Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Archive 11

Help from regional noticeboards
As we are getting help from some WikiProjects, I think we may also consider asking some WP:RNB for help, they often double as as 'WikiProject Country'. For example, I am sure members of the Portal:Poland/Poland-related Wikipedia notice board would be happy to assess the quality and importance of Poland-related articles, if such a need exists (although I am not sure how this would fit into the current category scheme?).--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus talk 16:06, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

"I'd like to encourage people to work toward making all articles on countires WP:GA. Maurreen 16:12, 27 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Yes, we plan to do this. If I can get some more help over at WP:WVWP, we would love to do this, as we have discussed previously.  I'd also like to see RNBs using the bot to automate their lists if they are interested.  Would you be able to help us make the contacts?  Thanks, Walkerma 18:30, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
 * With Polish RNB, sure, but I am only briefly familiar with German and Easter Europeans, and almost not at all with others.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 19:49, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the offer! Pretty busy this week, but I'll try to set something up next week.  Cheers, Walkerma 05:13, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Piotrus, would be interested in a geography subproject? Maurreen 04:28, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

I just tag along
Sorry for the pun:). Sincerely, the last days I have tagged about 50 articles (with the template). The articles, mainly in the fields of History and Geography, should in my opinion be part of any fairly-sized encyclopedia. I would however appreciate if someone with experience review my additions here, and tell me if it seems I'm on the right track. Please do not hesitate to tell me your opinion. My regards, --Dna-Dennistalk - contribs 09:10, 4 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Looks good to me. Thanks. Maurreen 09:36, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

This project
What is this all about? Putting Wikipedia on CD would seem to be a waste of plastic (as it's already available online) and the talk of pricing doesn't mention who will be keeping the money. If this project is serious, who is behind it and what are the specifics? There are too many editors who have worked very hard here, some for several years, to spring something like this without discussing such plans in detail first. Badagnani 08:48, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Furthermore, if the thought of your efforts being used to make money for others is unpleasant to you, you'd best read Text of the GNU Free Documentation License before editing any more. Your work is already being used commercially, by hundreds or thousands of advert-carrying mirrors. --kingboyk 14:58, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
 * 1) Please see Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team objections archive.
 * 2) What talk of pricing?
 * 3) For who's behind this and other details, please see the project page.
 * 4) Nothing is being sprung; this project has existed for a few years; it has had internal publicity. Maurreen 11:25, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Bug reporting
I have some "bugs" (or perhaps "issues") to report regarding the browsable CD edition. It concerns some problems with empty contents in parts of some articles, which probably have arisen in the streamlining process. As it would be a good idea to address the problems before the next version, I just wonder if someone could tell me where such reports should be made - here on this talk page, or somewhere else? My regards, --Dna-Dennistalk - contribs 15:16, 7 August 2006 (UTC).


 * Sorry I missed your note earlier. The talk page for that is Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Test Version. Maurreen 15:55, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Torrent Project Changes
Screw my shipit idea. Anyway, the Torrent Project has grown to not only distribute wpcd 2006, but other files such as the German 2005 version. Also we don't only do torrents, we actually have begun to also use e2dk links, which are like torrents but use eMule and eDonkey. So we're not just the Torrent Project anymore, we haven't decided a name yet. Also our Project Page is getting kindof big so we're considering making subpages. Back to the name.../Torrent_Project, does this mean we use the 'move' tab to change it to (w.e our name is) Project? Yeah thats it. Nominaladversary 15:00, 8 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Wow! Congratulations.
 * Yes, you can use the "move" tab when you decide on the new name. Maurreen 16:34, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
 * We didn't move the page, but we re-structured it, added sub-pages, and extended the help/getting started section. Nominaladversary 15:22, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Lulu
Check this out....Lulu. It costs money, not to register, but to make a book (enyclopedia??)...but it looks very well made.
 * It is $5.50 per cd, im guessing if peopel want to buy a wpcd they can, still looking into it. We at Torrent project would be happy to set this up.Nominaladversary 19:23, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
 * People can download a book, order it, cds, dvds...this is aamzing, but the people have to pay for it, besides that, it really is something we can use Nominaladversary 19:28, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
 * For now, please don't... let me dig up a link why. Tito xd (?!?) 22:39, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
 * OK, here's why: A user used Lulu Press to publish Wikijunior Big Cats, and there was a huge discussion about what to do about this cases on the Foundation-l mailing list. Please don't do it unless we've contacted the Special projects committee and asked them about the proper way to proceed. Tito xd (?!?) 22:44, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Try, try, try again. Let's contact Special Projects. Nominaladversary 23:39, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Question re: WikiProject worklists
I have a question about the bot-generated worklists for WikiProjects (such as this one). Is there a way to populate the Comment field without inserting a direct comment into that page? If there is a comment inserted directly into it, will it be overwritten by the bot if the quality and/or importance is changed? I know that the quality/importance info is fed through attributes on the WikiProject benner (such such as but is there also a comment field? Thanks in advance for any help.--NMajdan &bull;talk  12:48, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Sorry I can't answer, and if no one else here can, leave a message at Wikipedia_talk:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team/Index. Walkerma 07:21, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Report from Wikimania 2006
I thought I should summarise some of the information on Wikipedia 1.0 that I picked up while at Wikimania 2006.

