Wikipedia:Simple talk/Archive 25

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Selected articles

As you can see on Wikipedia:Very good articles/by date, our last plans for the Main Page selected article extended up to Feb 23 (five days from now). In the mean time, many things have happened to our VGA and GA process and criteria, and I'm personally not hopeful that we can gather enough VGAs in near future to update the Main Page selected articles list fully. So I propose:

Either we should reach consensus on what to do (other than what I suggest below) before Feb 23
Or we should temporarily continue with that list (for five more weeks) and try to reach the consensus within this period of time.

What do you think? - Huji ^reply 20:34, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

With the demtion of Muhammad to GA level, we only have three VGAs left to show. This means, if we don't reach any consensus here, we are forced to reuse our older VGAs on the main page from March 16. We should reach a decision in less than a month. I'm impatient for your suggestions and comments. - Huji ^reply 17:14, 19 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think that for now, we need time in order to even hope to gather enough VGAs to help start to fix that problem. Therefore, I believe that we should temporarily continue with the list already provided and try to reach a consensus within 5 weeks. That, I think, would be the best course of action. I have been going through this list of articles, and there are some articles that need demotion because they don't meet some of the requirements. I have already issued some concerns about these articles on the Wikipedia:Proposed article demotion page. I think that we should look over the rest of this list to determine which articles, if there are anymore in the list, need to be demoted to a lower status, and which ones we should be willing to keep as VGAs. Razor flame 17:20, 19 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Rules for inclusion

Is there a rule on Simple English Wikipedia that only articles that exist on English Wikipedia may be tolerated here? - PathWrote (talk) 19:28, 18 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

No. Any article is welcome here, as long as the subject is notable and the content simple english.--Bärl iner 19:32, 18 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

For interwiki links (and to check notability), it might be helpful though to be able to link to another wikipedia; this need not be the English one though. --Eptalon (talk) 20:06, 18 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I have requested restoration of the article in question here. - PathWrote (talk) 20:59, 18 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Pokemon

Except for the notable ones, all of the new Pokemon articles need to be combined into lists of 20 IMHO. What does everyone else think? --Birds Army Talk 20:45, 18 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I've already expressed my agreement: Wikipedia:Simple_talk#Merge_articles_created_by_86.1.102.174. - Huji ^reply 22:10, 18 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Reopening VGA process

Hello all,

it looks like we are finally getting somewhere. As outlined above, about a third of the VGAs were demoted (to GAs, mostly). This of course also means that we can re-start the VGA process. Note: It is probably less work to get a GA to meet VGA criteria than it is to get a regular article there; despite this, both ways are left open.

Keep up the good work --Eptalon (talk) 16:07, 19 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Actually the entire process has been up and running since Feb 9. To give an update, after demotion we have 19 VGAs and 10 GAs. We can get more, but let's remember to not get so excited about promoting things that we don't follow the criteria. Let's be sure that we strictly follow the criteria for both types of articles so we can avoid freezing things ever again and re-vamping the criteria because people are letting things get through that shouldn't be promoted. Happy improving and happy voting! · Ty grrr... 16:15, 19 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Redlinks

Following a post from tygrrr on talk:coffee, I think it important to stress that the VGA/GA processes should encourage a search to find variants to fill redlinks (City of New York -> New York City for example) but there can never be a reason to fill in a redlink with a close matches as happened at coffee, ie changing solvation to solution.

I was surprised how many of the most wanted articles I was able to fill just by searching for variants --Bärl iner 15:40, 20 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Year pages

Yesterday and today, between Durova (contribs) and W7bot (contribs), about 900 (basically) empty pages were created. Here are some examples of the creations: 150, 720, 1120. From what I can tell, they're all like that. I disagree quite strongly with having close to a thousand pages with no content. My question to the community is this: what do we do with these pages? Deletion would be a lot of work but is perhaps the best option. A community push to fill them would also be a lot of work, but is also an option. We could leave them as is, under the assumption that "they'll be created eventually". I would be strongly against this, but it is an option. What do others think? (P.S. for the record, I think this should have been discussed before it happened. There should have been some foresight that this might have caused some concern to others.) · Ty grrr... 16:46, 20 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I would be up for one of two things:

The push provided by the community to fill the pages would be the choice that I would make. I would not mind helping to fill these pages if others feel that this would be the best solution. If others think that deletion is the best solution, then I won't start filling the pages.

The other option that I can see is to have all of the pages deleted. Browne34 has already posted a fast deletion request for all of the pages, but I think that this decision should be postponed until we discuss it fully here. We need to fully think about this before we delete these pages.

