Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Murder Madness and Mayhem

Project Discussion

Hi. I'm from the Literature Wikiproject. If any of you need help with literature topics or wikipedia's technical issues, just let me know and I'll help out. I think this is a great idea. Wrad (talk) 02:41, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Are all the articles you're going to be working on currently listed? Wrad (talk) 03:38, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Wrad, thanks for this. Any and all help greatly appreciated! We're still finding our way here at the moment. The students are still a little shy about editing directly. But here's a quick question already... what are the copyright issues involved in using images of book covers? I ask given the discussion here. --jbmurray (talk|contribs) 07:21, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

This is an example of what you do in that case. Copyrighted book covers require a fair use rationale similar to the one on this page. They're actually pretty simple. Wrad (talk) 07:41, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Wrad is a very good editor, although I think the picture he shows on his user page was probably touched up a little. Sorry I myself am not as up on literary topics as he is, but if you would ever think I could help you feel free to ask, either here or on my talk page. John Carter (talk) 21:20, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Second goal

It wasn't clear to me what the second goal of the project is: presumably it was referring to Wikipedia review processes rather than the wikipedia review. I tried to clarify it, so please check that I got it right! Geometry guy 12:00, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Yup, you got it. The idea is to submit each article to (at least one) peer review by April 10th. --jbmurray (talk|contribs) 21:36, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Cool. Lets hope we can get a few of them through FAC too! Geometry guy 22:52, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Indeed. I just hope we haven't bitten off more than we can chew... But nothing ventured, nothing gained. --jbmurray (talk|contribs) 00:12, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Just take it one step at a time, I guess. Divide the work. Go for GA before even worrying about FA, etc. Wrad (talk) 00:18, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Good advice!

As I am sure you have realised, most of the intro to the FA team page is a joke, but one phrase is central: "if you can find reliable sources". There are only two games to play at Wikipedia: neutral point of view and attribution (the last is usually known as verifiability and no original research); providing a reliable source for every nontrivial statement is the key to playing these games successfully. If you can do that, other Wikipedians (e.g. the FA-Team) can help with the rest. Enjoy :-) Geometry guy 00:49, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Help with articles

A group of editors with a lot of wikipedia experience has expressed willingness to help out with this project's goals. They can help with style, copy-editing, and other issues more difficult for new wikipedians to grow into on your path to FA status. Basically, we'll depend largely on you to provide the bulk, sourced content of the articles, and step in when you have questions or when the article needs help with overall style issues. Wrad (talk) 02:38, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Wrad, that is so magnificent that I can hardly express my thanks. We're having another meeting on Tuesday, and hope that we will be up and going then. Again, this is really perfect. --jbmurray (talk|contribs) 10:48, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Images

I've started this as a separate section, but many thanks to Wrad, above, for helping out with my question about book cover images. I uploaded an image of The President's cover, copying the example he gave, and all seems well. We should do this for each book featured, ideally finding images of the first editions (Spanish and English).

But we should also get images for the biographical articles. Reabell uploaded a photo of Asturias from the Nobel site. As is noted on her talk page, this needs its permissions fixing. And now I'm looking for an image of Roa Bastos for his page. There are some nice ones out there. Here, for instance. But frankly I find wikipedia's image policies to be a minefield (to be fair, the whole issue of copyright permission is a minefield), so have no idea if we could justify the use of that image. If so, how? And if not, how to search for an image that can be used? Advice from the FA-Team would be much appreciated. --jbmurray (talk|contribs) 07:05, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Yep, it's a minefield. With living persons, your best bet is going to be to find a picture taken by a private individual (not from a news network or major website). Then email that person and ask if they would like to release that picture for wikipedia under the GDFL license. (This has actually worked for me!) Wrad (talk) 17:07, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

This page gives instructions on how to request permission, and where to email any explicit permissions granted. If the picture is on flickr or a similar site where the permissions can be obvious, it isn't necessary to email the permission back to wikipedia. Images are tricky (lots of my first uploads were deleted), but don't be discouraged. Karanacs (talk) 17:24, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Free and non-free images

Yes, copyright is something of a minefield, and Wikipedia policy even more so. Here's the readers' digest summary (details at WP:Non-free content).

