User talk:Raul654/test

opinion
To be honest, I like the current one more. --Osbus 18:27, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Sorry to be obtuse, but what are the differences, aside from the seeming removal of all of the "spoken" icons? I could not see any differences. Batmanand | Talk 20:50, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
 * This page is not the final proposal. We're trying to experiment a new way of subsectioning the page without making the page difficult to maintain (see WP:GA for an example). I tried first on the Geography section and I invite you to do the same. CG 21:27, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Aha! Thanks. It looks good so far. I'll try another section. Batmanand | Talk 21:37, 13 April 2006 (UTC) Just had a go at Physics and Astronomy. Any comments? Batmanand | Talk 21:55, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Heyas. I saw the link here from Wikipedia_talk:Featured_articles and thought I'd check it out. I think the new subsections you both created are much better than the blocks of text we have now, kudos there. The only thing was all the different sized fonts were a bit harsh on the eyes. I noticed a bunch of people on the fac talk page didn't like all the bolding either and didn't want more icons on the page instead of bolding.


 * I messed around with the page a bit to see what I could come up with and stumbled accross the french FAC page when I was looking for ideas. I thought it looked pretty decent so I used it here (I wasn't sure if anyone was allowed to make changes to this page). The only two sections I did were Philosophy and Physics and astronomy. It's mostly the same as the french FAC page, except there isn't a mass of icons, no bold (except subsection headings) and instead I've just used a slightly different shade of blue, the fonts are the same size throughout and it isn't overly spaced out. The Subject icons don't really suit atm but I think they do a good job of breaking the subjects up a bit more (as I said, at the moment the fac page is just block of text after block of text).


 * The only thing was, I couldn't decide if the different shade of blue should be used for fa's that have been on the main page or the ones that haven't, so I did one of each. I think the Physics section looks better for what it's worth - more focus on the articles that haven't been on the main page might prompt the articles principle author(s) to organise it /shrug. Anyway, just tossing out another idea. Cheers -- darkliight [&pi;alk] 20:07, 28 April 2006 (UTC)


 * I like the subheader-style and indenting. Much clearer.
 * I'm not sure about the link colour change, but using Pete's suggestion would be an easy way to test a variety of similar options.
 * I'm not a fan of icons in general, particularly these cartoony winXP style ones that keep cropping up everywhere, but let's see what other people say about that. --Quiddity 20:49, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Optional bolding of "main page-d" articles
Following a recent short discussion on Wikipedia_talk:Featured_articles, I have just implemented a solution for making the bolding of articles that have been on the main page optional. Currently the ==Art, architecture, and archaeology== section should appear in plain text to you. However if you add the line "span.featured_article_metadata#has_been_on_main_page{ font-weight: bold; }", excluding the quotes, to your personal CSS file and refresh both that page and this, the relevant articles will have been bolded.

What do you think of this?

Also, note that the addition of these span tags will allow other users, if they wish, to add icons rather than bolding by changing their css file in an appropriate way. Pcb21 Pete 17:02, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Although the wikitext is rather ugly now, I do like this solution. Raul654 20:06, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Box colour
Do you know if there's a way to have the boxes in a different colour other than white, such as grey, etc. ? El_C 23:44, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Yes. Acceptable colors are: none, gray, red, blue, green, yellow, amber, brown, orange, purple, navy, forest, white, black, bloodred, plain Raul654 02:17, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Naturally, it didn't work so long as I spelled gray as grey! All finished now. Thanks again! Enjoy. Best, El_C 09:02, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

=Updating FA stats= Copied from Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates:

Help requested
I was getting ready to add two new columns to Featured article statistics (for promotions and demotions). I'm putting it together at User:Raul654/test. I added promotion data based on the numbers listed at Featured article candidates/Featured log, and I added demotion data based on the delta-FAs minus promotions (delta-FAs is calculated by taking the number of featured articles at the end of the month and subtracting the number at the beginning). The problem is, there are two months where we added more articles than we actually promoted. Can someone look into this? Raul654 19:08, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I was looking at it just yesterday, and gave up -- there was a glitch at the end of May, when you actually promoted articles in June, added them to the June log, but listed them in May stats. Has that been adjusted?  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 19:10, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
 * PS, which are the two months of concern? I will try to look at them tonight.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 19:12, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes, I fixed that a while back. The problems are for April 2004 (25 more FAs at the end of the month than the beginning but only 18 promotions) and August 2004 (45 new ones, 44 promoted). Raul654 19:13, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
 * OK, unless someone else gets to it first, I'll dig into those later tonight during the ball game. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 19:14, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

August 2004
I've been working on August 2004. At the end of July, there were 310 FAs. At the end of August, there were 352, although this is incorrectly labelled as 355. Based on the end of July to end of August diff The article changes are:

Promotions:
 * 1) Art competitions at the Olympic Games
 * 2) Bloodletting
 * 3) DNA repair
 * 4) Kakapo
 * 5) Mixed-breed dog
 * 6) Orca
 * 7) Isan
 * 8) England expects that every man will do his duty
 * 9) History of Greenland
 * 10) Warsaw uprising
 * 11) Common scold
 * 12) Chuck Palahniuk
 * 13) Calvin and Hobbes
 * 14) Felix the Cat
 * 15) Nineteen Eighty-Four (TV programme)
 * 16) Quatermass and the Pit
 * 17) Hey Jude
 * 18) Something (song)
 * 19) Yesterday (song)
 * 20) 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens
 * 21) Cold fusion
 * 22) Richard Feynman
 * 23) Speed of light
 * 24) 2004 Democratic National Convention
 * 25) Barack Obama
 * 26) Privy Council
 * 27) United States Constitution
 * 28) Holy Prepuce
 * 29) Edward VI of England
 * 30) Elizabeth I of England
 * 31) George III of the United Kingdom
 * 32) Henry VIII of England
 * 33) Mary I of England
 * 34) Order of the Bath
 * 35) Order of the Thistle
 * 36) Rights and privileges of peers
 * 37) Bishojo game
 * 38) Monopoly (game)
 * 39) Color Graphics Adapter
 * 40) Data Encryption Standard
 * 41) Enigma machine
 * 42) Mains power plug
 * PaX
 * 1) Mercedes-Benz 450SEL 6.9
 * 2) Battle of the Bulge

Demotions:
 * 1) Computational complexity theory
 * 2) Social history of the piano
 * 3) Pattern welding

These 45 promotions do not jive with the 44 listed in the promotion log Also, now I need to verify September. Raul654 19:39, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

DING DING DING - Featured article candidates/Orca is the problem. Raul654 19:41, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Pcb promoted the article in August 2004. It's still listed as a featured article, so I'm going to retroactively say this is OK and adjust the stats accordingly. I still need to verify september. Raul654 19:43, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

I'm honing in on the April problems -- see my Sandbox edits -- they were FACs we had to re-create as they were never added to the log, I think. Still working on it. Sandy Georgia (Talk) 20:06, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm doing the same thing in my test page. The more I audit, the more errors I find. Basically, a lot of the 2004 entries are slightly wrong. Raul654 20:18, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm down to a list of problems in my Sandbox -- most of them were FACs we had to recreate when we did ArticleHistory, as they were never added to logs. This would have been a mess without the AH work.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 20:21, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

April 2004
There are still a few problems, but the following need to added to the April 2004 featured log:


 * 1) Featured article candidates/Asperger's syndrome
 * 2) Featured article candidates/Chinatown
 * 3) Featured article candidates/Congo Free State
 * 4) Featured article candidates/Art in Ancient Greece/archive1
 * 5) Featured article candidates/Hinduism/archive1
 * 6) Featured article candidates/Kitsch/archive1
 * 7) Featured article candidates/Ludwig Wittgenstein
 * 8) Featured_article_candidates/Mail/archive1
 * 9) Featured article candidates/Prostitution

Sandy Georgia (Talk) 20:35, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Hold off, found a problem, that list might be wrong. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 20:38, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
 * OK, those are good to go to April. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 20:42, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Based on my count, there were 206 FAs at the end of March, and 231 at the end of April (+25), but only 18 promotions listed in Featured article candidates/Featured log/April 2004. So there have to be at least 7 articles out there that need to be added. Raul654 20:39, 29 June 2007 (UTC)


 * But there were at least two deletions, maybe three (still running one down). Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 20:41, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Needs to be added to February 2004: Sandy Georgia (Talk) 20:41, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
 * 1) Featured article candidates/Golden Gate Park

I think Gimmetrow knows how to generate a list of any file with Featured article candidate in the title that doesn't link to a log -- can you do that? The list above that I provided are FACs with no What links here to any featured log. Sandy Georgia (Talk) 20:43, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Ok, so just to get this right: End of March: 206 FAs. End of April: 231. 28 new FAs promoted, 3 demoted. Right? Raul654 20:46, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
 * PS - Raul654 20:47, 29 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Well, still not sure ... the original missing seven is accounted for by the 9 additions above minus two demotions (Paul Erdös and Concept album). But something is wrong at Doom (a FARC) and at Representative peer -- haven't figured those out yet.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 20:49, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Golden Gate Park should be February; that gives the 9 - 2, still not sure what's up at Doom and Rep. peer. Sandy Georgia (Talk) 20:52, 29 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Drat. Not sure it's worth the effort.  Doom was featured in April, but I can't find the FAC.  And I can't figure out why Representative peer fell off the list that month.  How about use the 9 - 2 above, and call it a day ?  (But add Golden Gate to Feb?)  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 20:58, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

PS, there are a lot more like the list above, because I had to re-create a lot of FACs from the original WP:FA history when we were building articlehistory. The way to find them all would be to somehow generate a report of any FACs not linked to logs. Sandy Georgia (Talk) 21:00, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I've moved Golden Gates to from April to Feb, and added a Doom placeholder. So 28 nominations. For some reason, representative peer fell off the list (demoted?). 28 promotions, 2 demotions and 1 de-facto demotion = 25, which is correct. Raul654 21:13, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Here is the explanation you seek. For the sake of ensuring my sanity, we'll call it a demotion and a repromotion. If someone wishes, please create a placeholder promotion/demotion page for that article and link it from the talk page and the promotion and demotion logs. Raul654 21:16, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I found and finished Doom. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 21:58, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

May–June 2007
Ok, I just finished updating moving the old FAC noms (basically undoing my moving of several noms into May from June). The Featured article candidates/Featured log/April 2007 log shows 53 successful noms, but Featured article candidates/Featured log says 56. Can someone look into this? Raul654 22:33, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I can do that now. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 22:40, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm not seeing the problem; are you sure you're not mixing up the months? You moved 14 noms out of May into June (which would lower the 1421 May total in stats to 1407).  April is 53 total (and April wasn't touched), but May is 56 as it should be (the old 70 - 14 moved to June).  But, the 1421 at Featured article statistics should be 1407, to reflect the 14 that were June.  What problem am I looking for?  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 22:53, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Also the 56 May promotions, with a 33 delta in FAs, yields 23 demotions for May, which looks to be correct, so I think May is in order now. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 23:03, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Your April numbers also look correct, because they yield 17 demotions, which is correct. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 23:06, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

You're right, I was looking at the wrong months. However, I just checked all of them, and there are others that do not match up: Log   Actual September 2004   48     47 November 2004 	  37     36 March 2005	  46     47 July 2005	  37     36 September 2005	  36     37 Fixed January 2006	  43     42

These should be looked into as well. Raul654 00:30, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I'll start from the newest (Jan 2006), in case anyone else wants to work from the other end of the list. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 01:21, 30 June 2007 (UTC)


 * January had vandalism which altered a header, now fixed to 43.
 * September, you added something later, in November? It was a September promotion, so it looks like 37 is the right no.   Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 02:09, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
 * July 2005, typos fixed, correct number is 37 Sandy Georgia (Talk) 02:17, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
 * March 2005, 47 is correct. If you go back in history even to March 2005, you see that the (original 46) number was off because of a FAC that was missing a header.  (click on Colditz Castle here to see two in one, since fixed. ) Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 02:28, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
 * November 2004, vandalism had altered a header which altered the number, correct number is 37.   Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 02:41, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
 * September 2004, correct number is 47, that was me during articlehistory construction, where I found it linked twice (it was an end of month closing). .  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 02:50, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

Sweet. That takes care of everything regarding FA counts and promoted articles. Now we have to straighten the de-featured logs, and we'll be all done. Raul654 02:52, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

More to add

 * Featured article candidates/Mordechai Vanunu/archive1 May 2004


 * Featured article candidates/Paul Morphy Mar 2004
 * Featured article candidates/Lego/archive1 Mar 2004


 * Featured article candidates/Radar Jan 2004
 * Featured article candidates/Poetry of the United States/archive1 Jan 2004
 * Featured article candidates/Japanese general election, 2003/archive1 Jan 2004
 * Featured article candidates/Ralph Yarborough Jan 2004
 * Featured article candidates/Palm Sunday tornado outbreak of 1965 Jan 2004
 * Featured article candidates/Geyser/archive1 Jan 2004


 * Featured article candidates/Concept album Dec 2003
 * Featured article candidates/Newark, New Jersey Dec 2003
 * Featured article candidates/Phonograph cylinder Dec 2003
 * Featured article candidates/Revised Standard Version Nov 2003
 * Revused standard version and phonograph cylinder are listed under Oxyrhynchus, so weren't in count)
 * Irish theatre is listed twice in December's archive

Sandy Georgia (Talk) 00:41, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Featured article candidates/Bruno Kreisky Nov 2003
 * Featured article candidates/Vampire Nov 2003
 * Featured article candidates/Brolga Nov 2003
 * Featured article candidates/Taiwanese (linguistics) Nov 2003
 * Featured article candidates/Social history of the piano Nov 2003
 * Featured article candidates/Korean name Oct 2003
 * Featured article candidates/Heavy metal music Oct 2003
 * Featured article candidates/Sperm Whale/archive1 Oct 2003
 * Featured article candidates/Lollapalooza Oct 2003
 * Featured article candidates/Law of Demeter Oct 2003
 * Featured article candidates/Miles Davis Oct 2003
 * Featured article candidates/American English Oct 2003


 * These are all successful noms, right? Raul654 00:52, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes. It was a pain in the neck, since I had to go to each talk page to verify, since I did the work so long ago.  This list is basically the stragglers that Gimmetrow and I couldn't find anywhere when we were reconstructing the FA histories, and I had to go diff by diff through the old WP:FAC to find them.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 01:03, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
 * All done. Raul654 01:12, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

And now, the big problem
Ok, I've just finished adding all the demotions to User:Raul654/test. You don't have to be a math genius to realize that:
 * Number of FAs at the end of the month - number of FAs at the beginning of the month = Number of promotions that month - Number of demotions that month

