Wikipedia:Simple talk/Archive 37

Peer review dust collection...

Hello all,

Wikipedia:Peer Review is a good thing to have. Since we are a small community, I propose to limit the "dist-collection" period to two months. If the article has not been looked at in 2 months, it is unlikely to be looked at (I therefore just archived the requests of April/March 2008). Just wanted to let you know. --Eptalon (talk) 12:36, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

EN Wikipedia Template

If some of you are aware, a common template, which some may have seen before:

"This article or parts of it were created based, in whole or in part, on this version of the English Wikipedia article. The complete history of the article can be found there. "

, is used to tell people if an article is based on the EN Wikipedia version of the article. I believe that many do not use this template, and it should be due to the fact that it is troublesome. If possible, may I propose that a standard template be created to facilitate this, and promote the use of it? Prime Contributer (talk) 13:53, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Many do not use it because we write articles from scratch that do not need to attribute the English Wikipedia. At least, that's what I've pledged to do. Currently this is posted on talk pages. Would you want to move it to the articles themselves or keep it in talk? Cassandra 21:08, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

It will be more convenient if it can be implemented, then maybe more people would actually bother to use it. Prime Contributer (talk) 09:04, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Main Page

I would like to bring to your attention that when "Main Page" is typed in the search box, it will lead you to the Main Page of this Wiki. It will be misleading if a user wants to get information on Main Pages, and is sent back to where he was at first. There is currently a article on Home Page. Ought it be redirected to that page? I'm not sure, what do you think? Prime Contributer (talk) 15:16, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

This has been a recurring debate on English Wikipedia; some have suggested that there might be a book, person (someone asked, what if Jimmy Page has a daughter named Main), or whatever that will become famous. I believe they have been shot down because too many pages link to the Main Page. Proposals have included moving it to Portal:Main Page. I don't know if Simple should break away or meekly follow their big brother. Cassandra 21:05, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

At this point I say it's now or never because we are smaller.--  † ChristianMan16  17:30, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Non-latin text templates...

Hello all,

with Saare Jahan se Achcha we have a poem that has Urdu text in it; I don't know howe this is rendered by brwosers, but what about a page similar to To Read in Malayam (on Malaam Wikipedia)? - I don't know how the browsers handle Urdu though, Urdu is not malayam; it also looks different from the regular indic scrpt (hindi?) --Eptalon (talk) 20:52, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

en:Wikipedia:Multilingual_support is another candidate. --Eptalon (talk) 20:54, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

I use Vista with Firefox and Opera and it renders fine, everything. I just opened up IE and it's the same thing as well; everythign renders. I'm sure (but haven't yet proven) that XP will do just fine as well. Cassandra 21:05, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

I use linux, and I installed like all scripts I could find; I lack a few characters for Malayam (and some other Indic scripts I don't really use). It looks like Urdu is based on Arabic script. It has 36 characters; so perhaps they don't use Unicode. On a side-note: this page is already listed on Malayam wikipedia (iw links); I wonder if we get any editors from there?--Eptalon (talk) 21:32, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

On a side note: The Urdu text displays fine in my Windows XP...--Eptalon (talk) 08:39, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

You dual-boot, Eptalon? Cassandra 02:51, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

I do what most do, at work I am currently stuck with Windows (XP); at home, I do indeed dual boot..--Eptalon (talk) 07:30, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Video game stub template

I think there should be a stub for video games. While pretty much every video game article save for a small handful are stubs, once many articles start to get expanded, it'll be useful to be able to find what are still stubs. - A Link to the Past (talk) 00:58, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Please use WP:ST not this talk page... Cassandra 01:08, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

I have moved this discussion from the talk page to the non-talk page. Cheers, Razorflame 01:10, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

I've counted more than 3000 articles that transclude {{stub}}. I think perhaps maybe it is time to start breaking them down, starting with video games. Cassandra 01:25, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Actually, I thought that there were more like 13,000 or 14,000 articles that transcluded {{stub}}, but whatever :).

