Wikipedia talk:Collaboration of the week/Archive 5

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New COTW??? Is it History of the Balkans?? 209.89.30.8 00:00, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Turning old COTWs into featured articles

The holidays have caused a lull on the featured article candidates. When I do archiving tonight, the number of nominations will drop into the single digits. I think this makes it a good time to seriously consider looking back at previously COTWs and thinking about which ones would make good featured article candidates. I looked through, and the best I found were (IMHO) Space race, African Union, and Culture of Greece. My second tier (of good but not quite great articles) is:

All of these are within striking distance of featured article status, and I think with a modicum of work any of them could become featured articles. The most common stumbling block I have found is that most are missing references. →Raul654 22:54, Jan 2, 2005 (UTC)

old cotws

I just deleted Kwanazaa and Dakar from cotw-there time was up according to GMT. Dunno if they gent sent qutomqtically to the old cotw candidates or not--Onefool 01:51, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Double?

Erm... why are there two sets of Nominations? -- AllyUnion (talk) 07:13, 15 Jan 2005 (UTC)

An inexperienced user... problem corrected.--Pharos 08:25, 15 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Double?

Erm... why are there two sets of Nominations? -- AllyUnion (talk) 07:18, 15 Jan 2005 (UTC)

An inexperienced user... problem corrected.--Pharos 08:30, 15 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Removed votes by User:Puget Sound

I've removed...

  1. Puget Sound 19:04, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)

...from all the nominations. The user voted for every nominee and I do not believe that they will contribute to any of them. For reference: Puget Sound (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)). violet/riga (t) 10:52, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Tempted to remove votes by WizardOfTheCDrive (talk | contributions) too, but these aren't for every nominee. violet/riga (t) 11:00, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Removed WizardOfTheCDrive (talk | contributions) twice now. violet/riga (t) 19:56, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Military histories

If there are so many users interested in collaborating on military history articles, perhaps they should form a specific COTW to deal with their pet subject. Otherwise we may be in need of a 'No military history please' COTW. Gareth Hughes 20:15, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

  • Why don't you form one and lure them there?--Pharos 20:20, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Hmm, a history of pacifist strategies, perhaps?

First, I would point out that we vote on COTW, therefore, if "so many users [are] interested in collaborating on military history articles", then they should be included, since that's what voting is for. If the nominations don't win, too bad, but if they do, that is what the voters wanted. The point of the main COTW is that any genre can be nominated, even of those with their own COTW's, like the UK or China, etc; a new COTW does not forbid its nomination

Also, I nominated Military history of the United States. I did it not necessarily because it is of any special interest to me (but it is an important topic that has no text, check it out). However, it is my experience that articles I am most interested in and think need the most recognition, are often ones that others are not interested in and will not support (I previously nominated Honduras and Dakar which failed). Additionally, less popular or Western topics that do become COTW's often receive very little edits anyway (it seems people will vote on subjects they think deserve better articles with no intention of contributing). For example, see Tangshan earthquake, Indian Railways, Situs inversus, and African art compared to more successful ones. Unfortunately, it seems that only mainstream, Western topics are usually very successful, but there are still plenty of those in need, so it's not all bad. Anyway, general topics like military histories are good nominations if they tend to be more well known.--Dmcdevit 03:23, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)


The Stub Snub

I was looking over the list of the current COTWs (Everyone vote for Military history of Switzerland!) and noticed that on the votes for the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, one user had actually pulled out, because the page had gotten beyond stub length while still in the nomination precess, which really seems to defeat the COTW purpose (the article is now contested for NPOV). This doesn't seem right, so I propose an amendment to the COTW system: articles that get past stub length while under consideration for nomination are still valid candidates for COTW. Any thoughts? -Litefantastic 01:36, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

That is already the case: a nominated article has to satisfy the requirements (redlink or stub) when nominated. There is no requirement that the article remain so until it is COTW or pruned, so there is no need for an amendment, although perhaps this could be made clearer on the main page. However, there is nothing to compel someone to vote, or to prevent them withdrawing their vote, if they so wish. -- ALoan (Talk) 10:57, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I didn't think it was bad that there was a withdrawn vote. The COTW nomination process is notoriously long (read the page above). It's common for articles to catch interest and get work done during that time. If the nomination fails, but the article is improved, is this a loss or a win? Seems to me it's a win. --Dhartung | Talk 10:09, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Paris Peace Conference, 1919

