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March 2009

Tut tut tut

You've been here for a long time and you still don't sign you comments. Shame on you! Simply south (talk) 16:38, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

My ISP? Why would i need to capitalise that or even give it away? (:)) And yes i did in the decisions area (unsigned, not random capitalisation). Simply south (talk) 16:50, 8 March 2009 (UTC)
ruddymuddyferderedergermedder Simply south (talk) 17:00, 8 March 2009 (UTC)
i know. I was delIberately IgnorIng the code so that It would read lIke that. SImply south (talk) 17:02, 8 March 2009 (UTC)
Sowwy. :) Simply south (talk) 17:16, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

download's special barnstar

download's special barnstar
Thanks for signing my guestbook! Reading details carefully is a quality more people should have. -download | sign! 19:30, 8 March 2009 (UTC)


Tropical cyclones WikiProject Newsletter #24

Number 24, March 7

The Hurricane Herald

This is the bi-monthly newsletter of WikiProject Tropical Cyclones. The Hurricane Herald aims to give a summary, both of the activities of the WikiProject and global tropical cyclone activity. If you wish to change how you receive this newsletter, or no longer wish to receive it, please add your username to the appropriate section on the mailing list. This newsletter covers all of January 2009 and February 2009.

Please visit this page and bookmark any suggestions of interest to you. This will help improve monitoring of the WikiProject's articles.

Cyclone Fanele near peak intensity
Cyclone Fanele near peak intensity

Storm of the month
Cyclone Fanele was the first cyclone of tropical cyclone status to strike western Madagascar since Cyclone Fame one year prior. It formed on January 18 in the Mozambique Channel, and rapidly organized, reaching peak winds of 185 km/h (115 mph). It weakened before moving ashore in Menabe Region southwest of Morondava, and rapidly deteriorated over land. Fanele briefly re-intensified after reaching open waters, only to become an extratropical cyclone by January 23. The cyclone caused heavy damage near where it moved ashore and along its path, resulting in at least eight deaths. Fanele struck Madagascar just two days after Tropical Storm Eric brushed the northeastern portion of the country. The two storms affected over 50,000 people, of which at least 4,000 were left homeless. Fanele struck the country during a series of government protests, and consequentially relief efforts were hindered.

Other tropical cyclone activity

  • Western Pacific Ocean– The first tropical cyclone of the season was Tropical Depression Auring, as designated by PAGASA. It formed on January 3 to the east of the Philippines, producing heavy rainfall and flooding on Mindanao island. Never organizing much, the depression dissipated a few days after forming, causing one death and destroying 305 houses. The next month, Tropical Depression Bising formed near Palau and, moving westward, later passed through the Philippines as a remnant low; rainfall from the system produced mudslides, though no major damage was reported.
  • South-West Indian– Tropical Storm Dongo was the first storm of January in the basin, and it remained over open waters without affecting landmasses throughout its duration. In the middle of the month along with Cyclone Fanele, Tropical Storm Eric developed and moved near Madagascar, killing one and producing heavy rainfall in the northeastern portion of the country. Later, Cyclone Gael killed two people on Réunion while tracking for ten days east of Madagascar; at the time it was the 2nd strongest cyclone of the season. Lastly, Tropical Storm Hina persisted for about five days, nearly reaching tropical cyclone status before weakening.
  • Australia- During the previous two months their have been nine Tropical Lows with four of them becoming a Tropical Cyclone whilst the remants of Cyclone Innis briefly moved into the Australian Region from the South Pacific. Cyclones Charlotte, Dominic, Ellie, and Freddy all caused damage to Australia and or the Indonesia Islands.
  • South Pacific- During the last two months the south Pacific has come alive with six depressions forming in January and February. The most significant depression was Tropical Depression 04F which brought heavy rainfall to Fiji and caused widespread flooding and killing at least 11 people. The first two named storms, Hettie and Innis also developed, each having minor effects on land.

Member of the month

Cyclone barnstar
Cyclone barnstar

The member of the month is... HurricaneSpin HurricaneSpin is a relativly new member of the project who has helped the project out by finding photos of Tropical Cyclones and uploading them to Commons. He is still getting to grips with the project but is coming on in leaps and bounds thus we have decided to make him the Member of the Month, for January and February 2009.

New and improved articles

Main Page content

Storm article statistics

Grade Oct Nov Dec Feb
FA 49 50 50 56
A 19 19 19 17
GA 190 198 202 239
B 13 21 22 14
C 119 118 122 122
Start 204 210 210 198
Stub 19 16 17 28
Total 613 631 642 669
ω 2.88 2.87 2.87 2.80
percentage
≥Less than C 		36.4 35.8 35.4 33.0
percentage
≥GA or better 		42.1 42.2 42.2 46.6

Project News
The project reached a milestone in the last two months in terms of article quality for all articles within the project. For the first time, the percentage of Good articles or better reached more than 1/3, and at the same time, the percentage of Start or Stub articles totaled less than 50%. In the previous twelve months, the overall project grew by 262 articles, of which 204, or 78%, were GA or better. Additionally, in terms of only storm articles, the project now has 46.6% of its articles as GA or better, and only 1/3 are Start or Stub. Unfortunately, much of that is due to newly-created articles easily attaining GA status. For storm articles, the total number of Start or Stub articles, currently 226, is about the same as it was a year ago. The lack of work on older articles is especially noticeable on season articles, where more than 75% of articles are still Stub or Start.

