very little by way of a structure. (Compare this to a structured interview, where specific questions are asked and answered.) This analysis was done on 29 stories. Codes were generally classified as "benefits" (positive contributions made by a WikiProject to the editing experience) and "obstacles" (issues posed by WikiProjects, broadly speaking). Codes were generated as I went along, ensuring that codes were as close to the original data as possible. Duplicate appearances of a code for a given WikiProject were removed.
We found 52 "benefit" statements encoded and 34 "obstacle" statements. The most common benefit statement referring to the project's active discussion and participation, followed by statements referring to a project's capacity to guide editor activity, while the most common obstacles made reference to low participation and significant burdens on the part of the project maintainers and leaders. This gives us a sense of WikiProjects' big strength: they bring people together, and can be frustrating to editors when they fail to do so. Meanwhile, it is indeed very difficult to bring editors together on a common interest; in the absence of a highly motivated core of organizers, the technical infrastructure simply isn't there.
We wanted to pair this qualitative study with quantitative analysis of a WikiProject and its "universe" of pages, discussions, templates, and categories. To this end I wrote a script called ProjAnalysis which will, for a given WikiProject page (e.g. Wikipedia:WikiProject Star Trek) and WikiProject talk-page tag (e.g. Template:WikiProject Star Trek), will give you a list of usernames of people who edited within the WikiProject's space (the project page itself, its talk page, and subpages), and within the WikiProject's scope (the pages tagged by that WikiProject, excluding the WikiProject space pages). The output is an exhaustive list of usernames. We ran the script to analyze our test batch of WikiProjects for edits between March 1, 2014 and February 28, 2015, and we subjected them to further analysis to only include those who made 10+ edits to pages in the projects' scope, those who made 4+ edits to the projects' space, and those who made 10+ edits to pages in scope but not 4+ edits to pages in the projects' space. This latter metric gives us an idea of who is active in a certain subject area of Wikipedia, yet who isn't actively engaging on the WikiProject's pages. This information will help us prioritize WikiProjects for pilot testing, and the ProjAnalysis script in general may have future life as an application that can be used by Wikipedians to learn about who is in their community.
Complementing the above two studies are a design analysis, which summarizes the structure of the different WikiProject spaces in our test batch, and the comprehensive census of bots and tools used to maintain WikiProjects, which will be finished soon. With all of this information, we will have a game plan in place! We hope to begin working with specific WikiProjects soon.
As a couple of asides...
- Database Reports has existed for several years on Wikipedia to the satisfaction of many, but many of the reports stopped running when the Toolserver was shut off in 2014. However, there is good news: the weekly New WikiProjects and WikiProjects by Changes reports are back, with potential future reports in the future.
- WikiProject X has an outpost on Wikidata! Check it out. It's not widely publicized, but we are interested in using Wikidata as a potential repository for metadata about WikiProjects, especially for WikiProjects that exist on multiple Wikimedia projects and language editions.
That's all for now. Thank you for subscribing! If you have any questions or comments, please share them with us.
Harej (talk) 01:44, 21 March 2015 (UTC)
WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 3
Greetings! For this month's issue...
We have demos!
After a lengthy research and design process, we decided for WikiProject X to focus on two things:
- A WikiProject workflow that focuses on action items: discussions you can participate in and tasks you can perform to improve the encyclopedia; and
- An automatically updating WikiProject directory that gives you lists of users participating in the WikiProject and editing in that subject area.
We have a live demonstration of the new WikiProject workflow at WikiProject Women in Technology, a brand new WikiProject that was set up as an adjunct to a related edit-a-thon in Washington, DC. The goal is to surface action items for editors, and we intend on doing that through automatically updated working lists. We are looking into using SuggestBot to generate lists of outstanding tasks, and we are looking into additional options for automatic worklist generation. This takes the burden off of WikiProject editors to generate these worklists, though there is also a "requests" section for Wikipedians to make individual requests. (As of writing, these automated lists are not yet live, so you will see a blank space under "edit articles" on the demo WikiProject. Sorry about that!) I invite you to check out the WikiProject and leave feedback on WikiProject X's talk page.
Once the demo is sufficiently developed, we will be working on a limited deployment on our pilot WikiProjects. We have selected five for the first round of testing based on the highest potential for impact and will scale up from there.
While a re-designed WikiProject experience is much needed, that alone isn't enough. A WikiProject isn't any good if people have no way of discovering it. This is why we are also developing an automatically updated WikiProject directory. This directory will surface project-related metrics, including a count of active WikiProject participants and of active editors in that project's subject area. The purpose of these metrics is to highlight how active the WikiProject is at the given point of time, but also to highlight that project's potential for success. The directory is not yet live but there is a demonstration featuring a sampling of WikiProjects.
Each directory entry will link to a WikiProject description page which automatically list the active WikiProject participants and subject-area article editors. This allows Wikipedians to find each other based on the areas they are interested in, and this information can be used to revive a WikiProject, start a new one, or even for some other purpose. These description pages are not online yet, but they will use this template, if you want to get a feel of what they will look like.
We need volunteers!
