Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Lakes/Archive 3

Hydrography resources for BC and Canada
I happened to find a few things linked through the main BC Names/GeoBC page last night, where sizes of water basins, lengths of streams, elevation data for lakes and streams, flow rates etc can all be found/cited; I haven't explored these fully, just dropping the links for others to have as a resource when working on lake/river articles:
 * Freshwater Atlas main page
 * Using the Freshwater Atlas (FWA) Data
 * Accessing Freshwater Atlas (FWA) Data
 * Geospatial Reference - useful for more than hydrography
 * Parcel Fabric & Registry Services this contains links to the Online Cadastre I used to cite Land Districts of British Columbia and materials linked through here will provide shape files for those charting rivers, municipal, IR and park boundaries and more.
 * National Hydro Network. This is for Canada as a whole.Skookum1 (talk) 03:58, 12 October 2014 (UTC)

Expert attention
This is a notice about Category:Lakes articles needing expert attention, which might be of interest to your WikiProject. It will take a while before the category is populated. Iceblock (talk) 23:29, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

Categorization of watershed drainage basins
Comments are requested in this discussion of appropriate categories for hydrographic features. Thewellman (talk) 17:27, 2 November 2014 (UTC)

Dota 2
Hello. Does anyone here play Dota 2? The article currently states: "Located in a tarn on the northeast side of the river is a "boss" called "Roshan"." From reading the tarn article, I don't think that it actually is a tarn in the game. Could I have some advice from your WikiProject please? Axl ¤  [Talk]  10:35, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

Proposal Outline
This is what I want to add to this page. I am asking for feedback

Lake McConaughy Lead (quick Summary) Location what is it: res purpose recreation irrigation electricity tourism Big Mac History Recreation/tourism bays attractions events — Preceding unsigned comment added by Alexis Wiezorek (talk • contribs) 20:50, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

Proposal Outline
This is what I want to add to this page. I am asking for feedback

Lake McConaughy Lead (quick Summary) Location what is it: res purpose recreation irrigation electricity tourism Big Mac History Recreation/tourism bays attractions events — Preceding unsigned comment added by Alexis Wiezorek (talk • contribs) 20:57, 5 December 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) 16:57, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Proposal to add age of lake parameter to Template:Infobox body of water
Hi, could someone take a look at this request to add a parameter to Infobox body of water? Would this be a good idea? Alakzi (talk) 18:38, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

Merging name+state lake list into state lake list
There are long list articles, like List of lakes of Alaska or List of lakes in Oregon, some of which have coordinate entries for each lake. There are other, shorter, WP:SIA set index articles, like Summit Lake (Alaska) or List of lakes named Summit Lake in British Columbia. Having these more narrow SIAs makes maintenance of the data more difficult, and also may be too narrow of a topic for a list article.

, other editors, and I were discussing at Talk:Summit Lake (Alaska), and it seems that the best solution is to merge the more specific list articles into the state/province list articles, adding coordinates to the list articles. This would make the state/province list of lakes more useful, but perhaps too large.

We're contemplating doing the merge for the specific case of Summit Lake, and the state/provinces of British Columbia, Alaska, and Oregon. But, this could be precedent-setting for other lake list articles. You're welcome to join the discussion at Talk:Summit Lake (Alaska). —hike395 (talk) 20:24, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

Category:Scottish lochs with reported cryptids has been nominated for discussion
Category:Scottish lochs with reported cryptids, which is within the scope of this WikiProject, has been nominated for deletion. A discussion is taking place to see if it abides with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. RevelationDirect (talk) 00:20, 24 April 2016 (UTC)

Notability
Are real lakes intrinsically notable?--Mr. Guye (talk) 22:07, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
 * See WP:GEOLAND, the relevant bit would be;
 * Named natural features are often notable, provided information beyond statistics and coordinates is known to exist. This includes mountains, lakes, streams, islands, etc. The number of known sources should be considered to ensure there is enough verifiable content for an encyclopedic article...Jokulhlaup (talk) 09:43, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

Bierstadt Lake
How wonderful to find the very specific lakes WikiProject!

I created this article, but I haven't been able to find information about the lake's width, depth, and area. Is there something for water body information, like the GNIS geonames site? Or, how I might format a google search query to get this? ("Bierstadt Lake" area OR depth OR length returns of a lot of info, but not what I'm looking for).

Thanks!-- CaroleHenson (talk) 00:03, 29 October 2016 (UTC)

Notice to participants at this page about adminship
Many participants here create a lot of content, may 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) 01:07, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

Wikidata Lakes
Just writing here to let people know that I have created a Wikidata Project for lakes Please join! (Jst4 (talk) 18:30, 16 April 2017 (UTC)).

Disambiguation links on pages tagged by this wikiproject
Wikipedia has many thousands of wikilinks which point to disambiguation pages. It would be useful to readers if these links directed them to the specific pages of interest, rather than making them search through a list. Members of WikiProject Disambiguation have been working on this and the total number is now below 20,000 for the first time. Some of these links require specialist knowledge of the topics concerned and therefore it would be great if you could help in your area of expertise.