In an attempt to improve articles, there is talk of forming a collaboration between a few Wikipedians. The current project is to improve Hurricane Camille to FA status in time for its 40th anniversary this August. There is still plenty of work to be done, so if you're interested, any help would be appreciated.

Additionally, there is a recent discussion on the WPTC talk page about establishing a notability criteria. There was talk in the past of instating one, although this time the proposal is backed up by interpretations of existing Wikipedia policy. The proposal would limit articles to tropical cyclones that have at least one independent, reliable source other than any warning centers. Excluding cross-basin, off-season, or 64 knot cyclones, the proposal would affect 26 articles, none of which affected land or lasted for an appreciable amount of time.

Jason Rees (talk) 01:12, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Country outlines project update - 2009/03/08

Things have been slowing down again, so it's time for a big push...

We've gone live

This project needed a shot in the arm. Also, its draft pages have been littering Wikipedia's categories for months. The time seemed right to move all the country outline drafts to article space.

WHAT???

Well, the drafts had been sitting in Wikipedia space for a year.

WHAT???

Development has been moving at a snail's pace and we could use the help of the Wikipedia community at large (who are more likely to find these if they are in article space).

WHAT???

Yes, we've gone live.  :)

This puts pressure on us to get the blatantly incomplete elements of these outlines done. The only glaring problem is the government branches sections. These need to be corrected ASAP.

I've mentioned THE GOVERNMENT BRANCHES SECTIONS many times to many people over the past year, but the problem just doesn't seem to have been taken seriously. So let me put it another way:

HELP!!! I need your help on this now. Almost all the countries have a government with an executive branch, a legislative branch, and a judicial branch. The links for these branches need to be completed for each country outline:

Here's a convenient list you can use WP:LINKY on to access and edit these quickly. Please copy the list's link to the top of your talk page so that you can access it easily.

If you spot any standardization in links, and ways we can automate parts of this process, or for groups of countries that have links in common, please let me know!

Administrative support for outlines

There has been growing pressure on me to write up the administrative pages for outlines - their instructions, guidelines, etc. Therefore, I'm now in the process of composing these. Fortunately, it is mostly a matter of gathering material from messages I've written to you guys over the past year. Still, this is taking up most of my time, and I will be buried in these for the foreseeable future.

Traffic control

The next big task after the government branches sections are cleaned up is link support for the outlines.

There's quite a list of links and notices that need to be put in place around Wikipedia, providing access to them to readers, and alerting editors to the need to develop and maintain these pages. This will keep our bot people very busy (and happy).

But the most important thing right now is to get the government branches sections completed. So please, put your bots aside, roll up your shirt sleeves, and start typing.

Thank you.

The Transhumanist 03:02, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Frequently used idea and approved areas

The Frequently used idea are needs updating seriously and now the future of the approved area is questioned. Please see the discussions at Wikipedia talk:Motto of the day/Nominations/Archive 2#Help with FUI and Approved area discussion. Simply south (talk) 20:26, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Geography WikiProject update - 03/15/2009

You commented on the awards effort when it was just getting started a long while back - I thought you might like to see the end results...

The award images are complete!

After months of toil and attention to detail, Penubag has completed the set of images for this WikiProject's awards!

There are five race ribbons:

There's an engraved medallion:

And by far the hardest to create, a golden trophy:

If you are interested in the contests and collaborations that will feature these awards, drop me a note.

And be sure to pop by Penubag's talk page to let him know what you think of his graphics artistry.

The Transhumanist 22:25, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Re:GA reviews?

Somehow a comment of mine posted to User:IMatthew's talk page ended up several other user's talk pages, including yours, along with the comment "Geography WikiProject update - 03/15/2009" posted by User:The Transhumanist. I have nothing to do with the WP Meteorlogy assessment system. Dough4872 (talk) 00:42, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Oops.  :) I better track those down and revert them. The Transhumanist 01:31, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Re: Awards and outlines

Hi. First of all, I think the awards look excellent. Are there copyright issues with integrating the characters from the Wikipedia logo onto the trophy, however, or did we decide it looks better that way? I'd like some information on the activities available, as I have time over the next week or so. Also, as for the topic outlines, I did some more editing, especially in the governmental area of Canada (as you requested) and the lists of earthquakes in some countries. I found Special:Allpages to be especially useful for some of this. One thing I noticed, however, is how many topic outlines are still missing their time zones. This shouldn't be too difficult to integrate, so I'll take some time to add those if they are still not completed. Do we use numbers (ie. UTC -5) or names (ie. Eastern Standard Time)? Thanks. ~AH1(TCU) 00:17, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

As far as I know, all the images belong to Wikipedia.
The globe in the trophy looks better without the letters: the letters look cheesy unless they're engraved into the globe like the edges of the puzzle pieces, which is something we couldn't figure out how to do.
Someone started filling the time zone entries with numbers, but the problem with that is that the numbers differ based on what season it is (standard vs daylight savings). And the articles on them include the time zone names, not their numbers. I think we should use the names, with the standard time-zone numbers following them in parentheses.
Other activities...

