Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Film/Coordinators

Guidelines

• Watchlist WT:FILM and WT:FILMC to keep up discussions at both and check page histories occasionally to see which discussions had activity recently
• Include "Agenda:" in a discussion heading if it relates to the coordinators' agenda
• When making a proposal, craft the proposal into a tangible product (e.g., rough draft of proposed re-wording, sandboxed template) to present for further input and refinement
• If a discussion needs further input, nudge uninvolved coordinators with a talk page message to participate
• If you have no strong opinion about proposed tasks in accomplishing an agenda objective, say so to let other coordinators know you have read the discussion and move to finalize consensus

Discussion

Film cleanup

Hi all. Now the elections are done, I think it's time to agree on what can be cleaned up on each article, hopefully using a bot to do all the busywork. Off the top of my head:

• Infobox
  • Do all the minor changes (Infobox Film to Infobox film, for example)
  • Delink the language parameters
  • Country cleanup (PC78 - is the coding ready to use so adding Spain instead of {{Film Spain}} will add Category:Spanish films to the the article?
  • Adding the film date template to all articles

• Categories and stubs
  • Add all three primary cats to articles (Year, Language, Country)
  • Add the genre by decade, eg instead of Category:Drama films, more precise of Category:1990s drama films
  • Add categories from existing stub tags. Many articles have a decade-genre specific stub tag, but lack that category.

• Misc
  • Remove the cinema of x from all film articles
  • Cleanup of other minor tags (correct case on the IMDB link in the external links, for example)

Those are the things I can think of from the top of my head. Can we get a definitive list together over the next couple of weeks to get things moving? Thanks! Lugnuts (talk) 08:16, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

I would add:

• making sure every title is italicized, whether using {{Italic title}} or display title
• using translation and transliteration templates in the lede sentence (like {{lang-fr}} and {{translit}})
• removing flags, imdb/allmovie parameters from the infobox
• providing just the worldwide gross in the infobox when that and others are provided.
• remove image_size parameter unless necessary.

We should make sure that we can agree on the formatting of each of these and if any controversial, take them to the wider public. BOVINEBOY2008 08:38, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

Lugnuts:

• I agree that a bot would be useful to address these tasks. I've thought of "CinemaBot" in my head before. :) We'll have to explore that. For fixing the "Infobox Film" instances, would that be for any key organizational purpose? The name works otherwise, obviously, so I'm wondering what makes this one of the priorities.
• As for the country field, I recall a discussion to keep {{Film US}} instead of just writing "United States", automatically categorizing it as an American film. (Like if English is the only language in the language field and written plainly as such, the film is categorized as an English-language film.) Would it be possible to have coding for country fields with single and common values, such as United States (not to mention USA, United States of America, etc.) and Spain and France? We can use a template like {{Film US}} to override where multiple countries are listed, unless I'm forgetting a reason we're using the template instead of plain writing even in single-country instances.
• Is there any way to visualize the use of the film date templates? I saw someone defend the use of microformat by showing on Google Maps how all the articles for places with coordinates pop up, and it really impressed me. Something similar with a calendar might help demonstrate the film date templates' use and encourage continued use.
• For categories, do we need to encourage use of the non-staple categories, basically those here? Like is there a way to search categories for certain keywords? For example, to do a category "films" search for "Los Angeles" to find categories like "set in Los Angeles" and "filmed in Los Angeles" and maybe others. I'm looking at Help:Searching but am not seeing this kind of search capability.

Bovineboy2008

• Does it seem like we are on our way with italic titles? We have a pending request at Template talk:Infobox film, and I started some guidance at MOS:FILM#Article italics (though some steps like the infobox parameter are not available yet).
• Regarding worldwide gross, are there any exceptions to be had? For example, earlier films may not have the most accurate measurements either in the U.S. and Canada or outside of them.
• I think removal of "image_size" should be low-priority. Its presence only adds bits of information to an article. Let's try to sort tasks by having first the ones that would add value to film articles. Removals like old IMDb parameters should be secondary as they don't have a real detrimental effect on the articles.

