Wikipedia talk:Collaboration of the week/Archive 1

This page contains old talk from 26 April to 19 July 2004, archived from Wikipedia talk:Collaboration of the week, then known as Wikipedia talk:Article of the week.

Article in a Day/Week idea

Anyone like the sound of this? Over a certain timeframe, we have a specific featured non-article which either didn't exist or was a very basic stub to begin with. The idea being that within a day, a week or whatever the article gets to Featured Article standard, or as close as possible.

It could help fill in big missing gaps in Wikipedia, and would also give users something to concentrate and work on collaboratively.

Any thoughts? Tom- 21:56, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I think this is a great idea, and it is something that seems to be working well on some other Wikipedias. See fr:Wikipédia:Article de la semaine, ro:Wikipedia:Articolul săptămânii and sv:Wikipedia:Veckans artikel for example. There is also the related Qualitätsoffensive on the German Wikipedia. Angela. 22:40, Apr 26, 2004 (UTC)

Interesting, FR changes every week, DE every two. So some questions that need answering for EN are...

• How would the article be picked? Public vote?
• How often should it be changed? Every day? 2 days? Week? Or "when it's good enough"?
• Where should the article be featured?

Tom- 22:53, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)

How does this differ from the 5 requested articles listed at the top of Recent Changes? Even when we have a wider range of choices (as opposed to one, possibly very narrow and boring ONE), we -- as a group -- don't really work on them. Reducing the # from 5 to 1 would just be more restrictive to people's interest.

In any case, it's impossible to get a stub or non-existent article to be feature article-standard in 1 day. Maybe 3. --Menchi 00:17, 27 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Surely the reason nobody edits those is that they don't really notice them. Sure, there's always plenty of articles we could write. The idea of an "article of the week" is surely to get lots of people to focus on it, and turn it into a kind of event, something to be proud of and that people will appreciate an individuals work on. At heart, it's an incentive scheme, like offering WikiMoney. - IMSoP 10:51, 27 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I like the idea. How about a week? About selection, maybe 2 or three people (Tom should certainly be one of them if he agrees) decide on what article to select. Any user can nominate an article to be "featured" and the selectors pick it. The page to be written is then advertised. That work? LUDRAMAN | T 19:39, 27 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I think a week would probably be the best idea, at least to begin with. Could we not just have a public vote? Anyone can vote on an existing suggestion, or add a new suggestion? Tom- 13:16, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Ya. We may as well go on ahead and try it. I nominate either Duet or Duo as our first project. Tom, its probably your choice as it was your idea. How about the two or three "selectors" idea? LUDRAMAN | T 19:00, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I've converted the above discussion into Wikipedia:Article of the week and added a few points such as who can vote etc. Does this seem ok to go with? We could do with a few more nominations for the article, which I propose will be worked on starting from next Thursday, if there are no objections. Angela. 11:30, Apr 29, 2004 (UTC)

The choosen article should also be featured on the Main Page, as is done at Swedish Wikipedia and French Wikipedia. Den fjättrade ankan 11:45, 29 Apr 2004 (UTC)

An Article of the week could also be an article with lots of red links, with the aim of making all those links blue. Den fjättrade ankan 15:49, 29 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Maybe... or could that work better as a totally different project? Tom- 19:28, 29 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I'd like to see a Category of the week project, which would take one of the links from the main page each week and bring it up to featured status. It is cute to pick a random page, but those are the really important high-level pages... and not all of them are breathtaking like, say, Astronomy or Archaeology. +sj+ 06:51, 2004 May 2 (UTC)

here's a stab. +sj+

What next?

