Walkerma

This is Martin Walker's discussion page.

Archives

/Archive1 (mostly before March 1st 2005) - Chem. names, pictures, inorganics table and PNGs vs. GIFs,, HCl, ZnCl₂, plans (Henry & I), NaCl, MeSH, inorganic stylesheet.

/Archive2: The earlier part of the discussions on the new chembox.

/Archive3 (spring 2005) - Wikiprojects, P halide pix, Free beer, Maggie Thatcher, Oestrogen, Ongoing work, Wittig images, prefixes.

/Archive4 (summer 2005) - Project Drugs, Terpenes, Menthols, ISIS, Tb₄O₇, MIBK, photos, data sources, indoles and CoCl₃.

/Archive5 (autumn 2005) - incl. new chemists, various WP:1.0, HOAc, Wpchemwatcher, Nobel chemists, PC4A, Wikimania, C₂H₂F₄, butter.

/Archive6 (Dec 2005 - Jan 2006) - incl. June presentation, folic acid, toluene, aldol, WVWP, data pages, Humanities as COTW, contacts with Ahmed, RA Norton, Smokefoot.

/Archive7 (Feb 2005 - mid-Mar 2006) - incl. Smokefoot's class, WP Campaigns & Elections, Various 1.0 stuff. oxy, minus, WiktionaryZ, Chem portal, SCOTUS, Antarctica/WVWP, Streamlining 1.0/GA

Discussion

About WP:1.0

Hello, Walkerma. I'm glad to see the 1.0 project moving. I had already signed up as part of the Wikisort project, but lost track of it for a long time, so I'm not really useful there. However, I've found out through WikiProject Tropical cyclones that all a project needs is a group of very active users committed to a project. The project requires a "critical mass" for it to really take off, and that's what happened in the Cyclone project. The hurricanes last year caused significant interest, providing a set of knowledgeable editors that expanded Wikipedia's coverage and quality of cyclones tremendously.

The same thing needs to happen with the 1.0 project: there needs to be a small subset of users dedicated to it, but large enough for it to reach "critical mass". There is considerable interest in the project and Wikipedia in general after the Nature review. At this point, I think several projects have made considerable progress, but the progress is lost in all the talk pages [1] [2]. There's at least several redundant pages that should be merged or eliminated to avoid duplicate effort, and to help new users browse the project.

And finally, no, my name isn't derived from TiO₂, but rather from my real-life nickname... good guess, though. :) Titoxd^{(?!? - help us)} 02:22, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Sorry for the late reply, I keep forgetting. I agree with everything you and Gflores have said, and I look forward to moving onto the next stage. I will try to leave comments on the roadmap to publication tomorrow. As for using AWB, what I did was tell it to make a list from the links on the page, and I put Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/WPScience as the page name. Then I went to the "More options" tab and checked the "append message" box. Then I just typed in the message, including the header. Then I went to the start tab, changed the summary, and clicked on Start the process. I told AWB to ignore links that weren't Wikipedia talk links as it was going through the list, but I suppose you could also remove the other links from the list beforehand. There's probably a better way to do it but I wouldn't know how. --Shanel 07:12, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Core Topic Levels

Hi Martin, Here is some more work in grouping core topic articles (from most general to more specific): Core topic levels. (Some other organization schemes could be used, but this one seems simple and effective.) I'm going to sit on this a day or longer: I included suggestions for additional core topic articles by level. I think if we focused on completing something like these levels (or sub-groups) of core topic articles we could have a real sense of progress -- knowing that a stage of core topic work was complete after finishing off each level. If you get a chance to look this idea over, do you think it could be useful? Vir 21:06, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

PS. The Core topic levels page has changed a good bit today. It is yet more abstract at the top. So, it's applicability might not be directly obvious -- but I think this will help in organizing knowledge categories. Anyway, it'll settle for a bit now. Vir 04:42, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Hi, I been too active. After reassessing a bit, I have decided I have too much to do this year to volunteer in Wikipedia. So, I need to back out for awhile. Perhaps I can help in a year or two. Good luck with everything. Best wishes, Vir 22:21, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. We too have a young 'un to care for. And, though I do love and really care about participatory democratic media work (which is why I tend to dive in) and this project is wonderful -- I just have too much on plate. When time frees up in year or two, I hope I can help. Vir 22:42, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

One thing: Before I put my participation on hold and while mostly I must stop diving in now, there is one process I would like to finish or get more developed. I'll write up some of the notes I made about categorization schemes that I started on here -- maybe next week or this summer. The French front page scheme is a useful one and some ideas about that and how it could be used it might be helpful (or not). Tying such thoughts into other Wikipedia thinking on this, such as by Larry Sanger, and with the Propaedia system and theories of knowledge would be fun too. If and when time allows... OK, back to moving beyond procrastination... Vir 17:10, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Rather than you doing that, why don't WE at WP1.0 try to do that for you (not for a while, there is in important conference for me just over a week away), then you take a look at OUR summary in a month or so. I think I understand what you were suggesting, there's no need for you to start getting sucked in all over again! But please come back in a few weeks and check that we didn't get the wrong idea. Your family must always come first! Walkerma 18:44, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Core topics

I think the navigation box is good and the logo is spiffy. I will try to work on replies about all the other points and questions. I'm having a little technical trouble. And you guys all apparently manage your time better than I do; you seem to be getting much more done.

Tangentially, about Wikiproject involvement, I had started to ask at various groups about their relevant core topics (hoping to encourage the groups to work on the core topics, or at least review them). But I got little response.

Also, about the various levels, I had been working on a possible working draft type outline. I can't put it up yet, because of technical troubles. I hope to this weekend, if that works for the rest of you.

And thanks for asking, I expect to be around at least every other day for a while. Maurreen 08:04, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Hi, glad you like the idea of a geography focus. I am very gratified by your response. Also, btw, I didn't mean to imply that anyone was neglecting anything. Oh, and thanks for fixing my sig. Maurreen 04:51, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Thoughts on a map

Hi, Martin, you asked what I think of Titoxd's road map. Sorry, but not much. To me, it seems more process than substance. Only Step 3 is about actually improving articles. Maurreen 09:09, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Step 3 is the bulk of the work. All that happens before is to identify a list of articles to improve, and then to try to get the most opinions about those articles as possible, including outside Wikipedia if possible. Titoxd^{(?!? - help us)} 03:17, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

I have to say, I really like it myself. I don't see a problem with "process" in this context, to me that's something a roadmap should include (how to get from A to B in our case is a process). I think Titoxd quite rightly puts a lot of emphasis of bringing in lots of help from interested groups (WikiProjects) and existing channels (AID and COTWs), and I think those are things we all agree are good (we will burn ourselves out trying to write even 150 FAs ourselves!). Our job at WP1.0 is (IMHO) to build the infrastructure to allow all of us (mainly others, we're only a few) to improve all of the important articles quickly and using expert help. For me it has "substance" because it tells us in specific ways, how to get from A to B, which a roadmap should do. Thanks a lot to both of you, Walkerma 04:58, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Toluene and SMILES

I'm not terribly familiar with SMILES, but I think that the modification to the SMILES structure of toluene that you reverted was in fact correct. The lower case letters indicate aromaticity. But ChemDraw does not recognize aromaticity and renders its SMILES output as a series of alternating double and single bonds, so you get a SMILES that is not technically correct (or at least less precise). --Ed (Edgar181) 16:21, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks a lot for that- I did wonder if that was the case, I have never used SMILES in my life so I didn't know - but being an anon edit I was being rather careful (hence the Chemdraw check - my standard SMILES generator). If this is the case we will need to review benzene, naphthalene etc that all use the same C=C type notation. I'll rv my rv and post something on WP:Chem. Thanks, Walkerma 17:06, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