This candidate must be archived, as it has not met its votes target. Kostja 12:02, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

There's no need to post this on the talk page. Someone always gets around to the pruning eventually. --Dhartung | Talk 10:09, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

COTW template

The {{COTW}} template appears on the talk page of only 6 of the current 28 COTW nominees. It was also not removed from about 6 failed nominations. I think it serves a purpose, so how can we promote its use (and removal)? violet/riga (t) 15:56, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I used to go through the lists from time to time, adding the template to current COTW nominees and removing it from old ones, but no-one else seemed to care. If it was useful, I expect that people would do it. -- ALoan (Talk) 21:09, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

A military collaboration of the week?

Quite a few of the candidates that I see listed are military in nature. Would I be correct in assuming that this could likely become another viable branch of CotW? Oberiko 16:50, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I have some interest in that, especially if it had no stub requirement. Maurreen 19:26, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I think many, most or all of the specialized CotWs should have no stub requirement. Tuf-Kat 19:39, Feb 13, 2005 (UTC)

Agreed. Many articles need to be rewritten, standardized, merged etc. Just because there's something written doesn't mean it's any good. Oberiko 20:17, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Neutral: item-specific COTWs tend to burn out after a while - Literature and Gaming are the only active ones left. However, I think a MiCOTW has a better chance of success than others; people tend to remember wars quite strongly. -Litefantastic 23:33, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The Stub Snub: Reloaded moved to Wikipedia_talk:Article improvement drive

Concept of a non-stub collaboration and name seemed to be agreed upon, so I have moved the expanding discussion to its own page. 119 23:31, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Pruning improved articles

Some article comes to be vastly improved between the time they are nominated and the moment they are pruned (see Mozambique). Shouldn't there be a system for pruning them? --Circeus 19:21, Feb 17, 2005 (UTC)

There is - either they are selected as COTW or they are pruned because they don't get enough votes. Many people don't support a nominated article because it improves significantly after its nomination.
Why do you think improved nominee articles need to be pruned? How are you going to tell when an article is "too good" to be a COTW candidate? -- ALoan (Talk) 19:41, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Defunct COTW's

Just wondering: is there a procedure for getting rid of defunct COTW's (at the very least, off the Template:COTWs). I am not trying to delete any working (or "reviving") ones, but that long list is making the page look very cluttered. Some of them have been inactive for a while, so I don't think we have any reason to think they will start back up again. Who needs a link to an inactive COTW anyway?--Dmcdevit 03:42, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Military History of the Soviet Union:FAC

I recently submitted a former COTW, Military history of the Soviet Union, as a Wikipedia:Featured article candidates but so far it has drawn very little attention: no objects, one abstain and one support (from a contributor). I'd really appreciate any help you can give me there. Thanks. Ryan Anderson 03:10, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Adding expiration date to header

I'm going to add in the instructions for the user to add the expiration date (n+7) into the header, allowing janitors (such as myself :)) to more easily determine which have expired (by simply looking at the TOC). If anyone objects, reply here or revert (but at least reply here with reasons). Thanks. -- BRIAN0918  00:01, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

This was more or less the way it used to be done in months gone by - there should be some discussion in the archive along the lines that it was thought to be ugly and the italic "Nominated:" line was added underneath the header instead. It seems a bit duplicative to have the date in the header and in the "Nominated" line too. -- ALoan (Talk) 01:47, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Rules

Should articles that are far from stubs by lenght, but in practicality almost entirely constituted of commented links be eligible? see Asia! Circeus 18:27, Mar 9, 2005 (UTC)

  • Absolutely, and many of them are. See the current COTW, Military history of the United States, which is only a list of links. I can see your concern with commented links, I had a similar feeling about an article a while back that I can't remember. I would say that the initial sentence under a heading, usually, should be included in the count, such as in Asia, that first sentence under Southwest Asia, or North Asia or whatever, but the bulleted lines that are really just links with conjunction between them do not count (the guidelines say 2 paragraphs of information). I would say Asia probably qualifies, since it looks like about 2 smallish paragraphs if it were condensed. We could formulate a policy, anyone else agree with my assessment? --Dmcdevit 03:48, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Proposal for two COTWs per week

If you look through the recent history of successful bids for COTW, it seems like most have taken around a month to reach a point where they are officially a COTW. It seems that most have between 20-40 votes by that time. However, after over a month of waiting, from what I can tell, generally only around 10 or so users actually make significant edits to the COTW article.

