User talk:Robert Skyhawk/Archive 2

This archive contains all messages received from September 2008 to early March 2009.

Hi! I've fulfilled your request for rollback. Please remember to use it only for clear cut vandalism per WP:RBK - feel free to ask me if you have any queries! Pedro :  Chat  23:53, 28 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks much. Robert Skyhawk (Talk) 23:56, 28 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding rolling back unexplained deletions. Personally I err on the side of caution on these, but it is context specific. WP:UNDO lets you leave an immediate "rv unexplained blanking" message so it helps clarify things. Having said that, blanking of a large part of a non confrontational article (say Helium) would seem to be a poor edit and rollback would be fine. Blanking of any section of an article under WP:BLP would require more consideration before reverting. I view rollback as a tool that requires a certain level of discretion, hence why it's not just given out on auto-confirm. The over-riding concept is - if in doubt don't. Manually undo the edit instead and use an edit summary that jutifies it. Hope that helps. Pedro :  Chat  00:16, 29 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It does, thank you very much. Robert Skyhawk (Talk) 00:17, 29 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Most welcome. Happy editing! Pedro :  Chat  00:30, 29 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Not vandalism, nor testing, nor intentionally incorrect. You have seen the movie, correct? The own article states it was about witchcraft, and in the popular culture footnotes it mentions that it brought interest to witchcraft AND WICCA. I would appreciate it if you actually read what you revert. At the very least its a confusion of practice/religion, can you tell me how that is vandalism please? Also, I've been editing for ages, so welcome to you too I suppose. 24.175.72.249 (talk) 01:20, 2 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

After looking at it, you are correct. This is indeed a legitamate edit. So is the whirlwind of Huggle; in my vandalism-reverting, I took the substitution of witches for Wiccans to be slander. I neglected to look into the subject of the article. I take full responsibility for this blunder (of course), and will proceed to revert my edit. My deepest apologies. Robert Skyhawk (Talk) 01:25, 2 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hah, I came back here to add an edit to what I said, but you caught me before I added one. I'm sorry for being so needlessly snippy, I take work home. In other news, I'm glad you work against vandalism, it's people who do that who make Wikipedia respectable.24.175.72.249 (talk) 01:28, 2 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I am sorry for my edit on the ABC that wasnt constructive, it wont happen again what happens if i get 3 warnings? Am i raided with police? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.180.221.134 (talk) 04:55, 2 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

To answer your question, normal anti-vandalism policy on Wikipedia is, for relatively new contributors, that vandals can receive up to four warnings for different instances of vandalism. After four warnings have been given (the 4th will usually say something like This is your last warning:...), users are commonly blocked from editing for a short time (24-48 hrs.). If the user vandalizes again immediately after the block expires, they are usually blocked again for an extended period of time. Note that waiting between vandalisms doesn't restart the process; if, for example, a user is given four warnings, then stops vandalizing for a month, then vandalizes again, the user is only given one warning before being blocked.

On a lighter note, if a user vandalizes four times, then "sees the light" and stops, there are no real consequences, and the editor can become a contributing member of the community.

I hope this explanation has helped; for more information, see Wikipedia:Blocking policy and Wikipedia:Vandalism. Robert Skyhawk (Talk) 05:05, 2 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Why do you revert my SCAR acronym? It most is definitely what it stands for and in no way do i see this as putting false information on purpose. Please explain. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.229.109.68 (talk) 04:33, December 4, 2008 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but it just doesn't seem likely to me that an acronym for a program has the word shit in it. Since you didn't provide a source, I didn't know if it was true and assumed it wasn't. See Wikipedia:Verifiability. If you can find a source that verifies this, then feel free to add the information again. Robert Skyhawk (Talk) 04:55, 4 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hello from the UK! I too am an avid aviation enthusiast, and I am excited to see your upcoming article on the pancake maneuver, the maneuver that saved Sgt. Wilson from the grave in 1954. [citation needed] Make sure to mention the similar boating maneuver! Cordially, Cpt. Pablo —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.254.167.43 (talk) 00:50, 5 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This was clearly some kind of joke. Did you read it? Martin 22:58, 6 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed I did...guess it could've been declined immediately as a joke but you never know...perhaps the dish-man is still at large! Anyway, things like that are what keep me processing all those AFC requests. Robert Skyhawk ^{(Talk to me)} 05:42, 7 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Lol, yes, we do get some weird ones, don't we? Anyway, keep up the good work! Martin 09:31, 7 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Dear AfC participant,