Anyone mind if I create the Wrestling related ones?-  † ChristianMan16  17:31, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

How many wrestling-related articles exist? - A Link to the Past (talk) 21:54, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

It would probably make more sense to create a {{sport-stub}} and put them in there for now till the sports one needs to be split. -Djsasso (talk) 21:57, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

That's just it Professional wrestling isn't really a sport....it would be inaccurate.--  † ChristianMan16  04:05, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Personally, I think that a few more direct ones would be useful (for we have more like 25,000 than 5,000 stubs). But I don't think we should do what en:WP does and have like "This biographical article relating to a 1990s baseball pitcher is a stub." We should have the most simple and most important ones such as "Sports," "Religion," "Music," "Geography," "Biography," "Video Games," "Television," "Radio," "Theology," and selected others that are more general. Cheers -- America ^†alk 22:17, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

I would have to agree with American Eagle on this. We should not do it the way that en:WP does it because the way that they do it would be too complex for this site. We should probably do a few of the more simpler types of stub templates FIRST and then after that point in time, break them down into more simpler stubs in the future (not now). Cheers, Razorflame 22:22, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

1. I kinda didn't do the video game stub template correct - {{video-game-stub}}, I forgot to make it so articles go to Category:Video game stubs.
2. My stance is that if we ever NEED to have a "1990s baseball pitchers" stub, we should have it. We won't, but just saying, we should set a limit for how many stubs can be in a category. If it gets too big, we split it into another stub. For example, if the video game stub fills up too much, we can make the Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony stubs. - A Link to the Past (talk) 22:42, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

(unindenting) Hiyas alll. The stub problem again. Hiding the problem does not make it smaller. Suppose we had 5 different categories of stubs, with 600 articles each? - It is all the same. I think, our current stubs can be classified as follows:

1. The usual 3 sentence stub
2. Longer stubs where the tag has not been removed, or which have been clased as stub even if they aren't.

Rather than coming up with stub-categories, we should look what the nature of a stub is. Once we know that we can then see that most of these 3000 articles do not require the stub tag (or we could have a "stub drive", focused at getting articles to a state where they no longer need the tag. Of course, just my 2 cents. --Eptalon (talk) 22:29, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Where are you guys getting 3,000? We have 31,653 articles, and just guessing, about 28,000 of them are stubs. I cannot understand how 40 editors are going to quickly expand 28,000 articles when it took around 4 years to create them as stubs. I wasn't really talking about stub categories, just the stub templates. Cheers -- America ^†alk 22:44, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

A category doesn't exist, and I got tired of going through Whatlinkshere after six times. Cassandra 02:50, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

41 clicks; ie. 20.500 stubs. I'll say it again: creating stub categories does not solve the problem. The category of the stub should be given by the article category, not the stub category. Another problem: What if more than one stub category fits? Like Ps2-games and xbox-games? (we then have oduble counting of that stub). I really think we need an analytical solution to it. What exactly is a stub? --Eptalon (talk) 09:38, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Thing is, creating a more detailed description of a stub (whatever that is, different discussion) means that editors who are interested in specific topics can more easily find stubs that they're interested in expanding. Right now, as you've shown Eptalon, the stub template is a waste of time with 20k odd articles called "a stub" - who's going to wade through that lot to help out? The Rambling Man (talk) 09:47, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

And then in the end, we get to go and decide where 20,897 (mainspace pages transcluding the stub template - thank you AWB for counting) pages need to be reclassified as and edit them to match.. lots of work there. Clearing it one group at a time based on categories and sub-cats would let much of it be done by bots for the most general of groupings (VG, geography, movies, biography, etc). That would let the left overs be easier to deal with. To cover multiple category stubs - the bot searches and if it finds {{stub}} it replaces with the currently checked "sub-stub" and if it finds any other stub tag (other than the one it is checking) it would add the currently checked sub-stub. ie: it is seaching cat:movies and sees {{stub}} in an article so it replaces it with {{stub-movies}}. Later it sees {{stub-videogames}} (a videogame/movie article) and instead of replacing, adds {{stub-movies}}. Later it sees {{stub-movies}} (an article it already checked under a separate subcat) and just ignores the article. -- Creol(talk) 10:14, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

(unindenting) Our catergory tree is single rooted (Everything is in Cat:Wikipedia, IIRC). So if we have two stub tags, go up the cat hierarchy to the level where both cats meet, ie. the entry where the cat tree splits - Hence the bot could do stub replacement too. --Eptalon (talk) 10:50, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

All I was wanting to do at present was use the templates (like Template:Sport-stub), I don't care too much about the categories. Seeing you all don't seem to mind the template in itself, would it be alright just to use that template, without the category, on any sports-related article I create? Thanks -- America ^†alk 17:08, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Since there seems to be no problem with it, I am going to be using the most basic stubs (as I mentioned above), on any articles I create or will be changing - for now, without the category. Thanks -- America ^†alk 03:24, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

I thought only the EN-Wikipedia has stub templates for different articles? I always use the usual:

{{stub}}

I only see this around here. You mean there are individual stub templates? Prime Contributer (talk) 09:07, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Arrgg...