A list of the relevant links on pages which fall within the remit of this wikiproject can be found at http://69.142.160.183/~dispenser/cgi-bin/topic_points.py?banner=WikiProject_Lakes

Please take a few minutes to help make these more useful to our readers.&mdash; Rod talk 16:40, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

former nayon kalikasan where is it located at caliraya lake
can anyone enlite us where exactly former nayon kalikasan is located at caliraya blake. tnx. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 112.205.192.98 (talk) 10:03, 8 May 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  10:58, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

Water resource regions category tree discussion
There's a discussion at WP:RIVERS talk about creating a category tree for North American bodies of water based on the USGS hydrological unit codes / Water resource regions that may be of interest to participants in this wikiproject. Please feel free to weigh in. -Furicorn (talk) 22:40, 1 October 2018 (UTC)

Lake Mercer (Antarctica)
Hello. I just created an article on Mercer Lake (Antarctica), which is the first subglacial Antarctic lake penetrated with clean hot-drill pressure water. For its coordinates and length, I used the data currently shown at List of Antarctic subglacial lakes. Other parameters I found in papers and news reports. Please review that I am using the correct Categories and use of its Infobox, as I am not familiar with this project. Thank you. Rowan Forest (talk) 21:58, 1 January 2019 (UTC)

WP 1.0 Bot Beta
Hello! Your WikiProject has been selected to participate in the WP 1.0 Bot rewrite beta. This means that, starting in the next few days or weeks, your assessment tables will be updated using code in the new bot, codenamed Lucky. You can read more about this change on the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial team page. Thanks! audiodude (talk) 06:49, 27 February 2019 (UTC)

A new newsletter directory is out!
A new Newsletter directory has been created to replace the old, out-of-date one. If your WikiProject and its taskforces have newsletters (even inactive ones), or if you know of a missing newsletter (including from sister projects like WikiSpecies), please include it in the directory! The template can be a bit tricky, so if you need help, just post the newsletter on the template's talk page and someone will add it for you.
 * – Sent on behalf of Headbomb. 03:11, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

AFDs (plural) of interest
Please consider commenting at ongoing Articles for deletion/List of lakes named McArthur. It is my personal opinion, by the way, that we do not need/want lists of completely unrelated lakes merely sharing the same name, even if the separate eponyms are unrelated persons, or unknown. --Doncram (talk) 00:28, 3 September 2019 (UTC)


 * There is also:
 * Articles for deletion/Jumbo Lake (new, opened 7 September)
 * Articles for deletion/Lac Terant (opened 30 August)
 * --Doncram (talk) 20:31, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

Request for information on WP1.0 web tool
Hello and greetings from the maintainers of the WP 1.0 Bot! As you may or may not know, we are currently involved in an overhaul of the bot, in order to make it more modern and maintainable. As part of this process, we will be rewriting the web tool that is part of the project. You might have noticed this tool if you click through the links on the project assessment summary tables.

We'd like to collect information on how the current tool is used by....you! How do you yourself and the other maintainers of your project use the web tool? Which of its features do you need? How frequently do you use these features? And what features is the tool missing that would be useful to you? We have collected all of these questions at this Google form where you can leave your response. Walkerma (talk) 04:24, 27 October 2019 (UTC)

Category:Annular lakes has been nominated for discussion
Category:Annular lakes, which you created, has been nominated for possible deletion, merging, or renaming. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. Ikluft (talk) 07:41, 20 November 2019 (UTC)
 * ✅ See the results below under Crater lakes. Ikluft (talk) 01:27, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

Category:Crater lakes has been nominated for discussion
Category:Crater lakes, which you created, has been nominated for possible deletion, merging, or renaming. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. Ikluft (talk) 07:41, 20 November 2019 (UTC)
 * ✅ The CfRs passed. I updated the "Categorization of craters" essay to reflect those results, and added a table of crater-related CfD/CfR/CfM discussions. The essay is still pending approval to move from my userspace to a subpage of WikiProject Geology. Please comment in the essay's review discussion to give your feedback and/or help approve that move. (WikiProject essays should be approved by discussion, not unilateral action. But that means there needs to be enough response to qualify as a discussion.) Ikluft (talk) 01:27, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

The Limnology and Oceanography Barnstar


I've made the Template:The Limnology and Oceanography Barnstar. Awarded to users who've shown great editing skills in improving Limnology and Oceanography related-articles. Jerm (talk) 20:33, 8 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Nice job, ! SMirC-smile.svg Atsme Talk 📧 13:02, 11 January 2020 (UTC)

Lakes in Washington, DC Area
There's currently a discussion at Talk:List_of_lakes_in_the_Washington_metropolitan_area which would use a few more voices. We're trying to set inclusion criteria and decide how to define the "Washington, DC Area". –dlthewave ☎ 05:23, 12 January 2020 (UTC)

The Great Britain/Ireland Destubathon
Hi. The The Great Britain/Ireland Destubathon is planned for March 2020, a contest/editathon to eliminate as many stubs as possible from all 134 counties. Amazon vouchers/book prizes are planned for most articles destubbed from England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland and Northern Ireland and whoever destubs articles from the most counties out of the 134. Sign up on page if interested in participating, hope this will prove to be good fun and productive, we have over 44,000 stubs!♦ Dr. Blofeld  18:32, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

Please have a look at this article
Recursive islands and lakes is a reddit trivia thing. I cleaned it up but don't think it's notable and I don't have more time to spend searching for whether "recursive" is a term used anywhere except on reddit. Thanks.--The Eloquent Peasant (talk) 10:40, 12 March 2020 (UTC)