1.0 trees and levels

Hi, Martin. My home computer went on the fritz today, so I won't be able to show you the tree I had made. So don't wait up for me. But I am considering somehow organizing the current GAs, FAs, etc. into some type of tree. I might start with just the geography items. Maurreen 19:59, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

For reviving and leading WP:1.0. Sincerely, Maurreen 20:25, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

This basic tree might be useful or interesting. Maurreen 21:07, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Hi, As mentioned in a recent post, for now, more or less solely, I am going to think about basic knowledge outlines or trees in Wikipedia. It occurs to me that listing a number of options of basic topic outlines and dialoguing about those is a way to go! So, in response to Maurreen's tree suggestion above: I think having a few simple starting points can be good. I don't prefer her particular wording for category choices above -- the reasons for this are sort of immanent in the outlines below.

Here are some variants of possible first levels of subject trees. (This is off top of my head--need to reflect on if these are balanced and inclusive).

• Alternate 1: mixed practical & disciplinary domains
  • geography
  • history
  • society & culture (which includes culture and social systems) -- if one or other term, I would suggest society as it is just a bit more inclusive than culture. but, two terms may be better for this and next cateogry.
  • science & technology

[I think it is good to make conceptual structure of categories explicit. In the following, I attempt to do so. This can be accomplished by footnotes to knowledge trees.]

• Alternate 2: headings with practical-theoretical mixed categories subtitles

(perhaps this is closest to Maureen's outline above - but more description brings things together)

• • the universal atlas: maps of the earth and the universe, natural and social
  • society: socio-cultural life and studies
  • sciences: techno-scientific practices and sciences

• Alternate 3: abstract categories
  • nature: time and space (that is, history and geography as subtopics, and not just social history) as subcategory & nature (contents of natural sciences) as subcategory
  • social (or inter-subjective) knowledge (social system/structures and culture as main subtopics)
  • objective knowledge (science and tech as subtopics)

Here are several more options that may be more in the direction of inclussiveness but perhaps are less useful for general reference in being yet more abstract: core topic levels and core topic quad (actually binary at start). The basic cateogories at these pages are:

• Alternate 4A: very abstract alternate
  • objective world
  • subjective world

• Alternate 4B: abstract, adding inter-subjective world to 4A, very similar to 3 above
  • Nature: objective world (and inter-objective world--ecology, natural systems, etc.)
  • Society: inter-subjective world
  • Mind: subjective world

• Alternate 4C: very abstract, sub-divided (4A topics subdivided into micro-macro topics)
  • Nature, large scale physical and organic world
  • Organismic-behavioral world
  • Socio-cultural world
  • Humans

Feel free to edit and copy the above over to the core topics pages.

In general, I would invite us to lean toward using phrases to describe basic 2, 3 and 4 category origin points -- it allows more to be accomplished. We can pick one or two world labels later.

Perhaps these efforts would benefit from generating more top level categories and choosing a few to develop further. What do you think? Generate more options? Pick options most attracted to? Vir 23:00, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. I'm responding here for clarity. I think we need to pick a 2 or 3 choices from the selection and then put them to the vote. We can perhaps pick our favourite, then go to the main WP1.0 talk page to propose a structure. Personally I like "Alternate 1" and "Alternate 2". #2 has to be on the list because that corresponds with Maurreen's tree, and #1 is basically #2 with history added. I'm assuming that maths goes in with science & technology, is that what you planned? A third choice might be something with more at the top level, such as Vir's original set of eight as used on the core topics tree (I believe this was based loosely on the French top level cats). As for what we call these, we can decide onwce we pick one. I think it is good to make conceptual structure explicit (that's in effect one of the ideas of the tree structure, in effect). All of our descriptions should be straightforward and clear to "the man on the Clapham omnibus". If Vir and Maurreen are OK with this strategy we can take it to Core Topics.

As I've mentioned before I do think we can have alternative categories cutting across the main ones. On the main en page there is one such category, "Biography". So I think we could have one of the type 4 organisations as an alternative system, added later. For now I think simplicity is the best way, until we get WP 1.0 launched. Walkerma 04:12, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Maureen that simplicity at top (for general use) is good. I think picking a few options and refining those is a good idea. We may want to decide to go with around an 8-fold top level rather than 3 or 4 category top levels. This can cut down a little on need for extra verbiage to explain categories. I agree with Martin that it is good to make conceptual structures explicit. That sometimes involves discussion/critique and polishing (because there are various concepts involved. The top level descriptions can be straightforward but footnotes can include and point to more detailed explanations of conceptual structure. (Sorry that I listed so many options above -- I was in a rush yesterday afternoon and was trying get the text online.) Ive copied these options to a sandbox and added some more. A listing of all options is here: core topic trees Vir 15:23, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Note: Please see the latest option for top level topics which is listed on the Core topics talk page. This is Long Option 4A, which is based on the English Wikipedia lists of lists page main categories. (Other options are linked there.) I think comparing 2A and 4A and the originals of both of those is a good step to take now. I think this round of work on this may be nearing a constructive end point (feels so to me anyway). If you have time, please respond at the core topics page? Thx, Vir 17:12, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Martin, I wrote some background about myself and my research on Wikipedia on my talk page. I was unsure about whether to participate while researching Wikipedia. I decided participation is best (if complicated in several ways). I also put a new post on the core topics talk page. If you have time, what do you think about that? Oh, and, I might make it to Wikimania in August. So, I hope to see you there. -- Vir 23:32, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

My apologies

Seems I have been inadvertently multi-linking topic in articles I have edited (Noticed frim your corretions) and also some things in the tables I have forgotten to replace - My mistakes!

Ryan Jones 19:54, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Don't worry, I did exactly the same when I joined WP! Another thing, with major topics like water make sure you link to the appropriate page (such as water (molecule). Many of the links you've added have been helpful, and thank you for your hard work. Walkerma 20:53, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

My RFA

I was going to say something else, which is why I held off this thanks but I've forgotten what I was going to say! Anyway, thanks and enjoy your much deserved semi-wikibreak. :) Gflores ^Talk 02:44, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Sorry

I apologise for not getting back to you regarding pooling ideas - I've not forgotten, I just was hoping to get something else finished first.. I noticed you commented on a version I worked on for the GA page. I'd really appreciate it if you take a quick look and post you feedback. TheGrappler also did sterling work on categorisations within the sections which I think will make it much easier to find articles for viewing, and easier for editors to include and remove articles. The proposed version is here, and I've put an announcement on the talk page. Cheers SeanMack 16:53, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Template:Good article

Template:Good article has been listed for deletion. Please vote to keep this template at Wikipedia:Templates_for_deletion/Log/2006_March_25#Template:Good_article. —RJN 10:30, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

1.0 COTF

You showed support for Amazon rainforest at Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Core topics/Core topics COTF. This article was selected as our collaboration. Hope you can help.

