Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Kent

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 86.173.103.127 (talk) at 22:59, 5 February 2017 (→‎Slade Green). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

New neighbours

A new wikiproject has been created covering our neighbouring county, Essex. See WP:ESSEX for the project page and WT:ESSEX for the discussion page. Mjroots (talk) 14:39, 7 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

New User edits Trosley Country Park and is savaged : WP:BITE

We have a new user User:DavidAnstiss who has been adding material to some country park pages including a new one for Trosley. As can be expected, he has made a few mistakes... --So within minutes he was savaged. I have put this comment on the aggressors site

I more than a little annoyed by your carnivorous behavior to the first new user in Kent to show any interest in the environment. WP:BITE . It would be more helpful to have tagged the article with Trosley Country Park {{Kent-geo-stub}} and introduced him to Wikipedia:WikiProject Kent. Yes there are several copyvios- but Wikipedia:WikiProject Kent can take them out- it is almost certain that the 2003 website would be considered a government website in the US and it would be dubious whether copyright would apply! However I don't expect a new user, in his first week of editing would understand that, hence WP:BITE. An apology on his user page would help.

I am in dialog with this editor now so hopefully something can be resolved.

Can members look at his edits- and see what needs to strengthened or changed.

--ClemRutter (talk) 21:20, 25 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Cheriton

I've done a driveby on Cheriton, Kent, it still needs a fair bit of work but at least it's now pointing in the right direction. If anyone fancies it, taking it to WP:GA would make a nice little project - enough there to be interesting, but not unmanageable. I've got lots of relevant photos, but they'll have to wait just for the moment - just like all the others I've been taking. I've been making reasonable progress in my project to take photos of geotagged articles without one, I've now pretty much done all of them east of a line between Hythe and Canterbury, but I keep getting distracted by improving the articles themselves rather than uploading the pics - doing this makes you 'really aware of inaccurate coordinates for instance! I've even started doing photos for articles which currently just have Geograph pics, as they tend to be a)not great quality (no more than 640x480 from what I can tell) and b)not the most flattering, it's amazing how much better places look when it's sunny... Le Deluge (talk) 16:00, 26 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Start class is a reasonable assessment, possibly could go to C class but a severe lack of referencing prevents it going higher atm. Mjroots2 (talk) 14:50, 1 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Oh I wasn't claiming it was GA at the moment, just that it would be a relatively easy one to take up to that standard compared to the average dog's dinner of a geopgraphical article... <g> It's a lot of work pulling in all the related articles and knocking it into the basic structure of WP:UKTOWNS, even if that effort doesn't particularly get reflected in the assessment. In particular having the related articles linked in means that there may be a lot of refs that can be borrowed "for free". I also cleaned up Faversham a bit some time ago although that was in a lot better shape to start with - but I really ought to spend more of my Wiki time getting some of my photos cleaned up and uploaded... Le Deluge (talk) 11:57, 17 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

New Kent template:

{{Small-village-of-about-1,000-inhabitants-in-Kent-stub}} is at TfD. PamD (talk) 20:56, 16 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Article alerts

Wikipedia:WikiProject Kent/Article alerts has been created; generating Article alerts for this WikiProject. Timrollpickering (talk) 20:19, 25 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry for my poor English.

Can you read w:fr:Discussion catégorie:Hameau du Kent/Suppression about deletion of w:fr:Catégorie:Hameau du Kent and its content (16 entries). Nota bene : w:fr:Catégorie:Hameau du Kent = Category:Hamlets in Kent ...

You can write in English in w:fr:Discussion catégorie:Hameau du Kent/Suppression.

Thank you.

