Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles/Archive 8

Archive 5

Archive 6

Archive 7

Archive 8

Archive 9

Archive 10

This is the third archive of the discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles.

Only 1 notable film remaining

There is only 1 notable film remaining without an article: Death of a Salesman (1951 film). Who wants to claim the glory? Kaldari (talk) 20:41, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

I don't mean to be mean and rub this in, but apparently there are 7 movies titles Death of a Salesman: [[1]], 5 of which have no article. I know for a fact that the play is very notable, not sure about each of the individual films though.

Good job on trimming down the list though. I would have been tempted to give the article writing a whirl, but as you might guess from my contributions, I am only on Wikipedia for basic research and small amounts of procrastination (aka, what I am doing right now hehe!). Cheers!Calaka (talk) 07:57, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Only the 1951 film is considered notable enough to have an encyclopedia article. The others were all rubbish :) Kaldari (talk) 18:49, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

I have made the article. Cheers! Scapler (talk) 23:20, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Turn of the century biographical encyclopedias

If anyone is looking for something to do, it turns out that there are tons of illustrated public domain regional biographical encyclopedias on Google Books - for example:

• Encyclopedia of Virginia Biography
• Men of Hawaii
• Encyclopedia of the history of Missouri
• Encyclopedia of Pennsylvania biography
• American Women (with over 1,400 images)

Cheers! bd2412 T 04:50, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. It is well worth listing such things here; we will get around to turning each of them into projects sometime soon. Any more effort you want to put into finding them will not go wasted. Note, however, that Google has a really poor habit of making the PDF of books available to US users but not to the rest of the world. So, for instance, the American Women book is inaccessible to me :(. There's not much you can do about this, though, and doubtless we can use wikisource to hold a copy of a PD document should needsbe. --Tagishsimon (talk) 11:39, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

New "Monthly focus." Any suggestions?

So it seems like the current monthly focus will come to a satisfying end with most of the notable articles at OBI created! Good job to all those who contributed! Now I in no way want to sound like the boss/manager of this whole operation (just someone that is taking a 5 minute break from regular real life studies!) but does anyone have any suggestions of what the new monthly focus should be? I will suggest List of notable albums but only because that list only contains 16 articles left to create! Shouldn't take very long to knock that list of and put a strike through it! But if anyone has any other suggestions, feel free to suggest some over the next month or so (since the OBI list isn’t finish just yet)! Cheers and once again good job! Someone give these workers some barnstars I say! Calaka (talk) 04:05, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

Well the OBI list is now done (three cheers for a job well done!) and I have decided to be a little bit bold and changed the new monthly focus to the List of Albums. Hopefully that can be done in a month or 4! :) If there are any other preferences though, feel free to change it. I just picked a project at random that happened to be near complete. Calaka (talk) 08:36, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

I probably should suggest that people keep in mind another "monthly focus" since the list of albums will become complete anytime soon now. I will make a suggestion (again at random) at a future date. Calaka (talk) 03:55, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

Maybe Wikipedia:Aircraft encyclopedia topics for the month of June. Only 152 remaining. Acebulf (talk) 19:21, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Sounds good! I am not sure if the albums will be done by then, but if they wont, I will just add a "previous month" or something to let them get a bit more attention just for the sake of them finishing off. I mean, I assume that the lists on this little table get the most attention/views.Calaka (talk) 08:47, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Australian tv missing topics list

I have a missing topics list based on AustralianTelevision.net and left a message at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Australian television but the talk page doesn't seem too active. Would this sort of list of interest to either project ? 71.184.60.175 (talk) 19:59, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Don't see why not. Feel free to place the list on a subpage or something (maybe register an account and place the subpage on your username) then we can post the link here for others to see. Calaka (talk) 08:41, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Encyclopedia of Life

So does anyone here have any interest in starting up a "List of missing Encyclopedia of Life articles" on here? Would it be possible to just copy/paste the articles here assuming the licenses are compatible? If not, surely a list of all the articles that they have and wikipedia does not have would be useful (i.e. incentive to create articles we are missing!). I would have been tempted to start the list myself but a). I have no idea how to start such a list (i.e. by using a bot or what?) and b). I wanted to see what others in the missing encyclopedia articles project think first.

See this for background: [2] and [3].

Cheers!Calaka (talk) 04:06, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Why don't you propose it here? Common procedure involves getting approval. Also-- the proposal will go further if you call it a task force instead of a project. Bob the Wikipedian ^{(talk • contribs)} 17:27, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Also, according to http://eol.org/files/pdfs/docs/EOL_Licensing_Policy.pdf the licenses on certain material may not allow for copy/paste. We'd need to specify that the material came from the EOL or whatever source if we copied and pasted, and that can be done with boilerplate messages or hatnotes (not sure what the preferred manner is these days). Bob the Wikipedian ^{(talk • contribs)} 17:37, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Sorry for the triple-post...according to my findings in comparing licensing from Wikipedia and EOL, any material from EOL with a license OTHER THAN CC-BY, CC-BY-SA, or public domain would be ineligible for copy/paste and would have to be reworded. Bob the Wikipedian ^{(talk • contribs)} 17:50, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Ah but just to clarify: I don't mean to turn this into a full fledged project (since it will require too much effort/administration to get the template up and going. I mean to just have a list and place it within the scope of the Missing encyclopedia articles wikiproject (e.g. pretty much everything on this list here is done in such a format: [4])

