Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Java/Things you can do/to do

Java Cafe: THE place to contribute ideas about what to do next... (If you are not a member of the project or want to make general comments about it, please go here instead.)

= Questions =

1
Where should we tag and/or  /  : on some or all Java categories, on some or all Java articles?
 * I'll risk an answer to my own question: the Portal template is used on 2,200,000 pages so it should be safe to put its Java incarnation in all Java-related articles, under the See also section. As for the navbox mechanism, it seems to be used extensively by some projects and not at all by others. I think the Java (Sun) navbox is a worthwhile addition to any Java-related article (more than the over-specialized JVM one), right before the Category tags. But I don't think putting any of these 3 templates in remaining categories is worthwile. The cumbersome job of putting the 2 tags, Portal and Java (Sun), in all Java-related articles should be done in combination with the tagging of unaccessed Java-related articles with Compu-stub. Anyone with another opinion?... --   Alain R 3 4 5   Techno-Wiki-Geek    02:00, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
 * In abstentia, I moved the resulting action here (AR)
 * Couldn't we make a bot to add the remaining tags to any article that has 1 tag already? I assume that if it has one tag then the others belong there too? (PC)

2
Is there a better way to screen for untagged Java material than the searches suggested under List: in Things you can do?
 * Again I'll do some loud thinking here about this second question of mine. Since I could not figure out a less convoluted way of finding existing Wikipedia content currently untagged for Java, I'll keep it at that. The first search I'm referring to gives 935 articles, the second search is 3515 long; so I guess we will stay with the first one for the time being. What I suggest is to cover all of that material by placing those 935 links in a list (on the to_do subpage) with 3 types: 'Good candidates', 'Bad candidates' and 'Unclear'. An example of a 'Good' article for inclusion in Java categories would be Jess_programming_language, a 'Bad candidate' would be Computer and an 'Unclear' is Cross-platform. After that process, we settle the 'Unclear' and then we tag all the 'Good candidates' with Java categories. What do YOU think? --   Alain R 3 4 5   Techno-Wiki-Geek    02:27, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
 * In abstentia, I moved the resulting action here (AR)

3
What kind of Infoboxes (if any) like should we put in articles?
 * Since there is not a whole lot of folks doing stuff here presently, I'll answer this one of mine gladly for you Javawees: having done researching on this subject, I don't think there are any other infobox in existence adequate for Java-related material (except maybe in rare cases). The Infobox software should therefore be added BUT only to those articles that talk about well... a piece of software. That could be done at the same time that we do the BIGTO ('BIG tagging operation'), see 1 and 2 above. --   Alain R 3 4 5   Techno-Wiki-Geek    02:51, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
 * In abstentia, I moved the resulting action here. (AR)

4
What are the merits of using to get visibility on the main Wikipedia page? (not so urgent...)

5
We need to discuss WPBanner hooks with the Computing project in order to get specific Quality-rating statistics for Java articles:
 * What do you think about that compromise?
 * a) We ask them to add this in their Template:WikiProject Computing: (already done by Tothwolf)
 * |tf 9=
 * |TF_9_LINK           = Wikipedia:WikiProject Java
 * |TF_9_NAME           = WikiProject Java
 * |TF_9_NESTED         = Java
 * |TF_9_IMAGE          = Crystal_java.png
 * |TF_9_QUALITY        = yes
 * |TF_9_IMPORTANCE     =  (not sure this line is good...)
 * |TF_9_ASSESSMENT_CAT = Java articles
 * b) Then we can put this kind of tags in Java-related talk pages and get both our own Importance rating and their Quality rating in the stats matrix:
 * c) To that end, I did the first simulated test on Talk:J2EE application, you can see the stats matrix  here , it's great!
 * d) Furthermore, after that we could put the Compu-stub tag in all Java-related article pages NOT already quality-rated and ask TinucherianBot to auto-assess on the talk pages; that would give us a base Quality rating to start with. --   Alain R 3 4 5   Techno-Wiki-Geek    02:00, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
 * c) To that end, I did the first simulated test on Talk:J2EE application, you can see the stats matrix  here , it's great!
 * d) Furthermore, after that we could put the Compu-stub tag in all Java-related article pages NOT already quality-rated and ask TinucherianBot to auto-assess on the talk pages; that would give us a base Quality rating to start with. --   Alain R 3 4 5   Techno-Wiki-Geek    02:00, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Comment about 5) For me, in creating the Java WikiProject, there was to be a balance between 'bringing focus to the bettering of Java-related content on Wikipedia' AND 'the overhead of maintaining such a project'. The balance I found, apart from bringing up the Java Portal from scratch, was that 1) we would be a descendent project of WikiProject Computing (not a task force) 2) we would have our own 'banner' linking to the Java Project and the Java Portal and 3) we would stick to the WP1.0 stats management (the Quality-by-Importance matrix). Nothing original so far. Then, comes the decision of having, or not having, a specific Importance rating and/or a specific Quality rating (for Java-related articles) by the Java project. I therefore examined several other projects related or not to computing, and saw that they run the whole gamut in between having no specific ratings (for example, the Quebec project VS the Canada project) to having all specific ratings (for example, the Linux project VS the Computing project). I did think having Importance ratings was practical because that's a management issue for prioritizing articles and their rewriting. There remains the infamous Quality ratings. As I understand it, Quality rating is an editorial issue of Wikipedia, and in fact I never saw (so far) 2 projects giving a different Class. When they do, these differences get reconciled through inter-project discussions. By having NO specific 'class' parameter, the Java WikiProject can somewhat shortcut the 'paperwork' as was explained to me by my adopter SriMesh. Also, we would not need to invoke a bot from time to time to assess the articles from other project banners. And we do not have to constantly check if the other Computing projects attempt to change the rating over our head. So the problem becomes more simple: how to generate the relevant 'Java articles by quality' category in an article's talk page from the project banner. One way I foresaw is explained above. It means putting both the Computing banner and the Java banner, both keeping their own independant meaning and responsibilities. If you take a look at Talk:J2EE_application that's what I would want, the Quality rating for Java taken from Computing (I'm not engaging the whole team in saying so though). The only problem is the java-importance parameter on the Computing banner which is necessary there (if not there, the templates will generate an extra Unknown-importance Java articles category) but is redundant in that case; I don't know how to fix that in the Computing project template (putting the java-importance as an option) but I'm sure someone does... If somebody has a better method, that's great, but please explain it here before doing any work, so that the team can choose which way to go... --   Alain R 3 4 5   Techno-Wiki-Geek    21:56, 9 December 2009 (UTC)


