Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles/Archive 6


 * This is the third archive of the discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles.

Catholic Encyclopedia
JASpencer has added 100's (thousands?) of template links asking for expansion from the Catholic Encyclopedia. This is controversial for a number of reasons. Is there any policy about blindly doing mass updates like this? Many of these articles don't need expansion from the 100-year old CE, and many of the CE articles are not appropriate for WP. -- Stbalbach 19:48, 2 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I don't see this harming wikipedia, having a PD resource for expanding articles is good (with a direct link even better). I think it should be left for the editors to evaluate, if the CE articles (content, relevance) are not appropriate for WP, before adding or using it here. I'm not aware of any "policy about blindly doing mass updates". If You think, that an article doesn't need expansion from the 100-year old CE, then remove the template and mention this in the edit summary? feydey 20:08, 2 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I don't like inviting expansion on the article page - it seems a clear self reference - but there's no problem with listing the link on the talk page. --Cherry blossom tree 22:10, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Template:Catholic-expand has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. --Stbalbach 22:56, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Hm. Some of the arguments here would also apply to update-eb. I guess it should only be used in talk pages, but I included it in a main article page here. It just seemed the right thing to do; the talk page is too easy to overlook when you come at the article other than through the template or associated category. One difference is that we haven't been adding it automatically; in fact it's only been used for 13 articles so far. David Brooks 00:39, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

DYK
Just a reminder to project members: if you think you have a good fact from a DYK-qualified article that you made within the last five days, I strongly urge you to submit to T:DYKT. I have already had nearly 20 of my articles featured on DYK, and it's a wonderful incentive for making non-stubby articles. Thanks,  Nish kid 64  00:05, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

SFNI?
Are people a little too hasty with casting entries to the "SFNI" basket? I notice under hot/O that "Online music" has been dubbed SFNI "dicdef". Presumably that means that we could never write an article about "online music" that was not a one line dictionary definition. Clearly this is nonsense - at the very least it should be a redirect to some long article about online music delivery, iTunes etc. Actually it should probably redirect to Online music store. Why are articles being dumped in the SFNI basket so hastily? Stevage 15:03, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Wall newspaper
That article is on WP:DEAD, but it provides a link to a well-developed Britannica article. Could your WikiProject take a look? YechielMan 03:59, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Revitalization of project?
I've noticed that there are now projects relating to most of the specific field article lists as well as a number of others. Would anyone be interested in maybe helping these other projects create or develop lists of articles for themselves, possibly from subject-specific encyclopedia? I think the other projects would very likely benefit from having such lists, and it might also help in the revitalization of this one. If anyone does think it might be a good idea, I would be very happy if you could perhaps indicate to me how you think it might be done. John Carter 19:22, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
 * I have gotten favorable response for this idea elsewhere. Are there any other members out there who would be willing to help produce the specific article lists for given projects? I think that there are probably too many for me to be able or qualified to do them myself. John Carter 23:39, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Expandable Articles
I've been trying to set up templates for articles that I think are "expandable" from other sources. That is that the article in Wikipedia has substantial gaps that could be filled by another on line resource.

I've not handled it well, to say the least, partly because it grew out of my involvement in WP:CATH so it had more Catholic Encyclopedia articles than anything else (indeed it started as a Catholic Encyclopedia template). This meant that a lot of people who showed enormous hostility would have been less hostile if it was another source.

However there is a serious point here, what do we do once we have started a corresponding article? Is this where our responsibility drops off? Perhaps insert a link to the online encyclopedia to meet with verifiability rules and then delete it from the project page? This would be fine if it was consistently applied. Alternatives are:


 * Leave it hanging around until it is at an "acceptable" standards (whatever they are), perhaps with a note on the project page as to what is not "acceptable".
 * Have a seperate page(s) on the project for "expandable articles
 * Have a link on the talk page to a category or template. I've tried this and it has met resistance, although the reasons for this resistance change.
 * Put text within the Talk page.
 * Text dump articles and wait for them to be cleaned up. Although suggested as a joke, this is quite a common approach which I was keen to avoid.

If there is any policy or settled rule laying out what the exit criteria should be from these projects I would be grateful. Otherwise can we see if we can get some concensus?

