Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Antarctica/Archive 1

Start up
When you start this up, there is some work done on Antartic explorations from an Australian perspective at WikiProject Australian history/Exploration which I will be grouping. We could link projects. SauliH 19:24, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Maps
the Antarctica series of articles could really use one or more SVG maps to use as a base to build on. The existing maps are good in so far as they go but being bitmaps are hard to extend and improve. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.247.128.75 (talk) 01:44, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Live?
I think this project has enough support to go live now.A mcmurray (talk • contribs) 07:04, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Assessment
There is now an assessment page for the project. There is also a list of the existing assessments at Category talk:Antarctica that any members who want to do assessments can use. John Carter 17:39, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Scope?
"This project covers the creation and maintainence of articles related to the continent of Antarctica, its geology and geologic history, geography, climate and lifeforms. It aims to expand Wikipedia's resources on Antarctica in a fair and accurate manner."

The first clause in the scope above suggests that this project is all things Antarctica. But the subsequent items in the project scope point to a limit of natural history. Subsequently, I am not clear what fits this project and what doesn't. For instance, do we include polictical history articles such as the Antarctic Treaty System?

If the scope is all things Antarctica, won't we be duplicating the comprehensive index already maintained by a bot? Instead, "the project's stated goal is to build a "comprehensive guide." Thus, I am unclear what makes this project a guide and not an index.--Fishdecoy 12:33, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Sorry for the delay in changing the original scope of the project from its original creation. The changed was actually proposed on the proposed project page, but when I moved that page I forgot to change the scope to reflect the comments there. And I'm not sure what is meant by saying this project is a guide and not an index, because I don't think that it is necessarily intended to be either. It is to be a project of people who can try to improve and maintain articles, which isn't really either of the above items mentioned. John Carter 18:00, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
 * John, your description above of this initiative as being a "project of people" makes good sense. Still. I was thrown off by the project template's reference to creating a "a comprehensive and detailed guide to Antarctica."--Fishdecoy 17:11, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I hadn't actually noticed the phrasing there before. I hope it is a bit clearer now, after I changed the language a little. John Carter 17:17, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Antarctopelta
I just rewrote the Antarctopelta article tonight if you would like to reassess it. : ) Sheep81 11:12, 11 May 2007 (UTC) (WP: DINO)
 * So noted. Good work. :) John Carter 17:56, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Quality assessment completed
I believe that all the articles in the Category:Antarctica have now been assessed for quality. I would welcome input from any member of the project at WikiProject Antarctica/Assessment/Importance for what level of importance to assign to the various articles. I do believe that we should focus the bulk of our attention on the Top and High importance articles. Anyway, any input is welcome. John Carter 15:28, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks for all the categorization!--Fishdecoy 17:04, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm working on the Terra Nova Expedition article... I think it should be assessed "High" importance because it meets all the criteria (in my opinion). How is this done?  I've been muddling around for about 15 min, can't figure it out.  When I finish editing it I may get the quality re-assessed too. thanks! Zatoichi26 03:30, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Adding "importance=x", with "x" being the importance (Top, High, Mid, or Low). John Carter 16:29, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
 * OK, I see now. Thanks for the help - Zatoichi26 01:15, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

Distance to south pole?
Is it possible for some of the articles on Antarctic research bases to say how far they are from the South Pole? Especially the inland ones like Concordia Station. I think this can be calculated from the geographical co-ords provided in the article. Carcharoth 12:48, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Antarctic maps
Is there a map available showing various locations in Antartica, such as Concordia Station and the other research stations? I tried to follow the geo-cords link to Google Maps at that article, but because Google Maps uses a Mercator projection, the map was next to useless. Any ideas on how to get round this? Carcharoth 12:50, 25 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I have posted a request for a map to be made for Research stations of Antarctica. Roger (talk) 17:50, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

Chinese Antarctic program
Missing from Wikipedia so far. Mporter 10:45, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

Category
In the tagging of the categories that make up the project - cat simply does not fit as well as NA so I have replaced. If someone really wants to revert to cat - there will be need to tweak the template - of which I am not adept - cheers SatuSuro 03:29, 19 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Please note that Warlord - John Carter has re-located all the cats to NA now anyway - many thanks to him SatuSuro 12:13, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

DYK candidate: Plateau Station
Because of the recent visit by the Norwegian-U.S. Scientific Traverse of East Antarctica (which also should get its own article, at Plateau Station, I have created the initial draft of an article about the station. Edits to improve it in general and in particular for the DYK inclusion would be welcome. Also, it'd be great to find some PD photographs of the station, which I would think might exist somewhere. --Leifern (talk) 02:39, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

South Pole article
Hi

I'd like to request that someone knowledgeable write a paragraph or two at South Pole. Obviously we still want to link to the main articles for the full detail, but for the sake of the completeness of the South Pole article I'd like to see a brief summary here, with particular reference to the status of the US station, and how their permanent presence there is viewed internationally in terms of potential territorial claims. It would also be intersting to explain what happens to the sector claims at the pole: presumably they all converge at a mathematical point? Anyway, if someone feels up to doing this it would be great. 86.133.245.64 (talk) 21:32, 6 March 2008 (UTC).

Stubs
Hi all - I've just extended the information on Antarctica stubs on the project page - there are now three separate stubs directly relating to antarctica - two geography stubs and one more general one for any other stub articles relating to the continent. Grutness...wha?  00:01, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Changes to the WP:1.0 assessment scheme
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Articles flagged for cleanup
Currently, 2199 articles are assigned to this project, of which 147, or 6.7%, are flagged for cleanup of some sort. (Data as of 2008-07-14.) Are you interested in finding out more? I am offering to generate cleanup to-do lists on a project or work group level. See User:B. Wolterding/Cleanup listings for details. More than 150 projects and work groups have already subscribed, and adding a subscription for yours is easy - just place the following template on your project page:



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Ratings need updating
Noted some articles where the ratings seem out-of-date: Several of these were not tagged for this wikiproject. I've done so, but not updated the assessments. Please update the table here as well if any of the ratings change. Thanks. Oh, and Mrs. Chippy is a lovely (if rather sad) story! Carcharoth (talk) 18:59, 10 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Aeneas Mackintosh (had no wikiproject tags for some reason)
 * Voyage of the James Caird
 * List of personnel of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition
 * Victor Hayward
 * James Paton (seaman)
 * Richard W. Richards
 * Arnold Spencer-Smith
 * Joseph Stenhouse
 * Ernest Wild
 * Robert Clark (biologist)
 * Aurora (ship)

