Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Chicago/COTW

Methodology
As this project ramps up, we should probably develop a methodology for voting on and pruning nominations, as many other COTW have. Cinema_Collaboration_of_the_Week has pretty decent guidelines. I don't know if we want to adopt the style of a pre-existing collab or modify it. - AKeen 16:37, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Detailed guidelines would be something to think about if we begin to get more participants. One thing I do like about Cinema's guidelines, though, is that their first order of business is a "to do" list for each new collaboration. That's a good way of breaking things down and allowing individual editors to make smaller contributions without dedicating a whole lot of time to something. I would have been more likely, myself, to participate in the Intelligentsia collaboration if there'd been something like that. L Glidewell 14:41, 22 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the direction. They have some good guidelines. I will incorporate something this week and request ratification. TonyTheTiger 10:26, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Renominations
You mention things coming in second as being eligible for renomination after four weeks. Given that therecurrently seem to be four people voting, it would appear we're going to be headed for a variety of ties for first or second place. How do you propose handling those? Shsilver 00:31, 5 January 2007 (UTC)


 * First, let's hope this picks up some steam and attracts new participants. However, generally, the shorter article should be the focus.  I think previous COTW failed by trying to take good articles to featured status.  I think we can take stubs to B or GA status regularly.  If the tie is multiway where everyone is voting for their own nomination, we should encourage consideration in the voting.  Thus, I propose everyone submit a 2nd choice so that we don't get a situation where people are voting for their own nomination even when it is not the best thing to work on.  TonyTheTiger 23:48, 8 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I guess anything could be described as 2nd place that had the 2nd most votes including at least one vote from someone other than the nominator. TonyTheTiger 23:52, 8 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I propose an amendment to the renomination rules. I think that this should only apply to the original nominator. For example, I propose an article and it isn't chosen. Then I have to wait 4 weeks or ten weeks to renominate it myself. But if someone else decides that they like it, they can renominate it in the next round. If it doesn't win, then they also have to wait the 4 or 10 weeks. What does everyone think? TheQuandry 20:10, 25 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I'd support this amendment. Shsilver 20:15, 25 January 2007 (UTC)


 * The people have spoken. I will change. TonyTheTiger 19:57, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Advertising
We are not allowed to place the CHICOTW template on article pages. However, I have placed it on the talk pages of Chicago, Chicagoland, Cook County, Illinois, Illinios, and all 77 Chicago community areas. Does anyone have any good ideas on attracting editors? TonyTheTiger 22:25, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Nothing beyond inviting people to join piecemeal as we come across them. I wish we had more participants in CHICOTW, especially onsidering the long list of folks on the main project page. Maybe we could go down the list and post invitations on their talk pages? TheQuandry 20:14, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Next week when I do my update, I will contact all those folks. Thanks for the suggestion. TonyTheTiger 19:55, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I removed the CUR-CHICOTW (and related comments) from South side (Chicago) after reading the ongoing DYK discussion. It's simply not needed. People who know this is a COTW don't need the tag, and people who don't know it is a COTW don't care. There's no need to advertise in the main space.--Bookandcoffee 21:20, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

New WP Chicago pages
You may have noticed that I added a new WP Chicago pages section. I was trying to decide if I should explicitly encourage proper citation in this section. Let me know if you have an opinion. TonyTheTiger 00:51, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

New Objective
I hope you noticed and agree with the objectives section above. I just made our first WP:GA nomination (Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago) according to this objective.

Washington Park, Chicago
Given the MCA good article review, I think we may be able to turn ourselves into a WP:GA factory. I think we should review our past articles with this review in mind. I.E., we should consider the six things that good article candidates are judged for. I am going to try to spend some time today with the Washington Park, Chicago articles that are in the good article candidate queue. I think some of our past articles may be deserving especially if we clean them up a little. TonyTheTiger 19:47, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Nominees
The following was pasted here from the CHICOTW project page


