User talk:Walkerma

This is Martin Walker's discussion page.

GOING TO WIKIMANIA, SO I WILL BE PRETTY BUSY.

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 Elections, 1.0 stuff. oxy, minus, WiktionaryZ, Chem portal, SCOTUS, Antarctica/WVWP, Streamlining 1.0/GA

/Archive8 (mid-Mar 2006 - Apr 2006) - incl. various on overall Wikipedia 1.0 strategies and plans, CASREF external links in tables, coordinating GA, FAC, AA and 1.0.

/Archive9 (May 2006) - incl. assessment tables, Mathbot, Geber, WP1.0 icon, Tito, Vir, BozMo, A-Class wording, 1.0/0.5 stuff, 18-Electron rule, chem substance. Discussion

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)

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)

NFPA 704

NFPA 704

I will not be adding the NFPA 704 images to IMD. I thought that since we have an NFPA 704 template, the images would be pointless. Thanks for proving me wrong. :)

--Evan Robidoux 19:33, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

your message

Thanks indeed for your support! Tony 07:06, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Chemical substance

Thanks Martin for the edit on chemical substance, it just has the feel that I wanted to see from it. Nice work! --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 07:22, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Contacting WikiProjects

I don't know whether you watch my talk page or not, that's why I reply here. Thanks for the infos. I have exams now, so I can't say I'd help now, but I'd like to join when you start contacting science-related wikiprojects. So please let me know when you are there. Thanks and good work. :) NCurse _work 08:41, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

WPCD

So are you back in circulation for a chat? I have managed to tweak the Good Articles template so that all the good articles are added to WPCD. If you could do the same to the category of articles accepted for 0.5 it would help me. Category WPCD now has about 3400 articles. At 5000 we will try a rerun (at least to stick up as a demo even if not as a download). If you want help putting up a 0.5 version then let me know. --BozMo talk 09:24, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Tuesday? In 6 days time? Personally I would prefer to chat UK office hours on a M,T or Th if thats ok. --BozMo talk 21:16, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

see http://www.soschildrensvillages.org.uk/sponsor-a-child/sponsorship-directory/africa.htm for eg click map

Suppliers

I posted a slightly worked-out suggestion on Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Chemicals#ChemSources. I guess that is better place for the discussion. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 11:59, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Got one step further, but still not there, see Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Chemicals#ChemSources, Wikipedia:Chemical sources and Wikipedia talk:Chemical sources. I hope we can find someone that knows how to, and can make a special page. Hope you don't mind I put your name as a possible contact for the page. Cheers --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 22:38, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Wikifilms Project

I believe the Wikifilm project would welcome the chance to open a Worklist, Bot Generated or otherwise. What do you we have to do to obtain this? Send in a request? Thanks for your time. --P-Chan 06:36, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Hey thanks for the info. We'll definetly discuss this on Film Project talk. I have a feeling that the worklist would add a lot of value to the project. Gremlins 2? If that's called being a b*****d, then you should keep it up! Hehe. Best to you! --P-Chan 07:39, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Congratulation on your sixthousandth edit

Hi, Martin, while doing some editcounting, I compared my nearly 3900 edits with some others and found you've just passed the 6000 edit. Congratulations. I wonder how you managed to also get some real work done. I tend to stay up way too late. Wim van Dorst (Talk) 23:07, 15 June 2006 (UTC).

Remember, though: editcountitis can be fatal...

Statistics for: Walkerma (Permissions: N/A) - Total: 6081 -

• Main: 2656
• Talk: 659
• User: 135
• User talk: 587
• Wikipedia: 801
• Wikipedia talk: 870
• Image: 180
• Template: 55
• Template talk: 9
• Category: 78
• Category talk: 8
• Portal: 42
• Portal talk: 1

---

• Total edits: 6081
• Minor edits: 1680
• Edits with edit summary: 5730
• Edits with manual edit summary: 5450
• Percent minor edits: 27.62% *
• Percent edit summary use: 94.22% *
• Percent manual edit summary use: 89.62% *
• First known edit: Nov 9, 2004

---

• * - percentages are rounded down to the nearest hundredth.

---

Titoxd^(?!?) 01:05, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! Yes, I stay up too late as well, so it's a rather dubious achievement in my opinion. I'm very restrained compared to some, though! Cheers, and congrats on reaching 4000, Wim. Walkerma 04:03, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

RFA offer

I know you do exceptional work WP:1.0 And WP:0.5 and I'm wondering if I could nominate you for adminship as the tools can be more helpful for you. Reply on my talk page. Thanks Jaranda ^{wat's sup} 19:14, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Sorry to join, but I must say it's a perfect idea. :) NCurse _work 19:17, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Nice of you to offer, but tools are only useful if you know how to use them! I'm still getting the hang of templates! Also, call me selfish, but my NOT being an admin frees me from all sorts of duties so I can work on fun things like WP:Chem and WP:V0.5! Thanks a lot, Walkerma 03:42, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

WikiProject Rocks and minerals

Hi - just now saw your request from last spring on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Rocks and minerals. Obviously I don't pay much attention to the project although I do edit a bunch of rock & mineral articles. I have added 3 to the Rock & mineral section of Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/WPScience and can add a bunch more - need to review the criteria a bit more before continuing. Vsmith 22:29, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

1.0/Good articles

Martin-Those articles are definitely the type I'd love to put some work into...and it would be a pleasure collaborating with you. At the moment I'm going to go listen to my favourite radio program but when I get up tomorrow morning (noon or whereabouts) I'll have a look at Dow Chemical.