All,

• Let's group tasks accordingly. It looks like we have a lot of infobox-related tasks here, and we should group these. In that group, let's try to implement any coding like for the country field or for forcing italics so when we go out there, we can revise parameters in each article in one fell swoop. (Of course, automating tasks via bot would be helpful, too.) It looks like categories could be another group with the precise mashups like "1990s drama films". Would it be useful to have a checklist to follow? I would personally benefit from one to remember what can be added. Erik (talk | contribs) 14:29, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

Even if some of these infobox edits aren't really a priority, I believe a bot can fix all/most of them in a single edit, so we don't really have to worry about being picky on what tasks we'd like a bot to cover. I would be interested in seeing a bot actually add an infobox to the 5,000+ articles lacking one, even if it only includes a few basic parameters. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 01:38, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

I am a programmer that would be willing to work on a bot except I have no idea how that works. Is there information somewhere I can read to get started? I think having a film-bot would be extremely useful. --Peppage^tlk 13:05, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

WP:BOT looks like a good start. I'll read up about it, too. I'm no programmer, but it will be helpful to understand what we could do with one for WikiProject Films. It may be worth looking at other WikiProjects to see if they have any project-specific bots since most bots appear to be indiscriminate in their fixes. Erik (talk | contribs) 13:30, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

WP:BOT is quite straightforward - it was quite simple to setup a request to tag the talkpages with the American-task-force banners not too long ago. Lugnuts (talk) 13:51, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I think it would be much easier to request a bot than to code it ourself. A bot like the one we have planned is not easy to write. This bot we are planning will be an automatic bot, running through all 70,000 of our articles without any human interaction. As such all of its edits must be able to be done without the need for a human to check the changes. Only yes or no, no maybes. Some of the things in the above list I think this bot would not be able to do — adding "Films set in XXXX" and "Films shot in XXXX" categories (requires a human to check, I could do this with AWB but it would have to wait several months); providing just the worldwide gross in the infobox when that and others are provided (would be hard for the bot to detect which is worldwide and which is the others since there isn't any set formatting); making sure every title is italicized (bot won't be able to tell whether the article title is already italicized).

Regarding minor edits like changing "Infobox Film" to "Infobox film", they are what I call "since I'm here" edits. You wouldn't go around doing that alone but if you are making more significant changes to the article you might as well tidy up the code while you're at it. So there is no need to prioritise these changes, the bot will do everything on this list in one edit.

Other fixes I can think off are:

• Header fixes (eg. "Home Media" → "Home media", "The plot" → "Plot")
• Fix incorrectly named parameters in Infobox film (eg. director_of_photography → cinematography, editor → editing)
• Removed non-existent parameters from the infobox (eg. rating, awards, imdb_rating, eproducer etc.)
• Removed unused and unlikely to be used parameters from the infobox (ie. image size, narrator, preceded by, followed by)
• "min"/"mins"/"min." → "minutes" in the infobox
• Common typos (eg. "[[Blu-Ray Disc]]" → "[[Blu-ray Disc]]")

Kollision (talk) 16:24, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

Using a bot to handle all/most of these tasks shouldn't be too difficult. We have bots that can create articles, so adding templates, populating them, and making other changes should be straightforward. We either need to look to an existing bot and see if the existing changes it makes can be altered for our project or if we need to put a request in for an experienced bot-writer to further develop one for us. Once a bot is created, do we just need one person to run it (does it necessarily have to be the creator or can anyone use it)? I know there are some limitations on the duration and number of edits, but if its transferable, we can maybe shift it from coordinator to coordinator (or other willing members) to allow it to keep running and ensure it is working correctly. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 06:13, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Bots can requested at Wikipedia:Bot requests. Normally, the creator of the bot will run it. They will probably run it once through all of our articles, then if it needs to be updated or run again we just ask them to do so. - Kollision (talk) 07:13, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

The limitations do slow it down but it does have the ability to edit without stopping. Most of the smaller edits are done using regex. I also looked at Pywikipediabot and using that framework it seems much easier to create a bot, it already has scripts written that can be edited for the project. There is also information on using the framework. I think a majority of what is needed it reasonably easy and figuring out the other stuff would be interesting. --Peppage^tlk 13:42, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

I created Wikipedia:WikiProject Films/Bot requests to list the repetitive and mundane tasks that a bot could complete for us. I used the input so far to create two sections: "Infobox" and "Article body". If you can think of anything noncontroversial to add, go ahead, Kollision, does this help provide information for bot use? Or does this need to be replicated somewhere specific?

