Wikipedia:WikiProject Geography/Bot

Welcome to the GEOBOT group! Some Wikipedians have formed this collaboration resource and group dedicated to improving Wikipedia's coverage of the geography and notable features of the Earth by creating a process by which such articles can be selected for creation and then creating them. This page and its subpages contain our basic ideas; it is very sincerely hoped that this project will help to focus the efforts of other Wikipedians interested in the topic. If you would like to help, please join the project, inquire on the talk page and see the to-do list below.

Goals

 * The goal of this project is to determine the notability of the major geographical features of the world, as well as their likelihood of being able to achieve Start-Class status or better, and then, with the assistance of the bot, creating these articles.

Scope

 * This WikiProject has been created to coordinate the activities of . This allows for a central group of volunteers to assist with the generic tasks involved in making this project work, and gives a centralised place for questions to be asked, and new proposals and requests to be made
 * We are expecting the project to work to help to determine the notability and suitability for articles of the earth's major geographic features, including rivers, lakes, mountains, population centers, notable buildings, and the like.

Phase 1: Setting up a country task force
A country list can be obtained at this subpage. If a country is blue-linked, it means that the country's work is already underway, in which case, feel free to dive in and contribute! If the country is red-linked, click on it to create a new page by typing (Wait until this message is removed, as the template is not ready yet) and saving the page.

The WikiProjects that can help with this should be contacted. A mix of a few volunteers willing to help should sign up to the country task force page before moving on to the next phase.

Phase 2: Get the placenames
During the course of setting this project up, a variety of sources were found that can help with place names and their districts. Additional data from census sources needs to be found, ideally in a form that can be automatically extracted by the bot. Fritzpoll will be available to review all sources and see if the bot can be tuned to the new sources.

The bot will then extract these into lists of placenames, with as much geographical data as is available in a comma-delimited format, which makes is human- and machine-readable. The placenames will be rendered as wikilinks to make disambiguation in Phase 3 easier.

Phase 3: Notability sources and cleanup
Individual articles cannot be created without some evidence of notability, so this is where the most evidence gathering will take place by volunteers through searches of the internet, paper sources, etc. Discussion should take place on whether sources are suitable, and also how to integrate the data. This can either be by editing the lists created in Phase 2 so that the bot creates the articles, or a commitment to add the information manually, in which case a simple mark can be made within the lists so that the bot knows that the article can be created in isolation.

Discussion can also take place on whether the bot should compile a list of all the locations with the basic geographical data into an article such as "List of settlements in Fritzpoll Province, Fritpollia".

In this stage, disambiguation of the articles can take place, and other anomalies can be checked by hand. Links to appropriate images can also be included at this stage, if desired, for adding to articles or to location lists.

Phase 4: Bot work!
Once all volunteers and other interested parties come to agreement that the data is acceptable for article creation, the following steps will occur:


 * Tuning the code of FritzpollBot to accomodate country-specific data
 * Notifying New Page Patrollers thirty minutes before beginning article creation
 * Upload articles

Once the articles are uploaded, volunteers should watchlist as many of the articles as possible.

Phase 5: Beyond the Bot
Once the articles are created, the work of the Bot is done, but not the work with the articles. Where individual articles have been created, the intention is that they be expanded over time. With lists, that they be cleaned up, formatted and useful annotations added.

Notability
The bot cannot upload places deemed to be non-notable by Wikipedia's guidelines. There is no specific guideline in place relating to geographical locations, although one is in progress at WP:NPT, which people may wish to go and comment on. In the meantime, therefore, the project shall work within the confines of WP:N and WP:NOT.

Participants
Please feel free to add yourself here, and to indicate any areas of particular interest.