Wikipedia strives to be free reusable content, which means ideally that material on Wikipedia is either in the public domain or freely licensed (using a license such as GFDL which permits free reuse of content). However, if this ideal were applied strictly to all images, then Wikipedia would be one of the dullest encyclopedia's in the world. Hence, there is a compromise: copyrighted and not freely licensed images can be used as long as (1) there is no known free alternative and (2) any use of such an image constitutes "fair use" under US copyright law.

How does this impact WP:MMM? The images concerned are mainly book covers and photos of authors. For book covers, there is no problem: there's no free use alternative, and using them in the article containing critical commentary on the book is well-established fair use. For dead authors, you should be okay: make a good faith effort to find a free image, but if you can't find one, a non-free image can usually be justified as fair use. For living authors, you're mostly in trouble, as Wikipedia, bless it, reckons you could just (!) track down the person in question and take a photo of them. (See Wrad's and Karanacs' comments above for further ideas.)

But that isn't all. If a non-free image is okay, then you need to demonstrate it is okay on the image page. That means three things:

• You need to identify the copyright holder, which is not always easy.
• You need to add a fair-use copyright tag (probably {{non-free book cover}} or {{non-free fair use in|article=name of author}}).
• You need to add a fair-use rationale (the easiest way to do this is using {{fair use rationale}}).

Wikipedia articles are copied all over the web: these demonstrations are intended to protect Wikipedia from being sued both by copyright holders, and by those who break copyright by reusing a fair-use image in a non-fair-use way.

I've done this with the photo of Asturias to give the idea: I found the copyright holder, provided some evidence, and added the copyright tag and rationale. There are free content zealots out there, so it could still be deleted: if anyone finds a free use replacement, just replace it!

Final note: only use the image in the article (or articles) mentioned in the rationale. For example, if you use a book cover in an article on the book, don't also use it in the article on the author, unless that separate use can be justified as above! Phew, that's all. Have fun with your images :-) Geometry guy 20:21, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

This Reader's Digest version is very helpful. I think with this, I can find a picture of Roa Bastos that should work. Fingers crossed. And in fact, he's the only one we're missing. --jbmurray (talk|contribs) 01:36, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Dividing the work

If someone could let us know on this project page how you are dividing the work, that would be great. For example, listing project members in categories according to the article they are working on. Our FA team has divided up similarly, and this would make it easier for us to work together. Thanks. Wrad (talk) 23:08, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Wrad, I've tried to indicate that here. Is there a better way of showing that? NB I think it's a great idea that the FA-team can divide up similarly. So people working on specific articles can get to know "their" FA-team member.

I completely missed that! Let me try and reorganize it and add the FA-team info. Wrad (talk) 23:19, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

References

One problem that I've run into on big projects like this is with citation formats. Is everyone in his project using the same format? Do we have an agreed-upon format to use? Wrad (talk) 23:40, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

OK, explain! I should say that today I said to other members of the project (i.e. the class, heh) that for the moment their task was to plan their line of approach and then go out and get information, do research, and go through sources. We would worry about the technicalities of citation formats later... and indeed, I said that you guys were the experts here.  ;) But tell us: is there a particular format you recommend. It would certainly be good for me (overviewing and trying to help out on each page) if there were consistency across the articles. --jbmurray (talk|contribs) 01:34, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

I personally like the style used for the Hamlet article. Wrad (talk) 01:38, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

I should mention that I think that I think that is an excellent plan - work on the content first and worry about the formatting later. The content is the most important part and your class will be able provide us with invaluable assistance in researching these writers and their works. Awadewit | talk 01:47, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

