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The Transhumanist 21:04, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Progress report: Country outlines

Development has been slow but continuous:

Penubag has done a fantastic job on the images for the awards we'll be using for our project's collaborations and contests. We now have 3 awards: a medal, a trophy, and a race ribbon. They all look tight. The trophy needs a small adjustment, but other than that, all 3 awards are complete and ready to use.

Spartaz has warned us of (threatened to take) G4 (speedy delete) action if we run a competition that resembles the previously deleted Awards Center page. So whatever we do, any contests we run must differ substantially from the methods used there.

One type of competition I've been exploring is edit racing. I'm in the process of working the bugs out of this concept - the first race didn't work as expected - you see, because we only had an award for first place, the opponent didn't think it worthwhile to continue once it was clear who the winner would be. And since editors are in different time zones and usually need to start the race at different times, we need to base winning on personal start times - he who completes his assigned edits in the least time (rather than first), wins. And last but not least is quality control. What good is winning if your edits are ripe with errors? So I'll be exploring possibilities such as using a referee (whoever is overseeing a particular race), having participants watching each other for errors to knock them back, etc. I'm not sure yet.

Rich Farmbrough has been applying his bot expertise to filling in blanks in the country outlines (the population and area entries). I'm amazed at the number of edits he pumps out each day on a myriad of projects - ours makes up but a small time slice of his activity, and yet he has saved us many hours of manual work. Perhaps we should look into how he gets so much done.  :)

Zlerman has chosen to work on one outline at a time, and is taking on Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. He also has been keen on noticing and reporting design issues pertaining to the whole set of country outlines. Keep up the good work!

Highfields has been filling in the names of capitals, and is our first race winner. Check out the award on his user pages.

As you probably know, this project has expanded to include working on any and all sets of pages that are linked to from the country outlines. Once the set of country outlines go live (in article space), traffic will likely increase for all the links included on them. The quality and usefulness of those pages will reflect heavily on the country outlines (the outlines, which are essentially lists of links, are only as good as the links they present), and therefore we've branched out to solve the biggest problems with those as well. So far, we've taken on:

  • The creation of disambiguation pages for country adjectivals ("German", "French", "Taiwanese", etc. About half done.)
  • The clean-up of the CIA World Factbook statistics on the "demographics of" country pages. We've been renaming those sections to provide a key string that AWB can use for targetting (for skipping and filtering). Once that's done, we'll be able to break the clean-up down into simple AWB search/replace tasks, because we'll be able to target just those pages that include the CIA stuff.
  • Renaming the "Cuisine of" articles to their adjectival forms ("Chinese cuisine", "Italian cuisine", etc.)

Blackadam2 and Thehelpfulone have been helping out with the "demographics of" pages mentioned above.

And we have a couple speed addicts (addicted to wiki-velocity, not drugs)...

Both Robert Skyhawk and Thehelpfulone prefer (and excel at) simple AWB search/replaces. Robert hasn't actually joined our team yet, but he has been helping out quite a bit from the sidelines (via the WP:AWB/Tasks page. Unfortunately, there has recently been a non-AWB chore that has been holding things up on the AWB front - an edit to all the the headings which had to be reverted before too many new edits were made, because any new edits would make the reversion more difficult. The headings have been restored, so now the way is clear for AWB operations, and there are many search/replace tasks in the queue. AWB assignments have started again!

There's a similar bottleneck on the "Demographics of" pages (the "keying" mentioned above), but that's almost cleared too.  :)

With my internet access somewhat crippled, I've been finding it difficult to keep up with you guys. However, I expect to be accessing a Linky-capable workstation on a faster server (I'm on it right now, as you can probably tell from my contributions list for today), and so I should really pick up speed. Feels goooooood.  :)

Recruiting has been a bit slow (but steady), due in part to my crippled access, and because we've been waiting for the images for the awards to be completed. I expect the team to grow more rapidly as the bottlenecks are removed.

Well that's what's been happenin', and here's what's in the pipeline...

I'm about to begin work on a set of lists that corresponds to all the standard links on the country outlines, and these will be presented on the Topic outline of countries which will be organized exactly like the country outlines. Aside from being an extremely useful navigation aid, it will allow editors to easily see the state of country coverage on Wikipedia. I'll provide you with a link once I get up to speed on this.

In the meantime, keep up the good work!

Cheers,

The Transhumanist 05:21, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Outline of Knowledge / Geography WikiProject Collaboration: Country outlines

As you know, last spring we started work on the "Geography and places" branch of Wikipedia's Outline of knowledge. (WikiProject Lists of basic topics has been renamed to Wikipedia:WikiProject Outline of knowledge). The geography branch is in the form of a set of outline pages including one for every present-day nation or state in the world. That's 247 pages! This has been a huge undertaking, involving dozens of editors using advanced wiki-tools.

These pages have come a long way, and it won't be long before the whole set is complete enough to be moved to article space into the encyclopedia for the benefit of all. But there's still a lot of work left, and we could use all the help we can get!

While some editors prefer to work on one country at a time, most of our team members take on a particular entry and complete it across all the pages. This has come to be our standard type of task. To facilitate this process, we apply tools such as AutoWikiBrowser, Linky, and WikEd, all of which can be used to process a large number of pages in various (direct or indirect) ways.

In case you are interested in what we've been up to, here's a progress report:

Lately, development has been slow but continuous:

On our recruiting initiative, Penubag has done a fantastic job on the images for the awards we'll be using for our project's collaborations and contests. We now have 3 awards: a medal, a trophy, and a race ribbon. They all look tight. The trophy needs a small adjustment, but other than that, all 3 award images are complete and ready to use to create awards with.

Spartaz has warned us of (threatened to take) G4 (speedy delete) action if we run a competition that resembles the previously deleted Awards Center page. So whatever we do, any contests we run must differ substantially from the methods used there.

One type of competition I've been exploring is "edit racing". I'm in the process of working the bugs out of this concept - the first race didn't work as expected - you see, because we only had an award for first place, so the opponent didn't think it worthwhile to continue once it was clear who the winner would be. And since editors are in different time zones and usually need to start the race at different times, we need to base winning on personal start times - he who completes his assigned edits in the least time (rather than first), wins. And last but not least is quality control. What good is racing if the participants' edits are ripe with errors? So I'll be exploring possibilities such as using a referee (assigned to oversee a particular race), having participants watching each other for errors to knock them back, etc. I'm not sure yet.