JASpencer 10:30, 10 February 2007 (UTC)


 * A supplementary point would be that we should look at areas where this would stop being expandable. Perhaps when a subject moves beyond a stub (although there will still be areas where Wikipedia's coverage is very poor compared to the online source).  Another area to think about would be where and where not the Encyclopedia can be regarded as a reliable source. JASpencer 15:11, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
 * For what little it might be worth, I would think the best thing to do would be to try to find if any WikiProject out there deals with the specific kind of article and place that project's banner on the article talk page. One disadvantage we will often have is not necessarily knowing exactly how important a given article is to a given project, or whether some of the material we have just put in the article can already be found in a related article. Also, any given editor who works particularly with missing articles of a specific given type, maybe s/he could consider joining the project relevant to the subject. Then one could reasonably follow up and expand articles important to the project. Lastly, of course, you can always add the todo template to the talk page and indicate there that there is additional data from another source. I do think that this is a very important question that I hope to see others address as well. John Carter 15:44, 10 February 2007 (UTC)


 * The template MEA-expand seems to do something along these lines but there is no real guidance on how it should be used, and there does not seem any facility for adding links, etc. JASpencer 16:05, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

In general you will find most people on Wikipedia would prefer not to have templates, categories and other forms of solicitation used to canvass one users opinion about which source should be used in writing articles. Every article on Wikipedia can be expanded as a matter of course, but the devil is in the details on a per-article basis, it is not possible to codify it and say "all articles of X type can be expanded using Y source". You will find a general sentiment against mass solicitation in a number of places such as Canvassing - we don't have a policy on Canvassing sources, yet, but I suspect we may need one soon that lays down some guidelines on this type of activity. -- Stbalbach 18:02, 10 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Serious question, do you regard an "expand" tag mass solicitation by definition? JASpencer 18:13, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Another debate? That's interesting. I agree with Stbalbach. I strongly object to any template or category soliciting expansion from a specific source, especially from obsolete and unreliable public domain encyclopaedias. If someone knows a good source for expanding a particular article, they can write it down on the talk page. --Folantin 19:24, 10 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Well as this has no time limit, then this can rumble on until there's a consensus. Any way on the main subject why is a category on a talk page any worse than text on the talk page.  The only reason I can see (albeit a big one) is that there is more of a chance to comment on the suitability on the talk page.  On the other hand it will (together with comments) be archived, it's not centrally trackable and it can't be removed when it's no longer relevant.  JASpencer 19:46, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Stbalbach, more or less. Frankly, I don't spend much time worrying about whether someone else will come along and improve articles. If they want to, they will usually do it without someone else trying to tell them how. If nobody does, perhaps the article truly isn't important. Having said that, working on EB1911 verification, I have used include-eb template a few times when I really think I'm not competent to judge whether the 1911 information is any use (or when I was too tired to go through it all) as a hint that it should be left to an expert. It's more important to tag potentially archaic articles with update-eb though. David Brooks 06:32, 12 February 2007 (UTC)


 * David, are you saying that the responsibility for the articles from the Missing Encyclopedic articles project ends when the article has been entered? I'm not against that idea, by the way.  JASpencer 09:46, 17 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I'll have it both ways: it depends on the goals of the sub-project. Wikipedia has always had a tension between breadth and depth editors, with the breadth writers always behind, especially during the insane rush to one million articles. If we agree that the goal of a sub-project is depth, then spend time on that, otherwise I don't see a problem with a stub, so long as it is properly tagged. Even if the hope of a subsequent breadth editor coming along later is forlorn, it's a useful note to the reader. Nobody pretends that Wikipedia will ever be uniformly comprehensive. David Brooks 16:46, 17 February 2007 (UTC)


 * "it depends on the goals of the sub-project". Fair enough, but what about WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles?  Where does the responsibility for an article stop with that project?  JASpencer 17:21, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Maybe I'm not experienced enough to really have a well-informed opinion, but I would think that this project's "responsibility" (and I don't think that anyone has a "responsibility" for articles) would probably end when we have more or less ensured that all the relevant information from a given existing encyclopedia article elsewhere is more or less included in the wikipedia article. However, given the length of some articles, that's probably unrealistic. Maybe it should be two responses: (1) when the existing stub-to-B class wikipedia article contains most of the relevant information from the other encyclopedic source, and (2) for longer articles that could/should be GA-FA class, like say Spain, maybe we should just ensure put in all the bassic data, and let the existing subject-related project carry on from there? They'd probably have a better idea of sub-articles and what not than us, anyway. John Carter 19:57, 24 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Welcome to the debate, John. Are you saying that subjects should keep in the article until all the up to date bit of the articles are included? I can see this meeting a lot of resistance. JASpencer 21:39, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Not really. Just that (1) our "responsibility" might end when we get the bulk of the content from the other encyclopedia entered in (then the other more specific subject-based projects can deal with the articles) and (2) if it's a large article, maybe not even all the content from the other encyclopedia. In those cases, maybe we can just add a comment to the talk page (i.e. "A lot of content relating to Portuguese royal history can be found here. I dunno where you guys in the Portugal Project are putting this stuff, so I won't include it here, unless you reply and tell me where you think it should go.") Of course, if they never do reply, or reply to the effect that they don't want to include it, fine. John Carter 22:35, 24 February 2007 (UTC)