129.102.254.253 (talk) 18:44, 28 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

My thoughts are that what fr.wiki and what en.wiki do are separate things. What is desirable on one wiki may not necessarily be desirable on the other. We should allow the French to run their wiki in their way. Mjroots (talk) 15:41, 2 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Resources

I've started a resources page at WP:KENT/R. Feel free to expand, organise and generally improve the page. Mjroots (talk) 08:29, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Romney Marsh is said to be the homeplace of many writers, including Joseph Conrad, Stephen Crane etc... It seems to me that you should also mention Ford Madox Ford who first settled in the Romney Marsh in the summer of 1894. There he met Conrad who became his collaborator for ten years or so. After staying five years in the area (Bonnington) he wrote a historical book called "The Cinque Ports". Later he portrayed Meary Walker and her neighbours, all inhabitants of the Romney Marsh, in "Women and Men". I am no specialist myself, but you can refer to the biography of Ford Madox Ford written by Max Saunders, "Ford Madox Ford : A Dual Life" Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1996. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.235.196.91 (talk) 16:23, 7 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hasted-bot

I see bots doing auto corrections. Cannot a bot be devised which inserts links to the relevant page of Hasted ( http://www.british-history.ac.uk/place.aspx?gid=99&region=2).Gdcox (talk) 17:38, 2 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The place to talk to bot makers is Wikipedia:Bot requests - but you'd have to be a lot more specific about exactly what you want. How would a bot know what page of Hasted is relevant? Or are you talking about a template that would expand say {{Hasted|4|191}} into a full {{cite}} template linking to http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=53803 ? Trouble with that is that BHO doesn't always map 1 page to a page of HTML, so that could get tricky, I'm not sure if the guys over at Wikipedia:Requested templates could do something. Or are you talking about adding a link to the first page of the relevant section of Halsted to the Further Reading section of articles? In which case it might not be worth the time to create a bot to work out a) the various formats for naming town articles - Faversham is easy, but you wouldn't want to add a Further Reading section to the Ashford disambiguation page and b) which page of potentially many in Hasted you actually want to refer to. Instead you might be better off with a semi-automatic process, feeding categories such as Category:Villages in Kent into WP:AWB. If you can be a bit more precise about what you want, then people should be able to help you. Le Deluge (talk) 11:44, 17 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I use ref name=hasted cite journal |last=Hasted |first=Edward |date=1800 |title=Parishes |url=http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=62986 |journal=The History and Topographical Survey of the County of Kent |publisher=Institute of Historical Research |volume=6 |pages=467-481 |accessdate=8 February 2014 as a template to add all my hasted references and then copy and paste from one article to another and then edit to suit. But a bot would not work due to the amount of unneeded stuff in Hasted. Re;Badlesmere, Kent mention is a page worth of Hasted notes but only used about 10 lines of decent wiki notable notes.DavidAnstiss (talk) 19:41, 12 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:HighBeam

The newspaper (and other stuff) archive Highbeam are generously offering up to 1000 free accounts for their service to Wikipedians with more than 1000 edits to their name. No catch, you just sign up by Easter Monday at Wikipedia:HighBeam.Le Deluge (talk) 13:55, 6 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Unreferenced Kent-related articles

The Category:Unreferenced Kent-related articles seems to be out of date, containing many articles that have references. Perhaps a check and cleanup may be needed? And doesn't this cat need to be hidden, like other maintenance cats? Fram (talk) 07:49, 11 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The 1580 mayor of Faversham up for deletion

Tributaries of the River Rother, East Sussex

Greetings. I am not part of your project, but have been working on the River Rother article, which is. I have taken the liberty of removing the unref=yes tag from the Kent Project banner, since I have expanded it by a factor of nine, and everything is now referenced. I still have quite a bit more to do, but I am stuggling to find the names of most of the tributaries, or sources for such information, and wondered if anyone here might be able to suggest anything. Bob1960evens (talk) 18:41, 28 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Please help get Kent ready for the start of the Wiki Loves Monuments competition on 1st September

This September the UK is taking part for the first time in the international photography competition Wiki Loves Monuments. Participants will be invited to submit pictures of listed buildings of significant importance (grades I or grade II*), as recorded by English Heritage. The main external website for competitors can be found here, and you can leave a message there if you have queries about competing. Do please join in, and let people in your local area know of this excellent way in which both existing and new Wiki users can help improve the encyclopaedia by contributing photographs of local listed structures. What about organizing a local Wikimeet to attract new people?