Incidentally, you and I are both SUNY alumni...very interesting choice of uni for an Englishman. (And furthermore incidentally, I will be visiting your sceptered isle from 5 July to 22 July in preparation for this wacky event. If you'd like to get together at some point for an imperial pint of a fine ale, then let me know. Paul 06:00, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

My goodness, I just had a quick look...the world's second largest chemical company truly deserves better. Will get to it in the mornin'. Paul 06:07, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Firstly, congratulations on your barnstar; the good articles project is perhaps the most worthy of Wikipedia's many projects. Secondly, check out Dow Chemical and share your thoughts; it still has a ways to go but I think it's much better than it was when I started. Best, Paul 06:52, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Education V0.5

I was looking at this article, which you nominated, for V0.5 inclusion. It seems to be to be well written and is an important topic, but it has no inline citations (as oppossed to general references) at all and is B-class. B-class does not prevent it from being included, but higher levels are preferred (Aclass, GA, FA). I just don't feel comfortable including it without any citations. If appropriate citations were added, I'd include it without hesitation. Please respond on my talk page and note I'll be gone for a week beginning 25 June. Rlevse 11:10, 24 June 2006 (UTC)...same deal with Money.Rlevse 11:13, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Are you trying to say for 0.5 that no or only a few footnotes are OK? For a B class, I may see that, but not for GA, A, or FA. Rlevse 17:26, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for helping me understand the process better. I started off mainly writing articles in the Scouting area, now I the coordinator of the Scouting Project and Scouting Portal. Now I'm moving into the area of making articles better and getting them rating, which is how I recently became involved in the GA and 0.5 areas. So, now that I understand the 0.5 process better, I selected Education and Money. I have my own article I was a main co-writer of up for 0.5 --- Eagle Scout (Boy Scouts of America), which is a FA. It was my second FA. Thanks for the help on learning the process.Rlevse 20:18, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

WikiProject templates

You might want to take a look at this new proposal; if it gets any significant support, the entire Mathbot-driven rating system will go down the drain. Kirill Lokshin 16:49, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

10,000

I award you this Barnstar of Diligence in recognition of your extraordinary efforts towards creating a working system of article assessment for Wikipedia. Kirill Lokshin 05:21, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

It seems we've finally broken past 10,000 assessed articles. We have—thanks, in large part, to your own determination in seeing this project through—achieved the first steps of what may become the semi-mythical article validation system that everyone always talks about. More than that, your efforts have spurred furious activity on the part of many formerly lethargic WikiProjects. We—as Wikipedians—are all very much in your debt. Kirill Lokshin 05:21, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Picture

Thanks for nominating my picture - it was really funny for me to see it here :-)

Polimerek 20:28, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

GA disputes and vetos

Hi,

We are having a discussion about a change to the delisting procedure here. Since you were part of the group that formulated the dispute procedure your feedback on the matter would be appreciated if you have the time.

Best wishes,

Cedars 03:05, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

The message you left for wikiproject Stargate

Hi, When you first asked our project for "quality articles" we thought you were asking for articles that were both good and important. Because of this, we decided to get rid of some very good articles, just because they were obscure. (Here is an example) There was an intense debate in the project a few months ago over what is imporant enough to be put in. Now that you are asking us for important articles I, and probably others are in a state of confusion. We thought that's what the first list was.

What I think you want is:

• The first list to be of good articles (They don't have to be important despite previous misconceptions)
• The second list will be of crucial articles

Thats what I think you are saying. If that's indeed what you are saying, pleaser make that clear, or a big havoc will start in the project out of confusion. If not, please let me know what you want the project to do. Thanks Tobyk777 06:03, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Novels

Spotted you were in touch with a WikiProject Books that has been a little less active than ours. We do overlap a bit but in a co-operative manner. I was just wanting to make contact with the WP:1.0 team and start getting proper assessment going. We have made a start with Category:Novel articles by quality etc. Please you or someone else from the team if you get in touch that would be good. :: Kevinalewis : ^{(Talk Page)}/_(Desk) 16:11, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

WP:WVWP contacts and other things

Hello, Martin. As you can see, I haven't been editing much lately, as real life has picked up its pace, and I have overall less time to edit (or to be online at all). However, I'll still help with 0.5 and the WikiProjects lists, I'm just not sure what exactly to do. I was thinking of doing the contacts for the science/places WikiProjects, as I had contacted them originally, and perhaps do more behind-the-scenes work, but if there's something else I can help with, feel sure to give me a nudge. Titoxd^(?!?) 22:22, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Usually, I'm better at updating and maintaining the lists, and other back-end infrastructure, but I'll try to help as much with the Science/Places contacts, as I'll be less busy by that time, hopefully. The next few weeks will be extremely busy for me, but I'll try to come back in and help out anyways. Titoxd^(?!?) 23:04, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Static content

Dear Martin, see my recent post on titoxd's talk page... we should identify places to coordinate for the greatest impact in the short term. I hope all's ewll, and that your computer has not suffered any more down time; and send regards from the frigid north, +sj + 15:20, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

FAC: I'd like your feedback, if not support

Hi Martin, I currently have the article Baden-Powell House on WP:FAC. I know it has nothing to do with chemistry, but knowing your high-quality view on wikipedia articles, I would appreciate your feedback on the comments page. Wim van Dorst (Talk) 22:18, 1 July 2006 (UTC).