Possible featured topic
Most of the articles I've mentioned here are to do with Antarctic exploration, so those editing those articles might be interested. Does anyone here know if there are some people in particular who do a lot of the editing on Antarctic history? I'd like to drop them a personal note about this. Carcharoth (talk) 19:36, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Arctic Portal and WikiProject?
I may have missed something, but fromn looking at Category:Exploration of the Arctic and Category:Polar exploration there also seems enough there to have a portal, featured topic, or WikiProject on the Arctic, but I can't find anything! Both Portal:Arctic and WikiProject Arctic are redlinks, while Portal:Antarctica and WikiProject Antarctica exist. Is it best to try and start up something separate for the Arctic, or try an expand the scope of this project to "polar" material in general, or to try and get the various country WikiProjects with Arctic territories working together, or something else? I've found WikiProject Canadian Territories and WikiProject Greenland, but not much else specific to the Arctic. Does anyone here have any pointers or advice? Carcharoth (talk) 21:02, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Southern Ocean
Is the Southern Ocean/Antarctic Ocean within the scope of this project? If not, I think you guys should expand your project to include it. If so, you should modify your project description. 70.55.84.50 (talk) 07:08, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia 0.7 articles have been selected for Antarctica
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Antarctic articles without geographical coordinates
I've now put the remaining Antarctic articles without geographical coordinates into Category:Antarctica articles missing geocoordinate data using the coord missing template. Would anyone be interested in adding coordinates to these, or adding this template to any other eligible articles I've missed? -- The Anome (talk) 12:30, 12 October 2008 (UTC)


 * It would be good if we could also replace the low-usage Coor d Antarctic & Coor dm Antarctic templates. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 18:31, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Early Antarctic expeditions map
I uploaded a map of Antarctic expeditions before the Golden Age which could be used in List of Antarctic expeditions and possibly other articles. It is meant to contain all expeditions south of 60° S latitude. It would be good if somebody could check for completeness, correctness and beauty. The fonts look a bit ugly as rendered by the svg-renderer. On my computer they look much better. I will upload a png-version when finalizing the map. The png should not have these font problems. Also, it would be good if somebody could direct me to the route taken by the expeditions in the box. I'd like to draw them in the same way as Cook's expedition for instance.bamse (talk) 01:21, 10 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Also uploaded the png now, which looks much better as a thumb.bamse (talk) 16:57, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Review Request: Australodelphis
I just put up the article, Australodelphis, I have been working up for the last couple of days. Would several people review the article before I put it up for DYK. Thanks --Kevmin (talk) 21:38, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Coordinators' working group
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Wilkins Ice Shelf should be separate article - not "hidden" in Wilkins Sound.
Wilkins Ice Shelf should be separate article - not "hidden" in Wilkins Sound. I propose that all material relating to Wilkins Ice Shelf be moved to that page with a small introduction being left in this article with a link to the main article. At the moment there is virtually nothing about Wilkins Sound other than Wilkins Ice Shelf. The tail is wagging the dog. dinghy (talk) 00:51, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea, looking at the article I agree with this conclusion. However, it also sounds like there is no significant ice shelf in Wilkins Sound any more. Excuse the pun. By the way David Vaughan who is quoted in this piece on the breakup is actually my boss Polargeo (talk) 10:45, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Heroic Age articles
For the past 18 months or so I have been working on articles related to the Heroic Age of Antarctic exploration. The ultimate aim is to have comprehensive articles of good quality on each of the Heroic Age expeditions and on the principal explorers of the age. A lot of the work has been my own, though I have often built on foundations laid by others.

The present state of play is summarised in these tables. As might be imagined, it is somewhat harder to find reliable sources with detailed information about some of the lesser-known expeditions. I am currently researching the most obscure of all, the Japanese expedition of 1910-12 led by Nobu Shirase. Articles on expedition leaders are on the whole less well-developed than the expedition pages.

Expedition leaders from the Heroic Age
Numerous articles exist for other Antarctic explorers, including Tom Crean, Ernest Joyce and Harry McNish (all featured). There are underdeveloped articles on major figures such as Apsley Cherry-Garrard, Edward Adrian Wilson, Lawrence Oates and Frank Wild. Various editors have worked with me in the past; most are doing other things now, but if anyone feels like picking up one of these articles and developing it, or of contributing to one of the more developed articles in some way, please feel free to do so.

Brianboulton (talk) 16:13, 9 April 2009 (UTC)
 * ohh...that's why all of those articles seem so high-quality. Good job! ResMar 22:42, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Leonard Hussey
Incidentally, I created the above a bit ago, and wonder if anyone with knowledge could fill the areas on the two expeditions? SGGH ping! 21:40, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

Scott Base
Hi! I put a question here about the name of the station. Can you help me? --Arcibel (talk) 22:56, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

What is "DI"?
Does anyone know what the initials "DI" mean in the context of Antarctic exploration? Example:
 * "Alert Channel is a small channel between Whaler Channel and Bar Rocks, and leading to the head of Husvik Harbor in Stromness Bay, South Georgia. Charted by DI personnel in 1928 and named after Alert, the motorboat used by the DI survey party."

-- The Anome (talk) 22:39, 23 April 2009 (UTC)


 * DI means Discovery Investigations Polargeo (talk) 09:01, 24 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Thank you! -- The Anome (talk) 22:39, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Removal of unnecessary Stub Articles
In my recent editing I have become aware of some issues of having geographical stub articles that have become a bit of a nuisance. There are several stub articles which have been created from the USGS names list which are essentially small bays or rocks. I think these articles should be either subsections of other articles or removed enitrely. For example I ask the question, do any of these currently deserve wikipedia article status? Would anyone mind if they were removed? Polargeo (talk) 17:05, 24 April 2009 (UTC)
 * 1) Bouquet Bay a bay between two islands (also stub articles) in an archipelago (also stub article).
 * 2) Gillies Rock a rock named after a telephone/radio operator.
 * 3) Miller Crag a bit of rock probably seen by less than 10 people
 * 4) Gill Bluff !!
 * 5) Gilbert Bluff !!!
 * 6) Gillick Rock !!!!


 * Antarctica is one of the largest areas on Earth, and there are only ~20,000 features listed by the USGS for that entire continent, of which only a small proportion have already been created as articles, compared with ~500,000 geolocatable articles already listed in Wikipedia for things located on the rest of the Earth's surface. Wikipedia certainly has space for these; even if we created articles on them all automatically down to the last rock and boulder, they would still constitute less than 4% of Wikipedia's geographic articles, for an area which covers 10% of the Earth's land area.