Unfortunately, this isn't true for any of the months for which there is a FARC archive. Something is seriously amiss there. Raul654 00:43, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I *think* (not sure, need to check with him) Marskell archives by when the FAR started. The months above (April and May) added up because I didn't look at FAR archives; I looked at the difference in the number of articles at WP:FFA, since I personally know those are accurate numbers.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 00:45, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I *think* (not sure, need to check with him) Marskell archives by when the FAR started. !!!! Featured articles is the absolutely definitive list. The FARC archive date *must* match the date an article is removed from the list. Raul654 00:47, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Let me dig around and see if I can figure it out myself; if not, I'll ping Marskell. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 00:49, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Ps, the new list (above) are ones that I found in my contribs from when Gimmetrow and I were re-constructing ArticleHistory. They are FAs that were moved directly from WP:FAC to WP:FA without a FAC file, and are not listed in any archives, so they need to be added and all your numbers need to be re-done :-))  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 00:51, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes, Marskell archives by the month a FAR started, not by the month a FAR ended. Not sure how far back that goes. Gimmetrow 00:53, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Yep, just checked. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 00:55, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Ok, that too needs to be remedied. Raul654 00:56, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
 * On the other hand, FAR also has a "definitive" list (as FAC does) at WP:FFA, which is by the date removed. Anyway, I'll ping Marskell.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 00:57, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

Fixing the FARC archive
Ok, after much thought, I could see no easy way to fix the FARC archive. My method is as follows:
 * Get a end-of-month to end-of-month diff for featured articles. I've been putting them at User:Raul654/workbench
 * Compare the before and after, and take down a list of all featured articles that were on the left list (beginning of month) but not at the end of the month. Watch out for renamed articles!
 * Take the names of the articles, prepend to them.
 * Dump the resulting list to the month. Foe example, Featured article review/archive/May 2007. If it already exists, overwrite it.
 * Update the count at user:Raul654/test. Make sure that the number of removals equals the number of promotions minues the delta-FAs. If it does, you've done your job right.

Now, this method is very slow and time consuming, but I cannot see a better one. Also: (1) It totally omits all FARCs that did not result in a removal. I have no idea how to approach that. (2) It assumes that every FARC is a first one (/archive/1) This will probably have to be fixed later, but it affects only a very small, very manabgable number of articles.

I'd appreciate all the help I can get on this one. It's a *VERY* time consuming list. Raul654 03:32, 30 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Why not just do a diff at WP:FFA? I watch it *very* closely, and know it's accurate.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 03:39, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm rum-dummy, done for the day—will see what Marskell and Gimmetrow think tomorrow. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 03:44, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I too am exhausted and am going to call it quits for the night. Gimmetrow might want to look at Featured article review/archive/December 2006, which I just created - 5 of the 17 FARCs linked from there are red because Gimmebot nees to move the to /archive1 Raul654 03:51, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm going to hazard a guess that in most of those, someone converted it to ArticleHistory by hand before the bot got to it. I think it's been archiving FARs since it was able to handle the formerFA template. The bot doesn't archive pages where the article name has changed, since a new FAR would start up at the new name. For the same reason, nothing under the old FARC system should have been archived. Gimmetrow 04:00, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Read Raul's description above of how he's creating those archives; he's appending the archive1, which will make anything that is pre-GimmeBot redlinked. I think.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 04:10, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

(Unindent) There were several problems in December 2006, which concern me about the process. Talk:Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was not FARC'd—don't know how it got added to Dec FARC archive. I removed it. And GimmeBot started archiving more or less at the beginning of the year, so adding on /archive1 won't work on earlier files; I removed the incorrect four. I'm also worried that we've lost all archives of Kept FARs. Sandy Georgia (Talk) 04:17, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I don't think that method's going to work, Raul. Your December changes added a FARC that wasn't a FARC (Abu Musab al-Zarqawi), missed two (Mixed breed dog and Bodyline, one a name change, the other re-promoted in same month), and got several wrong on archives.  Now I'm worried about the other months, and whether the integrity of the archives is preserved.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 04:40, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
 * January, April and May are good; I still need to check Feb and March. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 04:59, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
 * The rest are OK; it's only December that was off. I don't think that method will work on the pre-GimmeBot archives.  Maybe we can just wait for Marskell to move the others around.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 05:07, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

Copied from user talk:Raul654:

FAR archives
I stayed up late last night—long after I'd run out of steam—double-checking the work at FAR archives. The more I looked, the more frustrated I became, since I'm not sure now how to put the pieces back together in a way that works for everyone. The method you were using probably won't work for anything before November, because GimmeBot kicked in somewhere around the beginning of the year, and there will be too many anomolies on earlier months due to article name changes, random archiving methods, etc. Also, I don't know how to begin to reconstruct November now, since we've got apples and oranges. Well, I do know how, but it will take a lot of work, which made me think it might have been easier to let Marskell do the re-arranging. We've gone from something we knew was accurate (albeit not organized the way you needed them) to something we're reconstructing in a way that introduces the possibility of errors. And, I'm concerned that Kept articles were removed—need to know where Marskell wants to save those. I'd start plowing through it today to reconstruct things the way you need them, but I'd much rather wait for Marskell to weigh in before changing things. Also, having spent so much time in archives when we built articlehistory, I know that the further back we get, the less likely the numbers are going to come out within a margin of plus or minus two articles, because there are so many different kinds of errors in the FA archives. I mean, we can make it all work, and find and fix everything similar to what Gimmetrow and I were doing during AH building, but if you want to make the stats jive exactly, it's probably going to take much more effort than you realize. (For example, that situation with the Representative peer article—who knows why it was added and then removed by Emsworth, but I'm not sure tracking it down is worth the effort?) Please let me know your thoughts—I don't want to keep working until I'm sure which way we're heading. Leaving a note to Marskell also. Sandy Georgia (Talk) 14:39, 30 June 2007 (UTC)


 * I'd like to reconstruct it with as much accuracy as possible back to early 2004. (The process was a bit crazy before then) I don't really have problems retroactively classifying certain actions as a successful promotion or demotion, (like I did yesterday) or placing sentinel pages where we need them. I think, using my method, it should get easier the further back we go (the diffs become *waaay* smaller). I'm not fussy about how we get there (be it using the method I described on the FAC talk page or any other system someone else thinks up) but this is something I think really needs to be done. Raul654 14:50, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
 * PS - I noticed for December 2006, the FA count indicates a change of +33 -- 50 promotions, so presumably 17 demotions -- but the log contains 18. Any idea what's up? Raul654 14:50, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes, I noticed that too, but I gave up as it was so late. I can dig back in today, but this is going to be very time consuming, and I need to start fresh.  I'd sure like to hear from Marskell as to where we should park Keeps, etc., so I don't have to backtrack too many times.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 14:57, 30 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Regarding weighing in... Well now, someone in the office decided to steal four grand today (if you accuse me make sure to do it in accordance with WP:BLP!) and my laptop has blown. So I can't weigh in on much at the moment. The FAR archives are (were) based on month started because Jeffrey G. had started doing it that way in the few months prior to the merger. I just carried on. If there's some godawful repetitive task you need help with, I'll do my best. Marskell 14:59, 30 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Marksell, you know I'm more than willing to do the "godawful" stuff (even though I regularly get called a "bot" :-), but I need to know how/where you want to park the Keeps—Raul's method was overwriting them. Can we add them back to the bottom of Raul's work, once we re-arrange them by months kept/removed rather than when FAR started ?  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 15:03, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
 * "Can we add them back to the bottom of Raul's work, once we re-arrange them by months kept/removed rather than when FAR started ?" - I know you were asking Marskell, but this strikes me as absolutely the right thing to do. Raul654 15:07, 30 June 2007 (UTC)


