Wikipedia talk:Articles for improvement/Archive 10

Anyone going to Wikimania 2014?
If so, we can get leaflets printed to promote TAFI and recruit volunteers. - Evad37 &#91;talk] 13:06, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
 * In fact, you don't even have to have anyone going - just fill in the template and we'll distribute it for you! Do please spread this around any other projects you work on, or lists you frequent. EdSaperia (talk) 11:24, 22 May 2014 (UTC)
 * That's a great idea that I would have never thought of. If there's anyone going, this would be an excellent opportunity to spread the word. -- Nick Penguin ( contribs ) 03:52, 10 May 2014 (UTC)


 * That is a fantastic proposal. I say go for it!! (does this project have a logo btw?) Turn➦  01:16, 21 May 2014 (UTC)
 * - our logo is Today's Article For Improvement star.svg. GiantSnowman 11:57, 22 May 2014 (UTC)


 * I've put in a basic submission at https://wikimania2014.wikimedia.org/wiki/Project_Leaflets#Today.27s_Articles_For_Improvement but please everyone feel free to edit it (today's non-article page for improvement ). I put you down as a second contact (I hope you don't mind). - Evad37 &#91;talk] 12:33, 22 May 2014 (UTC)


 * Not a problem at all. I'll try to take a look at the submission more closely and make some improvements. -- Nick Penguin ( contribs ) 22:59, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

Discussion notice
A discussion is occurring at Template talk:Find sources regarding updating the Find sources template with links to the Google News and Google newspapers searches. Interested editors are invited to contribute to the discussion. The discussion is located here. NorthAmerica1000 08:09, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

Best and Fairest from Week 27
Although there are many contributors each week, I find that often one or two really stand apart from the rest of us, in terms of the quality and the substantial nature of their contributions. So with that in mind, I would like to start an informal acknowledgement of the Best and Fairest editors from each week, so that they can receive some public recognition for their hard work.

With that in mind, I really feel that did a great job on Java Man. At the start it was barely a C class, but now it is an excellent example of well sourced, well researched material. I'd also like to acknowledge Madalibi's significant improvements to Anubis and National Library of China, so well done on those too.

My hope is that by sharing our accomplishments and showing our appreciation to editors that do a great job, we can encourage all project participants to make at least one substantial improvement each week. -- Nick Penguin ( contribs ) 02:26, 7 July 2014 (UTC)


 * Thank you very much, ! I did spend a lot of time on these articles, but access to reliable sources was the key. Apart from actual books that I own, Questia, HighBeam, and JSTOR helped a lot. Wikipedia Library is still granting free accounts at WP:Questia and WP:HighBeam, so I encourage interested editors to apply! WP:JSTOR is also granting free access to 400 editors. I see that the count has reached 436, but dozens of applications date from 2012, so there may still be space.
 * And yes! It would be wonderful if each TAFI participant could make a small contribution every week! Articles can be improved in a number of ways without doing any research: by copyediting (punctuation, grammar, etc.), improving footnote format, checking for copyright violations on web sources, streamlining structure, adding images, making image captions more intriguing (many readers look at images first and may be encouraged to read on if the caption teases their interest), merging short paragraphs with similar contents, adding templates and portals ( has done a great job on that front!), creating a relevant infobox, linking to other WP articles, adding relevant categories or WikiProjects, finding external links, etc.
 * Finally, a great thank you to, who has been the driving force behind TAFI for so long, and who keeps feeding his enthusiasm into the project. Efforts are starting to pay off, as new names have appeared lately on the TAFI pages ( and this week,  and  last week). I think TAFI is looking good again and has a great future ahead of it!
 * Cheers to all participants old and new! Madalibi (talk) 04:29, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

Main Page return?
It's been over a year since TAFI was taken off the Main Page, and over six months since the new one-per-week format was introduced, with associated changes to the holding area and selection procedure. So, without going into any detailed formats/proposals yet, let me ask: Is this something we (as project) still want, and if so, is it time to try to get back on the Main Page? - Evad37 &#91;talk] 04:57, 7 July 2014 (UTC)
 * I'm a relative newcomer to TAFI (my first experience was with Prehistoric Asia, and I really started to get involved with Tickle Me Elmo), so I'm not sure what the advantages and drawbacks would be of going back to the Main Page. I do remember, though, that I've seen this very issue being discussed here about 3 months ago. I have to run, but I'll be back to comment after I try to understand this issue better. Madalibi (talk) 06:26, 7 July 2014 (UTC)
 * A main page entry would likely increase participation to the nominations page 100-fold compared to the present amount of contributions there. That would obviously be a plus. NorthAmerica1000 07:53, 7 July 2014 (UTC)
 * We have demonstrated that the project can sustain itself as far as a process goes, but we still lack that "wow" factor when it comes to our past work. I really think we need to work on improving content (which is improving, a lot) and then show up with that, asking for a better showcase. -- Nick Penguin ( contribs ) 11:02, 7 July 2014 (UTC)
 * I'm not fully involved in this Project - my contribution is pretty limited to !voting for articles - but anything that gets more people helping out, resulting in better articles, is only a good thing. GiantSnowman 11:50, 7 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Promoting a helpful project is beneficial. TAFI is also listed on the sidebar menu at Community portal (scroll down the page). ///Euro Car  GT  19:20, 7 July 2014 (UTC)
 * I definitely think TAFI should be featured again on the main page. It's a fun project and has a lot of potential to be much larger if featured :)  Turn➦  23:20, 7 July 2014 (UTC)


