User talk:Walkerma

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This is Martin Walker's discussion page. Archives

Archive1 — Archive2 — Archive3 — Archive4 — Archive5 — Archive6 — Archive7 — Archive8 — Archive9 — Archive10 — Archive11 — Archive12 — Archive13 — Archive14 — Archive15 — Archive16 — Archive17 — Archive18 — Archive19 — Archive20

/Archive21 (Jun-Aug 2008). C-Class vote aftermath, , 1.0 (helping, version selection, 0.7 planning, etc), Dispatch, OLPC, Chemistry on Freebase, WP1.0 Bot new version, Hydrochloric acid FAR.

/Archive22 (Sep-Oct 2008). Version 0.7 consultation with WikiProjects, CAS file review.

/Archive23 (Nov 2008-Feb 2009). Article assessment developments, Organofluorine chemistry and PFOA, Version 0.7 odds & ends, IsisDraw, WPChem worklist, some assessments, Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards.

/Archive24 (Mar 2009-Jul 2009) A-Class discussion, core contest awards, the new 1.0 bot and V0.8, assessment consistency, cerium(III) chloride, boron, WP:Chemistry in the Signpost, Wikipedian of the Day.

/Archive25 (Aug 2009-Aug 2010) Wikimania, chemistry article validation/CheMoBot, Version 0.7 and Version 0.8 including indexing, Okawix, Book-Class/Wikibooks.

/Archive26 (Aug 2010-Dec 2012) Pending changes/Flagged revisions, Version 0.8, Chemistry image validation, YuviPanda's GSoC project for WP1.0, menthol elimination, WP1.0 release version tools, Wikimania 2012. Discussion

Talkback: you've got messages!

Hello, Walkerma. You have new messages at Theopolisme's talk page.
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The WikiProject: Good Articles Newsletter (January 2013)

The WikiProject Good articles Newsletter Volume IV, No. 1 – January 2013 For past newsletters click here

In This Issue Featured editorial: Skyfall by Hahc21. Project News: A record, and issue and a future. Good Articles of the Month: See which articles were picked this year of records: 190 articles passed in December! GA Task Forces: Results from the drive Member News: Two crucial users leave the project Read this newsletter Single-page Unsubscribe Newsletter delivered by EdwardsBot · 3 January 2012

This newsletter was delivered by EdwardsBot (talk) 14:42, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Talkback: you've got messages!

Hello, Walkerma. You have new messages at Theopolisme's talk page.
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WikiProject Good Articles Newsletter - February 2013

The WikiProject Good articles Newsletter Volume IV, No. 2 – February 2013 For past newsletters click here

In This Issue Featured editorial: Time to make a Sweep by Hahc21. Project News: Several proposals are currently ongoin at the project, including two requests for comment. Good Articles of the Month: See which articles were picked this year of records: 282 articles passed in January! GA Task Forces: Some minor notes this month Member News: Member news Read this newsletter Single-page Unsubscribe Newsletter delivered by EdwardsBot · 12 February 2012

Wikipedia:Release Version Nominations

Hi there, just wanted to point out there are some nominations waiting since 2011, will you take a look at them? :) Cheers, --Lester Foster (talk | talk) 06:10, 18 February 2013 (UTC). These will be done, for Version 0.9; answer on talk. Thanks, Walkerma (talk) 07:35, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

wiki 1.0

I don't see a template for adding my name to the list of editors willing to help. I'd be willing to review, edit, write legal articles. Thanks. Malke 2010 (talk) 18:34, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

Never mind, I figured it out. Malke 2010 (talk) 00:40, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

Good Article Nominations Request For Comment

A 'Request For Comment' for Good Article Nominations is currently being held. We are asking that you please take five to ten minutes to review all seven proposals that will affect Good Article Nominations if approved. Full details of each proposal can be found here. Please comment on each proposal (or as many as you can) here. At this time, Proposal 1, 3, and 5 have received full (or close to) support. If you have questions of anything general (not related to one specif proposal), please leave a message under the General discussion thread. Please note that Proposal 2 has been withdrawn and no further comments are needed. Also, please disregard Proposal 9 as it was never an actual proposal.

WikiProject Good Articles Recruitment Centre

Hello! Now, some of you might be wondering why there is a Good article icon with a bunch of stars around (to the right). The answer? WikiProject Good articles will be launching a Recruitment Centre very soon! The centre will allow all users to be taught how to review Good article nominations by experts just like you! However, in order for the Recruitment Centre to open in the first place, we need some volunteers: Recruiters: The main task of a recruiter is to teach users that have never reviewed a Good article nomination how to review one. To become a recruiter, all you have to do is meet this criteria. If we don't get at least 5-10 recruiters to start off with, the Recruitment Centre will not open. If interested, make sure you meet the criteria, read the process and add your name to the list of recruiters. (One of the great things about being a recruiter is that there is no set requirement of what must be taught and when. Instead, all the content found in the process section is a guideline of the main points that should be addressed during a recruitment session...you can also take an entire different approach if you wish!) If you think you will not have the time to recruit any users at this time but are still interested in becoming a recruiter, you can still add your name to the list of recruiters but just fill in the "Status" parameter with "Not Available". Co-Director: The current Director for the centre is me (Dom497). Another user that would be willing to help with some of the tasks would be helpful. Tasks include making sure recruiters are doing what they should be (teaching!), making sure all recruitments are archived correctly, updating pages as needed, answering any questions, and distributing the feedback form. If interested, please contact me (Dom497). Nominators, please read this: If you are not interested in becoming a recruiter, you can still help. In some cases a nominator may have an issue with an "inexperienced" editor (the recruitee) reviewing one of their nominations. To minimize the chances of this happening, if you are fine with a recruitee reviewing one of your nominations under the supervision of the recruiter, please add your name to the list at the bottom of this page. By adding your name to this list, chances are that your nomination will be reviewed more quickly as the recruitee will be asked to choose a nomination from the list of nominators that are OK with them reviewing the article. If you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact me. I look forward to seeing this program bring new reviewers to the Good article community and all the positive things it will bring along. A message will be sent out to all recruiters regarding the date when the Recruitment Centre will open when it is determined. The message will also contain some further details to clarify things that may be a bit confusing.--Dom497 (talk) This message was sent out by --EdwardsBot (talk) 01:26, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

June 2013

Hello, I'm BracketBot. I have automatically detected that your edit to Copolymer may have broken the syntax by modifying 2 "{}"s. If you have, don't worry, just edit the page again to fix it. If I misunderstood what happened, or if you have any questions, you can leave a message on my operator's talk page.

List of unpaired brackets remaining on the page:

• }}

Thanks, BracketBot (talk) 14:07, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

2nd Annual Wikimedia New England General Meeting

You are invited to the 2nd Annual Wikimedia New England General Meeting, on 20 July 2013 in Boston! We will be talking about the future of the chapter, including GLAM, Wiki Loves Monuments, and where we want to take our chapter in the future! EdwardsBot (talk) 09:29, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

DYK RfC

• As a listed GA participant, you are invited to contribute to a formal Request for Comment on the question of whether Good Articles should be eligible to appear in the Did You Know? slot in future. Please see the proposal on its subpage here, or on the main DYK talk page. To add the discussion to your watchlist, click this link. Thank you in advance. Gilderien Chat|Contributions03:15, 1 August 2013 (UTC)

Re:Polymer

Dear Walkerma; first of all, let me apologise for this belated reply to User talk:Vanischenu#Polymer (I failed to notify). Since I did not know IPA, I requested help from the language reference desk (here) and got some helpful answers. They also corrected the IPA (diff); is it okay now? Thanks and regards.···Vanischenu^「m/_Talk」 19:15, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

Wittig reaction, Schlosser modification

Hello homie, great to see your work in chemistry articles here! Could you perhaps have these images in a high-resolution PNG or in an SVG?

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Corey_Schlosser_Wittig.gif https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Schlosser_Wittig.gif

Although it would perhaps mean drawing them yourself.

But if you're busy with academic stuff, don't worry; I can put them under https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Chemistry/Image_Request.

Hope you have happy days in the university! Cheers.

Georginho (talk) 22:36, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

I have had a lot of marking this weekend, but I'll try to do a higher resolution PNG this week - somewhere I should have the original files. I'm puzzled, though - why aren't the existing resolutions high enough? Surely they're big enough for the articles in which they appear? Please ping me here if I don't get them done by Friday. All the best, Walkerma (talk) 03:48, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

Apparently according to the style guide, they want them to be PNG or SVG. I personally don't bother redrawing GIF and JPEG images that are already clear enough. But I do message the creators if it's possible to convert the images in case they have the original files. It's because I think it's quick enough to open the file and save it in PNG.

