Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles

EB-specific instructions

We tailored the instructions here specifically to the EB2004 project, but this project page has a broadened scope. They should be revised, but (as the original author) I hesitate to start because I think they are already somewhat too long, and by adding assistance specific to the other sources, they would become just mind-numbing. Does anyone with better organized instructional skills want to make a start at reorganizing them, maybe? David Brooks 02:58, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Russian names bot

I noticed that Britannica uses full Russian names, complete with "father name", so in many cases a simple redirect is enough. Maybe a bot should be used to do that. It shoulkd do the following

Find Britannica titles consisting of three words "Foo Bar Baz"
Check whether "Foo" is a common Russian name
Check whether the article "Foo Baz" exists in Wikipedia. Check also alternative spellings of "Foo" (Alexandr, Aleksandr, Alexander and such).
Make "Foo Bar Baz" redirect to "Foo Baz"

I think this procedure would greatly reduce the numbers of missing articles. Grue 16:25, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Its a good idea, but i am not sure there are actually enough to warrant the effort, plus bots tend to make mistakes when even the smallest amount of intelligence is needed. Bluemoose 18:12, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Template

I just made this template, its for the main project page, the list pages and your user pages. I think it is a great idea, because when the weekly focus page and "Todo" gets changed, it will be changed on every instance of the template, and of course it will provide much advertising, it also provides all the useful links. I put it on here first because I'm sure it can be vastly improved/tweaked. thanks Bluemoose 18:12, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Duplicate list entries

I just added an instruction to this effect, but remember: don't consolidate duplicate entries in the lists (or, if you do, add a comment as I just did to /Q). They represent two articles with the same name but different topics. For WP they will need a disambig pointing to two (non-empty) content articles. David Brooks 18:26, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

"Purge" Bot

I have recently created the RABot to help manage requested articles pages (i.e. sort lists, remove created articles, cleanup formatting, etc.). With only minor modifciations, I could run it on all the encylcopedia pages you have here to wipeout the completed requests. Since it only operates under manual control, it never runs faster than about a minute per page (and considerably slower if I have to stop to correct mistakes), so it is not something that I am likely to do often, but occasionally going through and clearing out the encyclopedia request pages seems like a reasonable thing to do.

However, I didn't want to do so without coming here and making sure it would be okay with the community for me to clear out all the requests that have been fulfilled. Dragons flight 06:23, Jun 17, 2005 (UTC)

P.S. If you want to know how your encyclopedia requests compare to the other requested articles, you might enjoy taking a look at the stats page that I have created.

It sounds interesting, however, i think we would not want formatting to be changed (for Britannica articles at least), as the idea is that if someone searches for an exact britannica title, they will find it. I suspect formatting of the general topics does not matter, but dont quote me on that. In terms of removing the "blues" it sounds useful, but do you mean it removes one link a minute, or removes all the blue links off one page a minute? the later would be very useful. thanks Bluemoose 08:25, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

All links in one minute. I assume you have already sorted the lists in the way you want, so I would turn that off. After that, formatting is mostly concerned with whether white space and new lines are used consistantly, so probably not something you would be concerned with. However, before I go through and do all of the pages, I can do a couple and people can look them over to make sure they look right. Dragons flight 14:13, Jun 17, 2005 (UTC)

Be aware also that a number of the lists have been annotated, marking up existing articles that may contain some information, or articles that are not the same as the Britannica one. We would not want these removed. Where the bot may be very useful is in pruning the Nuttall Encyclopedia topics, most of which currently contain lots of blues. --OpenToppedBus - Talk 10:43, Jun 17, 2005 (UTC)

Your notation seems to be "* or # [[link]] - optional notes, new line". I would only be looking at that first link to determine whether the topic had been created and treating anything that came after it but before the next line as notes to preserve if the topic hadn't been created. Is that the kind of annotation you are referring to? The case of things that are marked as not equal to the encyclopedia topic would be harder. Is there any semi-standard notation that I can look for to determine this? This is a manually controlled script so in principle I can check all of these, but if there was a way recognize most of them automatically it would save time. For example, on RA, requests followed by the word "redirect" or "copyvio" are passed over since even though they may be blue they probably don't point at what the requester wanted. Dragons flight 14:13, Jun 17, 2005 (UTC)