 * In the last few weeks, there has been a significant increase in the quality of our articles. The number of regular participants has also increased. If we can continue to improve articles steadily for the next few weeks, I think we can seriously consider working on a new proposal. But it would have to be something pretty good before we bring it to the village pump. -- Nick Penguin ( contribs ) 04:13, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

Best and Fairest from week 28
This week saw a lot of significant improvement to stir frying, which went from this to this in just 7 days. Significant milestones include a 4x expansion in both length and the number of citations. Other improvements include a significantly longer lede, expanded history section, expanded techniques section, and two new sections on nutritional value and medicinal uses, as well as almost a dozen new images.

True to the collaborative spirit, this week had a lot of contributions from a lot of users. Early additions from got the ball rolling, with other large additions from, , ,  and myself. Other appreciated contributions came from, , , , and. And of course, our good friends and, both on template duty.

Thanks to everyone for making this week's collaboration a success. All of your contributions are valued, wither it be whole paragraphs of new content, or a small copyedit. The more edits we get on an article, the more pings it will get in watchlists, and the more attention we can attract to the project. Hopefully this weeks collaboration will be just as successful.

Well done everyone, and thanks again. -- Nick Penguin ( contribs ) 05:03, 14 July 2014 (UTC)


 * Whoop whoop! Thx. David Condrey (talk) 08:05, 14 July 2014 (UTC)


 * This is the first time I see this in the many months I've observed TAFI: a true team effort that really managed to improve the article. Congrats and thanks to all! Madalibi (talk) 08:53, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

Best and Fairest from week 29
7 days of hard editing turned C-4 (explosive) from this into this. Significant milestones include a 6x expansion of article text and a 5x expansion in the number of references. Other improvements were new sections about composition, detonation, safety, toxicity, investigation, use in terrorism, expanded history section and a dozen new images.

We had another round of significant contributions, especially from, , , , , , , and. Other contributions came from, , , , , , and myself, as well as , and.

Everyone did a awesome job working on this collaboration. Thanks to everyone for their improvements, we had another tremendous week. Hopefully everyone can turn their browsers to Jazz band make that another example of the great work we can do. -- Nick Penguin ( contribs ) 06:11, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

Discussion area
Hi, is there anywhere to discuss the current nominated articles? CSJJ104 (talk) 20:23, 19 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Not in particular, probably just as a comment on the nomination page. What in particular did you have in mind? -- Nick Penguin ( contribs ) 20:41, 19 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Ah, sorry. To clarify I meant the list of 10 articles currently being voted on for a future weeks article for improvement. Is it appropriate to highlight issues or current ratings of such articles?
 * Feel free to make a subsection in the voting section. We don't bite. -- Nick Penguin ( contribs ) 02:06, 20 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Speak for yourself. Some of us bite, it's more like nibbling though really ;) David Condrey (talk) 08:55, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

C4
Good work on the C-4 article everybody. Take a look at the diff between the current version and last weeks.. It's NUTS how dramatic the difference is. David Condrey (talk) 11:24, 20 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Hey, there's still 11 hours, you never know what might happen! But yes, everyone did an absolutely awesome job, compare this "article" to our fantastic creation. Here's looking forward to Jazz band for next week. -- Nick Penguin ( contribs ) 13:41, 20 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Pick a better article next week! lol This week's article shouldn't even exist in my opinion, it ought to be merged into other articles or have other articles merged into it.  Seems like a lot of duplicate content spread out across a number of related pages. David Condrey (talk) 08:54, 25 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Next week is Vatican library, which is a topic that has a lot more meat to it. I think it will go much better. -- Nick Penguin ( contribs ) 07:42, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