1. Msgj and Tnxman307 are organising the AfC challenge! It's a little competition to help improve some of the articles created through AfC and we are hoping that everyone will get involved. For level 1, you just need to bring a stub up to Start-class. Level 2 is improving a Start-class article to C-class. And so on. To get involved or for more information please see the competition page.
2. Those of you who haven't reviewed an article recently might not have noticed the new process that was implemented this year. Reviewing articles is now more enjoyable than ever :) You might like to give it a try. All articles waiting for review are in Category:Pending Afc requests. (Please read the updated instructions.)
3. Please consider adding {{AFC status}} to your userpage to keep track of the number of articles waiting for review. At the time of writing we are officially backlogged, so help is needed!
4. There is currently a proposal to bring the Images for upload process under the umbrella of WikiProject Articles for creation. The rationale is that both processes are designed to allow unregistered users to take part more fully in Wikipedia, and partipants in each process can probably help each other.

If you no longer wish to receive messages from WikiProject Articles for creation, please remove your name from this list. Thank you.

Hi. I reversed an edit you did with AWB at Rhondda (district) as "enflamed" was not a typo but the correct heraldic term in blazonry for on fire/burning. It had been changed to "inflamed" which I think you will agree has a different meaning! Might be worth keeping an eye on: obviously some occurances may indeed be mispelt, but any included in descriptions of coats of arms are probably correct. Lozleader (talk) 15:08, 14 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

My apologies! I do indeed agree that this correction was out of place. Thank you for being so kind as to notify me of this discrepancy. Robert Skyhawk ^{So sue me!} (You'll lose) 16:34, 14 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I undid your edit to Encyclopedia article - you mistakenly removed the AfD template, but the template was for the article's 2nd nomination, which is still being discussed. Graymornings_(talk) 22:27, 22 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Oops! Terribly sorry about that; being a bit too bold, eh? I'll do my research in the future. Robert Skyhawk ^{So sue me!} (You'll lose) 22:38, 22 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

No prob! Graymornings_(talk) 22:41, 22 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

No, it certainly wasn't too bold. It's great to have another person on hand. Martin 12:53, 30 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Excellent, thank you. Robert Skyhawk ^{So sue me!} (You'll lose) 19:16, 30 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Just a tiny point. If you leave the timestamp parameter (e.g. |ts=20081230230019) because it is used to sort the completed category. Happy New Year! Martin 00:56, 1 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Oh! I was thinking that the completed category didn't use that. I'll certainly leave it in from now on, but I believe the instructions say to replace the template with {{Afc submission|D|reason}}. Perhaps that should be reworded. Anyway, thanks for the correction. Robert Skyhawk ^{So sue me!} (You'll lose) 18:17, 1 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You're right, the instructions probably should be updated. Leaving the ts in puts new submissions at the top of that category so they are more likely to be able to find their reviewed submission. By the way I have just (I think!) fixed Template:Afc talk. It should now be displaying different messages depending on whether the user is registered or not. Please let me know if there are any other problems with it. Martin 09:59, 3 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I just used it-looks good to me, nice job! Robert Skyhawk ^{So sue me!} (You'll lose) 18:16, 3 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, it would be very helpful to replace any instances of {{WPAFC|notarticle=yes}} with {{WPAFC/project}}. At the moment the template is forwarding them on automatically, but it would be neater if this wasn't necessary. Cheers, Martin 13:28, 12 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Right, think I've got them all now. Martin 17:49, 12 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Please refer to my posting at Talk:Political Appointments System in Hong Kong/GA1, thanks. Ohconfucius (talk) 07:21, 6 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Um,do you think you could specify what it is you would like me to respond to? Looks like the reviewer has responded to your most recent comment. If you'd like some help with copyediting NPOV, I'm sure I could help a bit, but this isn't really my area of expertise as it were. Robert Skyhawk ^{So sue me!} (You'll lose) 01:00, 7 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hello,