 * So in a small article (say three paragraphs) including all of it that wasn't obviously out of date or POV? (I'm not sure that this would work but we'll get to why once we've clarified that point.)  JASpencer 16:02, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

Expandable article lists - Proposal
Would dedicated lists as part of the project be a way of dealing with these expandable articles? This has been suggested before by some of the opponents of templates.

Personally I don't like them, but it may be a way of removing the expandable articles from the missing articles pages.

JASpencer 15:19, 24 February 2007 (UTC)


 * What do you mean exactly. Please give an example. -- Stbalbach 14:57, 25 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Essentially setting up seperate pages and putting the "Expandable articles there". I'll do a mockup if that would help. JASpencer 15:53, 25 February 2007 (UTC)


 * OK, essentially to set up a main page off the Projects page that would look something like this: User:JASpencer/Expandable.  On each of the letters you would have a sub project page like this: User:JASpencer/Expandable/B (the suggested rules are a sample - but there will need to be rules to stop pages hanging around for too long).  JASpencer 16:12, 25 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Disagree. The purpose of this project is not to wring information out of old encyclopedias. It is just to make sure that every article title in other encyclopedias has a corresponding article title on Wikipedia. That's it. You've taken it to a new level of "expansion". If there was a project whose purpose was to expand articles using old encyclopedias it would run afoul of many people, and that is what this proposal is trying to do. -- Stbalbach 17:56, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
 * What Stbalbach said. The purpose of this project is quite clear. It certainly isn't to ensure that articles are expanded until "The Catholic Encyclopedia article has no useful information to add". --Folantin 18:01, 25 February 2007 (UTC)


 * The purpose of the project is not to wring information out of old encyclopedias, agreed. But what I'm trying to understand is just when is an article considered created.  There seems to be a belief that some articles are expandable - hence templates such as MEA-expand and comments about articles needing more information (see this Talk page for examples of that).
 * I think that there is some confusion when I said "the suggested rules are a sample", in that these can be hammered out later. The idea is that we take the "expandable" articles - however we define them - off the missing articles lists.  (And please let's try to keep WP:CIVIL).
 * JASpencer 18:24, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Presumably an article is considered created when it's at least a stub. We already have a wide range of stub templates which ask users to expand such articles. Given the nature of Wikipedia, there is no way of assessing whether an article is "finished" or not since a page can be edited potentially infinitely. However, once an article is no longer considered a stub then the stub template can be removed.--Folantin 19:22, 25 February 2007 (UTC)


 * So does that mean it "defines the meaning of the article's title", to quote from WP:STUB. That would seem workable, and I would not have too much of a problem with this - as long as it's consistently applied.
 * There are some issues I'd have. Firstly this would need to be either a consensus (or preferably a previously agreed policy).  There is certainly a feeling that there should be some expandability, I think it may be an idea to get some opinions on this.
 * Secondly, the article should cover the subject. This is obvious when talking about two different subjects, but it is not so clear cut when talking about a subset of an existing article, for example a CE article about a diocese and a WP article about a town.
 * Lastly there's an issue of good housekeeping - not particularly expandability but items such as does it have a stub category, is it in a category and does it comply with WP:V? Another thing that can be hammered out later.
 * JASpencer 20:37, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure I understand what you are getting at. As far as I can tell, these problems are already covered by existing policy and practice. For instance, we have plenty of editors who watch new pages and do stub-sorting (assigning such articles to the correct stub category). --Folantin 21:26, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Well that can be hammered out later. I'll need to go around to get some comments from some editors who've been on the Missing articles project for some time. JASpencer 21:45, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

User pages in Category:Wikipedia missing topics
There's a stack of user pages in Category:Wikipedia missing topics (despite my attempts at clearing some out). If they're useful to this project, can they be moved into project space please? If they're not, please decat them. --kingboyk 20:48, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Concerning that Kingboyk just recently told me to remove my pages from the Category:WikiProject Biography (and I did), he probably wants me and couple of others out of here as well. he has also altered various other pages of this project apparently in his own volition. So; does our pages offend the other participants and do you want us to remove them? I'd like to know beforehand - Skysmith 22:15, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Don't take things personally mate. User pages don't generally get categorised. If they're useful to others, move them to WikiProject space. If they're only useful to you, don't categorise them. It's nothing personal and not getting worked up over.