Re: Your other comments about copy/pasting: I know that the Citizendium allowed the copy/pasting (following a number of guidelines) and if the EOL article has the same license as in Citizendium then it shouldn't be a problem (so long as people give acknowledgment and paste that footer thingy that you mentioned above). Furthermore for those where a stricter license is given it would be good to have the list available to then be able to create the articles (and make sure no COPY/PASTE is undertaken). Would anyone know of any way to automatically collect the articles (use of some bot I would imagine... but I am no expert in this...). Cheers!Calaka (talk) 08:30, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

I don't think I'd recommend a bot to go out and locate articles like this. This should be done by humans, since there is so much room for error. Often, I cannot find the creature I am looking for in Wikipedia until I perform a search on Yahoo! and find an alternate name. Limitations such as this would produce a much longer list than expected. I'd be happy to help out with the list, though. I'm currently wrapped up in an off-wiki project, but it has no degree of urgency, and it would be a nice change in flavor to alternate projects each day or even every few hours. I can go ahead and set up these lists in my userspace, and if we decide the project simply isn't worth it, there's no harm done. I'll be working at User:Bob the Wikipedian/Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedia articles/Encyclopedia of Life. Feel free to move it into your userspace. It was your idea, after all, so why should I take credit? Bob the Wikipedian ^{(talk • contribs)} 17:21, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Upon delving into the project, I'm realizing how unwilling I would be to actually continue that project...it's amazingly unrewarding. I did discover that there are two types of articles in EOL-- blue links have text, gray links are empty. So a large portion of EOL is simply bulky blankness. Also, a spreadsheet application like Excel would be far better for managing the list as opposed to wikimarkup. It is amazingly simpler. I'm doing a very similar project currently cataloging prehistoric species for a group who is trying to make every single fossil species, and that list is much easier to manage in a binary XLS file. Bob the Wikipedian ^{(talk • contribs)} 18:00, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Hmmm, so I had a look at EOL and maybe I am just new to the website but at present, it is a bit horrible to navigate through (maybe it is just me?). I think I would rather a bot get all the articles that are not on wikipedia and then remove any of the errors present myself. The bot can surely be tweaked around so as to ensure that it finds the articles on wikipedia no matter what (i.e. via using Google or Yahoo etc.). Furthermore, I would be willing to create redirects for all the multiple named organisms. This would enrich the encyclopedia itself. Also as you showed, it might get a bit tiring making up the lists manually (considering the thousands upon thousands of articles that would be missing). But I admit, I am not very good with the technical aspects of a computer so I would not know where to begin with the bot formation (i.e. who would be able to make such a bot to do what we are after?). Cheers! Calaka (talk) 13:09, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

I know how to program parsers, but I don't know how to automate them or how to parse over a network. I also don't know how to program them to work as bots for Wikipedia. Since the EOL recently adopted an all-Latin tree (which I am eternally grateful for), parsing the cyc and searching the wiki would be that much simpler. Thankfully, most species articles in Wikipedia at least contain the scientific name in the first sentence. If I were programming it, I'd have the bot parse each scientific name on EOL and then search for that on Wikipedia. If the name doesn't appear before the first period in the article (excluding periods that may occur within brackets or braces), the name would be added to the list. Bob the Wikipedian ^{(talk • contribs)} 17:44, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

I made a suggestion over here: [5] so hopefully someone can help us out either on that page or here with the whole creating a bot (by following your suggestions). Cheers!Calaka (talk) 13:16, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

If you just want to find missing articles and make a list for manual action, I don't see much trouble. If you want a bot to automatically create wikipedia articles, there are a lot of pitfalls in that. Most obviously, the classification at Encyclopedia of Life may not match what is in use here, and that could lead to things like creating a bunch of articles for species or higher taxa which we already have articles for (under a different name). Kingdon (talk) 15:19, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

I believe the current intent is to provide merely a list of articles which appear in EOL but not Wikipedia, not to actually create articles. This would serve as a sort of "to do" list for bored Tree of Life members. Our next move is probably to contact EOL and ask them if there's a master list somewhere that we could have access to. Bob the Wikipedian ^{(talk • contribs)} 20:36, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Yup as Bob said, we intend to just have a list and then create the articles manually. Yeah I don't see a problem with contacting them but I fear they won't be too responsive (being direct competition and all). Calaka (talk) 09:41, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Yeah...it would be like asking them to donate all their time and effort to helping someone who won't pay them at all in return. There's not exactly any benefit to them providing us with the fruit of their labor. I sort of feel guilty asking them, and that's why I haven't done so yet. Unfortunately for them, their encyclopedia isn't (in my opinion) very user-friendly. Wikipedia is a huge source, probably, of their competition already. This isn't a question anymore of doability...it's ethics. Bob the Wikipedian ^{(talk • contribs)} 16:57, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Albums

I don't think the last remaining album on this list currently meets our notability guidelines for music (see notes at Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles/List of notable albums). I propose removing it and calling the list complete. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 18:57, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Sounds reasonable enough to me! Feel free to do the honours of striking the project out, writing COMPLETE on its page and putting it in the complete section list at the missing encyclopedia articles main listing! Good job! :)). Calaka (talk) 23:20, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

And done! Whoot! Feels like we should all head off to a pub somewhere. :) (And, yet, curiously melancholy. I've been working on that list for two years! Oh, well. Off to work on books. :D) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 23:55, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Haha wow! Must be a great feeling though getting it all out of the way. I am sure if you didn't help the project might have lingered on for a few more years yet. Keep it up! :)Calaka (talk) 05:18, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

update to Missing encyclopedic articles/de

The last dump was on 23 january 2006, and there are only 11 items remain. Perhaps its time to redo the list? 85.65.69.166 (talk) 09:43, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