I am a newbie and really need help. I submitted a piece on Castle Mountain Internment Camp. I was asked to provide inline citations, which I did. For some reason they are not showing up. Help! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.195.32.215 (talk) 21:33, 29 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

(Posted on anon's talkpage as well) Hello there. The trouble is that you didn't put in the actual reference list. You do this by typing {{reflist}}. I've gone ahead and done that on the article you asked about. I hope I've helped, and welcome to Wikipedia! Robert Skyhawk ^{So sue me!} (You'll lose) 02:19, 30 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your help.

By the way, in case you are interested, I've posted a couple more (easy search/replace) tasks at WP:AWB/Tasks. One of them is a refinement of the task you just completed.

The Transhumanist 23:44, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

From WP:AWB/Tasks On the pages listed at User:The Transhumanist/Country outlines, please search/replace this string (without the quotes):

"[[Category:Outlines"

with:

"[[Category:Outlines of countries"

(without the quotes)

Sorry I didn't catch this before. Zlerman pointed it out to me.

The Transhumanist 23:40, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

 Doing...do you want the pages in the Wikipedia mainspace recategorized too? Robert Skyhawk ^{So sue me!} (You'll lose) 03:42, 3 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, looks like you've already beat me to this, unless you want the Wikipedia namespace articles recated too. Robert Skyhawk ^{So sue me!} (You'll lose) 04:01, 3 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. See Category:Outlines. The country outlines shouldn't be in there. Rather, they should show up on the subcategory Category:Outlines of countries. If you use User:The Transhumanist/Country outlines as you input list to AWB, AWB will skip the pages for which the search/replace has already been done. The Transhumanist 04:37, 4 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Development has been slow but continuous:

Penubag has done a fantastic job on the images for the awards we'll be using for our project's collaborations and contests. We now have 3 awards: a medal, a trophy, and a race ribbon. They all look tight. The trophy needs a small adjustment, but other than that, all 3 awards are complete and ready to use.

Spartaz has warned us of (threatened to take) G4 (speedy delete) action if we run a competition that resembles the previously deleted Awards Center page. So whatever we do, any contests we run must differ substantially from the methods used there.

One type of competition I've been exploring is edit racing. I'm in the process of working the bugs out of this concept - the first race didn't work as expected - you see, because we only had an award for first place, the opponent didn't think it worthwhile to continue once it was clear who the winner would be. And since editors are in different time zones and usually need to start the race at different times, we need to base winning on personal start times - he who completes his assigned edits in the least time (rather than first), wins. And last but not least is quality control. What good is winning if your edits are ripe with errors? So I'll be exploring possibilities such as using a referee (whoever is overseeing a particular race), having participants watching each other for errors to knock them back, etc. I'm not sure yet.

Rich Farmbrough has been applying his bot expertise to filling in blanks in the country outlines (the population and area entries). I'm amazed at the number of edits he pumps out each day on a myriad of projects - ours makes up but a small time slice of his activity, and yet he has saved us many hours of manual work. Perhaps we should look into how he gets so much done.  :)

Zlerman has chosen to work on one outline at a time, and is taking on Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. He also has been keen on noticing and reporting design issues pertaining to the whole set of country outlines. Keep up the good work!

Highfields has been filling in the names of capitals, and is our first race winner. Check out the award on his user pages.