But like I said, don't worry if you're busy. Wiki isn't a job. You can do it when you have free time. I personally agree that your images are clear enough. I'm just listing images in chemistry articles to convert per the style guide.

Cheers!

Georginho (talk) 18:49, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

Responded on my talk page

Hi, just a quick ping that I got around to responding to your comments on my talk page about the A-class articles. I'm really curious to learn more about the stories around assessment in Wikipedia, so that's partly why I got in touch again. Cheers, Nettrom (talk) 16:44, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

GAN December 2013 Backlog Drive

Hello! A GAN Backlog Drive will begin in less than 4 days! In past Backlog Drives, the goal was to reduce the backlog of Good article nominations. In the upcoming drive, another goal will be added - raising as much money as we can for the Wikimedia Foundation. How will this work? Well, its pretty simple. Any user interested in donating can submit a pledge at the Backlog Drive page (linked above). The pledge should mention the amount of money the user is willing to donate per review. For example, if a user pledges 5 cents per review and 100 nominations are reviewed, the total donation amount is $5.00. At the time this message was sent out, two users have submitted pledges for a total of 8 cents per review. All pledges, no matter how much money, are greatly appreciated. Also, in no way is this saying you must make a pledge. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me or leave a message on the Backlog Drive talk page. And remember, there are less than 4 days before the drive starts!--EdwardsBot (talk) 03:19, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

GAN December 2013 Backlog Drive

Hello! Just a friendly reminder that the GAN Backlog Drive has begun and will end on December 31, 2013! If you know anyone outside of the WikiProject that may be interested, feel free to invite them to the drive! If you have any questions or want to comment about something regarding the drive, post them here--EdwardsBot (talk) 00:12, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, Walkerma. You have new messages at Talk:Guttman Community College.
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Collaboration with PubChem

Hi Martin, I would appreciate your comments on a potential collaboration with PubChem. Thanks! -- Daniel Mietchen (talk) 22:46, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

Martin, you may also want to check the ChemID page as they are considering include CAS numbers, it seems. Egonw (talk) 22:50, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

New England Wikipedia Day @ MIT: Saturday Jan 18

NE Meetup #4: January 18 at MIT Building 5

Dear Fellow Wikimedian, You have been invited to the New England Wikimedians 2014 kick-off party and Wikipedia Day Celebration at Building Five on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus on Saturday, January 18th, from 3-5 PM. Afterwards, we will be holding an informal dinner at a local restaurant. If you are curious to join us, please do so, as we are always looking for people to come and give their opinion! Finally, be sure to RSVP here if you're interested. I hope to see you there! Kevin Rutherford (talk)

(You can unsubscribe from future notifications for Boston-area events by removing your name from this list.)

March 2014 GAN Backlog Drive

It's that time again! Starting on March 1, there will be another GAN Backlog Drive! There will be several changes compared to previous drives:

• This drive will introduce a new component to it; a point system. In a nutshell, older nominations are worth more points than newer nominations. The top 3 participants who have the points will be awarded the Golden, Silver, or Bronze Wikipedia Puzzle Piece Trophy, respectively.
• Unlike the December 2013 Backlog Drive, earning an additional barnstar if you reached your goal has been removed.
• The allowance to have insufficient reviews has been lowered to 2 before being disqualified.
• An exception to the rule that all reviews must be completed before the deadline has been created.

Also, something that I thought I would share with all of you is that we raised $20.88 (USD) for the WMF in the December 2013 drive. It may not sound like a lot but considering that that was raised just because we reviewed articles, I would say that's pretty good! With that success, pledges can be made for the upcoming drive if you wish.

More info regarding the drive and full descriptions regarding the changes to this drive can be found on the the drive page. If you have any questions, feel free to leave a message on the drive talk page.

I look forward to your participation and hope that because of it, some day the backlog will be gone!

--Dom497

--MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:58, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

GAN March 2014 Backlog Drive

The March 2014 GAN Backlog Drive has begun and will end on April 1, 2014! Sent by Dom497 on behalf of MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:01, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

tb

Hello, Walkerma. You have new messages at Dank's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

- Dank (push to talk) 13:28, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

Your edits on the page count graph

Hi Walkerma; Your edits related to this page count graph suggested you might know how it was created. My interest is to prepare some data for a new edit for the "Wikipedia" page on trends in the growth of Pages for each level of quality assessment. Could you let me know if there is an easy way to make this chart print out its results for 2013, 2012, 2011, etc, for end of year. If you could show me how to do 2010, for example, then I should be able to do the rest. I only need the last 7-8 years. Any comment would be an assist! Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Statistics (The graph comes out with double curly brackets placed around the linked Page name.) FelixRosch (talk) 19:29, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for your note. Since the comment above, I have found a Page for "Featured_article_statistics" and one for "Good_article_statistics", yet none for the other rows in the graph table which you help to maintain. You mentioned reminding you if you have any thoughts on getting the history of the data stats for the edit I described to enhance the "Wikipedia" page. FelixRosch (talk) 20:27, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

You're invited!

NE Meetup #5: April 19th at Clover Food Lab in Kendall Square

Dear Fellow Wikimedian, New England Wikimedians would like to invite you to the April 2014 meeting, which will be a small-scale meetup of all interested Wikimedians from the New England area. We will socialize, review regional events from the beginning of the year, look ahead to regional events of 2014, and discuss other things of interest to the group. Be sure to RSVP here if you're interested. Also, if you haven't done so already, please consider signing up for our mailing list and connect with us on Facebook and Twitter. We hope to see you there! Kevin Rutherford (talk) and Maia Weinstock (talk)

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IUPAC definition quote-boxes

Did anything ever come out of this: User talk:Amr94#Adding IUPAC definitions? I just removed a few where they seemed especially off-topic (not really chemistry) or non-universal (not in agreement or over-reliance when multiple organizations are relevant) before seeing this attempt to discuss. DMacks (talk) 17:29, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

Adrianne Wadewitz Memorial edit-a-thons

Adrianne Wadewitz edit-a-thons in Southern New England

As you may have already heard, the Wikipedia community lost an invaluable member of the community last month. Adrianne Wadewitz was a feminist scholar of 18th-Century British literature, and a prolific editor of the site. As part of a worldwide series of tributes, New England Wikimedians, in conjunction with local institutions of higher learning, have created three edit-a-thons that will be occurring in May and June. The events are as follows: May 21st at Northeastern University's Snell Library, in the Digital Scholarship Commons on the second floor May 22nd at Brown University's Rockefeller Library, in the Digital Scholarship Lab June 25th at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (exact location TBA), where we will also be hosting a "how to conduct an edit-a-thon" session beforehand We hope that you will be able to join us, whether you are an experienced editor or are using Wikipedia for the first time. If you have any questions, please leave a message at Kevin Rutherford's talk page. You can unsubscribe from future notifications for Boston-area events by removing your name from this list.

New England Wikimedians summer events!

Upcoming events hosted by New England Wikimedians!

After many months of doubt, nature has finally warmed up and summer is almost here! The New England Wikimedians user group have planned some upcoming events. This includes some unique and interesting events to those who are interested: Cape Cod Wiknic and Photography Blitz on June 14th in Barnstable County, with complete travel reimbursements available for those who participate Adrianne Wadewitz Memorial Edit-a-thon on June 25th at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (exact location TBA), where we will also be hosting a "how to conduct an edit-a-thon" session beforehand 3rd Annual Wikimedia New England General Meeting, which will feature at least one guest speaker, and possibly many more Although we also aren't hosting this year's Wikimania, we would like to let you know that Wikimania this year will be occurring in London in August: Wikimania 2014 in London If you have any questions, please leave a message at Kevin Rutherford's talk page. You can unsubscribe from future notifications for Boston-area events by removing your name from this list.

New England Wikimedians summer events!

Upcoming events hosted by New England Wikimedians!

After many months of doubt, nature has finally warmed up and summer is almost here! The New England Wikimedians user group have planned some upcoming events. This includes some unique and interesting events to those who are interested: Cape Cod Wiknic and Photography Blitz on June 14th in Barnstable County, with complete travel reimbursements available for those who participate Adrianne Wadewitz Memorial Edit-a-thon on June 25th at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (exact location TBA), where we will also be hosting a "how to conduct an edit-a-thon" session beforehand 3rd Annual Wikimedia New England General Meeting, which will feature at least one guest speaker, and possibly many more Although we also aren't hosting this year's Wikimania, we would like to let you know that Wikimania this year will be occurring in London in August: Wikimania 2014 in London If you have any questions, please leave a message at Kevin Rutherford's talk page. You can unsubscribe from future notifications for Boston-area events by removing your name from this list.