Adding infoboxes to lakes
Hey Lakes Project, I'm new to editing and added an infobox to a page. So once that is done...do I remove it from the list of lakes needing infoboxes? Does it get reviewed and someone else does that? I would "lake" to know how that works. Cheers Uninspired Username (talk) 05:16, 9 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Hello and welcome! Thank you for your contribution. Once there is an infobox on the page go to the talk page and switch the parameter of Wikproject Lakes "needs-infobox" from yes to no to remove it from the Category Lakes articles needing infoboxes. No review is needed when adding the infobox, changing the parameter will automatically remove the lake from the backlog of needs infobox. You can see some examples in my recent history. We're happy to have your help with this backlog. Wolfgang8741 says: If not you, then who? (talk) 10:19, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

Feedback on Index Pages script and approach to consistency
Before creating a number of index pages I'd like to have some feedback on the Long Lake (Michigan) edit revision. I'm looking ot create a consistent experience for index pages. This means looking at which columns should be present and how to maintain the information. I've written a script that lets me generate the list in the linked revision above for Long Lake (Michigan). Before I use it on other Index pages, I would like some feedback from others with interest in set index pages for comprehensive lists to help navigation and disambiguation. Potentially these may be work lists as well. For now the scope is limited to does this index page provide readers with information they want or would need. While I would like to base these on Wikidata to take advantage of automatic linking, updates, and references, but I'm not sure what the current consensus is on building lists from WikiData and second the stated of the data quality on lakes needs some work to make these lists feasible. For now I have a python script that is limited to parsing the USGS GNIS queries which would limit the current tables to US lakes. The following are a few comments that can use some feedback. My current focus will limit this script's index activity to creating them for Michigan lakes as to test the script and build out a model of what this could look like for other states and regions. (more to come on that later, now just tell me if the script could be improved for editors or readers. Cheers Wolfgang8741 says: If not you, then who? (talk) 23:18, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
 * 1) Are the columns "Name", "County", "State", "Coord", "Elevation", "GNIS ID", and "Notes" sufficient as this is what GNIS provides? If not, which are needed or should be removed? I've included state as some lakes cross boarders to other states. Ideally both states and counties would be listed.
 * 2) How many lakes of the same name should be in a US state before an index page should be created? To give a starting point -> 10 lakes?
 * 3) Would making index pages from WikiData be something that the community would find acceptable if the references were as specific as that on Long Lake (Michigan) i.e. per cell in the table?
 * 4) Is the namespace Long Lake (Michigan)

Question about article structure and section order
I'm working on Independence Lake (California), my first lake article of hopefully many to come. What order do you folk recommend for the sections of the article? I'll be further fleshing out all current sections, as well as adding another section: either "Conservation" or "Recreation" (or maybe both, if needed). CJK09 (talk) 18:08, 13 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Hi. The main WP page suggests an article structure and from a skim, your article is coming together very well. Wolfgang8741 says: If not you, then who? (talk) 23:02, 5 June 2020 (UTC)

Reservoirs as Task Force with the Dams project?
Documentation and consistency could be improved to clarify how to complete listing and articles on reservoirs and dams. A Reservoir Task Force might be a good way to look across WP Lakes and Dams interests at this intersection and help clarify documentation on how to handle this intersection. While the Body of Water Infobox states to

There was previous mention in the Lakes talk page archive to create WikiProject Reservoir as a descendent, but didn't seem to manifest. There is a current mention on Wikiproject Dams that reservoirs are an overlapping interest with Wikiproject Lakes as well as former discussions.

So if there is interest we can create a subpage of WikiProject lakes for the task force to setup tracking, guidelines and other unified documentation on what lists, article structures might work or just compile examples of what is currently done to help look at consistency across the articles of reservoirs and dams. Also remaining in the Lakes need infobox are a number of reservoirs that need reading to identify which infobox to apply or maybe an evolution of the Dams infobox to incorporate a few more body of water fields, but the question now is there sufficient interest to focus on reservoirs.Wolfgang8741 says: If not you, then who? (talk) 21:40, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

Worklist update needed to convert CatScan to new queries
Another task in the project update is to find any CatScan references which the tool changed to PetScan thus anything based on this no longer works and needs to be replaced. For example Worklists - Category talk:Lakes of Brazil possible the query can be reproduced with a PetScan or Wikidata query. [|PetScan] and Template:PetScan or |Query Wikidata or other tool I'm not aware of and would be great to identify. Mix'n'match does provide this for data imports as highlighted in the worklist for the US lakes and GNIS. Wolfgang8741 says: If not you, then who? (talk) 06:26, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

Page with multiple lakes
Hey WikiProject Lakes,

Is there a protocol for adding infoboxes to pages containing multiple lakes?

For example, on this page, the table formatting looks nice for showing the details.. Would the infobox contain the overall info and coordinates of general area? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Rila_Lakes

If so, in the case of this page for example (Lake Akdoğan) then I can add a list with the info for each lake.