See reply on your talk page. Walkerma 23:27, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

• Perfect touch-up. Thanks very much. I hope this'll bring the scale to the positive side. Wim van Dorst (Talk) 20:36, 2 July 2006 (UTC).

Re: Thanks

Thank you for your kind words! I see no reason why we couldn't have 100,000 tagged articles by fall; my main suggestion here would be to focus, at least initially, on projects that are actively tagging to begin with, rather than spending a significant amount of time trying to prod dead projects back to activity. An updated version of the list of templates by usage would help significantly in this, as it would then be trivial to determine which projects have already tagged a significant number of articles, and would thus be ripe targets for inclusion in the bot tables; but even looking at the old listing, for example, immediately highlights Wikipedia:WikiProject Ice Hockey, which already has ~5000 articles tagged. A fairly trivial modification to their template and some category creation would thus give a greater immediate benefit—at least in terms of articles under the bot's purview—than messages to any number of inactive projects (or even those that, while active, simply don't have the manpower for the massive tagging this requires).

As far as 0.5 is concerned, I'll try to do some more work on that; I've been quite busy with WP:MILHIST things recently, so I haven't really had a chance to do much. I wonder if it might not be appropriate, should we need more articles, to simply import large portions of the WP:FA listing? We might not get the most balanced coverage of important topics, but there would at least be enough well-written articles to give a test release some substance. Kirill Lokshin 01:52, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

wiki1.0

thanks for the welcome! Uh, i'm a bit confused as to how I can help out the assesment process; is it just a review by one editor quick (for 0.5) or a big process? Do I just judge an article's quality and accuracy? -- Chris ^Ccool2ax _contrib. 02:17, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Judaism

Brave of you passing Judaism. I reckoned it was so far from NPOV as to be untenable, and hard to save on section deletes. Personally I have problems with statements like "The 20th century animosity of Muslim leaders towards Zionism, the political movement of Jewish self-determination, has led to a renewed interest in the relationship between Judaism and Islam" ... --BozMo talk 08:39, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Fair enough. I know only a little of history too, and always see it from a Western bias but there are a whole serious of problems with this statement (and others) including such delicacies and whether animosity is religious or political (Muslim leaders or Arab leaders?) and whether animosity is toward "Jewish self-determination" per sae (is that really what most people mean by Zionism?) or whether it is to do with the fact that in our wisdom we created Israel forcefully in the middle of Arab lands where Palestinians had been living for thousands of years rather than say by annexing New England out of the USA (where there were more Jews living after all, and the indigenous population had been wiped out a matter of a century ago, so no one else had a strong claim) and letting the Jewish people self-determine there. WP in general has a very American history slant and I tend to avoid articles like this one where it comes out so strongly; as with many areas of conflict in the world we are not entirely on the right side of history. Casting it as though the origin of the problem was religious hatred for self-determination is not accurate or fair. However I could not disagree with the importance of the topic. --BozMo talk 08:43, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

1.0 Team

Hey sorry,

I'm the idiot that was wondering how to use the bot. I have tried and failed miserably, as I can't understand the instructions. It would be great if you could set something up for the bot to run over Category:Adelaide. Sorry if this is a hassle. Jasrocks ^(talk) 06:10, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Ok, I've just made this like you said. I don't quite get what to do next. At the moment, Talk:Adelaide doesnt list through to the categories. How do I do this? Jasrocks ^(talk) 22:40, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

1.0 Question

Where can I help most? My interests are more general in nature, although I do have some areas in which I have a reasonable level of expertise. KillerChihuahua^?!? 14:28, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Bhumibol Adulyadej

Hi. I see your work on Wiki and you do great article improvement (FA, V0.5, GA, etc). I was wondering if you could give the Bhumibol Adulyadej article a look over as I plan to work it to FA. I spent most of yesterday fixing the messed up ref section. I'd especially appreciate you input on whether the image tags are sufficient for a FAC round. Will the on section with a current event tag be a problem? Any other input would be appreciated. Rlevse 12:17, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Whenever you get to it is fine. As for V0.5, I thought I'd get blown off, but I'm obviously not the only one who has complained and there is obviously something wrong with the current system or there wouldn't be all that talk. Also, I never asked for the Eagle Scout article be included, my complaint was with the flaws in the system. I've been debating what to say in that thread next. Oh, and the Scouting article is rated B-class right now and the Baden Powell article GA. Rlevse 18:51, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

V0.5 proposal

Here's what I think would work for your V0.5 project and meet most concerns people brought up:

1. Articles already selected: water under the bridge, leave them there
2. Article must be nominated-even if they are "automatically included", it is not the job of reviewers to go looking for articles
3. Stub and Start articles are not eligible under any circumstances, if the editor wants them included, he/she must beef them up
4. B-class are only eligible if they are on a Core Topic and in such a case are automatically included
5. FA, A-class, GA articles are automatically included if they have been rated as TOP or HIGH by a WikiProject OR are on a Core Topic
6. remaining FA, A-class, GA articles must be voted on by at least 3 reviewers and at least 2 must vote for inclusion and rated 1-5 by each reviewer, 5 being very important (like George Washington) and 1 being very minor (like Spoo). A score of 2.1 must be attained for inclusion. Nominations in this cat should be left on the nom page for at least 10 days
7. nominators should note if they feel an article is in an "auto included" category

Rlevse 20:56, 6 July 2006 (UTC) Yrs, I think we'll end up with a system something like this. I'm going to try and put everyone's ideas together into a workable solution over the next couple of days. Walkerma 04:14, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Sometimes complaining does good-;). Rlevse 21:32, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

GA template

See Wikipedia:Deletion_review for 8 July. Rlevse 12:43, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Topic priorities for release versions

Hi, Martin. I had an idea about article topic priorities that might build on Silence's idea and the four-level scale already in use.