Thanks

Enjoyed your talk on Wikipedia at ACS yesterday. Although I've contributed to Wikipedia from time to time, I have to confess it's been mostly on topics of personal interest, and I haven't delved too much into chemical topics. Thanks for the overview! Chuck 18:04, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! I think our chemistry coverage was weak, but it's now getting to the point where it can be a useful resource, and it should get much better. I like your list of errors on your talk page - I guess I gave you a couple more examples! Cheers, Walkerma 20:18, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

• Hey, Martin! Please do tell: how did it go? Wim van Dorst (Talk) 21:12, 28 March 2006 (UTC).

I was a bit nervous as expected, but I think it went pretty well. The talk was titled "Wikipedia: Social Revolution or Information Disaster?" The first part explained what Wikipedia is, its Alexa ranking, I showed examples of the user's perspective and the perspective of a regular editor, and also mentioned some things about the Wikipedia community (I said that mostly the WikiChemists work well together in a friendly way, too!). I even included a picture of a handsome Dutch chemist at one point! The second part covered some of the strengths and weaknesses of Wikipedia, and I covered the Nature review as well as an academic study. To close (beginning to rush a bit, I was about a minute behind where I'd hoped to be) I looked to the future, and I gave a few conclusions to close. At that point it was 23-24 minutes in, so there was time for one question asking about how you cite Wikipedia. A podcast or webcast was made of the entire morning's talks, so in a few days you may be able to watch the talk and judge for yourself!

I was worried about how some in the audience might feel about open access, but because of the nature of the session (on Social Software) most seemed to be open access advocates. In discussions it was clear that some in the chemical information business are very interested in using wikis, and we may some new developments in the coming year. Walkerma 05:57, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the note on CASREF in chemboxes. I will desist for now from adding any new ones. Jaraalbe 21:49, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

WP 1.0

Hey - Noticed you're working on the Version 1.0 project - would love to get involved since it's probably a whole lot more useful than my usual aimless editing and categorizing. If you could provide some guidance or a to-do list, I'd be thrilled to jump right into the project. Thanks, hope to hear from you! Paul 23:55, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Hey, thanks for responding...I'm still not quite sure how I should start contributing to the project - i.e., are there particular articles I should work on, or are we selecting the articles we will work on, etc...all very exciting, any guidance is much appreciated. Paul 05:20, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

CAS links

Martin: sorry if I got carried away inserting the CAS links into the chemboxes of the articles that we work on. One of our articles got a "correction" that I interpreted to imply that we should be using this linking format. We are content-oriented, usually steering clear of the format stuff. Say the word, and I will revert them. BTW, you can see that we are about to undertake our final assault on stub-dom plus a few others gems.--Smokefoot 03:36, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Barnstar

You're welcome. I'm glad you like it. Thanks fo ryour nice note. Maurreen 04:25, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

It was overdue. The project was in a coma until you came along. Maurreen 06:09, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

AA, GA, FAC, 1.0

I know you have an interest in better co-ordination between GA, FAC, AA and 1.0. I wondered if you knew about the mechanism used on the Norwegian and the Swedish Wikipedias. They use the FAC page to pick the GAs as well. I've seen comments on FAC before like "this is a good article, but not yet a featured one". What would make a degree of sense is to formally allow FAC discussions to ratify GA status without FA status. Similary, AA could be allowed to award GA status if there is consensus there (although the fact that AA uses different criteria to GA is a bit of a problem). I would also suggest that people ratifying articles for 1.0 could nominate sufficiently high class articles they come across for GA status. Admittedly this is all "feeding in" to GA rather than a more helpful style of multi-level co-operation. Perhaps GA reviewers could be integrated into 1.0 in some way, but you have to remember that GA reviewers rarely tend to be experts in the fields they are reviewing (they are more concerned with e.g. basic reference checking than with fact checking) so it would make more sense to use the GA list as a resource within 1.0 (identifying articles that at least hit certain benchmarks). I don't know whether people at FAC or AA would like to become proxy GA reviewers too, and there is a risk it would invite more low quality candidates to be nominated for FA. Still, these are just a bunch of ideas and I wondered if any would spark with any of your thoughts?TheGrappler 20:28, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm answering here to keep the thread going. Thanks a lot, I think the a lot of your ideas are excellent, here are my thoughts:

• I really wish we could do the joint GA/FA thing on the English Wikipedia, but I think the anti-GA people would just get upset and we would have 100kB of heated comments that would waste everyone's time and could even jeapordise the GA proposal. I use the word proposal deliberately - I think most people consider it to be de facto policy, but until it is official policy and established like FA/FAC it would be hard to make the change easily. I think your point about encouraging poor FACs is valid too. I think a system is developing for article -> GAC -> GA -> fix things, poss PR -> FAC -> FA, this provides an easier progression than the old poss PR -> FAC -> FA. I think as long as things are working that way, let's leave things as they are at the moment, at least until GA is official policy and people are used to it as such.
• At 1.0 we are definitely aware of this issue - we are likely to approve a change in our assessment tables so as to tag all GAs as GAs. All of our A-Class articles from Core Topics were nominated for GA, and all but two became GAs. Meanwhile all of the A-Class articles from WP:Chem (whose assessment scheme we use at WP1.0) became GAs when the GA idea was new. We regard the A-Class standard now as an automatic candidate for GA. We need to finish listing the A-Class articles here and then we will nominate all of those for GA. At 1.0 we are often trying to assess a dozen articles in an hour, and we are not experts on those article subjects (as with GA reviewers), so our assessments are therefore bound to be rather superficial. Offering these as GACs gives the A-Class articles a similar but independent second review. I think we will begin to see a lot more articles feeding in from WP 1.0 into GAC in the next few months.
• The Work via WikiProjects part of 1.0 has now contacted all of the WikiProjects, and we have probably "discovered" 100 or so A-Class articles from that so far. This allows WikiProject -> WP1.0 A-Class -> GAC -> GA. From my perspective, though, the most exciting development has been the adoption by several groups of a worklist - see the list of these here. I am very happy with this because who better to assess an article on Buffy the Vampire Slayer than a member of WP:Buffy?! Worklists are (I believe) allowing the projects to find their own GACs more easily, and fix up their B-Class articles to make them GACs, so now we can get WikiProject -> GAC -> GA. The inclusion of subject expertise should make these GAs from the WikiProjects much stronger (IMHO) than the "I found this as a random article and liked it" type of GA nomination.
• As for AA, I think we will probably be able to find equivalents, a 9 or a 10 is a definite A-Class, 6-8 is probably B-Class. Once we have those equivalents become more clear, we can then go AA -> GAC -> GA. I notice that some recent 9s from AA are now GAs.
• I don't see any problem with these other things feeding into GA. I think GA was created to serve as a major clearing house for bringing together good articles. GA serves as a benchmark that is now pretty much accepted across Wikipedia.
• I like the idea of there being an independent review of the article at WP:GAN. As I see it, WP1.0, WikiProjects and WP:AA can provide the initial "This looks good" assessment that then generates candidates for GA. Most 1.0 and AA assessments are based on one person's view, so the second look by someone at GAN is useful.
• My initial idea was to produce a common navigation box template that could bring together all of the projects that are concerned with quality assessment and peer review, similar to the WP 1.0 navbox. I propose to make the box appear at the bottom of the page, rather like Template:Phenethylamines and similar templates in articles. I want to be sure it looks good before I upload it, though, because I'm sure some people will complain. I think it's a much more concise way to do a "See also" or "Related projects", and currently there are many relevant projects that are not linked, so people may be unaware of what related work is going on. Walkerma 05:22, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

Interesting thoughts! Have you seen {{WikiProjcetGATasks}} by the way? How about putting an extra line in the AA blurb saying "if you find an article that is well-written, stable, accurate, referenced, and contains appropriately tagged images, then you can nominate it for good article status at WP:GAN?" I think you're right about the advantages of an independent review at GA - it also helps keep the GA standards consistent, and serves as a "bonus" peer review, which can be helpful given the slow speed of WP:PR at the moment! TheGrappler 13:11, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

Work via WikiProjects

I've gone through and updated the list of most science WikiProjects, most notably WikiProject Medicine, and I think we've had significant progress. However, WikiProjects are created every day, so we don't know if we've contacted all the active projects. However, Interiot ran a dynamic database query for us, which can help us weed out inactive WikiProjects. What do you think about this one? Titoxd^{(?!? - help us)} 07:33, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

Your timezone is GMT-2?