 * The problem we are having strikes me as suspiciously close to an Endianness problem. The task at hand is to reorder the archives by close-date. The reasoning is simple - the definitive list of featured articles is Featured articles. If an article is listed there, it is a featured article (by definition), regardless of whether or not its talk page says it is, regardless of whether or not it has an open or just-closed FARC. An article stays an FA until that list is updated.
 * Now, normally this isn't a big deal, except in this case. If I go to defeatured article Q, the FARC archive date doesn't match the date it was actually removed from the FA list. Now that we're trying to reconstruct accurate stats, they must match. Therefore, the FARC archives have to be reformatted by the date actually removed.
 * While we are at it, for consistency's sake (as well as that of our collective sanity) we should consider asking Gimmetrow to update the talk page tags to match the system. What do you guys think? Raul654 15:06, 30 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Gimmetrow has limited time this summer, and it's time consuming work. Raul, back to the overall question (but I'd like to hear from Gimmetrow, because he's a genius at this stuff) ... I'm still concerned about the errors that may be introduced if we use your method.  I don't mind doing the work, but I'm a methodical plodder, and I'd like to be able to check each step and make sure we didn't miss anything.  I'd rather go back through the original archives, do something like maybe stick them into a spreadsheet, and reorganize them by month ending rather than month starting.  That way, I'll know I got everything, without introducing new errors.  The method you're using takes me a lot of time, because I basically am going back through WP:FFA diff by diff to make sure you've gotten everything and to correct errors, and I'm having to check almost every article talk page.  If we just re-arrange what we had (which only involves changing the month archived), I'll know we got everything, and then if the numbers don't jive, we can check diffs and get into detail on that month.  There are also so many name changes back in history that I'm concerned your method will generate a lot of manual work.  I could be wrong :-)  Wonder if this makes more sense to all of you ?  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 15:13, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
 * PS, if we end up doing the work this way, does anyone care if I archive the Keep/Removes alphabetically rather than by date within each month, as that allows me to more easily verify and errorcheck things using spreadsheets ? Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 15:26, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
 * As I said above, if your method produces a comparable result with less work, I'm 100% in favor of it. As far as alphabetizing the archive page - as long as they are all in the correct month, I don't really take issue with how they are ordered within that page. Raul654 15:49, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

Can we move and consolidate all of this discussion at User talk:Raul654/test? This is going to take a lot of coordination, so we should set up a workspace. Sandy Georgia (Talk) 15:53, 30 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Re December, could Magellan have anything to do with it? Everything that moved off FAR (17) made it to the proper spot on the FAR archive and FFA, as near as I can tell, and this is the only one that I see that sticks out. (But that was a superficial dig.) I'm sorry I don't have more time to help you two at the moment; I'm really pressed.


 * As for the q regarding arranging by kp/rm month, by all means. Marskell 16:38, 30 June 2007 (UTC)


 * No, Magellan didn't affect the numbers -- I already checked that last night. The mistake in December was mine (working too tired last night).  Mixed-breed dog was in the FAR archive twice -- my fault.  Bodyline was missed by Raul's method because it was FAR'd and FAC'd in the same month, while Abu M was picked up erroneously -- errors cancel each other out, tally unchanged.  Final summary of December corrections, several changes, resulting in final tally of 17.  I've been through diff by diff, and I think December is OK now.  I'm going to regroup now to move forward.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 16:44, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

Reconstructing the Keeps
I know Mark is probably anxious to get all the FARCs finished, but I don't think we can finish this job in time for month-end closing of stats, so next I'm going to reconstruct the Keeps so that we'll be accurate back to Dec 2006—I'm worried about our archives being out of sync. Once I've finished that, I'll start back on November, hopefully hearing from Gimmetrow soon. Sandy Georgia (Talk) 17:19, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
 * OK, now done with Dec 2006 thru May 2007. In order to check my work, I saved the previous numbers in the template box above.  Under the former system, there were 66 keeps between November 2006 and May 2007.  There are now 63 between December and May, with 1 added back to November (still incomplete) and 2 added back in to current (June), for the previous total of 66. Now we can start back from November and prior.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 18:48, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Next I'm going to sort the rest of the old keeps, so that I can start into the Removes after hearing from Gimmetrow. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 19:16, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

Keeps are done now under the new system (July 2006–May 2007). The previous total on keeps from June to October was 41, plus one in November, for a total of 42. The current total July through November is 42, so all are accounted for. Sandy Georgia (Talk) 21:37, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

June is now empty; waiting for guidance from Marskell to start on old system. Sandy Georgia (Talk) 21:37, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Since Marskell is busy, I made some executive decisions about June, and covered it with a note in the file. June reconciles to 4 demotions. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 14:53, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Revised plan
When I started through the Keeps, I discovered the Removes were much easier to do, because there is a clear and easy record at WP:FFA. It's a simple matter of moving the FARs between files, and fairly easy to do manually. I haven't looked yet at what Rick did (below), but pending resolution of that, November, October and September 2006 resolve to the Test numbers. I'll fix the Keeps after I do the Removes -- the Keeps are currently incorrect in those files, but I'm working through the Removes first, because on the Keeps, I think the only way to make them accurate is to actually look at each article talk page. Sandy Georgia (Talk) 20:17, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

Resolved Removes (keeps not done yet) :
 * Nov 2006
 * Oct 2006
 * Sep 2006 (may be off by one, see Rick Block below)
 * Aug 2006
 * July 2006 is off by one, I think the 1064 may be wrong, because the citations list has 1065 ?? Something to check.
 * June 2006 reconciles (4 demotions), but split between two files because of merger


 * Marskell, I don't want to keep going until I hear from you. June is now empty (all moved to July and beyond), and now I need to start into the old system.  Do I need to keep files separate as to what was FARC'd under old and new system?  If so, I'm not sure how to do that.  Help?  For now, I'll go back to working on the Keeps.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 20:48, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Keeps are done, all archives under new system are now finished and accurate. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 14:54, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

I just rechecked July 2006 by pasting into Excel. Unless I'm doing something very wrong, it's definitely correct at 1064. Raul654
 * PS - the counts in the linked versions are wrong *a lot*. The counts I posted on this list were done by pasting into excel, and I did my very best to make sure those were as accurate as possible. So if the version on this page differs from the one on the linked page, I'd say 99% of the time the version on this page is probably the right one. Raul654 01:28, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Count for Sept 2006
The promoted count for Sept 2006 was off by one due to this edit. I've fixed the monthly log file and the count at Featured article candidates/Featured log (but not in the table at user:Raul654/test). BTW - I've updated the nomination by year lists (like Featured articles nominated in 2003) to exactly match the monthly log files (at least, I think I've done this). The 2003 list includes a number of articles that are either in FA or FFA for which there aren't nomination histories in any of the monthly FAC logs. My bot says History of South Carolina (which shows up in Featured article candidates/Featured log/August 2005) isn't in either WP:FA or WP:FFA. -- Rick Block (talk) 19:44, 30 June 2007 (UTC)


 * ... and if you still want FACs that aren't linked to log files let me know. I can probably do this fairly easily (and any other automatable cross checking). -- Rick Block (talk) 19:52, 30 June 2007 (UTC)


 * ack, exploding brain, I just reconciled September. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 20:14, 30 June 2007 (UTC)


 * I have a list of FAC pages (over 5000 of them). I haven't cross checked against any logs (it will take a while to do this, even mechanically).  If you want this, let me know. -- Rick Block (talk) 20:19, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
 * A list of FAC files not linked to any archive file would be fabulous, at the risk of exploding brains. I suspect most of them will be 2003. Sandy Georgia (Talk) 20:29, 30 June 2007 (UTC)