 * Judson. We seem to be focusing on theatres and neighborhoods a little too much. Shsilver 20:01, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
 * The nomination process is open to all nominations. If you don't like the emphasis make another type of nomination and it will be given its fair due process. Also, we have done two bios, a museum and a legislative act.  I think we are handling things equitably. TonyTheTiger 20:15, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
 * I would appreciate the ability to nominate an entire category for improvement, such as Chicago area bridges, but am content with improving specific articles decided by vote from the concerned user community. Additionally, in comparison to other urban areas, Chicago is somewhat "known" for theatres and the unique character of individual neighborhoods.  To that end, for COTW to focus on widely known topics serves to advance access to knowledge for the entire user community. ChicagoPimp 23:16, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
 * I don't think there's any rule against nominating categories. I nominated "Chicago Theatres" a short while back and it would have meant improving some of the existing articles (including Chicago) and writing articles for theatres that don't have them yet (Congress, Uptown, etc.) I think the size of something like that might have seemed overwhelming but since we seem to be attracting more folks to this project maybe it's something to think about for the future. TheQuandry 03:54, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

New Did You Know Policy
Having recieved my first WP:DYK yesterday for Rob Pelinka, I am very new to DYK. I am trying to decide what the best policy is for CHICOTW articles. I noticed 3 editors came by and edited the article during the 10 hours and 41 minutes it was on the Main page. That is pretty good for a short bio article with narrow appeal. I think many of our articles could benefit from the proper timing. I am hoping to be able to get editorial help within the CHICOTW window if possible. However, there is no guarantee how quickly an article will be included in the DYK if successful. Generally, our articles have taken shape within the first 4 or 5 days. I am thinking that if an article becomes CHICOTW on Day 1, that by Day 5 or 6 it could have interesting fruit for a DYK nomination. Many of our articles probably had something DYK-worhty by this time. In weeks, where DYK success comes quickly enough, we could get help with our CHICOTW editting. Also, it may help us recruit editors who notice we are doing interesting things if we get them involved in our current project. Any comments? TonyTheTiger 21:19, 27 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I just got the following notice. Let's see if it gets us any editorial assistance.

We got one editor, which is better than no DYK and none. TonyTheTiger 23:40, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Related nominations
We make our own rules here. However, I would like to suggest that unless nominees are closely related enough to rightly belong on the same dab page they be listed as separate nominees. Nominees that belong on the same list are many. We have to set a policy and I believe that is what our policy should be. If we can take 52 stub/redlink articles a year close to if not past WP:GA standards and find WP:DYK topics for many of them that is a good thing. We should not lose our focus and try to do too much. TonyTheTiger 23:39, 1 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Without opposition, this will go up as policy on the main page in 48 hours. TonyTheTiger 15:50, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Sounds fine to me. TheQuandry 16:45, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

National Register of Historic Places/National Historic Landmark
Chicago Board of Trade Building, Chicago Theatre, Hull House, Washington Park (Chicago park) and Union Stock Yard Gate all need to be cleaned up in a consistent manner with good links. I am just discovering that the date of listing on the National Register of Historic Places and date of designation of National Historic Landmark status can be very different based on info for the last of these three. Does anyone know a good link for the former listing? TonyTheTiger (talk/cont/bio) 23:15, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

The National Landmark status is oft bestowed at a different time than the Register listing. However, if a site is listed a National Historic Landmark before it is listed on the National Register of Historic Places then it automatically joins the Register when it is designated a landmark. That said, the NRHP has a database (that doesn't always work) with every property listed (includes: date, city, county, address and all of the info can be exported to an excel file for easy recall later).


 * The NRHP Database can be found at:
 * The NHL Database can be found at:

Hope that helps. IvoShandor 20:37, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

GA noms
I have to say, I don't think it is necessary to nominate every single collaboration as a GA. Review the criteria, then if you think it qualifies, nominate it. IvoShandor 09:08, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Please note
I'm in the middle of moving, transferring all my phone, internet, electric, etc. accounts and unpacking, and I'm going out of town next week, so I probably won't be very active for a couple weeks. TheQuandry 18:46, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Good luck with the move. You presence is missed. Come back soon. TonyTheTiger (talk/cont/bio) 15:55, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