Cheers,Uninspired Username (talk) 03:01, 22 May 2020 (UTC)
 * I haven't noticed a set practice for lakes in a list or group of lakes. If an infobox were to be added per lake the coords in the infobox should be within the boundary of the lake, just use the display= inline. The page itself might have a coordinate that is the center of the group of lakes. If there is a group name for the lakes then the group name should be included in the group parameter of the infobox. For now I have been skipping these in the backlog as I think these could use some discussion on how to approach. That said if a page has a section for a lake or multiple lakes with a section each then I definitely vote add an infobox for each of them. That is my perspective, but I'd like the perspective of others in the Lakes project.Wolfgang8741 says: If not you, then who? (talk) 22:41, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
 * So if a page contains multiple lakes, then have an infobox for each lake? My preference would be one infobox for the group for page clarity, provided the group is the more commonly used geographic reference, and if the lakes are notable enough they can have their own pages. If not, then the table (e.g. in the article the Seven Rila Lakes) is a great overview and the infobox could contain the statistics for the group as a whole - e.g. mean depth is overall mean, max depth is deepest point in group, area is either mean area or total area, etc. Definitely need some guidelines set out for these though as there are quite a few! Cheers, Uninspired Username (talk) 17:05, 10 June 2020 (UTC)
 * I understand the point on why one infobox would be desired, but this greatly reduces the resolution of the data and established norms. A group of lakes would each body of water get an infobox and be related using the group parameter Group of lakes that this body of water belongs to (e.g., Lake Erie is part of the Great Lakes). Each infobox provides machine readable output that having the fine resolution is helpful to know what is actually referred to in the page. Now in some instances yes there is just a name for a group of lakes such as seen in Kalamazoo County List of Lake Demo. One example of this for a chain of lakes Belgrade Lakes yet we also see the single infobox Twin Lakes (Bridgeport, California) I think this is something that consensus is needed or at very least consistency of implementation.Wolfgang8741 says: If not you, then who? (talk) 16:22, 12 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Okay, I see what you mean. If individual lakes don't all have their own infoboxes, they are not standardized and organized in the common format of the rest and will be missed in further automated processing. So far in summary:
 * Articles pertaining to groups of lakes (for example Seven Rila Lakes or Finger Lakes) can (or must?) have an infobox describing the group using the group parameter and the coordinates in the center of the group
 * If individual lakes in the group have their own articles, link accordingly - if they do not, each lake requires its own infobox (for example Belgrade Lakes)
 * Make sure the article is in the Category:Lake groups

How about this progression bar?
I saw this swanky bar on the WikiProject Dams page. What do you think about adding it, or something similar, to the WikiProject Lakes page? This is what it looks like with the Lakes project data. Sorry if I'm not crediting them properly, still new to Wikipedia. Cheers, Uninspired Username (talk) 05:31, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