I added "Add missing parameters" because I think there are a lot of articles out there with older infoboxes. We should obviously include staple ones like "director" and "released". I was wondering, should we add "alt" as well? We don't use this much, but we should, and it would help to proliferate it everywhere. Erik (talk | contribs) 13:51, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

It would be a good idea to add the alt parameter to all of the articles to hopefully encourage editors to add it. Maybe a hidden comment pointing to alt instructions would be helpful too. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 00:25, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

Erik: The list is fine for a start. Whether it is enough will depend on the bot coder and their knowledge of how film articles, templates and categories work. Also, a bot probably won't be able to do the Cast table-to-list conversion. - Kollision (talk) 13:26, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Disagree on the removal of the narrator parameter - it's used in most documentary film articles and in other films too. Lugnuts (talk) 14:19, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

The suggestion is to remove it where it is not being used. For example, March of the Penguins will be untouched. What about a way to remove it when it's empty and where the word "documentary" is not detected anywhere in the article? (If that's even possible.) Erik (talk | contribs) 14:24, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

What's going on with Template:Unbulleted list? Is this something that needs to be added to the infoboxes and if so, why? Mike Allen 18:21, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

I think the problems with this template were resolved, but I have yet to see a proper explanation as to why this is preferable to using line breaks. PC78 (talk) 15:48, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

Per Kollision, I removed the task to convert cast tables into cast lists due to the improbability of being able to accomplish this. I also added a list of parameters for "Add missing parameters that ought to be used", sticking with basics. However, I also included "alt=" so accessibility could be promoted. Are there any more tasks we could add? I'd like to kick this off soon. Erik (talk | contribs) 21:33, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Would it make sense to others if TBA/TBC/TBD were removed from parameters in the infobox. They seem useless to me. BOVINEBOY2008 03:52, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

I haven't minded them for the "released" parameter; some productions take place without a release date to be declared. Films in production are largely likely to come out, though, so there may be stragglers when a real value should be included. I'm fine with removing the TB* values. Erik (talk | contribs) 13:39, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

I added a "Talk pages" section so all mainspace talk pages could have the same banner name. This way, we coordinators and editors can use this to keep up with all discussions under the banner. There is a requested move to move WikiProject Films to WikiProject Film seen here, so if that concludes with a successful rename, we can complete the on-hold banner discussion. Erik (talk | contribs) 17:23, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

I don't know if having the bot change the name of the banner template on talk pages is such a good idea. Performing an edit solely to "fix" a link which is not broken and has no visual impact is usually discouraged. Maybe we could hold this off until we have some more important talk page changes to do as well. As for the Recent changes thing, I think using a category is better. - Kollision (talk) 11:20, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Taking the long view

Hello, everyone! It has been a long time since we coordinators have gathered here. I hope everyone is well, and I would like to restart discussion. First, to update everybody about the bot requests, I believe that Peppage (talk · contribs) is working on the bot. The discussion can be seen here. Feel free to review the bot requests; they should be agreeable and help standardize articles.

I would like to talk about taking the long view. I think that we have a lot of structure and a lot of guidelines in place for articles related to film. We are usually able to point to a set of guidelines or to a place for discussion. On top of all this, I think we should discuss ways to increase content contribution. I do not think WikiProject Film has had a successful history with collaboration, and perhaps we can talk about why that's the case. It may have to do with the number of editors, which brings me to my next point—outreach. If you have reviewed recent changes to film articles and their talk pages, we will see a lot of activity. I created User:Erik/Outreach for myself to follow the activity and to extend invitations to editors who appear to make good edits and have an interest in film. I was thinking that perhaps we could set up a quick way for established editors to engage in outreach when monitoring their watchlist or even the recent changes. Not everyone will join, but I think extending invitations will create opportunities for the community and potentially lead to more. More editors in the community might improve the likelihood of collaboration. In summary, I suggest making the outreach department a focal point and determining how we could reach out to others with ease.

In addition to outreach, I would like to explore the prospect of having school and university projects related to film. I'm not familiar with what classes about film have as coursework, but I was thinking that an ideal project could help improve an article about a film genre or something similarly broad. Perhaps one of the Core-class topics. What we could do here is find out what universities have strong film studies programs and contact their professors to see what they would be willing to consider. I'd like to find out what successful projects are relatively close to film to find out the approach we can take to providing structure.

Finally, I'd like to talk about images. There has been an idea for some time to find a way to get film images freely licensed. Nehrams2020 mentioned it recently to me: "Ideally, I'd like to move away from films for a while to try and contact various museums and maybe film studios for batch images of various topics. I've been putting it off, but would like to try my luck and see what additional images I can help secure under free licenses." Certainly there are archives of film images out there, and it would be great if we could get such archives freely licensed. It would be a boon to film articles on Wikipedia. In addition, we should explore how we can request freely licensed images from specific productions. For example, Dustbin Baby (film) particularly impressed me since its three film images are freely licensed. It may help to have instructions about how to do that, especially for productions that are not as major and are more accessible (like via blog or Facebook).

