User talk:Styrofoam1994/Archive 15

Adoption
HI, i am seeking for an adoptee. Will you be mine please? I am not at all a sock--WorldPeaceFTW (talk) 19:37, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
 * If you are not a sock and is a new user, then why did you decide to come right to me and ask for adoption right after creating the account? I suspect you are. STYROFOAM1994  talkReview me! 20:49, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Awards Center Newsletter
I'm pleased to announce that the Awards Center will be getting its own newsletter shortly. If you want to receive the WP:AWC newsletter, put your name here. -- Shark face  217  20:52, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Orphaned non-free media (Image:Zipeg screen.JPG)
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AWC
You said at WP:AWC that you gave 100 warnings. Were these before or after you signed up for the vandalism challenge? -- Shark face  217  20:32, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I think I had 100 warnings issued to others before, but now I should be ahead of that by now. STYROFOAM1994  talkReview me! 23:57, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Can you give me the diffs please? -- Shark face  217  02:24, 1 April 2008 (UTC)
 * They're here: . STYROFOAM1994  talkReview me! 19:34, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

AN clean up
Regarding while such edits  make sense in article space, some editors to not react kindly to editing their comments even if you are making actual spelling and grammar fixes. It is generally a good idea to leave Wikipedia space pages alone unless they are policy pages, essays or guidelines. JoshuaZ (talk) 19:58, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
 * But there was no harm, was there? The comments' meanings were still exactly the same. Anyway I will follow your suggestion. STYROFOAM1994  talkReview me! 20:00, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Some editors will resent that you touch their comments, so I hope that you are not trying to clean article's talk pages like that :). Your time will be at better use correcting articles, where the correct spelling is important, and you won't find any oversensitive person shouting at you because of the corrections. --Enric Naval (talk) 20:15, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Help me

 * Hi there. Don't worry. Sockpuppetry is only prohibited when one user makes another account for him/herself against policy (see WP:Sockpuppetry). Just because it's in the same house, it doesn't mean that more than one person can't have a Wikipedia account. This isn't a case of sockpuppetry, and you haven't violated policy. For the other account, I'd just leave it; most accounts established here go unused anyway. :) Best, PeterSymonds | talk  22:28, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks. STYROFOAM1994  annoyCriticize! 22:29, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
 * No probs. Best, PeterSymonds | talk  22:30, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Award Center Newsletter
- Newsletter Bot 'Talk  20:07, 27 April 2008 (UTC) This newsletter was delivered by If you would not like to receive this newsletter, please add your name here.

Editor review
Thanks for having requested an editor review. A month has passed since it has been posted there, and it has been archived. You can find it at Editor review/, where you may read last minute additions. We would really appreciate your help in reviewing a random editor. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 15:58, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Award Center Newsletter
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Orphaned non-free media (Image:Arch of triumph.jpg)
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Award Center Newsletter
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Kamel Nitrate
Please note that as a British band this article should use the British English collective 'are' when referring to the band rather than 'is' - I've edited your edit accordingly. Exxolon (talk) 01:54, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Just a heads up
I thought you might like to know that the Awards Center page has been deleted, along with its newsletter. :(

So, where do we go from here?

To new and even more interesting projects, of course!

As announced in the newsletter, I've been preparing to co-coordinate a large collaboration/competition called Around the World. It was going to be run at the Awards Center, but since that no longer exists, the collaboration will be hosted somewhere else.

Around the World will begin July 15th as planned - it's location will be announced soon.

It'll be a blast. In the competition, participants will be helping to develop over 200 pages (drafts, which will be moved to article space once they are ready), using advanced tools to edit every single one of them!

This is going to be interesting.

And the event shall have awards which are being created specifically for it as we speak!

If you would like me to keep you informed of this and other interesting collaborations I'll be working on and/or organizing in the future, please drop me a note on my talk page, and I'll be happy to keep you in the know.

I look forward to your reply.

Sincerely,

The Transhumanist 21:50, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

I need your feedback...
Which of the following medals looks better. This one:



Or this one:



Which one do you like better?

Please let me know on my talk page.

Thank you.

The Transhumanist 21:44, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

What is Around the World?
It's a collaboration!

A collaboration using advanced wiki-tools!

If everything goes according to plan, it will begin on July 15th.

The event is being co-sponsored by Wikiproject Lists of basic topics and WikiProject Geography, and participants will be "traveling" all around "the World" visiting each country online (here on Wikipedia and perhaps beyond) as they apply advanced wiki-tools to improve pieces of the profiles of each and every country on Earth!. Each pass through these pages is a "trip around the World..."

The set of pages we are working on is currently located at WikiProject Lists of basic topics.

Each page presents essential information on each country in a topic outline format, for ease of overviewing and navigating. Most of the topics presented are linkified, which turns these pages into a hypertextual map to material about each country on Wikipedia. When completed, they shall all become part of Wikipedia's contents system.

The pages share a standard format, with the information on each country presented in the same general order. So rather than getting stuck on a single country trying to complete it, each participant works on all 200+ political entities, completing a single data item or detail across all of the pages!