WikiProject Good articles Future GAN Backlog Drive

Hello everyone! Hope you've all been having a great summer!

TheQ Editor recently proposed the idea of having another Backlog Drive in either September/October or November/December of this year. For those of you who have participated in the past two drives you know I was the one who organized them, however, come September, this will be my most important year in school so I will not be able to coordinate this drive (if it happens). TheQ Editor has volunteered to be a coordinator for the drive. If any of you would like to co-coordinator, please notify TheQ Editor on his talk page.

If you would be interested in participating in a Backlog Drive sometime before the end of this year, please notify TheQ Editor. Also, make sure to specify what month(s) work best for you.

At the time this message was sent out, the backlog was at 520 nominations. Since May, the backlog has been steadily increasing and we are currently near an all time high. Even though the backlog will not disappear over one drive, this drive can lead to several others which will (hopefully) lead to the day where there is no longer a backlog.

As always, the more participants, the better, and everyone is encouraged to participate!

Sent by Dom497--MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:52, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

GA Cup

Hello everyone! We hope you have all been having a great summer!

As we all know, the recent GAN Backlog Drives have not had any big impact on the backlog. Because of that, me (Dom497), Figureskatingfan, and TheQ Editor have worked on an idea that could possibly finally put a dent into the massive backlog. Now, I will admit, the idea isn't entirely ours as we have took the general idea of the WikiCup and brought it over to WikiProject Good Articles. But anyways, here's what we have in mind:

For all of you that do not know what the WikiCup is, it is an annual competition between several editors to see who can get the most Good Articles, Featured Article's, Did You Know's, etc. Based of this, we propose to you the GA Cup. This competition will only focus on reviewing Good articles.

For more info on the proposal, click here. As a FYI, the proposal page is not what the final product will look like (if you do go ahead with this idea). It will look very similar to WikiCup's page(s).

The discussion for the proposal will take place here. Please let us know if you are interested, have any concerns, things to consider, etc.

--Dom497, Figureskatingfan, and TheQ Editor

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:29, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

WikiProject Good Articles - GA Cup

WikiProject Good Articles's 2014-15 GA Cup WikiProject Good articles is holding a new competition, the GA Cup, from October 1, 2014 - March 28, 2015. The Cup will be based on reviewing Good article nominations; for each review, points will be awarded with bonuses for older nominations, longer articles and comprehensive reviews. All participants will start off in one group and the highest scoring participants will go through to the second round. At the moment six rounds are planned, but this may change based on participant numbers. Some of you may ask: what is the purpose for a competition of this type? Currently, there is a backlog of about 500 unreviewed Good article nominations, almost an all time high. It is our hope that we can decrease the backlog in a fun way, through friendly competition. Everyone is welcome to join; new and old editors! Sign-ups will be open until October 15, 2014 so sign-up now! If you have any questions, take a look at the FAQ page and/or contact one of the four judges. Cheers from NickGibson3900, Dom497, TheQ Editor and Figureskatingfan. --MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:04, 15 September 2014 (UTC) To receive future GA Cup newsletter, please add your name to our mailing list.

ETHIOPIA

ETHIOPIA — Preceding unsigned comment added by 197.156.77.79 (talk) 14:56, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

stop what about copyrights violations p-2-p — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.44.168.98 (talk) 19:10, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

I have now idea what you're talking about - sorry! Walkerma (talk) 02:47, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

Core Contest

Hi Martin, I'm writing a piece on the history of the Core Contest (which is running for a sixth time at the moment) and have written up a draft at User:Casliber/sandbox#Core_Contest_blurb. I was wondering whether the prizemoney ever eventuated for the 2007 running and who ended up providing it. Also, any other discussion at the time about it would be good to point out/flesh out etc. cheers, Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 02:53, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

Hi - I must confess I can't remember, sorry! I do seem to recall calling (by phone) the person who set up the contest (who I won't name here, you know who) and there being a problem with it with good reason, but they really wanted to provide the money. I have a vague recollection that someone did pay in the end, not sure if it was the original person or not, or whether I'm just imagining it, and it was just a promise that never materialized. Sorry, it's quite a while ago now! I do recall spending a LOT of time doing the judging, looking at many diffs, etc. It's nice that it's continued, thanks for working on it. All the best, Walkerma (talk) 05:03, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

Yep, I know who. Thanks for letting me know. cheers, Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 05:37, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

RCS & ACS

Thanks for the invitation to speak in Boston; I'm consulting with my RCS colleagues. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:13, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

Still waiting to hear. I'm assuming, as you invited me, that I don't need to submit a pitch/ abstract? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:26, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

Submitted; had to fake your email address. No idea yet whether I will be funded to travel, and am on a plane tomorrow, so can't check. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:32, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 2

For this month's issue...

Making sense of a lot of data.

Work on our prototype will begin imminently. In the meantime, we have to understand what exactly we're working with. To this end, we generated a list of 71 WikiProjects, based on those brought up on our Stories page and those who had signed up for pilot testing. For those projects where people told stories, we coded statements within those stories to figure out what trends there were in these stories. This approach allowed us to figure out what Wikipedians thought of WikiProjects in a very organic way, with very little by way of a structure. (Compare this to a structured interview, where specific questions are asked and answered.) This analysis was done on 29 stories. Codes were generally classified as "benefits" (positive contributions made by a WikiProject to the editing experience) and "obstacles" (issues posed by WikiProjects, broadly speaking). Codes were generated as I went along, ensuring that codes were as close to the original data as possible. Duplicate appearances of a code for a given WikiProject were removed.

We found 52 "benefit" statements encoded and 34 "obstacle" statements. The most common benefit statement referring to the project's active discussion and participation, followed by statements referring to a project's capacity to guide editor activity, while the most common obstacles made reference to low participation and significant burdens on the part of the project maintainers and leaders. This gives us a sense of WikiProjects' big strength: they bring people together, and can be frustrating to editors when they fail to do so. Meanwhile, it is indeed very difficult to bring editors together on a common interest; in the absence of a highly motivated core of organizers, the technical infrastructure simply isn't there.

We wanted to pair this qualitative study with quantitative analysis of a WikiProject and its "universe" of pages, discussions, templates, and categories. To this end I wrote a script called ProjAnalysis which will, for a given WikiProject page (e.g. Wikipedia:WikiProject Star Trek) and WikiProject talk-page tag (e.g. Template:WikiProject Star Trek), will give you a list of usernames of people who edited within the WikiProject's space (the project page itself, its talk page, and subpages), and within the WikiProject's scope (the pages tagged by that WikiProject, excluding the WikiProject space pages). The output is an exhaustive list of usernames. We ran the script to analyze our test batch of WikiProjects for edits between March 1, 2014 and February 28, 2015, and we subjected them to further analysis to only include those who made 10+ edits to pages in the projects' scope, those who made 4+ edits to the projects' space, and those who made 10+ edits to pages in scope but not 4+ edits to pages in the projects' space. This latter metric gives us an idea of who is active in a certain subject area of Wikipedia, yet who isn't actively engaging on the WikiProject's pages. This information will help us prioritize WikiProjects for pilot testing, and the ProjAnalysis script in general may have future life as an application that can be used by Wikipedians to learn about who is in their community.

Complementing the above two studies are a design analysis, which summarizes the structure of the different WikiProject spaces in our test batch, and the comprehensive census of bots and tools used to maintain WikiProjects, which will be finished soon. With all of this information, we will have a game plan in place! We hope to begin working with specific WikiProjects soon.

As a couple of asides...

• Database Reports has existed for several years on Wikipedia to the satisfaction of many, but many of the reports stopped running when the Toolserver was shut off in 2014. However, there is good news: the weekly New WikiProjects and WikiProjects by Changes reports are back, with potential future reports in the future.
• WikiProject X has an outpost on Wikidata! Check it out. It's not widely publicized, but we are interested in using Wikidata as a potential repository for metadata about WikiProjects, especially for WikiProjects that exist on multiple Wikimedia projects and language editions.

That's all for now. Thank you for subscribing! If you have any questions or comments, please share them with us.

Harej (talk) 01:44, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 3

Greetings! For this month's issue...

We have demos!

After a lengthy research and design process, we decided for WikiProject X to focus on two things:

• A WikiProject workflow that focuses on action items: discussions you can participate in and tasks you can perform to improve the encyclopedia; and
• An automatically updating WikiProject directory that gives you lists of users participating in the WikiProject and editing in that subject area.