 * It may take a while to get this, possibly not til tomorrow (real life intrudes). -- Rick Block (talk) 20:43, 30 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Comments on Featured article removal candidates/History of South Carolina might help sort it out. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 03:24, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

See my note below; I think Rick's find should finish resolving June thru Sept. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 14:56, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Old FARC archives
Featured article removal candidates/archives are not divided by month, and within files, not divided by Kept/Removed. Sorting these out will take some time, because the only way to construct a correct tally is to read every single FAR.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 22:04, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Started sorting them into Kept and Removed; next will move them according to closing month. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 01:53, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm about halfway done here; lots of updating is needed because people don't archive when they move and redirect. I'm working on Removes; don't really care if the Keeps that old are correct by month -- too hard to track down.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 04:52, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Raul, pls advise
Have a look at my inline comments at Featured article removal candidates/archive/March to July 2004, which I've tried to start sorting by month. WP:FA is a wreck during this time frame, and I'm afraid sorting it out will involve literally reconstructing diff by diff. Few edit summaries used, lots of revert wars, lots of confusion. Please advise ? WP:FFA didn't start up til 2005, which is when things regarding removals seemed to stabilize. Sandy Georgia (Talk) 17:11, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
 * So, I started at the other end (Dec 2005), which is after Jeff Gustafson started WP:FFA, and I find everything looks to be in order at Featured article removal candidates/archive/October to early December 2005. Somewhere in between early 2005 and late 2005, the process stabilized.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 17:22, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I could have told you that the 2004 stuff (especially the first half of 2004) was going to be a wreck. For the moment, I cannot think of any simple way of doing it (my previously-described method being the only one guaranteed to produce relatively-accurate results), although this will tend to miss anything that happened within a single months (e.g, article is added, and removed within that month, so that it never shows up on the end-of-month saved version) Raul654 23:50, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

FAR logs by month ended
Rather than creating new "logs" in some artificial way with all sorts of obvious systematic errors, wouldn't it make sense to just take all the articles currently logged (both removes and keeps), and sort them into a new structure by month ended? FAR has only been around a year, so this is 12 or 13 months to deal with. *Then* see if the numbers correlate. By the way, the bot did /archive FAR pages from before 2007, but only if the bot got there first, and only if the article name had not changed.
 * Yes, I'm almost done re-organizing the FAR archives through 2006. It's just a matter of moving the archived FARs around.  I feel this is safer than an artificial mechanism to recreate them.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 01:52, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

There are a few other issues to know about. There are a ton of redirects among the various FAC subpages. A smaller number of FAC subpages appear to be initiated by someone but never actually listed on FAC. There are also a few nominator-removed FAC pages that probably don't appear in the logs. There are a few FAR pages like this too, where someone typed up some review comments about an article but there is no indication anyone ever commented. Some FAR pages have been deleted for various reasons. Gimmetrow 01:00, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

June thru Sept 2006
I believe these months are now reconciled, but there are errors in the chart. End of July FAs should be 1065. End of August FAs should be 1094. And September promotions per the error Rick Block found (above) should be 47. Making all of these changes yields agreement with the number of demotions now in archives. June is balanced to four demotions, but they are in two different files (old one linked via See in also in new one). Sandy Georgia (Talk) 04:30, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I've recounted July several times - I keep getting 1064. Raul654 01:45, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Ditto August: 1093 again. Raul654 01:47, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Also, with the fix made by Rick Block, September no longer matches up (47 - 24 != 24) Raul654 01:49, 2 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Drat. OK, if we do a July thru September diff, we get an 89 FA delta, 150 promotions, and 61 demotions, which reconciles over the 3-month period.  So, everything is there, but something is in the wrong place or multiple pieces are missing.  What is the best method to find it?  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 01:55, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
 * We verify them one at a time using diffs. I just checked September 2006 demotions using the workbench diff, and it is indeed 24. Next - promotions. Raul654 02:05, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Correction - 23 demotions. Raul654 02:12, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm afraid that after two days of my head in the archives, history, compares and diffs, I'm wiped out, and will only make mistakes if I try to look. If there's something I can start on in the morning when I'm less wiped out, leave me a new list at the bottom of this page ??  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 02:15, 2 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Max Weber is the problem. It disappears from the August to September diff, but has no corrosponding FAR listed. Raul654 02:16, 2 July 2007 (UTC) Correction - I was right above - 23 is the correct number of demotions. Raul654 02:18, 2 July 2007 (UTC) Second correction - the Max Weber FAR appears in the archive, but it is still on the list as of the end of September. Raul654 02:21, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Marskell removed it; was it in there twice ? Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 02:27, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
 * The plot thickens - it was demoted Sept 4, and repromoted that same month. It's in both the demotion and promotion logs. So we have 23 demotions, which means we're missing a promotion. Raul654 02:36, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

I still think it's just in the tally. First, this had 1065 and 1094 (which means those were the month-end FA tallies we saw when we built the citations list nos), and so does this and this (linked in your table). If you use 1065 and 1094 the numbers work. I think. But I could be missing something, since I'm rum-dummy. Sandy Georgia (Talk) 02:51, 2 July 2007 (UTC)


 * The problem is at Shoshone National Forest; see Rick's list. That could be the problem with the earlier tallies ??  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 05:15, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
 * No, I think Rick's took made the same mistake I made by using a spreadsheet, because Shoshone was on the same line as Sikkim. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 05:26, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Feb thru May 2006
May is +2 on demotions, while April is -2, so there may be a difference somewhere between the months; either in the promotions filed wrong, or month-end numbers being wrong, or demotions filed wrong. I'm too tired to look for this tonight.
 * OK, thanks Rick for building the diffs. This shows that the April/May +/- 2 is in the 959 to 961 end April number.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 19:25, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

March is off by one, could be Magellan. Need monthly diffs to check all of these. Bedtime here. Maybe new eyes can find the differences, since I've been moving files all day. But also, February is up by one, while March is down by one, so there could be something off between the months there as well. Month-end counts could have been off back in those days, which would explain the diffs even though everything works out right in the end. Need to review Raul's diffs. Sandy Georgia (Talk) 04:45, 1 July 2007 (UTC)


 * March resolved, correct demotions is 19 -- don't know what typo was causing header not to show in file on Nicolas Sarkozy. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 19:58, 1 July 2007 (UTC)


 * February resolved; Christianity was in the wrong month. This also solves December 2005 below.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 20:34, 1 July 2007 (UTC)


 * By the way, if we can figure out those up one, down one's, January 2006 should be 13 demotions, which it is, so that would balance through 2006. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 04:49, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I think all of 2006 should be reconciled now. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 20:34, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

2005
I think 2005 is mostly cleaned up now; waiting for everyone else to catch up. Sandy Georgia (Talk) 19:04, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Demotions found so far
 * Dec — 7 (6 plus 1, files are split); off by one Found, Christianity was in wrong month, now 8
 * Nov — 8; reconciles
 * Oct — 1; reconciles
 * Sep — 7; reconciles
 * Aug — 5; reconciles
 * Jul — 1; reconciles
 * Jun — 4; off by one
 * May — 4; off by one  (see Jun +/- ??)
 * Apr — 3; off by one
 * Mar — 9; off by one
 * Feb — 4; reconciles
 * Jan — 7; reconciles