As you probably know, this project has expanded to include working on any and all sets of pages that are linked to from the country outlines. Once the set of country outlines go live (in article space), traffic will likely increase for all the links included on them. The quality and usefulness of those pages will reflect heavily on the country outlines (the outlines, which are essentially lists of links, are only as good as the links they present), and therefore we've branched out to solve the biggest problems with those as well. So far, we've taken on:

• The creation of disambiguation pages for country adjectivals ("German", "French", "Taiwanese", etc. About half done.)
• The clean-up of the CIA World Factbook statistics on the "demographics of" country pages. We've been renaming those sections to provide a key string that AWB can use for targetting (for skipping and filtering). Once that's done, we'll be able to break the clean-up down into simple AWB search/replace tasks, because we'll be able to target just those pages that include the CIA stuff.
• Renaming the "Cuisine of" articles to their adjectival forms ("Chinese cuisine", "Italian cuisine", etc.)

Blackadam2 and Thehelpfulone have been helping out with the "demographics of" pages mentioned above.

And we have a couple speed addicts (addicted to wiki-velocity, not drugs)...

Both Robert Skyhawk and Thehelpfulone prefer (and excel at) simple AWB search/replaces. Robert hasn't actually joined our team yet, but he has been helping out quite a bit from the sidelines (via the WP:AWB/Tasks page. Unfortunately, there has recently been a non-AWB chore that has been holding things up on the AWB front - an edit to all the the headings which had to be reverted before too many new edits were made, because any new edits would make the reversion more difficult. The headings have been restored, so now the way is clear for AWB operations, and there are many search/replace tasks in the queue. AWB assignments have started again!

There's a similar bottleneck on the "Demographics of" pages (the "keying" mentioned above), but that's almost cleared too.  :)

With my internet access somewhat crippled, I've been finding it difficult to keep up with you guys. However, I expect to be accessing a Linky-capable workstation on a faster server (I'm on it right now, as you can probably tell from my contributions list for today), and so I should really pick up speed. Feels goooooood.  :)

Recruiting has been a bit slow (but steady), due in part to my crippled access, and because we've been waiting for the images for the awards to be completed. I expect the team to grow more rapidly as the bottlenecks are removed.

Well that's what's been happenin', and here's what's in the pipeline...

I'm about to begin work on a set of lists that corresponds to all the standard links on the country outlines, and these will be presented on the Topic outline of countries which will be organized exactly like the country outlines. Aside from being an extremely useful navigation aid, it will allow editors to easily see the state of country coverage on Wikipedia. I'll provide you with a link once I get up to speed on this.

In the meantime, keep up the good work!

Cheers,

The Transhumanist 05:18, 5 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Robert Skyhawk is faithfully implementing your instructions, changing "Area" to "Area of" and "Population" to "Population of" in all country outlines. This is creating red links all over the place. What's going to be? Between you and me and gatepost, the change looks totally unnecessary to me, and the layout was actually much better (more readable) without the "of". --Zlerman (talk) 17:22, 8 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'm holding off on this task until this is worked out. Robert Skyhawk ^{So sue me!} (You'll lose) 17:34, 8 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

No need to hold off. Those redlinks will be completed by someone inserting the country names into them after the "of". Then each redlink will be turned blue by creating redirects leading to the relevant information. The redlinks only show up in the country outline drafts that are in the Wikipedia namespace, so don't worry about it. Keep up the good work.

Zlerman is diligently watching these outlines for potential problems, and that's a good thing. The Transhumanist 21:03, 9 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

(I posted this 3 days ago. Somehow I missed your talk page. Sorry about that...)

There has been a flurry of activity on the project as of late - so much so that I felt compelled to write another progress report...

More racing award graphics!

Penubag has completed 4 more award graphics for our upcoming edit races. They look great!

New outline developer

Buaidh has joined the effort to develop country outlines. Like Zlerman, he has chosen specific outlines to work on. Which ones? All the countries of the Americas!

Bots!

User talk:Thehelpfulone now has a bot, and User talk:Robert Skyhawk has requested approval for one. Work on the country outlines using these should start soon. I feel the technological singularity approaching.  :)

Regex

Several of us have been trying to figure out how to use regular expressions (regex), in AWB, and once we have done this, we should be able to insert country names into entries for all the outlines using a single search/replace regex.

