User talk:Dex1337/Archive 1

Welcome to WikiProject Former countries
Welcome,, to the Former countries WikiProject! Please direct any questions about the project to its talk page. If you create new articles on a former territory, please tag their talk page with our project template WPFC. A few features that you might find helpful: If you have any questions, please feel free to ask me or any of the more experienced members of the project, and we'll be very happy to help you. Again, welcome, and thank you for joining this project! 52 Pickup 06:30, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
 * The project's Navigation box points to most of the pages in the project that might be of use to you.
 * Most of the important discussions related to the project take place on the project's main talk page; you may find it useful to [ watchlist it].
 * If you wish to use the template Infobox Former Country, please read the instructions before you get started
 * There are three other projects that this project is heavily involved with. You are welcome to join them as well:
 * Holy Roman Empire
 * Extraordinary governments
 * Prussia

Welcome to WikiProject Trains
Hello and welcome to the Trains WikiProject! Thank you for adding your name to our project membership list. Our goal is to build the most comprehensive and detailed guide to rail transport on Wikipedia. As a project member, you may add the project membership userbox to your user page if you wish.

If you haven't done so already, please add our main project page to your watchlist and take some time to review the Trains project manual of style where we have collected guidelines and suggestions on notability and style for a consistent representation of rail transport related material. If you're curious about where to start, we've gathered a few suggestions in the Trains project to do list. If you'd like to specialize in a particular area of study within rail transport, take a look at the current Trains project task forces.

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask on the project talk page or on my talk page. Again, welcome and happy editing! Slambo (Speak) 11:01, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

TfD nomination of Template:Keihan Electric Railway Keishin Line
Template:Keihan Electric Railway Keishin Line has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. — Sushiya 23:20, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

License tagging for Image:OTS map Cosmosquare.jpg
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License tagging for Image:Trade-Center-mae-eki-1.jpg
Thanks for uploading Image:Trade-Center-mae-eki-1.jpg. Wikipedia gets thousands of images uploaded every day, and in order to verify that the images can be legally used on Wikipedia, the source and copyright status must be indicated. Images need to have an image tag applied to the image description page indicating the copyright status of the image. This uniform and easy-to-understand method of indicating the license status allows potential re-users of the images to know what they are allowed to do with the images.

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Japanese train names
I think it is great that you created all the DAB pages for the Japanese train stations. But, in many cases (like Yoshikawa Station), you only included one possible Japanese name. Those three stations all have different kanji (well, hiragana, in one case), as seen on the lists. There are many DAB pages on the English side which do not need DAB'd on the Japanese side. Conversely, there are actually a few stations with the same kanji, but which have different readings, so, we don't need the DAB page here, even if one exists in Japanese. I can't think of it right now; but, my main point is that for many of these new DAB pages, the kanji should not be in the opening; nor, should just one of the three stations' ja: wikipedia be linked. I've fixed the articles at the end (from Z up through Ts so far), but, have to take off and do some other stuff right now. Regards. Neier 06:39, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

DEFAULTSORT
Hi, Dex1337. Thank you for your active creation of articles on Japanese railway stations. Unfortunately, I suppose from your recent edits, especially those in the articles of some Sakurai Line stations such as Unebi Station and Obitoke Station, that you are using DEFAULTSORT without good understanding of its purpose. Please read carefully Categorization, which fully describes the role of the magic word, and then please apply it to your future edits. --Sushiya 04:17, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Just forgot to change the values, fixing now thanks for the heads up (copy and paste ftw) --Dex1337 05:56, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Please confirm that you don't need DEFAULTSORT for articles like Sakurai Station (Nara) as opposed to those like Ōji Station (Nara) (which needs to be sorted as "Oji Station (Nara)", without macron). Omission of DEFAULTSORT would facilitate your copy and paste. Also, please note "Ōji Station (Nara)" and "Ōji Station (Tokyo)" may be sorted in same category so that it is better not to omit "(Nara)" or "(Tokyo)" from the sort key. --Sushiya 06:38, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the tips, Ill only include DEFAULTSORT if there are macrons in future, makes things easier I suppose (I had just gone with the policy of including it was best...) but I see how its easy to slip up. Thanks again --Dex1337 06:46, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Route diagrams of Japanese railways
I do not know what is your source, but I kindly recommend not to use that. So many errors have been found in your contributions, espectially rivers and locations of underground stations. See Sakaisuji Line. Thanx --Maxima m 03:32, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Notability of Individual Railway stations
Hi, I noticed in your contributions that you have been writing a series of short stubs on stations of the Iga Railway Iga Line. While I can understand how "Iga Railway Iga Line" is notable, the individual articles do not contain any assertion of notability. Notability is not automatically inherited by the parent topic. Please keep this in mind. You may also want to see Notability. Thanks! SmileToday☺(talk to me, My edits) 01:58, 24 October 2007 (UTC)