Sandy Georgia (Talk) 19:08, 1 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I have no interest in moving around the Keeps in these old files to get them into the closing month; does anyone have a problem with leaving them as is ?? Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 19:20, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Unlinked FAC pages
I've created a list of unlinked FAC pages at Featured article candidates/Not archived. There are a lot of them (452!). If there is some common exclusion criteria I missed let me know and I can further filter the list. I think in at least some cases these are individual FAC pages that were created as yank and puts from a monthly log file, but then the log file wasn't modified to be a series of transcludes. -- Rick Block (talk) 15:01, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Note at least some of these (possibly lots of them) are linked from the article's talk page. I could split this list into two lists, those linked from a talk page and those not linked from anywhere if that would be helpful. -- Rick Block (talk) 15:07, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I'll look at those and continue reconciling after I finish reorganizing the old FARC files; I'm in the middle of that, and close to done, so want to stay focused on that for now. If anyone else can help figure out the plus/minus one and two above in the meantime, it would be great.   Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 15:22, 1 July 2007 (UTC)


 * There are so many different kinds of issues and problems there that I'm not sure where to start. Anything you can do to refine the sorting may help.  There are a lot of 2003 promoted FACs that aren't archived anywhere, which doesn't matter, there are re-named articles, FACs pulled by the nominator and not archived -- not sure where to start.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 22:34, 1 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I've been going through them one at a time. After converting Featured article candidates/Featured log/February 2005 to transcludes (which got about 40 of them), they seem to be individual issues.  Like I suggested above, I could probably group the ones that are linked from talk pages.  I've seen incorrect links from archive files (the archive links to a newer FAC), although most seem to be failed FACs that aren't linked from the nomination archives.  -- Rick Block (talk) 23:45, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Unlinked FARC pages
I'm making the same sort of list for FARC files. Seems like that might be helpful as well. -- Rick Block (talk) 17:43, 1 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Here's the list of FARC articles that aren't transcluded anywhere. -- Rick Block (talk) 18:00, 1 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Featured_article_removal_candidates/Adam_Clayton_Powell,_Jr./archive1
 * Added to file, needs to be added to articlehistory. Sandy Georgia (Talk) 18:30, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
 * It's in ArticleHistory on the talk page, and has been for a while. Gimmetrow 00:25, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Featured_article_removal_candidates/Beer
 * Featured_article_removal_candidates/Beer/Tags
 * This one gives me a headache; we had a problem with it before. Maybe Gimmetrow remembers?  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 18:30, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
 * The first is a link to the archived page, the second is linked nowhere and should be linked nowhere, as it's a copy of /archive1. Gimmetrow 00:25, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Featured_article_removal_candidates/Blue_Whale
 * This was removed. Sandy Georgia (Talk) 18:30, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Featured_article_removal_candidates/Bulbasaur
 * This was removed. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 18:30, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Featured_article_removal_candidates/Coca-Cola
 * This was in ArticleHistory, I added it to May 2006 keep file. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 18:30, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Featured_article_removal_candidates/Cool_(song)
 * Withdrawn. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 18:30, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Featured_article_removal_candidates/Diego_Velázquez
 * Looks like never submitted. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 18:30, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Featured_article_removal_candidates/Domestic_AC_power_plugs_&_sockets
 * Something wrong here, this is at Featured article removal candidates/archive/August to October 2004 ?? Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 18:12, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
 * The tool choked on the "&" in the name. -- Rick Block (talk) 19:05, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Featured_article_removal_candidates/Glass/archive1
 * Added to file, but something is off at Glass -- doesn't match WP:FA
 * This one is flagged at Template_talk:ArticleHistory/work as having an issue, which is that the sequence of actions don't make sense. But it's linked from the talk page. Gimmetrow 00:25, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Featured_article_removal_candidates/Marshall,_Texas
 * Withdrawn. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 18:30, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Featured_article_removal_candidates/Matthew_Brettingham/Archive1
 * Added to archive, needs to be added to talk page articlehistory
 * Featured_article_removal_candidates/San_Jose,_California
 * It was removed. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 18:20, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Featured_article_removal_candidates/Shakers
 * Probably never submitted. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 18:20, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Featured_article_removal_candidates/Tea
 * withdrawn. Sandy Georgia (Talk) 18:20, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Featured_article_removal_candidates/Virtuti_Militari
 * Probably never submitted. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 18:21, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Featured_article_removal_candidates/Wigwag_Archive_1
 * Withdrawn. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 18:21, 1 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I've been looking for a couple of those -- that is very helpful. Now I'll have to work back through them.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 18:03, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm adding these to the archives as I straighten them out, but they still need to be added to talk page articlehistory. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 18:18, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Historical question on December 2005
Is there a historical reason that "early December 2005" can't be merged into December 2005 at Featured article removal candidates/archive ? I left June 2006 as a split because that's when the old FARC was merged to FAR, but unless someone tells me not to, I'd like to get all of December 2005 into one file. Sandy Georgia (Talk) 15:22, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I went ahead and consolidated December and renamed file to Featured article removal candidates/archive/October and November 2005. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 14:13, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

FA diffs by month
Perhaps a trifle late, but it really wouldn't be that difficult to write a little tool that would calculate the added and deleted FAs (by name) for any given month (from two end of month versions of WP:FA). Seems like all the work that's been going into this has been based on manual methods - I've heard computers are actually pretty good at this sort of stuff :). If anyone thinks something like this might still be useful, let me know.  -- Rick Block (talk) 00:50, 2 July 2007 (UTC)


 * It might be too late -- I'm pretty sure almost everything reconciles now. Just need for Raul to update the test page and see where we stand.  There are a few months that are off by +/- 1 in mid 2005, and I don't even know what to do about early 2004, since that is still missing at lot of FACs.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 01:27, 2 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I don't think it's too late for such a bot to be useful. So far, I'm happy with October 2006 to present, but I think there's a lot more to do before we can wrap up most of these. Raul654 02:06, 2 July 2007 (UTC)


 * OK - I've written a little tool that diffs any two oldids of WP:FA and produces output like what I just added to User:Raul654/workbench for the May 2007 diffs (names of articles removed and added to WP:FA). It doesn't deal with renames yet; these show up as a delete and an add (there's at least one of these in May, i.e. Koichi). If there's anything anyone would really like added to this, or any month you'd like to see let me know. -- Rick Block (talk) 03:50, 2 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Looks great; worked for May (what are the struck items)? I'm halfway done with September 2006 manually -- can you run it?  If it works there, we can use it for all the months that are still off.  Wow.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 04:03, 2 July 2007 (UTC)


 * The struck items are the renames (Mark did this). It makes the total adds match the FA promotion count (and the deletes should match the FFA demoted list).  With a little more work (not done yet), I can do this automatically and not even list them (the old names almost always turn into redirects to the new names).  I've added Sept 2006.  Any other months that are problematic?  -- Rick Block (talk) 04:48, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