We have a live demonstration of the new WikiProject workflow at WikiProject Women in Technology, a brand new WikiProject that was set up as an adjunct to a related edit-a-thon in Washington, DC. The goal is to surface action items for editors, and we intend on doing that through automatically updated working lists. We are looking into using SuggestBot to generate lists of outstanding tasks, and we are looking into additional options for automatic worklist generation. This takes the burden off of WikiProject editors to generate these worklists, though there is also a "requests" section for Wikipedians to make individual requests. (As of writing, these automated lists are not yet live, so you will see a blank space under "edit articles" on the demo WikiProject. Sorry about that!) I invite you to check out the WikiProject and leave feedback on WikiProject X's talk page.

Once the demo is sufficiently developed, we will be working on a limited deployment on our pilot WikiProjects. We have selected five for the first round of testing based on the highest potential for impact and will scale up from there.

While a re-designed WikiProject experience is much needed, that alone isn't enough. A WikiProject isn't any good if people have no way of discovering it. This is why we are also developing an automatically updated WikiProject directory. This directory will surface project-related metrics, including a count of active WikiProject participants and of active editors in that project's subject area. The purpose of these metrics is to highlight how active the WikiProject is at the given point of time, but also to highlight that project's potential for success. The directory is not yet live but there is a demonstration featuring a sampling of WikiProjects.

Each directory entry will link to a WikiProject description page which automatically list the active WikiProject participants and subject-area article editors. This allows Wikipedians to find each other based on the areas they are interested in, and this information can be used to revive a WikiProject, start a new one, or even for some other purpose. These description pages are not online yet, but they will use this template, if you want to get a feel of what they will look like.

We need volunteers!

WikiProject X is a huge undertaking, and we need volunteers to support our efforts, including testers and coders. Check out our volunteer portal and see what you can do to help us!

As an aside...

Wouldn't it be cool if lists of requested articles could not only be integrated directly with WikiProjects, but also shared between WikiProjects? Well, we got the crazy idea of having experimental software feature Flow deployed (on a totally experimental basis) on the new Article Request Workshop, which seeks to be a place where editors can "workshop" article ideas before they get created. It uses Flow because Flow allows, essentially, section-level categorization, and in the future will allow "sections" (known as "topics" within Flow) to be included across different pages. What this means is that you have a recommendation for a new article tagged by multiple WikiProjects, allowing for the recommendation to appear on lists for each WikiProject. This will facilitate inter-WikiProject collaboration and will help to reduce duplicated work. The Article Request Workshop is not entirely ready yet due to some bugs with Flow, but we hope to integrate it into our pilot WikiProjects at some point.

Harej (talk) 01:58, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 4

Newsletter • May/June 2015

Hello friends! We have been hard at work these past two months. For this report:

The directory is live!

For the first time, we are happy to bring you an exhaustive, comprehensive WikiProject Directory. This directory endeavors to list every single WikiProject on the English Wikipedia, including those that don't participate in article assessment. In constructing the broadest possible definition, we have come up with a list of approximately 2,600 WikiProjects. The directory tracks activity statistics on the WikiProject's pages, and, for where it's available, statistics on the number of articles tracked by the WikiProject and the number of editors active on those articles. Complementing the directory are description pages for each project, listing usernames of people active on the WikiProject pages and the articles in the WikiProject's scope. This will help Wikipedians interested in a subject find each other, whether to seek feedback on an article or to revive an old project. (There is an opt-out option.) We have also come up with listings of related WikiProjects, listing the ten most relevant WikiProjects based on what articles they have in common. We would like to promote WikiProjects as interconnected systems, rather than isolated silos.

A tremendous amount of work went into preparing this directory. WikiProjects do not consistently categorize their pages, meaning we had to develop our own index to match WikiProjects with the articles in their scope. We also had to make some adjustments to how WikiProjects were categorized; indeed, I personally have racked up a few hundred edits re-categorizing WikiProjects. There remains more work to be done to make the WikiProject directory truly useful. In the meantime, take a look and feel free to leave feedback at the WikiProject X talk page.

Stuff in the works!

What have we been working on?

• A new design template—This has been in the works for a while, of course. But our goal is to design something that is useful and cleanly presented on all browsers and at all screen resolutions while working within the confines of what MediaWiki has to offer. Additionally, we are working on designs for the sub-components featured on the main project page.
• A new WikiProject talk page banner in Lua—Work has begun on implementing the WikiProject banner in Lua. The goal is to create a banner template that can be usable by any WikiProject in lieu of having its own template. Work has slowed down for now to focus on higher priority items, but we are interested in your thoughts on how we could go about creating a more useful project banner. We have a draft module on Test Wikipedia, with a demonstration.
• New discussion reports—We have over 4.8 million articles on the English Wikipedia, and almost as many talk pages as well. But what happens when someone posts on a talk page? What if no one is watching that talk page? We are currently testing out a system for an automatically-updating new discussions list, like RFC for WikiProjects. We currently have five test pages up for the WikiProjects on cannabis, cognitive science, evolutionary biology, and Ghana.
• SuggestBot for WikiProjects—We have asked the maintainer of SuggestBot to make some minor adjustments to SuggestBot that will allow it to post regular reports to those WikiProjects that ask for them. Stay tuned!
• Semi-automated article assessment—Using the new revision scoring service and another system currently under development, WikiProjects will be getting a new tool to facilitate the article assessment process by providing article quality/importance predictions for articles yet to be assessed. Aside from helping WikiProjects get through their backlogs, the goal is to help WikiProjects with collecting metrics and triaging their work. Semi-automation of this process will help achieve consistent results and keep the process running smoothly, as automation does on other parts of Wikipedia.

Want us to work on any other tools? Interested in volunteering? Leave a note on our talk page.

The WikiProject watchers report is back!

The database report which lists WikiProjects according to the number of watchers (i.e., people that have the project on their watchlist), is back! The report stopped being updated a year ago, following the deactivation of the Toolserver, but a replacement report has been generated.

Until next time, Harej (talk) 22:20, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

Invitation to join the Ten Year Society

Dear Walkerma,

I'd like to invite you to join the Ten Year Society, an informal group for editors who've been participating in the Wikipedia project for ten years or more.

H Padleckas (talk) 23:04, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Skepticism articles by quality

I'm wondering why we don't have an auto-generated page? Is there something we need to do? Jerod Lycett (talk) 20:46, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

So far as I can remember, that is never made as a page itself. The two pages which do exist, Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Skepticism articles by quality log and Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Skepticism articles by quality statistics are the ones the bot generates on a regular basis. If you are thinking of a page containing content different from that of either of those pages, though, it might be possible to arrange a bot to create it. John Carter (talk) 20:55, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, John Carter Walkerma (talk) 04:25, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

This Friday: Women in Architecture edit-a-thon @ Cambridge, MA

You are invited to join the Women in Architecture edit-a-thon @ Cambridge, MA on October 16! (drop-in any time, 6-9pm)--Pharos (talk) 18:28, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 5

Newsletter • October 2015

Hello there! Happy to be writing this newsletter once more. This month:

We did it!

In July, we launched five pilot WikiProjects: WikiProjects Cannabis, Evolutionary Biology, Ghana, Hampshire, and Women's Health. We also use the new design, named "WPX UI," on WikiProject Women in Technology, Women in Red, WikiProject Occupational Safety and Health. We are currently looking for projects for the next round of testing. If you are interested, please sign up on the Pilots page.

Shortly after our launch we presented at Wikimania 2015. Our slides are on Wikimedia Commons.

Then after all that work, we went through the process of figuring out whether we accomplished our goal. We reached out to participants on the redesigned WikiProjects, and we asked them to complete a survey. (If you filled out your survey—thank you!) While there are still some issues with the WikiProject tools and the new design, there appears to be general satisfaction (at least among those who responded). The results of the survey and more are documented in our grant report filed with the Wikimedia Foundation.

The work continues!

There is more work that needs to be done, so we have applied for a renewal of our grant. Comments on the proposal are welcome. We would like to improve what we have already started on the English Wikipedia and to also expand to Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata. Why those? Because they are multilingual projects and because there needs to be better coordination across Wikimedia projects. More details are available in the renewal proposal.

How can the Wikimedia Foundation support WikiProjects?

The Wikimedia Developer Summit will be held in San Francisco in January 2016. The recently established Community Tech team at the Wikimedia Foundation is interested in investigating what technical support they can provide for WikiProjects, i.e., support beyond just templates and bots. I have plenty of opinions myself, but I want to hear what you think. The session is being planned on Phabricator, the Wikimedia bug tracker. If you are not familiar with Phabricator, you can log in with your Wikipedia username and password through the "Login or Register: MediaWiki" button on the login page. Your feedback can help make editing Wikipedia a better experience.

Until next time,

Harej (talk) 09:03, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

ArbCom elections are now open!