I was looking at the Hamlet article and it completely confused me as to citation. There seems to be a notes section which has abbreviated footnotes of in-text citations in order of use, later expanded in another section entitled secondary sources. Is that right? Can I just use http://tools.wikimedia.de/~magnus/makeref.php, at least for now?--Abarratt (talk) 04:05, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

That's another cool tool that I didn't know about! Yes, it produces great results, and we can easily split the notes into notes and references later if we want to (I like that format too). For now, as Awadawit says, concentrate on the content (and providing sources!) — we can worry about the formatting later. Geometry guy 09:16, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

That's exactly what it does. Basically it combines MLA format with things that Wikipedia uses more often. Oh well. Just be sure to cite things as you write the articles and we'll figure it out later. Cool site, by the way. I'll have to use that one. Wrad (talk) 16:39, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Non-referenced Work

I'm not sure what the policy is for if a page you're working on has information that has no source. For example, someone added "Postmodern Latina writers of the 1980s, such as Ana Castillo and Giannina Braschi challenge the structure of the dictator novel. For example, in Giannina Braschi's mock diary, "The Intimate Diary of Solitude" (published in Empire of Dreams), the narrator of the Latin American Boom is shot by a lonely make-up artist who works at Macy's and despises the commercialization of her solitude." I left a message on their talk page but so far no response. What is the wiki etiquette here? Do I just move it to the talk page with request to provide reference???--Abarratt (talk) 22:51, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes, moving it to the talk page is a polite way to deal with unreferenced material. Asking at the user talk page is also sensible. You can also just delete it if you're fairly confident it can't be sourced; make sure you put an informative edit summary though. Mike Christie (talk) 23:19, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the advice! I just moved it to the talk page for now.--Abarratt (talk) 22:50, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Quick citation overview

It was brought up on the FA-Team talk page that some of the articles are getting a lot of good material added but no sources, and I was afraid that the sourcing formats might be confusing enough to make you guys not want to add references (it certainly scared me at first). There is some discussion above, but here's what I think is a pretty easy method\.

• Generally, if you are going to be citing from books, you want to create a section called References. Within this section, list your books (alpha by author). You can format the book references yourself, or use the template {{cite book}}.

{{cite book | last = | first = | authorlink = | coauthors = | title = | publisher = | date = | location = | pages = | url = | doi = | id = | isbn = }}

• To actually cite the books within your article, use a ref tag. <ref name=myrefname>Author name, p. pagenumber.</ref> You don't have to include the name=myrefname part, but if you will be citing the same book/page number multiple times, then you only have to define the text once; All other times just type <ref name=myrefname />
• If you aren't only citing books, then you might want to be different text inside your ref tags. There are a lot of citation templates to allow you to fill-in-the-blanks to create a good citation.
• If you want all of your references to be visible to people (and you do!), then create a section called Footnotes or Notes above the References section. Within this section, type {{reflist}}. It will automatically add your footnotes here.

If you have any questions at all, just ask :) Karanacs (talk) 16:35, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Deadline 10 April 2008

If you're deadline is 10 April, people in the project should get as many articles in the Good article nominations queue as possible. The backlog means reviews can take more than month. To speed things up, you can review other nominated articles and build up a bit of good will. Cheers! Wassupwestcoast (talk) 23:57, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Or alternatively, leave me a message and I'll review it asap. Much faster than going through GAN and hoped that someone is interested in that article to review it. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 16:31, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Probably the best compromise is to put it in the queue at GAN, and then a member of the FA-team or a GA reviewer can pick it up, whichever happens first. OhanaUnited, currently Facundo is waiting for a GA review if you'd like to take it on. Because of the nature of this project, can I suggest that even if it definitely doesn't meet the GA criteria, you place it on hold rather than failing it? There are enthusiastic students willing to work on these articles so a review that identifies weaknesses should lead to the article improving quickly. Mike Christie (talk) 16:40, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