This is getting rather annoying. I've been copy/pasting templates from the English Wikipedia intact, but somehow they are all messed up (see my sandbox for what I mean). Do we have a different Infobox template here or something? And can it be fixed, or are we stuck with it? Thanks -- America ^†alk 05:22, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

If the issue is the broken v/d/e links up the top, this fixes them. Otherwise I'm not sure what the problem is - can you clarify? —Giggy 05:26, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Oh my, you seem to have fixed my sandbox template. I think that's it. Maybe not, but that works to me. Thanks Giggy -- America ^†alk 05:35, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

New PVGA - American Airlines Flight 11

Hello everyone. A sensitive subject, I've expanded American Airlines Flight 11 up to a point where I consider it meets the WP:VGA criteria. I hope you'll all work with me to get it promoted. The Rambling Man (talk) 21:00, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

It is now ready to be voted on. Please feel free to contribute to the vote and make suggestions on how the article can be improved further. Thanks again! The Rambling Man (talk) 12:16, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Note

Hello all! This is Razorflame and I am just going to write a few thoughts that I have had about myself and my editing over the past few weeks:

I know that almost everyone here has noticed how infrequently I have been editing on the Simple English Wikipedia as of late, and this should help to explain why I haven't been editing here as much as I have in the past. There are several reasons why I am not editing as much as I have in the past and they are:

1. To tell you the truth, I feel like there have been so many good editors that have joined this site recently and I feel like they have been taking over many of the roles that I have been doing for the past few months. Therefore, I feel like I am not as useful as I have been in the past. Because of the influx of new users that have been editing this site frequently, I feel as if there is less work for me to do on here and I feel less likely to edit here.

2. To tell you the truth, I have lost motivation to edit here because of a certain email that a certain user has sent to me during my previous RfA and because of the fact that I am feeling like I can never have a successful RfA. It is really making me feel bad and I wish that there was something that I could do for this Wikipedia and make it so that I can have a successful RfA in the future as well.

3. There has not been much vandalism recently. Because of the low amount of vandalism and vandalism reversions, I feel like there is not much reason for me to edit here because that was one of the main reasons why I was editing here in the first place.

4. The long Wikibreak really took me out of the role of knowing what is going on on this Wikipedia and it has really made me think about if I want to continue editing here in the future or if I should just quietly slip off into the sunset.

5. The final reason why I haven't been editing here as much is because I have been extremely active over on Yahoo Answers. In fact, that is where I spend most of my time on the computer now-a-days when I am on the computer. I am trying to come back over here to edit more, but it has been hard.

Hope this clears some things up! Cheers, Razorflame 22:20, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Hello Razorflame; please forgive me if I just write like that. If you don't have the motivation, I can probably not give it back to you. You have been very active in the past (The most active editor by the number of edits done in short periods of time that I have seen so far). If you now slow down ot perhaps half to a third that pace, you will still be more active than most other editors here. Also, please note that some flags that say that you are allowed to delete/undelete pages, or to see who is editing from where (in the case of checkuser), or to rename users, promote bots, and make new admins (in the case of Bureaucrats) are not the only way to show (or get value). That we have most towns and villages in Switzerland (I was amazed down ot what size) is basically your work (you started a similar thing with french places. I can also not change the other editors, but if one editor wrote a mail or other message that got you down you should ont fan that out to all the editors. Many editors here probably appreciate what you do. And by the way, can you have a look at Wildhaus (I had to create it after a vandal attack); I am not as good at geographical stubs... All the best nevertheless...--Eptalon (talk) 23:03, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for helping to encourage me to edit here again :). I have already taken a look at Wildhaus and I fixed up a few things and factual errors that I had to fix, but other than that, I have completely made Wildhaus a much better article. Cheers, Razorflame 02:45, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, you don't need to be an admin or whatever to make this site better. In fact, being an admin usually takes up a lot of time leaving less time to improve articles and make the encyclopaedia better. Simple English Wikipedia will, however, be a worse place without you. The Rambling Man (talk) 08:15, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

1) Don't go; 2) Sorry if I took over - but it probably wasn't me, as I don't do much, do I? Microchip 09:50, Tuesday, July 8 2008 Utc