Hi,
You appear to be eligible to vote in the current Arbitration Committee election. The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to enact binding solutions for disputes between editors, primarily related to serious behavioural issues that the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the ability to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail. If you wish to participate, you are welcome to review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. For the Election committee, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:54, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Personendatan listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Wikipedia:Personendatan. Since you had some involvement with the Wikipedia:Personendatan redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion if you have not already done so. BDD (talk) 16:27, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 6

Newsletter • January 2016

Hello there! Happy to be writing this newsletter once more. This month:

What comes next

Some good news: the Wikimedia Foundation has renewed WikiProject X. This means we can continue focusing on making WikiProjects better.

During our first round of work, we created a prototype WikiProject based on two ideas: (1) WikiProjects should clearly present things for people to do, and (2) The content of WikiProjects should be automated as much as possible. We launched pilots, and for the most part it works. But this approach will not work for the long term. While it makes certain aspects of running a WikiProject easier, it makes the maintenance aspects harder.

We are working on a major overhaul that will address these issues. New features will include:

• Creating WikiProjects by simply filling out a form, choosing which reports you want to generate for your project. This will work with existing bots in addition to the Reports Bot reports. (Of course, you can also have sections curated by humans.)
• One-click button to join a WikiProject, with optional notifications.
• Be able to define your WikiProject's scope within the WikiProject itself by listing relevant pages and categories, eliminating the need to tag every talk page with a banner. (You will still be allowed to do that, of course. It just won't be required.)

The end goal is a collaboration tool that can be used by WikiProjects but also by any edit-a-thon or group of people that want to coordinate on improving articles. Though implemented as an extension, the underlying content will be wikitext, meaning that you can continue to use categories, templates, and other features as you normally would.

This will take a lot of work, and we are just getting started. What would you like to see? I invite you to discuss on our talk page.

Until next time,

Harej (talk) 02:53, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

Maybe you can assist

Hi Martin, I seem to recall you helping me out once before regarding a project table issue. At the discussion Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Motorcycling#Project classes we would like to analyse more of the different quality articles. I though one just had to create the additional categories and the bot would pick them up but that does not seem to be the case after I created these: Category:Disambig-Class Motorcycling articles, Category:Template-Class Motorcycling articles and Category:Category-Class Motorcycling articles

So I presume that is not enough but as I don't know enough about how the bot works maybe you can advise, or do it, or point me at someone who can. The 3 I added are the only additional categories I know are regularly used that are not currently analysed but maybe there is a list of them somewhere I can review. Maybe one should also add Redirects and Others. BTW I've reassessed all the template I can find with the proper class rating to see if they appear properly when the changes have been implemented. Thanks in advance. ww2censor (talk) 13:44, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

@Ww2censor: It could just be because the bot is frozen, but I suspect that those categories may be "non-standard" categories that the bot doesn't keep data on. When the bot was set up, it was focused just on keeping tabs on article quality & importance. Since then, WikiProjects have found it useful to extend it into things like redirects, disambiguation pages, etc. Some of these "non-standard" categories were added when we moved to Version 2 of the bot (around 2009, I think), but there has been almost no change since then; for the last few years, we've only had a couple of people maintaining the bot, because the developers are no longer active. There are several WikiProjects interested in seeing the scope extended, as in this recent request.

The good news is that may change. I've talked twice recently on Skype with a group who are interested in getting involved in working on the code some more. Their goal is focused almost entirely on producing offline collections (starting with Version 0.8.1, but I will make the case that the WikiProjects provide the metadata that makes those possible. I suspect it will be easy for these developers to add new categories for the bot to track. If that goes ahead I'll try to contact you. All the best, Walkerma (talk) 16:31, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

Thanks but I'm not sure you are correct that the "bot is frozen" (well not completely frozen) because the 3 projects I have on my watchlist are User:WP 1.0 bot/Tables/Project/Philately‎, User:WP 1.0 bot/Tables/Project/Ireland and User:WP 1.0 bot/Tables/Project/Motorcycling and they are all being updated very regularly. I had seen that post but ignored it as everything I watch appeared to be working fine. I was actually only asking about categories that already exist in other projects, such as the Ireland project and just wanted to separate them out on the Motorcycling project where they are lumped together under NA. I would have thought that, because these categories are not new ones, that it would be rather simple to just add them to an existing project that is working fine. I'm not really asking for something new to be done. ww2censor (talk) 10:27, 10 February 2016 (UTC) 17:38, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 7

Newsletter • February 2016

This month:

One database for Wikipedia requests

Development of the extension for setting up WikiProjects, as described in the last issue of this newsletter, is currently underway. No terribly exciting news on this front.

In the meantime, we are working on a prototype for a new service we hope to announce soon. The problem: there are requests scattered all across Wikipedia, including requests for new articles and requests for improvements to existing articles. We Wikipedians are very good at coming up with lists of things to do. But once we write these lists, where do they end up? How can we make them useful for all editors—even those who do not browse the missing articles lists, or the particular WikiProjects that have lists?

Introducing Wikipedia Requests, a new tool to centralize the various lists of requests around Wikipedia. Requests will be tagged by category and WikiProject, making it easier to find requests based on what your interests are. Accompanying this service will be a bot that will let you generate reports from this database on any wiki page, including WikiProjects. This means that once a request is filed centrally, it can syndicated all throughout Wikipedia, and once it is fulfilled, it will be marked as "complete" throughout Wikipedia. The idea for this service came about when I saw that it was easy to put together to-do lists based on database queries, but it was harder to do this for human-generated requests when those requests are scattered throughout the wiki, siloed throughout several pages. This should especially be useful for WikiProjects that have overlapping interests.

The newsletter this month is fairly brief; not a lot of news, just checking in to say that we are hard at work and hope to have more for you soon.

Until next time,

Harej (talk) 01:44, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

Info from WD

Hi, I saw in some discussions your interest for Wikidata in the field of chemicals. Right now no validation mark is planned in WD for validated data. And this is against the general philosophy of WD: WD doesn't say the truth only facts. This is not the task of WD to define what is true or false so even if for some data like identifiers can only be correct or not WD is not planning to develop an in-house validation system. Perhaps the question will become more critical in the future when more WPs will used WD but right now nothing is planned. But this doesn't mean that nothing can be done. Data can be easily extracted from WD using the API or special tool like this one and you can process the data offline and compare them to a validated list. Periodic analysis can generate reports indicating changes or other deviations. We have already a system working daily on that basis: see for example the violation constraints report for the CAS numbers there. Forget about the 1st section but have a look at the 2nd, the 3rd and and the 4th ones: theses sections indicate if a CAS number is not correctly written, if two items (in other words two articles or two compounds) share the same CAS number and if one item contains more than one CAS number.

For your information WD creates each day a dump of the edits since the last dump 24h before. So it possible to analyze only the last edits and to check the interesting ones related to chemicals.

So the only tools required are a validated list of data and a bot. For that we need to create a list of validated data. I was starting to create that list using a process described there but I was unable to progress in that project because I spend time to correct violation constraints reports for a bunch of identifiers. And the coding of my bot is not progressing as fast as I want.

As I know you are spending time to validate identifiers so I can be interested in your data. If you are ready to share your data perhaps we can work in the future to increase the reliability of WD.

If you have more questions about WD or about chemistry in WD you can let me a message or have a look at d:Wikidata:WikiProject_Chemistry (any help is appreciated because there are too few contributors for chemical subjects). Regards Snipre (talk) 01:33, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

@Snipre:Thanks a lot for getting in contact. I personally think that Wikidata is the future for this kind of thing, and I'd love to help out the project. However, I feel totally lost when I get beyond the project pages, perhaps because I'm a chemist and not a tech person (when I took computer science we used punch cards!). Having said that, I've had a long and deep interest in chemical information and data. Can you help me understand what something like this means, and what the links show? Where do these lists come from? Are they manually generated, or does a bot write them based on it detecting certain things? What am I supposed to do with the list? Can you perhaps help me show how to start working in Wikidata? Is there a low level routine task that could benefit from a chemist's eye? (Note - I'll be too busy to do a lot until the summer, though.)

Regarding the lack of validation, I can accept that if we wait for validated data we'll never progress beyond something like Nupedia! However, to forbid validation seems contrary to the overall goal of the project, which (as the error-flagging shows) is to make the data as accurate as possible. Although I'm a big fan of Wikidata, I would be reluctant to see us replacing the validated data we have currently with non-validated data, and I suspect @Beetstra: would agree. I accept that our validation is not perfect as it should be, but I think it's still a huge improvement on unvalidated data. You should realize that I've had a longstanding interest in this topic! You indicate that validation may come once Wikidata is adopted; however, possibly one reason it's not being adopted (at least in chemistry) is because it can't include any validation!