I've already reviewed Facundo. Awadewit (talk) 17:04, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

FAC Overview

It looks like El Señor Presidente is getting close to an FA nomination and several of the other articles are at GA and could potentially be nominated soon. Some of you may have been browsing the list of existing nominations to see how things work, but for the rest here's an idea of what to expect:

• FAC is not a vote, but an attempt to reach consensus. We call the statements that people leave !votes (sort-of-kind-of-not-really-votes). Nominations can fail even if there are more supports than opposes, if the opposes bring up real issues.
• An FA reviewer is expected to "grade" the article against the FA criteria. Anyone who wants to support the nomination should make a statement that is in line with the criteria. A support comment that just says "really important topic; deserves to be FA" is likely to be overlooked because it doesn't reference the FA criteria.
• There will be suggestions for improvement. That does not mean that you did a bad job or that the article shouldn't have been nominated, it just means that others are looking at things in a little different way then you did. I just collabored with over half a dozen other editors (most of whom are frequent FA reviewers and have done lots of FAs) on an article, and we still got lots of comments on little issues to fix. That's normal.
• If an FA reviewer opposes the nomination, (s)he should include actionable comments. That means that they need to leave enough information that you can recognize and fix they saw. If someone opposes without leaving actionable comments, the FA directors will generally overlook those comments. Some reviewers talk in wiki shorthand ("fails 2a"). This refers back to the FA criteria, which is numbered. If you're confused, ask the reviewer to clarify or ask the FA team.
• It is best to fix issues as quickly as possible. If you do not agree with a comment that someone leaves, then you do not have to incorporate those changes into the article. Don't forget - you are the experts on these subjects! However, you should leave a note on the nomination page telling the reviewer why you disagree with his recommendation.
• If you fix something that someone commented on, just put a note under that line that you've fixed it (and don't forget to sign your post). If the reviewer agrees that you fixed it, he'll cross of his comments, otherwise he's likely to respond back again. If you fix all the objections and the reviewer is now happy, he will likely strike out his oppose and either support or be neutral.
• FAC noms usually take at least a week to run their course, and sometimes longer. If you ever feel ovwerwhelmed, just ask for help! It's okay to help each other out too.
• Above all, don't get discouraged. If your article is not promoted, that is not the end of the world. Just make sure you fix any objections, and then you can renominate the article. Lots of articles go through multiple FAC nominations before they get promoted.

When you're ready to nominate an article, please post a notice here so that the rest of the FA-team can see it (and not just those who've watchlisted your article). If we haven't been directly involved in your article we'll be able to serve as reviewers. Good luck to all of you, and I hope that at least several groups nominate their articles for FA. Karanacs (talk) 16:32, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

The above advice is an excellent introduction to the FAC process. One additional point: if the deadline is 10 April, I'd strongly recommend trying to get any FA nominations in by the end of this weekend, or mid-week at the absolute latest. FAs almost never get promoted in less than five days of review, and it can take two weeks. Anything that has passed GA is obviously a reasonable candidate to go to FA next; I'd suggest the FA team can help most by spreading out across the articles and making MOS fixes and copyedits wherever they look like they'll do the most good, and creating checklists of "what's left for FA". Awadewit is doing this on Talk:The President (novel), for example. Mike Christie (talk) 16:51, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

I believe that 10 April is the deadline for nominating the article for FAC. Awadewit (talk) 16:58, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Yup, that's right, but I hope we get a few articles in well before that, so we know what to expect. El Señor Presidente is pretty much lined up, and then perhaps Mario Vargas Llosa? --jbmurray (talk|contribs) 19:44, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

You may find this essay helpful Handling the FAC page. Three warnings about FAC:

• Pushme-pullyou suggestions / demands/debates. You may find some editors opposing based on mutually exclusive suggestions. Often both parties will cite policy / guidelines/ precedence but you cannot implement both. Will drive you mad :-)
• Drive-by lunatic. There are editors who hate FAC for reasons known best to them. They will oppose your article ...and everyone else article ...for spurious reasons. Some lunatics come out of the woodwork to POV-push. Some can be nasty.
• AfD. It may happen...it has in the past...that someone might put up the article for deletion. Do not worry. It will go through the deletion process ...but it won' be deleted.

