Rejuvenate WikiProject Skepticism
Hello - my name is Susan Gerbic (Sgerbic) and I'm writing to you because at some point you joined Wikipedia:WikiProject Skepticism. This might have been months ago - or even years ago. With the best of intentions the project was created years ago, and sadly like many WikiProjects has started to go dormant. A group of us are attempting to revitalize the Skepticism project, already we have begun to clean up the main page and I've just redone the participant page. No one is in charge of this project, it is member directed, which might have been the reason it almost went dormant. We are attempting to bring back conversations on the talk page and have two subprojects as well, in the hopes that it might spark involvement and a way of getting to know each other better. One was created several years ago but is very well organized and a lot of progress was made, Wikipedia:WikiProject Skepticism/Skeptical organisations in Europe. The other I created a couple weeks ago, it is very simple and has a silly name Wikipedia:WikiProject Skepticism/Skepticism Stub Sub-Project Project (SSSPP). This sub-project runs from March 1 to June 1, 2022. We are attempting to rewrite skepticism stubs and add them to this list. As you can see we have already made progress.
The reason I'm writing to you now is because we would love to have you come back to the project and become involved, either by working on one of the sub-projects, proposing your own (and managing it), or just hanging out on the talk page getting to know the other editors and maybe donate some of your wisdom to some of the conversations. As I said, no one is in charge, so if you have something in mind you would like to see done, please suggest it on the talk page and hopefully others will agree. Please add the project to your watchlist, update your personal user page showing you are a proud member of WikiProject Skepticism. And DIVE in, this is what the work list looks like [1] frightening at first glance, but we have already started chipping away at it.
The Wikipedia:WikiProject Skepticism/Participants page has gone though a giant change - you may want to update your information. And of course if this project no longer interests you, please remove your name from the participant list, we would hate to see you go, but completely understand.
Thank you for your time, I hope to edit with you in the future.Sgerbic (talk) 06:48, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
Secrets of the Psychics
Thanks for your assistance with this article. Unfortunately, the NY Times says I have reached my limit of reading so I can't see their article any more. So I can't look for how I might have misrepresented it or how to remedy it... can you be more specific? Also, I was disappointed that you thought the interview with Randi where he talked about his motivation was not worthy of inclusion. I thought it was pertinent, so I would be interested in your reasoning why you feel differently.--Gronk Oz (talk) 04:51, 23 March 2022 (UTC)
- A little trick you can use to see the article, other than just trying to view it at archive.org, is to load the page and immediately press CTRL-A then CTRL-C, and then paste into notepad. If you're quick enough you can select all and copy before the bother box pops up, then paste the entire article to be read at your leisure. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 09:24, 23 March 2022 (UTC)
- (talk page stalker) Gronk Oz you can read all NYT articles after 1980 through Gale using the Wikipedia Library. There's no images but they do include the full text. Just yesterday I read an interesting piece on how teachers are dealing with the pandemic in the US. Hope this helps :) A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 09:32, 23 March 2022 (UTC)
Possible help/advice
Hello! I have noticed that you made a slight revision to an article I'm editing as part of a university assessment, Peter Nicol Russell. Would you be interested in providing some pointers to how I can improve the article more? It would be amazing to get your evident wealth of experience editing Wikipedia. Thanks in advance! Chasseur99 (talk) 07:32, 2 April 2022 (UTC)
On William P. Gottlieb You Removed that He Left His Work To the Public
For the article on William P. Gottlieb you took off a (cited, so presumably true) comment that Mr. G. left his photos to the public for free use. It seems to me that's relevant, it has to do with his enduring place in cultural history. Why not take out that he went to Leigh University or that the Canadian Film Board gave him an award for his filmstrips. And heck, worth noting that it could be especially relevant to readers of this encyclopedia, one of whose pillars is free use of info. So I think you should put it back. If you want change the section title from "Legacy" to "Photos in Public Domain" or just put the info about public domain into his bio, great. You could even write back to me and say "OK, hotshot, you put it back" and I will. But your edit reduces what people can easily know about Gottlieb and that seems to be not helpful to other readers. HighAtop94 (talk) 01:06, 5 April 2022 (UTC)
- OK, I was bold and put back that mention that he left his photos in the public domain. Not intending to undermine you or anything, presumably you spend less time thinking about William Gottlieb's Wikipedia page than I do. What do you do with all that free time? HighAtop94 (talk) 12:22, 11 May 2022 (UTC)
"La Nueva" listed at Redirects for discussion
An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect La Nueva and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2022 April 9#La Nueva until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. Danubeball (talk) 17:57, 9 April 2022 (UTC)
Cain and Serenade
I do not disagree with you that my summary is long. I had the same response with editors on B. Traven's The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. The "long plot" notice has been up over 3 years, with no significant effort to revise the summary. If you have read Traven's novel, your will see that it would be difficult to abbreviate the plot summary without doing injustice to the story. Same is true of Cain's Serenade.