So what happens after this vote is done? Do we reset all the votes? Keep the suggested topics? Or remove topics nobody voted for (other than the original nominator), and carry others over? -- Tom- 19:26, 29 Apr 2004 (UTC)

It'd make sense to just leave the nominations in place. Each week the article of the week is whichever one had the most cumulative votes by the beginning of the week. As for featuring, I'd say that the article currently being worked on should be featured on the Community Portal, not on the Main Page. After all, the idea is to make it a featured article, so it'll be on the Main Page eventually anyway. Besides, the "article of the week" is an event for editors more than for readers, hence appropriate for the Community Portal. Isomorphic 23:31, 29 Apr 2004 (UTC)

If we leave all nominations in place, the list is going to become unwieldy eventually, it'll need trimming at some point. Personally I'd like to see the AOTW featured on the Main Page if only in a small way, it'd be a good place for new users to start editing, and to see how work can progress. Tom- 23:41, 29 Apr 2004 (UTC)

We could leave in place only the higher vote-gatherers out of the week's nomination. That'd help with unwieldiness. I definitely do not think we should wipe all the nominations each week, because that will just put a lot of people in the position of re-nomination and re-voting. Certainly I would renominate Academia if it isn't chosen this time. Isomorphic 22:21, 1 May 2004 (UTC)

Mind, readers are potential editors. Fredrik 23:49, 29 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I think the ones that don't win this week should be left up, though obviously people can change their votes at any time. Perhaps those with less than 3 supporters should be archived and not nominated again for at least a month. Angela. 08:50, May 2, 2004 (UTC)

If that happens I suggest votes are NOT RESET, since I imagine that people will complain if they are removed or will add them in again with a sense of mounting boredom. --bodnotbod 11:51, May 2, 2004 (UTC)

I agree. Angela. 20:18, May 2, 2004 (UTC)

Preserving history

We need to decide how to manage the history of the selections. I just ran across this idea today, and started looking for some history to get a sense for how it worked. It took me a while to discover that I found it before any articles of the week had been selected, so I took the liberty of creating and linking to a mostly empty /History page.

I note that the French page keeps the history on the main page, and has a sub-page for the current /Vote. I think doing it the other way around is more likely to focus the attention on the current vote, so I did it this way, but as always the community will evolve to the solution it perfers.

Another question is how much history to preserve? All the votes? And should any statitistics be maintained on how much each winner grows in its week-in-history? NealMcB 20:38, 2004 May 4 (UTC)

I think the /History page should only have a list of winners and how many people voted for them. Tom moved all the topics and votes from this page to the History page which seems at odds with the agreement above on retaining the losers each week so more votes can accumulate. It also looks like the decision was made before "Thursday 6 May, 18:00 (UTC)" - be careful about time zones! So I think the previous topics need to be moved back here, leaving just a summary of the winner - something like "Situs Inversus (12 votes)" NealMcB 13:39, 2004 May 7 (UTC)

Forgive me if this is jumping the gun, but I've now brought this page and the /History page into line with the comments above by Isomorphic, Angela, bodnotbod, and myself, vs Tom's input. NealMcB 21:33, 2004 May 7 (UTC)

Sorry, I misread what people were asking for as regards to archiving. I don't think I mucked the time zone up though, it was 20:19 BST (UTC+1) when I updated the page with the result. Tom- 21:58, 8 May 2004 (UTC)

---

OK, so if I understand correctly, situs inversus is currently the article of the week. Someone started working on it on Sunday, with the comment that they were starting the article of the week. Shouldn't we have a link to it somewhere (my own vote is for the community portal, but there are other possibilities) and moving it and its votes to a new section at the top of the votes page to show the current AOTW? Isomorphic 22:26, 4 May 2004 (UTC)

Um, the project page says new nominations and votes can be made til May 6th... so it's too early for a winner, surely? I suppose you then have to say whether May 6th meant as midnight struck at the end of May 5th or midnight May 6. I suppose the latter sounds more like the default position? --bodnotbod 22:52, May 4, 2004 (UTC)

Oh ok. The voting started before the beginning of this week, so I thought this week was our first AOTW. Isomorphic 23:19, 4 May 2004 (UTC)