 * The only reason I came across this was that the WPBio category was full of user pages making it hard to find the most important Project pages. I created a new subcat for "missing articles" lists which as you know you're quite welcome to use. --kingboyk 22:27, 18 February 2007 (UTC) PS Doing things of one's own volition is called "initiative" around here. It's a wiki. I'm also an admin. So, I make no apologies for trying to clean up some stray categorisation.


 * Whilst I understand that Category:WikiProject Biography relates to WikiProject Biography and so arguably should not be used to categorise pages falling outside that project, I cannot see the same issue with Category:Wikipedia missing topics. Skysmith's pages look unimpeachably like lists of missing topics to me, and the categorisation is thus appropriate, and not "stray". That leaves us with the question of whether the lists should be in userspace or projectspace. I can't see a policy reason why categorisation should lead to a presumption that the pages should be in projectspace; equally I cannot see a point in categorising them if they are being held in userspace to cordon them off from general use. Beyond that, I cannot see any strong arguments for changing the status quo. --Tagishsimon (talk)

Appletons
I have found Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biography a good resource for 19th century bios. Would every person with an article in there be someone we would eventually want an article on? Thanks. ++Lar: t/c 21:47, 25 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Did you read the external link Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biography - it reads like one of the most unreliable encyclopedias ever written. There are so many high quality sources available why would we potentially populate Wikipedia with hoax entries. -- Stbalbach 21:54, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
 * I don't think we should populate Wikipedia FROM Appletons per se, but I do think it's a source of potential candidate articles. If nothing other than Appletons information can be found however hard one searches, sure, that's probably a hoax, but I thought the idea of this project was to identify missing (or potentially missing) articles. I may be confused though++Lar: t/c 02:54, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

source categories deletion
This Wikiproject might be interested in Categories for discussion/Log/2007 March 24; I'd point to a specific discussion there but must of the first half of the nominations are related. — coe l acan — 01:12, 25 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Just following up on Coelacan's timely heads-up, the CFDs all relate to categorisation by source. One editor has asserted that these categories are widely used by this project, but has not explained how they are used. At Categories_for_discussion/Log/2007_March_24 there is a proposal to refactor the categories to be applied to talk pages, and it would be helpful to have input from this project on the viability of that method, which (if I understand correctly) is already used by WikiProject Biography. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 03:34, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Status of 1911 verification project
I'm surfacing to report from the EB1911 verification project, where I seem to be toiling alone. I have found some articles that are unedited dumps of the OCRs, resulting in poor layout and in some cases spelling errors or missing diacritics. I've also found some obviously out of date material. But my main point is: I started on the B's on July 2, 2006, and just reached the end of the Ba's on March 29. At that rate, and assuming nobody else joins in, the entire set will take until June 3, 2043. I'm not sure what to do to speed it up. I'm not looking for sympathy; just reporting in, as I said.

Admittedly I was, until recently, doing more than necessary on the grounds that many of these articles will probably not get much attention from anyone else, so recently I was doing the minimum acceptable and getting through it a little more quickly. To my mind, the minimum set of actions are: The "additional work" was: David Brooks 05:47, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Assess for non-inclusion and move to the "wrong-uns" list.
 * Create a redirect to a correctly named article if warranted.
 * Check for OCR errors: non-English characters (accents, Greek) in particular.
 * Handle POV evaluations (esp in biographies) - use "According to..." or remove completely.
 * Check for strange layout.
 * Remove 1911 if the 1911 text has been supplanted.
 * Tag with 1911POV update-eb, wikify (in the article), or include-eb, ni-eb (on the talk page).
 * Add 1911 where there is actual 1911 text present, and make sure the tag is in a ==References== section.
 * Do any obvious style cleanups.
 * Improve the flow and add section headings.
 * Put in extra 1911 text if it seems to add to the article
 * Check links: add some if the article looks bare, look for targets for redlinks (often there under another name), and snap redirects
 * For bios, check dates and occupation are provided as categories.
 * Add other appropriate categories and interwiki links.
 * Look for and add images.