Rich Farmbrough has been applying his bot expertise to filling in blanks in the country outlines (the population and area entries). I'm amazed at the number of edits he pumps out each day on a myriad of projects - ours makes up but a small time slice of his activity, and yet he has saved us many hours of manual work. Perhaps we should look into how he gets so much done.  :)

Zlerman has chosen to work on specific outlines, and has taken on Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. He also has been keen on noticing and reporting design issues pertaining to the whole set of country outlines. Keep up the good work!

Highfields is in charge of capitals, adding them to all the outlines. He is also our first race winner. Check out the award on his user pages.

In case you didn't know, this project has expanded to include work on any and all sets of pages represented on the country outlines. Once the set of country outlines go live (in article space), traffic will likely increase for all the links included on them. The quality and usefulness of those pages will reflect heavily on the country outlines. The outlines, which are essentially lists of links, are only as good as the links they present, and therefore we've branched out to solve the biggest problems with those as well. So far, we've taken on:

  • The creation of disambiguation pages for country adjectivals ("German", "French", "Taiwanese", etc.) We're about half done with these.
  • Wikifying the CIA World Factbook statistics on the "demographics of" country pages. We've been renaming those sections to provide a key string that AWB can use for targetting (for skipping and filtering). Once that's done, we'll be able to break the clean-up down into simple AWB search/replace tasks, because we'll be able to target just those pages that include the CIA stuff.
  • We've also been renaming the "Cuisine of" articles to their adjectival forms ("Chinese cuisine", "Italian cuisine", etc.), for consistency and because the adjective-based terms are generally the most commonly-used names for those cuisine types.

Blackadam2 and Thehelpfulone have been helping out with the "demographics of" pages mentioned above.

And we have a couple speed addicts (addicted to wiki-velocity, not drugs)...

Both Robert Skyhawk and Thehelpfulone prefer (and excel at) simple AWB search/replaces. Robert hasn't actually joined our team yet, but he has been helping out quite a bit from the sidelines (via the WP:AWB/Tasks page. Unfortunately, there has recently been a non-AWB chore that has been holding things up on the AWB front - an edit to all the headings which had to be reverted before too many new edits were made, because any new edits would make the reversion more difficult. The headings have been restored, so now the way is clear for AWB operations, and there are many search/replace tasks in the queue. AWB assignments have started again!

There's a similar bottleneck on the "Demographics of" pages (the "keying" mentioned above), but that's almost cleared too.  :)

With my internet access somewhat crippled as of late, I've been finding it difficult to keep up with you guys. However, I expect to be accessing a Linky-capable workstation on a faster server (I'm on it right now, as you can probably tell from my contributions list for the past couple of days), and so I should really pick up speed. Feels goooooood.  :)

Recruiting has been a bit slow (but steady), due in part to my crippled access, and because we've been waiting for the images for the awards to be completed. I expect the team to grow more rapidly as the bottlenecks are removed.

Well that's what's been happenin', and here's what's in the pipeline...

We've got a long list of entries that need to be completed across all the outlines and related page sets. If you would like to dive in with advanced wiki-tools to process this whole set of pages on one or more tasks, drop me a note!

As for me, I'm about to begin work on a set of lists that corresponds to all the standard links on the country outlines, and these will be presented on the Topic outline of countries which will be organized exactly like the country outlines. Aside from being an extremely useful navigation aid, it will allow editors to easily see the state of country coverage on Wikipedia - each list will be one link-set, and each list can be used with our wiki-tools to process the pages listed. I'll provide you with a link once I get up to speed on this.

In the meantime, keep in touch!

Cheers,

The Transhumanist 01:02, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Country outlines update

There has been a flurry of activity on the project as of late - so much so that I felt compelled to write another progress report...

More racing award graphics!

Penubag has completed 4 more award graphics for our upcoming edit races. They look great!

New outline developer

Buaidh has joined the effort to develop country outlines. Like Zlerman, he has chosen specific outlines to work on. Which ones? All the countries of the Americas!

Bots!

User talk:Thehelpfulone now has a bot, and User talk:Robert Skyhawk has requested approval for one. Work on the country outlines using these should start soon. I feel the technological singularity approaching.  :)

Regex

Several of us have been trying to figure out how to use regular expressions (regex), in AWB, and once we have done this, we should be able to insert country names into entries for all the outlines using a single search/replace regex.

User talk:Thehelpfulone has successfully used AWB and regex to complete a 2-line search/replace using the \n command.

Regex repository - please add to it!

As a reference aid, I've set up the page User:The Transhumanist/Regexes for reporting the regexes we use. Please post regexes you've used successfully to that page. That way, everyone on the team can learn from each others' successes and we thereby leverage our experience collectively. Thank you.

The Transhumanist 22:38, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Please upgrade your AWB usage to include a bot!

Slowly but surely, our team members are upgrading to bot usage. So far, Robert Skyhawk and Thehelpfulone have added a bot (AWB, activated to be a bot) to their tool set.

Bots are incredibly useful, since you don't have to sit there and press the "Save" button for each edit - it just does all the edits and saves automatically, so it can do the work in another window while you are doing something else. The more people on our team who have bots, the better. There is a great deal of bot-work on the country outlines, and you'll find many other uses for your bot after you get up and running.

Please take the plunge and go for bot approval. I'm sure the two guys above would be happy to assist you through the approval process.

The Transhumanist 22:30, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

New team member

Be sure to welcome our newest member, User talk:NuclearWarfare, to the team!

See his talk page for the task he's taking on.

The Transhumanist 00:04, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

The project may be catching on. Take a look at this!

Someone not on the team has come along and moved one of the country outline drafts to article space. This is a great sign, as it means the set of pages is attracting attention.

It's Topic outline of Romania.

Please help complete it ASAP. Here's why:

It's got some awkward stuff in there, including blank links, redlinks (that need to be bluelinked by creating redirects), and apparently irrelevant entries (kept for comparison purposes, that need to be filled in with "none"), etc.

Many editors tend to remove awkward stuff instead of complete it.

We should finish up Topic outline of Romania before they remove anything.

Thank you.

Good luck.

Have fun.

The Transhumanist 03:48, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Linky Firefox Extension

"By the way, do you use Firefox? If so, Linky is an invaluable extension."