I made a similar concern on the talk page but no one responded. I am unsure of who actually maintains the language lists. But anyway, I guess there will be something done about it once all 11 are created (and they seem to be taking a bit longer for someone to go about making).Calaka (talk) 10:28, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Bolognia push 2009

Please help make sure wikipedia has articles on every dermatologic condition. There are many new articles and redirects to be made, and we at WP:DERM are looking for more help! ---kilbad (talk) 15:10, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

• UPDATE: We are making a lot of great progress with the Bolognia Push 2009. If you are not currently involved, perhaps consider contributing as we are always looking for more help at the dermatology task force. Feel free to e-mail me for all the details. ---kilbad (talk) 22:47, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

Merger of Aircraft articles

Please see this: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Aircraft/Missing_articles for background as to why I merged the current monthly focus over to the massive list (that basically served the same purpose). Kind regards.Calaka (talk) 10:28, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

American Governors

We are close to finishing Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles/American politicians/Governors, but help is needed! I have done a lot of the work myself lately, so others to come along and help finish it in one swoop would be great. Cheers! Scapler (talk) 20:31, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Only 1 notable film remaining

There is only 1 notable film remaining without an article: Death of a Salesman (1951 film). Who wants to claim the glory? Kaldari (talk) 20:41, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

I don't mean to be mean and rub this in, but apparently there are 7 movies titles Death of a Salesman: [[6]], 5 of which have no article. I know for a fact that the play is very notable, not sure about each of the individual films though.

Good job on trimming down the list though. I would have been tempted to give the article writing a whirl, but as you might guess from my contributions, I am only on Wikipedia for basic research and small amounts of procrastination (aka, what I am doing right now hehe!). Cheers!Calaka (talk) 07:57, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Only the 1951 film is considered notable enough to have an encyclopedia article. The others were all rubbish :) Kaldari (talk) 18:49, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

I have made the article. Cheers! Scapler (talk) 23:20, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Turn of the century biographical encyclopedias

If anyone is looking for something to do, it turns out that there are tons of illustrated public domain regional biographical encyclopedias on Google Books - for example:

• Encyclopedia of Virginia Biography
• Men of Hawaii
• Encyclopedia of the history of Missouri
• Encyclopedia of Pennsylvania biography
• American Women (with over 1,400 images)

Cheers! bd2412 T 04:50, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. It is well worth listing such things here; we will get around to turning each of them into projects sometime soon. Any more effort you want to put into finding them will not go wasted. Note, however, that Google has a really poor habit of making the PDF of books available to US users but not to the rest of the world. So, for instance, the American Women book is inaccessible to me :(. There's not much you can do about this, though, and doubtless we can use wikisource to hold a copy of a PD document should needsbe. --Tagishsimon (talk) 11:39, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Australian tv missing topics list

I have a missing topics list based on AustralianTelevision.net and left a message at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Australian television but the talk page doesn't seem too active. Would this sort of list of interest to either project ? 71.184.60.175 (talk) 19:59, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Don't see why not. Feel free to place the list on a subpage or something (maybe register an account and place the subpage on your username) then we can post the link here for others to see. Calaka (talk) 08:41, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

New "Monthly focus." Any suggestions?

So it seems like the current monthly focus will come to a satisfying end with most of the notable articles at OBI created! Good job to all those who contributed! Now I in no way want to sound like the boss/manager of this whole operation (just someone that is taking a 5 minute break from regular real life studies!) but does anyone have any suggestions of what the new monthly focus should be? I will suggest List of notable albums but only because that list only contains 16 articles left to create! Shouldn't take very long to knock that list of and put a strike through it! But if anyone has any other suggestions, feel free to suggest some over the next month or so (since the OBI list isn’t finish just yet)! Cheers and once again good job! Someone give these workers some barnstars I say! Calaka (talk) 04:05, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

Well the OBI list is now done (three cheers for a job well done!) and I have decided to be a little bit bold and changed the new monthly focus to the List of Albums. Hopefully that can be done in a month or 4! :) If there are any other preferences though, feel free to change it. I just picked a project at random that happened to be near complete. Calaka (talk) 08:36, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

I probably should suggest that people keep in mind another "monthly focus" since the list of albums will become complete anytime soon now. I will make a suggestion (again at random) at a future date. Calaka (talk) 03:55, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

Maybe Wikipedia:Aircraft encyclopedia topics for the month of June. Only 152 remaining. Acebulf (talk) 19:21, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Sounds good! I am not sure if the albums will be done by then, but if they wont, I will just add a "previous month" or something to let them get a bit more attention just for the sake of them finishing off. I mean, I assume that the lists on this little table get the most attention/views.Calaka (talk) 08:47, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Albums

I don't think the last remaining album on this list currently meets our notability guidelines for music (see notes at Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles/List of notable albums). I propose removing it and calling the list complete. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 18:57, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Sounds reasonable enough to me! Feel free to do the honours of striking the project out, writing COMPLETE on its page and putting it in the complete section list at the missing encyclopedia articles main listing! Good job! :)). Calaka (talk) 23:20, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

And done! Whoot! Feels like we should all head off to a pub somewhere. :) (And, yet, curiously melancholy. I've been working on that list for two years! Oh, well. Off to work on books. :D) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 23:55, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Haha wow! Must be a great feeling though getting it all out of the way. I am sure if you didn't help the project might have lingered on for a few more years yet. Keep it up! :)Calaka (talk) 05:18, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Encyclopedia of Life

So does anyone here have any interest in starting up a "List of missing Encyclopedia of Life articles" on here? Would it be possible to just copy/paste the articles here assuming the licenses are compatible? If not, surely a list of all the articles that they have and wikipedia does not have would be useful (i.e. incentive to create articles we are missing!). I would have been tempted to start the list myself but a). I have no idea how to start such a list (i.e. by using a bot or what?) and b). I wanted to see what others in the missing encyclopedia articles project think first.

