Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles/Archive 1

message: We tailored the instructions here specifically to the EB2004 project, but this project page has a broadened scope. They should be revised, but (as the original author) I hesitate to start because I think they are already somewhat too long, and by adding assistance specific to the other sources, they would become just mind-numbing. Does anyone with better organized instructional skills want to make a start at reorganizing them, maybe? David Brooks 02:58, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: EB-specific instructions

message: I noticed that Britannica uses full Russian names, complete with "father name", so in many cases a simple redirect is enough. Maybe a bot should be used to do that. It shoulkd do the following
#Find Britannica titles consisting of three words "Foo Bar Baz"
#Check whether "Foo" is a common Russian name
#Check whether the article "Foo Baz" exists in Wikipedia. Check also alternative spellings of "Foo" (Alexandr, Aleksandr, Alexander and such).
#Make "Foo Bar Baz" redirect to "Foo Baz"
I think this procedure would greatly reduce the numbers of missing articles.  Grue  16:25, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Its a good idea, but i am not sure there are actually enough to warrant the effort, plus bots tend to make mistakes when even the smallest amount of intelligence is needed. Bluemoose 18:12, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Russian names bot

message: I just made this template, its for the main project page, the list pages and your user pages. I think it is a great idea, because when the weekly focus page and "Todo" gets changed, it will be changed on every instance of the template, and of course it will provide much advertising, it also provides all the useful links. I put it on here first because I'm sure it can be vastly improved/tweaked. thanks Bluemoose 18:12, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I originally put this under the discussion for the template, but it didn't seem to garner much discussion.  Anyway, should a numerical listing of remaining articles also be included in the template?  It wouldn't be precise number like 3021, but ~3000 or <2500 would be appropriate.  This would also help to identify projects that are close to being finished like Nuttall (<2000) compared with 1911 which has >15,000 remaining.  This information is in each of the individual project pages, but also thought it was worth listing in the template. --Leonsimms 20:37, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

text: And to counter my own point, the template is starting to get a little bit unwieldly.  It's pretty busy without conveying information in straightforward manner.  I'm going to change the formatting a bit, but feel free to tinker with my changes Leonsimms 20:37, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: You were right to prune it a bit. The focus article idea hasn't really took off so I guess it is ok to remove that. Pcb21| Pete 21:09, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, good job. As for the numbers, there is already too much pruning/calculating %'s and other non-productive editting, I certainly dont think we need any more. Martin (Bluemoose) 21:14, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Just as a word of warning for anyone who liked my first suggestion, I tried adding the numbers but I could never get the formatting to look right, it looked too crowded. Leonsimms 21:24, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Template

message: I just added an instruction to this effect, but remember: don't consolidate duplicate entries in the lists (or, if you do, add a comment as I just did to /Q). They represent two articles with the same name but different topics. For WP they will need a disambig pointing to two (non-empty) content articles. David Brooks 18:26, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Duplicate list entries 

message: Inspired by a similar list on the Dutch wikipedia, I've created a list with articles that exist in a large(ish) number of languages, but apparently not in English. I've based this list on a database dump of the French wikipedia. There are many false hits, so I don't know yet if the list can be used to raise the quality of the English wikipedia, but at least we can add a lot of links to the French wikipedia.
I can also make this list for other wikipedias. Should I? Eugene van der Pijll 20:48, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Where can we find that list? — mark ✎ 02:01, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles/fr — mark ✎ 02:03, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't suppose there's any way of getting an English translation of the articles needed? Ambi 06:11, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I'll work on a few of those, as my time permits.Mamawrites 04:55, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Missing articles from fr.wikipedia.org 

message: Well, Nuttall has been pruned. It would be good if we had another simple project for the Todo square, along with filling in the blanks. One that I would propose is transferring all the computer viruses on the General list to the List of computer viruses page. Some have been done, some are still embedded in the lists, and some are located at the bottom of the page. How about it? And please think of other, similar projects for when we finish that. Oh, and how about those Q's in 2004. Nice work. Danny 05:16, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: New Todo Project

message: How about adding this to our goals to help Canada: Wikipedia:Canadian wikipedians' notice board/Dictionary of Canadian Biography. Danny 05:18, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: See also Wikipedia:Australian wikipedians' notice board/Complete to-do/Australian Dictionary of Biography. Ambi 08:11, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for pointing that one out, Ambi. I have added both to our list. I wonder if we can't find other biographical dictionaries to glean information from. Danny 13:43, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Another List

message: The thing is, Nuttall sucks in terms of information. But, with a little work, you can really make something good out of its little stubs. I am proud of this one Nation of shopkeepers. When you come across something short, add to it. It can get a lot better. Danny 04:18, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Cool little article, thanks Danny. Those fun little articles need to get linked to, maybe as see also from Napoleon, Wealth of Nations and Psychology of the British? Pcb21| Pete 07:07, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Nuttall