 * Perhaps a bit of notability filtering might be required to prevent the autogeneration of articles on minor rock formations and other less important features, but just about everything else on there (mountains, lakes, bays, channels, peninsulas...) seems to me to meet the notability criteria we use for geographic features elsewhere, which allow the creation of stubs on similar minor features elsewhere.


 * If you can give some guidance as to how we can perform this notability filtering, I'd greatly appreciate it. Bouquet Bay, for example, even if it is a bay between two minor islands, seems fine to me. The rocks, less so. -- The Anome (talk) 22:32, 24 April 2009 (UTC)


 * The SCAR Gazeteer is a better source. It includes the USGS locations and descriptions and has around 36,000 features listed
 * Composite Gazetteer of Antarctica (official website)
 * I actually don't find the ratio you have stated as suprising. The trouble with Antarctica is there is a high quantity of places where all we have is X mapped it, it is named after Y. The feature is often of little note geographically. For example there will be at least hundreds of bays around the Antarctic continent and its islands that are around 7 miles wide, many of which are much more notable than Bouquet Bay, there just isn't always a USGS entry on them. Do we want wikipedia to become a gazeteer where all we do is the replicate the USGS list? I think small bays and beaches should not be automatically added if we have no relevant information on them beyond their USGS listing. I certainly think that for any rock/bluff listed above if all we have is the USGS description they should not have an article.
 * The USGS gazeteer (for the rest of the world) includes names of over 3 million places (2 million are in the US), there are even 100,000 USGS listed names of places that do not exist any more. Do we create an article in wikipedia for every one of these places and for all of the other national lists? If not then why do we do this for Antarctica where the places mapped are often less notable? Many have been visited by humans only once or twice. This is meant to be some sort of encyclopedia isn't it?
 * [Places that don't exist]
 * Polargeo (talk) 07:44, 25 April 2009 (UTC)


 * I agree that the USGS data does not mention many places that should be listed, and includes many that should not, and that we should also draw on other data sources in order to get full coverage of notable features.


 * The advantage of the USGS data is that it is clearly in the public domain, and we have to start somewhere; the SCAR data is not, as far as I am aware, available under a free licence. It's easy enough to filter out the rocks, bluffs and entries marked "historical" from the USGS data. I'll take a look at the USGS data to see if I can find any more criteria which could be used for notability filtering, such as the numbers of references to a particular object from other object descriptions, and any easily machine-parsable data about feature sizes. -- The Anome (talk) 13:37, 25 April 2009 (UTC)


 * The first interesting result from the scan is that 132 of the USGS feature names are used more than once: two Philippi Glaciers, two North Bays, two The Amphitheatres, two Icefall Nunataks, and so on. See User:The Anome/USGS features with duplicate names. All of these will require disambiguation pages, where not already present, to avoid name clashes within Wikipedia. I can probably disambiguate these within the USGS database by using the geographic coordinates there and cross-reference links between feature descriptions.


 * Using cross-references as a proxy for notability seems to work quite well. Only 7602 of the features in the USGS list have both a unique name and a reference to their name in the description of another feature. Increasing the reference requirement to two reduces their number further to 4559, and eliminates nearly all of the minor rocks, craters, bluffs, hills, and similar features. Making all stations, mountains, lakes, bays and islands notable takes the count back up to 7650: see User:The Anome/Notable USGS features. Note that absence from this list is not proof of non-notability: many very significant features (for example, the Antarctic Convergence) fail to be picked up by this simple test. -- The Anome (talk) 14:15, 25 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Great to do this all automatically and thanks for the time on this. But one thing I note is that most of the features that do not have wikipedia artcles already and are on your list User:The Anome/Notable USGS features are just not noteable and nobody would miss them not having articles on wikipedia. Peaks are not necessarily noteable, bays are also not necessarily noteable. There is a spirit of exploration in Antarctica, people love to name features after people, it makes them feel like explorers of old. But a peak or small bay next to another peak or small bay, often the only noteable thing about them is that someone has put a name on a map. I don't think these should be wikipedia articles. I suggest a list page of Antarctic geographical features if you think they should be listed on wikipedia. I just wouldn't waste time making articles of these things unless someone has something worth saying about them. Anyway that is my personal view, I would be more than happy if you can find some sort of a filter to at least reduce this volume of unimportant articles which only serve to end up wasting the time of editors. Polargeo (talk) 18:04, 25 April 2009 (UTC)


 * I just did some googling for "Bouquet Bay" along with the seach terms either "antarctica", "liege" or "brabant" (the islands it is between) and it really only features on the web as part of the geographical lists already mentioned and now two of the search hits are the wikipedia article, which just mirrors the USGS list entry. Can you get less notable? Maybe this is a way of checking the notability of a minor geographical feature. Polargeo (talk) 06:28, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Okay I accept deletion is not necessarily the best thing. I propose we adopt the following policy outlined on Notability (geography)
 * Named geographic features are usually considered notable. This includes mountains, lakes, streams, islands etc. The amount of sources and notability of the place are still important, however. If little information beyond statistics and coordinates is known to exist for a named geographic feature, there is probably not enough verifiable content for an article. Rather than deletion, these articles should be merged and redirected to a more general geographic article. For example, an article on a river island where there is no information available except the name and the location should probably redirect to the article on the river.

I believe that if all we have is the USGS description 'X mapped this rock/bay etc. it was named after Y' and we can't find anything else in addition to this on the web. then that isn't enough for an article and we can merge or redirect. I would be reluctant to spend a large amount of time adding these articles new but then that is up to individual editors. Does anyone agree? Polargeo (talk) 14:07, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * As one option, it might be possible to create aticles like, for instance, List of mountains in the Ross Dependency where the information on individual mountains in that region which exist, but don't have sufficient content for a separate article, could be merged into. Doing something like this would save the information, reduced the number of tiny articles, and compact much of it into a smaller number of articles which will also, generally, give a bit more context as well. John Carter (talk) 15:16, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

WP:NOT#PLOT
Apologies for the notice, but this is being posted to every WikiProject to avoid accusations of systemic bias. Hiding T 13:23, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

GA Sweeps invitation
This message is being sent to WikiProjects with GAs under their scope. Since August 2007, WikiProject Good Articles has been participating in GA sweeps. The process helps to ensure that articles that have passed a nomination before that date meet the GA criteria. After nearly two years, the running total has just passed the 50% mark. In order to expediate the reviewing, several changes have been made to the process. A new worklist has been created, detailing which articles are left to review. Instead of reviewing by topic, editors can consider picking and choosing whichever articles they are interested in.