User talk:Thehelpfulone has successfully used AWB and regex to complete a 2-line search/replace using the \n command.

Regex repository - please add to it!

As a reference aid, I've set up the page User:The Transhumanist/Regexes for reporting the regexes we use. Please post regexes you've used successfully to that page. That way, everyone on the team can learn from each others' successes and we thereby leverage our experience collectively. Thank you.

The Transhumanist 22:29, 9 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Robert, I'm experimenting with daily categories for AfC submissions. For example: Category:Articles for Creation submitted on 18 Feb 2009. I have designed a header template {{AFC submission category header}} for these categories. You're clever with bots and automated processes. I was wondering how easy it would be to create these categories with

{{AFC submission category header|date=YYYYMMDD}}

at the top of them (where of course YYYYMMDD is the date in question). I have been trying to get others to discuss this and there may be some changes yet in how these work, so please don't start creating them yet in any large numbers. What do you think about the idea? Martin 06:12, 19 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Well, it would certainly be possible to get a bot to do this, and I think I can get one that will work using pywikipediabot. However, I think a key here is that the bot should be fully automated, that is, it should run without any user input whatsoever, making the category every day. If this isn't possible with pywikipediabot, I'll find another way. There is a concern of overcrowding the Category space with all of these, but perhaps it won't be an issue. Anyway, I'll look into it, but the short answer is that it should be possible. Hope I've helped. Robert Skyhawk ^{So sue me!} (You'll lose) 01:41, 20 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I think the process can be simplified. By naming the categories in a way such as Category:AfC submissions by date/2009/Feb/18, we can use the titleparts parser function to detect the date (see the code on that page) and so a parameter will not be needed. But I'm interested in whether you think this will be worth the effort? Personally I quite like being able to see them in a daily list, and it should help users to find their declined submissions. But we shouldn't embark on such a big change unless it is clearly worthwhile. Cheers, Martin^Msgj 12:43, 20 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It's certainly an interesting idea, but I don't think I quite understand the specifics. Would the categories be under/over the existing Pending/Completed categories, or would those be scrapped in favor of this system? Some explanation of the proposed organization would be helpful--perhaps you could put that on WT:WPAFC as well. Robert Skyhawk ^{So sue me!} (You'll lose) 05:33, 21 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The idea was that it would replace Category:Completed Afc requests because that one is so big and unwieldy and submitters may find it hard to find their article in there. I'll take it back to WT:WPAFC. Martin^Msgj 11:42, 21 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Any luck on creating the regex for the latest task?

(See: User talk:Robert Skyhawk/Country Outline task list#Completing "Population of " link)

The Transhumanist 04:40, 20 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You know, there's no apparent way to do this with RegEx that I can see...I think WP:VPT or perhaps WP:RD is my next stop. Robert Skyhawk ^{So sue me!} (You'll lose) 04:57, 20 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Another way has occurred to me on how we can to this. I've revised the task at User talk:Robert Skyhawk/Country Outline task list.

Good luck.

Have fun.

By the way, please drop me a note on my talk page when you reply elsewhere, to take advantage of Wikipedia's message alert feature. Thank you.

[[User talk:The Transhumanist| 23:39, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Be sure to welcome our newest member, User talk:NuclearWarfare, to the team!

See his talk page for the task he's taking on.

The Transhumanist 00:03, 22 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

When I did Pass 1, there's a problem with the parser functions that we overlooked. The first pass involved placing the command {{PAGENAME}} in links, however, we didn't subst: it, meaning that in the wikicode, the name of the page still appears as {{PAGENAME}}. So, the second Find & Replace won't give us anything, since the text "Topic Outlne of" doesn't actually exist in the wikicode.

I can fix this, but it will involve going through each of the articles and changing {{PAGENAME}} to {{subst:PAGENAME}}, then making the pass that will remove "Topic Outline of". Sorry that neither of us caught this.