The page says "Thursday 6 May, 18:00", which should clear up any confusion as to whether it's midnight on the 5th or 6th. :) Angela. 07:29, May 5, 2004 (UTC)

Of course, the great thing is that - even articles that don't win - may very well benefit from their nomination. --bodnotbod 15:13, May 5, 2004 (UTC)

Limit on number of nominations

I think we may need to bring in a limit on the number of nominations every week. People are still nominating new articles which almost certainly won't win the vote, if this continues then we'll end up with an unmanageable number of nominations, and it could be difficult for users to pick between them. Not entirely sure how to do that though... Tom- 17:19, 5 May 2004 (UTC)

How about nominations can only be made on one day, rather than throughout the week? This could lead to a massive list appearing on that day. But I reckon that, given the size of this project, enough people won't know it's there at all, and a significant second group won't remember to nominate on that day, and - third - some people won't be around that day.

An alternative is to say the first ten or what have you, but that will probably be more open to abuse.

The other thing to remember is that there's a recommendation that those that don't win this week remain. Because, some feel - me included - that they will just be renominated every week anyway. --bodnotbod 19:32, May 5, 2004 (UTC)

One idea I had would be to have a two-stage vote process: one page where anyone can list any page at any time and anyone can vote on it, and another which changes every week with just the top 5 or 10 pages from the first vote. That might over-complicate matters a bit though! Tom- 19:53, 5 May 2004 (UTC)

Pruning

Perhaps each item could have a date that it was proposed, and items with less than x votes after a month could be removed? NealMcB 21:33, 2004 May 7 (UTC)

I think something like that will have to be done, yeah. --bodnotbod 21:43, May 7, 2004 (UTC)

Ideally I'd picture having a goal of less than, say, 30 candidates. When the number goes much over that, old unpopular ones would be removed. Popularity would be calculated based on both number of votes and freshness of the votes. Votes from a month ago would be weighted much less than votes from the current week. People could refresh their vote if they wanted to (hopefully after checking that the article was still in need of lots of work). Practically, the calculations would be hard to do manually. Perhaps we can just see how it evolves and prune manually for a few months? I'd say candidates should stay up at least two weeks, though. NealMcB 16:49, 2004 May 8 (UTC)

I wouldn't feel comfortable putting the burden of doing the math(s) on somebody. Leave aside that a lot of people might not sign with a date, which would then entail going through the history. Let's not overcomplicate this, for all our sakes. In short. No! Nealmcb. No I say! Imagine the tooth pulling tedium of dealing with complaints because somebody's nomination got removed and they think it was just because someone forget to carry the 1. --bodnotbod 19:59, May 8, 2004 (UTC)

I guess I wasn't clear. "Practically" speaking, I agree that asking people to do math is a "No!". I was trying to start off stating the "ideal" weighting approach. And then suggest that we just prune things gently by hand for a while with that general notion in mind since we do have to come up with some notion on how to procede in the short term at some point. NealMcB 03:04, 2004 May 9 (UTC)

I suggest now removing the few nominations that have been there for 2 weeks or more without any votes. We could move them to a sub-page and users can re-nominate them if they wish? Tom- 20:55, 16 May 2004 (UTC)

Unless anyone complains, on Thursday I'm going to move nominations which have been there for more than two weeks and haven't gained any votes or articles which clearly don't fit the critera to a sub-page. Currently those are:

• European Union (good article already, no votes)
• Advaita Vedanta (good article already, no votes)
• Battle of Breitenfeld (1631) (quite a good article, no votes for over 2 weeks)
• Chicken nugget (no votes for over 2 weeks)
• Doctor Who (good article already, no votes)

Tom- 21:19, 16 May 2004 (UTC)

Sounds good, with the clarification that all these articles do have one vote, that of the nominator. That leads me to wonder it would make sense to require a "second" within the two weeks you suggest, or perhaps "If two thursday deadlines have passed and a nomination has not received a "second" vote, it will be moved to /limbo" (thus requiring a second in between one and two weeks). Though I'm still thinking that a simple procedure that prunes unpopular, old candidates to stay under a limit like 20 or 30 would be best - just hard to make it simple :-) NealMcB 17:57, 2004 May 20 (UTC)

