Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Work via WikiProjects/Archive 1

Wikiproject CVG
We've started compiling a list of articles that we feel would be essential to have. Is there some sort of roadmap regarding this project? Jacoplane 03:29, 17 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Thanks for letting us know, your worklist looks to be very helpful for us. This part of the WP1.0 project is fairly new; the closest thing to a roadmap was laid out when I originally proposed the idea here.  We are currently in the process of contacting all active WikiProjects to find out what they have available, or can put together in the next few months.  Most WikiProjects don't even have a formal list of articles at all, and almost no one has assessed their articles, though often subject experts can give us some good key articles.  WP:Chem have a large worklist, and a couple of other groups have started similar things recently.  We will definitely keep track of your page, particularly once we have a date for publication.


 * My own guesstimate (nothing more!) is that we will have something ready to publish by autumn 2006. I think it will be more like Wikipedia 0.9 than 1.0, because many important articles will have to be omitted because of poor quality, and our subject coverage will be patchy.  The new Wikisort system of article assessment by users may well revolutionise things and allow us to identify many more good articles.  However my own feeling is that peer review by subject expert Wikipedians (as you are doing) is still the best way of assessing articles.  Even aside from WP1.0, I think it's a very worthwhile thing to do, and at WP:Chem it has served to mobilise the chemists around article improvement.  Thanks for getting in touch, and good luck! Walkerma 05:29, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

WikiProject UK Parliament constituencies
I just stumbled on this page. While you haven't contacted our project yet, I thought you might be interested in WikiProject UK Parliament constituencies/Progress, which gives an idea of the status of articles - those rated three or four out of four with results completed are generally our best articles. Warofdreams talk 13:20, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Thank you! I just added your WikiProject to our contacting list last night, so I was taking a look at the project, but I didn't see the progress page. I'll take a look soon. Thanks, Walkerma 14:55, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Arab-Israeli conflict
Note that Six-Day War is detailed and referenced, and Yom Kippur War is a FA. 216.196.152.59 02:03, 2 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the info, these are nice articles. Walkerma 06:46, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

WikiProject Albums
You may want to look here WikiProject_Albums/Featured_Albums_Project for well-written album articles. In addition, Smile (Brian Wilson album) by the Beach Boys is a featured article. Gflores Talk 00:43, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Thanks for this, it looks like a really useful list, exactly the kind of thing we need. Walkerma 06:41, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
 * A similar page... Portal:Music/Featured_articles. Lists Music related featured articles. Gflores Talk 19:10, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
 * What a great idea for a page! Maybe we should start a similar one for science FAs. Thanks a lot, Walkerma 01:41, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Automation
Any hint of how to automate assesement? I'd like to have some simple "ticky-marks" to check-off on a page. In other words, I'd like to have a way of declaring "I agree with this assesment", or "I disagree", and also have a way of seeing how many other editors reviewed the given article, and what thier votes were. I'd also like to see the grand-total list of articles from my project. At this time, its not even clear where the current assesment, if any, can be viewed. linas 19:20, 15 December 2005 (UTC)


 * The automation side of WP1.0 is on the Version_1.0_Editorial_Team/Wiki_Sort project (sister to this project), this user-based assessment is supposed to come in early next year according to Jimbo's interview for Nature yesterday. This project involves contacting WikiProjects one by one, and asking the people there for their assessments.  For example, people at WikiProject Physics are much more able to assess your article on Wave-particle duality than I am, so we ask for their opinion.  There are only two (very busy) people working on this project, so it's taking some time to process all the WikiProjects, but so far we've contacted all of the Economics ones, and many of the Arts and the Humanities ones.  If you click on the links near the top of the project page, you'll see the five categories listed, for example the Arts WikiProjects; you can see that only about half of the projects have responded.  A typical discussion is this one. We'll probably contact the Science and Technology WikiProjects in January.  If you'd like to help with the work here, we'd love to have you join us...! Cheers, Walkerma 01:24, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