See this for background: [7] and [8].

Cheers!Calaka (talk) 04:06, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Why don't you propose it here? Common procedure involves getting approval. Also-- the proposal will go further if you call it a task force instead of a project. Bob the Wikipedian ^{(talk • contribs)} 17:27, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Also, according to http://eol.org/files/pdfs/docs/EOL_Licensing_Policy.pdf the licenses on certain material may not allow for copy/paste. We'd need to specify that the material came from the EOL or whatever source if we copied and pasted, and that can be done with boilerplate messages or hatnotes (not sure what the preferred manner is these days). Bob the Wikipedian ^{(talk • contribs)} 17:37, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Sorry for the triple-post...according to my findings in comparing licensing from Wikipedia and EOL, any material from EOL with a license OTHER THAN CC-BY, CC-BY-SA, or public domain would be ineligible for copy/paste and would have to be reworded. Bob the Wikipedian ^{(talk • contribs)} 17:50, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Ah but just to clarify: I don't mean to turn this into a full fledged project (since it will require too much effort/administration to get the template up and going. I mean to just have a list and place it within the scope of the Missing encyclopedia articles wikiproject (e.g. pretty much everything on this list here is done in such a format: [9])

Re: Your other comments about copy/pasting: I know that the Citizendium allowed the copy/pasting (following a number of guidelines) and if the EOL article has the same license as in Citizendium then it shouldn't be a problem (so long as people give acknowledgment and paste that footer thingy that you mentioned above). Furthermore for those where a stricter license is given it would be good to have the list available to then be able to create the articles (and make sure no COPY/PASTE is undertaken). Would anyone know of any way to automatically collect the articles (use of some bot I would imagine... but I am no expert in this...). Cheers!Calaka (talk) 08:30, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

I don't think I'd recommend a bot to go out and locate articles like this. This should be done by humans, since there is so much room for error. Often, I cannot find the creature I am looking for in Wikipedia until I perform a search on Yahoo! and find an alternate name. Limitations such as this would produce a much longer list than expected. I'd be happy to help out with the list, though. I'm currently wrapped up in an off-wiki project, but it has no degree of urgency, and it would be a nice change in flavor to alternate projects each day or even every few hours. I can go ahead and set up these lists in my userspace, and if we decide the project simply isn't worth it, there's no harm done. I'll be working at User:Bob the Wikipedian/Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedia articles/Encyclopedia of Life. Feel free to move it into your userspace. It was your idea, after all, so why should I take credit? Bob the Wikipedian ^{(talk • contribs)} 17:21, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Upon delving into the project, I'm realizing how unwilling I would be to actually continue that project...it's amazingly unrewarding. I did discover that there are two types of articles in EOL-- blue links have text, gray links are empty. So a large portion of EOL is simply bulky blankness. Also, a spreadsheet application like Excel would be far better for managing the list as opposed to wikimarkup. It is amazingly simpler. I'm doing a very similar project currently cataloging prehistoric species for a group who is trying to make every single fossil species, and that list is much easier to manage in a binary XLS file. Bob the Wikipedian ^{(talk • contribs)} 18:00, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Hmmm, so I had a look at EOL and maybe I am just new to the website but at present, it is a bit horrible to navigate through (maybe it is just me?). I think I would rather a bot get all the articles that are not on wikipedia and then remove any of the errors present myself. The bot can surely be tweaked around so as to ensure that it finds the articles on wikipedia no matter what (i.e. via using Google or Yahoo etc.). Furthermore, I would be willing to create redirects for all the multiple named organisms. This would enrich the encyclopedia itself. Also as you showed, it might get a bit tiring making up the lists manually (considering the thousands upon thousands of articles that would be missing). But I admit, I am not very good with the technical aspects of a computer so I would not know where to begin with the bot formation (i.e. who would be able to make such a bot to do what we are after?). Cheers! Calaka (talk) 13:09, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

I know how to program parsers, but I don't know how to automate them or how to parse over a network. I also don't know how to program them to work as bots for Wikipedia. Since the EOL recently adopted an all-Latin tree (which I am eternally grateful for), parsing the cyc and searching the wiki would be that much simpler. Thankfully, most species articles in Wikipedia at least contain the scientific name in the first sentence. If I were programming it, I'd have the bot parse each scientific name on EOL and then search for that on Wikipedia. If the name doesn't appear before the first period in the article (excluding periods that may occur within brackets or braces), the name would be added to the list. Bob the Wikipedian ^{(talk • contribs)} 17:44, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

I made a suggestion over here: [10] so hopefully someone can help us out either on that page or here with the whole creating a bot (by following your suggestions). Cheers!Calaka (talk) 13:16, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

If you just want to find missing articles and make a list for manual action, I don't see much trouble. If you want a bot to automatically create wikipedia articles, there are a lot of pitfalls in that. Most obviously, the classification at Encyclopedia of Life may not match what is in use here, and that could lead to things like creating a bunch of articles for species or higher taxa which we already have articles for (under a different name). Kingdon (talk) 15:19, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

