Wikipedia talk:Article Improvement Drive/archive2

Gaming Improvement Drive

I've tried out with a Gaming Improvement Drive (which I really think should be renamed... although I've renamed it way too many times I think o.o;). Basically, it's for non-stub gaming articles, to give them a better chance at improving to an FA status. -- A Link to the Past 07:17, August 8, 2005 (UTC)

Forgot to add link - Wikipedia:This week's computer and video games improvement drive. -- A Link to the Past 07:19, August 8, 2005 (UTC)

Order

I dislike the new order of the nominatiions. The chronological order we had before enabled people to easily see and distinguish new additions. Maurreen (talk) 19:28, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

I also like the chronological order. It's also easier to maintain the expiring dates when all the nominations of the same day are close to each other. I think sorting by votes is unnecessary work and really it's never up-to-date. --Laisak 15:21, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

2 articles/week again?

Maybe we're ready, since support has billowed since the AID turned into the TWID. -Litefantastic 20:28, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

The participation on Lhasa was miserable, and there was not much to be done on the Napoleonic Wars. The main collaboration has just had an experiment with two collaborations which failed. There are numerous smaller collaborations which need support badly, and lots of themes which need a collaboration (anniversaries, countries, social sciences, Europe...). I am against two collaborations.--Fenice 21:02, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

I agree with Fenice here, given that most of the voting appears to be based on the idea that the vote is saying "I agree that someone else should do something about this article." Mallocks 21:46, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

I'm probably guilty of a few "I agree that someone else should do something about this article" votes. In my case—but I bet this generalizes—they are a product of someone (Fenice, I believe, but apologize in advance if I've mis-remembered) hitting other project pages and actively soliciting people to vote here. So I come and vote; that doesn't mean I have any particular interest in participating in this project. -- Jmabel | Talk 21:35, August 15, 2005 (UTC)

I believe that no matter where the votes come from, only a certain percentage of voters really participates during the project week. And some may have a look, even research some but can't find anything they want to contribute. I don't think there is anything wrong with people voting and not contributing. This will happen no matter what we do. You cannot force people to contribute. People just may have other plans during the project week that they knew nothing about when they signed up. We also have many newbies who just leave again or are no longer interested in this project once they get more involved in Wikipedia. (They may remember the COTWs once they have had their first edit war.) The important votes are those of the regulars around here who contribute to several different COTWs and in addition to that, especially the IDRIVE needs to attract experts on the subject, because we are working on a different level than the main COTW. Getting help from experts is the main reason why I post messgaes on places where I believe I might reach experts. Also, I have spread some infos on project-pages saying "vote if you want this article to be improved" which seems to provoke exactly the misunderstanding Jmabel is talking about. I won't use that wording any more. All in all, a higher number of voters will on average probably result in a higher number o participants. --Fenice 22:26, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

Location of templates

Hi, based on the discussion at Wikipedia:Template locations it seems clear that the community generally prefers that templates related to internal efforts such as this one, which are "meta" information and not meaningful to readers, be placed on the talk page of the article instead of the article itself. In particular, this view prevailed with respect to the Template:COTW associated with a parallel project. --Michael Snow 20:12, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

I have restored this discussion, which was prematurely archived minutes after I posted, and copied the comment below from my talk page. --Michael Snow 20:36, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

That is all very nice, but our templates are not talk-page templates, they have a special design. The templates belong on the article page of the nomination and should be removed when the nomination fails. Your wording the community generally prefers... is false. The community consists of thousands of editors who obviously were not interested enough in these bullying attempts to even voice an opinion on the page you set up.--Fenice 20:16, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Having a special design does not exempt this template from the general principle that meta-templates belong on talk pages. I did not set up the page in question, nor do I think it constituted "bullying", certainly not any more so than the attempt at suppressing discussion here. I believe that the community does generally prefer this, and that the comments are a representative sample of those editors who would take an interest in this particular issue. --Michael Snow 20:36, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Michael, this is not a meta template. The page you cite is a text-book example of bullying: a small group is trying to force nonsensical rules upon others in order to annoy them. Maybe you believe the community believes this and that, the problem is the community does not care what you believe. It clearly has not stated an opinion on your ideas.--Fenice 20:40, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Why is it not a meta-template? It refers to an internal Wikipedia project, rather than providing encyclopedic information about the topic of the article. In fact, unlike some templates used in case of content disputes, the template has zero bearing on the content of the article. That's a classic example of a meta-template. --Michael Snow 20:55, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