I wonder if, by letting articles languish on the COTW nomination page for over a month, we are losing a lot of the initial enthusiasm and attention that is generated initially. By the time a nomination actually becomes a COTW, only a portion of the wikipedians who voted to work on the COTW actually maintain enough enthusiasm to do so. All of us have schedules apart from wikipedia (shocking, I know), and those that might have wanted to work on an article cannot a month later when real life rears its ugly head.

Structurally, I think the process for COTW, as it currently functions, is a bit of a bottleneck on that enthusiasm and opportunity. When the COTW community was small, it made sense to focus everyone on one article a week. But now that interest has grown, and the top two competing COTW nominations do not share a significant number of overlapping supporters, it seems like a waste to only have one COTW. For example, this week the top two contenders are History of sex and History of the Balkans. These two topics do not have a significant topical overlap, and the variety of users nominating each respectively reflect that topical/interst divide. Why make one distinct group of users wait, while the other group works on its own article?

I realize that having two COTWs would somewhat undermine the point of a COTW. All concerned COTW wikipedians ought to pitch in on whatever the COTW is, in whatever way they can, be it copyediting or formatting or whatever. And I'm sure there are a few users who do pitch in on every single COTW, regardless of the topic area. However, I do believe that this outlook is not shared by most people who contribute to COTWs. As far as I can tell, most will only contribute to an article in which they already have some area knowledge, or previous interest.

Looking through past failed COTWs, most were scrapped rightly after having only received 1-3 votes. But there are several that received over 5 votes, a few that received over 10 votes, and the odd couple that received 20+ votes. Why would we let an article with 20+ people interested in it languish without improvement? In the current list of failed nominations there is History of Painting (12 votes), the Paris Peace Conference (23 votes), Human rights in Myanmar (11 votes), Cultural impact of World War I (14 votes), César Chávez (13 votes), Capital punishment in China (12 votes), and Norman Borlaug (14 votes). The list would be substantially longer if we included those with 6+ votes as well. By restricting COTW to only one a week, we are bottlenecking all of this potential interest and improvement to wikipedia articles.

Clearly they can always work on the articles regardless of whether they are COTW or not. But that always holds true—why then even have a COTW at all? Obviously, having six or seven COTWs could not be sustained—there would be too much overlap between interested parties, and all the articles would suffer, since collective attention would be too divided. But since we have a significantly large COTW community, with diverse interests, I have no doubt that we could support two COTWs per week without significant dilution of our collaborative strength.

Therefore, I propose upping the number of COTWs to two per week. This will achieve several things:

  1. Eliminate the bottleneck for collaboration
  2. Decrease wait-time from nomination to collaboration
  3. Promote "striking while the iron is hot"
  4. Double the output of substantial contributions to needy articles
  5. Allow two different interest groups to have concurrent collaborations
  6. Not water down the effects of concerted collaboration too much, preserving what COTW was created for in the first place
  7. All of your wildest dreams will come true

I am eager to hear your comments, suggestions, support, or objections. —thames 20:21, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

There is nothing to stop you improving an article while it is a COTW candidate, although it may discourage others from voting for it if it improves too much.
This topic has been discussed before - see the talk archive. The consensus previously was that the risk of diluting what interest there is is greater than the potential benefit.
See Wikipedia:Collaboration of the week/Removed/Summary for a longer list of most popular failed COTW candidates - those with over 20 votes are: 2004 Summer Paralympics (47 votes), Attila the Hun (31 votes), Caribbean Sea (23 votes), Civil rights (24 votes), Civil war (20 votes), Culture of Russia (34 votes), Extinction (29 votes), History of Asia (22 votes), Junk mail (21 votes), Mediaeval Britain (27 votes), Roald Dahl (22 votes), Science fiction film (32 votes) Some of these are quite good, and some are Featured. -- ALoan (Talk) 20:48, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)
In fact, in my proposal, I did mention that people can work on articles regardless of whether or not they achieve COTW status. Actually, people can work on any article regardless of whether it ever achieves COTW status. I would venture that the majority of featured articles were not COTWs beforehand. The point is not that the articles will eventually get worked on anyway, but that COTW status is a powerful motivating tool for individuals who might not otherwise add to an article. It's the promise that many people will be working on the article at once that gets people to pitch in.
I agree that there is a possibility of dilution if there are two COTWs, a point I considered in my proposal. On the other hand, it appears as though the month+ wait for COTW status also dilutes the pool of willing/enthusiastic/free/interested wikipedians.
I would be interested to know if there was ever a trial period in which two articles were simultaneously COTW. Perhaps we could have a two COTW trial week as a test. —thames 21:14, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Oh, I wasn't disagreeing with you, just putting your proposal into context. Indeed - COTW is meant to be a motivating force, and I take your point about the wait (believe me, a month is a short time - some articles are on here for several months, but by that time they will have gathered lots of support - other than the first few weeks, I think the fastest ever around 2 or 3 weeks).
No, there has not been a trial "two COTW week" as far as I remember. Perhaps we should try two COTWs next week. -- ALoan (Talk)
Who do we contact about this? —thames 00:01, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Anyone. I'm for it; it's working splendidly over at WP:AID. -Litefantastic 00:34, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Sounds like a great idea to me. Especially if the two articles are on very different subjects like Piranha and civil libertarian, so there won't much overlap and thus little "dilution" of interest. I can't think of a good reason not to do it. Dave 18:17, Mar 14, 2005 (UTC)