In preparation for the start of the competition on 1st September there is still quite a lot of work to do, and we would like to ask for the help of members of this wikiproject. Your local and expert knowledge will be invaluable in ensuring that the lists of eligible buildings are up to date and correctly formatted. If you look at Listed buildings in the United Kingdom you will see how many structures are included. If you then follow the link to Listed buildings in England, you can get to the detailed lists for your area. Alternatively have a look at the WLM planning table. Can you help to ensure that the lists for your area are up to date and well presented?

Some of the lists have been semi-automatically generated from data provided by English Heritage. These use pre formatted templates (eg EH header) which will make it much easier for competition participants to upload their photographs to Commons as an automated process. Please don't change the template structure, as we need to ensure that the templates are properly compatible with the WLM standards that are in use worldwide. The format will allow a bot automatically to collect the information and to put it into the international Monuments Database.

The data still needs the attention of local editors:

  • The "title" may need wikilinking to a suitable article name (whether we currently have that article or not). If there are several buildings in one street all of the wikilinks point at an article about the street; however each entry has a separate line in the list.
  • The "location" column looks and sorts better if just the parish or town is included (& wikilinked).
  • The "date completed" column sometimes has eg "C19" for 19th century, and "C1850" for c. 1850 when the date is uncertain - these need to be corrected manually.
  • The "grid ref & lat & long" (which is occasionally missing) may be given to 8 characters — only 6 (grid ref) or 5 (lat & long) are really needed.
  • Clicking on the "list entry number" should take you to the data sheet for that entry on the English Heritage database which can be checked if needed for details.
  • The image column should have a picture added if we already have a suitable image on Commons. (N.B. if you are going to be taking photos yourself for inclusion in the competition don't upload them until September)
  • References may be added according to normal WP practice.

For further information, please see Commons:Wiki Loves Monuments 2013 in the United Kingdom.

If you have any queries, please post them not below but on the Organizers' help page on Commons.

Anything you can do to help improve these lists will be much appreciated. The final deadline for cleaning up is 31st August.

--MichaelMaggs (talk) 14:48, 9 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Fluted pillar box in Gravesend

There is a rare example of an early type of Victorian pillar box in Gravesend: an 1850s fluted style post box in Norfolk Road near the junction with St John's Road. It is a Grade II listed building. Wikimedia has photos of better-known examples in Malvern, Warwick and elsewhere, but seems to lack a picture of this example in Gravesend. Please will someone photograph it and donate the image(s) to Wikimedia? Thanks, Motacilla (talk) 01:01, 20 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

You mean this one ! http://www.britishlistedbuildings.co.uk/en-356396-pillar-box-at-the-junction-of-norfolk-ro If I have some time this winter - I will try to get a photo DavidAnstiss (talk) 22:42, 18 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Portal:Kent nominated for deletion

Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Kent. BencherliteTalk 16:14, 3 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Importance ratings