The flaw with the current scale is that it designates importance only within a given Wikiproject, or maybe other topic areas.

Besides that, I think it would be good for the overall project to use a larger set of numbers to designate the priorities, and a scale that is somewhat less relative than Silence's idea. By that I mean that each priority level would correspond to a set of some defined number. Here are a couple of examples.

One option is based on powers of 10.

• Priority level 1 -- The 10 most important items.
• Level 2 -- The 11th to 100th most important items.
• 3 -- The 101st to 1000th most important items, and so on.

Another option is based on doubling.

• Priority set 100 -- The 100 most important items.
• Set 200 -- The 101st to 200th most important items.
• 400 -- The 201st to 400th most important items, and so on.

Defining the size of the sets in each level would be more clear than otherwise. For example, you and I might agree that "Foobar" ranks as between the 500th and 100th most important topic. But without defining the size of the set, you might assign it a Level 1 priority and I might assign it a Level 3.

These could be set up by continuing in the same vein as the core topics or with categories or both. Categories could allow subcategories, such as "the art articles within level x."

The system could also still be used to complement other current functions, such as core topics lists and the current scale of importance within wikiprojects. And it could be used as a guide (not mandatory) for 0.5 or a later version.

Further, one way to lessen the potential for conflict within this system could be that we might want to no discourage people from moving an item more than one level at a time. Maurreen 14:17, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

I also put a similar note at the main team talk page. Maurreen 15:38, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Hi, glad you like the idea. Hope your trip or whatever was good.

Silence's idea is here. Maurreen 17:06, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

The problem with this is that non-experts are deciding how important something are. This is I think that with articles rated by a project, the subject-matter experts, that rating should be a main factor. Rlevse 17:06, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

The problem with THAT is how to rank vastly different articles - for example, which is more important, a biography of an Australian TV/pop star or an American scouting standard? The most objective answer is likely to come from someone who is familiar with both, but not strongly interested in either (i.e., impartial). That impartial reviewer (if such a person exists!) can consider the relative rankings of each article within a project, and of the project itself. If we can achieve a consensus of close-to-impartial opinions - which Maurreen is proposing, I think - then we can get close to what we need.

Even within the same general area, something rated "Top" by a very specialized project like this, might only get a rating of "high" or "mid" from a general Biology WikiProject. Or take a look at the two (very different, but appropriate) rankings on this example. In short, we need someone to turn the relative rankings within a project into absolute rankings - a very challenging task, I think you'd agree! I think Maurreen's approach is the only fair one in the long term, because it allows us to slowly evolve a consensus in the same way as WP:VA or WP:CORE are starting to do. This is ultimately the only fair way to compare the relative importance of an Aussie pop star with an American scouting standard.

By the way, my "trip" was simply to relocate to Boston for the summer, I teach summer school organic chemistry at Brandeis University most summers. Walkerma 17:31, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

I think there are two immediate problems with this idea. The first, and most obvious, is that it will require a separate ranking for every article that may be entirely different from the ones assigned by the WikiProjects. This would require enormous effort for even a moderately-sized set of articles, and will be (as the current 0.5 system is) very vulnerable to systemic bias on the part of the (presumably limited) number of people assigning these secondary rankings.

The second, and potentially greater, problem is that creating a quantifiable numeric ranking is among the few ideas absolutely guaranteed to cause a firestorm of resentment, because it will force relative rankings within any sufficiently large class of articles. This may not be as apparent, perhaps, to someone like yourself, who works primarily in the hard sciences; while there might be different opinions over whether sulfuric acid or hydrochloric acid is more important, neither choice is likely to cause much resentment. But consider applying the same logic when questions of pride are at stake. Is Uganda or France more important? How about Islam versus Judaism? Or Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin? You're asking for conflicts of quite epic proportions here. Kirill Lokshin 17:43, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

In other words, few if any people will be happy. Rlevse 17:46, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

As ever, Kirill, your comments are right on the money. If things like scouting and Hong Kong action cinema evoke such passions, consider religion and politics...! It would certainly be a lot of work. Using the project definitions as a guide would drastically reduce it, but not eliminate the work. How then can we reach a consensus, without upsetting people - or should we just not bother? I still think my old idea of a subject tree (more nicely formatted) might be the least controversial way of doing this. Then we simply have level 1, level 2, level 3, etc (like in Maurreen's system) in each subject area, with the projects organising their own part (branches?) of the overall tree. Walkerma 17:53, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

I think one option (I can't recall if I've proposed this before) would be to avoid having pre-defined release sizes. In other words, rather than starting out with the idea of picking exactly X,000 articles for a release and then forcing the WikiProjects into that metric, grab sets of articles (consisting of intersections between a set of importance ratings and a set of quality ratings) from various WikiProjects, with progressively lower standards until we reach the desired release size. In other words, start by taking all Top-Importance articles that are at least B-Class in quality; suppose we have ~2,000 of those. If we want to release ~10,000 articles, start accepting batches of various projects' High-Importance articles until we get close to that number.