FYI, if anyone's using the Opera browser, the "Linky" feature is built in; this could be useful information for any Opera users looking to join this project (like myself), who may not be aware of the feature - it is not immediately evident in a default install, you have to right-click on a toolbar and go to Customise->Panels->Links to enable it.

lucideer 00:11, 16 November 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Lucideer (talk • contribs)
Thank you for the information. I'll be sure to add this to WP:OTS and WP:LINKY. The Transhumanist 19:55, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

In case you are interested

I've recorded much of my wiki-know-how at WP:OTS.

The Transhumanist 00:57, 24 February 2009 (UTC)


Name of this set of pages

So far we've tried (in various namespaces (main, wp, portal)):

  • Lists of basic topics
  • Basic topics
  • Basic topics list
  • List of basic topic lists
  • Topical outlines
  • List of topical outlines
  • Outline of knowledge

and the pages themselves have been called:

  • foo basic topics
  • Topical outline of foo
  • List of basic foo topics
  • Topic outline of foo
  • Outline of foo

Are we going to settle on something soon?

More importantly, could you please ask somewhere for input before moving these again TT? It's annoying in watchlists, and creates a mess of redirects, and is confusing for everyone. (Prior discussions about this are all at Portal talk:Contents/Outline of knowledge) -- Quiddity (talk) 18:55, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

You're annoyed because they mucked up your watchlist? What about the encyclopedia itself?
Unfortunately, trial and error has been the only reliable way to test titles on these pages. The last time a proposal was posted, few participants even understood it. Fortunately, it appears that neither will be necessary again. I think we got it right this time.
The current name scheme is simple enough -- Outline of Topic -- and should serve as an interim measure. I think the final name should be a subpage of Topic, for a couple of reasons (see below). +sj +
I've received very few complaints about this page set or its name changes over the years. There may be one complaint about a title out of the hundreds of titles changed each time. The primary complaint each time is usually from you - about process. But the proposal process has utterly failed this project. Because of this, I generally follow WP:BOLD and WP:BRD, which are equally valid processes, and work well in the absence of complaints about content. "BRD" is especially sensitive to feedback on edits (including renames). The other editors working on the outlines and I have been very careful not to make changes that the pages' readers would find objectionable.
Any double redirects are cleaned up automatically by bot a few days after a move, and the project doesn't have enough traffic (yet) for double redirects to be more than a minor problem.
Nobody appears to be confused about the name changes. Least of all you.
But I don't plan on renaming these again. (See above).
We're about to set all the links leading to these outlines. Renaming the pages again would render all such links obsolete, and is something I wish to avoid.
The set has grown to over 300 pages, and continues to grow, so that renaming them will be evermore cumbersome. I wish to avoid that as well. The last move took me many tedious hours - I don't enjoy these moves any more than you do.
You can manage renames quite effectively with a script, and have it take minutes, not hours. +sj +
As always, thank you for your concern and feedback.
The Transhumanist 04:58, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
I am a strong proponent of avoiding the use of subpages where there is an alternative. In particular, I find the use of subpages only useful if the subpage is explicitly and forever bound to its parent page -- i.e., if renaming the parent page means one should rename the subpage. (In that case the use of subpage shorthand makes sense).
This is such a case. Every outline is simply another level-of-detail perspective on an existing topic. If the topic itself does not exist, one can omit "Outline of" from the title, since every encyclopedia article is an outline of its topic at some arbitrary level of detail (higher detail for a specialist encyclopedia, lower for a children's encyclopedia, middling but lengthy detail for Wikipedia at the moment -- since we lack the interface tools that allow us to gather all of these variants for a single topic).
So I would recommend Topic/Outline as a naming scheme. If one adds a particularly useful link to the outline, it should certainly be added as a footnote or link to the article itself. If it is a more minor link, perhaps it is alright to leave it only in the topic outline. The overall structure of sections, with relevant priority, parallelism of ideas acrss sections, and the like, should be similar or identical between the article and the topic outline -- this indicates the consensus about what is important to the topic, and should not change significantly depending on the detail-level of ones browsing.
The other reason to use Topic/Outline is this -- imagine a few other views provided for major articles. Not just a topic outline, but a gallery of images and media, an abbreviated summary for quick browsing, a simplified-english version, a detailed version for specialists. We have inadequate ways to approximate each of these : some articles have a brief "gallery" section, the lede is a hasty summary (to see the difference, compare the front-page blurb to the lede section of featured articles), there is a separate but star-crossed separate wiki for simple articles, a few articles have doubles with longer names that serve specialists (and others have excess detail simply deleted). Instead, consider having an encyclopedia with Topic/Outline, Topic/Gallery, Topic/Summary, Topic/Simple, &c. Then you would be able to group all available views/subpages by viewing special:allpages filtered to Topic and its subpages... my preferred solution. +sj +
+sj + 15:00, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
There is a lot of baggage associated with subpages proposals. See Wikipedia:Subpages for the iceberg tip. We would have a hard time getting traction/consensus for this.
Simple: has been on the mailing lists lately (search text for "simple" in feb and mar), and this comic from xkcd triggered a rush of new editors. People like it, and trying to merge it here is unlikely and would be insanely complicated.
Galleries have been discussed recently at Wikipedia talk:Image use policy, and we generally like them where they are (embedded) - easily accessible to all readers (even the computer-newbies), not hidden in a subpage or off at Commons.
A summary subpage is an interesting idea. Possibly the WP:FA crew or others have already considered this? I know the idea of transcluding the lede for subarticles into summary-style articles has been mulled over, and deemed problematic for reasons of target context and size (eg transcluding the lede from Military history into the section at History#Military history). But perhaps a "front-page blurb" length/style paragraph would be useful in other ways - for mobile access or similar?
I'm glad you didn't mention putting references/infoboxes/navboxes/seealsos/categories into a subpage, because that's when the fur really starts to fly! (divisive for editors, hard to access for readers, is the basic gist) -- Quiddity (talk) 21:26, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
I agree that a subpage proposal probably would not fly. Such an attempt would be a waste of bandwidth, IMHO. The Transhumanist 22:48, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
(reply to +sj) The subpage feature has been disabled in article space (see Wikipedia:Subpages#Articles do not have sub-pages (main namespace)). My guess is that it is because subpaging makes titles excessively long, which forces the use of piping in links and also because lengthy file paths make search results exceedingly hard to read. It would be possible to have subpages 10 or more levels deep, and that makes titles ridiculously long. It is much easier to present and maintain hierarchies on pages, that is, as content.
I noticed you referred to articles as outlines, but they aren't. Like outlines, articles are overviews or introductions to their respective subjects, to be sure, and their TOCs may form rudimentary outlines, but articles themselves are not outlines. The term "outline" refers to specific presentation formats, which articles lack. Articles use book formatting (headings and paragraphs), while the content of outlines is chopped up and presented as a hierarchy: one item or fact per entry on the hierarchy. Articles run facts together in prose.
You mentioned that "You can manage renames quite effectively with a script, and have it take minutes, not hours". Please teach me how to do this (please post such help to my talk page).
Thank you.
The Transhumanist 22:48, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Country outlines update - 2009/03/08

Things have been slowing down again, so it's time for a big push...