Pictures

Finding and placing images (maps and pictures). Pictures make these outlines look gooooood. The outlines that have the best image support so far are: Outline of Thailand, Outline of Iceland, Outline of Vatican City, Outline of Taiwan, Outline of France, and Outline of Japan.

The standard size we use for pics on the right of the page is 300px. Though that doesn't always work well - whatever size you use, make it look good. And remember, give each image a caption (description).

The best place to start is by picking a country you've always wanted to go to, and then go to Wikimedia Commons and see what they have on the country there. You'll find that they usually have a bigger selection of pictures to choose from than the pictures used in Wikipedia articles.

It's boring to use the same pictures from the Wikipedia article on the country. Try to make the outline look different, and better.  :)

Remember, each picture should match the subject of the section they are in. Generally.

By the way, you can get pictures of any person, place, or thing in the country. There are lots of terms other than the country's name that you can type in to the Wikimedia Commons search bar. If you get stuck, you can use the outline itself to "travel" around the country and look around to see what's on Wikipedia.

Maps

As for maps, each outline generally gets a location map at the top. Those were the easiest to place, because they had standard names that could usually be inserted automatically by the country outline creation template. I'm pretty sure all the country outlines have location maps.

Then there's a general map (showing borders, roads, major cities, etc.). The geography section gets either a satellite photo of the country or a topographic map, or both. The administrative division sections get maps showing the subdivisions of the country. Most of the countries haven't had these maps placed yet.

The country outlines that have at least some map support (in addition to the location map), include: India • Indonesia • Iran • Iraq • Israel • Japan • Macau • Russia • Taiwan • Thailand • Albania • Austria • France • Germany • Iceland • Ireland • Italy • Isle of Man • Romania • Russia • United Kingdom • Vatican City • Bahamas • Bermuda • British Virgin Islands • Canada • United States • Belize • Honduras • Mexico • Australia • Argentina • Bolivia • Chile • Ecuador • Falkland Islands

The atlas link on each outline will take you to the commons map collection. Once there, you can refine or broaden your search as needed.

Fill-ins

There are other entries besides time zones that need to be filled in. Such as:

  • Pronunciation
  • Population
  • Size
  • Form of government
  • Head of state
  • Head of government
  • Commander in chief
  • Economic rank

Blue-linking via redirect

Most links have been standardized. When they are red, rather than change the link, we either rename the destination page to correspond with the link, or if the information is in a section on a page, we click on the link and create a redirect leading to the information.

This helps reduce chaos in country coverage by standardizing article names. These outlines have become the de facto guide for country article naming.

But, we only change article names to a standard if the standard is the most common name. Like "Geography of x". In cases of links sets for which there is no standard (because the common names differ), like "adjectival cuisine" (country adjectivals include German, Italian, Taiwanese, etc.), we standardize by providing redirects, and include the standard links in the alphabetical lists within the outlines (such as in the culture section - adjectivals wreak havoc with comparability, as Algerian cuisine would be at the beginning of the list and Zimbabwean cuisine would be at the end). To keep cuisine in the same place we use Cuisine of x, which leads to the corresponding "adjectival cuisine" article.

In the government branches sections we use the common names. Parliaments have various names, but it could be misleading to refer to a country's government bodies by non-official names.

User:The Transhumanist/Lists by country is a set of lists that show the status of (almost all of) the standard links on the country outlines. These lists are very useful as task lists, for creating redirects, and for checking redlink status.

Or pick a country...

Or you could pick a country, and finish its outline all the way.

Zlerman prefers this approach, and I posted instructions on how to go about this on his talk page at User talk:Zlerman#Country outline development.

How's that?

There should be enough activities to choose from above to get you started.

If you have any further questions, feel free to ask.

The Transhumanist 01:27, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

[1]

Do you mind if a new version of this inage is uploaded? Paint isn't the greatest image editor in the world, and images pixelate annoyingly if changed from a SVG, say to a JPG. Do you mind if somebody uploads a cleaner version, using, say, Photoshop? The image would look so much better then. Queenie 19:00, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Hello, AstroHurricane001. You have new messages at Queenie's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

To browse the links of the country outlines by topic (to see which ones are red), take a look at the lists listed at User:The Transhumanist/Lists by country.

The Transhumanist 01:12, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

thanks

Thanks for signing my autograph book!!!--God'sGirl94 (talk) 14:20, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

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