It may be helpful, depending on the numbers involved, to create some sort of informal division of WikiProjects to represent the order in which they would be asked for additional sets of articles. This may be mildly controversial, but I think that a very simple scheme of asking higher-level projects (e.g. Biology) before lower-level ones (e.g. Banksia) would be generally accepted even by the smaller projects.

The concern that this will lead to "trivial" projects getting their articles into the release is not a particularly valid one, in my opinion. The smaller projects are unlikely to produce any substantial number of articles in the higher grades; and, in any case, I see little to be gained by purposely excluding them. So long as more "important" topics are adequately represented, is it really that big a problem if we have also included some more eclectic ones? One of Wikipedia's chief strengths is its breadth; I don't see the need to sweep that under the rug here. Kirill Lokshin 18:13, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

This is very similar to the method I mentioned a few days ago. The only problem is articles that are not covered/rated by a WikiProject.Rlevse 18:53, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, I think it's a bit too early to estimate how much of a concern that will be, since most WikiProjects aren't even aware of the bot yet. Even then, the most important articles will be covered by something like the core topics list, and we can even run an ad-hoc process to add (but not remove) extra articles if there are some significant areas where no projects are active. But I would expect that the overwhelming majority of useful topics will be adequately covered by a WikiProject; the key is informing them all of how to use the bot. Kirill Lokshin 19:15, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Actually, they don't need to use the bot. Through Work via WikiProjects (which worked with Oleg to set up the use of the bot) we are still offering projects a "manual" way of uploading this information. In some cases a small project may want to list only a few articles without bothering with the bot - but this information is still very valuable when put together with the rest. See this example. Walkerma 19:21, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Fair enough; replace "bot" with "some sort of worklist" in my comments above. (Although my experience suggests that even very small projects will happily use the bot over compiling a manual worklist.) Kirill Lokshin 19:23, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

I meant to say, hopefully soon we at WVWP can set up our own use of the bot, for compiling all of these fragmented data into a cohesive body of information. As we discussed, though, quality will be easy to compile (I hope to set it up this week) the absolute importance is much harder. My guess would be that about half of the responsive groups adopt the bot, and about half of them prefer just a simple short list. Walkerma 19:26, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

On hold

Hi Martin, I want to share why my participation has been on hold. I have a bit been unsure how to frame this until the last week. First, my research plan in Wikipedia has changed three times in the last few months due to discussions with my committee. It seems that I have a plan now. As it turns out, I will be researching an aspect of WP in which I was not involved. Second, a cautious advisor suggested I needed to hold off participation until I get my institution's IRB approval. That seemed prudent. This proposal stage may wrap up in next month or two. I will be unsure about using the Vir account (soon) until the proposal stage is over. Btw, I will probably attend Wikimania and I will look you up there. So, take care and I hope to chat with you sometime, Vir 16:30, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Hi again, Thanks for your comments. That is a lot of assessed articles! Yes, I will try to make it to one or both of the sessions you mention. Look forward to meeting you then, Vir 01:35, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Hi, I'm going to participate in "bits" via a new ID. This ID is going to sleep (on hold) for a good while. See you on the other ID and at Wikimania. :) Vir 17:04, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Bob Dylan

The references are there. They're in the section formerly called Further Reading.

Blue Stone - with a capitalised S

Hi Martin You were the most recent contributor to Blue stone so you seem a good place to start. There is a re-direct on Blue Stone that takes readers to Blue stone something completely different. If you go to Yellow Sun which I edited recently you'll see that someone has later added a link to Blue Stone which is then re-directed.

It was then and still is, subject to time constraints, my intention to generate a short descriptive piece on ENIs (Electronic Neutron Generators) as part of a more general update of UK nuclear history. Blue Stone was a codename used to describe several design generations of these devices that replaced the crude short-lifespan impact generators used on early nuclear weapons, eg. Fat Man. And its the only name used now for these ENI devices other than alpha-numeric jumbles.

I'd like to get the re-direct removed but I'm not sufficiently Wikified yet and want to proceed cautiously.

Some source material for Blue Stone can be seen at http://www.mcis.soton.ac.uk/Site_Files/pdf/nuclear_history/glossary.pdf Regards Brian.Burnell 14:33, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Project FBI

Well.. I really worked on template using some of the ideas of the WPBeatles project. {{Project FBI}}. Looks very rad now... still working on a neat feature which I can't share yet, but I will keep you informed so you can see it's "Wonder" ;-) Shane ^{(talk/contrib)} 22:15, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Importance

Meh, sorry about breaking your nice four-level scale, but it was the only way we could get consensus to go ahead with the ratings at all. (Unfortunately, a lot of projects have been copying our assessment page to start their own, without considering whether the three-level scale—or the fairly liberal interpretation of each level—is really suited for narrower and more homogenous topics. I'm not really sure what can be done about that.)