To do (Feb 2006)
There isn't a formal TODO, Shanel & I have just sent messages now & again. This message was written originally as a personal message, but as it got long I posted here for other folks who may join us. Maybe this will act as an informal to do list. At the moment the main tasks are
 * 1) Complete the listings of projects.
 * 2) Contact all the WikiProjects listed.  We always label the posting "Articles for the Wikipedia 1.0 project" so the link from our assessment page goes straight to that section of the talk page.  If you want to contact a few, take a look at some of the postings Shanel & I have done.  They have generally had a fairly standard intro which includes a link to the assessment criteria, then we tailor it a bit for the group we're addressing.  We often mention their FAs or some articles that look like poss A-Class to get their interest, and so they know it isn't spam.  If it's a really big group like Military History, you might ask if they already have a worklist -that worked well this week, they basically said "No, but we'll start one" and we could potentially get hundreds of assessed articles for WP 1.0 from that worklist! When you contact a group, mention the date of contact in the relevant section.
 * 3) Check the groups you have contacted.  Sometimes you may want to add something to your original posting -encouragement, ideas, etc.  Then (when you get time) tabulate the articles and their assessments in the appropriate section of our assessment page (such as WPHobbies). Often the project will just list some articles they like, and you have to do the A/B/Start stuff yourself.  Some groups get back to us on the WP1.0 talk pages, make sure you log that in our assessment page.

Shanel & I have talked about re-contacting some of the groups we originally contacted in October. Myself, I think we may want to try different approaches, and in a few cases maybe contact folks on their personal talk pages. Some other tasks that will arise once we finish are how to organise the listings we have, and to integrate them with core topics. I see it as a hierarchy, with core topics at the top (level 1), and many of the WikiProject suggestions are down at around level 3 or 4. (Maurreen & I spoke about this, she sees it the same way). You can look at my test page if you like (try clicking on the down arrows to find the lower levels and reach say an article on iron(III) oxide). I'm trying to make the hierarchy a little more tangible to help organise the topics more clearly. We have to make sure that we cover the level 2 ones, and make sure everything fits well together without huge gaps, IMHO. I also strongly agree with your opinion about WP1.0 helping to focus attention on improving quality in articles, particularly in the major topic areas. Thanks again, Walkerma 07:58, 2 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Hehe, it looks like Gflores is on a roll today! I agree with everything Walkerma (Mr. Martin? ;) ) has said. I think some Wikiprojects may have even gone inactive since we contacted them, so contacting people on their talk pages is a great idea. I noticed that some Wikiprojects overlap quite a bit. Someone on Wikiproject Theatre, for example, listed a FA that was listed on Wikiproject Opera's page! So, perhaps we could also try contacting similar Wikiprojects if a Wikiproject seems to have become inactive or hasn't responded. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Shanel (talk • contribs)
 * Should sub-WikiProjects be contacted as well. For instance, there's the Chemistry WikiProject and Isotopes WikiProject as a descendent project. What about the geographical projects? Contact all that are active? Gflores Talk 20:33, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Wow, you are on a roll! It seems like you just pushed the project about two months ahead, thanks! I like your inclusion of the GA idea into the posting, it's something people are now getting used to, and it approximates to our A-Class in most cases. You're right about similar projects, we heard nothing back from WP Albums, then WP Music supplied us with a nice list of albums they are working on! We should go to an similar but active project if needed. I think we should contact both the "mother" and the "daughter" projects. The chem ones are very familiar to me, since the majority of my wikiwork is coordinated through those two projects. In fact WP Isotopes and WP Elements tend to be pretty independent of WP Chemicals and Chemistry most of the time, they focus exclusively on the elements and many of them are physicists with no interest in the chem side of things. We do talk to each other a bit, but I don't even know if either group has a worklist. Yes, I think we should contact all the active "places" projects. Maurreen envisions a simple atlas as part of the WP1.0 release, which I think is a great idea - I suspect the places articles are likely to be second only to people articles in terms of popularity, and there are LOTS of them! I can't thank you enough for all the work you've done in the last couple days, Gflores, and I'm sure Shanel would say the same. Walkerma 21:38, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Tagging B-class articles
Is there a proposed mechanism for tagging b-class articles? The Category:Mathematics might have several thousand of these; I think that it would be a lot easier if we could add a B-class template to an article talk page, and having that template auto-include in a category, than it would be maintaining a list by hand. Right? linas 04:44, 3 February 2006 (UTC)