message: The list of K's in Nuttall has only 4 articles left, thanks to some help from the Polish Wikipedia, which added Kunowice. We can finish that easily~ Danny 9 July 2005 04:44 (UTC)
Some help would be appreciated in knocking out the rest of the A's in Nuttall. I think we can do it in less than a week. Danny 01:07, 10 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Another Nuttall milestone

message: I have selected the first list from EB 2004. While we are doing quite well there informally, let's see how well we can do with a full frontal attack on the opening list. Can we reach 60 percent? 70 percent? I have also selected List 3 from Nuttall, i.e., the B's. This is the biggest list on Nuttall, with 248 articles--about 10 percent of the total remaining articles. I wonder if we should also consider adding a 1911 list too. One word of caution. I have just restored Gavin Hamilton to the list. He is a Scottish painter according to EB, not just a cricket player, as we currently have him. Last night I noted that Jean Leclerc is not just a minor television actor but also an important Belgian biblical scholar. I have encountered a few other examples of this. Please check all names before removing them from the list. Otherwise, we can lose valuable information. Better to be a little slow and more thorough than quick and miss some. Danny 10:59, 19 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Point well taken. Some names are quite common. There are now articles forJean Leclerc (theologian), Jean LeClerc (painter), Jean LeClerc (actor), and articles are awaited on Jean Leclerc (hockey player), and Jean Leclerc (singer). Bejnar 20:04, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: This week

message: We are making really good progress in the Nuttall encyclopedia. Unfortunately, however, the excitement about finishing it is leading to a few little problems. Nuttall is almost 100 years old. Its information about geographical locations is often even older. This can pose a problem, since it is tremendously out of date. For instance, when removing some of the Y's, I came across "a district in German East Africa." I am quite confident that it is not in German East Africa anymore. Please check places carefully, and do not just copy and paste Nuttall text there. It may take a bit longer, but at least we can be relatively accurate. Danny 01:22, 26 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: And to think you rejected my plan to avoid any problems of this type! ;-). Pcb21| Pete 07:39, 26 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Your plan? If it works, I say go for it. Danny 11:04, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

text:  Actually I meant my plan in ==Focuses== above. The idea is that material from 1911/Nuttall would be added to the 'pedia under a clear heading of "historical view" equipped with a disclaimer. Thus people are stopped from data-dumping without thought, and we are able to modernize the material as part of the ongoing project in a careful way. Pcb21| Pete 12:37, 26 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Nuttall problem

message: Magnus has created 1911xNuttall, 1911x2004xNuttall and 1911x2004 lists. I think we should only focus on these for a bit for a number of reasons; 1) they should be easy having multiple sources; 2) 2 or 3 for the price of 1 will be good; 3) the fact they are in more than one other encyclopedia means they are probably more high profile.
I have added one as a focus, but maybe we should do all three? Bluemoose 10:20, 26 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Different focuses 

message: It seems to me that the small lists get done really quickly, while we plod through the longer ones. Look how well we did on the various small letters in 2004 (Q, U, X, Z). With that in mind, and given how much harder it is becoming to find links, I would like to propose that we focus on smaller amounts in upcoming collaborations of the week, for instance Section 3 of 2004's page 2. With a more specified concentration, we are sure to make a larger dent in good time. So, whaddya think? Danny 01:33, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I think it is a mighty fine idea. I wonder how many encyclopedia's have articles on psychological crutch? Pcb21| Pete 07:50, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: An observation and a suggestion

message: In the spirit of the Jewish Encyclopedia project, I'm wondering if there shouldn't there be a Catholic Encyclopedia effort to include this work as part of the project.  Similar to the intent of the Jewish project not every topic should included but be used as a reference for of interest Catholic topics.  The original text is in the public domain but the only online version  is copyright.  A word of warning though: because it was written to serve the Roman Catholic Church and reflect its doctrine nearly every article has a distinct POV and no article should included word for word. --Leonsimms 19:29, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah it would be a nice addition, I briefly talked about it with DanielCD but i dont know if he ever did anything about it. Bluemoose 09:08, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

text: I've just added search capability to half of the topics listed in the CE (A-L).  I would add it to the entire list, but I'm concered about page size and persons working on a limited connection.  Adding three different types of search quadrupled some of the larger size pages from ~ 50K to about 200K.  Has anyone run into this problem and what if anything can be remedied to alleviate the problem. Of course anyone interested in the project can choose a smaller page to work on but I know this won't be the first time that this project with it's long lists has run into this problem and possibly solutions.  Does it make sense to break up the pages? Reflex Reaction 15:15, 23 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Removing all the blue links will make them much smaller (and removing the innappropriate "or" links too), these pages have an awful lot of blues. The britannica lists used to be up to 180kb, it was never really much of a problem, and I had dial-up when I first uploaded them as well! Martin - The non-blue non-moose 16:46, 23 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't want to take away from the other projects but hopefully this will spur other users to do clear out some of the blues.  It's a pain to go back and forth between wikipedia and the CE site. I will make the entire list searchable. Reflex Reaction 17:40, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