 * , primary focus will be the smaller and less-developed nations 15:08, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
 * , primary focus is to coordinate activity for the purposes of bot operation 16:01, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
 * 1)  ♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦       $1,000,000? 16:13, 10 June 2008 (UTC) - to supervise bot coordination for each country and help in the planning and implementing process, specific aims are even global coverage but particularly emphasis on undeveloped parts on here in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
 * 2)  TinuCherian  (Wanna Talk?) - 14:35, 4 June 2008 (UTC) for WP:INDIA
 * 3) Calaka (talk) 14:45, 4 June 2008 (UTC). I will not be a big help unfortunately, but I will try to contribute in any small way I can.
 * 4) -- Nick  Penguin ( contribs ) 14:48, 4 June 2008 (UTC) Grunt work is my specialty, and I can dedicate a few evenings a week to this project.
 * 5) llywrch (talk) As I've mentioned elsewhere, I have materials about Ethiopia, although I can contribute to Eritrea settlements (which badly needs attention -- our Eritrean specialists seem to have dropped out of Wikipedia).
 * 6) EJF (talk) 17:08, 4 June 2008 (UTC) (signed as IP, on wikibreak)
 * 7) Wrad (talk) 17:33, 4 June 2008 (UTC) Should be able to help with Arabian towns and villages.
 * 8) I'm an Editorofthewiki[citation needed] 19:06, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
 * 9) Keeper, although I'm quite useless in most ways, I do have admin buttons for anything they may be needed for (mass deletions/page moves/blocking the opposers,(just kidding on the last one).
 * 10) I have some skills in rooting up data, but will oppose any stub without a population figure. Phlegm Rooster (talk) 19:24, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
 * 11) Will help with Russia... eventually.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 19:54, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
 * 12) I'm looking for a project, and I'd like to see the bot go forward. --Falcorian (talk) 00:11, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
 * 13) Adam McCormick (talk) Might be some use to have a template guy and bot op on board. I'm in. Adam McCormick (talk) 00:43, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
 * 14) Kaly99 (talk) 16:36, 6 June 2008 (UTC) for WikiProject Sierra Leone and anywhere else help is needed.
 * 15)  —Ketan Panchal  t aL K   05:28, 7 June 2008 (UTC) Should be able help somewhat with articles related to India
 * 16) — jwillbur 02:18, 11 June 2008 (UTC) I'll help with Caribbean places, maybe South/Central America too if I have time
 * 17) Mangostar (talk) 04:56, 11 June 2008 (UTC) have a pretty good idea of online resources re: Cambodia and am decent at digging up other sorts of info as needed...
 * 18) Geometry guy 20:33, 11 June 2008 (UTC) &mdash; This is a project I support, but passively. I'd like to help at the interface with the rest of WP (e.g. those editors who have mixed feelings about the project :), provide occasional feedback as a friendly uninvolved observer, and comment on issues of scale and scope which may arise from time-to-time.
 * 19) Shereth, available primarily for consultation and the like, as I have run a bot in related matters (on a much smaller scale).  Also willing to offer any kind of admin-type help (ie. page deletions) if no one else is available.  Yes, I did not support the project in the discussion but since the community wants to see it go forward I'm willing to assist. Shereth 04:12, 15 June 2008 (UTC)
 * 20) User:The Anome, operator of User:The Anomebot2. Currently just observing, but interested in collaboration in the longer term.
 * 21) Carlossuarez46 (talk) 01:17, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
 * 22) Cdogsimmons (talk) 03:02, 18 June 2008 (UTC) Creating city and town stubs.
 * 23) Bonadea (talk) 13:59, 20 June 2008 (UTC) Would love to help out in any way I can. Have access to quite a bit of reference literature, especially pertaining to Sweden but other parts of the world as well.
 * 24) Fram (talk) 06:55, 27 June 2008 (UTC) Minor help, probably. Have some knowledge of Western Europe (especially Belgium, of course), and am willing to help with other things as needed.
 * 25)  §hep   •   ¡Talk to me!  17:51, 28 June 2008 (UTC) I'd be happy to help out how I can.
 * 26) Kotniski (talk) 11:04, 14 July 2008 (UTC) particularly with regard to Poland (my bot already does something similar, but suffers from having incomplete and unverified data)
 * 27) ajh1492 (talk) 21:44, 8 August 2008 (UTC) I help Kotniski with Kotbot. Is there any Python code snippet that I can use to help add to Kotbot's codebase. It can then add the correct format coordinate tags.

Categories

 * Category:

Resources
WikiProject_Missing_encyclopedic_articles/Places