I believe the current intent is to provide merely a list of articles which appear in EOL but not Wikipedia, not to actually create articles. This would serve as a sort of "to do" list for bored Tree of Life members. Our next move is probably to contact EOL and ask them if there's a master list somewhere that we could have access to. Bob the Wikipedian ^{(talk • contribs)} 20:36, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Yup as Bob said, we intend to just have a list and then create the articles manually. Yeah I don't see a problem with contacting them but I fear they won't be too responsive (being direct competition and all). Calaka (talk) 09:41, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Yeah...it would be like asking them to donate all their time and effort to helping someone who won't pay them at all in return. There's not exactly any benefit to them providing us with the fruit of their labor. I sort of feel guilty asking them, and that's why I haven't done so yet. Unfortunately for them, their encyclopedia isn't (in my opinion) very user-friendly. Wikipedia is a huge source, probably, of their competition already. This isn't a question anymore of doability...it's ethics. Bob the Wikipedian ^{(talk • contribs)} 16:57, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

update to Missing encyclopedic articles/de

The last dump was on 23 january 2006, and there are only 11 items remain. Perhaps its time to redo the list? 85.65.69.166 (talk) 09:43, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

I made a similar concern on the talk page but no one responded. I am unsure of who actually maintains the language lists. But anyway, I guess there will be something done about it once all 11 are created (and they seem to be taking a bit longer for someone to go about making).Calaka (talk) 10:28, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Merger of Aircraft articles

Please see this: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Aircraft/Missing_articles for background as to why I merged the current monthly focus over to the massive list (that basically served the same purpose). Kind regards.Calaka (talk) 10:28, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Bolognia push 2009

Please help make sure wikipedia has articles on every dermatologic condition. There are many new articles and redirects to be made, and we at WP:DERM are looking for more help! ---kilbad (talk) 15:10, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

• UPDATE: We are making a lot of great progress with the Bolognia Push 2009. If you are not currently involved, perhaps consider contributing as we are always looking for more help at the dermatology task force. Feel free to e-mail me for all the details. ---kilbad (talk) 22:47, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

American Governors

We are close to finishing Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles/American politicians/Governors, but help is needed! I have done a lot of the work myself lately, so others to come along and help finish it in one swoop would be great. Cheers! Scapler (talk) 20:31, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Integrating effort to expand dermatology-related articles into this project

We at WP:DERM:MA are working to expand Wikipedia's coverage of cutaneous conditions. Would there be a way to integrate this effort into your "Missing encyclopedic articles" mainpage? ---kilbad (talk) 22:45, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

This project generally works from lists of redlinks. I think for us to be of much use to you, you'd have to generate such a page. I see you're trawling Dermatology by Bolognia ... if I read correctly you're encouraging your people to compare its index against the list of cutaneous conditions, and then write articles where wikipedia has a lack. For our page to be of much use to you, you'd want to take the Adam Smith pinmaking approach; break the job into two: scan the entire index, compile a list of redlinks, add the list of redlinks to the Missing Enc Articles page. Then get on with turning the redlinks blue. To be honest, I think being on this page is a marginal advantage at best, especially in your specialised subject domain. But you'd be very welcome indeed. --Tagishsimon (talk) 23:09, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

New Georgia Encyclopedia project is underway!

The New Georgia Encyclopedia ("NGE") has authorized Wikipedia to import and/or merge the following ten articles, which I have copied to project space:

• Wikipedia:WikiProject Georgia (U.S. state)/New Georgia Encyclopedia/Jesse Hill
  • Moved to mainspace
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Georgia (U.S. state)/New Georgia Encyclopedia/Jimmy Carter
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Georgia (U.S. state)/New Georgia Encyclopedia/Anne Cox Chambers
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Georgia (U.S. state)/New Georgia Encyclopedia/Charles Lindbergh
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Georgia (U.S. state)/New Georgia Encyclopedia/Nancy Hart
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Georgia (U.S. state)/New Georgia Encyclopedia/Piano Red Perryman
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Georgia (U.S. state)/New Georgia Encyclopedia/Georgia Department of Labor
  • Moved to mainspace
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Georgia (U.S. state)/New Georgia Encyclopedia/Trustee Georgia
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Georgia (U.S. state)/New Georgia Encyclopedia/Revolutionary War
  • Moved to mainspace, now at Georgia during the American Revolution
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Georgia (U.S. state)/New Georgia Encyclopedia/Sumter County, Georgia
  • Fully merged into mainspace

Our goal is to get these articles in top shape and merge or move them into mainspace as quickly as possible. If this turns out well (as I am confident it will), the NGE will permit us to import their remaining body of over 2,000 well-researched and well-written articles, which could pioneer a trend for other private owners of encyclopedic content to release their materials into our corpus. I would deeply appreciate any help that we can muster in accomplishing this. Please note that the original NGE articles (now linked in the required attribution section of each of the above articles in project space) have images, but NGE is unable to convey those to us at this time, as they are individually licensed by NGE. Finding equivalent images would, of course, be helpful. Also, please note that the NGE would like for us to parallel their selection of internal links (where they link to an internal NGE article, they would like for us to also link to our equivalent Wikipedia article). The first import, Wikipedia:WikiProject Georgia (U.S. state)/New Georgia Encyclopedia/Jesse Hill, is substantially finished in this respect. Cheers! bd2412 T 19:09, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

This will require an email to permissions-en@wikipedia.org documenting the fact that the New Georgia Encyclopedia are releasing the text under the CC-by-sa license before we can move the articles into regular article space. Kaldari (talk) 19:39, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the reminder, I just forwarded the NGE's authorization email to that office. Cheers! bd2412 T 19:43, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