I gave a presentation on Friday afternoon that summarised what's going on here at the English 1.0 project – nothing unknown to people at the project. I emphasised Core Topics project, the SOS Children's CD, Work via WikiProjects (incl. the bot assessments), Version 0.5 and the Torrent work. Afterwards there were questions, including one from someone connected with the One Laptop per Child project, though it sounds like their space for articles is very limited.

I was delighted to meet User:Kirill Lokshin from this project as well as others from other language 1.0 projects. I managed to have a working dinner on Friday with User:Polimerek (another chemist!) who not only oversees the Polish FAs, but is organising a DVD release of around 250,000 Polish articles in his spare time! Then on Saturday I had dinner with Emmanuel, who is starting work on a French release. His interest is in the software for presenting the static content. On Sunday all four of us got together for lunch, along with Florence from the Foundation, to share ideas. We plan to set up a page soon off Special_projects_subcommittees/Static_content to continue this interwiki collaboration.

Polish DVD
See this report. The approach adopted by Wikimedia Polska was to work with a publisher, Helion SA, from the start. As with the German DVD, they chose to start with all the articles, then remove those with cleanup tags and the like. A script then worked through an editor whitelist and tagged articles by those editors as "good". There remained 130,000 articles, and these were passed over to the publisher, who has hired 13 editors to check 100 articles per day for 100 days (13 x 100 x 100 = 130,000). Those 13 paid checkers are actually supported by around 35 non-paid volunteers, active Wikipedians, who were accepted to join the project on the basis of their "good" contribution to Polish Wikipedia. The checks are of course pretty cursory, but anything dubious is removed. They should have the articles ready by October 2006 for release shortly afterwards.

French Wikipedia 1.0
Work here is just starting, but they are keen on collaborating. Emmanuel may be able to help us with software to make things look nice for the user. His portal strips out the sidebar and other things that are not useful in offline releases.

Responses to our work
The thing that seemed to attract most interest was our scheme of assessments assisted by the bot. Even among the English Wikipedians some were unfamiliar with the work. I chatted with Kurt (Janssen???) from the German Wikipedia, and he seemed interested in the bot, as was Emmanuel, so Oleg may get some requests from other language wikis.

Stable versions
It was announced by Jimmy Wales in his opening plenary speech that the German Wikipedia will be testing Stable Versions of articles very soon. If successful on de then it should come here shortly afterwards. Brion is doing some work on the software to make it work nicely. From what I understand it does this by allowing registered editors with over X edits to tag a version as "stable" (aka "unvandalised") and this version will be the one that comes up from a Google search or wikilink. It isn't a fork, it's just like any other version from the article history. If you click the edit tab, then you get the latest version to edit. As Jimbo pointed out, this may allow more pages to be unprotected, since most users will only see the unvandalised version of the article. This feature is important for this project, as it will make it much easier for us to locate usable versions of articles.

Overall I came away from the conference exhausted but inspired. I was also impressed that 115 countries were represented! If other attendees think I've misunderstood or missed any topics please amend this as needed. Walkerma 07:40, 12 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the update. Glad to see the progress. Maurreen 07:46, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

New logo idea
I saw the CD logo/icon you guys are using to represent this project. However, let me throw one more idea out on the table: what if we use the jigsaw globe, except it's complete at the top.--HereToHelp 20:48, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Webaroo DVD
I forgot to mention in my report of Wikimania, a software company called Webaroo was giving away free DVDs of the English Wikipedia. The announcement is here. The DVD is reviewed here. I really like the comment, "It updates itself when you go online," a feature we have discussed here but without anyone knowing exactly how that might be done. I didn't meet anyone from the company at Wikimania, and both my computers are too slow/small to run the DVD, but clearly this is of interest to us! Would they be a suitable publisher for our CD releases? Walkerma 06:15, 24 August 2006 (UTC)