 * Nice! Sounds like you've got it down to a science. Haukur 08:48, 11 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Kudos to you, David, for keeping on keeping on verifying 1911s. I had intended to join the project last year, but there was a prominent "do not start verification" notice on Talk, and I didn't manage to get any responses to my "can we start now" messages. So I wandered off & did other things. --Tagishsimon (talk)


 * Good job man...Would like to join you but I allready have my hand's tied on the A's of WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles/Missing diseases... i dont see why this can't be more "honestly" advertised on the project page? Kind of like, right let's verify all this and modify it propelley so we can then go on to the 12th edition hehe... speaking of which.. (i have no idea of the status of the 11th edition and it's copyright) but when did it actually come in the public domain? As such when will the 12th 13th and eventually 14th edition go into the public domain? Isin't it something like 50 years after the person who wrote it/contributed to the encyclopedia pass away? So if it's a long way away, we can say something like: So and so till the 14the edition gets put in the public domain... Let's finish 11 of!? well thats my 2 cents & a bit... Calaka (talk)15:38, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Well I did some research and saw that under american law anything published before 1923 is automatically in the public domain...Therefore shouldn't there be a 12th edition version lying around somewhere on the internet? As such there might be a possibility for all of the editions to be eventually in the public domain as apart from the later additions of the 15th edition, they were all published before 1973(though the mater is complex tho?), which after 1973 makes a very long period before copyighted works go into the public domain... So is wikipedia governed by american law or? Calaka (talk) 11:51, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
 * The point about the 11th is that it is still regarded as one of the finest editions of Britannica, despite the problems with editorial approach (which we have come to understand and can address). Furthermore, it's useful in practice because of the availability of the CD edition and its electronic derivatives. David Brooks 00:57, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

One change of heart: I have been deleting entries from the list as I verified them, but I think it would have been more useful to other editors, and a proof of good faith, to leave them in the list, but tagged. Page A1 has a few symbols, but I don't understand them. I think the following would work: replace the search tag with one of: plus any more I come up with. Then, if it feels right, I'll spend a bored Sunday afternoon tagging all the lines in B1 I deleted. David Brooks 01:15, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
 * ok (article is acceptable, although some may still be archaic to some degree)
 * up (article has been tagged for update or POV)
 * no1911 (article has no 1911 text and no 1911 template)
 * lk (article was linked to another one)

gallium trichloride
I have just edited the gallium trichloride article and noticed it was flagged to this project--I have left the flag on. Hope this helps. Cheers. Axiosaurus 12:00, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Lists of Asia-related topics
There are currently 27 articles that list entries in The Encyclopedia of Modern Asia (ISBN 0-684-80617-7). You may find them at List of Asia-related topics. I believe these articles should be moved to a subpage of a WikiProject. As there is no WikiProject Asia, is this project willing to accept them? If not, could you please point me toward the appropriate project? Thank you, Black Falcon (Talk) 18:23, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
 * There are arguments on both sides of the issue of moving the articles into the wikiproject space. Meanwhile I've listed the main page from the table of Lists on the project page, under Specialized encyc.. --Tagishsimon (talk)

Missing articles from ODNB
Of the top 2000 ODNB entries (measured by article word count) 75 are missing in wikipedia. I've listed them on my userpage; where and how should I list them to be most useful to people in this project? Dsp13 00:16, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Just because other encyclopedias have them, does that automatically make the subject notable?
Much of the content that is missing is subject-specific, jargon, etc. Many of these could be redirected. The problem with this project is that it really requires expert attention.--h i s  s p a c e   r e s e a r c h 11:56, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Category for deletion
The Category:Missing Encyclopedic Articles requests for expansion is being considered for deletion. I figured the editors of this project would like to know because the cat seems to relate to this project.-Andrew c 03:20, 22 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I do have a question for the project. Does anyone remove the template after it is expand sufficiently?  I checked a few articles in the category and they seem like good articles and the specific reason for expansion is not provided.  So I wonder if the category is needed.  Best to join the discussion mentioned above if this category is actually serving a valid purpose.  Vegaswikian 05:35, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for verification
Please see: Requests for verification

A proposal designed as a process similar to prod to delete articles without sources if no sources are provided in 30 days.

It reads:

Some editors see this as necessary to improve Wikipedia as a whole and assert that this idea is supported by policy, and others see this as a negative thing for the project with the potential of loss of articles that could be easily sourced.