We are always looking for new members to assist with reviewing the remaining articles, and since this project has GAs under its scope, it would be beneficial if any of its members could review a few articles (perhaps your project's articles). Your project's members are likely to be more knowledgeable about your topic GAs then an outside reviewer. As a result, reviewing your project's articles would improve the quality of the review in ensuring that the article meets your project's concerns on sourcing, content, and guidelines. However, members can also review any other article in the worklist to ensure it meets the GA criteria.

If any members are interested, please visit the GA sweeps page for further details and instructions in initiating a review. If you'd like to join the process, please add your name to the running total page. In addition, for every member that reviews 100 articles from the worklist or has a significant impact on the process, s/he will get an award when they reach that threshold. With ~1,300 articles left to review, we would appreciate any editors that could contribute in helping to uphold the quality of GAs. If you have any questions about the process, reviewing, or need help with a particular article, please contact me or OhanaUnited and we'll be happy to help. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 22:08, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

2009 flu pandemic in Argentina
The maps of Argentina contain Antarctica... but AFAIK, Argentina respects the Antarctic treaty, is a treaty member, etc... so it's weird that they contain Antarctica.

And Antarctica is colored in, does anyone have information on confirmed cases in Antarctica?

76.66.203.200 (talk) 05:32, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

I think you will find that Argentina being signed up to the Antarctic treaty is not the same thing as respecting it. The Antarctic peninsula is now pretty much isolated from the rest of the world and will have been for at least the last two months so maybe if someone went in with it before that, but it would probably not have been tested and verified. Antarctic bases often get flu sweeping through them in the austral summer season (Dec Jan) as people who have been isolated for some time are suddenly exposed to a massive influx of visitors.Polargeo (talk) 08:09, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Actually you will notice that the Falkland Islands is also colored in. A fact which I know irritates a lot of Falkland Islanders. So I wouldn't read anything into the Antarctic color on the map. Polargeo (talk) 08:21, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

2009 swine flu outbreak in Chile
The same problem crops up on the maps of Chile...

70.29.208.69 (talk) 07:26, 11 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I've been to Chile. It is near standard practice to include 'their' area of Antarctica on maps. The Antarctic treaty doesn't force contries to drop their claims which are already in place. The claims are suspended though, different countries have different ideas about what suspended means. Polargeo (talk) 10:22, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

Flag of Antarctica
I copy this here because I put it in the discussion but I think maybe here could be much more discussed: According to Flags of the World, the Antarctic Treaty DOES have a flag and that it's used as the official emblem of Antarctica. I think that we should change File:Flag of Antarctica.svg; the current flag is just a proposal (ok, it's widely used) but at least the dark-blue flag of the Treaty has some official characteristics. --B1mbo (talk) 02:41, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Hoax or not?
Even since The United States Trust Territory of Marie Byrd Land and Ellsworth Land Antarctica appeared a month ago I was suspicious of it. Now an anonIP editor has tagged it as a hoax. Would some of you experts please weigh in on the article's talk page? Thanks ww2censor (talk) 01:19, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Popular pages
I have requested a list of popular pages for this project at. --Ysangkok (talk) 15:42, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Larsen Harbour
I was adding a Notes and references section as well as a Sources section to Larsen Harbour when I noticed it was only a (South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands location article stub) and was wondering if it should be included in Antarctica.

(Ice Explorer (talk) 06:32, 25 October 2009 (UTC))

As this location is only 54 degrees south I would not add it to the Antarctic wikiproject interest. Although I do know that South Georgia is a bit of an anomaly because of the circumpolar systems sweeping up over it making it extremely cold for it's latitude. Also the British Antarctic survey have a base on South Georgia. Polargeo (talk) 12:29, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes, this is why I would like a discussion about it. It is an anomaly to be sure.

Much of the history of Antarctica is tied to South Georgia as can be read in many of the books written about the subject. Also if you read any of the personal accounts by Antarctic explorers they mostly considered it a part of Antarctica. So I would like to propose that we include South Georgia and would like to know if anyone would second and third my proposal.

(Ice Explorer (talk) 12:25, 27 October 2009 (UTC))


 * My feeling on this would be for a more ad hoc approach. Anything South Georgia related that has clear Antarctic connections then please project tag it by all means. But a blanket project interest in all things South Georgia related is unlikely to be meaningful. I know the Argentine project has it in its sights but hey we don't need to piss on every lampost! To use a canine analogy. Polargeo (talk) 12:39, 27 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Now where is the Antarctic Explorer in you? You're supposed to want as much territory as you can possibly find. As for the Argentinian question " he who plants flag first and has biggest guns wins ", something every explorer knows, even kids playing in their back yards. (Ice Explorer (talk) 09:44, 28 October 2009 (UTC))

Pageview stats
After a recent request, I added WikiProject Antarctica to the list of projects to compile monthly pageview stats for. The data is the same used by http://stats.grok.se/en/ but the program is different, and includes the aggregate views from all redirects to each page. The stats are at WikiProject Antarctica/Popular pages.

The page will be updated monthly with new data. The edits aren't marked as bot edits, so they will show up in watchlists. You can view more results, request a new project be added to the list, or request a configuration change for this project using the toolserver tool. If you have any comments or suggestions, please let me know. Thanks! Mr.Z-man 01:01, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Tourism

 * New page Tourism in Antarctica Hugo999 (talk) 12:50, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

WP 1.0 bot announcement
This message is being sent to each WikiProject that participates in the WP 1.0 assessment system. On Saturday, January 23, 2010, the WP 1.0 bot will be upgraded. Your project does not need to take any action, but the appearance of your project's summary table will change. The upgrade will make many new, optional features available to all WikiProjects. Additional information is available at the WP 1.0 project homepage. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 02:50, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Unreferenced living people articles bot
Okip  01:34, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

volume ratio is not typical
In the article about icebergs a mass ratio it says that about 1/10 of the iceberg is over water and 9/10 under. I live in Greenland in a town at the Disko-bay, and I don't agree to this at all. My observation of small icebergs that floats into the harbour shows that it is more likely to be something in the range 1/6 to 5/6 - 1/8 to 7/8. I think the confusion arises from the fact that icebergs are not made of pure ice - there is air trapped in them, making them lighter and flowing higher. Someone should look into this issue.

holretz —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.177.251.243 (talk) 14:14, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