Choose the TAFI article for Week 34 of 2014
Results were:
 * Chicken sandwich - 9
 * History of pharmacy - 16
 * Performing arts - 5
 * Anatomy - will be archived
 * Abundance estimation - 1
 * Dentist- 9
 * Lowest common denominator - 5
 * Erik the Red - 10
 * Western literature - 9
 * History of West Africa - 19 - will be scheduled

Result was History of West Africa, which I didn't think was the winner, but it was the popular second choice. Thanks everyone, get participation in the voting this week. -- Nick Penguin ( contribs ) 14:23, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

Article special cases

 * Hi, new to this but was wondering if TAFI has any policy regarding articles tagged for proposed merging/deletion (e.g. dentistry), or ones regarded as core articles (e.g. Performing Arts)? CSJJ104 (talk) 11:55, 20 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your question. In regard to Dentist, the article if I recall correctly, didn't have a merge template when it was nominated while a long time ago, so it was not a factor. Sometimes when an article is chosen, a discussion begins on any relevant merges that need to take place, and actually speeds things along remarkably. In general, nominating an article of "just-notability", i.e. one that is dubious and could well be deleted, is discouraged as this project is more for those obvious or important topics that for some bizarre reason have been forgotten on Wikipedia. Which is where a core article like Performing Arts comes in.--Coin945 (talk) 12:09, 20 July 2014 (UTC)
 * The randomly selected articles every week are selected from the Holding Area (tab at the top), which is made up of all the articles that were successfully nominated over the last two years. The articles that are randomly selected could have been nominated as long as two years ago, so sometimes they have changed dramatically the old fashioned way.
 * The reason we do the voting thing is because sometimes articles would be nominated to be improved, and people would support them, but when they came around on rotation, no one would actually work on them. Sometimes interesting sounding articles are not good candidates to be improved. With the voting thing, its the overall most popular article that gets the focus. -- Nick Penguin ( contribs ) 13:32, 20 July 2014 (UTC)
 * For example, Anatomy has since become a GA article after its nomination, so in my books it would be deleted from rotation by default.--Coin945 (talk) 14:34, 20 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Yeah, when I was going through the articles for my votes, I was like, "Did we do that?". And for a behind the scenes look at how the articles are randomly selected, I open www.random.org in another tab and generate 11 random numbers, then copy those numbers from the holding area into here. Sometimes if you generate 10 sometimes you get a duplicate duplicate. -- Nick Penguin ( contribs ) 14:45, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

Best and Fairest from Week 30
At the start, I really wasn't sure how this week's collaboration was going to turn out, probably because apparently no one likes jazz. But it turned out better than I had imagined, as we collectively turned this start into this solid finish.

Significant milestones were an expanded lede section, expanded sections on the rhythm and horn sections, and turning the list of notable jazz bands into a prose section. Other important additions came with the significant expansion of the band instrumentation sections including a dozen different instruments and how they are used in jazz, a new section on ensemble types, a repertoire and a history section, as well as over a dozen new images and, for the first time, the addition of 9 sounds (which I thought was a particularly great idea).

We saw significant improvements from, , , , , , , , and myself. As well, other contributions came from and. And of course template duty from and.

Many thanks to everyone involved, hopefully this week's article Vatican Library can turn into another success. -- Nick Penguin ( contribs ) 21:51, 28 July 2014 (UTC)


 * Thanks, although I didn't do much but was planning on doing so. As much as I love working on content creation, I feel I won't be able to contribute effectively at times because I feel the collaboration something I have no connection to. The current one is like that. I'll do my best to chip in however. Cheerio, Happy editing. --Rsrikanth05 (talk) 21:55, 28 July 2014 (UTC)


 * Man that felt like a long week. lol Whoop whoop :p David Condrey (talk) 03:32, 29 July 2014 (UTC)


 * I feel the same way. Haha. Mirror  Freak  14:49, 29 July 2014 (UTC)

Logo awesomeness


Who designed the TAFI logo again? I just wanted to give a shoutout to whoever came up with that slick and extremely clever design, working off the featured article star to concisely comment on how we fit into the larger scheme of Wikipedia practices.--Coin945 (talk) 15:34, 29 July 2014 (UTC)
 * The credit goes to - see discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Today's_articles_for_improvement/Archive_3 - Evad37 &#91;talk] 23:31, 29 July 2014 (UTC)
 * That was such a nice thing to say. Although I always wondered if people really liked it.(formerly Amadscientist)--Mark Miller (talk) 02:59, 31 July 2014 (UTC)
 * I like it a lot! The logo shows improvement and development, in which the original FA star shows an fully developed article which an FA is about. ///Euro Car  GT  03:05, 31 July 2014 (UTC)
 * I probably didn't voice it as much when you made it, but it really is a great logo. -- Nick Penguin ( contribs ) 03:54, 31 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks NickPenguin and EuroCarGT! It is very encouraging to see the support and compliments!--Mark Miller (talk) 04:29, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