Should this be put to vote or something to get an idea whether the idea is popular? at Wikipedia:Collaboration of the week/Twin CCOTW/Vote, maybe (with /Twin CCOTW serving for the official proposition.) or maybe at Wikipedia:Double the Collaboration of the week? Circeus 14:46, Mar 16, 2005 (UTC)

  • Support. Most of the cotw articles are of wildly diverse topics. A possible objection however is a still non-zero chance that the top two are from close areas. I suggest that of these only one is picked, the runner-up is given a week of handicap, and the third in the line is taken for cotw instead. Mikkalai 19:49, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

An interesting idea. Since topics are so diverse, we're likely to get two groups of editors that are interested in doing both. In fact, we should maintain a culture of understated competition between the two ad-hoc teams. Just don't call them the red COTW and the blue COTW. Zocky 04:54, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Update and Remove

I wonder, does anyone have the right to update the nominations deadlines or to remove nomination if they failed? That because I saw nominations that had few votes but passed their deadline days ago, and no one removed them. 500LL 20:16, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Yes. Be bold. -- ALoan (Talk) 01:01, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

To nominate an article

Seems like the section got lost recently, I brought it back and I will leave it here for reference - I recommend this is moved to a visible place, perpaps a main article heading. Technical note: to display the text in main article, I had to add another nowiki tag, which is not needed in the main article (since the section is invisible there). After a second thought, the invisibility is more of a hindrance then help, I think. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 18:05, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

==To nominate an article== Please click on "Edit" on the right. <!--<nowiki> To add a new nomination, please: (1) Copy the template below (2) Paste it ABOVE the "== To nominate an article, please ....==" (3) Replace "Month n" and "Month n+7" with the appropriate dates. (4) Add {{cotw}} to the article's TALK page. <TEMPLATE BEGINS> <!-- DON'T FORGET: Add {{cotw}} to the article's TALK page. --> ===[[Your article name here]] (n+7 March)=== :''Nominated [[n March]] [[2005]]; needs 5 votes by [[n+7 March]] [[2005]]'' '''Support:''' # ~~~~ '''Comments:''' * ---- <TEMPLATE ENDS> -->

</nowiki>

Duplicate

Has anyone noticed that the contents of this article is duplicated? See index. Someone who is more experienced than me, please correct this without any vote lost. --Eleassar777 18:16, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Missing nominees

I see that History of sexuality was removed; I didn't think it was ready, but I can't check, because it isn't found on the Removed page. I've had other nominees I've wanted to reference and haven't found them, either. Is there a process problem here? How many people are involved? Is it the responsibility of anyone in particular, or anyone at all? The volume is apparently becoming a problem. --Dhartung | Talk 23:28, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure history of sexuality became history of sex and is now the current COTW. Were the two ever separate nominations? —thames 04:26, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Yup, this was my "read the darn page" moment of the week, I guess. I still have trouble sometimes finding other nominees. --Dhartung | Talk 10:52, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Suggestion: Opposing votes

Adding the possibility of pruning through opposing votes would accelerate the disappearance of articles that do not belong in COTW or on which the consensus tends toward no ("too obscure").