All lists except EB2004 are ok i would imagine? Bluemoose 10:51, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Could you clarify what the problem is with EB04? Is it just that you don't want blue links removed from that list (in which case I will skip it), or is there some formatting you are afraid will be disturbed (in which case I would teach the script to understand and perserve it)? Dragons flight 14:13, Jun 17, 2005 (UTC)

I think you would be safe to remove all blues on EB04 if they are not followed by a comment. But EB04 entries are followed by external links on a lots of pages, which might cause you problems, also it is kept fairly up to date anyway. Using it on the nuttall, EB1911 and general topics would, i imagine, be much easier for you, and much more useful for us, go ahead and try it. thanks Bluemoose 14:20, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Okay, some time over this weekend (hopefully) I'm going to put together a sample by processing two pages of each encyclopedia except EB04. Assumming there are no complaints, and I wouldn't expect there to be any, then I'll go through and do the rest of those encyclopedias. Dragons flight 00:34, Jun 18, 2005 (UTC)

No. I would strongly oppose. We have to check each entry, particularly on '04, to make sure that it reflects the right article Yaka is a good example. Britannica is about an ethnic group, while the Wikipedia entry is about a minor Star Trek character. A bot will not be able to check this. I would not, however, mind if this was done on Nuttall. (Danny didn't sign)

Well let's be clear what we are talking about. This morning (i.e. ~10 hours ago my local time) I ran the script passively over your encyclopedia pages to see how many entries were involved. Summarized as follows:

Encyclopedia	Entries	Active
Nuttall	4166	236
Britannica 1911	9061	1104
Britannica 2004	17430	382
"General Encyclopedic"	48376	2827
Total	79033	4549

However, I did notice that Danny took these comments as something of a challenge so some of the lists have presumably come down since then. If you are really opening each active link and comparing to the content under the same topic in Brittanica, etc., then this probably takes at least two or three minutes per link, and so you would have about 150-200+ man hours of work to check them all. If you and others want to check them all, then be my guest, I'll go away. I'm simply offering to remove the 6% of links that have already become active, if you would like me to, because I have a tool that allows me to do it far faster than an unaided human could. Dragons flight 05:07, Jun 19, 2005 (UTC)

I agree - we really do need to check these by hand. I'd also like to see us check by hand all of the lists (including the African and Middle-Eastern topics one, where this was already run without consensus) - it's not that hard to do, and will stop us missing things needlessly. Ambi 06:11, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

If you and others really want to volunteer to check them, then be my guest. See my comments to Danny about the scope of that effort. With respect to the African and Middle-Eastern pages, I apologize if I stepped on anyone's toes. Since they look like lists of requested articles, contain no special instructions (or links to this project), and are linked from various requested articles subpages (to be fair I added some of those links), then I hope you can understand why I chose to treat them as requested articles pages, i.e. exactly what my script was designed for. The existence of this script and its use on requested articles page was discussed and accepted at Wikipedia talk:bots but I am happy to discuss it with others. After a week of running it across WP:RA, there are no ongoing objections (save the one you just made), which I would regard as implicit acceptance of its existence even if it is not an explicit endorsement. If there exists a consensus to treat the Africa and Middle Eastern lists differently, then I would be happy to remove them from the set of pages I process, but I would like to see some people speak up and say they intend to maintain them. My form of processing can't be worse than simply neglecting them, and I would point out that Africa had not been pruned in 6 weeks and that was done by the frequent RA contributor DMG413 who almost certainly didn't do any entry checking either. If you just create lists and then don't maintain them, I would expect that to discourage participation, as people don't see them as being a serious endeavor. Dragons flight 05:07, Jun 19, 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, but I am not convinced. I think we should be more careful about what we purge, lest we purge copyright violations (there are some marked in the lists), inadequate redirects, and others. It is worth the time and extra effort to do a good job. I don't believe a bot is adequate. And by the way, I have pruned the African list, and checked when I did it. Danny 05:23, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