Infoboxes

 * Support I was looking at the progression bars last week! Thanks for bringing this up, I think there is a lot of good ideas we can incorporate from other WikiProjects to update the main page and utilities. This is a good start. We should compile a list of features that could be useful too. Looking at WikiProject_Maine we could add their opt-in member messaging section to be able to message the project to coordinate edit-athons and we might consider an inactive member section for accounts who haven't made a change to Wikipedia in over a year or some other time period to have a better idea of size of active participation, this could be maintained by a bot. Wolfgang8741 says: If not you, then who? (talk) 16:40, 10 June 2020 (UTC)
 * No problem, thanks for the feedback. If I find any other features that are useful I'll post in here so we all can discuss. The WikiProject Dams page is a great spot for ideas. I definitely Support your idea of having lists of Active and Previous/Inactive users... good to know who is actively participating, especially when discussion and consensus is useful for making changes like the ones we are bringing up here. Until we know who is actively participating I think the messaging and edit-athons might be a bit too ambitious... but I am in favour of getting more activity going on here. :) For now, what do you think - wait for more comments before adding the progression bar to the project page? We could also add to it a status bar for assessed/unassessed or how many still need infoboxes. Uninspired Username (talk) 17:06, 10 June 2020 (UTC)
 * I'd say give the progress bar a couple days for comment to see if there is any disagreement since it was added here to discuss, then if no disagreement be bold and add it to the main page. With regards to mass messaging I'm thinking only adding instructions how to join the notice list and provide it as an opt-in template. All existing members would not be added, but they can add themselves if they see it on a return. Coordinating this update with the member sort would be a quick update task. Some might call taking care of the backlog too ambitious, but we have tackled over 1500 so far. I'm not sure if the assessed/unassessed needs it or the infobox. If we apply it to the infobox it would makes sense under the section in open tasks as well as Category:Articles using infobox body of water without image to provide visibility to the progress of that task.Wolfgang8741 says: If not you, then who? (talk) 18:38, 10 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Ah, that's a great idea, potentially adding a progress bar to a relevant section. This all sounds good to me, and we have made great progress on the lakes needing infoboxes. Another minor detail is that I would love to update the list of Most Popular lakes articles. We'll see if anyone else chimes in in the next few days. Cheers! Uninspired Username (talk) 19:13, 10 June 2020 (UTC)
 * I updated the progress bars one more time to get feedback, and added two showing assigned article importance and infobox progression. Thoughts? Cheers! Uninspired Username (talk) 18:33, 11 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Haha, I was about to post that I had a change of heart and your revision appeared. The backlog progress bar is a great idea and the new design are even better. I especially like the article importance bar. Have you seen the backlog templates? I set some below. They could focus an effort on a particular backlog until it is under control or with the initial and goal exposed provide a way to baseline progress. Updating the initial yearly, monthly or whatever period it would provide a reference point for progress on how the project is maintaining the backlog. I added one to the infobox category page with a rough original baseline value.
 * Wolfgang8741 says: If not you, then who? (talk) 20:35, 11 June 2020 (UTC)
 * That's awesome, these are really useful. I'll add the others to the project page and then if necessary they can be moved around. I think the importance bar is quite useful as so many haven't been assigned an importance level yet. Potentially another backlog progress bar that would be useful is for which pages don't have maps yet as this is a main requirement for the infoboxes. Cheers! Uninspired Username (talk) 02:44, 12 June 2020 (UTC)
 * I agree about a backlog for maps, but what I think is missing for that is a category to follow. I requested two categories on the body of water infobox talk page for pushpinmap and bathymetry_image. Along those lines a couple years back I rated most of the unrated classes, but didn't touch importance as I thought it would be good to evaluate what criteria are used for importance since some are subjective such as "well known". Apparently what I considered a stub vs start was not interpreted the same as one other Wikimedian thus I stopped classifying when they complained. Maybe the discussion on the backlog and improving the assessment is better expanded upon in a different thread though. Your assessments are looking good to me so far.Wolfgang8741 says: If not you, then who? (talk) 16:06, 12 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Okay, that is helpful to know. (I started a thread on the assessment talk page.) Given that most pages are going to be 'low' importance...I'll keep doing what I am doing. And if someone disputes importance they are welcome to discuss...and that gets more activity going which I think is a good thing. :) I'm going to take some time and learn if it's possible to increase automation for some of the classifying, adding to talk page, etc... it would be nice at the very least to reduce the repetition of adding something like "|needs-infobox=no". (You may have some hints on that.) Uninspired Username (talk) 17:57, 12 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Well for the importance it is hard to get right without context so keep it up. For classifying articles check your assessment against a script you add to your username/common.js that integrates with ORES an AI guessing what articles should be rated (but it is not perfect). There also is the [|autoFormatter] script which you should pair with the diff as stated in the installation section. There are other tools out there that might help, but I haven't used many of them. Still learning about what is available myself. I noticed that many tools actually remove fields that state =no or are empty by default which is counter to running checks on fields having a response value. I do most of mine manually, but know there are tools to help with this like I think AutoWikiBrowser and a few others probably.  Wolfgang8741 says: If not you, then who? (talk) 18:54, 17 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Okay, that is helpful to know. (I started a thread on the assessment talk page.) Given that most pages are going to be 'low' importance...I'll keep doing what I am doing. And if someone disputes importance they are welcome to discuss...and that gets more activity going which I think is a good thing. :) I'm going to take some time and learn if it's possible to increase automation for some of the classifying, adding to talk page, etc... it would be nice at the very least to reduce the repetition of adding something like "|needs-infobox=no". (You may have some hints on that.) Uninspired Username (talk) 17:57, 12 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Well for the importance it is hard to get right without context so keep it up. For classifying articles check your assessment against a script you add to your username/common.js that integrates with ORES an AI guessing what articles should be rated (but it is not perfect). There also is the [|autoFormatter] script which you should pair with the diff as stated in the installation section. There are other tools out there that might help, but I haven't used many of them. Still learning about what is available myself. I noticed that many tools actually remove fields that state =no or are empty by default which is counter to running checks on fields having a response value. I do most of mine manually, but know there are tools to help with this like I think AutoWikiBrowser and a few others probably.  Wolfgang8741 says: If not you, then who? (talk) 18:54, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

Updating top lakes
Hi folks, I'm not sure what the preferred method for updating the list of the most popular lakes pages is, here is the top 30 for the year of 2019 by Pageviews using the massviews analysis web tool:

Cheers, Uninspired Username (talk) 19:04, 11 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Given that the list is more just a temporal view of what is popular, overwriting the previous list and date retrieved seems reasonable. The page history can be viewed and/or the list recreated via a query. This is a good candidate for regular automatic updates. Weekly, Monthly or something. It would also be helpful to state the period of measure ie most popular pages of 2020 year to date or most popular pages in the past 30 days, last updated [timestamp]. If this is a ranked list based on pageviews then I'd present it as an ordered list with numerical rank.Wolfgang8741 says: If not you, then who? (talk) 21:00, 11 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Ok, thanks! It would be cool to automate this but there are some pages that are included (e.g. category pages, generic lake terms) and need a bit of manual weeding out. That being said... those pages are still part of the lakes project so maybe it is fine to include them. I'm not sure how to automate this kind of thing but in the meantime can add this list (maybe keep to top 20) to the front page with pageview stats. Uninspired Username (talk) 21:06, 11 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Found the Popular pages tool as stated in "Project Page redesign ideas - WIP" section below and requested the project be added. We can see how that goes, its once a month I believe, but you can see it in action on projects that subscribe at /Popular_pages.Wolfgang8741 says: If not you, then who? (talk) 18:56, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

List Structure Section with Phases of
On the main page there is a Article Structure which helps to provide a guide on what content to produce for an article. The list section is geared to provide a similar guide to document the practice and provide a consistent experience across Wikipedia.

Phase 1: Document the current practices across the current lists to identify the common practices. Identify where there is unique content and list here to discuss if it is a good candidate to have on all lake lists.

Phase 2: Expand with examples of new information that would be good to have on lists articles and special lists like the Set Index Article lists.