We've gone live

This project needed a shot in the arm. Also, its draft pages have been littering Wikipedia's categories for months. The time seemed right to move all the country outline drafts to article space.

WHAT???

Well, the drafts had been sitting in Wikipedia space for a year.

WHAT???

Development has been moving at a snail's pace and we could use the help of the Wikipedia community at large (who are more likely to find these if they are in article space).

WHAT???

Yes, we've gone live.  :)

This puts pressure on us to get the blatantly incomplete elements of these outlines done. The only glaring problem is the government branches sections. These need to be corrected ASAP.

I've mentioned THE GOVERNMENT BRANCHES SECTIONS many times to many people over the past year, but the problem just doesn't seem to have been taken seriously. So let me put it another way:

HELP!!! I need your help on this now. Almost all the countries have a government with an executive branch, a legislative branch, and a judicial branch. The links for these branches need to be completed for each country outline:

Here's a convenient list you can use WP:LINKY on to access and edit these quickly. Please copy the list's link to the top of your talk page so that you can access it easily.

If you spot any standardization in links, and ways we can automate parts of this process, or for groups of countries that have links in common, please let me know!

Administrative support for outlines

There has been growing pressure on me to write up the administrative pages for outlines - their instructions, guidelines, etc. Therefore, I'm now in the process of composing these. Fortunately, it is mostly a matter of gathering material from messages I've written to you guys over the past year. Still, this is taking up most of my time, and I will be buried in these for the foreseeable future.

Traffic control

The next big task after the government branches sections are cleaned up is link support for the outlines.

There's quite a list of links and notices that need to be put in place around Wikipedia, providing access to them to readers, and alerting editors to the need to develop and maintain these pages. This will keep our bot people very busy (and happy).

But the most important thing right now is to get the government branches sections completed. So please, put your bots aside, roll up your shirt sleeves, and start typing.

Thank you.

The Transhumanist 02:44, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

About outline levels, outlines in general, and helping others understand this project

OK -- glad to see the push to finish the countries project underway!

I wrote earlier about outline levels : here is what I mean. Every encyclopedia article is, at some level, an outline of its subject. Not too vague, not too detailed, lots of good links. wikipedia's are already more heavily interlinked than most. On a scale from 1 to 10, with 1 being a high-level abstract outline with mostly links to more detailed pages, and 10 being a detailed 'outline' of what's known about a very specific topic with mostly text and a few links to less detailed articles, most Good Articles are level 5/6 outlines with a dozen related links. The average country article, say Nigeria, is more more like a level 3 outline, with 50 links to related topics and a specific "detailed article" for each section.

This project seems to aim to produce level 1/2/3 outlines. No-one has tackled a level 1 outline for an abstract field yet, which would be a useful example, so you've basically started with level 2 outlines for countries (many of which already are level 3 outlines) - it's not that easy to see the difference between an average country outline and the country page it supplements.

The project has also avoided the question of how much text to include in an outline, along with the links. I can imagine a level 1 outline with a good bit of text, though one would want to pack in many good links for each paragraph. (Think of an annotated timeline at multiple scales; a level 1 timeline for the History of Man, with a level 2 for a given Age.) Most current outlines have only section headings and subheadings, no complete sentences. In contrast, most articles have a lot of text; bare lists of links are discouraged. It might be helpful to have an example outline with good explanatory text for each section; and similarly an outline for a very specific topic (picked at random from geography, something like Welland Canal) +sj + 15:00, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Couple of quick notes:
  • We started with this set of links.
  • We were aiming to address just the topmost topics - this set is intended as an adjunct to the set of Portal:Contents/Overviews. (Similarly for the whole set of Portal:Contents pages - see this list of core/vital/key article lists, for example)
  • We have been conceiving of them as a cheat sheet or reference card method of accessing knowledge. So bare lists of links is where each outline begins forming. They're meant to fit somewhere between the main article, and the plain alphabetical-indices.
  • The list that has been worked on the most so far, is Outline of geography. That is the current target for quality/breadth/depth/text.
So for a top-level topic like history, we end up with this set of articles:
Hopefully that clarifies some of your questions. -- Quiddity (talk) 21:00, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
Actually, I've always aimed at summarizing knowledge as a whole, in an attempt to build the best navigation system possible to the knowledgebase known as "Wikipedia". But in the beginning, there was primarily only one individual working on this, and so the scope of development was limited by default.  :(
We now have a team of volunteers and the results reflect that. Though a comprehensive system will take a lot more volunteers to build it than we currently have. As the system grows, it will attract more editors to work on it, and this will allow it to grow even faster.
Note that "Basic topics" referred to the contents of each page in the set, not to the subjects in the titles. With outlines, the terminology is a little different but of the same scope. The term used to describe their contents is "essential points".
SJ, thank you for the clarification. Yes, there is need for instructions and examples. And for clarification of the terms "outline" and "level" as they apply to Outline pages on Wikipedia, in contrast to the more general contexts in which you have applied these 2 terms above. I'm working on it.
The Transhumanist 23:33, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Awards update - 03/15/2009

The award images for awarding country outline development are complete!

After months of toil and attention to detail, Penubag has completed a set of images for this WikiProject's awards!

There are five race ribbons:

There's an engraved medallion:

And by far the hardest to create, a golden trophy:

If you have any ideas about awards these images can be placed upon, and how to award them (to show appreciation and to attract participants), please let me know.

And be sure to pop by Penubag's talk page to let him know what you think of his graphics artistry.

The Transhumanist 20:54, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

There are currently two sets of country-related lists that are related to the country outlines.