I'm setting up three sub-sections below so we can have different threads. Please share your thoughts! If you can, suggest a specific structure or a specific idea, and we can build on it. Erik (talk | contribs) 17:53, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Outreach

This is definitely an area that would be great to expand. We've made efforts in the past, but definitely could use more concentrated efforts in bringing in new members. For those that join, we (along with the rest of Wikipedia) need to help push them along to join in on the discussions, learn about the guidelines, and assist in article writing. Maybe having a type of learning "film school" would be helpful (I believe WP:MILHIST has an established one) for detailing article fundamentals. This would definitely take a while to develop, but could assist in retaining members and encouraging new editors to join the project. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 03:06, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

I like the idea about article fundamentals. On a high level, I've seen some well-formatted basic outlines. I've wondered if our guidelines are a bit much for a newcomer to take in. It may help to have a kind of "So you want to write a film article" page and explain what an editor can do. Erik (talk | contribs) 13:58, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Right, the long single page on the guidelines is great for referencing, but if you want to read them straight through it becomes quite daunting I'm sure. Breaking up instructions by main areas and the steps it takes to really develop an article (researching and gathering sources, developing a layout, expanding, cleanup, etc.) could really help to develop editors (especially if we want to encourage university projects). I don't think it's going to work for universities if we just direct them to our guidelines (which are still important), but need to have a well-developed framework that provides a kind of broad step-by-step process (students like those for assignments). --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 00:27, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

University projects

I've thought about this in the past, and I think I have some notes/ideas I recorded a while back floating around somewhere. We could probably pull from the university project page the basics and then tailor it for WP:FILM. We would need to work to develop a type of form letter for approaching these professors with maybe a PowerPoint that could provide a basic overview of Wikipedia and WP:FILM. In addition, we're going to need stable volunteers willing to assist any student editors when the class starts. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 03:06, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Images

• I was able (with the much appreciated help from Moonriddengirl!) get a freely licensed image from the documentary I Am Comic of Roseanne Barr. I found the image on Flickr, I contacted the uploader and didn't know it was a film distributor. The companies publicity coordinator emailed me back. I explained the Creative Commons details, and she got permission from the director, Jordan Brady. Although there was a misunderstanding with this guideline on Commons (the wording was confusing); she thought if they released that image per CC-BY-SA, that the whole film would have to be released per that license. I knew that wasn't so, since it had been successfully done with Dustbin Baby. After that was taken care of, she uploaded the image her self to Commons. The whole process took two weeks, back and forth emails. I don't think we would have any luck trying to do this with.. say Universal, Paramount, Disney, etc. :P —Mike Allen 22:43, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

  Do we have a boilerplate template that we can use for contacting people? I know that there are such templates for advising websites not to use Wikipedia's content without the proper attribution. Perhaps we can put together one for requesting free licenses, pointing to all the relevant web pages, and making sure there's no confusion about what is being released. Erik (talk | contribs) 14:12, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

• I haven't been able to secure any images of actual films (mostly just the actors and crew, although I've had some film sets). I think it may be difficult to convince the major studios to let us use images, but not impossible. Wikipedia's not just some blog, it's reaching millions a month, so that may be helpful in convincing them that letting us use just a few images can help to improve the articles that are likely providing free advertising for their upcoming films and maybe DVD sales/rentals. We can point out that, although many articles are not of the greatest quality, we have excellent FAs to refer them to that could be reinforced with actual film images. The non-free aspect hurts our potential for further growth, and convincing them to help add images of pre-production and a screenshot or two I think would help both parties. Maybe a letter fine-tuned by multiple editors could assist in reaching out to the studios. Finding out the right person to ask and how many pictures to ask for is the main questions. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 03:06, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

  I think we should work our way up to the major studios, and so we should determine how we do that. The best start I've seen are images from Comic Con, especially to show the main cast together. Nehrams, I know you contributed some of these images, but certainly not all? It seems like a trend to continue encouraging, especially when the images are related to blockbuster films. I would also like to know more about photo archives of films. How does copyright work with that kind of ownership? Like how did the archives come into possession of the copyrights for such photos? In addition, what about shots of people at film premieres? It would be nice to show a picture of someone at the premiere of a 1980s film instead of showing a 2000s photo of the person in the 1980s film's article. Erik (talk | contribs) 14:12, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