 * My experience was at WP:Chem, where the worklist tracks 380 articles regularly, and that system has worked very well there, but we haven't handled thousands of articles. There isn't a mechanism such as you describe, though it was recently proposed on the main project talk page.  For your situation I can see the attraction.  One problem is that the B-Class status needs checking (in my experience in chem, at a minimum of every 6 months, preferably every 2), and without an active list the temptation might be to let the assessments stay - but I think you could build a system that deals with that.  Of course here at WP 1.0 we are facing the problem of handling many thousands of assessments. I have been hesitant myself on this, mainly because I was the one who proposed the A/B/Start/Stub system in the first place, and I didn't want to be seen to be "foisting" this scheme onto everyone - but it does now seem to be gaining some general acceptance. And your method is certainly an easier way of handling them! I'll try to raise this topic again. Cheers, Walkerma 05:51, 3 February 2006 (UTC)


 * FOLLOWUP. I posted comments here. I also solicited comments from the Military history project, like you they have thousands of articles to deal with, and they recently started a worklist using the A/B/Start/Stub system. Walkerma 06:15, 3 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Horrible idea, in my opinion. With a worklist, it's easy to keep track of WHO has given an article certain ratings; with a talk-page template, we'd have to deal with articles appearing in the category at random, with no assurance that they had actually been looked at by a member of the project. —Kirill Lok s hin 14:21, 3 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Ahh, OK. That's a good reason. I was looking for some way of simplifying/automating. I'm intimately familiar with a few hundred articles, I was hoping to avoid the tedium of editing a long list. linas 19:55, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Actually, WikiProject Tropical cyclones has found the category system to be the most effective, as it is a general agreement that when editors work on particular articles and want to raise their ranking, they make a listing at a subpage, where it is decided whether to push it up a notch or not. Tito xd (?!? - help us) 01:15, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Lists
Are we including Featured Lists in the worklists? WP Final Fantasy wants to know. Gflores Talk 16:21, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
 * The short answer IMHO is YES, include lists. In important question! In theory, the FAs First people would be dealing with that, and so they should set the policy. In practice I think we need to track FAs on a project-by-project basis here too.  When Maurreen & I discussed this, we both thought that some lists and other "non-articles" are going to be an essential part of WP1.0.  For example I listed a few lists in the WikiProject Elements & Isotopes listing yesterday, because these projects often deal with things like periodic tables or isotope charts which are "must-haves" as far as I am concerned.  Walkerma 18:58, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Regional Notice Boards
The recent post on the main WP1.0 talk page (here) alerted me to the existence of these groups, that I was blissfully unaware of, yet they will be extremely useful to us for locating articles on places (see this list). I will also be useufl for Core Topics, providing expert review of articles we locate through the "Core Topics Plus" articles, as Core Topics broadens to include countries and perhaps major cities, etc. The starting point for a list would be this category listing, I will add a new listing of these to cover our contacts with them (if people are OK with that). Walkerma 22:07, 4 February 2006 (UTC)