I do not believe that the existing plot summary has any deficiencies in terms of "Readability", do you? My approach in writing the summary was to favor this aspect, and not an arbitrary limit in terms of kilobytes. At all events, I don't see how the summary can be shortened without reducing it to merely a "thumbnail" sketch. The notice will remain, but I think its a distraction when readers visit the article. What say you? --CerroFerro (talk) 17:33, 5 May 2022 (UTC)
- @CerroFerro: Excessive length is a hinderance to readability, especially in an encyclopedia that should summarize, not teach or present the work. I'm not very active in literary articles, but a thumbnail sketch is probably fine: if it's too long, people won't bother to read it, so why even make an article? There is lots of extraneous fluff that can be excised from both articles, from filler like "To Dobbs' dismay..." and "As night falls..." to entire paragraphs. I'd say minimize details, don't try to capture the literary tone of the source. Focus on large scale plot points (for instance a paragraph or two at most summarizing each chapter or major element): minor elements and characters can be mentioned or elaborated in reception or analysis sections on an as-needed basis. Wikipedia:How to write a plot summary has some examples, and this website has a brief summary of Serenade. You you might look to summaries of the works in literary journals or other encyclopedias, CliffsNotes, etc. or Wikipedia plot summaries in Odyssey, The Lord of the Rings, War and Peace , as models to help pare down unessential elements (Featured-Article and Good-Article Class novels will probably have some of the best examples to follow). Cheers, --Animalparty! (talk) 00:09, 6 May 2022 (UTC)
Animalparty - Thank you for your comments. I don't disagree with you on several points, but I contest a couple things. Your "why make an article?" is unfounded. I have also included well-sourced sections on Critical Analysis, Publication background, Style/Theme and Film Adaptions. As to any effort on my part to "capture the literary tone" of the article is puzzling. You simply have to read a few pages of the novels by Cain to see just how unwarranted that remark is. I have my own objective approach to writing summaries that I hope are literate, but never in the style of the author ; it's simply impossible with a writer like Cain, or B. Traven for that matter. Perhaps an interested editor can remove any "filler" I've introduced without, however, violating the story line as it was written. I shall, in future, do my best to keep the summary length to a minimum. --CerroFerro (talk) 19:33, 8 May 2022 (UTC)
Hello, I started a new RFC on list of minority governors on the talk page.
Hello I started a new talk page on the RFC, since you are a regular there I was wondering if you could contribute your opinions to it. Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:8807:C80B:2D00:44D9:A6D5:9499:B1E7 (talk) 02:04, 8 May 2022 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:8807:C80B:2D00:4812:C99C:7BAD:92EE (talk)
Ladislaja Harnoncourt
We had already a discussion about the "notability" of Ladislaja Harnoncourt (in the DYK nomination). Sure she would probably not have an article if she didn't have these prominent children, and not many "independent sources" were written at her time about women who raised children. However, the alternative to have the details of her life in all biographies of children she raised - four of seven covered already in articles - seems not a good alternative. I'm not arguing that she was from highest nobility (but she was). I don't like article tags, very generally so, as discrediting our content. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:20, 13 May 2022 (UTC)
- @Gerda Arendt: What details of her life? That she was a good singer and a nurse? That could easily be mentioned in any biography of independently notable kin. I don't think lowering standards is a good way to improve representation of women on Wikipedia. The only person who appears to have written about the subject in any depth (and it doesn't appear to be much) is her own son Nikolaus. --Animalparty! (talk) 06:36, 13 May 2022 (UTC)
- Her son wrote about her not in private letters, but a published book. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:44, 13 May 2022 (UTC)
Disambiguation link notification for May 15
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Page Mention, NPR, trivial
I don't care deeply, but just a small point that the citation I added and you deleted...it's not the mention on the page that is the thing here, it's the discussion on the linked interview. It is still a bit brief. The interviewee mentions they are reading a few books, how those books make them feel, think, then lists them. So it's up for debate how to interpret that, I think. I interpret the proceeding paragraphs to be about the book. But I don't really care. I just don't want you to think it's just the passing mention in writing that I was citing. CT55555 (talk) 16:23, 16 May 2022 (UTC)
- @CT55555: I listened to that full extended interview, and unless I misheard, Page goes into varying levels of details on several books/authors, but only mentions the title Intelligence in Nature once by name at the end, without any elaboration. I don't think it's encyclopedic to include "actor Elliot Page read this book and liked it" in any article except perhaps Page's. If Page was a renowned book critic, and listed it in a top 10-list (with or without additional commentary), or actually got around to adapting it, that might be a different story. But that a notable person might like a book isn't on itself grounds for inclusion or citing. Cheers! --Animalparty! (talk) 02:36, 17 May 2022 (UTC)
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Doug Weller talk 15:42, 20 May 2022 (UTC)
New Page Patrol newsletter May 2022
Hello Animalparty,
At the time of the last newsletter (No.26, September 2021), the backlog was 'only' just over 6,000 articles. In the past six months, the backlog has reached nearly 16,000, a staggering level not seen in several years. A very small number of users had been doing the vast majority of the reviews. Due to "burn-out", we have recently lost most of this effort. Furthermore, several reviewers have been stripped of the user right for abuse of privilege and the articles they patrolled were put back in the queue.
Several discussions on the state of the process have taken place on the talk page, but there has been no action to make any changes. The project also lacks coordination since the "position" is vacant.
In the last 30 days, only 100 reviewers have made more than 8 patrols and only 50 have averaged one review a day. There are currently 728 New Page Reviewers, but about a third have not had any activity in the past month. All 1034 administrators have this permission, but only about a dozen significantly contribute to NPP.
This means we have an active pool of about 450 to address the backlog. We cannot rely on a few to do most of the work as that inevitably leads to burnout. A fairly experienced reviewer can usually do a review in a few minutes. If every active reviewer would patrol just one article per day, the backlog would very quickly disappear.
If you have noticed a user with a good understanding of Wikipedia notability and deletion, do suggest they help the effort by placing {{subst:NPR invite}}
on their talk page.
If you are no longer very active on Wikipedia or you no longer wish to be part of the New Page Reviewer user group, please consider asking any admin to remove you from the list. This will enable NPP to have a better overview of its performance and what improvements need to be made to the process and its software.
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Sent 05:17, 23 May 2022 (UTC)