FAR notice
nominated Antarctic krill for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here.-- Cirt (talk) 22:41, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

Template:Antarctica portal
FYI, has been nominated for deletion. 70.29.210.155 (talk) 04:52, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Now replaced by . Thanks! Plastikspork ―Œ (talk) 04:02, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

University of Antarctica
I found this weird internet site calling itself the University of Antarctica ... I'd like to know if it's a hoax or not, because the site has unusually detailed maps and information. If not, then there should maybe be a stub article on the subject. 76.67.162.204 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 04:37, 5 August 2010 (UTC).
 * The website discusses online degrees, so I'm guessing it's a hoax. And the "campus life" photo here doesn't look particularly realistic either. Which is really too bad; I like the idea of "Otter Pops" as a team name as per here. Maybe we could contact the people at the the Antarctica Highways Project? John Carter (talk) 18:27, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

I came across the University of Antarctica website through a group calling itself the "International Accreditation Organization", which claims their "evaluation commission visited their (UofAntarctica's) premises" as a prerequisite to granting them "Full Accreditation status." The IAO appears to be a kind of a 'front group' set up to provide accreditation 'cover' for various on-line and for-profit colleges, so I'm rather suspicious whether their people actually visited Antarctica. antarcticaedu.com is not in the proper domain for educational institutions; the URL should be antarcticau.edu or something in the edu domain. There are various things about their webpages that make me suspicious. They write more about the continent than the university itself (such as student population, number of faculty, etc.) in their "About the University" page (and they make mistakes like their reference to aboriginal Antarcticans and claims of the sovereign status of Antarctica), they claim to have their graduations in different locations around the world depending on the year, all of their courses seem to be online but are actually hosted by prestigious U.S. university websites or YouTube, there are no faculty pages, some of the courses listed wouldn't meet the standards of community colleges, much less four-year institutions (ZOO 204: Dogs and Cats... really?), etc. Fxfuji (talk) 21:15, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

Antarctica articles have been selected for the Wikipedia 0.8 release
Version 0.8 is a collection of Wikipedia articles selected by the Wikipedia 1.0 team for offline release on USB key, DVD and mobile phone. Articles were selected based on their assessed importance and quality, then article versions (revisionIDs) were chosen for trustworthiness (freedom from vandalism) using an adaptation of the WikiTrust algorithm.

We would like to ask you to review the Antarctica articles and revisionIDs we have chosen. Selected articles are marked with a diamond symbol (&diams;) to the right of each article, and this symbol links to the selected version of each article. If you believe we have included or excluded articles inappropriately, please contact us at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8 with the details. You may wish to look at your WikiProject's articles with cleanup tags and try to improve any that need work; if you do, please give us the new revisionID at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8. We would like to complete this consultation period by midnight UTC on Monday, October 11th.

We have greatly streamlined the process since the Version 0.7 release, so we aim to have the collection ready for distribution by the end of October, 2010. As a result, we are planning to distribute the collection much more widely, while continuing to work with groups such as One Laptop per Child and Wikipedia for Schools to extend the reach of Wikipedia worldwide. Please help us, with your WikiProject's feedback!

For the Wikipedia 1.0 editorial team, SelectionBot 00:10, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

WikiProject cleanup listing
I have created together with Smallman12q a toolserver tool that shows a weekly-updated list of cleanup categories for WikiProjects, that can be used as a replacement for WolterBot and this WikiProject is among those that are already included (because it is a member of Category:WolterBot cleanup listing subscriptions). See the tool's wiki page, this project's listing in one big table or by categories and the index of WikiProjects. Svick (talk) 20:23, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Base camp articles at AfD
Greetings. I thought I would give ya'll a heads-up that Patriot Hills and Union Glacier Camp are at Articles for Deletion here and here, respectively. Cheers. - The Bushranger Return fire Flank speed 02:56, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

First citation in South Shetland Islands
In the site http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/about_antarctica/geopolitical/treaty/update_1959.php, the first paragraph read as follows:

The Governments of Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Chile, the French Republic, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, the Union of South Africa, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and the United States of America

Is it possible to use for the citation in the said article? Vuhongtam (talk) 02:43, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

George Doumani
Earlier today I did some work on the George Doumani article for the Unreferenced BLP Project. The article was unreferenced and tagged for notability. On reviewing the subject, I added a reference and removed the notability tag. This geologist has two Antarctic mountains named after him, which, in my opinion, is a fairly impeccable claim of notability. I wanted to bring the article to this project's attention. It's a pretty bare bones stub right now, and it looks like he's quite a notable Antarctic researcher. The article could really benefit from a bit of expert help. Pburka (talk) 03:28, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Ice XI
According to Ice article, Ice XI is found naturally occurring in Antarctica, yet, this form of ice does not have an article. It seems that it is a rather important form of ice, and should have an article, as the other three naturally occurring forms (on Earth) have articles (amorphous ice, Ice Ic, Ice Ih). 65.94.45.160 (talk) 12:56, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Photos from flickr
Just thought I'd give project memnbers a heads up that a heap of photos from Antarctica are available under CC-BY-SA from a flickr account at this link. You may want to upload quite a few of these to Commons for use on the project. There is plenty to choose from. --Russavia I'm chanting as we speak 19:13, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

New South Korean station
Any more details on the Jang Bogo Station ? Hugo999 (talk) 06:59, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

Interesting information on Apsley Cherry-Garrard
About 20 years ago I left London to live in a small Dorset village called Netherbury. I was invited to dinner by a delightful elderly couple called (I think) Mr & Mrs Mason-Green. During dinner I described how moved I had been by reading 'The Worst Journey in the World'. To my amazement it transpired that for many years they had been near neighbours of Cherry-Garrard in Hertfordshire. They knew him well and recounted how when he returned to England he was pilloried for having survived the expedition, where England's hero, Scott, had died.

As a true Englishman (whose dedication and heroism shines through every page of his book), he felt destroyed by public opinion and became a recluse.

His later life is recounted in Wikepedia, but I thought this very personal insight might be of interest. I have never forgotten than conversation.