List of Country-related topics
This is an alphabetical list of general topics related to a country. I suggest that this set of lists be maintained as alphabetical lists of hyperlinks derived from each country outline. These lists should be fairly easy to maintain in this manner.
List of Country-related articles
This is an alphabetical list of the specific articles related to a country. I suggest that this set of lists be maintained as an alphabetical dump of the articles in the subcategories of a country. These lists may be quite long for larger and more advanced countries, so it may be necessary to exclude towns and political subdivisions with less than some threshold of population for each country, say 10,000, 100,000, or 1,000,000. We should be able to automate the generation of these lists.
Buaidh (talk) 17:16, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Country has more than one meaning

What is a country? It seems to me that you would be better to list states under sovereign state rather than country, because country has more than one meaning. See also Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Countries/Lists of countries --PBS (talk) 21:14, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Editorial guidelines still unavailable

Hi,

Does normal Wikipedia policy (like citing sources) apply to this project? If so, can we get stylistic advise somewhere? On the whole, "Outline of knowledge" articles are well below the ordinary standards that apply to Wikipedia, and should be improved. I would suggest a general cleanup template, but there seems to be zero editorial advice on how to write these things. So... if there is no easily accessible link to such a guideline, then it needs to be written (like... right away, *before* anyone else thinks this charade is a "good idea"), and an RfC *needs* to be filed over at the Pump. If the usual rules do not apply to this project, then at the very least please provide some courtesy templates to indicate when and how your work needs improvement. My current advice is that essentially all of the project pages are unreferenced. But, what would constitute suitable references for a "Topic outline" (given that we are "not a textbook") is a matter for debate... and for the policy pages to clarify. Thanks for your immediate attention! I will raise this issue in a more public forum (like WP:AN) if it is not addressed here in a few months. 71.182.216.55 (talk) 05:40, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

You're such a silly rabbit.  :) By the way, despite our differences (such as my disagreeing with your threatening approach above), I believe you are a valuable contributor to Wikipedia, and I wish you would stick around under the name we all know (and love) you by. :) The Transhumanist 22:51, 2 June 2009 (UTC)


The obvious solution, short of redirecting Glaciers of Surinam to Surinam, is to transclude (not replicate) article leads, so that the outline contains no data that must be referenced. I admire Transhumanist's stubborn effort, but I'm afraid that redirection will happen sooner. NVO (talk) 13:05, 25 May 2009 (UTC)


The draft for the guideline was just moved into projectspace. Wikipedia:WikiProject Outline of knowledge/Outline of knowledge still needs review and clarifications, but it's mostly there. -- Quiddity (talk) 19:10, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Volunteers

WikiProject Countries currently has 112 volunteers whom I suspect would be happy to work on the country outlines. --Buaidh (talk) 21:17, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Outline of knowledge WikiProject update - 04/02/2009

Hi everyone.

Things are going slow again. Where have you been?!

Maybe what you need to get you going is a little competition...

Who are we competing with?

Encyclopedia Britannica. Specifically, with its Outline of knowledge (presented in its volume called the Propaedia). Currently, they're kicking our asses. You've really got to check out their Outline of Knowledge (available only in the encyclopedia's paper edition - not the online version).

Portals. Informally, of course, just for the fun of it. There are around 600 portals. We're about 100 behind them, with about 500 outlines. Let's blow past them and leave 'em in the dust!

Confusion in editors at large

Now that the country outlines have been moved to the encyclopedia proper (article space), recruiting help on these is of high priority -- it will soon be time to alert all relevant editors to the nature and function of these and how they relate to other country coverage on Wikipedia.

However, I've noticed instances in which editors do not understand the nature and function of outline pages, and complain that they are redundant to articles. Well, ya. (That's the point of an outline - to provide the essentials in a structure for greater understanding, for easy viewing and faster reading, and to provide a topical guide).

A few editors over the years have viewed outlines as redundant to portals, not understanding the purpose and scope of outlines, nor the benefits provided by their structure and standardization.

These problems of misunderstanding need to be solved before "going public", to prevent their expansion as the community's awareness of these pages increases. Consider the response we'd get now if we announced these pages on the talk pages of 500 WikiProjects, 500 article talk pages, and placed links in 500 see also sections, etc.

That could be a nightmare.

So...

Encyclopedic and administrative support

I've been working on a couple things that will help alleviate confusion and hopefully reduce the need for editors to ask questions and seek advice. They're drafts, still under construction. Please look these over and jump in and help complete them (directly or by providing feedback):

First is an Outline article draft, intended to replace the current Outline article.

Next is a guideline on the Outline of knowledge and its outline pages.

Let me know what you think. Do they help you understand outlines better and how to develop them on Wikipedia? What is missing? How can they be improved?

The Transhumanist 04:55, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

Outline of knowledge WikiProject update - 04/06/2009

As the country outlines have been approaching completion and more attention has been given to the non-country outlines and the Outline of knowledge as a whole, I've run into this...

Topic lists

As you know, we've been cleaning up sets of pages the links of which are displayed on the outlines.

One of the most prominent of the sets presented are the "List of x topics" (including "List of x-related topics) pages, and they are in a sorry state.

There's actually 2 different kinds mixed together in the same set: most of them are alphabetical indexes.

The others are non-alphabetical hierarchical lists. That is...

outlines!

So, I've been renaming the indexes to "Index of x articles" or "Index of x-related articles", and wikifying them (especially their lead sections). So far, all the country-related topics lists that are indexes have been renamed. It appears the new name fits so well that nobody favors the old name over the new. It's been over a week since that was done, with no complaints, so I've started on the rest.

As for the topic lists that are outlines, those can be absorbed or merged into the OOK. Even though this would entail a lot of renaming and reformatting, and cutting and pasting, these pages might still save us some work! I'm not sure how many there are, but that should become clear once the index pages are all renamed.

Feel free to join in and help. It's hog's heaven!

The Transhumanist 04:49, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Outline of knowledge project summary, and future direction

In response to a friend on Wikipedia who was wondering about how I've been and what I've been up to, I got to spewing about our little endeavor, and well, I got so carried away I pretty much told him everything.  :) The message turned out to be a pretty good summary of what we've accomplished so far and the overall plan.

See User talk:The Rambling Man/Archive 35#What's up?

The Transhumanist 23:06, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Update on the Outline of knowledge WikiProject & Geography WikiProject (Country outlines workgroup) - 04/16/2009

Momentum in the development of the outlines is continuing to build, even though we haven't added any new outlines lately. Plenty of work is being done on the outlines we already have.

Keep up the good work everyone!

Inspiration!