These small hidden remarks, no idiot would normally notice unless he is obsessed with these things: As far as I know there is no timezone at GMT-2 in the US. As you wrote that you'll be busy in GMT-2, I wondered what that could be. So, it is easily found out you're on Greenland, or in Brazil. Either way nice trips. I wish you a pleasant vacation :-). Wim van Dorst (Talk) 15:50, 9 April 2006 (UTC).

Break

Martin, thanks much for your note. I sent you a couple pieces of e-mail. Maurreen 17:11, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

SCOTUS

I am sorry to hear you were ill; I am hopeful you are feeling better. I am glad you found the list useful - as I said, if you guys still need more notable cases, I would be happy to append the list I gave you with another 10-20 cases. I would be more than happy to help your team in any way I can with bringing the Supreme Court cases to the level of quality necessary for inclusion into the 1.0 version - please let me know if there is anything I can do to assist you in that regard. RidG Talk 20:23, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

1.0 process down the road

Thanks very much Martin for putting up those category set options. As you'll see on the 1.0 main talk page, I edited one category label (language-->communication) per the last version mentioned on the core topics talk page. If you disagree, I don't know what the step to revise is. I leave that up to you and AtionSong and whomever. Revert I guess.

I am moving for now to work on some things that I think are very important (which will actually serve the 1.0 project): collaborating in polishing the vital articles list and helping some how to improve some GA & FA articles and article review processes. I love publishing and collaborative publishing projects, so...

For future 1.0 processes, I'll check in from time to time: I remain very interested in 1.0, but not so much .5 and .8. at this time. I am specifically interested in what can be done to encourage expert humanities & scientific reviews of all articles. I am also interested in whatever other quality review processes come online. I will remain interested in adapting categorization sets as 1.0 gest closer. Oh, in time, I'll probably do some reviews of core topics society and social science articles. See you around in GA and perhaps Scientific PR and back here in awhile, --Vir 19:17, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I'll make sure we agree on something and push forward. The revision is fine to me. We need people working to get things good for 1.0 now, so I'm glad you're involved with that, and I'll remind you that Humanities could benefit from your expertise. I think the WP:VA is a great thing to work on and something I think we will be using for WP1.0. Thanks, Walkerma 19:26, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Cool :) I wonder if the convoluted prose in my comment and the edit of option C has had any effect in slowing down voting. Sigh, too much attention to detail. Perhaps I should've left it the way it was. Since you are OK with the edit, do you mind tossing in an indented "I'm OK with that" or whatever?

OK, I will look at Humanities sometime between now and August. I want to look at Society and Sociology and Social sciences and other very general "society" articles too -- don't know when I'll get to it. These are mind-bogglingly broad subjects to think about short articles for. I'm growing found of the idea of offering concise summaries of topics in the most general articles -- really having them be portals (even having theme be almost annotated tables of contents to whole fields) -- it would make them much easier to write. One reason: This would make it much easier to defer POV issues to the next level. It would be nice to find some best examples of types of portal articles: comparing those that have some narrative & theory summary with those with very short summaries. Any ideas? --Vir 02:15, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

1.0 and new FAs

Australia at the Winter Olympics, which you rated as A-class in February, has since become a featured article. Is there some process for new FAs having their status updated in the 1.0 project? Thanks, Andjam 07:32, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Tawkerbot2

Martin: I spend a lot of time inputting content so I was very, very upset to have a serious edit wrecked by tawkerbot 2, accusing me of vandalism. Could you please explain to that group that I dont vandalize? Very upsetting and discouraging.Smokefoot 01:20, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Martin thank you for your helpful comments. Your considerable attention is helpful not just to me but many like me. I have done some editing off-line as you recommend. The Tawkerbot2 thing just froze my edit and I couldnt even cut and paste back into another application - hence my anger. I also saw how you did the refs in NaSH, and I will adopt that format. With much admiration for one who has dipped his (gloved) hand into S2Cl2,Smokefoot 02:53, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

WP:WVWP

Sure, no problem. I had already seen your post, and was replying to it before I got distracted by the watchlist bug. Thanks! Titoxd^{(?!? - help us)} 05:30, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Quality levels

Hi, Martin, you might be interested in a [discussion] at GA. Maurreen 04:18, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

RE: Wikipedia 1.0

Hi there! Thanks for your note and advice. I'm emerging from an extended wikibreak of sorts, so I apologise for not having perused the cornucopia of information regarding this long-overdue initiative yet. In any event, I do believe that an outline/tree like such (or similar), perhaps with drill-down menus/arrows (CSS?):

• [macrocategory] [A]
  • [category] [B]
    • [microcategory...] [C]

would be more effective in exhibiting the intended structure and hierarchy. Anyhow, let me know if you've questions. Thanks again! E Pluribus Anthony | talk | 05:13, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

Yes: hi there; I'll soon be ramping up again in Wp. Forgive me for not replying to your prior post. I will take a crack at an alternate core topics tree, even though I like the outline Maurreen has proposed (if, for anything, just how it appears); give me a few days.

Also, I'd be willing to assist with moving things along or leading efforts for this topic ... but I cannot guarantee a speedy turnaround. What are the timelines? Moreover, is there a succinct one-pager/primer or the like (besides the infobox on the right!) about the project, or can you provide me with related links? That would be helpful.

Moreover, I've been engaged in some discussion to initiate a 'hydrography' wikiproject (e.g., oceans and seas), but have yet to strike this. In any event, three users (including me) have expressed interest in participating. As such, both this wikiproject and expressed interest might be of benefit to the current topic. Thoughts? Thanks! E Pluribus Anthony | talk | 22:38, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your note; the suggested course of action regarding a gazetteer makes sense, but it will probably have to be expanded somewhat to account for locales and other over-arching topics (e.g., landforms, etc.) I think we can do so through merely adding relevant 'branches' to the topic tree. Anyhow, I shall review, provide more feedback and recommendations shortly.

As well, I don't think it'll be problematic regarding maps. There are numerous Wikipedians who actively create these, including myself: upon requests (of sorts), I recently created detailed (and somewhat consistent) maps for Canada and Norway. Anyhow, please let me know if you've any questions. Thanks again! E Pluribus Anthony | talk | 17:14, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

{{chemistry}}

I've changed the template to allow the class parameter, just like {{hurricane}} does. As the Chemistry WikiProject has extensive lists, you may find them quite useful. Titoxd^{(?!? - help us)} 02:01, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

1.0, Core, ane möre

Hello Martin :-) Emerging from a Wikimania-induced haze...

1. I'll get back to work on blessed revisions soon. We need something such as this badly.
2. Humanities has been COTW for a while now... Time for Toy, I think. But I'll let someone else make the change, perhaps this Sunday. How do you promote that?