This is ridiculous. I can see precisely no reason why these templates should go on the article page. Why should this be an exception to the rules of the rest of the encyclopedia? The only reason you have presented is that they have a special design. I fail entirely to grasp this concept. Could you lay out exactly why you think these templates are special? [[smoddy]] 20:58, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Well, I have explained that numerous times. Now, Smoddy, why exactly are you so keen on having a bullying rant here. That is the question that is really interesting and would get us further. Do you not have anything else to do? Why on earth would you want to go out and annoy other users for no particular benefit whatsoever. Aren't you embarrassed?--Fenice 21:06, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Well, I don't see the numerous times. All I can see is you accusing users who are making good-faith comments of bullying. I am not trying to annoy you. I am merely following up on Michael's request for other people to have a look. Incidentally, this seems to me to be an excellent place for this discussion, contrary to your comment on my talk: it prevents fragmentation. I repeat my request, please tell me why the templates should be on the main pages. [[smoddy]] 21:15, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Well, are you planning to limit your edit-warring to "good-faith" comments on talk-pages then? Hm? Were you planning that? Hm? No. You have seen Michaels advertisement for an edit-war on the village pump and went straight for it and joined in. You probably do this every night to bully some user or destroy some project that has nothing to do with your template-craze whatsoever. You are probably going to go way beyond so called good-faith comments. I have taken your message, and I will leave. We have been through this crap before. However, as I recommended to Michael: the aggression level you are showing is not normal and you should get counselling. Bullying should not be the problem of the victim. I can leave. Your problem will last if you do not get it treated. Also, please have the decency of taking over my work here, it is roughly 50 to a 100 edits a day, which Michael and you can share. --Fenice 21:26, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

It is quite clearly the same as the COTW template and should appear on the talk page. COTW received 29 votes that it should appear on the talk page and only 11 for appearing in the article (one of which, I note, was Fenice). Surely that shows a community-favoured position? violet/riga (t) 21:20, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Violetriga, decency is an alternative. Just to inform you, not that I think you'd consider that. Read the talk page before you respond. It has been said before that the community consists of thousands of people who have not supported your bullying attempts. No this page is not a policy or anything that you could seriously base your pack attack on me. Are you never embarrassed of behaving like scum?--Fenice 21:26, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Fenice - No personal attacks. Do not do that again. Got that? --mav 04:07, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

Compromise?

Why don't we put the templates at the bottom of the article pages? Maurreen (talk) 06:44, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

Given the arguments against having meta-templates on article pages, that offer is more a concession than a compromise. In the case against meta-templates, the issue is not primarily where the template appears on a page, it's which page the template appears on. --Michael Snow 16:53, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

I think that would be the worst positioning, not being noticable in many cases and forgotten too often. violet/riga (t) 10:28, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

Changed over

I've just spent ages making all the templates appear on the talk pages and removing those that were incorrectly done (ie. no longer listed). violet/riga (t) 10:28, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

Archiving

I do not seem to be able to archive this page right now. The discussion above has served its purpose and I comply with Michaels and Violetrigas attack to bully me into leaving. So whoever has a better working connection please archive this. --Fenice 22:44, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Never mind, it was just violetrigas editwarring, as she reasons on her talk page. The system was working but bully no 1 around here has been reverting my archiving for an hour or so.--Fenice 23:02, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Passing off the baton

I am taking an indefinite break. Live long and prosper. Maurreen (talk) 09:35, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

• I'll take over again. -Litefantastic 16:18, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

The New Article Improvement Drive

Since I'm in charge again, I'd like to change the name of this project back to the Article Improvement Drive. I would keep all the nomination system changes from Maurreen and Fenice in place - I just want to change the name back. AID always seemed more accurate and succinct than This Weeks Improvement Drive, which I always called the TWID. If anyone has a reasonable objection to me doing this, please tell me. If no good reasons are raised, this becomes the New Article Improvement Drive (AID) as of Sunday. -Litefantastic 16:42, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