To be fair it's not a true bot, since I read and approve each edit (really an editing tool rather than a bot), so I wouldn't remove anything actually marked as a copyvio, bad redirect, etc. Of course, many such presumably aren't marked. You also seem to be placing a great deal of importance on catching copyvios and the like right now (which are easy to miss even if you are looking). I tend to take an eventualist approach to this, and assume that once an article is created there will always be future eyes to look at them and catch mistakes. In fact, I would regard an editor interested in the topic as far more likely to catch problems. However, if the consensus is to check all the encyclopedia articles by hand I am willing to step aside and wish you luck. Though before I do that, I would like to hear a few more voices on this matter. Right now the comments on this thread are fairly evenly divided, and for a decision that effectively creates more work for the project, I would think it is worth knowing that this is really what the majority wants. Dragons flight 05:47, Jun 19, 2005 (UTC)

First of all, this WikiProject has just been started last week. I'm pretty sure that capacity or man hours won't be a problem if it gains more momentum. WRT to the matter at hand, I'm afraid the eventualist approach is not the best one in this case — the very reason that these lists exist is to warrant that future eyes look at them and catch false redirects and other misfits. Furthermore, 'neglect them or prune them' is a false comparison.

Above all, we should not forget that these lists are not here to be pruned, but to point out that we still need a lot of articles. It is far less harmless for a blued link to stay for a while (and get the chance to be checked) than to be pruned by a bot as soon as something exists. — mark ✎ 07:51, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Mark, I'd actually missed the point that this was a new project. It is probably a compliment to you guys that it doesn't look or feel new. Dragons flight 08:31, Jun 19, 2005 (UTC)

Actually the project has been going for at least a year - the project page is much younger. Pcb21| Pete 10:50, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I meant the project page, of course; the lists are a lot older. But I think that this enterprise is likely to gain more contributors now that it's cast in the form of a WikiProject. — mark ✎ 16:23, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I think checking the blue links by hand is a matter of due diligence, but I'd like to know what happened when the very first versions of the list were created. Is is true that the creator (Bogdangiusca?) first automatically removed all the entries from the EB index that already matched WP titles? If so, then the genie is out of the bottle — we never got the opportunity to match any of those by hand. David Brooks 23:51, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Okay, okay, I give. Good luck to everyone doing them by hand. Dragons flight 02:44, Jun 20, 2005 (UTC)

PS. I would still like to resolve the details of the copyright question I asked below, if people have anything more they can contribute to that discussion.

Missing articles from fr.wikipedia.org

Inspired by a similar list on the Dutch wikipedia, I've created a list with articles that exist in a large(ish) number of languages, but apparently not in English. I've based this list on a database dump of the French wikipedia. There are many false hits, so I don't know yet if the list can be used to raise the quality of the English wikipedia, but at least we can add a lot of links to the French wikipedia.

I can also make this list for other wikipedias. Should I? Eugene van der Pijll 20:48, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

~~Where can we find that list? — mark ✎ 02:01, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)~~

Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles/fr — mark ✎ 02:03, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I don't suppose there's any way of getting an English translation of the articles needed? Ambi 06:11, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Improve Wikipedia's credibility?

It would be useful to also be able to see a listing of Wikipedia articles whose topics appear in no other encyclopaedia. Some of my work on WP has to been to rehabilitate topics dropped by the current Britannica but which are of importance to historians and biographers. How easy would that be, please? Apwoolrich 11:41, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, I've been thinking about that, too. It's an interesting idea. We should be aware that it would first of all expose our fancruft bulge — but there are lots of perfectly legitimate and important articles that Wikipedia has, but that others don't. Lord's Resistance Army comes to mind — I just checked Britannica 2005 and all they have is a paragraph or two in their 'Year in Review: 2003: Africa' and 'Year in Review: 2003: Uganda' articles. — mark ✎ 12:17, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Problem is that listing will be 20 times the size of the 2004 listing. Not easy to analyse. Pcb21| Pete 15:59, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

How about featured articles that don't exist in Britannica. I doubt they wrote about exploding whales or "All your base". Grue 16:18, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Good idea. Maybe other might be added, such as Engrish. Apwoolrich 18:22, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Bread clip, Rubber duck, ... (not featured articles, perhaps, but the best treatments of the subject in any encyclopedia, I'm sure). But I don't know if listing these articles will improve wikipedia's credibility with everyone.

