Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Europe/Archive 4

New article
Climate of Europe - I am rather surprised this didn't exist until today. Totnesmartin (talk) 15:51, 8 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) 03:17, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Fibla carpenteri
I just created an article for Fibla carpenteri, an extinct snakefly known from baltic amber. Review and assessment is needed.--(talk) 00:43, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

Electrinocellia
I just created an article for Electrinocellia, an extinct snakefly genus known from baltic amber. Review and assessment is needed.--Kevmin (talk) 00:18, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Jacob Frank now a mascot for Wikipedia sister project Wikiversity
Hi, I'm developing Jacob Frank (an 18th-century European Jew who developed a religious movement called Frankism) as a mascot for Wikipedia's sister project Wikiversity. Wikiversity aims to be an online open school and university, and was also created to host original research. Because of its nature, it's open to educational resources in almost any format. Wikiversity's mascots appear on User talk pages when new Users are welcomed. In my opinion, the Wikiversity mascots could be used more fully as an opportunity to teach. The previously developed Wikiversity mascots lack intrinsic educational value. For example, they include a jack-o-lantern, a goat and twin babies not noticeably tied to anything else. In contrast, Jacob Frank is tied to a chapter of history that is relatively little-known and is probably interesting to some people who might not have heard of him beforehand. I'm also hoping to use his professed ignorance in real life and his doctrine of "purification through transgression" to introduce the Wikiversity policies of "Be bold" and "Ignore all rules" (Wikipedia has very similar policies with the same names). I would appreciate your going over to Wikiversity to provide feedback on the pages about the mascot: v:User:JacobFrank and v:Template:JacobFrank. The Template is left on new Users' talk pages; the Userpage is linked from the template and provides more information about Jacob Frank. Also, any ideas for other Wikiversity mascots? Thanks. -- AFriedman  (talk)  04:18, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Notification regarding Wikipedia-Books
As detailed in last week's Signpost, WildBot has been patrolling Wikipedia-Books and searched for various problems in them, such as books having duplicate articles or containing redirects. WikiProject Wikipedia-Books is in the process of cleaning them up, but help would be appreciated. For this project, the following books have problems:


 * Book:European Union (problems)

The problem reports explain in details what exactly are the problems, why they are problems, and how to fix them. This way anyone can fix them even if they aren't familiar with books. If you don't see something that looks like this, then all problems have been fixed. (Please strike articles from this list as the problems get fixed.)

Also, the saved book template has been updated to allow editors to specify the default covers of books (title, subtitle, cover-image, cover-color), and gives are preview of the default cover on the book's page. An example of such a cover is found on the right. Ideally, all books in Category:Book-Class Europe articles should have covers.

If you need help with cleaning up a book, help with the saved book template, or have any questions about books in general, see Help:Books, Books, and WikiProject Wikipedia-Books, or ask me on my talk page. Also feel free to join WikiProject Wikipedia-Books, as we need all the help we can get.

This message was delivered by User:EarwigBot, at 01:39, 2 April 2010 (UTC), on behalf of Headbomb. Headbomb probably isn't watching this page, so if you want him to reply here, just leave him a message on his talk page. Earwig Bot ( owner &bull;  talk ) 01:39, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

Inclusion of project banner on country articles such as Germany and Talk:France
I see that someone (apparently not a member of this project) has been adding our project banner and assessment parameters to articles on European countries (e.g. France and Germany, claiming that Wikiproject Europe includes the main articles of all European countries. The banner is being re-added when removed. Have I missed a discussion of this?

I suppose there is an argument for inclusion, but it would seem to violate the previous consensus as documented on the project page. If we allow the inclusion of the articles in this project, I suppose most would also then get included in WP:EU as well. And members of both projects should presumably also keep an eye on these articles as well. --Boson (talk) 19:19, 27 August 2010 (UTC)


 * I didn't think they could just force articles on us. — Blue-Haired Lawyer t 19:36, 27 August 2010 (UTC)


 * I have now removed the banners from the countries that are not within the scope of the project. Most seem to have been added about a week ago. I'm not sure if I got all of them. There still seem to be banners on several pages under Category:Low-importance Europe articles, possibly added before the countries concerned got their own projects. I think they are mainly for provinces in Bulgaria and Bosnia and Herzegovina. --Boson (talk) 00:24, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

Dividing Europe
The need to divide Europe into large trans-national parts arises in many contexts, leading to various ad-hoc terms. Since these terms exist, we have articles on them, but in most cases it's not clear what, precisely, the articles are supposed to be about. I have looked at the situation, and some of these articles are in a really bad state.

Some regions are relatively well defined and not (very) problematic:
 * British Isles – United Kingdom and Ireland.
 * Iberian Peninsula – Portugal and Spain.
 * Benelux – Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg.
 * Baltic states – Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania.
 * Nordic countries – Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden. (Also Greenland.)
 * Scandinavia – Denmark, Norway, Sweden. (Article also says Finland is sometimes included.)
 * Balkans – Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia. Sometimes also included: Moldova, Romania, Slovenia, Turkey.
 * Alpine states – Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Austria, Slovenia. Also Germany, France, Italy, Monaco.
 * Latin Europe – Essentially Portugal, Spain, France, Italy.
 * Romance-speaking Europe – Andorra, France, Italy, Moldova, Monaco, Portugal, Romania, San Marino, Spain, Vatican.
 * Slavic Europe – Countries with Slavic languages.
 * Celtic nations – Ireland plus parts of UK and France.

The reason why I started looking at this is the sad state of the following, which for some reason is on my watchlist:
 * Germanic Europe – Gives a sloppy OR definition related to "Germanic culture".

But as soon as you add a compass direction to "Europe", it gets incredibly messy:
 * Northern Europe – Uses an internal UN Cold War era definition (Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Sweden, UK).
 * Western Europe – Uses the Cold War era political definition (Andorra, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece[!], Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Malta, Monaco, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, San Marino, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, UK, Vatican) but also highlights the UN definition (Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Monaco, Netherlands, Switzerland).
 * Southern Europe – Simply lists the several definitions (Geographical, UN, climatical, phytogeographical, linguistic).
 * Eastern Europe – Explains that the term is extremely volatile, then lists various definitions (UN, CIA World Factbook, geographical, political/cultural), in most cases without saying in detail which countries they cover.
 * Central Europe – The article lists states that are normally included (Austria, Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Liechtenstein, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Switzerland) and states that are sometimes included in part. It also lists the UN definition (as before + Croatia, Luxembourg, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania).
 * Mitteleuropa – Apparently a content fork under the German name.
 * Northwest Europe – Gives a geographic and a linguistic definition. Also a Canadian/British definition from military history.
 * Southwest Europe – Redirects to Iberian Peninsula.
 * Northeast Europe – Redlink. (And I am not asking for this to change, at least not without discussion!)
 * Southeast Europe – Initially defines it as a recent term for the Balkans, but proceeds to give several different definitions.
 * Central and Eastern Europe – Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Kosovo, Albania, Montenegro, Macedonia, Bulgaria. Political term for ex-communist countries that are not CIS members.
 * East-Central Europe – Essentially the same thing.

Given the problems with the latter block of articles, I wonder if we can't simply merge them all (or almost all) into Regions of Europe. Any other ideas what to do with this mess? Hans Adler 23:47, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

Europe 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 Europe 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 23:00, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Featured portal review/Portugal
I've listed Portal:Portugal for demotion from featured status as it has not been updated properly for many years. If you'd like to join in the discussion or improve the portal to meet the Featured portal criteria, please do so. BencherliteTalk 17:40, 29 September 2010 (UTC)