• Changed my mind slightly. Calling it the New AID makes it sound like it works with stubs, which is COTW territory. My proposal is now for calling it Article Improvement Drive. -Litefantastic 00:40, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

• • I agree with this - "AID" is a great name. violet/riga (t) 10:28, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

I know it's not an article but we should still maintain the edit histories and we should never copy/paste the contents. I've gone through and fixed it now. violet/riga (t) 10:08, 21 August 2005 (UTC)

Did I goof?

I updated the expiring date on Johann Gutenberg, but didn't realize that the nomination had already expired. The original was "Nominated 26 July 2005; needs at least 9 votes by August 16 2005", but the 9th vote had came too late.

9. DiamondDave 09:07, August 16, 2005 (UTC)

It has since gained one more vote so I'll leave the decision to more capable hands if the nomination should be removed. --Laisak 17:02, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

• I'm feeling generous. Let's leave it a bit longer. -Litefantastic 00:14, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
• Keep --ZeWrestler ^Talk 00:24, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

About the new colors

I changed the color scheme to reflect the rollover back to the AID name, and while I'd actually like to thank whoever changed the background color to purple because the powder blue was too painful to look at, I am seriously frustrated with the person/people who just reverted back to the last template versions before I changed things. It isn't so much a blatant disregard for my work - because even though it took an hour, I respect that not everyone will like it - but the fact the some of these still said "This weeks improvement drive"! You didn't change anything! You just reverted back! Come on, that's not fair or right. -Litefantastic 23:09, 21 August 2005 (UTC)

Ali Khamenei

I noticed he got 11 votes but didn't suceed and so I thought I would mention he is nominated at the Biography Collab. Falphin 23:13, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Philippine collaboration of the month

Any one intersted in taking this up or should I put it under {{historical}} ?Falphin 00:08, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

Leaving a template mess behind us.

If one goes to the list of articles that link to the nomination template {{IDRIVE}}, it's quite noticable that many more pages than the current nominations are sporting this template - I can foresee this being a possible point of confusion.

The list includes many failed noms, past winners, and some that as near as I can tell, though tagged, never made it to the project page (or were not archived), such as my hometown: Tacoma, Washington. I think it would be useful in meeting the spirit and purpose of this prohect to replace the tag on failed noms at least with a notice that comments on possible improvements to the article may be found on the Removed page. I know there's some resistence to the proliferation of templates, but it would seem in this case, we could use another. Whitejay²⁵¹ 17:12, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Would this new template look like the old one or just a line of text? I think it should be something like {{oldpeerreview}}. I volunteer to clean up the old nominations if this template is created. --Laisak 15:42, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

Anonymous votes

I spotted a few irregular votes on History of chemistry. These votes were done by an anonymous user, but signed as a different one. I'm assuming good hope that these were done accidentally by forgetting to logon.

• Esthurin 02:12, 12 September 2005(UTC) (edit by 131.220.68.177)
• Vb16:10, 19 September 2005 (UTC) (edit by 130.123.128.114)

What is the policy on this? --Laisak 09:07, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

• If it's verifiable, leave it. If it's not, do a strikethrough of the vote with the <s> and </s> commands. -Litefantastic 23:22, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

Before we strangle this institution...

Maybe we should go back to three votes/week again. I think we'll just kill this place if we don't. -Litefantastic 23:22, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

I for one agree, it's getting rather sparse around here. Whitejay²⁵¹ 18:24, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

This place turned into a ghost town...fast :) Everyone go back to school or something? Even getting three votes a week is asking a lot now, much less four --Fxer 07:15, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, I changed Apple Macintosh's "needs at least..." number to 20 based on 4 votes. Somebody fix that if it's officially 3 votes. Tsm1128 06:32, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

I fixed it. I also fixed the stay until date to reflect that it has gotten enough votes to go six weeks after nomination. I also fixed the new nomination template as all the new noms were still spitting out 4 votes needed. I'm about to fix the nomination date on the American Motors nom. It says it was nominated on the 21st but was actually nominated on the 25th. I'm mentioning all this in the interest of transparency - I'm not mucking with the process, just correcting errors where the process went awry. Whitejay²⁵¹ 16:47, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