Now that this has been mentioned, I'll probably bugger off some time soon as well. I just don't like big communities, I loved it here when it was small. --Gwib ^-(talk)- 10:28, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Come on everyone, it's not like English Wikipedia is it?! I look over the recentchanges and see maybe two dozen regular contributors over the past week. That's not a huge community by any means. The Rambling Man (talk) 10:31, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Well, I do think this community is rather small. We have about 50 active contributers here. Recent changes at en goes by 50 at a time in just 10 seconds and here it takes almost an hour. :P I like it though, and Razorflame, we can't make you leave or go, it;s your choice. But we would be heart broken if you left... :( -- RyanCross (talk) 10:36, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Oppose Retirement - Dont leave! You are a very good editor. The main reason they oppose your RfA's is because of the frequency. Leave it for a while, a couple of months. Or even better, wait until someone nominates you. As you can see here, quite a few people like you, and think you do a good job. So I'm sure that if you give it a while someone will nominate you, and you will succeed soon enough. The Guiness slogan is right, "Good things come to those who wait"™. All the best! ← κεηηε∂γ ^(talk) 10:42, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Redirects to active user pages

As we have a small userbase, would it be worth creating UT:G, UT:RM, UT:RC, UT:RF, UT:M etc? I use the watchlist notifier, and have to manually type in the userpages manually into the search bar, which takes time. Microchip 09:54, Tuesday, July 8 2008 Utc

Sounds like the New York Stock Exchange... I'd be happy with it so long as I can have the iconic UT:H. ;) Hippopotamus (talk) 14:11, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

I get stuck as either Universal Time, Coordinated or The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.. So I don't like this idea one bleeding bit. -- Creol(talk)

Not necessarily. You could be Unbelievably Terrible Contributor if you preffered? ;) ← κεηηε∂γ ^(talk) 14:23, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Howl ong do I get to keep UT:E? ;) --Eptalon (talk) 14:27, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm the only "UT:AE" - hehe. -- America ^†alk 16:56, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Creol, not true. See en:UTC (disambiguation). There's a lot of abbrevations for UTC, including a rugby club, a town center, and a communist youth group. Cassandra 18:24, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Do we really need to create the UT namespace? We could just have WP:MAJOR or something like that, or WP:RAMBLE (I would be WP:CASS), similar to how we have WP:JIMBO for our leader Jimbo Wales over on the English Wikipedia. Cassandra 18:18, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, keep it in one namespace if you think this is a good idea. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:21, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

At least the "UT" makes it clear that they are user talk pages, doubling up "WP" might get confusing. WP:A would get you an administrator, WP:H a hippo? Hippopotamus (talk) 18:25, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

What is a stub

Fllowing the discussion (on Video game stub templates), I propose to start the discussion on what a stub actually is. I propose the following "features" for a stub

• Very short article (less than one screen, whatever that translates to)
• Can easily be expanded
• Categories are missing, or very general

Or look at some examples (picked more or less at random)

• Contact network
• Cheese
• Graph theory
• Slavery

The following (taken from the short pages list) are also stubs:

• Scripps Ranch, San Diego, California
• Folkvang

I also propose the following (vague) concept: Articles that give a broad overview of the subject are not stubs. In that classification Graph theory should not be a stub; it is also no lnoger easy to expand it (in other words: it requires some knowledge on graph theory to do so).

What do you think? --Eptalon (talk) 10:38, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Something else, that might identify a stub candidate: Lists make up a good part (more than half?) of the article--Eptalon (talk) 10:38, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Hmm... when you say "less than one screen" do you include infoboxes, other websites, references, ect or just text? -- RyanCross (talk) 10:40, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Thats up for discussion; once the article is close to a screen, it should likely no longer be a stub (whith the list exception, seen eg. in Slavery above). But very basically: If you scroll down and there is less than a screen of scrolling. --Eptalon (talk) 10:44, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Less than one screen is far too vague - I run 1600 x 1200 and almost all articles here would still qualify as a stub for my viewing pleasure. You need to quantify it in readability terms I suspect, using the same tool as we do for checking PVGA are over 5Kb... That's a quantitative measure at least. The Rambling Man (talk) 10:45, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

For me, the vague "broad overveiw" concept is more important than most definitions. A large article the only barely covers the topic (Slavery is 3K, but has very little useful information on the topic) is certainly a stub while a small article that covers all the main points may not be. The small one may or may not be able to be expanded by us, but as long as it covers what most feel are generally the key points of the subject, it is no longer a stub. Very vague and up to personal interpretation as to what applies and what does not though.. "Too short" and "can easily be expanded" tend to fall under this concept as if they are true, the article is not likely covering all the key points. -- Creol(talk) 10:50, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Drop all the size requirements and say:

• Stubs can easily be expanded
• Articles that give a broad overview of the subject are not stubs

Criteria like mostly list, less than a screen etc would then simply be indicators. Proper list of things should not be stubs. --Eptalon (talk) 10:56, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

The Wikimedia Toolserver informs us about stub articles, but I don't think everyone wants to go there go often, right? Prime Contributer (talk) 09:02, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Higer priority articles?