 * I know what you are trying to do and WPBannerMeta and the WP1.0 stats bot doesn't work like that. WikiProject Computing's TF code for java will eventually go away and can't be depended on either (I just added it for transitional purposes since I saw many articles trying to use java with WikiProject Computing. --Tothwolf (talk) 21:36, 9 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I've put in the bot request to get everything auto-assessed using the existing banners and stub templates. Once that is done we can weed out and re-tag articles that aren't within the project's scope (I noticed a few related to DVD manufacturers for example). After  is fully populated, User:WP 1.0 bot will re-generate Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Java articles by quality statistics. --Tothwolf (talk) 22:06, 9 December 2009 (UTC)


 * The thing about project independance is certainly a relevant argument. But I'm not sure you are talking about TF hooks in terms of your own taste or of a WP1.0 policy change... Could you flesh out your idea please. (Note: Auto-assessing before putting the Compu-stub tag in untagged articles only means we'll have to request the bot a second time, but if you like it, why not!) --   Alain R 3 4 5   Techno-Wiki-Geek    22:29, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

As for WikiProject Java, there are already stub templates on many articles. We will likely have to request several bot runs for the initial stuff anyway and that is pretty normal. In my experience assessing articles doesn't add too much overhead and it won't require AWB or anything fancy. Keeping banner templates standardised and using normal options means people who assess for one project will usually assess for the other projects that have banners present since class will be the same for all banners and is usually the only option that needs to change once the assessment templates are established. Unlike the importance scale, which varies between individual projects, there is a standard scale for assessing articles for class. See Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Assessment, Template:Grading scheme, and Template:Importance scheme for more information on the scales. --Tothwolf (talk) 22:53, 9 December 2009 (UTC)
 * If we are talking about the TF stuff in WikiProject Computing, it has become unmaintainable and people are not even bothering to use the parameters for WikiProject Computing much of the time now. All of the WikiProjects that have TF options already have their own banners and most have been slowing switching back to them. In the not too distant future I'll look into getting a bot to finish the job and clean up the bulk of what is left. It will be trivial to have a bot add WikiProject Computing to articles that already have other banners as well.


 * OK, I think you've shown a good case for that (having our own Quality rating). I modified the Template doc and Assessment subpages accordingly. We only wish you'd justified these actions BEFORE doing them, as they influence a lot of things. Remember it's a team effort... --   Alain R 3 4 5   Techno-Wiki-Geek    00:44, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Feel free to copy from this assessment page if you'd like. I created that one ages ago. Don't forget about WP:BOLD ;) We should be seeing the bot begin to process WP:JAVA articles soon. It was processing WP:OXFORD stuff today and JAVA is next in the queue. --Tothwolf (talk) 00:55, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

6
Not sure where to ask about this, but if you look at how I've changed MIDlet you'll see I got rid of the huge chunk of Java code. I think, for instance Xlet ought to get the same treatment, we shouldn't just have code in an article, that belongs in a book or howto. At the moment I'm getting on with the cleanup of articles that require citations and references, but it's slow going. Also, s there a general discussion page for this project?  — M3TA  (  info  ) @  07:06, 3 March 2010 (UTC) (copied from User_talk:M3tainfo)
 * As far as code is concerned, I agree with you... up to a point. Looking at that Xlet article, I think the interface list would be 'bookish' (I'm not EN so pardon any crazy neologisms I could come up with...), while the example would be the one to keep. Is that your feeling? More generally speaking, you'll observe that there are Java articles with FAR more code than that and I think the difficulty in that eventual 'cleanup' would be to keep the worthwhile efforts of over-enthusiastic Wikipedians somewhere. Accessorily, there IS a Java Wikibook (however imperfect it is), the link of which is now at the end of the Java Portal. -- AlainR345  Techno-Wiki-Geek  19:10, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

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