Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Philately

	Philately portal This page is within the scope of WikiProject Philately, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of philately and stamp collecting on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.PhilatelyWikipedia:WikiProject PhilatelyTemplate:WikiProject PhilatelyPhilately articles
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Archives

This page has archives. Sections older than 60 days may be automatically archived by when more than 3 sections are present.

Articles needing images

Category:Wikipedia requested images of philately is the new holding place for philatelic missing image articles. Such missing images are tagged in a field of our project assessment banner. I've uploaded around a dozen mainly non-free logos, but there are 100+ mainly for people, so any help will be appreciate. Remember that, before uploading, one should wait at least six months after their death and must make reasonable efforts to find freely licenced images before simply uploading a non-free one to this wiki. Don't forget to change the image-needed box in our banner on the talk page to no. Good luck. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ww2censor (talk • contribs) 15:49, 7 October 2018

User script to detect unreliable sources

I have (with the help of others) made a small user script to detect and highlight various links to unreliable sources and predatory journals. Some of you may already be familiar with it, given it is currently the 39th most imported script on Wikipedia. The idea is that it takes something like

John Smith "Article of things" Deprecated.com. Accessed 2020-02-14. (John Smith "[https://www.deprecated.com/article Article of things]" ''Deprecated.com''. Accessed 2020-02-14.)

and turns it into something like

John Smith "Article of things" Deprecated.com. Accessed 2020-02-14.

It will work on a variety of links, including those from {{cite web}}, {{cite journal}} and {{doi}}.

The script is mostly based on WP:RSPSOURCES, WP:NPPSG and WP:CITEWATCH and a good dose of common sense. I'm always expanding coverage and tweaking the script's logic, so general feedback and suggestions to expand coverage to other unreliable sources are always welcomed.

Do note that this is not a script to be mindlessly used, and several caveats apply. Details and instructions are available at User:Headbomb/unreliable. Questions, comments and requests can be made at User talk:Headbomb/unreliable.

- Headbomb {t · c · p · b}

This is a one time notice and can't be unsubscribed from. Delivered by: MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:02, 29 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Standards for lists of people on stamps

So we have a developing situation where several per-country lists of people on stamps, such as List of people on the postage stamps of Vanuatu are proposed to be deleted, because they are non-notable, poorly-referenced, etc. At least one of the comments suggested that all of the lists might be intrinsically non-notable, which come as a surprise to the many people who've worked on, for instance, List of people on the postage stamps of the United States. My first reflex is to say that the deletions are wikilawering run amuck - the lists are per-country because the original list was gigantic, and splitting them up was the reasonable solution, and it seems biased to assert that the US stamp program is somehow "more important" than those of Vanuatu, Haiti, etc. But I suppose it's possible to develop some kind of neutral standard for which lists are allowed to stay, and which can never acceptable for Wikipedia, and so I'm posting here to collect people's thoughts on what the rule should be. Stan (talk) 14:47, 11 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I think it doesn't matter which country it is at all, but depends on the quality of the individual list. It shouldn't be just a list of names whithout further information - you could just use categories for that - and it should be somewhat complete. --Lupe (talk) 02:26, 4 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Merger proposal

An article of interest to the project - Dogsled mail — has been proposed for merging with Mail delivery by animal. Project members are invited to participate at the Talk:Dogsled mail--Annwfwn (talk) 01:28, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I have gone ahead and merged it. CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 01:49, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Several lists nominated for deletion

Several lists of people on postage stamps in [various countries] are up for deletion. See Wikipedia:WikiProject_Deletion_sorting/Lists_of_people. It looks like some of the pages aren't tagged with this WikiProject's banner, but would be of interest. Ah, I see there's a more specific section about this above. Keeping this notification, however, as others have been nominated since then. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 15:41, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I am quite disturbed by these nominations. The underlying argument from the contributors most active with deletion proposals seem to be that stamps are irrelevant trivia. Bw --Orland (talk) 16:01, 5 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed, one wonders how List of Pokémon Trading Card Game sets is not trivia... :-) But the debating illustrates a practical problem - how does one justify a list in such a way that future skeptics don't try to take aim at it? When Eclecticology and I and others first worked on these lists in the early days, notability seemed so obvious it didn't need to be said. If it now does need to be said, how does one say it? In thumbing through the featured lists, I came across List of people on United States banknotes, and since the banknote design process is 90% identical to the stamp process, it seems worth studying that list and its background more closely. Stan (talk) 20:39, 5 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I've seen a few of these discussions at Articles for Discussion. I have a lot of sympathy for the editors who created these, due to the reasonable assumption that the topic is notable. There is presumably some topics where notability is obvious: List of Countries, List of Chemical Elements and while this is less clear, the assumption was reasonable. Also it seems that a small number of editors are now rushing to libraries to find offline sources, during a pandemic, with a 7 days window, for maybe 100+ deletion nominations.

Would a fairer approach be to have a wider discussion if, in general, List of people on postage stamps is a notable thing? I don't have the experience to know what that forum would be. Maybe WP:RFC, maybe a topic at WT:N? - more experienced editors might know better. I am neutral on issues of philately but the status quo seems to be rushing something bigger than the average article. CT55555 (talk) 19:12, 8 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know if a wider discussion would go much differently. I suspect there is a strong age correlation; people over 50 remember having to think about how to get stamps, deciding which types to use, reading announcements in the newspaper, having bar arguments about whether so-and-so was on a stamp, etc, and so for them the value of a list seems intuitively obvious. Without that personal history, it seems like more of a random topic. Plus, there have been stamps issued for trivial reasons, especially by certain countries in recent years, and even the philatelic experts are unsure how to handle them (some catalogues list them, and some don't). So I think a workable rule is going to need some background research - on my agenda, but has to compete with other activities. :-) Stan (talk) 13:25, 9 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I share your concern. Reading between the lines, I got the impression that you could prove it is a notable subject by the books you mentioned somewhere and if there was a centralised discussion on this, you might not need to fight 75 arguments, just one central one. I suppose deleted articles could be brought back, but I saw advantages if this could interrupt the widespread deletion proposals. CT55555 (talk) 14:05, 9 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The American Topical Association doesn't seem to have any generic "people on stamps" publications, but they do have a 5-volume series of women on stamps worldwide, so that would be a solid source for lists of women on stamps for each country, and many of those appearances have interesting backstories too. Stan (talk) 14:01, 10 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I guess the closest thing to a general discussion about these is the bulk nomination at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Lists of people on the postage stamps of countries (A-B). In my latest comment on that page, I indicated that some country-specific philatelic literature does include lists of people on stamps. Perhaps we should limit the discussion of all this to the bulk nomination page to have everything in one place? Xwejnusgozo (talk) 01:22, 10 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

2nd AfD for List of people on the postage stamps of the Faroe Islands

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of people on the postage stamps of the Faroe Islands (2nd nomination) may be of interest. PamD 14:24, 9 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]