Kudos go to Buaidh, who has dived head first into outline development, continuing improvement of the country outlines, and doing so vigorously. Take a look at his contribs. He has taken the initiative and has been expanding those outlines' design and coverage. Be sure to let him know what you think of his work!

Coming soon: the Super Huge Expansion (it will be really really big)

Excitement (mine at least) is building as we approach the Super Huge Expansion, during which notices will be placed on thousands of subject talk pages and their corresponding WikiProjects (see below concerning which ones). Though not all on the same day! - this will take place over a period of weeks or months, because it's best not to open the flood gates all at once.

The existing outlines should serve as strong examples for editors who wish to develop new outlines, and so we need to complete them as much as we can before we start to take this to the next level (in about 3 months). The rewrite of the outline article (the draft, which explains outlines in detail), and the guideline on outlines and outline development, also need to be completed before the transcendence begins. These will help guide the decisions and actions of editors, and reduce confusion.

Projected outline, at the OOK WikiProject page

What's next? Where is the Outline of knowledge headed?

Well, it will grow, to encompass all of human knowledge.

But, is there a plan?

YES!!!

Currently under construction on the Outline of knowledge WikiProject page is a version of the outline that will display links to all the outline pages currently in the encyclopedia proper, links to all outline drafts, and redlinks to all planned outline drafts.

You can help. Please place links to the remaining drafts in there (with complete pagenames so we can easily tell they are drafts). Once all the draft pages are placed, please look over the overall outline for gaps in coverage, and add missing subjects. I expect there are thousands of missing subjects extensive enough to benefit from being outlined. New subjects should be included as red draft links. Thank you.

But it's not just an editing task list...

During the upcoming "Super Huge Expansion" (mentioned above), the article talk page and WikiProject for each of the subjects listed on the projected outline will receive a notice requesting the creation and development of the outline page for that subject. Each notice will also explain how a subject's outline will integrate into the Outline of knowledge and into Wikipedia's navigation system as a whole.

See Wikipedia:WikiProject Outline of knowledge#Projected outline.

Topic lists

The nice thing about a reverse outline is that it turns up problems that exist in the publication being outlined, which provides opportunities to fix them. Since we get very little or no opposition to fixing problems even on sets of hundreds of pages, we've been plowing through them.

One of the biggest problems in Wikipedia that our work on the Outline of knowledge has uncovered so far is with the set of topics lists. Their titles, in the forms "List of x topics" and "List of x-related topics" are ambiguous, and they are not the most common terms for describing their content. See WP:COMMONNAME. To make matters worse, the set is divided between 2 competing types/sets of pages: alphabetical indexes, and outlines.

In an effort to sort out this mess, the indexes are being renamed, and the outlines are being reformatted and moved, or merged, into the Outline of knowledge.

So far, almost 300 topic lists have been renamed to indexes. Nobody has objected to the names chosen, but one editor has expressed reservation on the approach - he was concerned it would cause confusion by having 2 title standards in place at the same time for these. Though he himself was not confused, nor did he object to the titles. And nobody else has expressed confusion or dissatisfaction with the new titles either. It has been over 2 weeks since the renaming has begun, and since no confusion seems to have been caused, and since there is no opposition to the new names, I plan to continue with the renaming.

Also, one topic list has been merged into its corresponding outline so far: List of transport topics was merged into Outline of transport. It turned out very good. List of cell biology topics is currently being merged into Outline of cell biology (see the link dump in hidden comments at the end of the outline).

I'm not sure how many lists have "topics" in their titles, but Google turned up 788, and these appear to include the ones that have already been renamed to indexes. Subtracting those renamed so far, there are about 500 more to go.

Watching tips

I thought you might want to compare notes on the methods we use to watch over the outlines. Here's how I keep an eye on things...

My watchlist had so many thousands of articles in it that I finally just deleted them all. Now I have it set so that I have to manually add pages to be watched, and I use it only to watch trouble spots and collaborations I'm participating in.

Because I like to watch specific sets of pages at a time, I use "Related changes" on list pages. That way the results are not watered down with edits from pages I'm not immediately concerned with.

I always use WP:POP and Related changes together. With POP installed, you go to a link list, like User:Buaidh/Country outlines of the Americas, then click on "Related changes" in the toolbox menu, and then hover the mouse cursor over the diff and hist links so you can look at those without clicking on them.

It's pretty fast.

The technique turns Wikipedia's list system into a crystal ball.

Update Scanner

Penubag recommends Update Scanner, which is a Firefox add-on that periodically scans pages and pings you when a change is detected. You can even set its level of sensitivity for each scanned page (e.g., "ignore changes of 100 words or less").

I'd use it, but I don't have a computer.  :(

See also WP:OTS for more power tools and techniques, and User:Penubag/optimum toolsets for some more nice addons, that do a variety of things.

I'm always looking for new power tools and power skills, so if you know of any, please share (let me know)!

The Transhumanist 04:42, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

Do not read this one - The Hunt - Outline of knowledge WikiProject - 04/17/2009

While surveying libraries, their outline-related resources, and our coverage of them, I came across something funny...

What subclass is the Bible in the Library of Congress Classification?

Do you think they'd like this one at WP:DYK?

(Nope. They didn't.)     :)

Libraries

For months, I've been sitting at a terminal in one of the largest libraries in the country, and I haven't even looked around at the available resources.

Until a few days ago.

I'm overwhelmed.

When compared to libraries, Wikipedia is small. (See Digest of Education Statistics 2008, Chapter 7:Libraries and Educational Technology Libraries, and turn to page 617).

But is that a fair comparison?

Yes.

Why?

Because we have growth potential.  :)

And we cover everything, including libraries!

Guess what else I found?

Hunting for outlines

I began to study libraries and librarians, since they are experts in organizing knowledge. And of course I turned to Wikipedia to see what we had on the things I came across...

And while doing so I kept running into outlines on Wikipedia that are not (yet) part of the Outline of knowledge.

When I come across non-OOK outlines, generally I rename them, and reformat them to our standard outline format. But there is the occasional exception.

Here are some outlines I just added:

  1. List of energy topics --> Outline of energy (it converted great)
  2. List of Dewey Decimal classes --> Outline of Dewey Decimal classes (no conversion)
  3. Library of Congress Classification --> ??? (no rename, no conversion)

The last 2 are outlines by their very nature, and so our standard outline subheadings didn't seem to fit. So I left them as is.

I renamed the first 2, but the last one is the name of the outline, that is, the topic itself is an outline, and that outline is presented as the article's content, so I left the name as is. For now. This needs more thought.