+sj + 14:05, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Assessment tables

Yeah, I had set up a live table already. It is the table for WP Cyclones, and it is at the WPScience listing, all the way to the bottom. Titoxd^{(?!? - help us)} 02:23, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

I've been working on a perlscript to create these tables. (initially for use in WP:Beatles) I would be interested in feedback on it, it can be changed to do different things, more columns, less, etc. You can see a sample of what it creates at User:Lar/Sandbox2. The script itself would be released as GFDL. It uses the category SQL dump as input along with a list of categories. Any interest? I've tried stirring some but no luck so far. ++Lar: t/c 03:00, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks Tito for the (very prompt!) reply and link, I've started work. As for the perlscript table, Lar, that looks fantastic! Do you mind if I link to your test page from the worklist description page to alert people to it, or would you prefer to wait? I suspect the WP:1.0 project would be very interested, we have up to 700 WikiProjects to trawl though! You should take a look at the lengthy discussion we had a day or two ago. Also, take a look at the sample table I'm writing the old-fashioned way (the only way I know!). Thanks a lot to both of you. Walkerma 03:11, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Please link to it! I've been stalled at a certain point for a couple of weeks now, and this would provide impetus to get moving again and meet the needs of the projects. A key thing they need to know to use this scheme is, what are the categories their project covers. I'll update the code as well so it's the same version as what produced the most recent sample table. ++Lar: t/c 03:38, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Now added, thanks! If the list becomes an official worklist of the Beatles project (they'd be crazy not to use it!), please let me know I'll also add it into the list of worklists below. Cheers, Walkerma 03:53, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Mathbot and WP1.0

Hi Martin. I wrote a first rough script, with the result being at User:Mathbot/WP1.0. Wonder if you can comment at User talk:Mathbot/WP1.0. Thanks. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:56, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

{{chemistry}}

I see the problem with the template. If you call class=Start, it recognizes the parameter, but if you use class=start, it doesn't. I'll go through and change all the bad calls. Titoxd^{(?!? - help us)} 04:25, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Jabir ibn Hayyan

Hi Martin!

Im sorry to bother you. But since you have been involved in many chemistry related articles, your neutral stand is urgently needed in the Jabir ibn Hayyan article, regarding his ethnicity. Nearly all reliable sources say that he was an Arab. I listed all sources here: [3].

Thank you! jidan 00:57, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for sharing your wisdom with us ;). I actually had no problems with the Geber article, until this nationalistic user called ManiF, transported all his ethnic-crap to chemistry related articles that has nothing to do with his ethnicity [4]. Unfortunatly I was stupied enough to fall in his trap ;(. jidan 00:29, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

A wiki user User:Inahet, had actually took the time to go the library, borrow the book E.J. Holmyard's Makers of Chemistry, and type the part important about Jabir's ethnic background. I have commented this. More here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Geber#A_test . jidan 17:33, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Mathbot & automated worklists

As I'm preparing to convert the WP:MILHIST worklist to the project banner version, I've come up with a few questions; I'm not quite sure where the best place to ask is, so I was hoping you knew the answer, or could direct me to someone who does.

1. Will Mathbot be using the categories (e.g. Category:FA-Class chemistry articles) or the template tags (e.g. {{chemstry|class=FA}}) to compile the worklists? In other words, does the parameter need to be named "class" for it to work?
2. Can it also fill in the article importance rating automatically, whether from a category or another parameter in the template? If so, is there a standard scale of importance ratings we can use?

Kirill Lokshin 19:54, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

Will do. The work we've been doing is more basic groundwork—creating subpages and so forth—in any case. It's likely that we won't actually be in a position to start using the new assessment method for another week or two. Kirill Lokshin 01:32, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for barnstar

Martin, thank you! The barnstar was thoughtful. It made me feel good. It helps make all this feel more worthwhile. :) Maurreen 20:29, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

Links to images

To link to images directly, you can add a colon before the image link. For example to link to the image when the United States article was deleted, you type [[:Image:US deleted.PNG]], which produces Image:US deleted.PNG. Titoxd^{(?!? - help us)} 22:08, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

Oh, wait... you mean using something like {{featured article}}, with the image as the link itself? I believe the appropriate way to do so is through {{click}}, but it is highly discouraged... Titoxd^{(?!? - help us)} 22:36, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree, it is a handicap, especially for pages like the Main Page. It is useful for editors to see the image description page, in case an image is vandalized, for easy access and reversion, but most newbies have no clue about that, and click on a link expecting to reach an article. I believe that the main issue with it is that the current implementation is an ugly hack in some browsers, so persuading Brion in Wikimania might be a good method.

As for going to Wikimania myself, I doubt it. I would have to fly/drive at least 5,000 miles, from Arizona to Harvard, and that is outside of the budget of an undergraduate aerospace engineering student... I'd like to give some kind of lecture/discussion/round table about 1.0, but alas, I wouldn't be able to be there. I could write a statement and give it to you for reading, but I'm not sure if I'll have the time to do so (I might).

Don't worry about it, I'm glad to help. :) Titoxd^{(?!? - help us)} 05:03, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Core Topics COTF

You showed support for Toy at Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Core topics/Core topics COTF. This article was selected as our collaboration of the fortnight. Hope you can help.

Assessments

Thanks, that's good news that the bot will get the evaluated articles. Maurreen 02:33, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Geography

I'm ahead of you. I already asked for someone to take it over a couple of days ago. :) Maurreen 02:56, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Image:WP1 0 Icon.png

As the image is a derivative work of the copyrighted Wikipedia logo, we cannot claim it under the GFDL. I've changed the logo's licensing to reflect that it is owned by the Wikimedia Foundation, after consulting with Anthere, one of the Board's members. Just to let you know. Titoxd^{(?!? - help us)} 05:42, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, glad you thought of that! Walkerma 05:44, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

All right, now to respond to your question (as I was quite busy fixing the copyright thingie :P): Adding a new parameter would not change the table, nor it would affect the bot, but I'm not sure how the bot might be able to process it. Perhaps adding a status column would be better, but making sure it is manually updated, like with the comments. Also, there's the issue of page width. As you can see, the Cyclones table is very wide, and adding too much information will make a few things wrap to two rows, which will make it even longer. So, perhaps we need to add a small template, akin to {{FA}} (Template:FA), to mark the status in the comments section? Titoxd^{(?!? - help us)} 06:02, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

You may also be interested in this thread in the Foundation's mailing list (foundation-l), as you know the technical/publication details much better than I do. Titoxd^{(?!? - help us)} 19:37, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Interestingly enough, I hadn't seen at all your reply on my talk page... :P I didn't know that the articles would be categorized after passed / failed; that would certainly make it easier. Let me try a few things in the assessment templates to make things a bit narrower, and tell me what you think. Titoxd^{(?!? - help us)} 23:39, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Reply from BozMo

Walkerma,

Reading your message carefully this time...I think the idea of you going for a release in the autumn is a good one. Could you messenger or email because I'd like to talk through some of the details of what you have in mind for us to do off line? I think a much better shot at a children's release is quite a good idea and we have some other educational partners who might want in as well.

I am andrew AT my homepage which is catesfamily dot org dot uk. There is a simple spam challenge.

--BozMo talk 09:39, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

A-Class articles

(copied from my userpage -- I'm not sure how these userpage communications are supposed to work. You have my permission to delete this without objection if I've put it here improperly).