Talking about Britannica and credibility: here's an article I came across while creating redirects for this project: Code of Kalantiaw; compare this with the EB article... Eugene van der Pijll 18:39, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Now that's funny. But I think a cleanup tag would be in order. (gotta run; grandson arrived...) David Brooks 19:00, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Oh, that's brilliant. If the Wikipedia article is true, where is that page poking fun at Britannica's errors again? Ambi 03:49, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

meta:Making fun of Britannica. The perfect candidate by the looks of it. Pcb21| Pete 10:30, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Except some goon as boringified the name and moved it to en:wp - see Wikipedia:Errors in the Encyclopædia Britannica that have been corrected in Wikipedia. Pcb21| Pete 10:32, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Whee! If you have access to EB, I really can recommend looking up some articles in your field of experience and comparing them with their Wikipedia equivalents that you know are good. I've compared some of my own articles with Brittanica and found enough errors to start a new section ("Languages and linguistics") on the 'Errors in the Encyclopaedia Britannic...' page. I furthermore discovered a particularly grave error in their coverage of Qala'un Mosque, which I created last week for this project, to blue the missing link. Check this out. — mark ✎ 17:20, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

New Todo Project

Well, Nuttall has been pruned. It would be good if we had another simple project for the Todo square, along with filling in the blanks. One that I would propose is transferring all the computer viruses on the General list to the List of computer viruses page. Some have been done, some are still embedded in the lists, and some are located at the bottom of the page. How about it? And please think of other, similar projects for when we finish that. Oh, and how about those Q's in 2004. Nice work. Danny 05:16, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Another List

How about adding this to our goals to help Canada: Wikipedia:Canadian wikipedians' notice board/Dictionary of Canadian Biography. Danny 05:18, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing that one out, Ambi. I have added both to our list. I wonder if we can't find other biographical dictionaries to glean information from. Danny 13:43, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Copyright?

I hate to create problems for people doing good work, but has there ever been any serious discussion of the copyright implications of creating lists based on the indices of copyright protected work? Dragons flight 10:27, Jun 19, 2005 (UTC)

There was a discussion on the WikiEN mailing list about a similar list of topics from the Columbia encyclopedia, and I think the consensus was that it's OK. See especially Jimbo's reaction. Eugene van der Pijll 11:18, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

If you are familiar with this, could you perhaps point to where Columbia encyclopedia is discussed? The link you gave basically says: "Didn't we settle this before, now let's talk about biography stubs". Incidentally, it does not inspire confidence that the list of biography stubs being discussed was subsequently taken off the internet. Dragons flight 11:27, Jun 19, 2005 (UTC)

The discussion about the Columbia topics was in the same month. Search for "Columbia" in the mailing list index; unfortunately, the discussion is a bit fragmented, as not all mails are in the same thread. Eugene van der Pijll 11:32, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2004-March/011449.html Jimbo writes: "This is not problematic in the least". Pcb21| Pete 11:42, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Columbia Encyclopedia article titles was deleted because of copyright concerns Wikipedia:Goings-on/February_29,_2004. Dragons flight 12:09, Jun 19, 2005 (UTC)

And it was later decided that this isn't an issue - or at least that any risk was outweighed by the benefits. I just wish that that was still in the database so I could undelete it - was that the actual location? Ambi 12:23, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I think so, it is what is mentioned on the mailing list and there are still a few links to it on "What links here". When you say "later decided", can you point to who/when/where? Dragons flight 12:34, Jun 19, 2005 (UTC)

Yes it was that page, probably was a "database deletion" - I recall that the most vocal proponent of deleting the pages also has/had full access to the db so that potentially explains it. I know at least one of other user decided not to take part in the missing topics project because his view about copyright did not coincide with others working on the project. It'd be a shame if Dragons flight does the same, but of course it is his decision and I am sure we would all respect that. Pcb21| Pete 12:36, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I dug the copyright discussion out of the archive [1]. Look under March 2. Dragons flight 13:28, Jun 19, 2005 (UTC)