 * Acutally, I may be wrong. See User:Mangoe/Wikipedia is not a timetable. SmileToday☺(talk to me, My edits) 02:00, 24 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Considering every stations has a page on the ja wikipedia, we would assume that that content should be mirrored here, and was considered notable enough. It appears every station in english speaking countries has its own page, so we should be fighting systematic bias and include from non english speaking countries as well. The stubs are simply allowing people to enter content easier, which is my aim (people are more likely to add one sentance to an article than create it before).

You are very busy indeed! good answer above, was wondering the same thing as SmileToday. Good luck. Alpine boarder. July 22, 2008 —Preceding undated comment was added at 12:36, 22 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the support Dex1337 (talk) 12:39, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Lists of basic topics WikiProject status report
I've just created List of basic human anatomy topics. It's not complete. Please look it over to see if there is anything you can fill in.

Also, we've got a pretty long wish list of basic topics lists that don't yet exist. Please adopt a topic from the list and create a basic list for it -- the BLT template is for creating basic topic lists, and is used like this: topic (where "topic" is the name of the topic being covered). Instructions are included on the template. Once the page is created with the heading skeleton, fill it in to the best of your ability. Post a message on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Lists of basic topics to let the whole team know what you are working on.

The Transhumanist 01:43, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Collaboration
I'm pushing a collaboration to complete the list of basic space exploration topics.

Should be fun. Drop on by. ;)

Also, see my post to User talk:Quiddity if you want to delve in deeper.

The Transhumanist 09:20, 6 February 2008 (UTC)



One link at a time
Hi.

Since you are a member of the Lists of basic topics WikiProject, I have a couple requests for you...

As you browse/edit Wikipedia, please be on the lookout for links you can add to the lists of basic topics (and each time you find one, add it to the appropriate list). The ones that need the most work are listed at WikiProject Lists of basic topics.

You can also help build the set by adding or completing lists. Set a personal quota (build or complete one list per month, or per week, or per whatever time period you think you can handle), and keep up with your quota. These lists take from 3 hours to 8 hours each to complete, even if you know nothing about the subject to begin with. (The basic topics of a subject are pretty easy to identify). Even partial lists are useful for study and navigation, so don't be shy. Others can pick up where you've left off.

Links add up, so even if you add one link at a time, here and there, it will help. Please acquire the habit. The more people we get involved with this, the sooner the project will reach its intended scope.

The Transhumanist 06:06, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Disambiguating the unnecessary?
Why the disambiguation pages when all the entries on the page do not have Wiki articles? This is the second one I've run into in the space of a couple hours random browsing. This page has only been up for a half a year, but the other one was up for years. Wouldn't it be better to wait until there's a need?

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Yamamoto_Station&action=history 24.130.14.14 (talk) 10:08, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Shimmachi Station
A proposed deletion template has been added to the article Shimmachi Station, suggesting that it be deleted according to the proposed deletion process. All contributions are appreciated, but this article may not satisfy Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion, and the deletion notice should explain why (see also "What Wikipedia is not" and Wikipedia's deletion policy). You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the  notice, but please explain why you disagree with the proposed deletion in your edit summary or on its talk page.