Incidentally, you might want to keep an eye on the new "Biography" ratings that are being introduced. It's a very broad and varied area—even more so than military history—and I suspect that if they start doing importance ratings in earnest, there will be a huge mess of complaints as a result. Kirill Lokshin 22:40, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Timing

Still on for Oct to give me a list of articles to run? Still aiming at 5000? Does the nomination process include a check on whether the images used have decent copyright by the way? Also please don't forget the "bad paragraph" list although I notice some bots have been cleaning up inconsistent headings so with a little prompting this might be automatable. --BozMo talk 06:20, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Libya

Please feel free to evaluate the Libya article which has become a 'Featured Article Candidate' and write you support or opposition on Wikipedia:Featured article candidates. Hopefully Libya will become only the second African country to be featured on Wikipedia. Thanks --User:Jaw101ie 12:28, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Wrong Category

Eagle Scout (Boy Scouts of America) was selected for V0.5, here, but it was put in a military awards category. Can another cat, perhaps "Other awards" be made or it moved to a more appropriate category? Thanks. Rlevse 23:47, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

I'd suggest creating a section that would include things like scouting in general (community-based organisations sort-of-idea), so that all the scouting articles (I know you want lots of them in 0.5!) will all be listed together. Any suggestions? Walkerma 23:50, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

How about under Sociology, you make a subcat called "Youth organizations" or something similar?--reword the title of the subcat "Social phenomena, movements and subcultures"? We working on improving many articles right now, and yes, the V1.0 bot is a factor-;) We have another FA, but even I think it's a bit obscure for 0.5--History of merit badges (Boy Scouts of America). I personally want to make our Top article, Scouting an FA (GA now) as it's the grandaddy overview of the movement and our project. Rlevse 00:00, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

PS: do you have suggestions on Scouting, ie is it A-class now, or what it needs to be A-class? Thanks.Rlevse 00:07, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

I can't see I really good place right now. I want to reorganise the whole page anyway back to our ten-category system we originally used, I find the current system hard to follow. Then it would go into "Culture and society" (as scouting does at WP:GA), I'd create a separate section for Youth Organizations. Or should we do it for community organisations? We need a place for things like the Lions Clubs International too, scouting fits better there than alongside "Same-sex marriage in Canada" (see GA). In the meantime I'll create a Civilian awards section as a home for the Eagle scout article now - is that OK? Regarding assessments, Wim is a veteran assessor (> 1 year) and a scouting expert, I'd ask him! Walkerma 00:18, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

I'd say "Community organizations" with "Youth organizations" as a subcat, all under "Culture and Society". Wim and I work together a lot. He's busy with his FAC right now, Baden-Powell House. Rlevse 00:31, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

GA standards

Could you look at the GA talk on International Space Station and European Space Agency? The guy insists on arguing with me about my hold status. Look at them as of the day I put the hold on. He mainly complains about my expecting good, consistent referencing. Am I being unreasonable here? Rlevse 20:39, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

I suspect the person here is either ignorant of the exact point you are making or too idle to fix it. I guess it may be the latter, since the response seems to say, "Make me," but that may just be bravado. Some people seem to regard references in articles as a nuisance imposed by fussy people at WP:GA and the like. I would suggest fixing a few of the refs yourself, then say, "Fix the rest like this (give a wikilink to your edit) and it should be able to pass." Then wait and see. Walkerma 01:07, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Please see my response to him dated 19 July 2006 at International Space Station (which is in better shape than the other one. I didn't go into details because I don't want a pissing contest. Rlevse 02:29, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Very nicely done! Walkerma 02:36, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Jewellery

Thanks; I'm working (slowly) in bringing this up to FA; you;re quite correct on the lack of attention to anything but diamonds in materials - will get onto that .Bridesmill 04:01, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Review team

If it's okay with you, I've signed myself back up for the 0.5,1.0,etc review team at Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team/Review_Team. Rlevse 15:10, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Libya

Hi,

I've recently added Libya to the list of featured article candidates. Overall the candidature is going well with many of the objections now sorted out. The final concrete objection is with the article's prose. I have been the main contributor to the article and have been looking at it for the previous 9 - 10 months. My eyes no longer see it freshly, so I am not a suitable copy-editor!

To meet the final demand of copy editing, I have been advised to ask different people to edit parts of the article.

I would really love to get this article featured as you can probably see from the page's history! I've worked very hard on it and I see this as possibly being the final hurdle.

You can see the prose objections, mostly raised by Sandy, on the candidature page. If you have the time, please choose a section (Politics, Religion, Culture etc.) and copyedit, perfect, ace it! I would be very grateful with any help I can get.

Thanks a lot,

--Jaw101ie 16:49, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

I will try to look at this in the next few days, but I have a backlog of such requests, I'm afraid! I'm going to try some copyediting tonight, but since I'm giving an organic chemistry exam tomorrow morning at 9am this will only be a temporary distraction for me! Thanks for working on such an important article like this, I wish we had more countries as FAs. Walkerma 02:44, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Re: Aleksandr Vasilevsky

Thanks! :-) Kirill Lokshin 04:55, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

0.5 cats

Sometimes it's really hard to find an appropriate category to put an article in on the 0.5 page after they're selected. Nothing seemed to fit FA Swastika, so I put it in social phenomena. There've been several other cases. Just FYI. Rlevse 21:52, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Core topics COTF -- Biotech

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.