Sally Ferrers — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.149.6.157 (talk) 07:30, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Merger proposal Collins Harbo(u)r
Articles Collins Harbor and Collins Harbour both relate to the same place. I have proposed merging into Collins Harbour (British spelling) as there seems to be some suggestion the name has British origins. However, I'm not so sure of my ground that I don't welcome advice. Jan 1 naD (talk • contrib) 19:38, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Sounds reasonable enough to me. - The Bushranger One ping only 20:42, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

USGS GNIS Gazetteer
The gazetteer, at geonames.usgs.gov, has been used as the source of some thousands of Wikipedia articles. Please be aware that in the main it is simply a transcription from other sources, with significant examples of elision and other types of transcription error. As far as I can tell the majority of the gazetteer entries have been taken directly from this source: "", which can be used to provide a useful check. Hope this helps. Jan 1 naD (talk • contrib) 13:13, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

Statute or nautical miles?
I just added a couple of templates to Mary Byrd Land. As I did that, I remember having had a similar edit reverted, or modified, some time ago where the other editor made the claim that all (or most?) distances in Antarctica are measured in nautical miles. Am I misremembering or is there some truth to this?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 21:39, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

Portal:Geography at portal peer review
Portal:Geography is now up for portal peer review, the review page is at Portal peer review/Geography/archive1. I've put a bit of effort into this as part of a featured portal drive related to portals linked from the top-right corner of the Main Page, and feedback would be appreciated prior to featured portal candidacy. Thank you for your time, &mdash; Cirt (talk) 21:03, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

Portal:Geography for featured portal consideration
I've nominated Portal:Geography for featured portal candidacy, discussion is at Wikipedia:Featured portal candidates/Portal:Geography. Thank you for your time, &mdash; Cirt (talk) 21:25, 4 February 2013 (UTC)
 * '''Geography

Is this project still inactive?
Is this project still inactive? Emmette Hernandez Coleman (talk) 06:12, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Countries and territories bordering the Indian Ocean
has been nominated for deletion -- 76.65.128.222 (talk) 11:07, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

Popular pages tool update
As of January, the popular pages tool has moved from the Toolserver to Wikimedia Tool Labs. The code has changed significantly from the Toolserver version, but users should notice few differences. Please take a moment to look over your project's list for any anomalies, such as pages that you expect to see that are missing or pages that seem to have more views than expected. Note that unlike other tools, this tool aggregates all views from redirects, which means it will typically have higher numbers. (For January 2014 specifically, 35 hours of data is missing from the WMF data, which was approximated from other dates. For most articles, this should yield a more accurate number. However, a few articles, like ones featured on the Main Page, may be off).

Web tools, to replace the ones at ~alexz/pop, will become available over the next few weeks at popularpages. All of the historical data (back to July 2009 for some projects) has been copied over. The tool to view historical data is currently partially available (assessment data and a few projects may not be available at the moment). The tool to add new projects to the bot's list is also available now (editing the configuration of current projects coming soon). Unlike the previous tool, all changes will be effective immediately. OAuth is used to authenticate users, allowing only regular users to make changes to prevent abuse. A visible history of configuration additions and changes is coming soon. Once tools become fully available, their toolserver versions will redirect to Labs.

If you have any questions, want to report any bugs, or there are any features you would like to see that aren't currently available on the Toolserver tools, see the updated FAQ or contact me on my talk page. Mr.Z-bot (talk) (for Mr.Z-man ) 04:52, 23 February 2014 (UTC)

Antarctic lakes
The Antarctic lakes article is a redirect, but the redirect is wrong, and no help. Can someone please fix this?--DThomsen8 (talk) 16:10, 12 July 2014 (UTC)

Comment on the WikiProject X proposal
Hello there! As you may already know, most WikiProjects here on Wikipedia struggle to stay active after they've been founded. I believe there is a lot of potential for WikiProjects to facilitate collaboration across subject areas, so I have submitted a grant proposal with the Wikimedia Foundation for the "WikiProject X" project. WikiProject X will study what makes WikiProjects succeed in retaining editors and then design a prototype WikiProject system that will recruit contributors to WikiProjects and help them run effectively. Please review the proposal here and leave feedback. If you have any questions, you can ask on the proposal page or leave a message on my talk page. Thank you for your time! (Also, sorry about the posting mistake earlier. If someone already moved my message to the talk page, feel free to remove this posting.) Harej (talk) 22:47, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Expert attention
This is a notice about Category:Antarctica articles needing expert attention, which might be of interest to your WikiProject. It will take a while before the category is populated. Iceblock (talk) 16:15, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

WikiProject X is live!


Hello everyone!

You may have received a message from me earlier asking you to comment on my WikiProject X proposal. The good news is that WikiProject X is now live! In our first phase, we are focusing on research. At this time, we are looking for people to share their experiences with WikiProjects: good, bad, or neutral. We are also looking for WikiProjects that may be interested in trying out new tools and layouts that will make participating easier and projects easier to maintain. If you or your WikiProject are interested, check us out! Note that this is an opt-in program; no WikiProject will be required to change anything against its wishes. Please let me know if you have any questions. Thank you!

Note: To receive additional notifications about WikiProject X on this talk page, please add this page to WikiProject X/Newsletter. Otherwise, this will be the last notification sent about WikiProject X.

Harej (talk) 16:56, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

WikiConfererence Australia 2015 - Save the date 3-5 October 2015
Our first Australian conference for Wikipedians/Wikimedians will be held 3-5 October 2015. Organised by Wikimedia Australia, there will be a 2-day conference (Saturday 3 October and Sunday 4 October) with an optional 3rd day (Monday 5 October) for specialist topics (unconference discussions, training sessions, etc). The venue is the State Library of Queensland in Brisbane. So put those dates in your diary! Note: Monday is a public holiday is some states but not others. Read about it here: WikiConference Australia 2015

As part of that page, there are now sections for you to: It would really help our planning if you could let us know about possible attendance and the kind of topics that would make you want to come. If you don’t want to express your views on-wiki, please email me at kerry.raymond@wikimedia.org.au or committee@wikimedia.org.au
 * indicate your interest in possibly attending the conference (this is not a binding commitment, of course)
 * add suggestions for topics to include in the conference: what you would like to hear/discuss (again, there is no commit to you presenting/organising that topic, although it’s great if you are willing to do so), or indicate your enthusiasm for any existing topic on the list by adding a note of support underneath it

We are hoping to have travel subsidies available to assist active Australasian Wikipedians to attend the conference, although we are not currently in a position to provide details, but be assured we are doing everything we can to make it possible for active Australian Wikipedians to come to the conference. Kerry (talk) 05:07, 20 April 2015 (UTC)


 * Wikiconference Australia 2015 originally proposed for 3-5 October 2015 will not be taking place. Thanks to those of you who expressed your support. You are all free to watch the football finals instead :-) Kerry (talk) 07:29, 3 July 2015 (UTC)