Basically, if an article reaches the limit of 5 "no" votes on the first week before it reaches the yes, it's removed with reason being the one with the most vote (likely either "too long" (see Iraq), "too obscure" (see Far eastern University) or "too specific" (see Metaphysical objectivism)). Circeus 14:42, Mar 16, 2005 (UTC)

This is an interesting idea that in general I would be prepared to support, however it should be further elaborated. Namely, I'm afraid that people would not like to vote against - because if I vote against someone's proposal, which they would like to see to get promoted to COTW, but it doesn't, they could vote against mine solely on the basis of revenge. I don't know how serious this problem is; anyway, it surely would influence voting and should be taken into consideration. --Eleassar777 16:03, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I oppose opposing votes. If people want to collaborate on something, let them. Sure, COTW is supposed to focus on stubs, and 9 times out of 10 it does. But there's no real harm in collaborating on something that's not perfectly a COTW candidate. Neither is there harm in collaborating on something that's "too obscure"--in fact if we can round up enough people to collaborate on something obscure, that's a good thing, since such a topic probably wouldn't be expanded on as quickly left on its own. Most topics that are too obscure garner only 1-2 votes anyway, so no harm done--they're nominated and shortly thereafter removed. Opposing votes really won't change much: people who support a topic will collaborate on it, and people who aren't interested in a topic won't. —thames 14:22, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)
It would be fair better for people not to vote than to turn this system into VFD. -- AllyUnion (talk) 00:02, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

What's happenning?

Why do I get the feeling that the COTW board is either slowly dying or does not attract a lot of people knowledgeable enough to cast their votes? As far as I can remember, things used to be somewhat different around here. Could it be that Wikipedia is gradually losing people or forcing them out through different arbitrations, even though its traffick is growing? KNewman 12:07, Mar 17, 2005 (UTC)

In general, I tend to believe the "community" side of WP is far from being emphasized enough on the pages accessed by newcomers. Took me a whole lot of time to really get a hang of wiki's self-administration systems We could suggest that the community elements be emphasized on the Main Page, for example, problem being the english wiki is more strict than others in enforcing the "No elf-reference rules". Circeus 14:13, Mar 17, 2005 (UTC)
What means "No elf-reference rules"? Is this a typo? --Eleassar777 14:27, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Wiki-elves are special creatures that run wikipedia behind the scenes. They're responsible for all the good things that happen on wikipedia. Unfortunately, they're very shy and self-conscious, so if you go around mentioning them, they stay away for a while. Thus, the english wikipedia tends to be quite strict about not talking about the wiki-elves for fear of losing their auspicious protection. Related topics: WikiFairies, WikiGnomes, WikiGremlins. (Either that, or Circeus mean to type "self-reference". Either way, it's bad.) —thames 14:37, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I did mean "no self-references rule". I must admit the main page needs to be kept as simple as possible too. heck, look at fr:Accueil, that's way too busy! Circeus 15:59, Mar 17, 2005 (UTC)
Actually, although it is very busy, I like it and can orient myself better there than on the English main page. --Eleassar777 16:06, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Then where is the best place to word a proposition to reform a buit the Main Page? Circeus 16:49, Mar 17, 2005 (UTC)
KNewman, I'm not sure what you are concerned about. Could you please describe how things were when they "were different around here"? I guess I've just not been here long enough to see what you do. —thames 14:37, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I believe, too, that the spirit of community is weak. I am for example noticing that there is no progress with the chosen COTW candidates during the week when they are selected and in the end only a handful of people contribute to them significantly. Even more concerning is that the articles picked up in other nominations scarcely develop.
At the other side every day Wikipedia has more editors and the number of articles is fastly growing. IMHO, this could mean that due to different reasons not enough attention is focused on the already existing ones. There should be some way to bring attention of users to "important" topics. Perhaps not only by emphasizing the community elements on the Main Page, but also by the rule that only some people (for example those with more than 200 edits) should be able to create new articles (except for redirects)? Of course, this has its pros and cons and at first, the real state of Wikipedia should be assessed.
Perhaps my view is just false, because I haven't been here a long time. A broad discussion about all this would be welcome. --Eleassar777 15:29, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)
P.S.: Hey, these creatures are interesting. I saw one recently.