A much simpler alternative would be to ask NGE to please mark each article on their site as being CC_BY_SA. if they do that, no further permission is necessary. If they are reluctant to do that, then they should not be granting this permission to us anyway: any third party can grab this stuff from WP and use it under the CC_BY_SA license. If they do not understand this, then we should not grab their stuff. If NGE staffers do not have time to re-mark their articles, one of us can volunteer to do that work on their site if they are willing to give that individual a logon. -Arch dude (talk) 00:09, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

It seems to me that it would be easier for them to just send us an email releasing their material under those terms. Bear in mind, the license has one condition (which is consistent with CC-by-SA), that being an attribution note on the article page itself. bd2412 T 00:54, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Please add {{ConfirmationOTRS|source=The New Georgia Encyclopedia|otrs=2010020510038599}} to the top of each article's talk page once they are moved to article space. Kaldari (talk) 00:47, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Can this be done in advance? bd2412 T 00:54, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

You can go ahead an put it on the ones in Project space if you want to. It shouldn't go on any existing article space articles however, until they actually have material from the Georgia encyclopedia incorporated into them. Kaldari (talk) 01:39, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Done. Of course, any help getting these articles ready to move or merge would also be a great benefit. Cheers! bd2412 T 01:40, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

The New Georgia Encyclopedia has released an eleventh article to Wikipedia under the CC-by-SA license, now at [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Georgia (U.S. state)/New Georgia Encyclopedia/Delta Air Lines (I think this is a good sign for the project). They expressed to me their interest in seeing how we are able to merge their more thorough materials into our existing articles relating to Delta Air Lines. bd2412 T 16:53, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Canvassing

Some of you might be interested in discussing (or even participating) Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#WikiProject:Better Than Britannica. Regards, Paradoctor (talk) 00:57, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

The Global Names Index: A missing encyclopedic list makers dream (or nightmare!)?

So following on from the above discussion about me wanting to find the EOL's list that they used to gather their species, I was browsing their site when I happened to stumble on to The Global Names Index this: [11], Example letter: [12], example sub letter: [13] example links for choice of species: [14] and [15] and finally: example external links: [16] and [17]. Now I am quite sure there are bots out there that can probably utilize that list and even create a whole bunch of articles. But I think a more appropriate thing to do would be to get those names and turn them into a list, somewhere within a subproject here. I haven't looked at it in through detail but from the tidbits I did see and the links/references it provides it seems to be an incredibly useful list (or at least something to add an extra ref to an article). Anyone want to comment on this? Get some lists rolling? Maybe we can just test out the list making and just do the letter A? Hopefully a list can be made with the help of a bot? Kind regards.
PS: I will post this over to the WP:TOL as I am sure they would also find this resource useful.
PPS:18 million names! (not species mind you but names)Calaka (talk) 06:06, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

Hrm. Nightmare I think. Check the subletter listing for PAN. - UtherSRG (talk) 06:53, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

Seems like there is duplication as the list most certainly is robot generated. Having said that, the generations seem to be from scientific publications so at least the naming is credible (I can't explain why the duplicates are there but an example could be a simple comma as in the case of:

Pan paniscus Schwartz 1929

Pan paniscus Schwartz, 1929

but of course this does not explain all cases. I will continue exploring at random to see what comes up. In addition to species and the higher up (genus, order, family etc.) there seems to be the individuals who named them?Calaka (talk) 07:26, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

Furthermore, lexical grouping seems to reflect the same "item" or species as is the case of: [18] Panacca loveni was discovered (or described) by an individual by the surname of Jeffreys in 1881 and in 1882. I was after some searching able to find this: Pholadomyidae.Calaka (talk) 07:32, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

A further look around took me here: [19] which has the actual lists divided up from where they originate and actually going through some of those sites, individual lists can be spotted. Also, this: [20] seems to be needed if someone is going to obtain and turn into lists the large lists they have available with the help of a bot.Calaka (talk) 23:43, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

Of the resources presented, I like [21] best. Bob the Wikipedian ^{(talk • contribs)} 00:03, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

I am unable to open that link that they give though for some reason? [22] Are you able to?Calaka (talk) 00:44, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Update/progess of sorts: Here is what I was able to do with the help of that index using the first 7 names: [23]. With the next name on the list, I had less luck so all I did was: [24]. Cheers!Calaka (talk) 15:13, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Don't try to use the "data URL"-- just use the search box on that page; it will only search EOL. The reason I recommend EOL is because it's heavily moderated by experts. Also, I noticed you mentioned both the subfamily and the tribe on the genus page for Aaaba. As a general rule, include only the "sub-" and "super-" that come between the taxon being described and the next normal level above it, e.g. Kingdom>Phylum>Class>Order>Suborder>Superfamily>Family, K>P>C>O>F>sub-F>G, K>super-P>P, K>P>C>O>sub-O, etc. Also, for genera, subgenera, species, subspecies, use the template {{italictitle}} to italicize the title of the page. Enjoy your new endeavors! Bob the Wikipedian ^{(talk • contribs)} 02:13, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for the tips/advice/& words of encouragement! It is much appreciated. :)Calaka (talk) 02:50, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Well as it has been a number of days and no one has/had any overwhelming objections I have decided to be bold and created a subpage which will contain a listing/link of every single three letter link from that website. I decided against every single name as that would be a bit overwhelming seeing as there are many duplicates/etc. Here is the link [25]. If anyone has any comments/thoughts/ideas to further improve the layout/organization/settings of the page then by all means. It is still a work in progress so once I get the letter A set, I will further organize the numbering/search functionality.