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Disambiguation pages
Hi, I noticed that (some time ago) you had created a bunch of disambiguation pages for train stations. I'm not sure if you're still making any disambig pages, but in case you do, I'd like to point out that per the manual of style, entries should actually use bullet points, not be numbered (* instead of #). Not a big deal, of course, but best that they all look the same for the sake of consistency. --Xyzzyplugh (talk) 07:00, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Kitanoda Station
A proposed deletion template has been added to the article Kitanoda Station, suggesting that it be deleted according to the proposed deletion process. All contributions are appreciated, but this article may not satisfy Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion, and the deletion notice should explain why (see also "What Wikipedia is not" and Wikipedia's deletion policy). You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the  notice, but please explain why you disagree with the proposed deletion in your edit summary or on its talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised because even though removing the deletion notice will prevent deletion through the proposed deletion process, the article may still be deleted if it matches any of the speedy deletion criteria or it can be sent to Articles for Deletion, where it may be deleted if consensus to delete is reached. Do you want to opt out of receiving this notice? 70.56.168.6 (talk) 04:01, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Minami-Nagayama Station
This is an automated message from CorenSearchBot. I have performed a web search with the contents of Minami-Nagayama Station, and it appears to include a substantial copy of http://www.reference.com/go/http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Minami-Nagayama_Station. For legal reasons, we cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or printed material; such additions will be deleted. You may use external websites as a source of information, but not as a source of sentences.

This message was placed automatically, and it is possible that the bot is confused and found similarity where none actually exists. If that is the case, you can remove the tag from the article and it would be appreciated if you could drop a note on the maintainer's talk page. CorenSearchBot (talk) 04:53, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

Sakuraoka Station
This is an automated message from CorenSearchBot. I have performed a web search with the contents of Sakuraoka Station, and it appears to include a substantial copy of http://www.reference.com/go/http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Sakuraoka_Station. For legal reasons, we cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or printed material; such additions will be deleted. You may use external websites as a source of information, but not as a source of sentences.

This message was placed automatically, and it is possible that the bot is confused and found similarity where none actually exists. If that is the case, you can remove the tag from the article and it would be appreciated if you could drop a note on the maintainer's talk page. CorenSearchBot (talk) 05:03, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

What's up doc?
Hi Dex,

We could sure use your help over at the WikiProject Lists of basic topics...

We've created a page for every country of the world! (They are listed on the WikiProject page). They're not complete, and most of them aren't even in the main namespace yet, but...

A team of editors has been working on them, and the pages have come a long way.

We're about to run a competition, called "Around the World", in which participants will compete in the completion of specific data items across all of these country lists. For example, one task would be adding the population figure for each country. Each participant will be using advanced tools like AWB and Linky.

The awards images for the contest are almost done, and the pages themselves need a couple sections completed before they can be moved to the article namespace and the competition can begin.

We could sure use your help getting these pages ready...

Tracking down the administrative divisions types for each country
The first task is on the "Administrative divisions of" sections.

In each of these sections, there's an initial hierarchical list of the division types in that country, followed by subheadings for each of the types. Unfortunately, the types listed are those from the template I used to create these pages, and they aren't accurate for many countries.

The defaults that I used were:


 * Provinces of x
 * Districts of x
 * Municipalities of x

(Where "x" is the name of each country).

For each country, the links to the names of the administrative divisions for that country need to be checked and corrected, adding more links if there are more than 3 division types. Those that are subdivisions of another type are indented under the parent type. In most cases, you would leave municipalities in place, because that's a generic name for "city". We'll blue-link those later. (Blue-linking is creating a redirect so that a link turns blue - that way, the link remains standardized on all the pages in the set).

Also we need to change the subheadings in the same section to match the initial list, including the "main article" links presented just below each of those subheadings.

To find out what the administrative divisions are for a country so you can add them, try looking on the government of x or politics of x pages for that country, and on the country's main article as well.

Adding the administrative divisions to their respective subsections
For each country, we need to find the list of administrative division for each type, and add them under that type's subheading.

For example, copy and paste the provinces listed at Provinces of Angola to the "Provinces of Angola" subheading on that country's basic topics list page.