Choose the TAFI article for Week 35 of 2014
Results were:


 * History of geography - 5
 * Greater Antilles - 8
 * The arts - 14
 * Summer Palace of Peter the Great - 3
 * The Return of the King - 1
 * Latin Grammy Award - 2
 * Solar activity - 19 - will be scheduled
 * Whaling - 0 - will be archived
 * Asian art - 6
 * Chef - 8

Result was Solar activity, thanks everyone. -- Nick Penguin ( contribs ) 06:54, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

Nominations page and archiving
The Nominations page is rather sparse. Please feel free to add more entries there. Also, should the User:Theo's Little Bot parameters for archiving be extended so that entries stay on the nominations page longer? This may be helpful to retain nominations and allow more time for responses. NorthAmerica1000 03:26, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Accomplishments
In this section, can there also be a before/after "bytes" comparison, or even just a "difference in bytes" number? It's not a wholly useful way to check improvement but it should at least be part of the discussion.--Coin945 (talk) 14:48, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
 * I notice that a new template has been employed, which might that section easier to update. I find the class at start and finish not as useful, because these are essentially self evaluations. The increase in bytes and citations would probably be a better measurement of improvement. -- Nick Penguin ( contribs ) 15:24, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
 * The DYK clan utilizes prosesize.js, specified here Did_you_know - or at least a few of them still use this tool. (And yes, now that I write this I realize that you are working on automation and not userspace tools.) Kyle(talk) 03:44, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
 * A bot could be written to use the code in that .js file, that would be a great start. -- Nick Penguin ( contribs ) 04:05, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

Choose the TAFI article for Week 36 of 2014
Results:
 * Hyperbole - 8
 * Australian Aboriginal sacred sites - 8
 * History of perfume - 3
 * Rack and pinion - 6
 * Club drug - 7
 * Mario Party - 8
 * Notre Dame de Paris- 8
 * Raven Tales - 9 - will be scheduled
 * Ear - 3
 * Quinoa - 6

I have moved Raven Tales to Ravens in Native American mythology, which is a subtopic of Cultural depictions of ravens. The new title is a little bit broader, and would probably be easier to improve. If this is a contentious decision we can discuss before the schedule rolls over. -- Nick Penguin ( contribs ) 06:39, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

Best and Fairest from Week 31
Seven days and seven nights turned Vatican Library from this into this. Significant improvements included expanded History, Collections, Manuscripts and Staff sections, as well as a new Location and Building section, Library Organization, and a gallery with a dozen new images, as well as renaming a few sections. We also almost tripled the number of citations, as well as doubled the length.

Major contributions came from, , , , and myself. Other contributions came from, , , , , , ,.

Thanks everyone for all your work, let's make Animatronics another successful collaboration. -- Nick Penguin ( contribs ) 05:14, 4 August 2014 (UTC)


 * I really need Animatronics to be over, I'm getting obsessed. lol David Condrey (talk) 21:41, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

COTWs
has been nominated for deletion -- 65.94.169.222 (talk) 07:11, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

MfD nomination of Today's articles for improvement/Article collaboration
Wikipedia:Today's articles for improvement/Article collaboration has been nominated for deletion. This discussion is located here. NorthAmerica1000 07:23, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

Best and Fairest from week 32
A marathon seven days brought Animatronics from this to this. This was definitely a turn around article, we began with only just a lede, history and construction section. By the seventh day, we had an improved lede, significantly improved history section, a timeline, an implementation section with dozens of examples, and an expanded construction section with information about various materials. As well as seven new images, a 6.5x expansion in length, and a 13x increase in the number of citations. Also, this would be eligible for a DYK if a project participant were to nominate it.

Many thanks go to, , , , , and as well as , , ,  and. As well as our faithful bot companions, always watching out for us.

Thanks again everyone, here's looking forward to another successful week with Ghost story. -- Nick Penguin ( contribs ) 03:52, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

DYK nomination

 * Nominated. David Condrey (talk) 07:20, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Reaching out to the DYK project
I can see a lot of similarities between our project and Did You Know?, and I feel like that the two groups could work well together. They have a large group of editors interested in improving content, and they may also find a project such as this interesting. Plus it would be good if we could have our improved content featured in DYK so as to raise project awareness. I'm looking for ideas of how we can encourage the projects to coordinate together. -- Nick Penguin ( contribs ) 04:51, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Can't hurt to ask, can it? CSJJ104 (talk) 22:22, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

These developed articled should be deleted from the Holding Area
Having gone through the articles in the Holding Area, I have chosen (through my albeit arbitrary methods) the following articles that I feel since being nominated have been expanded enough that TAFI is no longer suitable. It is worth noting that many of these articles actually did run for a week but were kept after switching to the 1-per-week system. Otherwise I just don't think the type of article works for us.