Hello all, subjects like slavery are commonly taught in schools (In different contexts, probably with the false info that it no longer exists, but that is something else). I therefore believe that articles like slavery should increase our visibliity very much (ideally, slavery should be a well-balanced VGA, but we are very far from that). It woulsd therefore be a good thing if we could focus our efforts on such articles - it might sipmly pay off... ;) --Eptalon (talk) 13:30, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Hello Eptalon. I don't think we could all concentrate our efforts onto one article, or one type of article. As Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, we try to have articles on as many subjects as is possible. What I might suggest is that you find some people who would be willing to collaberate on this article. Perhaps start a WikiProject? Remember, be bold, try editing and improving it yourself. Regards, ← κεηηε∂γ ^(talk) 13:49, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Also, I thought you were new, so apologies if my reply was aimed at the newer editor. My points still stand. Best trying to get people who have an interest in the subject if you want to get it to a GA or VGA level. ← κεηηε∂γ ^(talk) 13:54, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

((IIRC I have been here for the better part of two and a half years (Welcome message still on my talk page). I have been an admin for about 1.5 years.)

That's actually not what I intended to say. To rephrase: Some subjects are commonly taught at school. Having a decent aricle for the subject in question might increase our visibilty. It would therefore be a good idea to see that such subjects are well-covered. -I only took slavery as an example because I discovered it (see stub discussion above). --Eptalon (talk) 13:58, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Update: I have been here since January 2006. (Dec 2005, actually) --Eptalon (talk) 14:01, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

(edit conflict) At this point, I would settle for "not a stub" level and not even bother with (V)GA level for a good many articles (mainly the entire "list of 1000 articles" collection). Yes, getting a group of interested people to work together on a focused topic/article is needed, but with such a wide selection as the List of 1000, nearly everybody can find something on there they have an interest in. Of course there will always be some that do/can not find an interest, but as an aim for the group in general, it is a valid idea. Given that it took me about an hour to cranked out a translation for the TOTW, getting several people to each flesh out a couple of stubs on that list or creating (non-stub) articles from the most wanted list a week should not be a hard thing to do. I think one of the issues here is aiming for VGA all the time. We still need a lot more work on the foundation before focusing so much on the towers. -- Creol(talk) 14:10, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

I tend to agree with the idea of prioritising certain articles. A little like the basic 850 words kind of thing. Some questions:

1. Where do we get our list of high priority articles?
2. Do we identify them with their own category? (probably yes)

The Rambling Man (talk) 14:03, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

I again apologise, I never checked your page, and just assumed. I can see your points. But as I say, you wont get all the editors to concentrate on one specific article. Thats why I suggested starting a wikiproject, gather like minded editors, who have an interest in the subject. Actually, I believe there is / was such a project over at en.wiki. Editors would choose an article and try to improve it. ← κεηηε∂γ ^(talk) 14:14, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

A wikiproject is probably a good idea; in my opinion it should be ndone in cooperation with teachers (any teachers here?), so that we can identify like 5 articles from every subject field; once we have that, we should probably look for more editors (related to that wikiproject) - I am not able to contribute any more to the Islam article, since I simply don't know. Someone who grew up with Islam, extends that article more easily, probably. We should also couple it to the schools gateway. If we had a list of say 5 articles from the 4-5 main subject areas (biology, science of relgion (this is not christianity alone), history, maths, graphical arts/music, philosophy). It would also give more of an outlook to those interested, say in history, to improve the slave article to a decent level. --Eptalon (talk) 14:24, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

(Unindenting)Re:Creol: An article has to grow of its own. All I am say is that eg. Slavery at a decent level (non-stub) would be a start. Slavery at (V)GA would of course be terrific. I am aware that it will take time though. --Eptalon (talk) 14:31, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Great! Unfortunately, I am not a teacher, and have no interest, background in, or dealings with any of the subjects you have listed, except perhaps history. ;) ← κεηηε∂γ ^(talk) 14:38, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Creol's idea: take any of the 1000 top wanted list; and get it to non-stub level? --Eptalon (talk) 14:41, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