I'm planning to start checking chemical identifiers in some of the English Wikipedia pages tomorrow, to see if they still reflect the "true facts" or if they've become corrupted at all. If they are still accurate (as I hope), then I want to start analysing and probably fixing any changes flagged by CheMoBot to generate new validated RevIDs. This will (I expect) be a long process which will take over a year; however, I know how much people depend on these data, so I consider it worthwhile. What I would like to do, with your help, is to cross-check the validated identifiers in en:WP against those found in Wikidata, and report any conflicts or ambiguities. Would this be helpful for the Wikidata chemistry project? If not, is there a way that my Wikipedia work could help Wikidata? If so, can you help get me started in Wikidata? Thanks, Walkerma (talk) 02:49, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

I will be happy to give you some help to understand some features of WD. But before I just want to say something about your comment: WD doesn't forbid any validation but only doesn't want to provide any specific system inside WD to validate data. The problem is about validation of disputed topics: if you propose a validation tool some persons will use it to force the validation and the spread of the data through WPs. WD wants to avoid that and prefer to have the role of data provider. Users, meaning WPs, are responsible to choose the data their consider as correct using the data source as parameter to define if a data is reliable. The view of WD is more to connect WD to other external databases i norder to offer an easy way to check data reliability not to propose the correct data.

Again WD integrate the wiki philisophy, everyone can contribute, and from this principle consider as impossible to let everyone contributing and at the same time insuring that all data are reliable. So instead of spending time to check all edits WD propose a system where different data can stay together and let the data selection to users according to their parametrs of reliability.

Does it mean that nothing can be done about validation ? No, but instead of using a WD feature to validate WD data you can use external tools which analyse WD data and generate reports indicating conflict between WD data and validated datasets. Users can later analyze more deeply the deviations and when necessary they can change the data in WD.

Just an example: if database D1 says that value VAL = x and database D2 says that value VAL = y this is not the task of WD to say who is wrong. WD will present both values with their references. Further development of WD focus more to link the value x in WD system with its reference in database D1, same for value y with D2, than to offer a way to validate the correct value between x and y.

In some way a data is correct when all the main sources on the topic say the same. And the correctness of a value depends more on the number and on the authority of its sources than on a validation tool. From that the best way to validate a data is to link as many reference sources as possible to a data.

I hope this give you an idea of the system which is a little complicate from a scientific point of view. But even in scientific area truth is a difficult topic: something is true until someone shows it is wrong. So from scientific point of view a validation tool is a bad practise unless you provide all parameters which influence the correctness of a value. Snipre (talk) 22:33, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 8

Newsletter • March / April 2016

This month:

Transclude article requests anywhere on Wikipedia

In the last issue of the WikiProject X Newsletter, I discussed the upcoming Wikipedia Requests system: a central database for outstanding work on Wikipedia. I am pleased to announce Wikipedia Requests is live! Its purpose is to supplement automatically generated lists, such as those from SuggestBot, Reports bot, or Wikidata. It is currently being demonstrated on WikiProject Occupational Safety and Health (which I work on as part of my NIOSH duties) and WikiProject Women scientists.

Adding a request is as simple as filling out a form. Just go to the Add form to add your request. Adding sources will help ensure that your request is fulfilled more quickly. And when a request is fulfilled, simply click "mark as complete" and it will be removed from all the lists it's on. All at the click of a button! (If anyone is concerned, all actions are logged.)

With this new service is a template to transclude these requests: {{Wikipedia Requests}}. It's simple to use: add the template to a page, specifying article=, category=, or wikiproject=, and the list will be transcluded. For example, for requests having to do with all living people, just do {{Wikipedia Requests|category=Living people}}. Use these lists on WikiProjects but also for edit-a-thons where you want a convenient list of things to do on hand. Give it a shot!

Help us build our list!

The value of Wikipedia Requests comes from being a centralized database. The long work to migrating individual lists into this combined list is slowly underway. As of writing, we have 883 open tasks logged in Wikipedia Requests. We need your help building this list.

If you know of a list of missing articles, or of outstanding tasks for existing articles, that you would like to migrate to this new system, head on over to Wikipedia:Wikipedia Requests#Transition project and help out. Doing this will help put your list in front of more eyes—more than just your own WikiProject.

An open database means new tools

WikiProject X maintains a database that associates article talk pages (and draft talk pages) with WikiProjects. This database powers many of the reports that Reports bot generates. However, until very recently, this database was not made available to others who might find its data useful. It's only common sense to open up the database and let others build tools with it.

And indeed: Citation Hunt, the game to add citations to Wikipedia, now lets you filter by WikiProject, using the data from our database.

Are you a tool developer interested in using this? Here are some details: the database resides on Tool Labs with the name s52475__wpx_p. The table that associates WikiProjects with articles and drafts is called projectindex. Pages are stored by talk page title but in the future this should change. Have fun!

On the horizon

• The work on the CollaborationKit extension continues. The extension will initially focus on reducing template and Lua bloat on WikiProjects (especially our WPX UI demonstration projects), and will from there create custom interfaces for creating and maintaining WikiProjects.
• The WikiCite meeting will be in Berlin in May. The goal of the meeting is to figure out how to build a bibliographic database for use on the Wikimedia projects. This fits in quite nicely with WikiProject X's work: we want to make it easier for people to find things to work on, and with a powerful, open bibliographic database, we can build recommendations for sources. This feature was requested by the Wikipedia Library back in September, and this meeting is a major next step. We look forward to seeing what comes out of this meeting.

Until next time,

Harej (talk) 01:29, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

Version 1.0 Index

Hi Martin, I'm curious as to what programming languages you're looking for to develop the index. I probably won't be able to do much personally, but can ask around on the WP to the Moon project page as this should be a huge boon to that project. Tonystewart14 (talk) 15:44, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

@Tonystewart14: I believe it's Python, but we have someone now working on revamping the code so it may be changing. We used to create the index as a "one-off" thing when we produced our collections. User:Kelson and the Kiwix people are now producing daily updates of article metadata at [wp1.kiwix.org], which will be used to produce collections. A group of about 5 of us are actually meeting roughly once a fortnight on Skype, so I'll ask about this at our next meeting; I'm sure the programmers would be happy to get some help, even though our group is mainly focussed on collections for (terrestrial!) schools. BTW, I added a reply to that talk page, on how WP1 might help. Many thanks! Walkerma (talk) 05:29, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

Thanks! That other reply looks good too. It would be great if you could ask, and I applaud the effort you and the others in your group are making. Tonystewart14 (talk) 11:10, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

Good! I want to get a project page set up for our new work, and then I'll follow up with this further. Walkerma (talk) 11:57, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 9

Newsletter • May / June 2016

Check out this month's issue of the WikiProject X newsletter, featuring the first screenshot of our new CollaborationKit software!

Harej (talk) 00:23, 25 June 2016 (UTC)

Fluorous biphasic

I will see you at the ACS convention this afternoon. Perhaps you could write a brief article on Fluorous biphasic at the Edit-a-thon?--Dthomsen8 (talk) 16:13, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

Good idea! I think I planned to do that about ten years ago... Not today, though: I'm unprepared for writing that without all my fluorous books around, so I'll probably work on a chemist. I may not get anything written myself, if I end up tied up assisting others all afternoon; we'll see. Either way, I'll be pleased to meet you! Walkerma (talk) 17:45, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

A page you started (Debbie C. Crans) has been reviewed!

Thanks for creating Debbie C. Crans, Walkerma!

Wikipedia editor Blythwood just reviewed your page, and wrote this note for you:

Looks great. I've added a few more categories.

To reply, leave a comment on Blythwood's talk page.

Learn more about page curation.

Nomination for deletion of Template:SDBS

Template:SDBS has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:04, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

ArbCom Elections 2016: Voting now open!

Hello, Walkerma. Voting in the 2016 Arbitration Committee elections is open from Monday, 00:00, 21 November through Sunday, 23:59, 4 December to all unblocked users who have registered an account before Wednesday, 00:00, 28 October 2016 and have made at least 150 mainspace edits before Sunday, 00:00, 1 November 2016.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2016 election, please review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. Mdann52 (talk) 22:08, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 10

Issue 10 of the WikiProject X newsletter is here!

This month, we discuss the new CollaborationKit extension. Here's an image as a teaser:

23:59, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

Tech support for the assessment bot

You asked me some questions about tech support for a bot on my page at User_talk:Bluerasberry#Tech_support_for_the_assessment_bot. I do not have good answers for you, but here is what I can suggest.