No matter how good an article is prepared, someone on Wikipedia will not like it. Cheers! Wassupwestcoast (talk) 16:56, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

A caveat - these problems are rare. I have been through FAC twenty times and have never had any major problems. Literature articles (except for William Shakespeare) tend not to attract controversy. Lucky for us. :) Awadewit (talk) 17:05, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Some clarifications to above comments. I typically allow a nom to run a minimum of six days, although I may remove noms that rack up a lot of significant, overwhelming opposes in three or four days. Project members shouldn't worry about unactionable opposes; I ignore them, with or without comment, so no need to argue with reviewers over whether an oppose is unactionable. On the other hand, a solid reasonable actionable oppose from a knowledgeable reviewer will stall your FAC no matter how many Supports. If you're not sure, ask someone on the FA team if an oppose is reasonable, rather than getting into a tussle on the FAC (but please don't ask me to comment on a FAC while it's running :-). Also, long discussions to resolve issues are better conducted on the article talk page, to leave the FAC intelligible; FACs that degenerate into back and forth discussion of prose or MoS issues become hard to read quickly, and may discourage subsequent reviewers from having a look, so if something is getting lengthy, try to take it to the article talk page if the reviewer agrees. The FA-team might help make sure your responses are threaded corrrectly on the noms, as that can get tricky. Generally, try to avoid long, drawn-out arguments on the FAC page, as a FAC that gets out of control is usually headed for a restart, which will add at least a week. The only other note of caution is that GA standing has no bearing on FA preparedness, and FAC is more rigorous than GAC, so be prepared for more nitpicking of every aspect of WP:WIAFA. One last note, MoS tussles can be avoided by asking Epbr123 (talk · contribs) to run through before you approach FAC, as he's quite thorough. Good luck to all !! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:55, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

I ran through the President, see my edit summaries, and inline queries. Wikilinking will need attention, references have some ??? that need to be filled in, there is a lot of inconsistency in capitalization, some endash issues, and there are links in section headings. All looks easily fixable. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:16, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

The President (novel)

I think The President (novel) is getting very close to being ready for FAC - my guess would be a day or two. If other members of the the FA-Team want to take one last look at it before nomination, that would be appreciated. More eyes, particularly for MOS and copy editing issues, are always appreciated. Our little FAC checklist is here. Kudos to everyone! Awadewit (talk) 17:08, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Great work

I applaud you all for your work on Wikipedia and bringing up the quality of some interesting articles, nice work! Cirt (talk) 22:12, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Many thanks!  :) --jbmurray (talk|contribs) 23:41, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

I second that praise, I hope many of you stay on and help us build up wikipedia, especially since you all are close to being aces at it with your own FA's! :) Judgesurreal777 (talk) 03:06, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

I just found out about this through the community notice board, and it looks like you guys have had some fantastic results! I hope your professor pressures his/her colleagues into exploring more projects like this - as you have likely found out, we need all the help we can get. Joshdboz (talk) 19:02, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Another comment of praise. Nice to see such dedication to lesser-known articles. Look forward to seeing the final results. Kaiser matias (talk) 08:38, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

Also just found about this and I'm excited that this "experiment" has been a great success. Every single article is vastly improved and one even reached feature article status and it's not over yet. I'm glad the topics were of educational value and even better, they were outside of the U.S./Europe scope, which helps us counter systematic bias. I really hope other professors and universities read about your encouraging results as your project comes to an end. Mahanga^Talk 00:57, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Many thanks, many thanks! I have to admit we hadn't thought much of the fact that we were addressing wikipedia's anglophone and northern hemisphere bias, but yes! In fact, Mahanga's comment rather inspired at least one of our number, judging by her blog today. So thanks very much for all your encouragement! --jbmurray (talk|contribs) 00:31, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