I noticed that there appears (in my view) to be some inconsistencies in importance ratings. For example, Wat Tyler, a resident of Kent that led the Peasants' Revolt (which is rated Top importance by wikiproject England), has been rated of low importance by us. Meanwhile, Jade's Crossing which, with all sentiment removed, is simply a modern footbridge over a road, is rated as mid-importance. In my opinion, one or both of these need reassessing as one is of lasting historical and national significance and one isn't, but their current relative ratings don't reflect that. danno_uk 22:00, 11 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Feel free to reassess them, just give a rationale in your edit summary. Mjroots (talk) 13:15, 13 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
It's worth remembering that the ratings are not about what "is of lasting historical and national significance". Rather than "importance", it would be better to follow the model of {{WP:BIO]] in calling it a "priority" for that particular WikiProject to work on. There will be articles where a local WP has a lot to offer, and ones where it doesn't - and personally I think people tend to over-tag biographies in particular when the only connection is birth/childhood which is obviously important for the person but doesn't yield much by way of WP:RS for the local project to contribute. Obviously Kent-based Wikipedians are uniquely placed to access resources about Dickens or Turner for example, but I'd guess that in the case of Wat Tyler there won't be much of a Kent angle, the medieval historians will be best-placed to access the sources. If WP:MA can take the lead there, then Kent's resources are better targeted at articles that won't attract much effort from elsewhere, like North Kent Marshes or the various town/borough articles. It's quite normal for articles to represent different priorities for different WikiProjects - for instance another writer that could be claimed by Kent is Ian Fleming - a blue plaque at Pett's Bottom claims (although it's disputed) that he wrote You Only Live Twice there, and the original Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was made in Canterbury. But you'd be pushed to say that this Project had much to contribute to his article, which is a Top priority for the James Bond project, of mid importance to the Literature project, and Low importance to WP Jamaica.
It's actually surprising how closely people's assessments of priority follow the pageviews of an article - Lows are generally <300/month, Mids between 300 and 3000/month, and Highs over 3000/month. Obviously pop culture articles get more than their fair share, and "overview" articles deserve more work than their views would suggest, but it's a pretty good guide give or take one level of priority. I'm a big fan of letting the readers set the priorities of editors, at least as far as the article's "lead" WikiProject is concerned. Wat gets 6k/month with the odd spike, so is obviously of High priority to the History projects, but I think it's reasonable to tweak that down one to Mid priority for secondary projects like Kent. Perhaps surprisingly, Jade's Crossing is on the borderline of 300 views/month, and growing despite the fact that it's not really been edited since November. Like you I don't really understand why it should be so popular, but we have to accept that people are interested in the subject no matter how trivial we might think it, so I'd give it the benefit of the doubt as a Mid for the moment.FlagSteward (talk) 12:19, 14 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
(edit - I assumed that the History Projects would be on Wat but they weren't, I've now done that and tweaked him to Mid for Kent. Also WP:WPBIO only sets priority at the workgroup level which he wasn't tagged for - hopefully that all makes things look a bit more logical.FlagSteward (talk) 12:30, 14 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Many thanks for your responses, very interesting. danno_uk 23:25, 19 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Wormshill on the main page

I understand that Wormshill, an article I slaved over about 6 years go to get to FA! will be featuring on the main page on 30 March (see Wikipedia:Today's featured article/March 30, 2014). Quite chuffed. Dick G (talk) 10:12, 18 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

That's great news. Mjroots (talk) 13:06, 18 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
For some reason I thought that had already been FAed. I do remember reading it some time ago and becoming green with envy as it made most of my contributions seem very pale in comparison. Well deserved. danno_uk 23:29, 19 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Highest Point in Kent

I have re-created and expanded the article on Betsom's Hill, it was only when I had done some work on it that I noticed it was on your 'things to do' list. Curiously, when I looked at the Geography of Kent article, I saw that it declared that Ide Hill was the highest point - am I right in thinking this needs to be changed ? --Jokulhlaup (talk) 17:52, 1 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Looking at the OS map, Ide Hill is 216m rather than (the phonetically similar) 260m as claimed by the Geography article, but Ide Hill is the highest village/church in the county as opposed to highest point. Also worth noting that the OS map shows a 245m contour on both Toys Hill and Betsom's Hill, it seems to be customary when the high point is on the border to also mention the highest free-standing hill. Le Deluge (talk) 16:00, 2 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the reply Le Deluge, looking at this List of Kent Hills it shows Betsom's followed by Toys Hill and then Wrotham Hill, strictly as highest points. I will alter the Geography article to confirm the highest point, and put Ide hill as the highest village church - unless there are any better suggestions -- Jokulhlaup (talk) 17:42, 3 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Joyce Green