 * I might be able to work on this. I could reopen the geography subproject and work it through there if I get any help. If I don't get help ... I don't know whether I would do anything on my own. Maurreen 03:27, 29 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I'd be happy to help, and Tito may help too as he did the first round contacts with the Places WikiProjects - (these are also needed). If you want, I can work on setting up the necessary infrastructure during August - it would probably look something like this, though probably a bit neater! Would that be OK?  We also have an overall list to give us the bigger picture, I would like to include RNBs on that list.  Walkerma 03:41, 29 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Maybe such a WVWP page could coordinate with the Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Geography page somehow. I think it's important to somehow focus attention on the countries and other widely important articles, in contrast to some of the detailed subjects that some of the projects are involved in.
 * Also, we might be able to get the various regions to help each other, or to have friendly competition between them or both. More to come. Maurreen 14:54, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Definitely, I regard WVWP as a "feeder" project to supply articles & information for the release projects, and that link is an obvious one. Having just finished reading over the article on Kosovo, though, your last comment made me chuckle! Walkerma 15:07, 29 July 2006 (UTC)


 * One thing I am thinking of is a general page that could list, for lack of a better phrase, all work groups related to geography or places. But this could be of interest outside 1.0. This could be linked from the geography portal, and it would include the notice boards, wikiprojects, portals, and COTWS.
 * Then we could base other stuff on that.
 * I'm unsure how to handle the ones that have little or no activity, or whether to check for that.
 * I just broke up the template for RNBs by region. But I didn't check the category. Maurreen 15:37, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
 * I just broke up the template for RNBs by region. But I didn't check the category. Maurreen 15:37, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Contacting science WikiProjects and stuff
Hi, I'm going on the road for a few days, so could I ask one of you guys to check up on the science contacts we made? Lots were contacted on March 9th, but with many there's been no contact with them since - I don't want them to think we're just spamming them. Sometimes our contacts trigger people doing a lot of work compiling lists (e.g., the astronomical objects people are putting a worklist together), we need to show we appreciate their work! I've checked in with all down our list as far as the chemistry/geology list, but sections 5 (Computer Science) onwards still need re-contacting.

Btw, Titoxd, I really like your latest iteration of our contact message, I'll start using it when I next do contacts (I think we need to contact the regional notice boards). Those contacts and the "Places" listings that Titoxd contacted (thanks!) are probably going to be particularly important if the Geography project gets going. Also, Btw Shanel, I have downloaded the automation software you mentioned to speed up the contacting - now I've just got to learn how to use it. Thanks, Walkerma 16:41, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Thanks, no problem. I'll go contact them regularly, as I'm member of a science WikiProject myself. If you need it, my message is available at my Project sandbox, so you can recycle it and adjust it as you see fit. Tito xd (?!? - help us) 18:49, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks a lot!This sort of thing is typical. Walkerma 19:43, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
 * I am going to borrow Titoxd's template, but for my part, it'd be the arts. — Mir  l   e   n   13:11, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Not all Wikiprojects have been contacted!!!
At least one wikiproject I know of, WikiProject Stargate has not been contacted, and is not on the list. Please refrain from saying that you have contacted all projects until you actualy have contacted them. Either contact the rest or don't say you have contacted them all thnaks. Tobyk777 01:16, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
 * That goes the same for WikiProject Middle-earth. However, being a member of the wikiproject, I can contact them. — Mir   l   e   n   13:06, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
 * I contacted WikiProject Middle-earth, so I am going to go ahead and add it to the list. — Mir  l   e   n   13:22, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
 * I also contacted Stargate. I'm going to leave the one or more remain message, just in case there's a few more there we didn't reach. — Mir  l   e   n   15:19, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Well, the thing is that we use the list at List of WikiProjects, which is slowly getting out of date. I asked Interiot if he could run a query to find most WikiProjects, and here's the results, which we may want to use to weed out inactive WikiProjects. Tito xd (?!? - help us) 20:14, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

1.0 "Release Version Qualifying"
Hi. I'm interested in feedback on Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Release Version Qualifying. It's essentially an idea to use a process similar to WP:FAC to identify and handle articles and lists that would go in a release version. Maurreen 18:30, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Wikiprojects and core topics
Please see note at Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team. Maurreen 17:54, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Is this a good place to suggest articles?
Hi, I remember you came to WikiProject Comics a while back, and I meant to get round to responding and never did. What have you got for comics articles so far? Hiding talk 20:05, 12 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Take a look at the WP1.0 comics article list, and please add to this! The discussion is archived here.  We will be contacting you again soon, asking for a list of major comic topics. Thanks! Walkerma 22:09, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Ta. I've added a few I feel are of value, will check a few more. Hiding The wikipedian meme 19:26, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