  For the Comic-Con images, I took some of the images when I went, but the majority were from other authors. Securing press passes for editors would be helpful in getting pictures from premieres and conventions such as this. I like to go to the convention, but it sells out pretty quick. GageSkidmore went to the event and took multiple high-quality images (I believe he had a press pass, but not sure). For photo archives it depends on the institution and how they release them. Images could be purchased or donated, and there are still limitations with the 70+ years and other requirements. I've found some for other topics that release the images with no problems while others like to hold onto the image copyrights to sell them for books and websites. Even if these archives keep them copyrighted, we can ask for a number of images or images of smaller sizes so that they can still sell the larger sizes and not hurt their market (while also giving them free advertising and us better images). Many studios may have images just laying around in storage, and might not have any problems with letting us use the images. I've learned that it never hurts to ask for images from various groups/individuals, because I've been surprised many times. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 00:27, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Other

I've been working on a side project to help encourage further film GA growth. Looking through GAN, we have some GANs in excellent shape and others that have many issues that should have been resolved prior to nominating. I did a brief mockup in my sandbox (and page 2) of a possible department/collaboration that could work to pinpoint the articles that could be prepared for nominating at GAN. Articles would be checked for a few criteria including images, a developed lead, citations, a limited plot, etc. Reviewers could point out where articles need to be improved first and then once the criteria are completed, two reviewers could indicate they think a GA is ready. This could assist in ensuring quicker reviews as many issues would be resolved prior to the nomination. I have some introduction on how the collaboration could be set up, but it's currently on my other computer, so I'll detail that tomorrow. This could be an interesting collaboration among established and newer editors while further expanding our number of GAs. For my sandbox I just selected a few current B-class articles that have potential to reach GA and left some mock comments. This could encourage more editors to take on the GAs who may not know how to fully bring an article up to that level. Like I said, more details will be later (other projects came up), but I'm interested to hear if this could work. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 03:06, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Okay, I have an intro further explaining how this cloud work along with other areas that would need input before starting. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 00:27, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

CinemaBot

It looks like CinemaBot (talk · contribs) (set up by Peppage (talk · contribs)) received approval for a trial of 100 50 articles: Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/CinemaBot‎ (see end). Stay tuned! Erik (talk | contribs) 20:04, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

Looks like a step in the right direction. Lugnuts (talk) 14:20, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

The bot has now edited its 50 pages, you can check the contributions and make comments on the BRFA. I hope some part of this passes or it can be worked on so it can pass. I put some effort into it and I think it would be really nice to have. --Peppage^tlk 17:54, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

Glad to see this finally in the trial phase. I reviewed 20 articles or so, and didn't see any issues. I see in the bot request that the section header of "Awards" will change to "Accolades". Is there also a parameter for changing "Awards and nominations" if the bot encounters that wording? --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 17:54, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

Yes, can't see anything too amiss with those edits. Are the primary cats (year, country, language) being added if they are missing? Lugnuts (talk) 08:15, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

2011 election

We are past due for an election since the last one was September 2010. The term is for a year, so we should kick off a new election ASAP. I would recommend starting the new election by the beginning of October and have it run for two weeks. The election page should be started at Wikipedia:WikiProject Films/Coordinators/Election 7 and use the same format as the previous election page. I recommend announcing the election in the October 2011 newsletter to be distributed in a few days. Erik (talk | contribs) 13:57, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

Actually, we need a two-week leeway for the nominations process. How about we kick off the nominations process on October 1, then have the election from October 15 to October 29? I went ahead and created the election page. Erik (talk | contribs) 14:13, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

Sounds good, Erik. BOVINEBOY2008 10:31, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

Need for new lead coordinator

Erik (talk · contribs) has been inactive for nearly 5 months now. Girolamo is not around either. Any new lead coordinator for the project?--Dwaipayan (talk) 18:23, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

We don't need any co-ordinators, full stop. Lugnuts (talk) 08:13, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

So no reply from ANY of the co-ordinators on this....? Lugnuts (talk) 13:25, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

Dwaipayan, good point. I have noticed the inactivity of both Erik (talk · contribs) and Bovineboy2008 (talk · contribs). Pity really, they were useful as people who could take up informal reviews of articles. I think we may need to have a new co-ordinator election sooner than the stipulated 12-month deadline. ~*~AnkitBhatt~*~ 16:41, 19 April 2012 (UTC)