Hi, I just wanted to explain that I reverted your change to Template:Grading scheme, because it would be quite a significant change in wording. We already have a couple of thousand articles assessed using this system, it would be a major change. Can you post your views on the template talk page? You could post it here as the topic has been mentioned before, though personally I agree with Titoxd's response. For an example of a short A-Class article that I wrote, see gold(III) chloride - is this what you had in mind? Wikipedia isn't limited by size of paper, that's why Jordanhill railway station was an FA candidate - I'd say if that topic can be considered for FA, almost anything can be! Cheers, Walkerma 21:44, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the note. As you can see, I have further reverted the change by Sj that prompted my initial change -- if we had to talk about it first, then that policy should apply to everyone, not just me. It appears that you are responding to an implication that FA status should not be available to short articles. I didn't mean to initiate such an implication. I have no problem with short articles having FA status or any other status befitting their quality. I intended my edits to reflect the reality so far as it exists, and to augment it within the new system. I would encourage you to reinstate my proposal, but with edits that conform to your understanding of what the differences would be between a short A-Class article, FA, GA, etc. To me, the difference would be that when an article suffers because it is short, it shouldn't get as far as GA (unless it's just a little short), whereas an article ought to be short should not be penalized for brevity in GA, AC and FA status. I bet we're in agreement on this -- if so, why not be bold and state it in the template in a way that makes you comfortable. Thesmothete 21:53, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

RE: Request for help on Village Pump (technical)

I've had a look at the wikicode for User:Walkerma/WP1.0 and all I could find was an erroneous div with no content and display: none;, and a background: none; style attribute on another div, both of which I removed to match the other sections. I couldn't find anything that could be affecting it. What is really weird is using the Developer toolbar in IE and opening up the DOM Inspector, it shows the Arts div as having the CSS property background-color: #ccccff;, but it just isn't displaying. I'll poke around a bit more but I doubt I'll be able to fix it, sorry. — Ian Moody ^(talk) 18:38, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Okay so it was easier than I thought, turns out an empty div before the Arts one with clear: both; fixes the problem. — Ian Moody ^(talk) 18:47, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

WP1.0 version

Hi Martin. I haven't been reading carefully enough or promtly enough the requests at User talk:Mathbot/WP1.0, so to come back to you, it is easy enough to read information from categories like Category:Version 0.5 science and add that info to appropriate subject pages in the WP1.0 project. As soon as you get the categories going, let me know and I will work on it. Cheers, Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 04:49, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

And I have a question at User_talk:Mathbot/WP1.0#Assessed version (approx) vs. current version of article. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 04:54, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

Article importance ratings

I've been discussing some potential automation here with Oleg, and have come up against two main issues:

• Do we have a standard set of importance ratings? I noticed that the chemistry and mathematics articles use a four-level scheme, but there doesn't seem to be any page describing what the levels actually mean.
• Would there be a major problem with having the rating given in the tag (e.g. {{WPMILHIST|class=A|importance=High}}), with an associated category like Category:High-importance military history articles that Mathbot could use? I'm not sure if every project would need to go along with this, or if Mathbot could be set to only automatically compile ratings from those projects that use them.

If there's a better place to discuss this, incidentally, please let me know. I'm a bit lost among all the various talk pages that are devoted to various aspects of this rating process ;-) Kirill Lokshin 05:41, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

My bot would compile such data from wherever it can find them. So if some projects don't use ratings, my bot will just have blank field there. The true problem would be only if different projects implement ratings in different way. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 06:00, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

User:Walkerma/WP1.0

All right, I've played with that page for a while now. Tell me how it looks on your browser, and tell me if you would mind moving that page to Wikipedia:Version 0.5. Titoxd^{(?!? - help us)} 02:48, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

It looks fine, thank you so much! As well as the formatting, I appreciate your removing the article listings. I was away much of the weekend, so I'm just catching up on a things. I am tweaking a couple of things (like removing the cyclists!) then moving it over. Do you like the pink/red colour, by the way? I wanted something different from 1.0, GA and FA, and the red seems to suggest to me it being a small test version (like red=stub in our assessments). But I'm not much of an artist! Thanks again, Walkerma 03:06, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

No problem. As for the pink/red color scheme, I don't mind; as long as it is consistent within the release, it's all right with me (and the stub=red idea is good too). The next step is getting reviewers to actually grade the articles and get this started. Titoxd^{(?!? - help us)} 04:00, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for vouching

Thanks for vouching for me in my unblocking request. I was unblocked that evening and I was able to make some useful edits. H Padleckas 19:15, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

You're welcome - I don't expect it did much, but just wanted to help. Regards, Walkerma 19:21, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

KHP

Legit, you fixed the table! w00t w00t. --M1ss1ontomars2k4 | T | C | @ 02:00, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Business now COTF

You showed support for Amazon rainforest at Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Core topics/Core topics COTF. This article was selected as our collaboration. Hope you can help.

Octet rule, 18-electron rule and electron counting

Dear Martin, Smokefoot and I (Dirk Beetstra) have been spending some time on electron counting and complex (chemistry). After working on electron counting for some time, I decided to move the 18-electron rule out of that article, creating a page which would be comparable to octet rule (on which I did some minor edits now). The category for 18-electron rule is clearly inorganic chemistry related (maybe some main group), but in which category would electron counting now fall? Could you have a look through these pages, and help me with the right categories (and maybe give some (hints for) more info that would fit here)? Thanks! Dirk Beetstra 20:24, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Re: Importance definition

Thanks, that should help somewhat. We're still discussing how we should assign the importance ratings within the project, so it might be some time before we can do any real work in that field. It would be nice if Mathbot could be set up to grab them from the talk page tags somehow, since editing our worklist directly is soon going to be a nightmare.

Overall, though, we're quite happy with the assessment tagging; we're about a fifth of the way through the articles that already have our project banner, at this point. Incidentally, I seem to recall you saying at one point that you wanted to have 10,000 articles rated by the end of the year? If that's the case, you might want to revise your estimate, since WP:MILHIST alone will provide you with more than that! ;-) Kirill Lokshin 18:04, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

WP:1.0, introducing myself

Hi, Walkerma. I am heavily involved with Russia-related articles and I believe I could help with both nomination and assesments of the articles. Also been in the real life a CFD-person working for simulation of plastic processes I could help with some CFD, Numerical Math and Plastic -related articles.