New contact with projects
Following on from discussion on the main WP1.0 talk page connected with meshing this project with topics, we were planning new contact with the WikiProjects. Tito had suggested the wording be something like:

Hello! We had previously contacted you to identify the quality articles in your WikiProject, and now we need a few more favors. If it were possible for you to revise the Core Topics list, to identify the articles that should be included in a small CD release due to their importance, regardless of quality. We will use that information to assess which articles should be sent to collaborations for improvement, as well as to help you identify which articles are the most important for you. As well, we ask you to keep updating your WikiProject article table for articles of high quality. Thanks!

I would propose something like the following altered version, but read my comments below too, it will need some revamping.

''Hello! We had previously contacted you to identify the quality articles in your WikiProject, and now we need a few more favors. We would like you to identify the "key articles" that should be included in a small CD release due to their importance, regardless of quality. We will use that information to assess which articles should be sent to collaborations for improvement, as well as to help you identify which articles are the most important for you. As well, we ask you to keep updating your WikiProject article table for articles of high quality. Thanks!'''

I am proposing we consistently use the term key article to indicate that it is one of the most important articles from that project - this suggests some importance, though to a lesser degree than core topics or vital articles.

Some other issues to resolve before we start sending this message are:
 * We need to make sure our last set of contacts have been followed up on, and the tables updated accordingly. Thanks, Tito, for all your help with this recently, I really appreciate that.
 * We need to update our listing of projects to contact. Again Tito has been great, getting a script written to get us up-to-date.
 * We need to consider how many articles we want projects to send us, because otherwise we may get 100 postings on our personal talk pages saying "How many?" This may have to be resolved ny classifying the projects as top level like History, which could be asked to supply a worklist of 100 articles, where something lower down like Polish history (inactive?) would be just asked for a top 10 or 20.  The "top level" projects could also be asked to look at core topics articles in their field, whereas lower level projects would not (they typically won't cover such broad subjects).
 * For simplicity, I would like to keep all of the articles from one particular WikiProject together. That will mean revising the tables slightly to include some way of indicating whether something is a key article or not.  However, once done it will be much easier for us to keep track and also for the projects themselves to start editing.
 * I think we should encourage groups to edit their own tables as much as possible, as the proposed contact post suggests.
 * We need to have a consistent name for the post. The word "collaboration" was added to some later posts, and this broke the links from our WVWP pages that are labelled "Contact with WikiProject:Sea Urchins".
 * Is it possible to use transclusion for our tables? Tito, you seem to know a lot about this kind of thing, and the cyclones project seem to do things like this - can you work wonders once again?  It would be really good if we could automagically list and count our A or B-Class articles, and even better if we could automate things such that other WP1.0 lists (perhaps things like this tree could be updated as the assessments are updated.  Currently, if an article like Australia at the Winter Olympics gets upgraded to FA (as it was recently), we have to locate the project table (in hobbies, Aussie sports) and manually change it.  Then we have to go manually into the list of A-Class articles and change it.  Think about it - even if just 150 projects (out of 700) provide us with 20 articles each, we will have 3000 article to try to monitor with about 4 people!  I was also thinking about seeing if we could do something like this at WP:Chem with their worklist.