We don't have a northern hemisphere bias on Wikipedia: there are a ton of Aussies here :-) But, it is true: there is an anglo bias. Cheers! Wassupwestcoast (talk) 00:44, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

I think there is a bias in the articles - more US and European articles, for example. Awadewit (talk) 01:19, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes, all the articles in this project seem to be connected in some way with Latin America. What about Asia? They have great dictators too. Geometry guy 08:21, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

This course is a Latin American Literature course, with a focus of dictators, maybe that explains the focus?--Mfreud (talk) 18:13, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

I was joking of course. Great work! Geometry guy 22:24, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

I wondered why Llosa was featured in english but not in Spanish (I was going to translate it.) But, I read the news today and voila, I learned the story! Good job. Brusegadi (talk) 09:38, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Clock ticking on The Feast of the Goat

Yo, just stopping by to remind mad murdering mayhem participants that they have only three more days to bring The Feast of the Goat up to GA standard before the article is failed. Someone may want to poke the students responsible. Best wishes, Skomorokh 19:11, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the reminder. Pokes will be out shortly! --jbmurray (talk|contribs) 21:55, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Be gentle! Skomorokh 21:59, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Re: your edit summary. I am one now! :) Wrad (talk) 22:07, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Heh. --jbmurray (talk|contribs) 00:27, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Gentle pokes have been made. --jbmurray (talk|contribs) 01:24, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Just wondering; usually with a GA review I try and help fix as much of the nominated article myself, but I have refrained in this case so as not to distort any grading efforts. Are comprehensive, large-scale edits by non-members of MMM welcome in this area helpful or counterproductive? In other words, if I would otherwise fail this article, would you prefer I did what was necessary to pass it? Skomorokh 07:36, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Primary research is the responsibility of the MMM members. WP:FAT members have certainly helped out with copy-editing for other articles. Perhaps the most useful (though for you, most time-consuming) tack is to indicate the problems in some detail. You might want to look for instance at Awadewit's work with Mfreud (in particular) on El Señor Presidente, or Mike Christie's on Facundo. Each article is generating its own style. I am happy for you to use your own judgement, rather than creating an artificial situation in which you feel unable to intervene at all. As far as I am concerned, part of the assignment is for students to be able to work with other wikipedia editors such as yourself. So long as the students are actively engaged (and I see two of them have, today), and you are not simply replacing them. But I think we are all to some extent working this out as we go along. I am sure we will reflect on this when we come to a post-mortem, and I'd be pleased to have your input. --jbmurray (talk|contribs) 07:56, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

And when I say that I would hope not to construct an artificial situation (though clearly in some ways it is at least unusual for wikipedia), I mean both that you should feel free to intervene if that's what you would normally do, and also that you should feel free the fail the article, if that's what you would normally do at this stage. I'll come round and have a look shortly, too. --jbmurray (talk|contribs) 07:59, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

I have been unexpectedly caught up in meatspace responsibilities, so won't be able to respond to this or look at the article in detail, but given the highly commendable efforts by the responsibe editors (esp. re: characters section, harvard referencing), I am more than happy to extend the "oh hold" period. I'm sorry I don't have time, but can you see to it that any concerns mentioned in the GA review that were not addressed by recent edits are either identified as not being understandable or rejected as unreasonable concerns? If the article writers asked for clarification on, or disputed unaddressed concerns, it would really move things along towards GA. Skomorokh 22:12, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Mexican writers heads-up

Shout out to Latin American lit fans. CBC Radio One is doing a four part series (one hour each) on contemporary Mexican writers.