For this they use advanced tools like WP:AWB, Linky, etc. It goes fast, and since others are doing this at the same time, it makes "the World" feel like a beehive, and the participants are its bees. :) The energy is contagious.

And since you are moving from country to country, the tasks make it feel like you are traveling around the world, and you get to learn a little about every country as you do so. This approach also allows for greater efficiency, because by the time you've done 30 or so of a particular item, you've figured out how to finish it faster and more effectively (such as where to find the data or how to make adjustments), and this specialization speeds up development - but more importantly it reduces errors.

The tasks are varied, which adds even more variety to the project. Some tasks are look-ups-and-fill-ins, some are copy and paste, some are image hunts, some are maintenance adjustments, some are link fixing, some are blue-linking (creating an underlying redirect so a link turns blue), some are fact checking, etc.

For an example of what a nearly complete page looks like, see these:


 * List of basic Albania topics • List of basic Argentina topics • List of basic Australia topics • List of basic Canada topics • List of basic Ecuador topics • List of basic Egypt topics • List of basic France topics •  List of basic Germany topics •  List of basic Iceland topics •  List of basic India topics • List of basic Indonesia topics • List of basic Iraq topics • List of basic Republic of Ireland topics •  List of basic Italy topics • List of basic Isle of Man topics • List of basic Israel topics • List of basic Japan topics • List of basic Macau topics • List of basic Mexico topics • List of basic Russia topics • List of basic Taiwan topics •  List of basic United Kingdom topics •  List of basic United States topics

There are only about 200 more pages to go!

During the collaboration, co-coordinators will be standing by, to lend a helping hand to participants, provide instruction and tips on how to use the tools, and help them find what they are looking for. Co-coordinators will also be using advanced tools to inspect the work of participants, and touch it up as needed, or if a task was done wrong throughout, point this out to the participant so he or she can make the necessary corrections.

Co-coordinators are working on the set of pages right now, to familiarize themselves with "the World" so they can help more effectively by the time the main event starts. But there's still lots of preparation left to be done, and we are looking for editors experienced in advanced wikitools who would like to become co-coordinators.

The Transhumanist 09:51, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Around the World, update...
We've been hard at work behind the scenes. We can't seem to get the trophy right, but we'll get there. And the set of pages need one more section completed before they can be moved to article space...

... that's right! We're almost ready to move the whole set into the live encyclopedia. One page for every country of the world!

We're currently developing the standard for these outlines, they're overall format and what they should look like.

One page that is nearly complete and built to the current standard is List of basic Thailand topics. Please take a look, and help us put the finishing touches on it if you have the time. It will be an example (along with List of basic Japan topics and List of basic France topics) for those working on the rest of the lists, and therefore is pretty important.

Any help or input you could provide would be most appreciated.

Thank you.

The Transhumanist 22:50, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

(P.S.: If you respond to this message, please do so on my talk page, so that I'm alerted by Wikipedia's automatic "you've got a message" feature. Thank you.  TT)

AAU reminder notice

 * Notice delivery by xenobot  14:35, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Upcoming World Development contest
Penubag has been hard at work developing awards for this project. He has completed a very professional looking medal, and is almost done with a trophy that is truly awesome - both of these awards are visually stunning.

I and a few others have been working steadily on the country outlines that will be the focus of the contest - an outline for every country of the world! They're shaping up nicely. So far, 28 of them have been moved to article space - these aren't complete, but they are complete enough to be made available for readers to benefit from them. The rest of the set still includes temporary data that was generated by template (because it matched most but not all of the countries), and before those lists can be moved to article space, all the temporary data needs to be checked for accuracy, and if incorrect it needs to be replaced with correct information.

The effort on the lists has been on 3 fronts:
 * 1) Working on the lists in article space to complete them so they will be good examples for editors working on the rest of the set (during the contest).
 * 2) Adding or correcting other data (fixing redlinks, filling in blanks, etc.).  The main type of work participants in the contest will be doing.  The reason we're doing this is to get a feel for it, to develop the fastest methods for each type of task, etc.
 * 3) Improving the overall design and implenting changes on all 247 pages, whether in article space or not.

There has been some opposition to us running the contest based on edit counts or iterations. The concern is that we should reward quality work and not quantity, for fear of crappy edits done quickly without thought just to earn an award. I pointed out that the collection of pages are drafts in the Wikipedia namespace (therefore posing no danger to article space) and that most of the work needs to be done with power tools like AWB and Linky (which are specifically designed for repetitive volumnous work), but the reply was that we shouldn't set the precedent of rewarding barnstars for numerically-based tasks, and implied the threat of continuously MfD'ing the contest if we attempted to do so (like they did with the Awards Center - I was very surprised and disappointed that participants didn't step up to defend it). So we need to be careful in determining what exactly the awards will represent, and how they will be awarded.

Since rewarding iterations (passes with AWB on all of the pages in the set) are out, we really don't need the globe-in-stand (award we were working on) anymore. Two awards should suffice.

Once we get started with the contest, I'd like to kick the whole thing off with a round of medals for those dedicated few who have worked hard on the project so far.

What do you think of all of this?

Your comments and suggestions are most welcome.

The Transhumanist 00:25, 23 October 2008 (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 03:20, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

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