Does anybody know anything about Joyce Green, Kent. It once had a Edwardian fever hospital [1] and a First World War fighter airfield [2], but now seems to have been swallowed up by the town of Dartford. Is it still a distinct entity and is there enough for a small article or a paragraph in the Dartford page? Alansplodge (talk) 17:39, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Joyce Green should be able to sustain an article, as should the Joyce Green Hospital. The airfield could possibly sustain an article too. Mjroots (talk) 05:52, 16 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Joyce Green Hospital would be an interesting article but the rest of the area is now part of the 'Bridge' development. DavidAnstiss (talk) 10:46, 21 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Joyce Green on the 1940 OS map, and the current one. Mjroots (talk) 15:23, 21 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I can see Joyce Green in 1923 (note the 1924 Watling Street improvement), and the hospital in the 1950s. A number of hits for Joyce Green in the London Gazette. Perhaps Joyce Green Hospital would be an easier task to get sources, but the place definitely existed and so should an article. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 14:58, 8 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
@Ritchie333: Yes, an article on the JGH would be worth having. For some background to the formation of the hospital see HMS Atlas (1860), PS Castalia and HMS Endymion (1865). Mjroots (talk) 15:31, 8 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
And lo, the Joyce Green Hospital redlink became blue. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 15:55, 8 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Slade Green

River Darent separated the airfield at Joyce Green from the Thames Ammunition Works at Slade Green. Weapons were made on the western side, an air field operated on the eastern side, and I think some kind of early air-to-surface munition was tested in the river. One light railway served the secure munition works on the western side, and another light railway connected parts of Joyce Green hospital - were there any physical, political, or economic connections behind these industrial programmes? Another shared industry may have been paper mills along the banks of the River Darent.

Does the Slade Green article belong in both WP London and WP Kent?

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)[reply]

Expert attention

This is a notice about Category:Kent articles needing expert attention, which might be of interest to your WikiProject. It will take a while before the category is populated. Iceblock (talk) 03:28, 26 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Iceblock: - I've got this WP watchlisted. Post here if there's any update. Mjroots (talk) 13:06, 26 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Old maps and views of the South-East

As you might have seen in the Signpost last week, there's currently a drive to go through the million 19th century images released by the British Library last year, and identify all the maps, with a view to their being georeferenced by BL volunteers, and then uploaded to Commons early next year. After the first week, over eight thousand new maps have been identified, with 40% of the target books looked at -- see the status page for the latest figures, and more information.

A part that may specifically interest this project is

c:Commons:British Library/Mechanical Curator collection/Synoptic index/England - South East

which currently shows pink templated links for 309 Flickr book pages still to be looked at. (Though there are lots of other parts of England, and indeed of the world, still to be looked through as well).

Any help looking through these would be very much appreciated -- as well as the maps (and ground plans) for tagging, you may well also find other interesting or useful non-map views that may be worth considering or uploading for articles on Kent and elsewhere in the South-East. (If uploading, please use the ingestion template described here, which sets up some appropriate image templates and categories).

Thanks, Jheald (talk) 21:32, 8 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

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)[reply]

You are invited to participate in Wiki Loves Pride!

  • What? Wiki Loves Pride, a campaign to document and photograph LGBT culture and history, including pride events
  • When? June 2015
  • How can you help?
    1.) Create or improve LGBT-related articles and showcase the results of your work here
    2.) Upload photographs or other media related to LGBT culture and history, including pride events, and add images to relevant Wikipedia articles; feel free to create a subpage with a gallery of your images (see examples from last year)
    3.) Contribute to an LGBT-related task force at another Wikimedia project (Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons, Wikivoyage, etc.)