Hi there, Thames! I don't hold any official posts at WP, I simply contribute by writing articles on Russian history (mostly). I've been around since August of 2004, not too long, I guess. I remember that people were much more active in the COTW section and they really knew what they were voting for. Now I see one person voting for every nominated article, as if he were a specialist in every field there is. I've always thought that a person votes for a COTW only if he feels that he can contribute, not simply because he would really love to see all of the nominated articles in WP. The Congo Basin article has already been nominated before, I think, and still it's a red link. History of Sex has been hanging there for weeks with tons of signatures under it, before somebody actually added something to it. I'm not even sure what to suggest, I guess I'm just sharing my feelings with you, guys. KNewman 18:24, Mar 17, 2005 (UTC)

Edit lock on COTW

History of sex is still locked up. I dont think it is a good idea to have the COTW locked out of editing, as a lot of new users probably check it out. But It seems that as soon as we open it it will again be vandalised. So either we should give this another shot and hope that the article can be edited or else we should simply change the COTW now instead of waiting 2 more days. I propose that we either change the COTW or atleast add a new COTW that people can work on. kaal 17:49, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

It seems a bit odd to have the COTW protected... -- ALoan (Talk) 18:26, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I unlocked it. Watch out for vandals. DAVODD 22:28, Mar 18, 2005 (UTC)

Setting up a new COTW

Is there any kind of procedure to go through to set up a new subject-specific collaboration of the week? I'd quite like to give a Wikipedia:Astronomy collaboration of the week a go as there's a wealth of astro-stubs that could be expanded enormously. Worldtraveller 14:12, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

You might want to build a reasonnable base of contributors first, as the Military Collaboration died a mere week after it was set up. Circeus 14:30, Mar 30, 2005 (UTC)

A new COTW

I'm thinking of creating a new COTW. It consists of nominating an article to improve it, but its nomination won't end until it reachs the featured status. What do you think? 500LL 18:23, Mar 30, 2005 (UTC)

I think it's a lot to ask of a small group of editors/constributors. People who are good at rapidly building up content on stubby pages are good at COTW. People who are thoughtful editors willing to scrounge around for the last polishing details of an article are better over at AID. The two processes are quite different functionally. Although it would be nice to have that kind of continuity when working on an article, essentially duplicating both COTW and AID wouldn't be a good idea. If you want to take a stub to featured article status, go from COTW to AID to PR to FAC. You'll get more viewpoints that way, even if it is rather disjointed and time-consuming. —thames 18:40, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Petition to move COTW to the main page

It seems to me that not enough people know about COTW and the community side of wikipedia. If they had a link on the main page to COTW it would be a much better project. So if you sign this petition here maybe someone will take notice and make a link for us.

Support:

  1. Bremen 18:39, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  2. Eleassar777 19:22, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  3. Tony Jin | (talk) 04:10, Apr 17, 2005 (UTC)

Oppose:

  1. Mikkalai 19:53, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  2. Bremen 01:26, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  3. —thames 13:38, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Commentary:

  • Actually there was some kind of discussion of this, although it didn't progress. See: What's happening. I support the idea, because in my opinion, the community spirit of Wikipedia should be more emphasized. This petition, if successful, should finally be transferred to the talk page of the Main page or its subpage. --Eleassar777 19:22, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

P.S.: I just noticed there is even no article on community spirit(!) - does it exist under another heading?

  • COTW is already on the Wikipedia:Community Portal and Wikipedia:Goings-on, althought I have no idea how many visitors they attract. -- ALoan (Talk) 19:54, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)
    • I've never even heard of the second one. -Litefantastic 02:15, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • Yeah, I'm aware that COTW is on the community portal page but I don't think that's enough. Look at Burundi this week's chosen article to see how well we're doing. No one is contributing! Bremen 20:02, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)
    • Exactly. --Eleassar777 20:20, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)
    • I think that's more to do with the choice of article than the publicity of COTW.

violet/riga (t) 20:21, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

      • You may be right but having a link on the main page can't hurt. Bremen 20:31, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)
    • Who has voted for Burundi to become COTW? Instead of writing now, those people just disappeared somewhere. Perhaps the main problem is that people vote for articles they do not know anything about neither they are prepared to research. --Eleassar777 20:26, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)
      • Or they vote for articles they have no intention of contributing to. Bremen 20:31, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)
    • Policies should be changed, probably. Two possible solutions come to my mind for improving the situation. The first would be that each user is allowed to have at maximum two votes and one nominee on the list of COTW candidates. The other, of course, would be to publish the COTW summary also on the Main page. --Eleassar777 20:54, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Ok...the mongol empire is this week's article and it hasn't had much success. I still really think a link on the main page would help...Maybe I should start a petition there? 04:46, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Posting not a petition, just the description of the situation, would probably bring some attention to this talk page - in any case, it would not cause harm. --Eleassar777 07:49, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