Research into mouflon population on Haute Island, Kerguelen
I intend to translate and incorporate additional material from http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faune_de_l%27archipel_des_Kerguelen#Mouflons. Any problems? BAPhilp (talk) 01:00, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research 2016 Malaysia conference
Hello all,

I have just found out that the SCAR 2016 conference is looking to host an edit-a-thon to improve the coverage of prominent female Antarctic researchers. For any members of this wikiproject that are thinking of attending, please let me know if you would be interested in helping out by leaving a message on my talk page. Similarly, feel free to let me know if you've any suggestions of people to cover! T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 11:33, 24 September 2015 (UTC)


 * For those interested, the wikibomb event now has its own webpage (Female Antarctic researcher wikibomb webpage). T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 00:30, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Stubs II
Lemnaminor has begun making a lot of stub articles based on USGS data. I think that a better approach, rather than littering the landscape with stubs, would be to place a lot of this information on the articles for the places where these geographical features are. Most of the articles that I'm proposing to merge into are themselves stubs, and these mergers would, in my view, help speed the larger articles along to better quality. Following are the articles that I propose to merge:


 * Lobeck Glacier               ( talk )           — Proposed merge with Saint Johns Range
 * Brahms Inlet                 ( talk )                  — Proposed merge with Alexander Island
 * Harris Peninsula             ( talk )              — Proposed merge with Alexander Island
 * Liadov Glacier               ( talk )                — Proposed merge with Alexander Island
 * Rutherford Ridge             ( talk )              — Proposed merge with Saint Johns Range
 * Kuivinen Ridge               ( talk )                — Proposed merge with Saint Johns Range
 * Mount Novak                  ( talk )                   — Proposed merge with Cruzen Range
 * Rohss Bay                    ( talk )                     — Proposed merge with James Ross Island
 * Low Nunatak                  ( talk )                   — Proposed merge with Gonville and Caius Range
 * Alexander Valley (Antarctica) ( talk ) — Proposed merge with Cruzen Range
 * Mount Isaac                  ( talk )                   — Proposed merge with Cruzen Range
 * Kreutz Snowfield             ( talk )              — Proposed merge with Cruzen Range
 * Koi Peak                     ( talk )                      — Proposed merge with Kukri Hills
 * Kennicutt Point              ( talk )               — Proposed merge with Wood Bay
 * Karoro Pond                  ( talk )                   — Proposed merge with Victoria Land
 * Kaki Ponds                   ( talk )                    — Proposed merge with Taylor Valley

All of the above articles fail WP:GEOLAND and are of the same basic character: basic information from the USGS, including lat/long coordinates, and the occasional reference to who it was named for / who discovered it.

Rather than having a multiplicity of articles whose notability is questionable at best, I believe it would be better to include information on these features on the articles for the regions they inhabit, and thereby improve the quality of each article. Note also that most of the regional articles are themselves stubs and severely lacking in substantive information; by themselves, they might also fail WP:GEOLAND, but with the added information from these stubs, some of them might become quite good articles, even achieving Good or Featured status. As these stubs currently stand, they are almost certainly doomed to become permastubs. Thanks in advance for your replies. J♯m (talk &#124; contribs) 22:56, 19 January 2016 (UTC)


 * Judging from my extensive work on initiating and developing Antarctic geography articles, it is my opinion that having separate articles is preferable. The idea of merging (1) could hardly be implemented in a systematic and consistent way as that would potentially involve thousands of mergers and a considerable effort, and (2) the resulting articles would be indeed larger but rather an artificial amalgamation of content that could hardly become good articles without major rewriting. In principle, due to the special importance of the Antarctic toponyms (that region lacking the extensive and dominant human-made infrastructure that the other world regions possess), one might presume that if an Antarctic geographic feature is notable enough to get named then it is notable enough to have a separate Wikipedia article or stub. Best, Apcbg (talk) 10:40, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

userpage drafting of possible interest
Please see Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:VanishedUser kasdjklajdskl/List of Antarctica Flora and Fauna. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:29, 22 March 2016 (UTC)

Auto-assessment of article classes
Following a recent discussion at WP:VPR, there is consensus for an opt-in bot task that automatically assesses the class of articles based on classes listed for other project templates on the same page. In other words, if WikiProject A has evaluated an article to be C-class and WikiProject B hasn't evaluated the article at all, such a bot task would automatically evaluate the article as C-class for WikiProject B.

If you think auto-assessment might benefit this project, consider discussing it with other members here. For more information or to request an auto-assessment run, please visit User:BU RoBOT/autoassess. This is a one-time message to alert projects with over 1,000 unassessed articles to this possibility. ~ RobTalk 22:18, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

Scientist Biography Drafts
Hello again,

The Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research has been gathering nominations for notable female Antarctic researchers, explorers, conservationists and policymakers. The meetup page is at Meetup/SCAR_2016. If anyone from this project has a moment, it'd be fantastic to have some extra eyes cast over the draft biographies. Any additional supporting references are always of use. Thanks already to the many editors who've already been swooping in to help out with formatting etc! We're planning on writing to subjects to request photos once they're accepted onto mainspace.


 * Draft: Doris Abele
 * Draft: In-Young Ahn
 * Draft: Robin Bell (Scientist)
 * Draft: Dana Bergstom
 * Draft: Nancy Bertler
 * Draft: Anita Buma
 * Draft: Kathleen Conlan
 * Draft: Carlotta Escutia Dotti
 * Draft: Karen Heywood
 * Draft: Christina Hulbe
 * Draft: Kumiko Goto-Azuma
 * Draft: Bettine Jansen van Vuuren
 * Draft: Ji Hee Kim
 * Draft: Catherine King (Scientist)
 * Draft: Kit Kovacs
 * Draft: Pat Langhorne
 * Draft: Hong Kum Lee
 * Draft: Jennifer Lee (Scientist)
 * Draft: Amy Leventer
 * Draft: Katrin Linse
 * Draft: Yan Liu (Scientist)
 * Draft: Diane McKnight
 * Draft: Roumania Metcheva
 * Draft: Victoria Metcalf
 * Draft: Bettina Meyer
 * Draft: Linda Nedbalova
 * Draft: Christina Riesselmann
 * Draft: Sharon Robinson (Scientist)
 * Draft: Michelle Rogan-Finnemore
 * Draft: Jane Rumble
 * Draft: Irene Schloss
 * Draft: Justine Shaw
 * Draft: Florica Toparceanu
 * Draft: Elizabeth Truswell
 * Draft: Trista Vick-Majors
 * Draft: Cinzia Verde
 * Draft: Anna Wahlin
 * Draft: Lijie Wei
 * Draft: Barbara Wienecke
 * Draft: Terry Wilson (Scientist)
 * Draft: Gillian Wratt

Thanks in advance, T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 10:53, 19 June 2016 (UTC)

Some Antarctic-Wikipedia news coverage
A couple of relevant bits of Wikipedia and Antarctic science news that might be of interest to this community:



They summarise work done with SCAR and WP:WPWIR on the SCAR 2016 editathon. Both give nice summaries of the history of Women in Antarctica. T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 04:20, 13 August 2016 (UTC)

Notice to participants at this page about adminship
Many participants here create a lot of content, have to evaluate whether or not a subject is notable, decide if content complies with BLP policy, and much more. Well, these are just some of the skills considered at Requests for adminship.