Or, view or update the current list of Tasks. This campaign is supported by the Wikimedia LGBT+ User Group, an officially recognized affiliate of the Wikimedia Foundation. Visit the group's page at Meta-Wiki for more information, or follow Wikimedia LGBT+ on Facebook. Remember, Wiki Loves Pride is about creating and improving LGBT-related content at Wikimedia projects, and content should have a neutral point of view. One does not need to identify as LGBT or any other gender or sexual minority to participate. This campaign is about adding accurate, reliable information to Wikipedia, plain and simple, and all are welcome!

If you have any questions, please leave a message on the campaign's main talk page.


Thanks, and happy editing!

User:Another Believer and User:OR drohowa

Hastings Line FAC2

I've re-nominated the Hastings Line article for FAC. It failed last time due to a lack of reviews, so I'd appreciate some support this time round please. Mjroots (talk) 12:02, 20 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Archaeologia Cantiana

The full set of Archaeologia Cantiana, the journal of Kent Archaeological Society, is now online: [3]. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:29, 22 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Pigsonthewing: Many thanks for that, will be very useful in researching and expanding Kent articles. Mjroots (talk) 20:14, 22 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 5

Newsletter • October 2015

Hello there! Happy to be writing this newsletter once more. This month:

We did it!

In July, we launched five pilot WikiProjects: WikiProjects Cannabis, Evolutionary Biology, Ghana, Hampshire, and Women's Health. We also use the new design, named "WPX UI," on WikiProject Women in Technology, Women in Red, WikiProject Occupational Safety and Health. We are currently looking for projects for the next round of testing. If you are interested, please sign up on the Pilots page.

Shortly after our launch we presented at Wikimania 2015. Our slides are on Wikimedia Commons.

Then after all that work, we went through the process of figuring out whether we accomplished our goal. We reached out to participants on the redesigned WikiProjects, and we asked them to complete a survey. (If you filled out your survey—thank you!) While there are still some issues with the WikiProject tools and the new design, there appears to be general satisfaction (at least among those who responded). The results of the survey and more are documented in our grant report filed with the Wikimedia Foundation.

The work continues!

There is more work that needs to be done, so we have applied for a renewal of our grant. Comments on the proposal are welcome. We would like to improve what we have already started on the English Wikipedia and to also expand to Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata. Why those? Because they are multilingual projects and because there needs to be better coordination across Wikimedia projects. More details are available in the renewal proposal.

How can the Wikimedia Foundation support WikiProjects?

The Wikimedia Developer Summit will be held in San Francisco in January 2016. The recently established Community Tech team at the Wikimedia Foundation is interested in investigating what technical support they can provide for WikiProjects, i.e., support beyond just templates and bots. I have plenty of opinions myself, but I want to hear what you think. The session is being planned on Phabricator, the Wikimedia bug tracker. If you are not familiar with Phabricator, you can log in with your Wikipedia username and password through the "Login or Register: MediaWiki" button on the login page. Your feedback can help make editing Wikipedia a better experience.


Until next time,

Harej (talk) 09:03, 26 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Request for comments

For info: Talk:Royal_Tunbridge_Wells#RFC --Malcolmxl5 (talk) 22:09, 5 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 6

Newsletter • January 2016

Hello there! Happy to be writing this newsletter once more. This month:

What comes next

Some good news: the Wikimedia Foundation has renewed WikiProject X. This means we can continue focusing on making WikiProjects better.

During our first round of work, we created a prototype WikiProject based on two ideas: (1) WikiProjects should clearly present things for people to do, and (2) The content of WikiProjects should be automated as much as possible. We launched pilots, and for the most part it works. But this approach will not work for the long term. While it makes certain aspects of running a WikiProject easier, it makes the maintenance aspects harder.