WikiProject X is a huge undertaking, and we need volunteers to support our efforts, including testers and coders. Check out our volunteer portal and see what you can do to help us!
As an aside...
Wouldn't it be cool if lists of requested articles could not only be integrated directly with WikiProjects, but also shared between WikiProjects? Well, we got the crazy idea of having experimental software feature Flow deployed (on a totally experimental basis) on the new Article Request Workshop, which seeks to be a place where editors can "workshop" article ideas before they get created. It uses Flow because Flow allows, essentially, section-level categorization, and in the future will allow "sections" (known as "topics" within Flow) to be included across different pages. What this means is that you have a recommendation for a new article tagged by multiple WikiProjects, allowing for the recommendation to appear on lists for each WikiProject. This will facilitate inter-WikiProject collaboration and will help to reduce duplicated work. The Article Request Workshop is not entirely ready yet due to some bugs with Flow, but we hope to integrate it into our pilot WikiProjects at some point.
Harej (talk) 01:58, 19 April 2015 (UTC)
WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 4
Hello friends! We have been hard at work these past two months. For this report:
For the first time, we are happy to bring you an exhaustive, comprehensive WikiProject Directory. This directory endeavors to list every single WikiProject on the English Wikipedia, including those that don't participate in article assessment. In constructing the broadest possible definition, we have come up with a list of approximately 2,600 WikiProjects. The directory tracks activity statistics on the WikiProject's pages, and, for where it's available, statistics on the number of articles tracked by the WikiProject and the number of editors active on those articles. Complementing the directory are description pages for each project, listing usernames of people active on the WikiProject pages and the articles in the WikiProject's scope. This will help Wikipedians interested in a subject find each other, whether to seek feedback on an article or to revive an old project. (There is an opt-out option.) We have also come up with listings of related WikiProjects, listing the ten most relevant WikiProjects based on what articles they have in common. We would like to promote WikiProjects as interconnected systems, rather than isolated silos.
A tremendous amount of work went into preparing this directory. WikiProjects do not consistently categorize their pages, meaning we had to develop our own index to match WikiProjects with the articles in their scope. We also had to make some adjustments to how WikiProjects were categorized; indeed, I personally have racked up a few hundred edits re-categorizing WikiProjects. There remains more work to be done to make the WikiProject directory truly useful. In the meantime, take a look and feel free to leave feedback at the WikiProject X talk page.
What have we been working on?
- A new design template—This has been in the works for a while, of course. But our goal is to design something that is useful and cleanly presented on all browsers and at all screen resolutions while working within the confines of what MediaWiki has to offer. Additionally, we are working on designs for the sub-components featured on the main project page.
- A new WikiProject talk page banner in Lua—Work has begun on implementing the WikiProject banner in Lua. The goal is to create a banner template that can be usable by any WikiProject in lieu of having its own template. Work has slowed down for now to focus on higher priority items, but we are interested in your thoughts on how we could go about creating a more useful project banner. We have a draft module on Test Wikipedia, with a demonstration.
- New discussion reports—We have over 4.8 million articles on the English Wikipedia, and almost as many talk pages as well. But what happens when someone posts on a talk page? What if no one is watching that talk page? We are currently testing out a system for an automatically-updating new discussions list, like RFC for WikiProjects. We currently have five test pages up for the WikiProjects on cannabis, cognitive science, evolutionary biology, and Ghana.
- SuggestBot for WikiProjects—We have asked the maintainer of SuggestBot to make some minor adjustments to SuggestBot that will allow it to post regular reports to those WikiProjects that ask for them. Stay tuned!
- Semi-automated article assessment—Using the new revision scoring service and another system currently under development, WikiProjects will be getting a new tool to facilitate the article assessment process by providing article quality/importance predictions for articles yet to be assessed. Aside from helping WikiProjects get through their backlogs, the goal is to help WikiProjects with collecting metrics and triaging their work. Semi-automation of this process will help achieve consistent results and keep the process running smoothly, as automation does on other parts of Wikipedia.
Want us to work on any other tools? Interested in volunteering? Leave a note on our talk page.
The database report which lists WikiProjects according to the number of watchers (i.e., people that have the project on their watchlist), is back! The report stopped being updated a year ago, following the deactivation of the Toolserver, but a replacement report has been generated.
Invitation to join the Ten Year Society
Dear Walkerma,
I'd like to invite you to join the Ten Year Society, an informal group for editors who've been participating in the Wikipedia project for ten years or more.
H Padleckas (talk) 23:04, 21 August 2015 (UTC)
Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Skepticism articles by quality
I'm wondering why we don't have an auto-generated page? Is there something we need to do? Jerod Lycett (talk) 20:46, 3 September 2015 (UTC)
- So far as I can remember, that is never made as a page itself. The two pages which do exist, Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Skepticism articles by quality log and Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Skepticism articles by quality statistics are the ones the bot generates on a regular basis. If you are thinking of a page containing content different from that of either of those pages, though, it might be possible to arrange a bot to create it. John Carter (talk) 20:55, 3 September 2015 (UTC)
- Thanks, John Carter Walkerma (talk) 04:25, 7 September 2015 (UTC)