Phase 3: Identify develop WikiData queries for these lists to clean up the associated articles. An example would be using Listeria to display the lists in a WikiProject WorkPage Queue to check the quality of the data. See example of a potential list of Lakes in Kalamazoo County, Michigan. Some clean-up is needed, but links to the associated articles are automatically maintained.

Phase 4: Identify a region to focus on clean-up to and demo the recommendation. Michigan is getting close to having all GNIS lakes imported to Wikidata and crosslinked to OpenStreetMap which means they also show up on the Wikimedia map and are searchable and tagable in commons and other Wikidata powered spaces. Wikidata Phase 3 is focused on automated Lists which this could help reduce orphans, and improve the list linking and completeness of data.

Lets focus on Phase 1 and 2 identifying what currently has been done for Lakes lists and what we want in lists for the current update on the main page to start this discussion. Wolfgang8741 says: If not you, then who? (talk) 07:54, 17 June 2020 (UTC)


 * Hey, I'll take a crack at responding to this. I updated this section on the Project page to help clarify (and reduce confusion for new page visitors), please update especially if I misunderstood the intention of some points. Phase 1: Maybe good to start by pulling examples of which lists seem best and get an idea of the 'ideal' list formatting?
 * As someone relatively new to wikipedia my main observation with lists so far is the lack of completeness, whereas a category page is automatically populated with the same info and always up-to-date provided articles are tagged properly. Uninspired Username (talk) 17:34, 17 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes, what you added was what I intended. I think it would be good to also provide an example for each type for a reference. Ideally ones formatted well. I was in a rush so didn't have time to flush out that minute.
 * So yes categories are great at automation, but lack any ability to add comments or other text and lists can be assisted with tools, but there is no automated check. If we can offload the tables to Wikidata we can focus on cells that require a human and the intro etc. The idea of this phased approach lets us create semi-automated lists which can easily be made more complete by importing and cleaning the data to Wikidata to compare what we have to official lists and generate tables with references etc. We can focus effort on writing and not maintaining a list that is generated from data and articles we've written. This could also be implemented in a way to allow Wikipedia editors to have control over the list tables and values, but apply automated checks on table update. For now just trying to figure out what lists we have and what we should create to help with content and navigation should be the goal. The improvements to lists with automation is a longer term goal that needs consensus on how or if it is adopted. I was trying out some scripted generated lists at Round Lake (Michigan)(one of my first tries) and Long Lake (Michigan)(Improved script, but needs accessibility improvement), but these required manual resolving of conflicts for now and are not based on Wikidata yet. These are based on GNIS and are complete for named lakes in these regions greatly improving previous partial lists. This is why I think we should talk column header consistency to have these present similar info across WikiPedia as a minimum. Wolfgang8741 says: If not you, then who? (talk) 19:15, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

Guidelines for former lakes
Hey, it would be good to add instructions for former lakes to the project page. Adding to Category:Former lakes to the article would be the main thing, and making sure the lake has an infobox specifying the lake type as Former lake? Plus having somewhere to add a date for the time period the lake existed in the infobox would be useful. Any thoughts on this? Cheers, Uninspired Username (talk) 05:05, 18 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes documenting how to handle these properly would be good. The body of water infobox mentions to tag the type in the infobox, but WikiProject Lakes should probably document this as well in a section. I'd say the Guidelines section seems appropriate. Wouldn't hurt to grab an example like Lake Arkona. The article body can document the dates until until a structured format is available. Though it makes sense that the discussion for this might be best on the Template:Infobox body of water talk page.Wolfgang8741 says: If not you, then who? (talk) 18:13, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

WikiPedia To-Do list for WikiProject Lakes article improvement coordination
Would it make sense to coordinate article improvements after an assessment in a To-do list. With a Lakes template on the article talk we can outline how to improve the article after an assessment and while in article development and post comments on what areas need help with finding information. WikiProject Trains uses this as seen on Talk:2-8-0. I created the template:. I've added this to the template section of the Project page. Wolfgang8741 says: If not you, then who? (talk) 09:22, 19 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Support.This is a great idea, particularly for high/top importance articles and those that the project wants to raise to GA class, etc. Cheers, Uninspired Username (talk) 17:40, 20 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Great, I've also pointed the Assessment requests to the Project's Talk ToDo list after clearing it, you can add it to your watch list to follow. Created the category Category:Lakes articles with to-do lists which shows that a page has a TODO. Wolfgang8741 says: If not you, then who? (talk) 18:20, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

New bot to remove completed infobox requests
Hello! I have recently created a bot to remove completed infobox requests and am sending this message to WikiProject Lakes since the project currently has a backlogged infobox request category. Details about the task can be found at Bots/Requests for approval/PearBOT 2, but in short it removes all infobox requests from articles with an infobox, once a week. To sign up, reply with and tell me if any special considerations are required for the Wikiproject. For example: if only a specific infobox should be detected, such as infobox journal for WikiProject Academic Journals; or if an irregularly named infobox such as starbox begin should be detected. Feel free to ask if you have any questions!