Of course, that's not all. Concerning those last 2 outlines above...

Alternate outlines of knowledge

...not only are they outlines, but they are outlines of knowledge! Well, the top few levels, at least.

Uh, so?

What happens if we linkify them?  :)

That is, what happens if we linkify their classifications to Wikipedia's outlines?  :)   :)   :)

They become alternate top ends to the OOK

Yep.

What can you find?

I challenge you to find some "hidden" outlines.

I dare you to take a look around Wikipedia for hidden outlines (that is, outlines not yet hooked into the OOK), and add your kills to WP:WPOOK#The hunt for hidden outlines.

My trophies are already there.

May the hunt begin!

The Transhumanist 20:25, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Categorizing books based on the Outline of knowledge

I started categorizing Wikipedia Books based on the Wikipedia Outline of knowledge. The outline provides a well-organized classification system for readers while also offering ample flexibility for editors. On the category page, I suggest to editors that, "If you want guidance categorizing a book or subcategory, please refer to that outline." Hopefully, this will allow us to build a new Wikipedia resource library without unnecessarily creating another contents classification system. :-) RichardF (talk) 01:40, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

A couple questions for you...

What are the benefits of a tree structure?

The article doesn't say.

I'm interested, because I need to explain the benefits in the guideline on outlines I'm writing. (Outlines are a type of tree structure).

I've also asked the question at various reference desks, and these threads may help to jump start your brain on this question.  :)

What are the benefits of outlines, over and above regular articles?

What benefits have you noticed?

How are Wikipedia's outlines useful to you?

I look forward to your answers on my talk page.

The Transhumanist 04:36, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

WPOOK Update - 05/17/2009 - Blockbusting!

This project needs another shot in the arm.

So here it goes...

Countries WikiProject Collaboration - Contests!

I've contacted all 59 members of the Countries WikiProject to help in designing and conducting contests for the further development of the country outlines.

You are invited too.

Houston, we have a problem

The guidelines and outline article still aren't complete.

Which means you will be needed to help explain to the newcomers mentioned above what outlines are and how to develop them.

Please participate in the discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Countries#Hosting country coverage contests.

The Transhumanist 22:23, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

A question for you, concerning a possible contest...

To promote work on the country outlines, maybe a contest between country WikiProjects could be run, to see which WikiProject could develop the best country outline.

What do you think?

(I look forward to your reply on my talk page).

The Transhumanist 23:51, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Contest Question

A WikiProject race - I like the idea - it will hopefully work not only to complete the pages but publicise them. (I noticed the pages have all been WikiProject tagged) Highfields (talk, contribs, review) 15:02, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Ps. I've nearly finished the currency filling in task you gave me ages ago - it's been slow because I've been very busy and will be again very soon but it should be done in about a week.

Cool. Thank you for keeping track of the currency task.
The contest probably won't be a race. It will likely be a cake-baking contest. That is, judges will decide which "cake" is the best. There will be a time limit, probably a month, within which each WikiProject will work on it's respective country outline, and then the best ones will be chosen as the winners.
The discussion to set the details of the contest is on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Countries.
Only a few of the country outlines have been WikiProject tagged. Most of them still need tagging. Please put that on your task list, right after "currency". :)
(Every little bit helps!)
The Transhumanist 22:01, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Has the shit hit the fan? - WPOOK update, 05/25/2009

Maybe...

We've started the next phase

I was experiencing mental block on the article draft for "outline" and on the outline guideline draft. And this was holding the whole project back. Without these (which are intended to explain the type of lists known as outlines in detail), the danger is higher that a controversy could go the wrong way.

I requested help on them, but there was none forthcoming.

So I went ahead and started us on the next phase of operations without those 2 pages...

Our AWB'ers and I have placed about 1600 notices all over Wikipedia. And the plan is to place several thousand more.

This generated only one complaint, but it was a very vocal one, and attracted a few other detractors who seemed unfamiliar with the concept of hierarchical outlines and their benefits. However, just as many or more editors came to the defense of the OOK, and there was no consensus formed. But, dab is still trying to rally opposition to outlines at the Village Pump. See below...

Administrator noticeboard incident and Village Pump policy discussion

It appears that the banner placed on the talk page of the Outline of Switzerland caught the attention of an editor named Dbachmann who posted a rather forceful message on my talk page, another on WT:WPOOK, another at WP:VPP, and still another at WP:AN!

He went well out of his way to use negative hype to cause a stir.

It appears that Mr. Bachmann doesn't understand the nature of hierarchical outlines and their applications. And though he implied that he has never seen an OOK outline before, he was involved with a discussion on these when they were called "lists of basic topics".

His primary argument is that outlines are content forks of articles, and violate WP:CFORK.

But "topic lists", of which outlines are a type, have been around for almost as long as Wikipedia, and fall under the WP:LISTS and WP:STAND guidelines. They aren't intended as forks, as they are lists, bringing the benefits of lists to the corresponding subjects, such as grouping and navigation.

Someone suggested an MfD, but lists are articles, and are within the jurisdiction of AfD. Only the portal page, which merely lists the outline articles, falls within the scope of the MfD department.

The administrator's noticeboard was considered the wrong venue for the discussion, and the discussion was closed.

But Dab's discussion at the Village Pump is still active. Hopefully level heads will prevail there too.

Now what?

Am I disheartened or deterred? Hell no. I say "full steam ahead!"

But we really need to finish the article draft and the guideline. Otherwise there will continue to be confusion.

Over the next week or two, we'll be posting another 1600 or so notices. It's a good thing we didn't send out 10,000 of them all at once.  :)

The Transhumanist 23:16, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

P.S.: Another related thread has popped up at WP:VPR#OoK's expediency. --TT   04:29, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

WPOOK update - 05/27/2009

Input on the OOK threads at the Village Pump has died down (at both WP:VPP and WP:VPR), and there is currently no consensus on either.

Negative feedback

For the number of notices we posted (over a thousand) the number of complaints we received (the two VP threads mentioned above) was quite low.

Silent majority

Considering most of the outlines are orphans, they get pretty good use.

Note that people who are happy with articles on Wikipedia generally don't say anything, so I simply interpret it as positive feedback.

Traffic, traffic comparison, and increasing traffic

Using Traffic, I compare the traffic of articles, their corresponding outlines, and their corresponding portals from time to time.

Outlines are starting to catch up to portals. Though the main portals, which are included in a navbar menu at the top of most portals are still way ahead of their outline counterparts.