So, please consider taking a look at and watchlisting this page:


 * Requests for adminship/Optional RfA candidate poll

You could be very helpful in evaluating potential candidates, and even finding out if you would be a suitable RfA candidate.

Many thanks and best wishes,

Anna Frodesiak (talk) 00:47, 14 August 2016 (UTC)

New 5000 Challenge for Australia
Hi, WikiProject Australia/The 5000 Challenge and the wider WikiProject Oceania/The 10,000 Challenge are up and running based on The 10,000 Challenge for the UK which has currently produced over 2300 article improvements and creations. If you'd like to see large scale quality improvements happening for Australia and Oceania like The Africa Destubathon, which has produced over 1600 articles in 5 weeks, sign up on the page. The idea will be an ongoing national editathon/challenge for Australia but fuelled by a contest if desirable to really get articles on every state/territory and subject mass improved. After every 100 articles done for Australia this would feed into the main Oceania one. I will start one for your focus if there is the support. I would like some support from wikipedians here to get the Challenge off to a start anyway with some articles to make doing a Destubathon for Australia and Oceania worthwhile! Cheers.♦ Dr. Blofeld  21:14, 20 November 2016 (UTC)

2016 Community Wishlist Survey Proposal to Revive Popular Pages
Greetings Members!

This is a one-time-only message to inform you about a technical proposal to revive your Popular Pages list in the 2016 Community Wishlist Survey that I think you may be interested in reviewing and perhaps even voting for:


 * Fix and improve Mr.Z-bot's popular pages report

If the above proposal gets in the Top 10 based on the votes, there is a high likelihood of this bot being restored so your project will again see monthly updates of popular pages.

Further, there are over 260 proposals in all to review and vote for, across many aspects of wikis.

Thank you for your consideration. Please note that voting for proposals continues through December 12, 2016.

Best regards, — Delivered: 17:52, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

Popular pages report
We – Community Tech – are happy to announce that the Popular pages bot is back up-and-running (after a one year hiatus)! You're receiving this message because your WikiProject or task force is signed up to receive the popular pages report. Every month, will post at /Popular pages with a list of the most-viewed pages over the previous month that are within the scope of. We've made some enhancements to the original report. Here's what's new:
 * The pageview data includes both desktop and mobile data.
 * The report will include a link to the pageviews tool for each article, to dig deeper into any surprises or anomalies.
 * The report will include the total pageviews for the entire project (including redirects).

We're grateful to for his original, and we wish his bot a happy robot retirement. Just as before, we hope the popular pages reports will aid you in understanding the reach of, and what articles may be deserving of more attention. If you have any questions or concerns please contact us at m:User talk:Community Tech bot.

Warm regards, the Community Tech Team 17:16, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

TO DO list for ANT articles?
Fellow Antarcticans. I see no activity on this page for some time. Is this a place to suggest ANT article creation or upgrades? BrucePL (talk) 16:29, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

WikiProject collaboration notice from the Portals WikiProject
The reason I am contacting you is because there are one or more portals that fall under this subject, and the Portals WikiProject is currently undertaking a major drive to automate portals that may affect them.

Portals are being redesigned.

The new design features are being applied to existing portals.

At present, we are gearing up for a maintenance pass of portals in which the introduction section will be upgraded to no longer need a subpage. In place of static copied and pasted excerpts will be self-updating excerpts displayed through selective transclusion, using the template Transclude lead excerpt.

The discussion about this can be found here.

Maintainers of specific portals are encouraged to sign up as project members here, noting the portals they maintain, so that those portals are skipped by the maintenance pass. Currently, we are interested in upgrading neglected and abandoned portals. There will be opportunity for maintained portals to opt-in later, or the portal maintainers can handle upgrading (the portals they maintain) personally at any time.

Background
On April 8th, 2018, an RfC ("Request for comment") proposal was made to eliminate all portals and the portal namespace. On April 17th, the Portals WikiProject was rebooted to handle the revitalization of the portal system. On May 12th, the RfC was closed with the result to keep portals, by a margin of about 2 to 1 in favor of keeping portals.

There's an article in the current edition of the Signpost interviewing project members about the RfC and the Portals WikiProject.

Since the reboot, the Portals WikiProject has been busy building tools and components to upgrade portals.

So far, 84 editors have joined.

If you would like to keep abreast of what is happening with portals, see the newsletter archive.

If you have any questions about what is happening with portals or the Portals WikiProject, please post them on the WikiProject's talk page.

Thank you. &mdash; The Transhumanist  07:25, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

Argentine Antarctica
The Argentine Antarctica article was written by a non-native English speaker, or contains computer-translated sections. Either way it reads badly. I'd try to clean up the language, but often I'm not entirely sure what the text is referring to. (However, given that the article is detailed and well ref'd, it would be silly to just delete chunks of it over wording.) Could someone who is familiar with Antarctic history have a go at translating the translations?

Example: "On 17 January 1953 was inaugurated at Deception Island the Refugio Teniente Lasala (a hut and a tent) by staff of the Argentine ship ARA Chiriguano, becoming a Sergeant and a corporal of the Argentina Navy." (1953 was inaugurated and became a sergeant?)

"On 15 February, in the incident of Deception Island, landed 32 Royal Marines of the British frigate HMS Snipe armed with Sten submachine guns, rifles and tear gas capturing two Argentine sailors." (February landed Marines?)

"On 7 April 1948, by Decree No. 9905 settled the administrative unit of the Argentine Antarctic Sector of the maritime Governor of the National Territory of Tierra del Fuego." (1948 settled the unit?)

-- PaulxSA (talk) 09:34, 6 September 2018 (UTC)

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Nomination of Portal:Antarctica for deletion
A discussion is taking place as to whether Portal:Antarctica is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

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