The problem with the global names index is that it is (as someone said) a list of names, rather than a list of species. Even after you've collapsed the variants in the representation of the authorities, there's a pile of synonyms and invalid/illegitimate names in there. I don't think that it can be used for automatically creating articles. Lavateraguy (talk) 14:19, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Note also that the same names can be used under both the ICBN and the ICZN. For example Bacillus is a genus of bacteria (ICBN) and a genus of insects (ICZN); Napaea is a genus of mallows (ICBN) and a genus of butterflies (ICZN). So you can't just assume that the oldest form is the correct one. Another complications are that some databases may list pre-Linnaean names (e.g. Monospermalthaea for Waltheria). Lavateraguy (talk) 14:25, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Ah but a synonym is not necessairily a bad thing, I don't see why it can't just be redirected if it was published under a different name. But you are right in the illegitimate name aspect as you can see at the SFNI section on page A: Wikipedia:WikiProject_Missing_encyclopedic_articles/Global_Names_Index/A. Oh and I was not aware of the multiple names aspect still applying to currently accepted names. I.e. I accounted one instance where Aaata could be two different geni (a moth vs. sponge) but for the sponge a more common name is used. But anyway, I guess, I got a long way to go hehehe.Calaka (talk) 07:17, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

A redirect seems a sensible means of handling commonly used synonyms, such as Senecio jacobaea for Jacobaea vulgaris, but it is questionable whether a large number of synonyms are notable. For example Eriolaena glabrescens Hu is a taxonomic synonym and later homonym (therefore illegitimate) of Eriolaena glabrescens A.DC.

In many cases the application of the name is ambiguous. For example some botanists identify Malope multiflora as a synonym of Lavatera cretica which then becomes a synonym of Malva multiflora - but the identify of Malva multiflora is disputed (a colleague proposes that it represents a casual occurrence of a Melochia), and the conservative view is that Lavatera cretica becomes a synonym of Malva pseudolavatera. (To muddy the waters further there are a few older names that have been identified as synonyms of Lavatera cretica, but none of these are clearly the case.) Lavateraguy (talk) 11:06, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Aaaba seems problematical. de Laubenfels originsally used this name for a sponge. On the face of it this would preclude Bellamy's use of it for a beetle, but I'm not familiar with all the ins and outs of the ICZN, and it's not immediately clear whether de Laubenfels' usage was legitimate. It seems that his name was superfluous, as Topsent had previously published a generic name based on Yversia alecto. I don't know whether that leads Aaaba available for use. Lavateraguy (talk) 11:30, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

I will reply over at your talk page in case this might seem a bit off topic to people in the missing encyclopedi articles project.Calaka (talk) 12:07, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia Saves Public Art

Hi! I'm helping with the WikiProject Wikipedia Saves Public Art, which is relatively new but has already made a splash in the cultural sector. Our initial goal is to create articles for public artworks that were assessed during the Smithsonian Institution's Save Outdoor Sculpture! program (which was completed in the early 1990's.) Since we are using the Smithsonian's SIRIS database for our information (at least in this initial step), we thought we might be able to link up with your project, perhaps as a Secondary Focus.

You can see some of our national media coverage here, in the Chronicle of Higher Education: Scholars Use Wikipedia to Save Public Art From the Dustbin of History and a good overview of the project (complete with page view statistics) here on the Indianapolis Museum of Art blog: The Bird Flies in Denver. We recently presented at Museums and the Web 2010 in Denver at a workshop bringing together Wikipedians and museums (See article in a recent SignPost.)

We are currently trying to come up with a more systematic way of getting the information from SOS! to Wikipedia, and your project seems like a great fit. Let us know what you think. Your thoughts are appreciated! HstryQT (talk) 11:58, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

We generally work from lists. If you can produce a list of public art from the SIRIS database, it may be that you;d find here some people willing to match up listings on the page with existing articles, and then start working through creating new articles for redlinks. --Tagishsimon (talk) 00:56, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. We had begun making location-based lists, but in order to utilize this potential help, we're going to begin making a SOS!/SIRIS list specifically to be used here. Thank you! HstryQT (talk) 19:41, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Excellent. Don't abandon the idea of providing lists which have a geographical element in them. IIRC we're talking tens of thousands of instances of public art. If so, and if possible, it would be way better to index them by country and even locality (state, city, &c) since users are (arguably) more likely to be interested in and know how to access information on stuff near to them. A simple alphabetic ordering should be your last resort. And we would tend to advice, I guess that if possible the lists would be improved to the extent that they immediately assist users, such as by providing

• a link named after the subject - link to some useful info on the artwork, such as the SIRIS page or a google search for the article name

Initial suggested article names can be whatever you can extract from the SIRIS database. This project picks up from that point on and will edit the list to suggest more appropriate names if & when necessary.

Finally, as you must be aware, we tend to work on tectonic timescales. I'm not in a position to make any representations as to whether anyone will get involved. But you pays your money and you takes your chance. --Tagishsimon (talk) 19:51, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

A tectonic timescale is completely understandable. Thank you for your help and suggestions, all of which will help us make a list that's user-friendly and makes sense for this project. I had found some lists that provide nearly half a dozen links following the article title, so I didn't know what was really expected.