I hope none of these are contentious. This way we can free up contributions for articles that really need it. We've found that the less developed an article is, the better our collaboration is. (Our very first TAFI was Culture, despite my fervent objections. It went about as well as you'd expect).

I have not taken into account articles that probably need to have merge discussions, or even AFDs.--Coin945 (talk) 15:57, 5 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Writer- too developed
 * Anatomy- too developed
 * Louis Pasteur- too developed
 * Cheers- too developed
 * Poaching- too developed
 * Common sense - too developed
 * History of geography - too developed
 * African art- too developed
 * Chewing gum- too developed
 * Great Society - too developed
 * Chewing gum- too developed
 * Mouth- too developed
 * Oceanography - too developed
 * Silent Spring - too developed
 * Library of Alexandria - too developed
 * Kingdom of Israel (united monarchy)- too developed
 * Silent Spring - too developed
 * Quinoa - too developed
 * Whaling- too developed
 * Roman numerals - too developed, technical, and messy
 * Toy Story (franchise) - too developed
 * List of cheeses - messy long list
 * List of hybrid vehicles - messy long list
 * List of types of marble - messy long list
 * List of prizes, medals and awards - messy long list
 * List of magic tricks - messy long list
 * Absolute magnitude - too technical
 * Chord progression - too technical
 * John Harington is a disambiguation page. The article should be swapped to John Harington (writer).
 * Sections of an orchestra redirected to Orchestra so no longer applicable
 * I agree with your assessment of all those articles. Some of them were nominated almost two years ago, so a lot has happened since then. Maybe we should make some (arbitrary) guidelines about article nominations. For me, length by itself is not reason enough to not support a nomination, but definitely having more than 20 citations, that is a sign that the article is already pretty developed. -- Nick Penguin ( contribs ) 17:46, 5 August 2014 (UTC)


 * I look at a few main things: Length of article (i.e. how small the side-scroller becomes :P), how much of the content is sourced, number of sources, how well the citations have been written, whether there are whole sections missing, whether the article is below B-class.--Coin945 (talk) 18:04, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Regarding the lists above, if they're messy, it's a qualifier as an article for improvement, in my opinion. NorthAmerica1000 00:19, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
 * I find the long lists intimidating, it would be difficult to imagine a new editor show up at List of types of marble and know what they could do to improve it. -- Nick Penguin ( contribs ) 04:02, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
 * NickPenguin nailed it on the head. Every time one of the list pops up as one of the 10 articles, i skip straight over it. They are intimidating and confusing. Not conducive to group improvement at all.--Coin945 (talk) 17:15, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
 * I would mention that shorter lists might actually be quite easy for newer editors to mention. It is a comparatively simple matter to add a link to a page, with or without a short description, and many are in need of formatting or a lead section. Perhaps using class definitions might help? E.g. anything above a C class is considered too developed. Another problem may be articles like Whaling (is this not to be archived anyway?) where discretionary sanctions can be imposed, possibly discouraging to new editors. CSJJ104 (talk) 23:34, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

We have had success with lists, such as Life sciences (before), but a well developed, even if messy, list article is probably going to be just as hard to improve as a well developed, even if messy, B-Class article. And re classes: we have had proposals to limit the eligibility criteria based on class, but the outcome of such discussions has been to rely on editors' discretion in picking articles, rather than class (which isn't always up to date or accurate) - Evad37 &#91;talk] 02:06, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Life sciences was kind of an interesting case, because there was essentially no new content created, it was just grabbing content from other articles. Not that there's anything wrong with that. But to touch on a point Coin945 said, I think we need to consider what will be "conductive to group improvement", in both the noms and the articles we vote for each week. Sometimes the articles I find interesting make just terrible collaborations. -- Nick Penguin ( contribs ) 04:55, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Perhaps two separate votes - one for articles and one for lists? The lists vote could be monthly if there aren't many nominations. Or is this just complicating things innecessarily? Sophie means wisdom (talk) 17:38, 9 August 2014 (UTC)
 * one vote would probably be the best system. I think we should focus on finding list articles that are good candidates for improvement to list as nominations. -- Nick Penguin ( contribs ) 22:38, 14 August 2014 (UTC)