Comments? Walkerma 05:20, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Well, I'll try to address each point at a time:
 * Wording: I just proposed a draft, and I like your wording too. I'm just curious: if an article is identified as a "Key" article, should it be indicated on the WikiProject's table (e.g. Tropical cyclone for WikiProject Tropical cyclones)?
 * Contacts: I've tried going through the list frequently, at least for Science and Places, but a double-check would sure help. One thing I've noticed, though, is that some WikiProjects don't reply, while they are obviously active. What do we do in those cases?
 * List: Unfortunately, as the Toolserver has stopped replicating the English Wikipedia (long story, hopefully it will be fixed soon) it has caused the script to be out of date. Either way, it is considerably newer than the list we're using, and we need to go through those and add them to the tables.
 * Depth of lists: I'm not completely sure I agree with this one - I'd like all articles that are of extremely high quality to have a shot at being in 1.0. Also, asking top-level WikiProjects for more articles might make them reluctant to provide them, as they would feel overwhelmed by the task.
 * Simplicity: That can be done fairly easily: write [[Image:Symbol opinion vote.svg|14 px]] Key article on the comments section, or italize the entire row in the table, or add a top row, like this:
 * Title: Agreed, and that one was my fault. I did that template before I noticed that we were using a particular title in the WikiProjects' talk page, but not until after I had contacted about 50 of them.
 * Transclusion: That is fairly difficult. Currently, WP:TROP uses a hybrid template/category system; the assessment is included as a conditional parameter for hurricane, and it has gradually been expanded to include assessment scales, assessment notices, collaboration notices, and merge notices. To change the assessment, someone needs to change the class parameter of the template, which then changes the respective subcategory of Category:Tropical cyclone articles by quality. That's as much as we can automate it, I think; I cannot think right now of a method that would allow us to read the template in the article's talk page and automatically update the table, besides getting a bot to do it, which isn't a bad idea. If I recall correctly, Mathbot does something similar for WikiProject Mathematics. That way, we could get most of the articles organized quickly; the only caveat is that the format of hurricane would have to be more widespread.
 * Any more questions? Tito xd (?!? - help us) 06:06, 18 April 2006 (UTC)


 * I'll leave the details to you guys, but I just wanted to say that I like and appreciate the direction you're moving in. Thanks. Maurreen 16:01, 18 April 2006 (UTC)


 * I like the idea a lot. Should we start contacting the WikiProjects? &mdash; Mir   l   e   n   17:26, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
 * It's better to go through checking that the WikiProject we've contacted already haven't added new things to their talk pages, and if they have, to copy them to the table. Then, we can start checking Interiot's report, and after that, we should begin Round 2 of contacts. Tito xd (?!? - help us) 21:34, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
 * I've updated the template, by the way. Tito xd (?!? - help us) 00:29, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
 * I've also gone through the Places, Technology and Science lists, and the only one that needs to be updated is WP Game theory. I'm short on time, and it's a long list, so if anyone wants to take it, that would be very helpful. Tito xd (?!? - help us) 00:27, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Now done - the game theory listing on EconBusiness has been updated (I think Game Theory appears in several places, we need to cross link these to avoid asking for info they've already given us. This also highlights another issue - when we do the request for a list of key articles, some groups like this one have already in effect done so, we may want to use a different message for these groups.  (I think we need to try to automate this process for efficiency, but we don't want it to end up just annoying people like spam. Right now we have the trust and support of many of the projects, we need to maintain that.) Walkerma 05:25, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
 * I had just removed Game theory from the Science listing, right before I saw this note. I guess that leaves Arts, Hobbies and Humanities to double-check, as I've double-checked the other four pages now. As to your question - if a WikiProject is ahead in assessments or has provided key articles on their page, it basically means a template can't be used, agreed. Tito xd (?!? - help us) 05:32, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Lists?
This is just food for thought ... at some point it might be good to ask them about the best or most important lists. Maurreen 16:01, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree. Asking another favor about sending in some of their best lists or key lists that are in need of collaboration. -- Mir   l   e   n   17:27, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
 * That's the plan! Walkerma 19:08, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Associate membership?
I was thinking of maybe being an associate member, for country and continent (possibly more later). OK? Maurreen 15:49, 19 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Sure, we can use all the help we can get. With you coordinating the Geography project, it would be great to have you do at least some of the "Places" contacts personally. Thanks, Walkerma 14:23, 20 April 2006 (UTC)