See the countries listed at Lists of basic topics for examples of how this has been done for those. If there's a map showing the administrative divisions, grab it too! Maps are great.

Generally do not add towns and cities to the municipalities section, as there are usually way too many of them (and will unnecessarily bloat the page). Instead, provide links to the various pages (Cities of x, [Towns of x, Villages of x, etc.

Completing the "Government of x" section
This section also has temporary data, and needs to be corrected/completed.

The titles of the head of state and head of government of each country need to be corrected, and the specific office holders added.

The branches of government subheadings need to be corrected/filled in.

Etc.

The above tasks are fun, because it's interesting to see how other countries operate. I've completed about 25 of the country pages so far, and I've been intrigued and even amazed at some of the approaches different countries follow. The U.S. is definitely behind in many respects.

Please help out as much as you can, and help us get Around the World started!

Sincerely,

The Transhumanist 18:03, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Reply to Train Station articles
Hey there, its Mattokunhayashi, and I have to say that I do not support competitions such as this. And, seeing how many articles you have created, I don't think I would win. ^_^ Although, I think you may have made a typo; perhaps you didn't mean 2300? Maybe 230? If not, sincerely sorry, I just doubt that number. It's a good thing we're working in two different parts of the country, or else we *might* create the same article under different names. Unless we coordinate ourselves to work on certain, different projects. Would you like to work together? I would like this, but if you wish to not, I will understand. RSVP. Mattokunhayashi (talk) 03:03, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Post-Scriptum
Statement Status: retracted Reason: Apology; hey listen, I'm sorry for what I said about your adjacent stations sections (see history tab, the second edit by me), I was wrong in thinking that someone else's edits were wrong. There is no wrong edit, just inexperienced ones. I'm not saying your edits are inexperienced, but someone else's may be. Although I'm apologizing, I still believe that the layout section should be left out. (You wouldn't put in a history section if you had no history on the article, would you?) In addition to the apology, and after review of the information provided in the template and of my thoughts, I realize that the format you used was superior to the one I had, and will format the stations I created to comply with them. This just means more work for me and also a more unified Wikipedia, don't you agree?

I'm deeply sorry for what I commented about your edits and I hope you understand. Mattokunhayashi (talk) 06:30, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

BSicon map
WARNING: if you click the link in this post: it may lag your computer and internet!) Here's a question, and I can only ask you because you're the only person I know with extensive knowledge on trains in Japan: Do you think it is possible to create a map of the Tokyo Metro system (or any other train system for that matter) using the Rail Icons? I'm not too sure about it, but I might be able to figure it out. Note: I'm not saying 'do it' (nor do I expect you to) just asking a simple question... If you think its possible, maybe I can try my luck at it, eh? Mattokunhayashi (talk) 07:47, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Concerning the WikiProject Lists of basic topics
(the RfDs below have already run their course)

RfD nomination of Navy of Sudan
I have nominated for discussion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; please participate in the discussion by adding your comments at the discussion page. Thank you. Ron Ritzman (talk) 00:07, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

RfD nomination of Navy of Belarus
I have nominated for discussion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; please participate in the discussion by adding your comments at the discussion page. Thank you. Ten Pound Hammer and his otters • (Broken clamshells • Otter chirps • HELP) 16:01, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Navy redirects
We've been "bluelinking" the Navy of x links in the basic topic country lists, by creating redirects for them, even for the countries that have no navy.

There's been a little controversy over the navy redirects for the landlocked countries (many of which have no navy), as you can see above. But it's all been worked out. Each country with no navy gets a redirect to wherever it is reported that it has no navy, or failing that, to its "military of" article.

The country lists are coming along slowing but surely. It shouldn't take too much longer before they will be complete enough to move into article space (!), but I can still use all the help I can get. (hint hint).

The Transhumanist 20:46, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

We could sure use your help in bluelinking the links in these lists (each link appears in one of the various country basic topic lists):
 * User:ChiragPatnaik/Navies
 * User:ChiragPatnaik/Armies
 * User:ChiragPatnaik/Air Forces

To bluelink them, create a redirect to wherever the information is covered. If there is no entity, redirect to where that is (or should be) covered.