By the way, instead of just removing "Topic Outline of", I should probably be removing the whole "Wikipedia:WikiProject Topic Outlines..." bit, right?

Thanks, Robert Skyhawk ^{So sue me!} (You'll lose) 18:54, 22 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The fix is  Done. Starting on the original second pass now. Robert Skyhawk ^{So sue me!} (You'll lose) 19:43, 22 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, please remove the whole path (Wikipedia:Wiki...etc.).

The software didn't use to require the extra "subst". Looks like an upgrade.

I'm glad you found a solution.

More tasks on the way...

:)

The Transhumanist 20:14, 22 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Rich Farmbrough did some advanced bot work for this project recently.

Unfortunately, he is extremely busy, and as far as I can tell rarely focuses on a single project for very long. I think he's in very high demand.

Rich used a bot to pull data off of a page and place the corresponding entries from that page onto each of the country outlines. He did it for population, and again for area.

Please figure out or find out how he did that!

That skill would be amazingly useful.

I could do it with MacroExpress, but I don't have access to a computer with that program installed.  :(

There's probably a way to do it with AutoHotkey (which is free). But I don't have access to that either. But you do.  :)

Richard probably used a script or programming language. Why not get in touch with him and ask him to explain to you how he did it.

Be sure to request the source code as well, so that you'll have a concrete example to modify and apply.

By the way, in case you didn't know, for years Rich was the most prolific Wikipedian (and still is if you include all the bot accounts he's run), but recently he's dropped to 3rd place. My guess is that he understands bots and wiki-automation better than anyone else on Wikipedia.

Good luck.

Have fun.

The Transhumanist 21:32, 22 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I've contacted our friend Rich, will let you know when he replies. Robert Skyhawk ^{So sue me!} (You'll lose) 21:46, 22 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Ok here is the way I do it: there isn't really code to share it was a one off.

1. use wget to recover the data 2. Use a perl script to create a set of AWB rules (regex encapsualted in XML) 3. Insert a suitable tag into each page using the %%title%% feature of AWB or {{subst:PAGENAME}} 4. Run AWB against the pages

Note 3 and 4 can be done in one hit, although I took two passes.

Rich Farmbrough, 21:52 22 February 2009 (UTC).

My head is spinning.  :) The Transhumanist 23:23, 22 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It looks like wget would work wonders with macros. But good macro programs have at least some of that functionality built in. The Transhumanist 00:08, 23 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

That would be great! --PommieB (talk) 03:18, 23 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Someone not on the team has come along and moved one of the country outline drafts to article space. This is a great sign, as it means the set of pages is attracting attention.

It's Topic outline of Romania.

Please help complete it ASAP. Here's why:

It's got some awkward stuff in there, including blank links, redlinks (that need to be bluelinked by creating redirects), and apparently irrelevant entries (kept for comparison purposes, that need to be filled in with "none"), etc.

Many editors tend to remove awkward stuff instead of complete it.

We should finish up Topic outline of Romania before they remove anything.

Thank you.

Good luck.

Have fun.

The Transhumanist 03:45, 23 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately, you're not the only one who seems to be having this problem; you'll notice a few sections up on my talk page the same thing happened to someone else. I can't for the life of me figure out what's causing it, but starting about a month ago, new installations don't seem to function for a while. It *should* work eventually, but in the meantime, I guess just keep going as normal. In consolation, you did do everything correctly; the template should work, and does for me, but why it's not for you is a mystery. Sorry I can't be of any help. :-( Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 17:47, 23 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It seems to me that the project could use a new talk page header--we currently have Template:WikiProject LOBT, but the project isn't even called that anymore. So, I've made User:Robert Skyhawk/Outline of knowledge template, which you are free to edit (I may use {{inuse}} tags when I'm doing something large). I think that once we get to a certain point, with your approval I'll move it into Template space, then we can redirect the old template to the new one. We may also consider using my bot/AWB to put the template on all of the project's pages. Any thoughts? Robert Skyhawk ^{So sue me!} (You'll lose) 04:58, 23 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for taking the initiative. I like that! It's like a breath of fresh air.