1. There is probably not good development support readily available. However, you could start asking around and see what happens. I have no good leads.
2. At meta:Grants:Project/Rapid, if you write out a proposal for ~ USD 1000 and commit to do usage documentation, the Wikimedia Foundation is likely to grant funds for you to seek a developer for the project. There is general awareness that all sorts of things break and need fixing and that there are no volunteers and staff around to do it. However, if you can convince a developer to fix it at market rate, then the WMF will fund it. You can do this in an iterative way - ask for some money, use the offer to solicit a developer, then come back to finalize the payment confirmation. It is not super easy, but the money is there and it definitely is easier than coming up with funding other ways, and it really is fast (~1 week to sort, very direct, not bureaucratic in my opinion)
3. You could seek to developer longer term relationships with a developer overseeing the space. I would not even know where to refer you for this, and even if you found the right person, getting on the official development schedule might mean 3-12 months away in the queue. Community requests are not the norm in any case.
4. Check out meta:Wishlists#Annual_Wikimedia_Foundation_Wishlist_Survey to see other sorts of requests people have made, and see if you can piggyback off something for contacts or development leads. Also, you could post your idea to the 2018 survey in about 9 months when that goes live.

Thoughts? I tried! Blue Rasberry (talk) 22:03, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

Project studying article importance

Hi, I think we were last in touch almost four years ago after I asked a question about A-class articles over on Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Index. Looking through my talk page archive I found your responses and first of all have to apologize for not replying just to say thank you. You provided me with some great insight into the quality assessment classes back then and I greatly appreciate that!

I'm currently working on a project exploring automated classification of article importance that you might be interested in. We have a project page on meta describing some of the details. So far I have had a productive collaboration with WikiProject Medicine and provided them with some predictions for reassessment, discussing our approach and progress with them on their assessment talk page. That's where your name came up, so I thought I'd get in touch.

Thanks again for helping me out back in 2013! Hopefully my current project interests you, please do get in touch if you have any questions. Regards, Nettrom (talk) 21:23, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

@Nettrom: I apologize - I mixed up this project with another similar one looking at a basic autoassessment of article quality, and I never followed up with yours (only the other one)! I just realized they're two completely different projects! I will follow up with you on Wednesday, as I will be extremely busy till then. Thanks for keeping me informed. All the best, Walkerma (talk) 04:31, 22 May 2017 (UTC)

WP 1.0

Hi. I won't be able to help. But good luck, and it was nice to hear from you. Maurreen (talk) 18:24, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

Hello!

I was reading Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team#Current_needs and was very interested by the problem "Preparation of a reliable index" and I have a general interest in the importance/quality scales. I would like to learn more and potentially help =). I think some improved navigation within Wikipedia would be extremely valuable, because of Wikipedia natural and organic disorganization.

On a side note: I think this page: Lists of unsolved problems, is (or has the potential to be) one of the most important of all time. (In my opinion) it has incredible value, and I will most likely be referring to it for my whole life. I did not even know that Millennium Prize Problems existed until I read about it on Wikipedia. I think it's a great topper to the "Sum of all knowledge", and a great reference to quickly glimpse the edges of human knowledge. As different fields make new discoveries, and information increases in quantity and becomes more cluttered... It is refreshing to see the "TODO" list of humanity.

Also, Hello! --- Popcrate (talk) 11:17, 28 May 2017 (UTC)

@Popcrate:, thank you for responding on that! I posted that request about eight years ago, and I also put out lots of requests in other places (e.g., to academics, librarians, etc.), and I've never had any response. I have some ideas on how to do this - in fact we used some of those ideas in the topical index in [0.7], but never perfected it. The problem is that I don't have the programming skills to write bots or scripts to solve these kinds of problems, and the person I used to work with (very successfully) left the project in 2011. The 1.0 project is suddenly coming to life again after about "seven lean years", so now is a great time to get involved. If you're interested in working on this I'd love to explain the problems we have, and to hear your ideas; I think you'd find it a very interesting task from an intellectual point of view, and I think it is soluble.

If you're coming to Wikimania in August, I'd love to meet with you. Best of all, if you could join a group of ~20 of us in Potsdam, New York at our hackathon afterwards, we could work on it face-to-face in a room full of experts. However, I'm sure we could still make good progress working at a distance, if you're unable to travel to Canada this summer.

I'll certainly look at that list of unsolved problems, but right now I need to get on with some gardening. Please look at the 0.7 topical index and let me know if you'd like to collaborate on this further; I would be thrilled to get some help on this at last! Walkerma (talk) 19:14, 28 May 2017 (UTC)

@Walkerma: I read | offline hackathon, and the I very much liked the "KEYWORDS" (paragraph 2). I have never attended a Wikimania before, since I have only recently began taking a serious interest in contributing to Wikipedia. I would like to know more about the logistics of Wikimania and the hackathon (beyond just showing up =P ?). I probably just need to read more into it...

Fun fact: This is going to happen and be VERY visible from that general location on the globe: Solar eclipse of August 21, 2017.

I definitely want to hear more about the project. I definitely am able to program, although I probably won't be the "developer who saves the day" (but hey, who knows!). As far as the organization of pages, assessments, bots, etc... I find the underlying mathematics in designing this to be interesting. I imagine that some fun applications from Network science and Graph theory will be useful, and most likely will be looking like Google's PageRank lol.

Popcrate (talk) 05:56, 29 May 2017 (UTC)

@Popcrate:I haven't attended Wikimania myself since Washington, DC in 2012, so it may have changed a bit. You have to be a pretty serious Wikipedian (or Wikimedian) to enjoy the specialised topics, but I suspect you'd find plenty; talks range from very technical sessions for computer experts to very general talks on social aspects of Wikipedia in society or how groups interact within WikiNews or things like that. There are also many people working "at the edges" of Wikimedia projects - like our offline releases - which are really interesting to learn about. If you look at last year's programme you'll get the idea. I tend to avoid the hardcore tech talks but find most others interesting. I also love the fact that you sit down for lunch and find you're sitting at a table with people from Pakistan, Venezuela, Germany and the US - but you find you have similar interests and passions. It's really fun to meet people in person that you've met online; even better is when you make friendships that lead to new collaborations. My meeting with User:Kelson at Boston in 2006 led to a deep collaboration that is still active today (I will talk with him again on Saturday), including when he invited me to Paris to give a talk on the 1.0 project. But of course you have to look at the cost (I have no idea where you live); the registration is usually kept cheap but flights & hotels can add up to a lot.

If you do plan to come to Montreal, I'd love to have you also attend our hackathon. I will be working as a facilitator for some of the time, but I would also have plenty of time to sit down with you and thrash out ideas. We could probably get a lot done. User:Kelson will be there all week with the full Kiwix team, and they provide much expertise in this area.

I wasn't aware there was a solar eclipse at that time! I will have gone to Washington for a chemistry conference then, but it looks as if that will be well within the path. I recall seeing one in Boston in the 90s, and it was really special.

Regarding your skills for the indexing project, they sound perfect. My previous collaborator on this was a mathematician, and for this topic I think clear thinking skills are probably the most important. The key part is to find a really good way to solve the indexing problem; once we can do that, I suspect that the programming will be quite straightforward (unless you get into AI or something more advanced). The main problem is exemplified by what I think of as the France/Belgium problem; if you look at the category hierarchy for France, you find that Belgium is listed as below France, so based on that you might think it was part of France! It is in fact because underneath Category:France there is Category:Belgium–France border. In another example, there is a bar in England listed several levels underneath Category:Chemistry, because it is listed a places serving alcohol => alcohol => ethanol => alcohols => organic chemistry. Thus categories generate a very useful network of connections, but not a perfect hierarchy (or a Dewey Decimal system) as one might imagine. I would love to really nail this problem as I think it would make our collections much better. If you'd like to talk further about this on Skype or some other format, please let me know, or tell me how you would like to proceed. Thank you again for your interest! Walkerma (talk) 05:23, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

For chatrooms and communications, I have been testing Discord (software), which is a pretty nice alternative to skype (and the desktop app is lightweight). I have a skype, and I'm willing to use it. I don't have any specific preference of which program to use, and I just don't know which is best lol.

For indexing: I'm writing up my first thoughts, and I'll show you more details when I finish.

My mentality and approach ATM is with this overall goal in mind:

• Learn the most when using Wikipedia.

And the overall way this could be made easier

• Improve Navigation by identifying the connections between topics.

A few thoughts/topics I will rite more about..

• Build off existing organization tactics
• using words from the intro section of the article to determine relationship to categories and parts
• Ontology and Ontology (information science)
• Artificial intelligence#Knowledge representation

Theres more, I'll save it for the write-up. Popcrate (talk) 04:32, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

Sounds great! I'm familiar with ontologies, as we use them a lot in cheminformatics, and occasionally we use AI as well, but I'm sure I know less than you about these. Let me know when you've got your thoughts together, and I'm happy to try out Discord. Thanks, Walkerma (talk) 04:52, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

Is the chemistry project chat meetings still on?