We are working on a major overhaul that will address these issues. New features will include:

  • Creating WikiProjects by simply filling out a form, choosing which reports you want to generate for your project. This will work with existing bots in addition to the Reports Bot reports. (Of course, you can also have sections curated by humans.)
  • One-click button to join a WikiProject, with optional notifications.
  • Be able to define your WikiProject's scope within the WikiProject itself by listing relevant pages and categories, eliminating the need to tag every talk page with a banner. (You will still be allowed to do that, of course. It just won't be required.)

The end goal is a collaboration tool that can be used by WikiProjects but also by any edit-a-thon or group of people that want to coordinate on improving articles. Though implemented as an extension, the underlying content will be wikitext, meaning that you can continue to use categories, templates, and other features as you normally would.

This will take a lot of work, and we are just getting started. What would you like to see? I invite you to discuss on our talk page.


Until next time,

Harej (talk) 02:53, 20 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

AfC submission

Could anyone have a look at Draft:University of Kent, Keynes Conferences? Thank you, FoCuS contribs; talk to me! 11:01, 17 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 7

Newsletter • February 2016

This month:

One database for Wikipedia requests

Development of the extension for setting up WikiProjects, as described in the last issue of this newsletter, is currently underway. No terribly exciting news on this front.

In the meantime, we are working on a prototype for a new service we hope to announce soon. The problem: there are requests scattered all across Wikipedia, including requests for new articles and requests for improvements to existing articles. We Wikipedians are very good at coming up with lists of things to do. But once we write these lists, where do they end up? How can we make them useful for all editors—even those who do not browse the missing articles lists, or the particular WikiProjects that have lists?

Introducing Wikipedia Requests, a new tool to centralize the various lists of requests around Wikipedia. Requests will be tagged by category and WikiProject, making it easier to find requests based on what your interests are. Accompanying this service will be a bot that will let you generate reports from this database on any wiki page, including WikiProjects. This means that once a request is filed centrally, it can syndicated all throughout Wikipedia, and once it is fulfilled, it will be marked as "complete" throughout Wikipedia. The idea for this service came about when I saw that it was easy to put together to-do lists based on database queries, but it was harder to do this for human-generated requests when those requests are scattered throughout the wiki, siloed throughout several pages. This should especially be useful for WikiProjects that have overlapping interests.

The newsletter this month is fairly brief; not a lot of news, just checking in to say that we are hard at work and hope to have more for you soon.

Until next time,

Harej (talk) 01:44, 24 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 8

Newsletter • March / April 2016

This month:

Transclude article requests anywhere on Wikipedia

In the last issue of the WikiProject X Newsletter, I discussed the upcoming Wikipedia Requests system: a central database for outstanding work on Wikipedia. I am pleased to announce Wikipedia Requests is live! Its purpose is to supplement automatically generated lists, such as those from SuggestBot, Reports bot, or Wikidata. It is currently being demonstrated on WikiProject Occupational Safety and Health (which I work on as part of my NIOSH duties) and WikiProject Women scientists.

Adding a request is as simple as filling out a form. Just go to the Add form to add your request. Adding sources will help ensure that your request is fulfilled more quickly. And when a request is fulfilled, simply click "mark as complete" and it will be removed from all the lists it's on. All at the click of a button! (If anyone is concerned, all actions are logged.)

With this new service is a template to transclude these requests: {{Wikipedia Requests}}. It's simple to use: add the template to a page, specifying article=, category=, or wikiproject=, and the list will be transcluded. For example, for requests having to do with all living people, just do {{Wikipedia Requests|category=Living people}}. Use these lists on WikiProjects but also for edit-a-thons where you want a convenient list of things to do on hand. Give it a shot!

Help us build our list!

The value of Wikipedia Requests comes from being a centralized database. The long work to migrating individual lists into this combined list is slowly underway. As of writing, we have 883 open tasks logged in Wikipedia Requests. We need your help building this list.

If you know of a list of missing articles, or of outstanding tasks for existing articles, that you would like to migrate to this new system, head on over to Wikipedia:Wikipedia Requests#Transition project and help out. Doing this will help put your list in front of more eyes—more than just your own WikiProject.