In my wiki-experience National portals like Portal-Russia, Portal:Ukraine, Poratal:Belarus, Portal:Poland, etc. works essentially as overblown Wikiprojects. I think we should contact people from there. abakharev 06:49, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Content 18 VE rule

Dear Martin, could you have a look at Talk:18-Electron rule, Brichcja and I seem to get into a content-dispute. IMHO, 18 electron rule should talk about the fact that the metal in TM-compounds have room for 18 electrons, and that compounds deviating from that show, in general, more reactivity. Brichcja is convinced that 18 VE principly only applies to organometallic compounds (I fail to see the difference between organometallics and inorganics, from the metal point of view). I have stopped editing that page for now (I spend some time on the talk page, but will wait for some other opinions now), though I am not happy with a lot of the things that are now written on it. I have also asked Smokefoot for an opinion. Thanks! --Dirk Beetstra 17:15, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Re: Wikipedia 1.0

Hey, thanks for the message. I definately think I will be most helpful with the Core Topics. I have tasked myself to copyedit all the core topics, as well as assess articles for V0.5. Let me know if there's anything else. Later, Chuck^(척뉴넘) 02:46, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

About the same thing: I had actually been thinking of nominating one article to jumpstart everything, so I agree. It's time to open the page. Titoxd^{(?!? - help us)} 02:57, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Hey. I think that we should definately use #:'s to quickly address one or two things that are needed, that way it can stay up for nomination while the problem is taken care of. With the case of Tony Blair, there's the problem with the references, the fact that there is no description for most of the refs, just an accomanying external link. This can be easily taken care of. So yeah, I think (like was already done with the List of elements by name nomination) that we should do some explaining. I was thinking about this just before your message and, although it might require too much work, it might be good to require the consensus of two reviewers to pass or fail and article. Since you have to be on the list of reviewers to review an article for inclusion, maybe reviews should be assigned to the different reviewers. This would also take care of articles just sitting there. Just a thought. Thanks for the message, Chuck^(척뉴넘) 03:46, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Version 0.5

I have extra things going on with work, etc., lately, but I'll try to lend a hand. Also, I got your e-mail about the supplement, and it's very smart thinking of you. Maurreen 03:09, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Well, about the category, I don't have strong feelings either way. It can be renamed by a bot if necessary, so that's not really a problem, for now.

As for Mathbot: I'm not entirely sure how it would work... the easiest way would be to add an assessment parameter to {{v0.5}} (which would cause Mathbot to automatically pick it up), and just make sure that it matches the WikiProject assessment, if necessary. Having an automatic process for this might be harder. As to add pages automatically to WP:V0.5, I'm not 100% on the idea... we want to make sure that every article that is on the category is actually approved, so the Wikipedia:Version 0.5 page could serve as the "human checklist", so to speak. Titoxd^{(?!? - help us)} 03:33, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Well, as the tracking would start when we approve the article, we can add the class parameter to the "approved" template ({{v0.5}}), and just not add an Unassessed category to not mess up the results. (If we decide later that we need such a category, we may always force all pages that include the template to change automatically by editing the template, thanks to the job queue.) Having functionality like the GAAuto script would be nice, though.

As for generating trees, I've never entirely understood the tree interface myself, so that would be something for you and Oleg to discuss. However, the easiest way to obtain the data is through the template, as I said above. Titoxd^{(?!? - help us)} 04:07, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Chemical substance

Having noticed that you added the classification to it of "stub", I wonder what you think about how this article fits. It used to be classified as a disambiguation page that referred to the respective chemical element, chemical compound, atom, etc., but now it has been suggested to transform it into a top-level summary of a chemical substance in general. However, because of that, I don't see how it could ever become anything more than a stub. - Centrx 21:47, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

I can't think of what would be in it other than overviews of information already in other articles. General information about reactions? General safe handling? General information about chemistry, bonding..? - Centrx 06:28, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

I changed the intro, and upgraded the rather nerdy description of the term 'chemical substance' to a more mondaine one .. isn't everything a chemical substance? What I mean is, the man in the street reads newspapers, and when a truck with ethanol has had an accident, the press describes the compound suddenly as a chemical substance. I think this page could be used to tell what a chemical substance is, I would even suggest to make some general compound point back to this page, if reasonably possible. No stub mark, not necessary, though it could use some more down-to-earth examples. But indeed, keep the page small and comprehensive. --Dirk Beetstra 07:50, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

I have copied this discussion to Talk:Chemical substance and interpolated it with that found on User talk:Centrx#Chemical substance. - Centrx 23:32, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial Team

Hi! I would like to join this team. I'm fourth year medical student in Hungary. I'm admin in hungarian wikipedia, wikiquote and wikibooks. I work in medical, biological related articles (have some FAs) in hun wiki and I maintain here the medical portal. I'm ready to help and take part in this wonderful project. What I ask from you is your opinion about joining and it would be very kind from you if you'd explain to me in brief how will start this work, where can I help. Thanks, regards, NCurse 17:23, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the long answer. Good to hear about your trip to Hungary. :) I wanted to work on medicine, biology and all of my nominated articles. My question (hope the last ones :) ):

• I'd like to join review group. It needs just a word or someone have to approve me, have to vote about me?

No, we're just glad to have your help! See the answer to the last question to understand why we're keeping it simple. Having the team of reviewers completely open also means that we can't be accused of elitism, which would cause a lot of bad feeling. Walkerma

• As far as I can see things now, you don't have a core topics coordinator and a geography coordinator. Don't you need scientific coordinator?

Right now most of the active folks are wearing about ten hats already - so I would be very happy to have you in charge of the science reviewing, other than ones you nominated yourself (I see it was you who added medicine and biology!).

• At least how many articles will be published on the CD?

A lot depends on how popular it is to nominate & review, I planned on a minimum of about 1000, and I don't expect more than about 10,000, but 2-3000 is most likely. Having said that, it's had a good start, so 5000 may be possible.

• Who will make the last decisions about articles? Review group? What if hundreds of editors will want to gen into that group?

Yes, the review group. I think there will be a hard core of dedicated people who will probably be final arbiters. We'll worry about too many people later on, right now we need reviewers badly!

• And why do we need a version 0.5?

Your earlier questions in effect give the answer. There are several I can think of quickly:

• • V0.5 is in effect a test bed for all sorts of systems, some of which are quite new to Wikipedia. We can make some mistakes, and people will realise that it's only a test release, then we can find what works and apply it to 1.0. That includes the open review panel - the process for "passing" at WP:V1.0N is planned to be much more stringent, so anything we miss here should get caught at the 1.0 stage.
  • We can get a sense of the likely size of releases - right now everything is largely unknown.
  • We will build up a team of reviewers with experience, and who know each other, hopefully many of this team will go on to help with the 1.0 release.
  • We will build up a body of articles that will be automatically nominated for 1.0., to get 1.0 off to a flying start.

You make a fantastic job! Good to see that some of you how can coordinate this wonderful job. I will help in any way needed. :) NCurse 20:29, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks a lot! We really appreciate your help. Are you willing to look after the science reviews for us? Cheers, Walkerma 01:10, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

Ok, now I can see things much clearer. Of course, I'd like to look after the science reviews. It's honour for me. :) Now I will read the nominated scientific articles, check their quality then continue nominations. But I thought that hundreds would want to be part of the review team. Maybe later more editor will join. Good work! :) NCurse 10:23, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

Sorry to have so many questions but I want to do possibly perfect job. If I move an article from 0.5 nominations to V0.5 then that article should have

• no mistakes
• just GFDL licenced images?
• no cleanup, POV templates.

Do I see it well? And What about other templates which help you to find similar articles? NCurse _work 10:41, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

I doubt if any article is perfect ("no mistakes") but "no significant mistakes" may be a better way to put it. For core topics and countries of the world, where we are aiming for complete coverage, we will tolerate articles that are incomplete or organised less well (B-Class), as long as there are no cleanup or POV problems. Regarding copyright, I've been sloppy with this for V0.5, but we should probably record in our comments section of our table if there are "fair use" images. We allow "fair use" even in FAs, so they are everywhere, but we will have to be more careful for a CD release. I was assuming that part of the preparation for release would be to examine image copyright tags for all articles, and eliminate any we can't use. Thanks again for helping out, hopefully the review team will continue to grow. Walkerma 15:59, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

While browsing among wikiprojects and nominate articles a question was raised in me:

• I examined others scientific nominations and moved the proper articles into V0.5. And I nominated dozens of articles and plan to continue. If there will be nobody in the scientific section (as it seems now) who will move my nominations into V0.5, can I take the responsibility that I can decide whether an article can get into V0.5 or I have to wait for someone else to decide over my nominations. It is just about scientific related articles. I hope it was understandable. :) Anyway I try to always do proper job and I've always dealt with science. So I feel, I can move my nominations well. And if needed I assume obligations for that. What do you think about that? NCurse _work 10:43, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

I think we should be strict in not allowing the same person to nominate and review, because we want to get two opinions. Sometimes one person can miss some important problem in the article, but a second person will often find the problem. I am a PhD organic chemist with some college physics, I think I can be review your nominations if they begin to build up (though you may have to wait I am off to a conference for much of this week, in fact to talk about wikis!). Most of the articles for this CD are not at the specialist level, fortunately.