That sounds good with me. Create a WikiProject, and I will join. I can contribute a small amount to articles I know nothing about. I mean the very least I could do is be another person to spell check etc... Good luck! ← κεηηε∂γ ^(talk) 14:45, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Also, I'm getting confused having three conversations at once, while trying to serve customers at my job. Anyone else tried that? It's bloody confusing I can tell you... ← κεηηε∂γ ^(talk) 14:46, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Ok, I do not have the time to create a formal description of the Wikiproject, to find a name, etc. But informally, I see it as follows: Extend the articles listed on the List of articles all Wikipedias should have so that:

• They exist
• They are not stubs (by the definitions above: They give a basic overview of the subject and cannot easily be expanded)
• The items maked in bold on that list should be considered more important than the others

There is therefore no need to join anything at the moment. Hopefully the list contains something for everyone. Use the definition I gave, to see if an article is a stub; the stub tag may be missing, it may also be on articles that do no meet the definition above. --Eptalon (talk) 10:19, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Well, I have created a basic Wikiproject. I have called it WikiProject Collaboration. Good a name as any eh? I have suggested your slavery option. You're welcome to move it to your userspace or change anything you want. Its not fixed. Its just my suggestion. ← κεηηε∂γ ^(talk) 10:57, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Good and Very Good Article news

Hurrah, well done everyone. Today saw the promotion of Gothic architecture to Good Article status and Daniela Hantuchová‎ to Very Good Article status. Together with Charles Spurgeon and Ana Ivanović, it means Simple English Wikipedia has seen four article promotions in the last month. That's four out of a total of 30 either Good or Very Good Articles. Brilliant.

However, let's not stop there. We currently have Powderfinger and Baseball uniform at WP:PGA and American Airlines Flight 11 & Anna Kournikova at WP:PVGA. Keep up the good work and we may be celebrating four more promotions before the end of July! The Rambling Man (talk) 13:59, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Hey, it's also been exactly one year since I joined here! --Gwib ^-(talk)- 19:25, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Congrats, keep up your good work, and now go support some GAs and VGAs!! The Rambling Man (talk) 21:58, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Templates have been created over here to prettify your contributions and to help keep track of how many VGA/GA you've created/significantly contributed to. Here they are, coded and user-friendly:

This user has written or significantly contributed to (# of articles) very good articles on Wikipedia.

This user has written or significantly contributed to (# of articles) good articles on Wikipedia.

--Gwib ^-(talk)- 19:57, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Well, I am working on EarthBound, Calvin & Hobbes, Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure, and Rhythm Tengoku (probably the most complete of the four articles). If any help can be presented, go for it (especially simplifying). - A Link to the Past (talk) 05:09, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

<-- Wait, but how will you decide if you've contributed significantly to an article or not? -- RyanCross (talk) 21:48, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

I guess you just have to make a judgment call. I mean, for instance, if any of the four articles I mentioned got promoted, I would definitely consider myself a significant contributor to the article. - A Link to the Past (talk) 04:17, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

I just hope nobody receives complaints if that happens saying "you didn't contribute to that article very much, and you consider you significantly helped promote it". You've been warned.... :P -- RyanCross (talk) 06:15, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Our stub problem

Hello all, I am writing here. Those interested should also read the Viideo game stub section above.What we have found so far:

• At the moment, there are slightly over 20.800 articles with the stub tag.
• A more specific stub tag might help people find articles to expand; getting a meaningful tag on all articles might however be a lot of work.

Do you all think that having 5 categories (for example of stubs) with roughly 4.000 articles each is better than the current situation. Put differently: I am interested in sports. Does it help me if I have 4.000 articles (vaguely related to sports), rather than 21.000 general ones? - Will anyone ever look past the first few hundred articles? - In that sense, does it make sense to have a more specific stub template, with perhaps laso a category (Sports-related stubs)? --Eptalon (talk) 11:01, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

• I'm tempted to say a more specific stub type will now help, perhaps based on the top-level of the cat tree, i.e. Category:Main page? The Rambling Man (talk) 21:02, 9 July 2008 (UTC)
• I would most definitely get more into improving articles if I could focus on a certain type. Cassandra 18:13, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

NPOV or not?