• CBC Radio One: Writers and Co

Note non-Canadians can listen online or vie podcast: see [1]]

Part 1: Elena Poniatowksa

Part 2: Juan Villoro and Jorge Volpi. Apparently, "Volpi became one of the founders of the "Crack" movement in Mexican literature - an ironic response to the Latin American literary Boom"

Part 3 and 4 TBA Cheers! Wassupwestcoast (talk) 19:14, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for this. My goodness, Wikipedia has only a redlink for Elena Poniatowksa! We'll have to fix that one of these days. --jbmurray (talk|contribs) 08:00, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

2000

Is El Señor Presidente really FA article number two thousand? If it is, that's hilarious. So, whose stars are all lined up just so. Cheers! Wassupwestcoast (talk) 04:04, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

See here Raul654 (talk) 05:35, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

We're doing a write-up on the 2000th FACs, and El Señor Presidente will be mentioned. This will be in the Signpost this week. Here's the temporary link until the Signpost is released Wikipedia:FCDW/April 14, 2008. The Signpost is the weekly Wikipedia newspaper. Karanacs (talk) 21:11, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Marvellous! Many thanks for the heads up. --jbmurray (talk|contribs) 21:21, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Vancouver meetup

Hi everyone, I'm trying to organize a meetup for Vancouver Wikipedians, and we certainly need your participation! This should be a fun chance for people from all areas of interest and walks of life to get together. A discussion page is here, and please join in: Wikipedia:WikiProject Vancouver/Meetup 2008. Best, Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 07:38, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Kudos

You guys are unstoppable! Rock on! --Moni3 (talk) 16:42, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

QFT. I can only hope I end up at a university which has such creative thinking professors. =) I for one would not mind having to joint-write an essay/research piece which might somehow affect the real-world for a heavy portion of my grade in English or some other class. --Izno (talk) 05:24, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Many thanks for your kind words! --jbmurray (talk|contribs) 17:58, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

A school project which didn't create hours of work for us AND helped to produce FA and GA's, wow, thanks a bunch :) --gren グレン 23:30, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Someone should work on that last non-GA!

It is close, and could make this an all GA project :) Judgesurreal777 (talk) 17:15, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

The article is Miguel Angel Asturias. As one of the FA-Team helpers for this article, I feel I really let the side down. I will re-watchlist it and do my best to help if other editors (and here I mean anyone, not just the group, not just the entire class, but anyone who wants to improve the encyclopedia) can provide content and sources. I believe those in the class have exams now, but please come back to fix this article once those exams are done: it is so close to being a great article, thanks to the fantastic work of the group involved. I am very sad that their fantastic work will not receive as much credit as other class members because the GA hurdle was not crossed. But I ask everyone who has been amazed by Jbmurray's brilliant Wikipedia project to come forward and help this article be as good as it can be. Geometry guy 18:08, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

I'd like to third the sentiment. I'd be more than willing to help ~this reach GA, I can even try to find online sources.. Unfortunately as far as printed sources go, my university library sucks and thats an euphemism.. I have a couple of exams/asignments of my own due at the end of the month, so I had to slow down abit these last few days and won't be as active for the next ten days but I intent to return in full speed afterwards Acer (talk) 18:16, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Agreed! I hope to get on to it soon. --jbmurray (talk|contribs) 23:15, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

That article is close enough to be GA so I'm going to review it on tomorrow. Should have results by then. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 02:17, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

I have watchlisted, and added the article to WP:GAN. Geometry guy 22:23, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Judging from last GA review, it seems that it was failed mainly due to the article too broad and not focused. Now I think Professor Beasley-Murray is the most appropriate person to judge on this matter as that is his area of expertise. If he thinks that this article is focused enough, then I can cleanup the prose and MoS and then pass it as GA. So I appreciate if professor can comment on this. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 03:03, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll get to this later today. --jbmurray (talk|contribs) 17:57, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

The future

Prof, have you considered the fate of the articles developed under MMM after the project is completed. Articles are usually at their best just after they become an FA and from then they usually degrade slowly. Once MMM is over and you and the students move away, the same may happen to these articles. Cherian Nair (talk) 05:42, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Indeed, thanks for the reminder. We'll be watching the articles, I'm sure. On the other hand, of course, we don't pretend to own them. --jbmurray (talk|contribs) 17:56, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Meetup

Vancouver Meetup Please come to an informal gathering of Vancouver Wikipedians, Monday, May 5 at 6:30 pm. It will be at Benny's Bagels, 2505 West Broadway. We'd love to see you there, and please invite others! Watch the Vancouver Meetup page for details.