Current collaboration template

Would it be possible to create a template for the current collaboration that displays just the name of the current project, as is done with Template:Cotw1, so that pages that don't wish to call the full banner can still display the current topic without having to manually update it every week? It would be most helpful, I think. — Your server has been MC MasterChef :: Leave a tip — 09:02, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

New listing

Participants here may be interested in the new Wikipedia:Most visited articles listing, which promotes featured status for these articles. -- Beland 03:03, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

Purpose

I'm a little confused by what winning entails. Articles that need the most improvement (i.e., they are "winners" because they are actually quite weak)? Conversely, articles that are very close to FA (winners because they are, in fact, fine articles)? Or is it simply, "I find this topic interesting" and thus I vote? Whichever, it should be made clear at the top of the page. Marskell 14:28, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Knock, knock. It's a simple question. What does a vote actually indicate? Marskell 23:23, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

Editors here vote on articles as part of a process to select an article they feel needs improvement. The article with the most support votes at the end of the week are selected as the "winner". Collaborators and other editors are then encouraged to work together on the "winning" article in order to bring it up to a higher standard. People might vote for a topic because they feel it is an important subject for the encyclopedia to cover, or because the selected article is in particularly poor shape, or because it's close to featured status and just needs a little more work, or any number of other reasons. — MC MasterChef :: Leave a tip — 03:11, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

"Because it's close to featured status..." Isn't that what Peer Review is for? PR is a wonderful concept that gets so little traffic. Why not leave this for pages that are particularly sub-standard and link to Peer Review for pages that are close to featured. Marskell 11:40, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

I agree. This week's contenders, The Discovery Channel and Rosa Parks. Rosa Parks is a mighty fine article and is very close to featured status. I don't think it warrants an entire week of improvement. Discovery has almost nothing and could benefit greatly from this improvement drive.

Past template

Made a template for past Improvement drives here Template:Past AID similar to the collaboration of the week one. The colours might need changing, especially the date/year which looks hard to see. Astrokey44 11:33, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

Do we really want votes by users without a single contribution to Wikipedia?

Now these are only the most obvious ones, but we're getting more and more votes by users who have only created an account to vote on AID. Here is some examples:

Vincent van Gogh
15. JordeeBec 17:21, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Cybernetics
3. David HC Soul15 October 2005

Asian fetish
12. Omblet 07:17, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

Green Party (United States)
7. dbreuer 17:50, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
10. mesoandy 18:04, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Stairway to Heaven
7. NightmareMoogle 18:06, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

I'm not a newbie hater, but does someone think these users will actually contribute if the article they voted for wins? Special:Contributions/Waltwe is also an interesting example. Lots of activity on voting, but not a single contributive edit. --Laisak 13:26, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

• With the possible exception of David HC Soul, who looks as though he got as far as finishing his user page before getting bored with it all, these all look like sock puppets. So as moderator I say ban sock puppets - but I think detecting them might be tricky. -Litefantastic 15:26, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

How nice of you to remove me,I see "the encyclopedia for everyone" should be taken with a grain of salt.Too bad that people not registered don't get a chance to voice their opinion on what they really want to see in the encyclopedia.The same goes for the front page redesign,again desided over by a minority.I guess a poll is something new arround these parts.--Technosphere83 12:13, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

Actually, Wikipedia's mottoes are "The Free Encyclopedia" and "The encyclopedia anyone can edit". Nobody said anyone willing to make an account gets equal privileges right off the bat.

But that's beside the point. The important things are that 1) allowing people with just a few edits leaves the door wide open to voting fraud, and 2) the AID is run by a single person, not Wikipedia as a whole, and is subject to whatever rules that person wants to impose. If you don't like it, you can start your own alternative AID. Today's Featured Article you have a slightly better case for (any user can suggest changes to the other parts of the page and expect a good chance of some friendly admin taking them up if their suggestion has merit). —Simetrical (talk) 02:41, 23 November 2005 (UTC)