An open database means new tools

WikiProject X maintains a database that associates article talk pages (and draft talk pages) with WikiProjects. This database powers many of the reports that Reports bot generates. However, until very recently, this database was not made available to others who might find its data useful. It's only common sense to open up the database and let others build tools with it.

And indeed: Citation Hunt, the game to add citations to Wikipedia, now lets you filter by WikiProject, using the data from our database.

Are you a tool developer interested in using this? Here are some details: the database resides on Tool Labs with the name s52475__wpx_p. The table that associates WikiProjects with articles and drafts is called projectindex. Pages are stored by talk page title but in the future this should change. Have fun!

On the horizon
  • The work on the CollaborationKit extension continues. The extension will initially focus on reducing template and Lua bloat on WikiProjects (especially our WPX UI demonstration projects), and will from there create custom interfaces for creating and maintaining WikiProjects.
  • The WikiCite meeting will be in Berlin in May. The goal of the meeting is to figure out how to build a bibliographic database for use on the Wikimedia projects. This fits in quite nicely with WikiProject X's work: we want to make it easier for people to find things to work on, and with a powerful, open bibliographic database, we can build recommendations for sources. This feature was requested by the Wikipedia Library back in September, and this meeting is a major next step. We look forward to seeing what comes out of this meeting.


Until next time,

Harej (talk) 01:29, 20 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Request for comments

I need help in removing flags on this page which ive put in quite a bit of effort into. Please help! Talk:Iden Green - see also User talk:RA0808

thanks!

VixenNo9No9 (talk) 19:43, 2 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 9

Newsletter • May / June 2016

Check out this month's issue of the WikiProject X newsletter, featuring the first screenshot of our new CollaborationKit software!

Harej (talk) 00:23, 25 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

oastandhopkilnhistory

please see my message to Melcous and also picture of Hadlow in 19th Century section of my website.

Patrick Grattan Patrick@oastandhopkilnhistory.com — Preceding unsigned comment added by 146.198.143.223 (talk) 15:16, 26 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

This is about Oastandhopkilnhistory adding a link to his website to the oast house article. I'm willing to work with this new editor with the aim of improving Wikipedia and have offered to assist with this. Melcous is also aware of this. Mjroots (talk) 17:49, 26 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@ Mjroots I see you live in Hadlow which is rich in oasts and maltkilns, and are an enthusiast for windmills. I appreciate that Wikipedia is not for promoting other peoples sites etc, but it is for giving sources and relevant organisations at the end of entries. So it seems to me relevant to add oastandhopkilnhistory.com to the sources list at the end of the feature on oasts and also Kentlife. Look forward to eharing from you and answering any questions you may have.

Patrick Grattan — Preceding unsigned comment added by 146.198.143.223 (talk) 09:21, 28 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Have you had a chance to consider whether Oastandhopkilnhistory could provide added value to the wiki article on oasts? PatrickOastandhopkilnhistory (talk) 17:06, 10 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Oastandhopkilnhistory: I've added a link to your website to the oast house article. As it was research when you were at university I consider that it is of sufficient quality to justify inclusion. I would encourage you to follow the suggestion I posted on your talk page and expand the oast and hopper hut articles from book sources you have. Mjroots (talk) 09:27, 12 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. I have also done some editing to the Introduction para on oasts. I take the point about hopper huts. That will involve quite a bit of research. Confess that I have not found out how ot get to my talk page to pick up your other suggestion. Patrick146.198.143.223 (talk) 08:32, 13 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@146.198.143.223: You get to your talk page by logging in on your Oastandhopkilnhistory account (tick the "keep me logged in" box) and the by the tab at top of page marked "talk". You can also reach it by clicking on the blue link marked talk by your signature above. Mjroots (talk) 17:03, 16 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]