I would encourage your comments in that page's talk or Mailing list thread on this proposal WikiEN-l: Proposed "prod" for articles with no sources

Signed Jeepday (talk) 14:10, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Citizendium
Shouldn't we include Citizendium into this project as well. They have articles like Telephone newspaper and Brown Institution that Wikipedia has little or no counterpart. As they are GPL licensed, should I be bold and copy these articles? It would be nice if there was a bot generated list for finding candidate articles for import. -- þħɥʂıɕıʄʈʝɘɖı 00:36, 5 August 2007 (UTC)


 * My understanding was that Citizendium's licensing was indeterminate, and that with the exception of Wikipedia-sourced articles (necessarily being under the GFDL), there isn't actually a license yet, although they do have aspirations to eventually choose some Free license. So right now Citizendium articles shouldn't be copied over. --Gwern (contribs) 02:11 5 August 2007 (GMT)


 * It would be worth drawing up a list of articles covered in C~ which are not in W~, to provide a list of redlinks for further consideration. Clearly, if anyone has the energy, we can write the article based on information from C~, so long as we do not breach their copyright. --Tagishsimon (talk)
 * List now created at WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles/Citizendium list of missing articles. Telephone newspaper is now a stub. --Tagishsimon (talk)


 * I gotta say, my limited experience of Citizendium so far has failed to impress. Despite their extensive coverage of ancient economics and Nepalese journalism, they don't have articles on topics such as: North America, Europe, the Earth, or human beings. Oof. --Gpollock 16:17, 8 August 2007 (UTC)


 * By the way, Citizendium's licensing is now CC-BY-SA 3.0, except articles copied from Wikipedia, which are licensed under GFDL, so we can copy text from it.--RekishiEJ (talk) 06:52, 19 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Not quite. See the discussion at Citizendium list of missing articles. --Tagishsimon (talk) 22:50, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Big objection
To "Biographies - 97.5%". Unless it's 97.5% missing. A year ago I stated that almost all entries from Polish Biographical Dictionary are missing from en wiki, noting has changed since then and there is no reason to believe that Polish coverage is less represented then others (in fact, I am pretty sure it's above average).--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 12:44, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Biographies refers to one specific list (details on that page.) It does not imply that once that list is exhausted there will be no need for any further biographical articles to be written. If you want to give it a more specific name then please do, or even better a list of missing Polish biographies would be useful in filling the gaps, if that is technically feasible. --Cherry blossom tree 14:15, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
 * I have uploaded the most comprehensive academic list of Polish biographies to Wiki: User:Piotrus/List of Poles. I am not sure how to further integrate it with the project; last year nobody replied to my announcements and questions about that.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 14:21, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
 * There's probably little more to do (at a minimum) that signpost your lead page from the table of sources in the project page (which I'll do in a second ... done). And possibly to reword the User:Piotrus/List of Poles page slightly, for instance to advise users to delete Poles who have articles. As per other missing this & that pages, we could then start keeping a score. If there was anyone who wanted to do more work on the list, implementing use of the template and implementing links to the Polish wiki (which might have better coverage) would assist editors. --Tagishsimon (talk)
 * With 25,000 entries, we need a bot - this is how the list was created in the first place... --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 14:42, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Text (criticism)
I was trying to clean up the article paratext (which I came upon while working on something else — isn't it always the way?) and discovered that as far as I can tell, Wikipedia has no article on "text" in the cultural studies/literary criticism sense of the word. (We've got a disambiguation page at text, but none of the pages linked there seem to be about the usage in academic criticism.) That meaning of "text" is discussed at hermeneutics, which is defined as the study of such texts — but we don't seem to have an article on that which is studied in hermeneutics. I'm not an academic, or an expert on cultural studies/literary criticism/critical theory, so I'm not really qualified to start the article myself. I'm not even certain what the best name for the article would be: text (criticism), text (hermeneutics), text (critical theory), text (cultural studies) or something completely different. I've dropped a note at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Critical Theory, but I'm not sure how active that WikiProject is, so I thought I'd give you good people a heads-up as well. Anyone feel qualified to give it a go? —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 03:24, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Magdeburger Biographisches Lexikon
The University of Magdeburg has an encyclopedia of notable people somehow related to the city of Magdeburg. It is located at http://www.uni-magdeburg.de/mbl/. I think having a list of entries of theirs we do not have corresponding article for would be nice, so I was wondering if someone with a bot could create such a list.--Carabinieri 01:56, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