Placement

I suggest replacing the current "Ancient pages" section on the Community Portal with the AOTW. The ancient pages section is mostly ignored, so it's no big loss.--Eloquence* 20:10, May 8, 2004 (UTC)

See the Community Portal talk page. Tom- 21:58, 8 May 2004 (UTC)

Time limit

How about instead of a time limit, we only switch articles when the one being worked on has actually reached FA status? Situs inversus is still pretty far from it, in my opinion. We could rename this page to Wikipedia:Article workshop.--Eloquence*

My sense is that this whole process is more useful for highlighting new articles to work on and actually getting community input on that, rather than actually achieving FA status on any regular basis or schedule. We just don't have the clout to get experts to do that reliably. If we delay votes I think people will just stop coming here. Perhaps we should get some of the other Wikipedia places that point to things to work on, and point them to the /History page here also. NealMcB 04:14, 2004 May 14 (UTC)

We don't want to stall out just because we can't get a certain article to featured status. After all, I'm not sure what else there is to say about situs inversus. It's a good article as it stands. Unless someone who really knows a lot about it comes along, it probably won't go much further. As long as the article ends a lot better than it was, I'm happy. Isomorphic 20:53, 14 May 2004 (UTC)

Please don't do this. It'll just turn into yet another pages needing attention/ requests for page expansion. It makes the whole thing seem very boring when it isn't limited to a week. The weekly deadline provides a necessary focus and I believe will encourage more people than something not similarly limited in time. Angela. 03:45, May 15, 2004 (UTC)

I'm for the weekly time limit. Please keep it. — Adam Conover † 17:12, May 15, 2004 (UTC)

Sequence

I just took another bold step of adding another guideline: add new nominations to the bottom of the page.

If people don't object, I'll re-order the list to be in the original sequence. Actually this was just an excuse to put the XML export (Special pages) to use and think of a way to easily determine what order they actually were added in. I extracted the XML and fed it into this little unix pipeline:

$ grep == /tmp/Special:Export.html  | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn

Which yielded this after a few tweaks. NealMcB 04:14, 2004 May 14 (UTC)

1. Indian Railways
2. Duo
3. Duet
4. Advaita Vedanta
5. Dinosaur
6. Battle of Breitenfield (1631)
7. Academia
8. Situs inversus
9. Conceptual blending
10. Hemicorporectomy
11. Chicken nugget
12. Baluchitherium
13. Seven-arm Octopus
14. European Union
15. Advertising agency
16. Comedy film
17. Accompaniment
18. Unicode Collation Algorithm
19. Cordite
20. Brazilian Tapir
21. McDonald's Corporation
22. dry stone wall

Quick question

Just stumbled on this page, great concept, I hope to be able to help out. The goal, however, is to have a great article "by the end of the week". Is this point in time defined? I would think Saturday at midnight, but not everybody ends their week there, so we might want to add a specific 'transition point'. Radagast 23:17, May 15, 2004 (UTC)

The end of the week is Thursday at 18:00 (UTC), which is mentioned on the page. It's not a conventional end of week, but Thursday was the day the page was created and the first vote started, and 18:00 UTC is a time when Europe and America are awake, unlike using midnight which is 1-3am in Europe. Angela. 20:34, May 16, 2004 (UTC)

Why require prior registration?

vote open to users who registered at least one week ago

I'm wondering if it is helpful to require this. We could require use of a registered userid, but are people really caring about, or checking, when the user registered? Removing this might even encourage more people to register. Are there examples like this where longevity rules have been helpful? I would think that votes from anyone motivated enough to do so would be helpful in this case. NealMcB 02:24, 2004 May 21 (UTC)