By the way, would you mind if I posted this discussion an FAQ page for other reviewers to look at? I suspect that many of your questions could be typical of new reviewers (thought really, we're all new at this!), so these postings could be very helpful for others to read. I can fix any English errors if you want. Walkerma 03:01, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

As you wish. Ok, I'll wait for somebody else. Until then I continue to nominate articles. What if somebody removes my nomination saying failed by quality, etc.? We should talk about it on the article's talk page? NCurse _work 10:34, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Utilisateur Jean-Pol GRANDMONT

Walkerma

Merci pour votre sympathique message. Je suis fort heureux que vous ayez utilisé l'image Antoing JPG04.jpg. Bonne continuation sur WIKIPIDIA !

Jean-Pol Grandmont

New Idea for 0.5 Version Nominations reviewing

Hey, I made a layout for my idea of reviewing at User:Chcknwnm/Sandbox. If you think it's appropriate it should probably go to Wikipedia:Version 0.5 Nominations/Reviews. Anyway, let me know what you think, and feel free to say that it will cause too much extra work or isn't appropriate for this project...just looking for feedback. I'll send this message to all the current reviewers to get their imput. Later, Chuck^(척뉴넘) 06:18, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, Kirill Lokshin said the same thing about reviewers reviewing what they know. I think the 0.5 nominations though are going to increase in scope as this thing gets going, and there are going to be lots of articles that no one knows very well, but may still be important. Because of that, I thought the assigning would come into play, to make sure that each article does indeed get reviewed and not just ignored, or even worse, get a pass or fail just to get rid of it. Which is what the two reviewers would be for...to make certain that an article is indeed reviewed in a true and unbiased manner. I realize this is only 0.5, but if we don't get this one too right, they might not even let us go to 1.0 (NOOOOOOO!!!!)(unlikely, but just worth a mention). These of course are just my opinions, so we'll wait I guess to get the opinions of everyone else. If worst comes to worst, the idea can chill in my sandbox and look good :) . Later, Chuck^(척뉴넘) 06:45, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Version 0.5 Reviewing

Well, I've been thinking about the sandbox idea above, and it seems like a good idea, with one exception: reviewers with expertise in one area do not get to necessarily review articles in that area. But then, I've noticed that the same is happening in the current system: I've pretty much reviewed articles about astronomy and other natural sciences, yet there's a small backlog in history, for which I think Kirill Lokshin may know more, so I don't touch them. Yet, at the same time, I cannot touch any of the tropical cyclone articles that are nominated, as I've edited most of them as part of WP:TROP... in brief, what should we do about this? Should we stay reviewing articles which we know something about, or should we be a bit more risky and review articles in areas we are unfamiliar with? Titoxd^{(?!? - help us)} 06:41, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

I think both pages are a good idea, with one exception: the "Disputes" page should be for the cases where another reviewer disagrees with the opinion of another, instead of it being a nominatior. I think it would be necessary so we don't have something alike the WP:AFD→WP:DRV→WP:AFD circle at the other side of the quality scale. Titoxd^{(?!? - help us)} 06:59, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

I guess that makes sense, although I'm a bit leery of it, as I've seen WP:DRV being gamed in unimaginable ways. That said, we can make a second review composed of three reviewers "final", and hopefully it doesn't have to go from there. I'll look forward to the WikiProject contact soon. Titoxd^{(?!? - help us)} 07:13, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

The first instance of this needed system that I've seen: Hoba meteorite is something I would have failed on quality immediately, and it was held instead. Titoxd^{(?!? - help us)} 03:40, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Good point, that article should be removed from "held." I confess I punted a few into "held" last night and I can't say I more than glanced at them, because I couldn't see us finding room for an article about tooth enamel on this test. But I (and others) probably need to check for quality more carefully, so we don't waste time reviewing poor quality "held" articles. Thanks, Walkerma 03:47, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Could I have a second opinion on Sandy Koufax? It passes quality-wise, but I can't decide whether it should go to the holding cell or to the release... Titoxd^{(?!? - help us)} 05:45, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

He is in that gray area, indeed, as the ones that are on my "short list" are Babe Ruth, Jackie Robinson, Hank Aaron, Ty Cobb and Cy Young... but he definitely is on the next rank, or in the same one. Again, it's not in my area of expertise... Titoxd^{(?!? - help us)} 05:55, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

COTW Project

You voted for [[Template:Cotw1]], this week's Collaboration of the week. Please come and help it become a featured-standard article.

Question on importance

Hi Martin. Wonder if you could comment at Wikipedia talk:Version_1.0_Editorial Team/Index of subjects#Category-based importance ratings. Thanks. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:14, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Helping with contacting WikiProjects

My primary interest with WVWP at the moment is in coordinating with the Physics WikiProject, but in principle I can help contact some WikiProjects. Let me know when it gets started! -- SCZenz 06:47, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Hi Martin. I am happy enough with the bot generated WP lists, so as far as I am concerned, any time could be good to contact the wikiprojects about WP 1.0. Cheers, Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 05:39, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

That's great news! We'll start contacting them tomorrow. Walkerma 06:06, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

I've tried for example contacting science wikiproject and they replied with plenty of articles. I've already nominated them. Maybe we should contact them personally. NCurse _work 08:12, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

Software for CD version (0.5, 1.0)

Martin, I have all these pages on my watchlist, and there are some on Meta as well.

• ‎Wikipedia:Database download
• ‎Wikipedia:Pushing to 1.0
• ‎Wikipedia:Stable versions
• ‎Wikipedia:Static version
• ‎Wikipedia:Version 0.5 Nominations
• ‎Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team
• ‎Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Index of subjects
• ‎Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Test Version
• ‎Wikipedia:Vital articles

Where do you think it is best to talk about software to assemble content for a CD ? I see the job as too big to be done via hand selection. I am also more interested in coverage than quality - I figure the quality will just get better. So, I want automated methods, both for selecting good coverage, and (less important at the moment) version selection. I also would like to target a size - 128Meg, 512Meg, 600Meg, 1Gig, 4Gig. I am also interested in post-processing - stripping redlinks, including main article references on core articles, like History of South Africa etc. I want to be able to tweak parameters, then press a button and get a new CD (from my downloaded XML dump of en and a picture collection, and possibly via a live mediawiki snapshot of that content). Wizzy…☎ 15:15, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Soil

This is a new wikiproject covering about 250 articles, almost all of which seem to be in a stub or start stage. Project formation was prompted by {{WPCD}} tagging. See here for the project's article assessment format. Any pointers or advice you can offer would be appreciated. -- Paleorthid 16:00, 11 June 2006 (UTC)