Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles/Archive 3

message: Books. This is a thought. How do we get a good reliable list of books that are encyclopedic? Gutenberg is pretty patchy - they'll take anything PD, and I think we can all agree there's a lot there to be ignored. There's a list of The Penguin Classics Library Complete Collection, which we seem to have pretty good coverage of, and this is probably a good first-order guess at "material which is probably worthy of an encylopedic article". Perhaps we could try asking various educational bodies for lists of the books they teach, and see what we're missing? Shimgray | talk | 17:23, 5 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: You may want to combine their list and some of the lists at http://www.interleaves.org/~rteeter/greatbks.html, as well as some of the items that are not in their index (which is itself a combination of multiple lists).  This would eliminate copyright concerns if they decide not to allow a direct copy of their list. --Reflex Reaction (talk)• 17:26, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Books

message: Can we please auto-prune some of these lists by automatically removing the blue links? I know we've been over this in the past, but now that there are so many lists, I hope the consensus might have turned.
Or could we at least move the blue links to a separate sub-page? We could call it "unverified blue links" or something. That would be highly preferable, in my opinion. – Quadell (talk) (bounties) 15:30, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I've set up Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles/Hot/Q that way, so you'll see what I mean. (Except that the blues would go on a separate page.) – Quadell (talk) (bounties) 15:30, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I like what you've done with the Qs, if that's fairly straightforward. I still think it's worthwhile having all the blues manually checked. --OpenToppedBus - Talk to the driver 15:54, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Okay, I've checked and removed all the blue Q's now, so look at Y or W if you want to know what it looks like. – Quadell (talk) (bounties) 23:04, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

text: Okay, now that I've worked with it a bit, it looks to me like about 1 in 40 blue links in the Hotlist are "false positives", with an external encyclopedia covering a topic that the Wikipedia article doesn't mention. IMO, that's too high of a false positive rate to do auto-pruning. Also, when I separate the blue and red links, it makes it much easier to manually prune, so that will go a lot faster. – Quadell (talk) (bounties) 14:30, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Re-visiting the auto-removal of blue links 

message: Congrats on completing Nuttall topics! I put it back in the template because its encouraging to see something 100% done Astrokey44 22:05, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Nuttall 

message: I've created a stub template, . When you find stubs that are listed on these pages (or when you make a new stub article from a title listed on Missing Encyclopedic Articles), you can add the mea-stub template to it. – Quadell (talk) (bounties) 03:01, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Be choosey though. If the article is of only marginal importance, it shouldn't get the tag. – Quadell (talk) (bounties) 03:07, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  Handy.  Very useful for revisiting articles started or identified by this project.  Not sure of the wording though, particularly the "has an article in a major encyclopedia" (since this would depend on the source of the entry on the list, and whether it is from a "major" encyclopaedia), but definitely useful.  Perhaps for those entries not identified from Britannica, Encarta, or something similarly "major", if we can't get a better wording, then there should at least be something on the talk page to the effect of "This article was initiated as part of WP:MEA", just so we can track them all down, even after the stubs have grown. Chris talk back 18:16, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

text: Ouch I am sorry about that. The delete result was brought about by people taking umbrage at my stupidly aggressive approach to the stub project, which is very precious to them. It would inded by idiocy to empty the category. I am happy with any category/template talk/non-talk calling them "stub"/not calling them "stub" approach - essentially all I want is some tag to collect mea-stubs. I suspect Quadell might still have more specific requirements. Pcb21 Pete 08:27, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: <nowiki>{{MEA-expand}}</nowiki>

message: I've created a few lists (Albums, Films, TV stations, Newspapers, TV shows) in the last few weeks and look to creating a few more in the future.  While it looks most of the discussion has already happened with the schools, I don't want to step on toes wouldn't mind any comments about some of the proposed lists.  Thanks! --Reflex Reaction (talk)• 17:26, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  New lists - comments/complaints? 