1904, The Twentieth Century Biographical Dictionary of Notable Americans, Vol III, Cowan through Erich
Seems to be in the public domain? Available on Google Books...Useful for mining? jengod 08:36, 7 September 2007 (UTC)


 * As with many books on google, the full text of this book is available only to USians, and not the rest of the world - at least, not to the UK. Which sucks. But yes, it would be useful for mining. If you want to make it into a project, steal the index and make a page of links out of it, and people can start going through it. --Tagishsimon (talk) 09:04, 7 September 2007 (UTC)


 * This is the first that I have heard the Google Full View text is not accessible worldwide. In Australia I have no problem accessible most Google Books.  I have been writing a GreaseMonkey user script that simplifies scraping the text from Full View books. John Vandenberg 02:24, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

List of health topics
Is List of health topics: Si-So worth dragging into this project? (see Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Medicine) John Vandenberg 02:28, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

GeneralxHotlist
With only two articles left to be created for the better part of 3 weeks, can we just shelve those and move on to a new list? Mbisanz 04:11, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Taking "Expandable" articles off the article lists
Question 1. Is the policy for "expandable" articles, stubs in Wikipedia that have large and relevant articles in other encyclopedias, to delete them from the Missing encyclopedic articles WikiProject? Is the policy that as long as there is a corresponding article, no matter how large, that the encyclopedia article is no longer missing?

Question 2. If it is what should be done with stubs with larger corresponding articles?

JASpencer 14:34, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

EB1911
A list of "easy" missing encyclopedia articles can be found here:

s:Wikisource:WikiProject 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/WikipediaCrossCheck

Find a red item on the list, copy the EB1911 article and paste it here. Enjoy. John Vandenberg 19:41, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Not entirely sure where this comes from. Just glancing at the list:
 * "Abeyance: w:Abeyancer does not exist" - but Abeyance does exist and is a copy of EB1911. Why does the s: article say "See also Abeyancer on Wikipedia"?
 * "xxx does not mention EB1911" - usually because the article xxx already existed and was better (more comprehensive, more up to date) so there was no point in importing any EB1911 text
 * "copy the EB1911 article and paste it here" - not only that, please. WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles/1911 verification was created to address problems caused by people who had performed uncritical pasting. Paste by all means, but then inspect for transcription errors, POV, glaring anachronisms, and at the very least wikify and categorize.
 * Certainly the job of absorbing EB1911 will never be done, but if you want to help it would be more valuable to pick a page of the verification project. I finished the first set of B's recently. David Brooks 05:15, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

My primary objective at the moment is to ensure that the EB1911 articles on Wikisource all point to valid Wikipedia articles, so EB1911 readers know where to go for updated information. As a side benefit, I am finding irregularities - there are articles that exist on Wikisource but dont exist on Wikipedia.

1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Abeyance was pointing to Abeyancer, which I have just now created as a redirect to Abeyance (and I have updated the EB1911 page so it points directly to Abeyance).

However, 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Ablatitious doesnt exist here: Ablatitious and Special:Search/Ablatitious has zero results. It does exist on ablatitious, but it is worth looking into.

Even more problematic, 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Accolti, Bernado is a biography of a person who was notable enough to appear in EB1911, and so is an obvious candidate for copying (and fixing) to Wikipedia, as Special:Search/Bernado Accolti returns zero results.

Regarding "xxx does not mention EB1911", yes it is possible that the article was written without anybody copying from EB1911, however that message appears in my log when the Wikipedia article doesnt link to Wikisource at all. That means the Wikipedia article doesnt even use sisterlinks or Wikisource1911Enc. I wont be pushing to have those log messages fixed, unless it is clear that the EB1911 article was copied, in which case attributing using 1911 is good form.