It certainly would cause harm. You know as well as everyone else here does that anything on the Main Page gets vandalized constantly. I'd rather not have to monitor COTW for reversion twenty times a day. I think we have to come up with better ways of advertising COTW. For instance, there are many specific wikiprojects and wikiportals. If our COTW is relevant to one of them, we ought to post a message there, or even simply post a message on the talk pages of all the members who have signed up. Posting a link on the front page will be an invitation to trollers and vandals, and won't necessarily attract the right type of people.—thames 13:22, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Those are some good ideas. But still, I think the amount of additional input we'd get from having a link on the front page would be more than enough to offset any vandalism. Bremen 01:26, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Please, I didn't say that having COTW on the Main page, but posting the description of problems we are trying to resolve here on the talk page of the main page would not cause harm. --Eleassar777 06:57, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)


  • If COTW gets front page service, than shouldn't the VfD and the AID get it also? They're equally important in WP upkeep. -Litefantastic 23:16, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)
VFD is very much internal housekeeping to a fair degree we don't want people with very little knowlage of wikipedia getting involved on VFDGeni 07:05, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • People who are interested in the topic in most cases have it on their watchlist. COTW is a busy week to waste time on fending off vandals, as in happened during the history of sex cotw. Mikkalai 19:53, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • People should pay attention to all collaborations, including this one. The collaborations on AID hardly gets any improvement, and the expansion on COTW is not enough either. -- Tony Jin | (talk) 04:10, Apr 17, 2005 (UTC)

Template:COTWnow?

Why was Template:Current-COTW moved to Template:COTWnow? Tony Jin | (talk) 01:29, Apr 9, 2005 (UTC)

As I said on Template talk:COTWnow, there was ample scope for confusion between {{Current-COTW}} and {{CurrentCOTW}} (since there is only a hyphen difference). Rather than move CurrentCOTW (which is linked to in lots of places) I moved Template:Current-COTW to Template:COTWnow.
Please feel free to move it again if you can think of a better name. -- ALoan (Talk) 23:58, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Removed featured candidates

I posted this note on a user talk page, but now think that a potential conflict of interpretatios deserves to be discussed here.

Andy, next time please don't hurry with removal. The moment you did it the database clock was still in 11 April (see your own timestamp). So formally the article still had a weak chance to get the 4 missing votes during the remaining 4 hours. I understand that the article was sitting there more than 7x24 hours, but the notice says "needs 5 votes by April 11, 2005", rather than, like, "needs 5 votes by 13:27 April 11, 2005". Mikkalai 19:41, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)
We always count from the exact hour and minute when deciding when a COTW candidate expires rather than waiting until the end of the day. Ie, a nomination made at 03:25 on 4 April 2005 expires at 03:25 on 11 April 2005 if it doesn't receive at least five votes, not at 23:59. AndyL 19:48, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Since I don't see this rule written explicitely, what do you think: when must the entry must be pruned: after N*7*24 hours since nomination or after the server time midnight of the marked date? Mikkalai 19:57, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The problem is an article nominated at 0:01 of April 5th will have just short of a full day's extra voting over an article nominated at 23:59 of April 5th. The only fair way to do it is to count from the exact time. AndyL 20:06, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Although it is not mentioned explicitly on the main page (perhaps this should be corrected), this is the way the cutoff has been interpreted for many months. There is definitely discussion in at least one of the talk archives. -- ALoan (Talk) 21:03, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Template:COTW is hardly used

When I'm looking through the talk pages of COTW candidates, most of them don't have {{COTW}} on them. Could a bot automatically put it on there? -- Tony Jin | (talk) 00:23, Apr 17, 2005 (UTC)


April 18 2005 COTW

The way the current COTW is proceeeding makes me to repeat my proposal: those who vote must either plead to contribute information or explicitely say that they know zilch in the area, but feel that it is important. Otherwise we have a week wasted while the queue is long. The contribuing/noncontribution votes must weigh 5:1. Mikkalai 21:45, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Why not limit the number of votes each one has? This will force us to be more selective. --Eleassar777 21:58, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)
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