message: The intro to this project page says Wikipedia can't claim to be the most comprehensive encyclopedia on the planet if it doesn't contain information that another encyclopedia contains! That plainly isn't true - to be "most comprehensive", WP simply needs to have more (better, whatever) articles athan any otehr. not every article. How should it be re-worded? Andy Mabbett 17:37, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Replace "can't" by "shouldn't"? Pcb21 Pete 17:52, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Or "To be the most comprehensive encyclopedia on the planet, Wikipedia ought to contain articles on topics that other encyclopedias contain." Scans better imho. – Quadell (talk) (bounties) 23:07, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I've been bold (or foolish!) and updated the intro based on Quadell's suggestion. Hope it reads better now. --G Rutter 11:43, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Intro

message: This is another list that could really use some pruning. Perhaps a focused effort could get most of it done. Danny 11:00, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I've made it this week's focus after updating some the search characteristics.  --Reflex Reaction (talk)• 15:47, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles/GeneralxHotlist]] 

message: I have started this little project on the basis of our lists and in an effort to destub some of our existing stubs by translating material from French. Please list any stubs that you find which have more significant content in French to this list. Do you speak projects in other languages are also welcome. Danny 13:14, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Don't know if you are aware of it, Danny, but Wikipedia:Translation in English Wikipedia:Translation into English already exists. Has a broader focus than MEA of course so maybe having both works. Pcb21 Pete 14:12, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I do know about that, but this is a good way to expand the list, and perhaps get some more destubbing done. Danny 14:30, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I've translated a few articles during the Nuttall push, and rediscovered the truism that translation is hard, if you want to end up with something that you would have been proud of if you'd originated it. Thanks for the pointer. David Brooks 17:18, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

text:  It would be cool if we'd have a "Hotlist of topics x fr.wiki" (also with de, es and it). I could help with translations from Italian, French and Spanish. bogdan 17:20, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

text: There's also Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles/fr, which has an equally worthy goal. David Brooks 17:48, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Wikipedia:Do you speak French|Do you speak French]]? 

message: I just realized that there is an entire giant wikiproject doing what I have been doing since few month ago :) On the bright side, my project is limited to a single (if large) Polish biographical dictionary ([[Polski Słownik Biograficzny). I will go over your project guidelines when I have some time, but if you can 'intergrate' what I did at User:Piotrus/List of Poles sooner, feel free to do so.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 17:57, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[User:Piotrus/List of Poles]] 

message: This list should be implemented out of the 'Sports Culture: An A-Z Guide' book. . 132.204.227.45 16:56, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I've put it into my todo list with a few sites that I would compile.  --Reflex Reaction (talk)• 15:38, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  New pedia-like ref 

message: This is a related project, which a nice lists of some articles that are missing at en, but are FA elsewhere.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 18:19, 26 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Wikipedia:Featured articles in other languages]] 

message: I've created a new subproject, Distributed indexing, which will coordinate efforts to create editable-text indexes to the several scanned online encyclopedias. These will then become lists used in the project to determine missing articles/redirects/content. If you are confused about what to do, please wait for one of the subsections to be completed first. — BRIAN0918 • 2005-11-29 21:34
*I've added my completed list of words for the first section of Volume 1. When you type your list, each word should be on its own line, but in Wikipedia will look like a huge block of text. — BRIAN0918 • 2005-11-29 21:50
**I am dubious about the appropriateness timing of this project. We are writing an encyclopedia, not an human OCR team looking for potential topics in an ancient tome. This should be the work of Project Gutenberg not Wikipedia.  When they are finished, we definitely can use the topics from this and other old encyclopedias but we need not create it now with so much other work to do. Just my 2 cents --Reflex Reaction (talk)• 22:38, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: New subproject: Indexing scanned encyclopedias

message: Would it be a copyright violation to make a MEA list out of the bibliography of a book that is not in public domain? Is a bibliography — the list of books which a published work cites as its sources — copyrightable? The case Feist Publications v. Rural Telephone Service noted that the author's choice of which facts to cover is protected, but it can be said that the choice is already made in the process of writing the book, and the bibliography is more of an after-the-work summary, hence is not copyrightable. In other words, the choice is expressed in the content of the book itself, and the bibliography is merely a summary of the choice. I would appreciate any advice. --BorgQueen 09:36, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Oh well, nevermind, I'm going to compile them into a hotlist. The main idea is that, if the name of a book comes up in multiple bibliographies then it is likely important, ergo should be included. I have access to quite a few bibliographies — hundreds, actually — I am doing them manually so it will take some time though. --BorgQueen 00:25, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bibliography 