FInally, your suggestions on how to improve an EB1911 article once it lands here are good. I had not considered transcription errors; please if anyone finds one of those, please also make the correction on Wikisource. Wikisource has the entire EB1911 available as TIFF files to assist in verification. John Vandenberg 13:00, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
 * I don't doubt that there are still missing EB1911 articles. Back when the "missing articles" subprojects started, a volunteer took the EB1911 index and removed those titles that already appeared in WP, just to make the project manageable. We know there were some (many?) WP articles that are about a completely different topic, and there are some that existed at the time but were since deleted due to claimed non-notability. The more improvement we get overall, the better! David Brooks 13:45, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Ablatitious was listed in our original list as Ablatitioua (probably an OCR error). Ablatitious probably doesn't belong in Wikipedia anyway, as it is more appropriate for Wiktionary. You'll find that a lot of EB1911 articles that are absent on Wikipedia were added to Wiktionary instead. Our original list did not include Bernado Accolti at all, but did include Pietro Accolti (his brother). We also have Benedetto Accolti (their father). Looks like Bernado Accolti was a legitimate oversight. No idea why he didn't make the original list. Kaldari 17:06, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Bernardo Accolti? Haukur 17:10, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Right you are! Looks like Wikisource made the error on that one. Kaldari 17:12, 15 November 2007 (UTC)


 * So, would it make sense to link wikisource articles to wiktionary entries where appropriate? Appropriateness is a judgment call, of course, and there are not that many pure dicdefs in 1911. David Brooks 20:40, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
 * From my memory it seems that we referred quite a few of the missing EB1911 articles to wiktionary. Kaldari 21:37, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Based on the above comments, I have updated 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Ablatitious to only point to Wiktionary, and will update the bot to also include wiktionary in the checking process.

Thanks to everyone for helping find and fix "Bernardo Accolti". Another case that looks like it warrants a Wikipedia article is the Santa Laura abbey, described in detail as a section of the "Abbey" article of EB1911 (with a picture). John Vandenberg 00:31, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

1911 verification: page B1 done and some musings
I'm surfacing again to report on the 1911 verification projects - or at least what I've discovered remains to be done. Incidentally, I'm picking up all sorts of useless information by reading the encyclopedia, but probably won't be writing a book about it.

As I said before, I worked through the list, checking for grievous errors and OCR misses, usually caused by uncritical dumping by some over-enthusiastic editor. I always used the scanned copies on wikisource to crosscheck. There are plenty of articles that are pure EB1911, a considerable number that have the original text subsumed in a larger article (which is good) and a few more that were written independently. Gratifyingly, most of these independent efforts seemed to me to be more comprehensive than, and at least as high-quality as, the EB1911 version. Very few articles turned out to be a completely different topic from the EB1911 arcticle.

The majority of the articles themselves are fine, with one exception: the References sections obviously have a pre-1911 cutoff, and I have no idea how to add post-1911 scholarship to the lists. In general I have left them in. So this project doesn't result in a high rate of improvements to Wikipedia, although I find it personally gratifying. And, as I said earlier, at this rate it would occupy me up to almost my 100th birthday.

So, I finished the first B page. After some discussions with others and some discoveries, here's what I did with each article: Additional work if I felt generous:
 * Assess for non-inclusion (despite its presence in EB1911, should this really be a Wikipedia article? Is it maybe a portmanteau article, where we already deal with the separate topics?)
 * If Wikipedia has the article under a different name, create a redirect. Redirects are free.
 * Check for OCR errors. You might even export to a program that has a spell-checker if it feels necessary. Check non-English characters (accents and Greek alphabet) in particular.
 * Handle POV evaluations (esp in biographies) - move them to an "According to the Encyclopedia Britannica 11th Edition..." section or remove.
 * Check for strange layout.
 * Remove 1911 if the 1911 text has been supplanted by completely rewritten text.
 * If appropriate, tag with 1911POV update-eb, wikify (article), or include-eb, ni-eb (talk page). One day, someone else may come along and deal with the problem.
 * Add 1911 where there is actual 1911 text present, and make sure the tag is in a ==References== section.
 * Add 1911 talk to the talk page if it's not already there.
 * Do any obvious style cleanups.
 * Improve the flow and/or add section headings.
 * Put in extra 1911 text (ie. execute on include-eb).
 * Check links: add some if the article looks bare, look for targets for redlinks (often there under another name), and snap redirected links.
 * For bios, check dates and occupation are provided as categories.
 * Add other appropriate categories and interwiki links.
 * Look for and add images.

In the index lists, replace the search tags with: redir = redirect or disambig, needs another tag ok = decent article no1911 = no EB1911 text left; tag taken off tag = one of the attention tags left on it Articles moved to the bad 'uns list can be deleted from this list

It is useful to actually remove the search tags. Each original index page contains 503 templates to expand and, by my count, 5,081 hyperlinks, which can take a loooong time to render. David Brooks (talk) 22:21, 20 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Good work, David; thanks. Good to read these progress reports. Carry on :) --Tagishsimon (talk) 22:32, 20 November 2007 (UTC)