Yes, I do have some thoughts...

An outline's title specifies what subject it is an outline of. For example "Outline of geography", "Outline of surgery", etc. "Outline of knowledge" means knowledge itself is the subject being outlined. In this context, "Outlines of knowledge" would mean more than one presentation (or publication). E.g.: "Wikipedia's Outline of knowledge" and Encyclopædia Britannica's "Propaedia" are both outlines of knowledge. The Propaedia is hundreds of pages long, and similarly, Wikipedia's OOK is split into hundreds of pages (each an outline unto itself).

I think we should avoid use of "Outline of knowledge" in the plural ("Outlines of knowledge"), as the singular already refers to the entire set of outlines on Wikipedia. Outlines of lesser scope (OOK's component outlines) can be referred to simply as "outlines", but if we refer to them as a set or page class, I think it's best to refer to them by their title as a whole: "Outline of knowledge".

Note: we shouldn't use "Subject outline" in outline titles, as the term is redundant (technically, the content of every outline is a subject, even if the subject is a speech, a book, etc.).

By the way, we're in the process of (gradually) phasing out "Topic" from the titles, because none of our outlines fit the strict definition of "topic outline" (an outline comprised entirely of topic names, as opposed to a "sentence outline" which is composed of sentences) - outlines on Wikipedia are more of a hybrid, and they are becoming more so over time (with the addition of lead paragraphs, annotations, etc.).

Concerning the WikiProject's banner, it is usually better to rename the existing banner in order to keep its page history intact. Replacing and then redirecting the original to the new version buries part of the page history. I've updated and renamed the banner, customizing the text because WPBanner's boilerplate prose just doesn't fit contextually. I've also retained the banner's focus on recruiting. Feel free to improve the banner as you see fit. The Transhumanist 22:21, 23 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

On a related subject...

There's a reason why I've left quality assessment off of the WikiProject's banner:

I've shied away completely from using the quality assessment rating system on outlines.

The main reason is that we are spread way too thin, and it would be a much better use of each editor's time to actually work on the outlines.

Another strong reason is that we've adopted a draft system. And our drafts generally aren't moved to article space until they are of at least good quality. The reason we've adopted this approach is because outline stubs in article space, that is, outlines that are nearly empty, tend to get AfD'd pretty fast.

A minor reason is that it would be extremely impractical to get these pages through the featured status proposal process (the referencing requirements are far too elaborate for navigation aids like these), making the rating system inappropriate for this page type - and I wouldn't want editors wasting their time trying to reference the entries on these pages. Why would you need to prove with a reference that "Geography of x" belongs in an "Outline of x"?

In the same vein, referencing is especially difficult for outlines, since because they are lists it is "inclusion criteria" that critics focus upon, meaning you have to prove with references that each item belongs on the list. Well, according to definitions out there, outlines are lists of the "essential points" (for sentence outlines) or "essential topics" (for topic outlines) of the outline's subject, and tracking down sources that specify something's essentiality to a parent subject is damn near impossible. You might easily find examples of essentiality and reference those, but that could be construed as "original research".

I just think it's better to avoid the whole can of worms. Toward that end, I support the concept of "reference pass through" for outlines. That is, includability should be established on each article that is listed on the outline, and the reference cited there should be considered to "pass through" to (automatically apply to) the outline.

The Transhumanist 23:23, 23 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I've recorded much of my wiki-know-how at WP:OTS.