Maurreen 09:14, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Hi! I've put the template {{to do}} on the talk page of Biotechnology article. Would you suggest any other changes to the article talk page? --Victor 15:28, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks - now we just need to fill out the to-do list! I do plan to actively participate on this when I get a chance. Thanks, too, Maurreen for updating the COTF. Cheers, Walkerma 17:38, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

0.5's FA review

Hello, Martin. I've tried to assess most of the articles in the Geology, geophysics, and meteorology section of the page, yet I feel I cannot assess the rest of the tropical cyclone articles, as I've been a significant editor to those. Would you mind having a look at those for me? Thanks. Titoxd^(?!?) 02:33, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Sure, I'll take a look when I get some time - busy right now with summer school students! Walkerma 17:34, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Core topics

Thanks! I'm glad you like it. Maurreen 06:59, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

WPCD progress

Well, the WPCD category has 3800 articles in it so far including (automatically) all GA, and all 0.5 agreed articles. I am still planning on 5000 articles for a Oct/Nov edition but it looks like it may be that bit longer before we converge with 0.5... I was hopeful we could do this together. Dividing it into ten categories is a very good idea but I need to think on how to do this. I have had a look an encarta etc. and a lot of the value is in the navigation stuff etc. i.e. the added value over and above the encyclopedia info. There is a broad spectrum between highest quality and highest practicality of course. Hmm. --BozMo talk 10:30, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Core COTF

Martin, thanks for taking care of that while I was away. Maurreen 16:09, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

You're welcome! Thanks for looking after it now you're back! I just wish I had the time to do more copyediting and article-writing so I could help more - but with biotech being so close to my field I do plan to add some stuff to that. Heck, I'm even in Boston now, biotech city! Cheers, Walkerma 16:11, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

WikiProject Biography

Just wanted to let you know I'm trying to resurrect this project. Let me know what we can do to help with the project. I've added the importance scale to our Project Banner... plange 07:42, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Need your support

As a member of the Project Philately I would like to make you aware of a discussion about the Category:Philatelists that some of us have recently come to a consensus about. The discussion is here, but essentially a decision was made to try and remove all the subcategories that grouped the philatelists into country categories even though there are only just over 20 pages referenced and some of the subcategories had a few as 1 listing. Besides which, I would never go looking for a philatelist based on a country of origin, even if I knew it, I would look at the category for his/her name. Anyway, this is up for discussion now at a CfD, categories for deletion, page and I would appreciate if you would weigh in on the matter having first looked at the original discussion. I am sure you will see the benefit and logic of getting rid of these redundant subcategories and vote a Support for this. By way of reference, one of these subcategories was up for deletion a short time ago and basically all the non-philately people won the day, overriding the philatelic viewpoint. I am sure you would not want that to happen again. Do not delay as CfDs get dealt with fairly quickly. TIA ww2censor 20:10, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Grading scheme and Medal of Honor

You use the MOH article as a sample FA. It just survied a FAR by much work by several of us, so I thought you'd want to change the grading scheme template to point to this new 31 July 2006 version vice the April version. The 31 July version is much better. Rlevse 14:17, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! We were going to change the article example because of the problems seen, but we never got around to it. This solves it, thanks! Walkerma 17:32, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

I went ahead and changed the template since you said this was a good idea. Hope that's okay. Feel free to look it over in case I made a mistake somewhere.Rlevse 18:02, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Validation

Saw you message on fact and reference check. You may be interested in m:Wikicite. There's no code that I know of but many good ideas including allowing users to comment on the veracity of each citation. Multiple verified citations could conceivable bring our average information quality out of the cellar. - Taxman ^Talk 23:28, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, that's a great resource. I'm familiar with the meta validation page but this page was new to me! It looks as if you're quite interested in these issues yourself - it would be great if you could look at the Wikimania abstracts and let me know YOUR ideas for setting up a system for fact-checking. Thanks, Walkerma 04:57, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Actually that pretty much embodied the thoughts I had on the issue. Breaking up articles into assertions and being able to certify that the cited sources verify the given facts would demonstrably show verifiability and provenance. The concept is solid, the issue is no concept alone gets anything done. It's the implementation in the code that matters. Unless something like Wikicite is coded up we're running in circles. Some version of Article validation (really more of article assessment though) features were stated to have been ready to impliment in the past but they never were. I never heard why they weren't brought live. - Taxman ^Talk 22:03, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for getting back to me. I've contacted the person working on Wikicite, it seems that significant progress was reported there in June. It would certainly help greatly the validation process, and if available it would give an added push to validation efforts. I don't think its absence prevents us from validating articles - after all, World Book and Britannica were doing this long before computers - but it would greatly help in recruiting people for validation reviews!