It was just to prevent sockpuppets being created to vote. It doesn't really stop them, but it at least makes them wait a week rather than being able to register a dozen accounts and cause an inappropriate article to be voted in on the same day. Angela. 03:15, May 21, 2004 (UTC)

I certainly see the value of this sort of rule in votes where there is significant risk involved. I'm just wondering if the stakes are high enough in this case to motivate people to game the system in that way. And if they are motivated enough to create a bunch of sockpuppets, they'd probably be willing to meet the letter of the law by just engaging the sockpuppets after a week of existence, affecting as many future elections as they like. Is there an easy way to check whether votes qualify? I don't mean to over-emphasize this question. I'm just trying to avoid unenforced rules and encourage participation. Thanks. NealMcB 05:21, 2004 May 21 (UTC)

I doubt it would do any harm to take it out. It's probably best to take it out now and add it back if it does seem to be needed than to leave it in unnecessarily. Angela. 07:49, May 21, 2004 (UTC)

A good compromise. I just took it out. ✏ Sverdrup 23:24, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Agreed. Tom- 00:05, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Errr

If I see an article on here that I like and am compelled to work on, wouldn't I be endangering its "stub" status, and therefore hurt its chances of becoming article of the week? I'm so confused... - DropDeadGorgias (talk) 22:51, Jun 14, 2004 (UTC)

Yes, you would be endangering its "stub" status. However, that is a good thing, AFAIC; giving a stub some good, hands-on TLC is surely better than letting it languish around here for weeks on end. - jredmond 23:19, 14 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Ah, so now proponents of candidate articles can sabotage rival articles by... helping them grow. Very twisted; doublethink, but in a good way. :-) --Benc 04:32, Jul 24, 2004 (UTC)

Academia promoted

Academia has been promoted and is now a featured article. Congradulations to those who worked hard on it. →Raul654 19:16, Jun 18, 2004 (UTC)

More on Pruning

As the page has reached 27 entries as of today (June 24), and most of them have 5 or more votes, I suggest the following pruning method. Edit as you desire. Burgundavia 20:29, Jun 24, 2004 (UTC)

• Minimum - Remove one article every week when the winner is chosen, in addition to the winner. This is article would have the lowest number of votes, tie breaker being age of votes (older before newer)
  • We could remove more than one article everyweek, following this principles.

Two articles of the week

Just an idea; would it work to have two articles each week? If two vastly different topics are chosen each week, I don't think having more than one place to work on would necessarily cause less effort to go into either; on the contrary, it might make it easier for people to find a place where they feel able to contribute. It'd also help keep the growth of the candidates list down, of course. Fredrik | talk 20:42, 24 Jun 2004 (UTC)

• That might cause a splinter that I don't think would really benefit either article. We just need some slightly more agressive pruning, so as to have more turnover. Burgundavia 20:52, Jun 24, 2004 (UTC)

Pruning Policy

First suggestion

As the length of this list blows out, I really think we need a more concrete pruning policy. Perhaps we could implement a time limit, such as a less severe version of VFD's five days. Alternatively, we could draw up better guidelines. At the moment, we have articles like Comedy film that have sat here for two months, and gathered half the votes that Kofi Annan was able to get in a couple of days. If this page isn't to become stale, we need to be clearing out this stuff. Ambivalenthysteria 15:57, 4 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Let's use a threshold of perhaps 3 or 4 votes per week. For example, using 4, a listing with 3 votes after a week will be removed; a listing with 7 votes after 2 weeks will be removed etc. [[User:Sverdrup|❝Sverdrup❞]] 16:22, 4 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I was going to suggest approximately the same thing. I think 4 votes/week is a good requirement (subject to change later) →Raul654 16:25, Jul 4, 2004 (UTC)