Before we dive in I think we'll be discussing what elements to include so as to have a practical balance that doesn't take a huge amount of time (and as such would make it almost as fast to create our own stubs as we go along). I think subject link - SIRIS link and google search link organized by location should be feasible, though. Thanks again for getting back to me so quickly. HstryQT (talk) 21:00, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Biographical dictionaries of artists

User:Fram has begun uploading public-domain entries from Bryan's Dictionary of Painters and Engravers, and I started helping out; right now we're looking at the 1889 enlarged edition, in two volumes. Here is volume 1 (A-K) from Google Books; here is volume 2 (L-Z). In addition, while tooling around looking for more information on Bryan, I found A biographical history of the fine arts, an 1873 edition of a book compiled by the New York-based dentist (!) Shearjashub Spooner. Fram created {{Bryan}}; I followed suit with {{Spooner}}. There is a great deal of material in these books which I think can be successfully transwikied - I thought I'd bring it to the attention of this project in case other people wanted to get involved. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 21:28, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

May I recommend that you first start a s:Wikisource project for each book? That way, you can first produce a valid "letter-perfect" transcription of the source that is under control of the Wikimedia foundation. As you complete the transcription for each article at Wikisource, you can then use that article as the basis for a Wikipedia article. A few of us are using this approach for the Dictionary of National Biography, which (at 63 volumes and 29,000 artcles) is somewhat ambitious. We have two projects, a Wikisource project (s:WS:DNB) and a Wikipedia project (Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles/DNB.) The huge advantage of this approach is that you get a consistent, valid source and you also get the WP article that can then be improved, modernized, and enhanced, for only a very small amount of extra effort. I can assist in setting up the WS project if you wish to try this. -Arch dude (talk) 22:56, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Lots of lists over at User:MadMax

No longer active I happened to stumble upon a number of subpages that he has made containing a large number of lists: [26]. I was considering bringing each page up here on the main list for greater exposure. I thought it would be better if I was to make a note here first in case anyone has any comments/objections etc. Some from glancing seem to be near done anyway but it would not be bad to have them here to finish of the rest. Cheers!Calaka (talk) 08:01, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Due to no objections after a few days, I shall start adding them up. :)Calaka (talk) 12:21, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Movie Guide Request

I've constructed a list of films in Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic_articles/Movie Guide that is based upon the entries in The Scarecrow Movie Guide that may not have Wikipedia articles. Is this suitable for inclusion among the lists of this WikiProject? Thank you.—RJH (talk) 23:22, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Yes, very welcome. Thanks. --Tagishsimon (talk) 23:52, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Thank you.—RJH (talk) 17:04, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Well done indeed! --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 10:51, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

s:A Compendium of Irish Biography

Over at Wikisource, I have started the transcription of A Compendium of Irish Biography and the Index file is at s:Index:A Compendium of Irish Biography.djvu Scan quality is pretty good, and the articles have a good authority list. There is a little formatting to align matters, however, it isn't rocket science, and I have started documenting. billinghurst sDrewth 10:15, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

2010 focus

I was thinking of changing the monthly focus to Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles/English Lit Bio Dict as there is only 24 individuals from that list left so it shouldn't take too long to finish. I will change it over sometime in January just to give a bit of prior notice. Hopefully I will be bold enough to start some of those articles myself in the coming months. All comments/concerns are welcome. Kind regards.Calaka (talk) 06:38, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

With the new year finally here, I will go ahead and change the monthly focus to the above suggestion. Please feel free to make other suggestions once the articles are all taken care of/fixed.Calaka (talk) 03:28, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

With the english lit bio dict page almost complete (hopefully the momentum of one article a day continues for just two more weeks) we could go on to place a new monthly focus. I was thinking of Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles/List of thinkers on education as another quick project to finish (16 articles only) but again, any other comments/suggestions are welcome. :)Calaka (talk) 02:38, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

I am happy to note that the monthly focus is almost complete. I feel like putting in the new monthly focus on another small list such as Australian politicians or Wikipedia:ACF Regionals answers but if anyone feels like adding a list of interest you are more than welcome to. Cheers!Calaka (talk) 09:06, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

New DNB project

I have founded a new Wikipedia:WikiProject Dictionary of National Biography. The thread at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Dictionary of National Biography auto-generated content shows clearly enough that the time has come for those working on the DNB to have their own place. I have nominated the MEA project as "parent", and have no wish to cut any ties; but it will make sense to move some project pages to new titles. DNB people: please come and sign up. Charles Matthews (talk) 09:12, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

Commonwealth Poetry Prize

appears in several authors biographies. --Eingangskontrolle (talk) 17:16, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Redirected to Commonwealth Writers' Prize.--hkr Laozi speak 09:08, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Gross neglect: Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles/List of U.S. television stations

My other specialty, besides the Arizona schools that have brought my completion numbers up to 87%, is local TV stations.

Enter Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles/List of U.S. television stations. The WB hasn't existed in 4 years, and Urban America Television is dead. All remaining bluelinks are false positives (some to AMs, some because of callsign changes), and all the stations left are small-market LPTVs. Could someone clean this up? I'm starting to see how big this project has become and how much it has suffered because of it. Raymie (t • c) 21:43, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Another encyclopedia

How about the Encyclopedia of St Petersburg, from 2004? Obviously we can't pillage their content because it's copyrighted, but there are many important topics in there which are worth having in here also. DS (talk) 14:17, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

There are many such encyclopedia. For them to be of any use within this project, we would, at the least, need to have an index of contents against which to work. If you can provide that, then great. If not, then there's not much that can be done from within this project. As you'll notice from the main page, all of the work of this project is based on comparing lists of contents in third party sources with content in wikipedia. --Tagishsimon (talk) 15:19, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Well, they have old maps at least, and some such images could be imported into Commons legitimately. But I agree with the general point: the difference between cherry-picking a few attractive topics, and assessing comprehensively what the overlap of content is, so as to do something about it, is the provision of some sort of "administrative" framework. Charles Matthews (talk) 15:24, 16 December 2010 (UTC)