text: Many blue links go to articles which badly need expansion. I was thinking of using the CE article to expand the University of Bologna article, for instance, which is a pathetic stub – this is after all the oldest university in Europe. I can easily imagine that the situation may be similar with other things. Uppland 17:57, 23 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: At your suggestion I have been careful to put comments where it looks like wikipedia would benefit from some of the information from the CE. Reflex Reaction 14:30, 7 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Catholic Encyclopedia 

message: Will be Eric Weisstein's online encyclopedias also included in this project? Samohyl Jan 14:02, 31 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Definately, i would love a science encyclopedia to be included. In fact i'll start compiling it soon.Bluemoose 15:00, 31 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Ill compile the science one, some one else do maths.Bluemoose 15:03, 31 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, i will do it all. Bluemoose 15:16, 31 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Weisstein encyclopedias 

message: Wikipedia:Maintenance collaboration of the week is nominating for focus projects of the week, at the moment it is to wikify pages (see the Wikipedia:Community Portal). I have just nominated this project, go and vote fo it now! Martin (Bluemoose) 09:53, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I think you're stretching the definition of "maintenance" a bit, but heck why not :). Pcb21| Pete 11:24, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Wikipedia:Maintenance collaboration of the week]] 

message: I just erased a bunch of links from one of the pages. Checking them against Britannica, I see that we really did not have links for some, and failed to include important information. Please be careful before erasing that each link is checked against the Britannica entry. It is worth taking a bit more time but doing a job well done than just erasing links. Danny 04:50, 13 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed.  If I find blue links that should not be removed, I always annotate them in the list - to prevent a less scrupulous person from removing them in error.  However, I suspect that the mass-remove of links from the Encarta page isn't being quite as rigorous.  And I'm sure that the first-round cull of the EB2004 links took out some duds (before these pages were created). Bluap 10:38, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

text: Even worse to my mind, some people are copying Nuttall directly, creating articles that border on nonsense because they are so dated. We must do something pro-active to stop this. If not, this project will end up doing more harm than good to the 'pedia! Pcb21| Pete 11:29, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  Perhaps we should remove the Nuttall links, now that we have both EB and Encarta to concentrate on.  Bluap 11:55, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: It would be a sad to do that, but I think it is probably the best course of action, as there is little to gain from nuttall now. A compromise could be to ruthlessly remove all the dic defs and other useless links - which it seems to me there are more and more of. People who like importing public domain stuff would be much better off using the 1911 lists anyway. Martin - The non-blue non-moose 13:57, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Warning

message: Just so you all know; Isaiah Bowman, Judah Leon Magnes, Pirate Perch, Society of the Sacred Heart, Ferenc Herczeg, Arthur Erdélyi, Sandor Szalay, African literature were created by User:Dubaduba and are all direct copyvios, so don't delete them from the lists. Maybe we need bigger warnings not to copy text from other sources? Martin - The non-blue non-moose 08:54, 22 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Sheesh.  You'd have thought that someone interested in contributing to this project would know all about copyright etc... Bluap 11:50, 22 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Copyvio 

message: Could someone explain the reasoning behind the deletion of the Encarta and Britannica projects? The only (partial) explanation I've found is on this web page. Mateo SA | talk 15:53, August 28, 2005 (UTC)
:I also feel a more rounded-out explanation would be extremely helpful, but that is they only information that has been made available to the masses so far. Pcb21| Pete 16:08, 28 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: See also User_talk:Jimbo Wales. Pcb21| Pete 16:25, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

text: Um, Wikipedia:2004 Encyclopedia topics has been deleted? Really? David Brooks 05:30, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes it was. It was restored temporarily for, I think, technical reasons, but it will be re-deleted soon. – Quadell (talk) (sleuth) 11:08, August 29, 2005 (UTC)
I am away at the moment, so dont have time to comment properly; while this is annoying, if it is deemed a copyvio risk, then i have no problem in the lists being removed, hopefully while we find a way around the problem. In the meantime the public domain lists are absolutly fine (i assume), good luck guys, i'll join the melee properly next thursday, thanks. Martin - The non-blue non-moose 10:03, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Deletion of Encarta and Britannica projects 

message: # Support for reasons given above  Reflex Reaction 20:24, 1 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Support

message: #I would prefer to keep them apart, although if it is significantly safer legally to merge them then that is acceptable. Martin - The non-blue non-moose 20:34, 1 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Oppose

message: This page is getting quite lengthy and finding the new discussions are becoming quite difficult.  Could an experienced wikipedian with some history in the project move some of the older discussions to an archived talk page?  Presuambly this very suggestion would be moved to that same page. Reflex Reaction 14:45, 7 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Archived talk page