message: The VCencyclopedia is a wiki at Vassar College, whose work (though often signed), is licensed under the GFDL.  Presumably we would need to incorporate article histories from it if we were going to use the content, but that should be quite manageable.  I've noticed a couple articles on MEA lists that they have, such as Sarah Gibson Blanding() and Lucy Maynard Salmon().  I wonder if we should, for starters, look into incorporating their content into Wikipedia, but I also wonder if someone would be interested in checking the MEA lists against their article list in some kind of automated fashion.  What do you think?  Chick Bowen 23:52, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  VCencyclopedia 

message: I admit it, I am proud to be part of this project and how much it has contributed to Wikipedia.  The only thing is that it's pretty hard to tell that from the project page, so I made a progress table detailing successes and work yet to be done.  Thanks to everyone who contributes and makes this project possible.  --Reflex Reaction (talk)• 22:04, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I have added estimated finish dates for all the projects as well.  Take those numbers with a mountain of salt though, because many of the estimates are based on "pruning progress" which is much different than "article creation" progress.   Speculating can be so fun! The big number is that since the start of the project, on average, 850 300 links are removed every day!  For over 200,000 links over the life of the project. Give yourselves a big pat on the back--Reflex Reaction (talk)• 15:42, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I would be very wary of these dates. I have started pruning the Art & Architecture Hotlist, and have removed over 750 links in the last few days. However, aside from redirects I haven't created a single article, so the figure is just a little misleading as an indicator of progress! Still, I agree with you that this project is making a great contribution, and I too am glad to be part of it :: Supergolden 12:26, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Progress page 

message: Hi. I have a question. Why at Wikipedia:Missing science topics/Maths2 and related places some articles names are incomplete, like Completely multiplicat.... That is not very helpful. Thanks. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 20:32, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Maybe you should ask User:Bluemoose, who created the page. bogdan 22:04, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  I asked here because I could not get an answer on his talk page. But he replied after a day. Thanks. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 16:27, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Question about dots 

message: Hey folks, just wanted to let you know that I'm making a list of all the articles in Los Angeles A to Z: An Encyclopedia of the City and County, Leonard and Dale Pitt, UC Press, 1997. I assume that this will be primarily of use to Wikipedia:WikiProject Southern California, but it might be of wider interest, so here's a link for anyone interested: User:Jengod/Topics in LAAZ. jengod 02:12, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Los Angeles A to Z: An Encyclopedia of the City and County

message: Can we declare 1911xMusic to be done?  I've dealt with everything I could that remains; the rest are too obscure to do anything with, I think (see my notations there).  Note that everything that remains on that list is something for which the music entry is obviously not actually the same thing that is contained in 1911.  Chick Bowen 02:06, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree, I have noted it as completed on the main and project pages.  Thanks for finishing the project. --Reflex Reaction (talk)• 16:12, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: And 4 days earlier than predicted.  Thanks for everyone who contributed to the completion of the 1911xMusic crossover list. --Reflex Reaction (talk)• 16:19, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  done? 

message: I just wanted to endorse Wikipedia:Computer help desk; Triddle just wrote a marvelous little tool to help me track my MEA edits so I could figure out which hotlists I hadn't been through yet.  They might be able to help with other kinds of automation as well.  Chick Bowen 04:22, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Endorsement 

message: Chalk another one up! The Encarta - Britannica 2004 crossover is now complete. Thanks to everyone who contributed to the project, though I would like to personally like to thank Bogdangiusca who worked hard to see the completion of the project.  
According to my very innaccurate progress chart, the next one that should be compete is the Black history biographies, though I'm thinking that 1911xCatholic will probably be next to be done. --Reflex Reaction (talk)• 16:45, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: ONLY Eight articles remain for the 1911xCatholic Crossover.  Help complete another project! --Reflex Reaction (talk)• 18:29, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Down to three now. And they strike me as actually needing expansion, not creation. --maru  (talk) Contribs 21:53, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  2004xEncarta is now done 

message: I've created a Wiktionary hotlist in the same style used here, listing 300,000 entries that need to be pruned/created. If you feel like a change, check it out. --BRIAN0918 04:29, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: For anyone interested in Wiktionary

message: I have a list of missing science articles, if anyone is interested. There are terms from just about every discipline, though a large portion are related to energy. I prefer to keep it on my userspace because I am fixing errors, removing inappropriate terms and adding new ones. Once I do most of the fixes, hopefully in a week or two, I may split the list up so that it will load faster. However, right now it's easier for me to work on it this way. If you duplicate the list, I strongly recommend that you check for updates to avoid wasted effort. -- Kjkolb 17:03, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The list has been updated. I've removed almost all inappropriate terms and mistakes. The page loads okay for me, so I guess I'll leave it like it is for now. If you have problems, you can copy it into a text document and use it offline. I'm still updating it periodically. The finished articles are removed, a few more terms are added and more mistakes are fixed. -- Kjkolb 06:51, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Missing science articles 