If anyone would like me to start filling in pages, let me know. Razor flame 16:49, 20 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If we did a "community push" to fill them, I would suggest a deadline. After said deadline, anything still having no content could then be deleted. I think it looks bad to have empty pages for any amount of time though, so I would suggest a short deadline (like 2 weeks). If there were interest in creating these pages with content, it would have been done by now. Why make people work on pages they don't really have interest in just because one person thought it'd be a good idea to make "shells"? · Ty grrr... 16:53, 20 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I would have to agree on this. Short deadline...I would suggest it be an even shorter deadline, like a 1 week deadline. I will start to work on filling them right now to begin the community push. Razor flame 16:55, 20 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, I was saying we should delete them, not do the community push... The point I was trying to make was that if others insist they not be deleted right away, I would be for a short deadline. · Ty grrr... 16:58, 20 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I will fill as many of the pages as I can before they get deleted, starting with the pages that I created the categories for. I will take it upon myself to do so, even though the community might decide to delete them in the meantime. Razor flame 17:00, 20 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Just delete. Although the easy way to fill them is is by copying from ENWP, what would be the point of a mass of redlinks? --Bärl iner 18:05, 20 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Red links should actually be encouraged since they point someone in the right direction for the useful creation of an article; but a copy-paste is a different matter. We have yet to convince people that we do not simply leech of En Wiki (from recent incidents such as Homer Simpson. --Gwib^-(talk)- 18:15, 20 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

(unindent)

If we are going to expand them, I would go with only using information we already have articles for. We have enough year and day pages full of links to pages we may never create. Certain red-links are fine (highly notable people and occurrences), but entire pages of slightly notable people and relatively unknown events ("Earthquake kills three people in Uganda") is overkill. Using redlinks to judge what articles we need is currently not useful since we have no easy way to tell what our "most wanted" articles are anymore. If the year has a matching births or deaths category, this should all be added as well as major information from "What links here" (non-day, non-year) articles.

If we go with deletion, I would suggest only deletion those that are entirely blank. Yearbox with three (or so) empty heading and it gets deleted, but one entry tied to an actual article is enough to keep it.-- Creol(talk) 22:55, 20 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

There shouldn't be many redlinks in he year articles. A small year article which only consists of blue links should be kept. A small year article with lots of redlinks should be quick deleted. A large year article with lots of redlinks should either be changed to a small one with blue links or get deleted. Any line of information on the year article which doesn't link to the corresponding pages or doesn't have its important phrases redlinked, should be removed. - Huji ^reply 08:24, 21 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

So...should we start deleting ASAP? We should probably make it a multi-admin job to get it done as quickly as possible. · Ty grrr... 14:18, 21 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Alright, I've got some free time at the moment so I'm going to start the process. Other admins: please feel free to jump in and help. This is going to be a time-consuming job. Many hands make light work... · Ty grrr... 15:29, 21 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Status update

Deleted around 210 pages, taking quick break. --Gwib^-(talk)- 16:13, 21 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Done Durova's empty creations have all been deleted. · Ty grrr... 16:49, 21 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Done W7bot is all done as well, mostly by Creol. --Gwib^-(talk)- 16:54, 21 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thats a realy realy Quick delete :) -- Creol(talk) 16:56, 21 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Good work you two, and thanks for your help! :-) · Ty grrr... 16:58, 21 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You aren't done yet. You forgot all of the categories that I created earlier. I will get you a list of the ones that I created shortly. I created mostly from 43-154, but some of those I didn't create. Some were already created. Razor flame 18:45, 21 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Done. I'll be happy not to delete anything for a while. :-) · Ty grrr... 19:26, 21 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I guess I got a little late here! - Huji ^reply 19:33, 21 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yep, you missed all the "fun". You can tell me the truth--you were hiding, weren't you? ;-) · Ty grrr... 19:41, 21 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It was a real ball... --Gwib^-(talk)- 19:42, 21 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Can we install mw:Extension:Nuke and have more fun?! ;) - Huji ^reply 21:46, 21 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I was thinking the same thing! :)Oysterguitarist 00:42, 23 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I have a couple to recreate :P --Bärl iner 19:55, 21 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I wasn't trying to cause any trouble. It just really slows things down to do any work in early Medieval history when every new stub requires a whole set of daughter pages and categories. Not many year pages existed for that period and a lot of the ones that did exist already were not standard, because people were just making them up as they needed one. I've been creating stubs for the early kings of France and was spending more time on those mechanical pages than on the biographies. Sorry if it created hassle. Durova (talk) 00:33, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, sorry about this. I should have asked the community before I started. My apologies to everyone who deleted the pages.--Werdan7^{T @} 21:21, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

No worries. No real harm done. · Ty grrr... 02:40, 23 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Another milestone: 25k articles

I know that I'm a little bit too late to mention this now, but I just barely noticed that the simplewiki now has more than 25k articles. While I'm assuming that some of you have already knew before, I just wanted to let everyone know in case they haven't yet. Three cheers to every simple wikipedian! :) --§ Snake311 _{(I'm Not Okay!)} 06:13, 23 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

There is a list of all of our accomplishments here. It's quick useful and shows all milestones and how they were met. --Gwib^-(talk)- 13:25, 23 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Gnosticism..

Hello all, I have changed Category:Gnosticism. It is only under Category:Christian denominations now. This may be a problem; there are gnostic movements totally outside christianity (Persian schools, Kabbalah in Judaism); At the moment we have the main article Gnosticism in there (yes, needs extending), as well as a subcat Gnostic gods and godesses, with one entry. I moved the Catharism in there; it had Gnostic tendencies. This possibly means we need to re-cat once there is more.--Eptalon (talk) 13:21, 23 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]