If you have any questions, please contact me. The Transhumanist 20:58, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Was I correct?
Hello, its me again. I need to know if my actions were just in doing this: Yasaka Station. I did it because I searched 'yasaka' and it went directly to Yaska, which was NOT what I was looking for; which, as I'm writing this, doesn't even exist. Mattokunhayashi (talk) 04:18, 5 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Statement Retracted. The article in question: Yasaka Station, has been deleted (as one can see the red link =).Mattokunhayashi (talk) 03:27, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

More Editing Help/Advice
Ohisashiburi! Matt, here. I was thinking of going from Japanese railway articles to creating maps using the rail icons -- not only for rail lines, but roadways too! Speaking of maps for roadways, I didn't know if I should use these icons or the normal icons for railways for something like a US Interstate or other roadway. What do you think? My concern is that the former doesn't have a full/complete icon selection. For example, it doesn't have an icon for a directional T interchange. (Specifically, I wish to have one similar to the I-25 and I-90/US87 interchange, north of Buffalo, WY). What is your input here? On another note, I still don't fully understand the template for showing the map (and Spoorstrip isn't helping me much, again because I don't know how to use it), but I'll get it eventually. Get back to me soon! O-henji o-machi shiteorimasu. Mattokunhayashi 05:49, 3 January 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mattokunhayashi (talk • contribs)

Outline of Knowledge / Geography WikiProject Collaboration: Country outlines
As you probably remember, last spring we started work on the "Geography and places" branch of Wikipedia's Outline of knowledge. It is in the form of a set of outline pages including one for every present-day nation or state in the world. That's 247 pages! This has been a huge undertaking, involving dozens of editors using advanced wiki-tools.

These pages have come a long way, and it won't be long before the whole set is complete enough to be moved to article space into the encyclopedia for the benefit of all. But there's still a lot of work left, and we could use all the help we can get!

While some editors prefer to work on one country at a time, most of our team members take on a particular entry and complete it across all the pages. This has come to be our standard type of task. To facilitate this process, we apply tools such as AutoWikiBrowser, Linky, and WikEd, all of which can be used to process a large number of pages in various (direct or indirect) ways.

In case you are interested in what we've been up to, here's a progress report:

Lately, development has been slow but continuous:

On our recruiting initiative, Penubag has done a fantastic job on the images for the awards we'll be using for our project's collaborations and contests. We now have 3 awards: a medal, a trophy, and a race ribbon. They all look tight. The trophy needs a small adjustment, but other than that, all 3 award images are complete and ready to use to create awards with.

Spartaz has warned us of (threatened to take) G4 (speedy delete) action if we run a competition that resembles the previously deleted Awards Center page. So whatever we do, any contests we run must differ substantially from the methods used there.

One type of competition I've been exploring is "edit racing". I'm in the process of working the bugs out of this concept - the first race didn't work as expected - you see, because we only had an award for first place, so the opponent didn't think it worthwhile to continue once it was clear who the winner would be. And since editors are in different time zones and usually need to start the race at different times, we need to base winning on personal start times - he who completes his assigned edits in the least time (rather than first), wins. And last but not least is quality control. What good is racing if the participants' edits are ripe with errors? So I'll be exploring possibilities such as using a referee (assigned to oversee a particular race), having participants watching each other for errors to knock them back, etc. I'm not sure yet.

Rich Farmbrough has been applying his bot expertise to filling in blanks in the country outlines (the population and area entries). I'm amazed at the number of edits he pumps out each day on a myriad of projects - ours makes up but a small time slice of his activity, and yet he has saved us many hours of manual work. Perhaps we should look into how he gets so much done. :)

Zlerman has chosen to work on specific outlines, and has taken on Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. He also has been keen on noticing and reporting design issues pertaining to the whole set of country outlines. Keep up the good work!

Highfields is in charge of capitals, adding them to all the outlines. He is also our first race winner. Check out the award on his user pages.