UGH !!! I'm sold. I spent several hours doing it manually, and your automated method turned up the same thing I did. The problem is at Shoshone National Forest, which was not a September promotion. Not sure why it was added in September. Maybe it was left off before, so that may explain why the earlier tally numbers were off. Can you do the other problem months? I'll come back and list them. Wow, magic. Sandy Georgia (Talk) 05:14, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Nope, false alarm. I think your tool made the same mistake I made.  If you look at this, you see that Shoshone is there, but it's on the same line as Sikkim, so it fooled us.  So, September numbers seem right.  I think the problem is back in the tallies between July and August 2006.  Argggh .... Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 05:24, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
 * By the way, that same problem could have fooled the (now defunct) bot counter or our manual tallies, which again makes me think that the whole problem is that the tallies are off in July and August. The overall of the three months is correct; there's just a glitch in the interim counting.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 05:29, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Yep, look back at former months. Those two were not on the same line at the end of June, were on the same line at the end of July and August.  Knowing how the bot counter (and spreadsheet counters) work, I'm convinced the July and August tallies were off, which is why we had different numbers at the citations list, and if you adjust thost month-end numbers, everything works out.  This was a time-consuming, irritating glitch in the count.  I hope.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 05:34, 2 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Yes - the tool assumed one per line. I've removed this assumption and it now catches Sikkim as an addition (but not Shoshone National Forest, so the net difference is correct).   I was thinking a total count, before and after, would be useful as well.  -- Rick Block (talk) 14:15, 2 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Without your tool, this would have taken forever to discover !! I was almost certain long ago the July/August problem was in the tallies, but I could have beat my head against a wall for a long time if your tool hadn't uncovered this.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 14:20, 2 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Oops, not sure we're saying the same thing. Sikkim wasn't an addition either; it was always there, just on a combined line.  It was also a much earlier FA.  Someone combined them during a move or rename.  So, the only error is in the July, August final FA numbers where each should be incremented by one (Raul's count got Shoshone and Sikkim as one during those months and the old numbers listed in the Citations stats were correct).  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 14:24, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

A new day. Certain the tallies are off in July and August 2006, and those months are balanced; just need for Raul to update the chart. There is a +/-2 situation in April/May 2006; Rick would you mind running your script on those two months so I can start working on them? Thanks ! Sandy Georgia (Talk) 13:59, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
 * With the exception of that +/- 2, everything reconciles through July 2005. I'm going to go ahead and merge the December 2005 numbers to one file, since no one objected.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 14:07, 2 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I'll post the output for April and May (soon). -- Rick Block (talk) 14:15, 2 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks ! Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 14:20, 2 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I've posted the output, but have noticed at least one anomaly (main page was treated as an FA due to the link in the intro). This makes the before and after counts incorrect.  I'll fix this and repost. -- Rick Block (talk) 15:11, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
 * OK, I've got some other things to do, and will look at these later today. Thanks!  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 15:14, 2 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks, Rick -- that one was simple. Again, the problem is in the tallies.  The 959 should be 961, which resolves the +/- 2 there.  (This is all reminding me of why I was unhappy when we had a bot counting FAs.)  Will see what needs to be done next.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 16:22, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Next, early 2005
Reconciled through July 2005.

May/June 2005 have a +/- 1 situation.
 * Where is the 618 between May/June 2005 coming from? I get 617 ???  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 18:28, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Warren County Canal was listed twice at the end of May, and was removed in June. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 22:17, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

March/April 2005 have a -2.


 * Helium is listed at Featured article candidates/Featured log/April 2005 but doesn't seem to have been added in April. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 22:46, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I haven't yet found when it was added. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 00:12, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Helium was added in 2003; the FAC was just because Mav wanted to "rectify" the brilliant prose. Not sure where that FAC should be filed, but it's not an April addition.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 00:24, 3 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Gramophone record was in twice at the end of February, removed in March.


 * Gramophone was added twice in August 2004, and it wasn't even an August FAC (it's brilliant prose), so all tallies are wrong from there forward. I guess we'll need to rebuild all the older months.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 02:38, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Jan/Feb 2005 reconcile, unless a prob is found in March - June.

Rick, can we start with May June 2005 ? It could be in the tallies again, or we could have something in the wrong month. Sandy Georgia (Talk) 16:30, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Above need to be adjusted first. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 00:09, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Ok, April 2005 is still off by one. Other than that, everything resolves back through (and including) January 2005. Raul654 13:49, 3 July 2007 (UTC)


 * April FACs are 30, because Helium wasn't added in April. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 13:51, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Featured article candidates/Helium - I removed this with the edit summary that we should call this refreshing brilliant prose. On second thought, it might be a better idea to call it a FAR which resulted in a keep. What do you guys think? Raul654 13:55, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I like what you did; don't think it makes sense to call it a FAR because it never left the FA list. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 13:57, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Clarify please - you prefer calling it refreshing brilliant prose, or you prefer calling it a FAR which resulted in a keep? Either way, it would never have left the FA list, which is what happened in reality. Raul654 14:01, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
 * ah, I see the question. Well, calling it a FAR would involved moving the FAC to a FAR file which was kept, which also works.  In fact, if you can do the moving and filing, that might make more sense.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 14:04, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

2004
December and November 2004 reconcile, unless one of the unresolved problems above affect earlier months (what happened with Helium?) Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 00:15, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

September and October 2004 need Rick's diffs; they are off by a lot, probably missing FACs. Sandy Georgia (Talk) 00:16, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I think I found them all; below. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 13:19, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

August, September and October 2004
Off by two:

Representative peer added, not in FAC file Shows as a Jan 2004 FAC, but Emsworth removed it in Apr 2004 (need to create a FAR) and re-added it in October 2004 (need to re-create a FAC). Sandy Georgia (Talk) 13:10, 3 July 2007 (UTC) And add to ArticleHistory. Sandy Georgia (Talk) 13:36, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

History of Buddhism added Filed under September FACs, added in October.


 * ok, so let me get this straight - two FAs were merged, and then later unmerged? When they unmerged, the resulstant article was promoted without a FAC? It sounds like it might be a good idea to retroactively create a place-keeper FAC nom. Raul654 14:03, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I think so, but I think we need to retroactively create the FAC and the FAR, as it actually left the list. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 14:05, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

September is off by one: see History of Buddhism to resolve.

Sandy Georgia (Talk) 13:10, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

August reconciles. Sandy Georgia (Talk) 13:13, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Except, see Gramophone problem above; we may be missing two August FACs. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 13:21, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

June 2007
Gimmetrow, Marskell, can we go ahead and cut the June FARs to archive? I know there's something in there that has to do with GimmeBot, so I didn't want to cut and move them myself. There are two July removes in there now. Sandy Georgia (Talk) 02:02, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I went ahead and archived June; now that the archives are organized by month closed, archiving is no big deal.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 14:18, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Improved tool
I've added redirect checking to the FA diff tool. If the "from" version includes a renamed article that redirects to an article in the "to" version the two articles are considered a match. This makes the tool's output for May 2006 skip the 6 "removes" that were simply renames (currently struck through at User:Raul654/workbench). This doesn't help the two from April 2006, since one was a rename that was laster renamed back (Peerage, which currently isn't a redirect) and the other was turned into a disambig rather than a redirect. I'm not exactly sure where we are with this effort at this point, but if this tool might be useful let me know. -- Rick Block (talk) 03:51, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
 * My take on where we are ... see the list of mistakes above under 2005. We're down to things that have to be resolved diff by diff, and I think we'll need to use your tool for each month going backwards (I suspect that even the months that appear to reconcile are missing pieces.)  For example, I've now found two articles that were carried twice in the tallies for many months.  Can the tool do some checking for duplicate articles, to generate new tallies?  A lot of the old tallies are probably wrong.  We're going to have to start going month by month to resolve the rest.  If you can get the tool to check for duplicates, is there anything you can do to help sort out those remaining 2005 issues above?  2004 is going to be much harder.  We can start on Oct 2004 after Raul resolves the rest of 2005.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 10:26, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Pending Raul's updates of my corrections above, I think we're reconciled back to August 2004. Things get very messy from July and earlier; will need to run a diff in July, as it is missing a lot of FACs.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 13:18, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Correction, we may be missing two August FACs, because of Gramophone problem above. We need to run diffs on August 2004 as well.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 13:22, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