DYK frustration
I have been getting frustrated finding interesting facts and not getting DYKs recently. I think we should make it official policy that only DYK-eligible articles can be nominated. Thus, only articles that are currently less than 1500 characters would be eligible. I will institute this with next week's nominations if there is no objection. TonyTheTiger (talk/cont/bio) 15:53, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Parameterization
I have parameterized ChicagoWikiProject and created all the categories and subcategories in Category:WikiProject Chicago. Let me know if you have any trouble using it. TonyTheTiger (talk/cont/bio) 17:25, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Top Importance
We will need to assess and tag our articles. A good example of an assessment system is at WikiProject_Biography/Assessment. I believe we want to be as strict as they are. In short, less than 1 in 1000 article should be rated as top. I have chosen 5 that are our top 5 for now Barack Obama, Michael Jordan, Sears Tower, Wrigley Field, & Chicago. I am open for debate, however. We probably should delete a top for everyone we add until we have 6000 articles tagged in our project. I am thinking that I might replace Wrigley with Art Institute of Chicago despite its short article. I am also thinking that the major sports teams should be seriously considered for top importance.

Until I create a page explaining the approximate guidelines, it would be more helpful if you would just add the ChicagoWikiProject to as many pages as you can and encourage others to do so as well. TonyTheTiger (talk/cont/bio) 00:10, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Some projects have much larger proportion of top articles. WikiProject Architecture has about 6%. There are two reasons why other projects may have extremely high top proportions.
 * 1) They are wrong and classifying too many things as top.
 * 2) They are right, which could be caused by the fact that their mid and low importance articles are not getting the attention they deserve.
 * 3) Consider WikiProject Architecture and look at the redlinks on the Chicago Landmark page.
 * 4) Consider whether they are aggressively tagging their low importance articles.


 * I personally believe that all projects should be capped at .1% top importance articles. This would force them to go out and create stubs and tag all low importance articles.  Keep in mind that since most FAs have multiple tags the fact that .075% of article are FAs means would imply that fewer than .075% all articles should be top if top meant the subject of the article has a level of importance that this project thinks time should be spent to make it an FA.  Suppose the average FA should have 3 tags with top importance. Then .025% of all articles should be top.  If the average FA should have 5 top importance tags then .015% of all articles should be top.  Of course, tagging efforts are always behind so almost no articles will be fully tagged.  The closest I seen to a fully tagged article is Talk:Andy Warhol. However, even it is not fully assessed.

I have started working on an assesment page for our group. If we were to agree to limit ourselves to the greater of top 0.1% or top 5 articles, we need to have a discourse. I am seriously considering replacing Wrigley with AIC as mentioned above. Please give me your feedback if you have an thoughts on what the top Chicago articles are. TonyTheTiger (talk/cont/bio) 20:33, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Please respond to above at Talk:WP:WPChi. TonyTheTiger (talk/cont/bio) 17:09, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Lack of participation
It seems that ever since the Magnificent Mile WP:CHICOTW, no one has significantly contributed to the editing of the weekly selection. People have slowly begun to resume nominating articles, but voting has also been sporadic. I sure would appreciate some help with the editing.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/tcfkaWCDbwincowtchatlotpsoplrttaDCLaM) 23:09, 30 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Could be the outstanding amount of instruction creep on the collaboration page, man that's a lot of text, scares people off, guarantee it. IvoShandor 00:07, 22 August 2007 (UTC)


 * I believe that the Project is a victim of its own success. As people's favorite topics get filled in, they then move on to provide context for their favorite topics on the relevant other pages in the Project. Once they have accomplished that secondary mission, they withdraw from the Project a bit. The fact that it's summertime is keeping many people busy too, I'm sure. IvoShandor could also be right; all the Project pages could use a rigorous scrubbing behind their ears, so to speak. Perhaps some archiving for starters? Speciate 04:54, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Discontinued
As the WP:CHICOTW coordinator, I will be putting this part of WP:CHICAGO on hiatus. I will be experimenting with WP:LOTD and making other contributions.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:LOTD) 00:57, 14 November 2007 (UTC)