As for the "Article Validation" effort, you're right, it was assessment rather than validation (as you & I seem to use the word). It was in effect the same as Amazon star ratings, based on votes by users. The software was "almost ready to go" late last year, but then it ran into insurmountable snags, I'm not sure if it was software or copyright issues. Thankfully we now have a system that is better IMHO - review by the WikiProjects. I think the consensus view of a group of subject experts/committed Wikipedians is likely to be much more reliable than the quick opinions of random readers. In about three months it's gone from about 2000 assessed articles to almost 30,000, I'm very excited about how that is going. Cheers, Walkerma 04:06, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Good point, you're right the lack of software doesn't prevent validation. Software just might make it manageable to demonstrate fact by fact verification that would be difficult to do without it. Even if the article assessment doesn't amount to fact by fact validation, review by Wikiprojects is indeed excellent, and it's also exciting to hear about the progess on Wikicite. - Taxman ^Talk 15:21, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

WikiProject Anglicanism assessment

Hi, I was wondering if you could take a "sneak preview" look at the worklist/assessment I'm creating for the Anglicanism project at User:Wine Guy/Sandbox. I'll be "going public" with this within the next day or two, and any feedback you can offer would be helpful. In particular, if your first reaction is "No! That's useless!", I would be happy to hear that before I move it into the project space. Thanks for your help. --Wine Guy Talk 01:34, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

I know Martin is busy, so I will add a comment here as his talk page is on my watchlist! The worklist looks fine as far as a non-expert on Anglicanism can tell. The only point I would question is the inclusion of the "Updated" column, which has never proved necessary at WP:Chem: in general, contentious assessments are challenged on talk pages, and often lead to objective improvements in the article, but are suprisingly (for me) rare. Physchim62 (talk) 17:03, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Good to hear from you, PC! When there are a lot of people actively updating the worklist then I think it's as PC says. But at WP:Chem (which has used a worklist for over a year now) things have quietened down and we can't tell when a section was last assessed. I suspect some of our data are woefully out of date, and we're not even aware of it! So I think the updated column is needed not in case of disputes, but to check that data are up to date. It was very useful for the table at Core topics recently, the old dates on many prompted someone to come in and re-assess the whole list for us! Walkerma 18:17, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks to both of you for your comments. I did give a fair amount of thought regarding the "updated" column, and decided that it was more likely to be useful than not. Once the worklist has been in use for a while it can always be removed if it proves to be unnecessary. Other things which you mentioned, such as bishoprics and cathedrals, I am going to add soon. Also, regarding the Scottish Church and ECUSA, the SEC is certainly more important historically, hence the "top-class" designation as opposed to "high-class" for ECUSA. The SEC should perhaps be included with the key articles, but this is one of many things we'll discuss once the worklist is up and running. At some point we may want to use a bot to help out with this, I'll be in touch with you about that. Thanks again for your input! --Wine Guy Talk 19:44, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Ok, it's live now at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Anglicanism/Assessment. BTW-I hope all is well at Wikimania! Cheers!! --Wine Guy Talk 01:12, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Core bios

Hi, Martin. If you have the time and inclination, would you take a look at Wikipedia:Core biographies. I think it could use more scientists. Thanks. Maurreen 17:43, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Note to self: Work on Chemistry

Well, you just mentioned (in your excellent talk) that you ought do some work on the Chemistry article, after all your work on Gold(III) chloride....

Thanks for your work on the 'pedia and at Wikimania!

BCorr|Брайен 19:23, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Wikimania

Glad to hear everything went well. I left a couple of comments at Wikipedia talk:Pushing to validation about the things that were discussed there; but how was everything else? Hopefully the attendees were at least aware of Mathbot and the 1.0 assessment projects, and you received some feedback about things to do... are there going to be more talks about this by other speakers? Titoxd^(?!?) 05:25, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for adding some comments. Yes, most people (probably not all) were aware of Mathbot. Many were at http://wikimania2006.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proceedings:MW1 the 1.0 talk] (right before the validation discussion) where I showed the overall information and the progress at Military History - with Kirill sitting in the front row! Walkerma 13:18, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

There are videos of some talks, go to the main schedule page to find links. I couldn't get it to work, but I'm sure you can! If you have time, you can take a look at the 1.0 talk for which a video was done - please let me know if I missed anything major. As for validation, I'm not aware of any other sessions on this topic. Very interesting to see the Calculus experiment, and the comments there! Walkerma 13:32, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for your presentations at Wikimania 2006. They were well worth attending. --Ancheta Wis 08:43, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

I listened to your validation presentation via mp3 - I would have been more interested in the 1.0 discussions. Any new tools available for actually producing a snapshot from a list of articles ? Wizzy…☎ 11:18, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Astronomy 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.

Maurreen 20:17, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Wikicite

Martin- sorry for not responding sooner. I am mostly on the Meta site these days and though I usually visit Wikipedia at least a couple times a week the previous week was particularly bad for me so I didn't see your message until today. I was actually supposed to present a poster at this year's Wikimania, but had to suddenly cancel my plans for going to Boston, and so unfortunately did not get a chance to see your panel. I will definitely listen to the audio archive of it, though!

Anyway, regarding the status of Wikicite- parts of the software are alread functional, including changes to the Cite extension to make use of Wikicat's data import function. Here is a screenshot of live software, showing how bibliographic information is pulled based upon a key like ISBN number. There is actually not too much to be done, software-wise, before this can be rolled-out on Wikipedia. The real effort is making sure that the bibliographic catalog portion of the project- Wikicat- is designed correctly, which requires thoroughly researching the professional cataloging standards out there.

I announced the first phase of the project- the bibliographic catalog- on the foundation list about a week ago and though the reponse was fairly positive, I would appreciate it if you could help drum up "grass roots" support on the encyclopedia to help push this through (it seems like there's an official non-offical policy of rejecting any new project proposals at this point). The endoresement of a Wikiproject group would be especially valuable. BTW- an essential component of Wikipedia 1.0- stable version designation- is ready to be rolled-out so there's something else to lobby for.

Jleybov 23:22, 7 August 2006 (UTC)