I think that's fine idea. For the record, by my estimates, this would nuke Seven-arm Octopus, Comedy film, Drama, Denim (*sob*), Studio, Color photography, Computer network, Journalism and Flinders Petrie, which would go a long way towards shortening down the page. Ambivalenthysteria 16:33, 4 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Ok, then let's implement it starting with the new week at 1800 UTC. [[User:Sverdrup|❝Sverdrup❞]] 16:34, 4 Jul 2004 (UTC)

If we do this, how will this apply retrospectively, to the nine articles mentioned above? Ambivalenthysteria 16:38, 4 Jul 2004 (UTC)

How about first asking the nominators if they mind withdrawing them? - David Gerard 18:03, 4 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I have gone ahead and added a week-counter to each article to make it easy to figure out how many votes the articles should have. →Raul654 18:28, Jul 4, 2004 (UTC)

Alternatives

It seems a bit weird to me to remove articles that have a lot of votes just because they've been waiting in line several weeks behind articles that had more votes to them. With this policy, we will get AOTWs with a low number of votes, but recent ones. This might be a good thing assuming that people's interest in a particular article fades over time, but is that actually the case? Fredrik | talk 00:58, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Think of the converse - that we have nominations aging on this page for *months* before they become AotW. →Raul654 00:59, Jul 5, 2004 (UTC)

I have just pruned a bunch, but there was a string of new entries just in the last few days. Burgundavia 01:01, Jul 5, 2004 (UTC)

Maybe the best thing would be to start a vote from scratch for each week. Fredrik | talk 01:07, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC)

And then the same articles get nominated over and over again? Bad idea. →Raul654 01:11, Jul 5, 2004 (UTC)

Most people would get the drift if their nominations only get one or two votes week after week. And you could have a rule along the lines of articles getting less than 5 votes being ineligible for re-nomination for a month. Fredrik | talk 01:20, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC)

What about a hard 4 week cutoff, with the provision that it doesn't get more than 1 vote in the 1st week it will be pruned. Burgundavia 01:21, Jul 5, 2004 (UTC)

Make it easy - one month and it's deleted. If after a week, it doesn't have a certain number of votes, (4-6 is probably better), it's deleted. We can always fiddle with the numbers later to make it more suitable. →Raul654 01:24, Jul 5, 2004 (UTC)

What's wrong with the system that was suggested last night? We'll end up with a considerably longer list, which is probably unnecessary. It's pretty rare for an article, if it hasn't gathered enough votes to pass last night's test, after one, two, three weeks, to suddenly get a massive boost of votes and become a featured article. If we leave them up there for a month, we'll just have one massive list - and we'd have been able to do none of the trimming that Burgandavia did earlier. Ambivalenthysteria 01:32, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Discussion

FWIW, I agree with the original proposal of a pruning threshold of 4 votes per week to remain on the list. I have added headings to make it easier to see how many articles are in which "week".

This may sound banal, I think we need to be clear how the weeks are counted when the threshold is applied - a nomination added on Monday has lots more time to gather the required votes by the following Sunday than one added on Friday. Perhaps articles should be in "week 0" until the first Sunday following nomination, and then the pruning threshold can be applied for the first time on the second Sunday (the end of "week 1")? This still means that some articles may be been on the list for almost 14 days versus some for less than 8, but that is what happens when you count in weeks and it is not so bad as checking at the end of the first week. Comments? -- ALoan (Talk) 12:06, 6 Jul 2004 (UTC)

We could simply remove articles that hasn't got enough votes every 7 days. So an article nominated on thursday getting only 3 votes would be removed the next thursday. That would be a bit more complicated, but alot more fair in my opinion. --Conti|✉ 12:51, 6 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Sounds fair enough to me, provided someone is going to prune regularly (I just thought it would be easier to do once per week, when a new article is selected, but I see that that could be unfair).