Hi,

I have recently discovered that the chemistry wikipedia project group meet weekly on an online chat, on the page it says to contact you for more information. Does this meeting still occur? Am I welcome to join? Is it still at the time listed on the wiki page? Thanks EvilxFish (talk) 23:10, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

@EvilxFish: - sorry, I've been away with no internet - just got back. No - those meetings ended long ago, I'm afraid! We had weekly meetings for a long time while we were developing our style guide and structure drawing standards. I'll have to update that....! Cheers, Walkerma (talk) 22:59, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) However, we do have discussions on the wikipedia project group's talkpages (Wikipedia talk:Chemicals and Wikipedia talk:Chemistry), and some of us are often on IRC if you'd like to discuss things that way. DMacks (talk) 07:23, 2 July 2017 (UTC)

Great thank you both! I will be sure to check into IRC as well then! Are these talk pages the correct places to request reviews for some of the things I have added lately to various articles? EvilxFish (talk) 13:01, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

Requests for review (of own work or others we come across) are a common topic at those talkpages. DMacks (talk) 13:06, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

Yes - be sure to post them on the talk pages (and the article talk pages also). I should have mentioned that in my original reply. Thanks a lot, DMacks! Walkerma (talk) 13:30, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

Sunday July 16: New England Wiknic @ Cambridge, MA

Sunday July 16, 1-5pm: New England Wiknic

You are invited to join us the "picnic anyone can edit" at John F. Kennedy Park, near Harvard Square, Cambridge, as part of the Great American Wiknic celebrations being held across the USA. Remember it's a wiki-picnic, which means potluck. Sunday July 16 New England Wiknic (also on Facebook) 1–5pm - come by any time! Look for us by the Wikipedia / Wikimedia banner! We hope to see you there! --Phoebe (talk) 16:33, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

(You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future notifications for Boston-area events by adding or removing your name from this list.)

hellow please add index by topic and location and year e s r b for school and univercity and more e s r b and alfabet and more thanks

hellow please add index by topic and location and year e s r b for school and univercity and more e s r b and alfabet and more thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by 5.22.34.53 (talk) 13:44, 29 July 2017 (UTC)

Hello! That's what we'd like to do, but it's very hard to do! We have some people working on it. What do you mean by e s r b ? Thanks, Walkerma (talk) 13:47, 29 July 2017 (UTC)

Mass notification

Hi Martin,

To notify people on a large scale, I believe you'll want to look into the User:MediaWiki message delivery system. What you need to do is a make a request for a mass message delivery at Wikipedia_talk:Mass_message_senders#MassMessage_Delivery_Requests, along with a list of the intended recipients.

There are other options too, like site-wide notices, depending on what exactly you have in mind. Let me know if the MassMessage delivery works for you, or if you need something a bit more tailored to your situation. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 14:43, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

@Headbomb:: Thanks a lot! If you want to join us for the hackathon 12-1pm EDT livestream and questions (on #offline). Info on Wed & Thursday talks are available here. Walkerma (talk) 16:22, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

Might not be possible since I've just resumed work (I work August 15 - May 15) and have quite a bit to do before the semester starts. But if I can somehow be involved, I will. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 16:46, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

@Headbomb::It's a live stream of the talks. We're learning about the PiBox right now. It's called a hackathon, but the main purpose is for everyone to learn what everyone else is doing, so we can work together on offline content and distribution. Thanks for the offer, though, and I hope work goes well this year. Walkerma (talk) 16:50, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

Would like your input on this please

Hi, This is something that will affect the quality of chemistry articles on Wikipedia. I personally strongly oppose the motion due to it not being accepted in mainstream chemical reporting however I am sure you can decide for yourself. Kind regards EvilxFish (talk) 10:36, 12 September 2017 (UTC)

Women in Red World Contest

Hi. We're into the last five days of the Women in Red World Contest. There's a new bonus prize of $200 worth of books of your choice to win for creating the most new women biographies between 0:00 on the 26th and 23:59 on 30th November. If you've been contributing to the contest, thank you for your support, we've produced over 2000 articles. If you haven't contributed yet, we would appreciate you taking the time to add entries to our articles achievements list by the end of the month. Thank you, and if participating, good luck with the finale!

ArbCom 2017 election voter message

Hello, Walkerma. Voting in the 2017 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23.59 on Sunday, 10 December. All users who registered an account before Saturday, 28 October 2017, made at least 150 mainspace edits before Wednesday, 1 November 2017 and are not currently blocked are eligible to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2017 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:42, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

MfD nomination of Wikipedia:WikiProject assessment/A-Class criteria

Wikipedia:WikiProject assessment/A-Class criteria, a page which you created or substantially contributed to, has been nominated for deletion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; you may participate in the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:WikiProject assessment/A-Class criteria and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~). You are free to edit the content of Wikipedia:WikiProject assessment/A-Class criteria during the discussion but should not remove the miscellany for deletion template from the top of the page; such a removal will not end the deletion discussion. Thank you.  — Mr. Guye (talk) (contribs)  11:44, 13 December 2017 (UTC)

Help create an index

To editor Walkerma: I'd be interested in helping with the preparation of a reliable index, as mentioned here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team. I can code and I've indexed before (mostly textbooks/nonfiction). Plus I have a lot of editing experience. Thanks. Pursuedbybaer (talk) 20:32, 22 December 2017 (UTC)

@Pursuedbybaer: - Thank you! That would be great! Good, reliable index creation is (IMHO) the last major hurdle before we call our collection "Wikipedia 1.0", assuming the version selection part works this time (We're going to be using both ORES and WikiTrust). Also, we may have another person interested to work on indexes (or do you prefer indices?!). It's perfect timing, in fact, because we're about to start work on our next collection - the first we've done since 2011 - because we have some new people helping on the tech side (we had lost our main tech person). Do you do Skype or do you prefer IRC, or Zoom, or something else? We will probably hold some meetings in January to discuss the general needs. There may be some synergistic benefits from it, also, in how we select articles.

In the meantime, it would be great if we could talk one on one, so I can lay out the task and likely problems, and you can share your ideas on what we can do. If you prefer to correspond by email, that's OK, but if we can talk in real time (somehow!) that may be more efficient for getting you started. Please also take a look at Kiwix, which is our main collaborator.

So please let me know how you'd like to communicate, and when is best for us to talk further. Thanks! Walkerma (talk) 15:17, 23 December 2017 (UTC)

@Walkerma: Oh, great! So exciting. I totally agree: a good index is the key to a text. (And I'd go with whatever Wiki prefers, of course ;)

Email, if that's okay. It would be more efficient to talk via phone but—I apologize—I have a bit of a phone phobia. (I totally understand if you want to talk to a person over the phone before working with them on something this important, though. I can do whatever task you think appropriate.)

Just let me know how I can help. I look forward to it! Pursuedbybaer (talk) 14:43, 24 December 2017 (UTC)

On Indexing and Article Assessment

I read your talk message, and I am definitely still interested in this! I actually have refined some of my ideas, and think Statistical classification might be a useful tool.

Relating to Article Assessment:

1. Handpick articles that are good examples of each assessment rating (Featured, Good, A, B, etc.) This would be the Training dataset .
2. Identify specific Features of those articles that would help to classify them.
3. Use the program to classify new articles (or articles that haven't been assessed in awhile).
4. Human can confirm that the program's article classification is correct.

A Few More Thoughts:

• There could be 2 separate article ratings: Machine's rating, and Human's rating. The machine's rating would be more updated, and the human's rating would be more accurate, precise, and/or reliable.
• Could use the program to help identify articles that are in need of re-assessment.

A similar tactic can actually be used to help create an index, or a categorization of articles. It could build upon the already existing category tag system, but it doesn't need to. It could use things like similarity in wiki-links to known topics, wiki-data, intro paragraphs, word counts, etc.

Due to the extremely high volume of Wikipedia articles, a bot could run this kind of program on random articles, sifting them into different groups and making various assessment predictions.

I believe there are currently bots for vandalism checking that are doing this exact type of thing: classification of an edit: (is this vandalism, or not?). In fact, as I look at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/ORES .... I realize it might also be doing article quality rating too.

Well anyway, yes, I'm willing to help with this =)

P.S. Perhaps we should collaborate with Wikimedia Scoring Platform team

Popcrate (talk) 18:58, 23 December 2017 (UTC)

A kitten for you!

Thank you!

Pursuedbybaer (talk) 15:06, 24 December 2017 (UTC)