message: I came across these lists from the Canadian Dictionary of Biography, see List of people in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography - A while flicking through random pages, they appear to be being used like lists for a missing article project. The CNDB is copyrighted although there are provisions for non-commerical use, I think that they probably need to be moved out of the main namespace. I though someone here might know what to do with them after that. --nixie 05:27, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Should this be in the main article space?

message: I have my own wishlist now. It's only 20 items. It's vaguely related to this, so I thought you might be interested. – Quadell (talk) (bounties) 18:03, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Daur people are described at Daur (could use improvement). 19!!! David Brooks 18:48, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

text: OTOH you may have less luck getting an article on Krystal Wakem. David Brooks 19:34, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That's true, I see. I replaced her with Johnny Dioguardi. – Quadell (talk) (bounties) 22:35, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wishlist (init 20) 19 left!!!

message: --ragesoss 20:57, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I linked to it from Wikipedia:Missing science topics. – Quadell (talk) (bounties) 21:31, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Wikipedia:WikiProject History of Science/scientists|Missing Scientist Articles]]

message: About three months ago I proposed a reorganization of the General topics list.  The ultimate decision was for me to defer to SimonP preferences and keep the old structure.  But every time that I come across that page, it always annoys the hell out of me.  It's just damn difficult to work with.  For example, there are 90 subpages for the hotlist which can be displayed in a single screen (it used to be 150).  To see all the subpages for the general list which only has 78 subpages, you have to scroll across two and half screens.  The navigation template also is not much help; I have no idea that page 48 corresponds to (Motherby - Naouri) or that page 66 corresponds to (South Ossett - Stambourne Green).  Yes, the navigation template can be changed, but that would make it almost as large to display something like 55 Lo-Lub, 56 Lub-Man for all 78 pages.
I don't do much work with the list so I'm willing to defer again, but I think that the page could use some improvements like 
* Search capability
* Organization by letter
* Ability to resort by red and blue links
* Easier totalling and tracking of progress
These developments have all been put into hotlist and allow for easier article creation, navigation and pruning of the lists.  Please let me know if you support a new reorganization or if you think nothing broken and am wondering why I'm trying to "fix" it again.  Thanks --Reflex Reaction (talk)• 15:28, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I guess really no one cares.  I will stop beating this dead horse and let the project be. --Reflex Reaction (talk)• 01:19, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well wait a minute, I think the horse is still twitching. I think that the list is "broken", in the sense that it's not being used much. The question, in my mind, is whether the list is worth salvaging. I would love it if someone found a way to find all article names in both this "cold list" and the Hotlist, and then remove articles found in both from the cold list. See how much is left, and how many of the remaining are just unencyclopedic. If it's worth keeping, then in my mind, it would be best if it were merged into the hotlist. If it's not worth doing that, then I'm not sure why it's still around. – Quadell (talk) (bounties) 14:25, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Hasn't Magnus already done that with the GeneralxHotlist?  I'm sure someone (i.e. not me) could write a script to remove those repeats in the General list?  I frankly don't remember if the GeneralxHotlist was all red linked when it was generated or had a mix of both.  I tend to think that he prunes the list before posting it.  About merging the lists.  I'm not so sure anymore, the Hotlist was made from known encyclopedic sources.  I don't know what made the General list and merging them would remove that benefit.  Probert's encyclopedia I'm sure was part of the General list, but I've seen stuff from a single page encyclopedia of wine and beer.  My thought with the reorganization has strictly been "This is a hard list to work with, in terms of navigation and topics.  If we clean it up it will be easier to find those gems that are still in the list."  --Reflex Reaction (talk)• 14:53, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reorganization of General topics 

message: There is a book of which most of you are probably aware, Who Was Who in America.  It has been released as a number of volumes over the years.  Is it the opinion of those in this project that all of the individuals who have articles in this book should be included as well?  I have to acknowledge I'm not really sure just how many people are included here, but it is a bundle.  Badbilltucker 16:57, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Who Was Who in America?