The Transhumanist 00:56, 24 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. I got your latest task, and will get started soon, but I wanted to let you know that I've found a way to eliminate the pass throwing the subst: into {{PAGENAME}}. The subst: bit must simply be enclosed with <includeonly> tags. This will work fine as long as the template itself is always substituted, and, by their nature, they always are anyway. See Help:Substitution#Includeonly. I've made the change to Sandbox08...if you'd like, I can apply it to all of the {{PAGENAME}} commands in the sandboxes with AWB (I won't use the bot...I'll check each edit myself). Thanks, Robert Skyhawk ^{So sue me!} (You'll lose) 03:48, 24 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

 Doing... Robert Skyhawk ^{So sue me!} (You'll lose) 04:04, 24 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

All the other substitution tasks requiring sandboxes (sandboxes #4, #6, #29) have been completed. I'll blank those sandboxes, but will double-check for completion first (translation: "I'll skip to Zambia and look").  :) Thank you for the heads up. The Transhumanist 04:07, 24 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yep, they're done. I've blanked those sandboxes. The Transhumanist 04:11, 24 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I've caught the outlines in article space up the best I can. It was tedious. (But I spotted some other stuff that needed to be done to them, so it worked out well).

Though we really need those included in the bot passes. And Zlerman is gearing up to move 4 more country outlines to article space, so the problem will just keep getting bigger.

Please return to the bot approvals group and ask if it is okay to include all the pages in the set rather than just the drafts. Currently there are only 30 in the main namespace. Perhaps they won't mind if we include those in the bot runs.

If they want a description of the bot's activity, you could say "completion of outline entries, and addition of outline entries".

Good luck.

The Transhumanist 23:56, 24 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

P.S.: Thehelpfulone has been including the main namespace country outlines in his bot runs, without incident.

Speaking about substituted templates...

Is there a way to insert a line, for example:

• Women in x

but only in the country outlines of those countries for which the article exists?

That is, cycle through all the countries with AWB and insert a template substitution in each, but the template checks for the existence of Women in x, and if it does not exist for the country of the current outline, then the template does nothing.

I think it has something to do with ifexist

'The Transhumanist 04:42, 27 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hey Skyhawk,

This is LOSTMAN1 confirming your request to adopt me on wikipedia. I'm ready to learn!! --LOSTMAN1 (talk) 10:54, 3 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Robert Skyhawk I wanted to let you know that [[]] is labeled as needing your comment. Please visit the above link to reply to the requests. Thanks! --BAGBotTalk 03:31, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Things have been slowing down again, so it's time for a big push...

This project needed a shot in the arm. Also, its draft pages have been littering Wikipedia's categories for months. The time seemed right to move all the country outline drafts to article space.

WHAT???

Well, the drafts had been sitting in Wikipedia space for a year.

WHAT???

Development has been moving at a snail's pace and we could use the help of the Wikipedia community at large (who are more likely to find these if they are in article space).

WHAT???

Yes, we've gone live.  :)

This puts pressure on us to get the blatantly incomplete elements of these outlines done. The only glaring problem is the government branches sections. These need to be corrected ASAP.

I've mentioned THE GOVERNMENT BRANCHES SECTIONS many times to many people over the past year, but the problem just doesn't seem to have been taken seriously. So let me put it another way:

HELP!!! I need your help on this now. Almost all the countries have a government with an executive branch, a legislative branch, and a judicial branch. The links for these branches need to be completed for each country outline:

Here's a convenient list you can use WP:LINKY on to access and edit these quickly. Please copy the list's link to the top of your talk page so that you can access it easily.

If you spot any standardization in links, and ways we can automate parts of this process, or for groups of countries that have links in common, please let me know!

There has been growing pressure on me to write up the administrative pages for outlines - their instructions, guidelines, etc. Therefore, I'm now in the process of composing these. Fortunately, it is mostly a matter of gathering material from messages I've written to you guys over the past year. Still, this is taking up most of my time, and I will be buried in these for the foreseeable future.

The next big task after the government branches sections are cleaned up is link support for the outlines.

There's quite a list of links and notices that need to be put in place around Wikipedia, providing access to them to readers, and alerting editors to the need to develop and maintain these pages. This will keep our bot people very busy (and happy).

But the most important thing right now is to get the government branches sections completed. So please, put your bots aside, roll up your shirt sleeves, and start typing.

Thank you.

The Transhumanist 02:31, 9 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

See User talk:Sj#Scripts?.

The Transhumanist 22:53, 10 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]