Sent on behalf of Trialpears (talk) via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:34, 12 December 2019 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the message, we've actually had quite a push to add the infoboxes in the backlog over 1500 added. Given this project has overlap with Wikiproject Dams on reservoir articles the Body of Water Infobox, Dams infobox and old Lakes infobox are the three that might be detected, but in some cases there are multiple body of water infoboxes that could be on a pages for instance multiple lakes may esit in an article about a river due to the lakes not yet meeting geographic notability, but the infoboxes being applied. Based on the recent add infobox push, the most obvious automation for needsinfobox removal that could be easily identified with low error would be those that may be found on a redirect page. The remaining cases of infobox detection might be assisted better by adding them to a maintenance category for WikiProject Lakes as something named like "Lake articles with needs infobox but an infobox is detected"... or something along those lines to aid in expedited manual review of the more nuanced articles. This category could be added to: or something like this. Wolfgang8741 says: If not you, then who? (talk) 17:07, 10 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Sorry for the wait, I've returned from a real low point in my Wikipedia activity in the last week. I'm quite not sure what you want the bot to do. Do you want the bot to remove infobox requests from all articles with an infobox, just if it has some specific infoboxes or a regularly updated list of pages with both an infobox request and an infobox so you or other project members can review whether the request is fulfilled or not. In case of the latter I've attached the current list below. I should be able to accomodate any of those alternatives, I just need to know which one I should do.

--Trialpears (talk) 20:01, 20 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Aberdeen Reservoirs
 * Blackbrook Reservoir
 * Brent Reservoir
 * Chingford Reservoirs
 * Dughla
 * Eyebrook Reservoir
 * Fairy Lochs
 * Fleet Pond
 * Gopi Talav
 * Gunners Pond
 * Hardley Flood
 * Kempton Park Reservoirs
 * Lake Oponona
 * Lake Wivenhoe
 * Ming Tombs Reservoir
 * Padre Bay
 * Ruedi Reservoir
 * Saddington Reservoir
 * Sawgrass Lake (Brevard County, Florida)
 * Sulejowski Reservoir
 * Tatipudi Reservoir
 * Testwood Lakes
 * Tring Reservoirs
 * Vaseux Lake
 * Veselovsky Reservoir
 * Waboose Lake
 * Weir Wood Reservoir
 * Weston Turville Reservoir
 * Windsborn Crater Lake
 * Thanks for the reply, I didn't mind the wait. I understand contribution time varies. The request is basically the latter suggestion of a regularly updated list that the project can verify if the infobox flag should be removed. The list you provided is great and useful as is. I'm assuming this is a list of any page with needs-infobox=yes and WP:Lakes and has any infobox. We appreciate the accommodation in the creation a list for a manual review. Do you want to point this to a dedicated page? What something like /lake_articles_infobox_flag_review or something else? Wolfgang8741 says: If not you, then who? (talk) 20:35, 20 June 2020 (UTC)
 * , it's pages in Category:Lakes_articles_needing_infoboxes with an infobox; it does not see if any other project requested an infobox. I'll set up a list page tomorrow that will update weekly. --Trialpears (talk) 21:28, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

Keep info in talk page banner
Hey, I have been noticing edits removing the 'needs-infobox=no' info from the WP Lakes talk page banner, presumably people think this is completed and the tag is no longer needed. Double double checking here that we do need that tag to remain, yes? If so we could add in the 'Guidelines' section on front page "Please do not remove previously filled tags, but feel free to update if they are out of date." Cheers, Uninspired Username (talk) 15:30, 26 June 2020 (UTC)
 * It is likly that its a result of a tool they're using defaulting to remove. I'm not sure where to escallate that, but it would be my preference if the parameter were left untouched if present even if empty. Might try asking at the Village Pump if someone else here doesn't have other insight.Wolfgang8741 says: If not you, then who? (talk) 17:40, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

Project Page redesign ideas - WIP
Thinking of adding the WikiProject Infobox template to the front page to replace the broken tracking box.


 * Trying to find out what other projects are using. Also think we should pull out frequently updated content to new pages and insert them as sections.
 * Top articles - Looking at WikiProject_Michigan/Popular_pages I found [|Community Tech Bot] which will populate WikiProject Lakes/Popular pages with an automatic list. Requested WP Lakes be added.
 * Infobox example ->

Keep the ideas coming.Wolfgang8741 says: If not you, then who? (talk) 20:19, 16 June 2020 (UTC)


 * Hey,, replacing (or removing/moving) the broken tracking box sounds good to me. Also support automatically populating the popular pages. What do you mean by "pull out frequently updated content to new pages and insert them as sections"?
 * For redesign ideas I keep coming back to the WikiProject:Dams page. It has good whitespace / emphasis with colours, and layout of important info with not too much verbosity. My perspective on redesigning is that it's important to make it easy for people to get the information they need at first glance and details when necessary. So that could be a combo of organizing the project page by importance (need to know info, summary graphics etc. at the top) and clear text - maybe details-heavy sections could be expandable. Uninspired Username (talk) 17:35, 17 June 2020 (UTC)


 * Regarding the "pull out frequently updated content" Wikipedia notation actually allow embedding other pages in a current page. For example to show the Assessment information within a page you would reference the page with curly brackets rather than square brackets and it embeds the content in the page. Try on the page preview without the nowiki tags. It splits page history to keep pages cleaner to just that content..
 * regarding the redesign there are other multi tabbed designs and other approaches though UX in a task based system is actually more tolerant to long pages since people are willing to scroll and often may use search or the table of contents at the top to jump to the section. I think we could collapse the article format, but keeping collapsing to minimum on infrequently used content. Else splitting the content to a new page may be a better option than hiding the content. I agree I think we're reaching a limit of scrolling tolerance, but I'm not a huge fan of collapsing except where content is rarely accessed.Wolfgang8741 says: If not you, then who? (talk) 19:34, 17 June 2020 (UTC)