Best, Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 05:53, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Good article icon

A proposal to add a symbol identifying Good Articles in a similar manner to Featured ones is being discussed: see Wikipedia talk:Good articles#Proposal. Cheers! Wassupwestcoast (talk) 19:24, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Historical project

Given that this WikiProject has now run its course, I suggest we place a tag at the head of the project page to indicate it is no longer active, perhaps {{Folded}} or {{Inactive}}. Other choices can be found at Category:Wikipedia header templates. Thoughts? I'll leave it to those involved in the project to make the change. Mindmatrix 16:23, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

External links

I just love how the AFP story got translated to so many unexpected languages and yet there’s no Spanish version. That said it’s somewhat disappointing, though not unexpected, that they never recheck the facts between translations and so the inaccuracies just keep on getting repeated. So much for new stories as reliable sources eh? Acer (talk) 11:03, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

I was thinking just the same... First, nothing in Latin America! And then, yes, this one story (based on a twenty minute phone conversation and a quick peruse of the internet... OK, and also a phone call to one of my students) is going around the world.

Perhaps Canadian Radio tomorrow, though. We'll see. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 11:13, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

You mean CR is going to interview you too? Acer (talk) 22:15, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

A discussion

An important discussion on " Should WikiProjects get prior approval of other WikiProjects (Descendant or Related or any ) to tag articles that overlaps their scope ? " is open here . We welcome you to participate and give your valuable opinions. -- TinuCherian ^{(Wanna Talk?)} - , member of WikiProject Council. 14:36, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Time for an article?

The project has now passed the threshold of notability for inclusion as an article in the encyclopaedia. Is it time to write one? Skomorokh 11:46, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

You should do a draft in userspace of what it would look like, and if it looks strong, go for it! Judgesurreal777 (talk) 19:55, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Moar 81.207.149.185 (talk) 09:47, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Comment on the WikiProject X proposal

Hello there! As you may already know, most WikiProjects here on Wikipedia struggle to stay active after they've been founded. I believe there is a lot of potential for WikiProjects to facilitate collaboration across subject areas, so I have submitted a grant proposal with the Wikimedia Foundation for the "WikiProject X" project. WikiProject X will study what makes WikiProjects succeed in retaining editors and then design a prototype WikiProject system that will recruit contributors to WikiProjects and help them run effectively. Please review the proposal here and leave feedback. If you have any questions, you can ask on the proposal page or leave a message on my talk page. Thank you for your time! (Also, sorry about the posting mistake earlier. If someone already moved my message to the talk page, feel free to remove this posting.) Harej (talk) 22:47, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

WikiProject X is live!

Hello everyone!

You may have received a message from me earlier asking you to comment on my WikiProject X proposal. The good news is that WikiProject X is now live! In our first phase, we are focusing on research. At this time, we are looking for people to share their experiences with WikiProjects: good, bad, or neutral. We are also looking for WikiProjects that may be interested in trying out new tools and layouts that will make participating easier and projects easier to maintain. If you or your WikiProject are interested, check us out! Note that this is an opt-in program; no WikiProject will be required to change anything against its wishes. Please let me know if you have any questions. Thank you!

Note: To receive additional notifications about WikiProject X on this talk page, please add this page to Wikipedia:WikiProject X/Newsletter. Otherwise, this will be the last notification sent about WikiProject X.

Harej (talk) 16:57, 14 January 2015 (UTC)