Both outlines and portals are way behind the articles on the same subjects. Articles usually have 20 to 30 times the traffic.

Keep in mind that most outlines are orphans, with the primary link to them being Portal:Contents/Outline of knowledge.

Traffic should improve once we include links on the corresponding subject pages, including the main subject as well as subjects that correspond to subheadings (e.g., History of x, and in the case of countries: Geography of x, Demographics of x, Culture of x, etc.)

I'm convinced the traffic of outlines will overtake portals once we've link-integrated them into the encyclopedia. And since outlines serve as tables of contents for each subject, it seems most fitting to place links to them in the form of hatnotes at the top of each subject's main articles (and the sub-subjects mentioned in the paragraph directly above).

By the way, there's another traffic counter called Wikirank, but I haven't tested it out much yet, but will do so in the coming weeks.

Going for the Main Page

Once the traffic of outlines has overtaken portals, it will be time to replace portals on the Main Page, even if we need to spearhead a new main page redesign! This isn't a far-fetched idea. I was the one who jumpstarted and led the project responsible for the current main page design (until it hit critical mass and attracted other leaders), and I was also the most active editor on that project. I even created the WP:CBB on the Community Portal to promote the main page election. The second time around should be easier.

Back to the here and now

Targetting the Main Page is a few months off.

Right now, we need to continue posting notices and start link-integrating the OOK into the encyclopedia.

I have a whole slew of AWB tasks to assign. I hope you are ready.  :)

Spread the word

WP:WPOOK needs members. Tell all your friends about the OOK, and get them to join.

The Transhumanist 02:52, 27 May 2009

Why do we have outlines in addition to...?

Main page: Wikipedia:Why do we have outlines in addition to...?

Wikipedia:Outlines was growing so large that I split this section off as a separate page.

I look forward to your feedback and improvements.

The Transhumanist 22:41, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

British Columbia Outline re Canadian provinces

The other day, or maybe last night, I had a go at tidying up the draft outline for British Columbia. First thing I noticed was that the outline was derived from a decided USPOV, i.e. with the separation of Legislative, Executive and Judiciary, and the assumptive use of President (we're a monarchy with a viceroy...), and mis-placed priorities for ecoregions over administrative regions (and in BC's case, historical regions upon which the administrative regions are based), and our legislature isn't bicameral (and the Premier, technically, is subordinate to it rather than the other way around, though in realpolitik this isn't how things work out). This isn't meant as a criticism so much as a heads-up for the outlines of other Canadian provinces and for Canada; we are organized differently than the US and other republican models of government and the layouts of the outlines have to be adjusted to reflect this. I don't have the time or patience to fix the other Canadian province outlines and there's some more basic infrastructure on BC's which needs designing/improving but for those working on the other provinces and territories and the national article, please use the edit history "compare' function for how it was when I got there, and how it is now, as a guide for how to begin improving the other related articles.Skookum1 (talk) 22:38, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Please add your two cents -Keep, Delete, Comment - to the articles for deletion discussion on Outline of BC. Are there any precedents? Kind regards SriMesh | talk 01:41, 2 June 2009 (UTC)
Skookum1, thank you for the heads-up. The outline was expanded using a template that was the closest fit we had - knowing that there would be errors. No other outlines on Canadian provinces have been created yet. The plan is to clean up BC's outline, and then use it as the basis upon which to design a template to create outlines for the rest of Canada's provinces. The Transhumanist 22:29, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Precedents

Some WP projects maintain a page which documents (give wikinlinks to) prior naming discussions, deletion precedent discussions, so that archival discussions can be referred to in case of future studies. Can one be started for this WP project? Such as currently BCs outline is under discussion for deletion, and the Canada outline just had a similar discussion, so it would be helpful to have such discussions kept in a referential page such as (random examples...) on WP US roads (especially in regards to what are and what are not deletable areas), WP Education (especially in regards to what are and what are not deletable areas) and WP Canada (mostly naming conventions). Kind Regards SriMesh | talk 01:52, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Another discussion is here, and here. SriMesh | talk 04:27, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Category:Articles belonging to WikiProject Outline of knowledge

Ouch. WikiProjects don't own articles. Perhaps you'll consider renaming this category. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:06, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Though it wasn't meant in that context. :) What is the standard wording for this type of category? The Transhumanist 22:40, 2 June 2009 (UTC)
Perhaps... Category:WikiProject Outline of knowledge articles SriMesh | talk 03:45, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
I think generally something like Category:WikiProject Outline of knowledge articles is what is generally included in the project banners. Maybe something like that would work. John Carter (talk) 20:01, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

May I borrow your brain?

Here are the goals of the OOK WikiProject:

  1. Increase awareness of readers of the existence of the outlines on Wikipedia
  2. Complete the existing outlines
  3. Create an outline for every subject that is extensive enough to benefit from having an outline (core subjects and major or extensive fields). There are thousands of these.
  4. Recruit as many editors to work on these as possible (we need thousands of editors working on these)
  5. Get a link to the main outline page or links to the major outline subject areas displayed on the Main Page (in addition to the portal links at the top of the page)
  6. Increase the OOK to higher quality than Britannica's Outline of Knowledge (published in its Propaedia volume).

How can we achieve these goals?

Any ideas you might have would be most appreciated.

The Transhumanist 19:52, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

I would want to emphasise that some are short term goals, and some are long term.
Personally, I hope #2 and #1 get the highest priority, then #4 for which I'd suggest "hundreds" is a more realistic/achievable goal(and less alarming for the nonbelievers/unconvinced!).
The rest I'd classify as longer term, and/or meta, goals, that will grow and adapt and become possible over time. -- Quiddity (talk) 23:56, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
And now back to my questions: How can we achieve these goals? The Transhumanist 21:10, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
I think that getting a link on the main page would help advertise the existence of these items, but I also think that it's unlikely to happen any time soon. Instead, I'd focus on taking a couple of outlines through the featured list process. Having many "certified excellent" outlines will increase the likelihood that such a link would be seriously considered.
Do you have a couple of good, experienced, active editors that are flexible about their topic area? It's possible that if you identified a small number of high-priority outlines, you could have joint-wikiproject collaborations. See whether existing collaboration projects like this one would consider scheduling an outline for improvement. Before you can really recruit editors, you need editors to know that these outlines exist. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:54, 8 June 2009 (UTC) who is not watching this page
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