 * Cool, the page embedding sounds useful.
 * I think it is best to focus energy on clearly organizing and reducing redundancy in the page, tabs really encourage bloat of info and reduce visibility of content so I support long format. Uninspired Username (talk) 17:56, 20 June 2020 (UTC)
 * I added to the todo points on splitting off longer advice to new advice pages.Wolfgang8741 says: If not you, then who? (talk) 17:44, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

Vital Articles and Recognized Content
I configured J-bot to create /Recognized_content which will show articles that currently are and previously reached FA, FL, GA, GL, and other levels of recognition and quality, but what might also be of interest to set priority of high would be articles that appear in the vital category. For example there are 101 currently listed at level 5 with a portion being level 4: Vital_articles/Level/5/Geography/Physical - this will be reported in the /Recognised_content too or configured to report just the vital articles elsewhere. Wolfgang8741 says: If not you, then who? (talk) 12:14, 26 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Now that JL-Bot has produced the Recognized content page there is a section we might want to discuss which are Vital Articles - FAQ. Given that these are articles that are ranked to be of critical importance to Wikipedia's base knowledge and could change lvl from 1-5. I propose that all be rated lvl 1-5 as Top importance to encourage their development to Feature Level articles or lists. Proposals to change the articles are possible, but we may want to automate what is ranked here to ease having to monitor the list as much. Does anyone object to this or have another preferred ranking per level. I would say at least lvl 5 should be mid importance, but for now propose all are Top. Wolfgang8741 says: If not you, then who? (talk) 14:58, 28 June 2020 (UTC)

proposed SIA and Redirect classifications for assessment
See WikiProject Lakes template talk page for reason and discussion.Wolfgang8741 says: If not you, then who? (talk) 17:42, 26 June 2020 (UTC)
 * ✅Wolfgang8741 says: If not you, then who? (talk) 17:19, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

WP Lakes backlog tracking and consistency dashboard
I started to compile a list of attributes which probably be consistent across articles. Starting first with the Infobox's most visible features it will expand into other metrics just to have an overview of what is and is not present across the articles. Lets brainstorm additional metrics that might be useful to track to understand the ways articles are similar, different, or levels of progress in class. View the current backlog dashboard. List your ideas and we can see what is feasible to implement with a bot or other method. Wolfgang8741 says: If not you, then who? (talk) 23:51, 12 July 2020 (UTC)
 * 1) For assessment of the body of text an non structured features I was thinking we could compare to the suggested article structure to get a list of articles with "x" section and those missing section "x". Given not all articles will match the article structure because they are not a lake focused article there should be an exclude list for a bot to skip in the categorizing of the articles. This would at least give an overview of what structure articles are taking and where there is room for expansion of the articles.
 * 2) Generating a review gallery for images used in the infobox. So one for the main image, one for the bathymetry image (so many non bathymetric images are in this field). The overview would give an opportunity to sort by the newest image and look for low quality or non images that should be adjusted.
 * 3) Pushpin Map Review callery to check Which version of the pushpin map is used ie with terrain or not. There is inconsistency across infoboxes
 * 4) Consistency check if a value that is present in the infobox also is present in the body of text. Might be easiest to start with those using convert templates as they should be easier to extract.
 * 5) Consistency check of the infobox value to the associated Wikidata value for that entry - a step toward building trust on how to support fact exchange with Wikidata.
 * 6) Pushpin Map resolution distribution - Pushpin map only at country level, pushpin map only at subregion level, both pushpin at region and country level.

Adding Image Maintenance Categories for Infobox Body of Water
See my proposal for tracking the image, image_bathymetry, and pushpin map images in maintenance categories on the Infobox Body of Water Talk page. Leave a comment with your thoughts or if other maintenance categories should be added as well. Wolfgang8741 says: If not you, then who? (talk) 06:57, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

Nothing on circulation in lakes?
I could not find an article on water circulation in lakes. Is there one? &middot; &middot; &middot; Peter Southwood (talk): 09:55, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

Aral Sea
The South Aral Sea existed for a quarter century before splitting into two, shouldn't the East Aral Sea and West Aral Sea receive articles? The various developments with these two basins should be better defined with separate articles, instead of muddling it with the quarter century history of the larger lake. -- 67.70.26.89 (talk) 13:33, 3 January 2021 (UTC)

FAR notice
I have nominated Chew Valley Lake 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 "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Hog Farm Bacon 02:11, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

Sandbox organiser
Hi all

I've been working on a tool for the past few months that you may find useful. Sandbox organiser is a set of tools to help you better organise your draft articles and other pages in your userspace. It also includes areas to keep your to do lists, bookmarks, list of tools. You can customise your sandbox organiser to add new features and sections. Once created you can access it simply by clicking the sandbox link at the top of the page. You can create and then customise your own sandbox organiser just by clicking the button on the page. All ideas for improvements and other versions would be really appreciated.

Huge thanks to PrimeHunter and NavinoEvans for their work on the technical parts, without them it wouldn't have happened.

John Cummings (talk) 10:59, 6 February 2021 (UTC)