Hi, I have the feeling that the pages created by 92.2.101.184 are not entirely NPOV. I am not familiar with the Pakistan/India politics but it seems to me all or most of these are started from a Pakistan point of view. Can someone have a look at this please? JurgenG (talk) 06:32, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

I am well aware that the pages created by this IP probably show a "pro-Pakistan" point of view. I do however think that this is ok for now. As far as I know these pages are about subjects our regulars will likely not be able to cover, as they most probably lack the knowledge. In other words: It is better to have the pages as they are now (and to be able to correct them, once someone is able to) than to label them all as npov, and possibly scare or even ban the editor for what they did. At the moment the idea is about getting the knowledge. As an alternative, we could try getting some editors with an Indian or Pakistani background (Which we currently do not have among our regulars). In short: Yes, I know. --Eptalon (talk) 07:30, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

It would also be good if we could get the editor to create an account. :) --Eptalon (talk) 07:31, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

They're way beyond being simply "pro-Pakistan". It seems that all the subdivisions of "Jammu and Kashmir" (which is at present in India, but disputed by Pakistan) and the cities have be categorized as being in Pakistan, so that can't be left. See Jammu for a very extreme example. Hippopotamus (talk) 20:27, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

My personal opinion is that the editor probably has useful information we do not have; our problem at the moment is that we are seemingly unable to communicate with him/her. Put differently: If we can actually talk to them (and may be get them to create an account, so they are contactable more easily), it will be much easier to work out the issues pointed out above. Before you try to condemn them for being radical of one side, please bear in mind that what is known as the Kashmir conflict has been going on openly since the independence of formerly British-occupied India, and the creation of India and Pakistan in 1947 - That was two years after the end of World War II. Bangladesh was formerly a part of Pakistan, it arose after a war of Independence in 1971. Well before that, people were thinking about the different options of what to do once the British were gone. In short, this conflict has been going on for almost two generations. Suppose for example, that you knew that the Holocaust was fundamentally different from what you were told, and that your view was not the mainstream one - You then see how hard it is to convince people. In short: Rather than trying to fix a few articles for a possibly non-mainstream point of view we should try to talk to that editor as they might have useful information we will not be able to get otherwise. --Eptalon (talk) 21:03, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

I'd love to be able to agree with you, but I can't see any see any evidence of useful information, unfortunately. I'm well aware of the history of the Kashmir conflict, but I see so many NPOV violations, and since the user is based in the United Kingdom, they must know that there is more than one side to the argument. Also they've edited Kashmir-related articles on enwiki without adding Pakistan categories. Incidentally, NPOV-wise, I think it's "formally British-ruled India", not "British-occupied"... Hippopotamus (talk) 01:02, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

First names explained

Hello all, or Category:Names again starts to show sings of becoming a name directory (eg. Naomi, Joseph (name), Colm; Khayyam and Stephen are red-link collections). This has already been discussed (It was about Nicholas; see this discussion. My personal opinion is still that SimpleWP is not a name directory, giving the meaning and origin of a name. Nicholas has basically not been touched in the last year (in other words, since that deletion discussion linked to above). Since the commuunity has changed somewhat since then, I just wanted to bring it up here (note:This is not an RFD; I don't want votes to keep or to delete the respective articles; I am loonking for opinons. I am also not quick-deleting; since I want opinions). What does the community think, do we want articles that describe where a name is from, and what it means? --Eptalon (talk) 12:20, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

I would say it depends on the name, though it's probably a very difficult thing to quantify. For instance, the enwiki article is reasonable apart from maybe the "People known as Nicholas". Perhaps that's down to the age of the name and its usage in multiple languages. I don't think pages that are just a list of people with that name are acceptable, though. Hippopotamus (talk) 20:37, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Main page redesign proposal

Still on Simple talk

Wikibreak

I am on Wikibreak as I have suffered burns - see my user page. --  Da Punk '95  talk  10:39, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Okay. Hope you come back soon. And I hope it heals soon also. :D -- RyanCross (talk) 10:42, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

2 days in a sling, two weeks with a dressing. --  Da Punk '95  talk  10:42, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

RfD Refactor

True to my metapedian roots, I have now refactored the RfD system completely. Now, all you need do is add {{RfD|reason}} to your proposed article, and follow the prompts. It is set up to enable automatic(ish) archiving into categories, so it is a simple matter of changing two words on the discussion page - quicker, easier, better. However, as I have only tested it once, and only as a subpage, I have no idea if it works properly. Please test it next time you RfD, and tell me what you think. Oh, and the current RfD candidates have had their templates substituted so the template they use stays the same. Microchip 18:16, Friday, July 11 2008 Utc

Well, from what I can see, it's saying that Jimbo nominated the article for deletion. - A Link to the Past (talk) 03:34, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