January to July 2004
Everything after July 2004 is now reconciled. Raul654 16:10, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Also, if Gimmebot could do a run over Talk:Representative peer, I'd appreciate it. Raul654 16:16, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Ditto talk:Helium Raul654 16:32, 3 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I moved Helium Kept FAR from 2004 archive to 2005 archive. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 16:38, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Rick, can we start by running your tool on July? I think we're missing a lot of FACs there. Sandy Georgia (Talk) 16:51, 3 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I've added diffs from July 2004 back through January 2004. -- Rick Block (talk) 02:33, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Gimmebot should also have a look at Talk:Political correctness Raul654 16:20, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

RBP removes
As an example, Paul Erdős was an April 2004 RBP Remove. Archive/Refreshing brilliant prose - People and culture. We listed these all as January 19, 2004 in article history, but it was actually removed in April, and needs to be part of the tally at Featured article removal candidates/archive/March to July 2004. How should we handle these? I suspect there will be a lot of them (removed without FAR files) once we start through the diffs. Should we create individual FAR files, or just create one file somewhere that lists all the RBP removes by month? Sandy Georgia (Talk) 19:00, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
 * The latter idea (a single centralized list) seems like it would be far less work, which makes me automatically favor it. Raul654 23:20, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

I moved around some of the obvious FACs and FARs and added back in some that were unlinked. Glass needs reconstruction; Poetry shows as March but is in December log; Political correctness is still missing pieces (it shows up in March); Origins of the American Civil War was an extended edit war - can't figure it out; Geologic age is a missing FAC, RBP remove; and I can't sort out the rest of the RBP mess/process. I think I've done all I know how to do, since I don't understand what logic was used during the RBP days. Sandy Georgia (Talk) 20:37, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Political correctness is all fixed. Raul654 20:53, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Paul Erdos fixed. Raul654 21:23, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Pub quiz and poetry are fixed. Raul654 21:57, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

You might find the early FARC pages useful. See some of the entries here Raul654 22:02, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Finished?
What do you guys think of this page as it now stands? Raul654 01:37, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
 * The numbers for Feb 04 don't add up (the delta was +9, not +16). The ending number for Jul 04 should be 308 not 309 (Wikipedia was not a featured article - same issue as the 273).  -- Rick Block (talk) 02:36, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
 * OK, I'll look into these exceptions tomorrow. Once those are finished, I'll copy to the stats page. Raul654 03:14, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
 * ... and then the off by one problem continues into August (308 plus a delta of 42 means there should be 350, not 351 in August). Going forward the numbers currently add up, which means either the current count is wrong or there's an off by one problem somewhere.  I could run my tool going forward from Aug 04 until I find it (I suppose).  I could also try a binary search to find the earliest count in the table that doesn't match what the tool says.  Do we really want to know? -- Rick Block (talk) 04:36, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I suspect you can find it by running the tool on August -- several days ago, I suspected there was still a problem in August 2004. My memory fails me now, but there was some article in August that was added twice (scan the talk page?  -- bedtime here). If you look back at my notes, I was concerned about two different articles added twice, and I'm not convinved we got them both.   Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 04:51, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Found it, gramophone record was added twice in August, was that fixed ? Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 04:53, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Arrgh. I think there are actually multiple problems.  The tool says at the end of May 05 there were 616 (Warren County Canal is a dup).  I guess I'll just run it for each month starting in August 04 (tomorrow).  The numbers in Dec 05 matched.  It really doesn't seem like this should be this hard (!). -- Rick Block (talk) 05:46, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I lost steam there on the last three months (got frustrated at RBP stage), but I'm sure you both worked it all out. The only thing I don't like is I'm never crazy about four decimal place precision on percentages ... maybe two or three on FA percentage?  Also, maybe some explanatory notes about the process, otherwise we'll be answering questions forever as people click on month-end FA links and find some of the tallies off.

I'm off next working on Rick's list of Featured article candidates/Not archived; it has two sections that need admin attention (Raul, you'll probably want to check these?)


 * Featured article candidates/Not_archived
 * Featured article candidates/Not_archived

Thanks for the nice note! Sandy Georgia (Talk) 03:04, 5 July 2007 (UTC)


 * PS, Raul, can you delete User:SandyGeorgia/Updating FA stats now ?? Thanks, Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 03:07, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Should Featured article removal candidates/archive/March to July 2004 be moved/renamed to include February ?? Sandy Georgia (Talk) 03:56, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Remaining discrepancies
I ran the tool on all months from July 2004 to January 2006 June 2007. The months where the tool's counts don't match the counts currently in User:Raul654/test are the following:


 * August 2005 - 41 (not 40) net difference
 * History of South Carolina is listed as a remove, but was never in FA -- Rick Block (talk) 17:40, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Tool ignores Wikipedia, which was an FA, so the count should be 730(!). -- Rick Block (talk) 17:55, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
 * July 2005 - 688 (not 689) FAs (no dups, so don't know that the issue might be)
 * History of South Carolina, perhaps? -- Rick Block (talk) 17:40, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Tool ignores Wikipedia, which was an FA. -- Rick Block (talk) 17:55, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
 * June 2005 - 652 (not 653) FAs
 * Tool ignores Wikipedia, which was an FA. -- Rick Block (talk) 17:55, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
 * May 2005 - 616 (not 617) FAs (Warren County Canal is a dup), 28 (not 29) net difference
 * Hmm. Wikipedia is listed as an FA (but the tool ignores it).  Seems like it must have been removed in a subsequent month. -- Rick Block (talk) 17:46, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
 * August 2004 - 43 (not 42) net difference
 * July 2004 - 308 (not 309) FAs (Gramophone record is a dup), 36 (not 37) net difference

I'll post the output and the alphabetical lists of FAs for August 2005, May 2005, and August 2004. -- Rick Block (talk) 17:14, 5 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Can you create lists of articles which were removed in these months that are not currently listed in the de-featured archives, and which ones were promoted in those months that are not currenty listed in the promotion archives? Raul654 19:07, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Yup. Here's the differences (after fixing the tool to treat Wikipedia correctly). -- Rick Block (talk) 20:23, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
 * May 2006 - net difference is 30, not 40 (I assume this is a typo)
 * Aug 2004 - net difference is 43, not 42 (so Jul is 308 not 309). Missing FAC for Glass.
 * Jul 2004 - net difference is 36, not 37. Glass is in this month, but should be in Aug.
 * ah, ha; Glass—making me crazy from the beginning. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 20:26, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Ok, I have updated the table accordingly. Anything else, or can I copy this to the main stats page? Raul654 20:36, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I still suggest adding a note explaining that the month-end tally on the diffs won't always agree with the chart because the numbers were audited, and still wondering if you want to reduce four decimal places on percentages to three ? Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 20:44, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
 * The former is probably a good idea. I'm not keen on the latter - the ossification of the FA proportion for the last year or so means that that extra digit actually means something. Raul654 20:46, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
 * OK, fine with me. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 20:56, 5 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I updated July 2004 (39 promotes, 36 delta). Looks good. -- Rick Block (talk) 21:51, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

January 2004 removes
One last thing; how about showing the 81 RBP removes during January 2004 ? FAR is criticized because the numbers jump after citations became part of WP:WIAFA, but FAR has deliberately given articles time to comply to avoid dumping a lot of articles at once, and to save as many as possible. This can be contrasted to the dramatic reduction of 81 FAs in one month during a process like RBP, so it's a historically interesting number. Sandy Georgia (Talk) 14:36, 6 July 2007 (UTC)