In case you didn't know, this project has expanded to include work on any and all sets of pages represented on the country outlines. Once the set of country outlines go live (in article space), traffic will likely increase for all the links included on them. The quality and usefulness of those pages will reflect heavily on the country outlines. The outlines, which are essentially lists of links, are only as good as the links they present, and therefore we've branched out to solve the biggest problems with those as well. So far, we've taken on:
 * The creation of disambiguation pages for country adjectivals ("German", "French", "Taiwanese", etc.) We're about half done with these.
 * Wikifying the CIA World Factbook statistics on the "demographics of" country pages. We've been renaming those sections to provide a key string that AWB can use for targetting (for skipping and filtering).  Once that's done, we'll be able to break the clean-up down into simple AWB search/replace tasks, because we'll be able to target just those pages that include the CIA stuff.
 * We've also been renaming the "Cuisine of" articles to their adjectival forms ("Chinese cuisine", "Italian cuisine", etc.), for consistency and because the adjective-based terms are generally the most commonly-used names for those cuisine types.

Blackadam2 and Thehelpfulone have been helping out with the "demographics of" pages mentioned above.

And we have a couple speed addicts (addicted to wiki-velocity, not drugs)...

Both Robert Skyhawk and Thehelpfulone prefer (and excel at) simple AWB search/replaces. Robert hasn't actually joined our team yet, but he has been helping out quite a bit from the sidelines (via the WP:AWB/Tasks page. Unfortunately, there has recently been a non-AWB chore that has been holding things up on the AWB front - an edit to all the headings which had to be reverted before too many new edits were made, because any new edits would make the reversion more difficult.  The headings have been restored, so now the way is clear for AWB operations, and there are many search/replace tasks in the queue.  AWB assignments have started again!

There's a similar bottleneck on the "Demographics of" pages (the "keying" mentioned above), but that's almost cleared too. :)

With my internet access somewhat crippled as of late, I've been finding it difficult to keep up with you guys. However, I expect to be accessing a Linky-capable workstation on a faster server (I'm on it right now, as you can probably tell from my contributions list for the past couple of days), and so I should really pick up speed. Feels goooooood. :)

Recruiting has been a bit slow (but steady), due in part to my crippled access, and because we've been waiting for the images for the awards to be completed. I expect the team to grow more rapidly as the bottlenecks are removed.

Well that's what's been happenin', and here's what's in the pipeline...

We've got a long list of entries that need to be completed across all the outlines and related page sets. If you would like to dive in with advanced wiki-tools to process this whole set of pages on one or more tasks, drop me a note!

As for me, I'm about to begin work on a set of lists that corresponds to all the standard links on the country outlines, and these will be presented on the Topic outline of countries which will be organized exactly like the country outlines. Aside from being an extremely useful navigation aid, it will allow editors to easily see the state of country coverage on Wikipedia - each list will be one link-set, and each list can be used with our wiki-tools to process the pages listed. I'll provide you with a link once I get up to speed on this.

In the meantime, keep in touch!

Cheers,

The Transhumanist 00:46, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Speedy deletion of File:OTS map Cosmosquare.jpg
A tag has been placed on File:OTS map Cosmosquare.jpg requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section I9 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the image appears to be a blatant copyright infringement. For legal reasons, we cannot accept copyrighted images or text borrowed from other web sites or printed material, and as a consequence, your addition will most likely be deleted.

If you think that this notice was placed here in error, you may contest the deletion by adding  to the top of the page that has been nominated for deletion (just below the existing speedy deletion or "db" tag), coupled with adding a note on  explaining your position, but be aware that once tagged for speedy deletion, if the page meets the criterion it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself, but don't hesitate to add information to the page that would would render it more in conformance with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. ~ JohnnyMrNinja  02:27, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Country outlines project update - 2009/03/08
Remember "Around the World"?

Well, we've been around the World, and around again (virtually speaking, on Wikipedia), on this project.

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 03:36, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Geography WikiProject update - 03/15/2009
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 have any ideas about awards these images can be placed upon, and how to award them (to show appreciation and to attract participants), please let me know.

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

The Transhumanist 21:11, 15 March 2009 (UTC)