The preload template asks for a value for the variable "There should be three tildes here" (which should be three tildes and should not even be asked for, but should be a forced value if they want to go this way) but nowhere in the multitude of templates to get to it is this variable even mentioned until getting to the final stage that is displayed. Bad enough that it uses the users signature (some/most are horrendously inappropriate to something like this - even a simple one like mine yealds "-- Creol(talk) requests the deletion") but by forcing users to explore the template and all its subtemplates just so you can say you are not Jimbo Wales?? Not a good thing. Most of the people who would use the template have enough of an understand of English that User=<!- -put your name here-->, article=<!- -put article, page or category name here-->, reason=<!- - Put why you think it should be deleted here--> should be enough. Also, this will work for categories as the {{la}} template it calls does not - The {{lc}} template should be used for categories (and actually works for non-category articles) but it is never mentioned that it does not work with categories. -- Creol(talk) 07:07, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

It wasn't meant to be forced. But I believe that the ~~~~ does work - surely a link to a talk page is useful? As to the category, an #ifeq call could sort it out. Off to fiddle. Microchip 13:33, Sunday, July 13 2008 Utc

Theoretically the category problem should be fixed. Not tried it, tho. Microchip 13:46, Sunday, July 13 2008 Utc

The talk link is not bad, those extra -'s though can get annoying and that is before considering something like your Nanochip account using the template:

Nanochip08 ^Microchip08 on_WHEELS has nominated this page for deletion for the reason:

Things could easily get out of hand using full signatures. -- Creol(talk) 16:07, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Although technically that shouldn't happen. Microchip 12:45, Monday, July 14 2008 Utc

Is there any other problems with the new system? mC⁸ 16:13, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia Statistics...

Hello all,

what would be involved in having [these] statistics updated monthly? - The current ones are from February of this year? --Eptalon (talk) 11:12, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Contact the developer of the stats software, who is Zachte. He is featured in the Wikipedia Signpost. Chenzw  Talk  13:51, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

I thought that it was Huji's bot that did all of the stats work for our Wikipedia...Cheers, Razorflame 23:55, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

More Statistics

On Special:Statistics, it say:

"There have been a total of 89 page views, and 979,112 page edits since Wikipedia was setup. That comes to 11.04 average edits per page, and 0.00 views per edit. ".

That doesn't seem right to me, is this a bug in mediawiki? - tholly ^--Turnip-- 15:22, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

I can't see that on that page. Majorly ^talk 15:28, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Me neither. The Rambling Man (talk) 16:50, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

4th line down. - 979,483 changes have been made since Simple English Wikipedia was started. That comes to 11.04 'changes per page' in the project. --  Da Punk '95  talk  20:51, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Mmm... I can still see it. Here is the total page for me: - tholly ^--Turnip-- 16:22, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia statistics

---

There are 89,704 total pages in the database. This includes "talk" pages, pages about Wikipedia, minimal "stub" pages, redirects, and others that probably do not qualify as content pages. Excluding those, there are 32,763 pages that are probably legitimate content pages.

22 files have been uploaded.

There have been a total of 89 page views, and 987,571 page edits since Wikipedia was setup. That comes to 11.01 average edits per page, and 0.00 views per edit.

The job queue length is 3.

User statistics

---

There are 21,448 registered users, of which 31 (or 0.14%) have Sysops rights.

Ah, it shows what User:Da Punk '95 says when I log out, but is still as above when I log in. Any ideas? - tholly ^--Turnip-- 16:25, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

I think it's a browser thing. On Safari, I get most of that but I get "That comes to 11.01 'changes per page' in the project." instead of edits. And no 0.00 per blah blah blah. You're not using IE are you?! The Rambling Man (talk) 16:24, 16 July 2008 (UT

I'm using Firefox 3. I get the 'simple' changes per page when I log out too. - tholly ^--Turnip-- 16:27, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Odd. Sounds like a bug. The Rambling Man (talk) 16:30, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

When I got the above, I was using Firefox 3 (3.0.0.0) and Windows Vista Home Premium without SP1. --  Da Punk '95  talk  20:33, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

What language is set in your preferences, as the page changes to normal when I log out. - tholly ^--Turnip-- 21:34, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

PVGAs

Hello everyone. American Airlines Flight 11 seems to be destined for promotion so now can I ask you to turn you attention to both Anna Kournikova and Jessica Alba, both of whom are looking for comments. Anna is up for voting too. Thanks for your time. The Rambling Man (talk) 16:50, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Proposed good articles

Just a note to everyone, we have 2 ongoing articles up for !voting at WP:PGA. Those articles are baseball uniform and Powderfinger. Feel free to comment, but it is completely optional. Thanks, RyanCross (talk) 08:38, 14 July 2008 (UTC)