On that basis, I think the following should go:

• drama did not have 16 votes after 4 weeks (2 July) (nor, indeed, 12 votes on 25 June or 8 on 18 June);
• U.S. Army Reserve did not have 4 votes earlier today;
• nor did sensationalism

and Marie Taglioni will be out of time later today unless she gets another couple of votes. -- ALoan (Talk) 13:44, 6 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I agree. Ambivalenthysteria 13:51, 6 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• I still think we should only prune when the new article is chosen. I have seen articles double their votes in one day, just before the new article is chosen. Burgundavia 08:36, Jul 7, 2004 (UTC)

I've removed Dick Cheney - it's so far from a stub as to be totally unsuitable even for consideration.-- ALargeElk | Talk 08:54, 8 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• Sorry, I didn't realise pruning should only happen after new candidate is chosen. I've pruned a couple out of sequence, then - I'm 99% certain they wouldn't have made the grade, but if anyone wants to reinstate them, please feel free. -- ALargeElk | Talk 10:12, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC)

We need to reach a consensus on how pruning is going to work. The candidates pruned for having too few votes since Jean-Paul Sartre was chosen are:

• drama (5 weeks, 13 votes)
• U.S. Army Reserve (1 week, 2 votes)
• sensationalism (1 week, 2 votes)
• Marie Taglioni (1 week, 2 votes)
• History of literature (1 week, 3 votes)
• Jeff Koons (1 week, 1 vote)

I think it is pretty unlikely that any of these would have been chosen in due course (there are plenty of candidates left with many more votes) so I think pruning as we go along (when a candidate has been on the list 7 days, 14 days, etc) does seem to work.

Returning to my previous point, if we only prune once per week, when a new article is chosen, how to we apply the 4 votes per week threshold, given that a candidate could have been on the list for almost 7 days longer than one nominated in the same week? -- ALoan (Talk) 12:15, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Well, I have carried on pruning after 7 days, etc. - I don't think it is particularly likely that Cornelius Cardew, No Taxation Without Representation, Uniform Code of Military Justice, Imperial Seal, Orange juice or Politics of Cuba would have got there, and there are still 25 or so candidates left. And I have just realised that I should not have deleted Art theft and will reinstate it pronto, but, even so, its 12 votes in 3 weeks is nowhere near Kofi Annan's 32 votes in just over 2 weeks.

I'm not sure that the "last minute voting" is a particularly strong argument - in any event, after 7 days on the list, a candidate will have had the "last minute" effect once - if it doesn't have 4 supporters after 7 days then it can't be that popular. -- ALoan (Talk) 22:58, 14 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Can I remind people to remove {{AOTW}} from article talk pages when pruning. Cheers. -- ALargeElk | Talk 10:11, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Are you taking to me? :) Thanks for the reminder. Also to add {{AOTW}} when nominating an article. -- ALoan (Talk) 10:43, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Template:AOTW

As it didn't seem to be in use (was only linked to from one user's page) I've edited Template:AOTW and placed it at the top of the talk page for each of the current candidates. We'll need to make sure to remove it when pruning. -- ALargeElk | Talk 14:16, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Sayed Qutb -> Sayyid Qutb

This article has a link saying it had been nominated as article of the week. It has recently had its name changed, and I thought I would move the link to the new t Noticed that its no longer nominated, did it win? Should I delete the link, put a mention of it having been article of the week in the new talk, or what? Thanks for you advice, Sam [Spade] 20:05, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Sorry - I should have deleted this when it was moved to /Removed. Now done. -- ALoan (Talk) 11:14, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Last removing of articles

Can someone explain to me why Art theft and Medieval warfare were removed? User:Pjamescowie removed them with the explanation "removed articles of more than 4 weeks duration". They weren't put in the /Removed section either. I can't find any discussion or rule about that tho, nominations can be here as long as they get enough votes, other things should be discussed here first. If no one objects, these two nominations should be reinserted. --Conti|✉ 22:25, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Until we sort out what the policy should be, I just added them to Wikipedia:Article of the week/Removed for consistency. --Lexor|Talk 10:34, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Unless they have failed to garner sufficient votes to stay on the list, they should be put back, I think. -- ALoan (Talk) 11:14, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)