I really would like to see evidence of how it is okay now, given that it apparently wasn't a year ago March. In my own professional life, I have been confronted with a very similar situation and we ended up scrubbing a project because the risk of copyright liability was judged to be too high, based on arguments very similar to those raised in opposition on the mailing list and during the copyright discussion linked above. Those arguments seem right to me, and if they aren't I would like to understand why not. Or in the alternative, if the community (or perhaps the Wikimedia foundation and Jimbo specifically) have decided to accept the risk that these pages might be a copyright violation but intend to proceed anyway, then I would like to see an acknowledgment/discussion of that which comes more recently than the deletion of the Columbia article list. I would like to imagine that these lists are not simply an act of quiet opposition by people disinclined to consider the copyright implications. Dragons flight 18:15, Jun 19, 2005 (UTC)

This is all paranoia. I am no legal expert, but it seems to me that there are a range of reasons why this is not a copyvio, not least the obvious fact that they Britannica seem to agree with me, as they havent done anything about it. Even if it is, whats the absolute worst that can happen? they ask us to take it down. Bluemoose 08:00, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Do you have a link to show that Britannica agrees with your assertion that you can use their content without violating copyright? I may be coming in late and don't see that reference. In what way haven't they done anything about it? Since we deleted the copyrighted content it seems they need do nothing to enforce their copyright. - Tεx τ urε 15:04, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

The Nuttallian paradox

Nuttall is 73% complete because 73% of articles in Nuttall are in Wikipedia. EB2004 is 38% complete because 38% of articles that were missing at the start of the project have now been covered. Different measurements, but no big deal I suppose. It would interesting to know though what stage we are at in the EB project if we used the Nuttall measurement... to do this all we need to know is how many articles there are in EB2004 in total. Pcb21| Pete 10:50, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

The promotional material [2] says that EB 2005 has over 65,000 articles. Dragons flight 11:03, Jun 19, 2005 (UTC)

I think the list of EB topics came from a CD-ROM version, which has more than 100,000 articles, which would mean we are at 83% or higher. Eugene van der Pijll 11:09, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Well, the "Deluxe 2005 CD-ROM" says 82,786 [3]. I can't find an article count for the Brittanica "Home Library", but that is presumably larger. Dragons flight 11:16, Jun 19, 2005 (UTC)

The 100,000 figure came from our Encyclopædia Britannica article, but I see now that that is for the DVD version. That was not entirely clear in our article. Eugene van der Pijll 11:21, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Actually, the 100,000 figure (54,592,999 words) for EB2005 contains a lot of duplicates, as it breaks down into the following:

73,570 - From Encyclopædia Britannica
15,716 - From Britannica Student Encyclopedia
1,851 - From Britannica Elementary Encyclopedia
61 Britannica Classics
9,090 from the Britannica Book of the Year (1993-2003)

The Student and Elementary Encyclopedias contain slimmed down versions of articles in the Encyclopædia Brittanica (termed Encyclopædia Britannica Library in the DVD 2005 version), so it's a little misleading to add them to the total. The best estimate would be 82660: all full articles plus the 'Book of the Year' articles. — mark ✎ 12:56, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Not too shabby, thanks guys. Pcb21| Pete 11:12, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

A word of caution

Our goal is to create articles and content, not to smudge over content. That is why we should be careful when creating (and checking) redirects to make sure that they are to the same article. They should not be smudged into something related, just for the sake of knocking another one off the list. For instance, I was checking the Battle of Rio Salado and I came across a link to Nasrid Dynasty. You will see that it redirects to the modern town of Granada, which was once the seat of the Nasrids. While the two are interrelated, they are not the same. In fact, it is a lot like having George Washington redirect to the United States or Tudor dynasty redirecting to United Kingdom. EB has articles for both, and so should we. And this is not the only example I can think of ... On a similar note, and I am guilty of this too, the literary characters in Nuttall are being redirected to their books. For instance, I redirected Uncle Toby to The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. Upon reflection, if we can have articles for every minor character in the Lord of the Rings or Star Wars, we could afford to do some major literary figures as well. Danny 18:25, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

On redirecting to "supra-topics". Yes we must be careful to resist the temptation to smudge merely to bump up percentages. However I think such redirects can be acceptable - Often the other encyclopedias tolerate much shorter articles than we do. Here we think of stubs as being short-term stop-gaps only. Thus as long as the parent topic clear identifies the sub-topic (so that a user is never bewildered by a redirect) and makes a good stab at describing the subtopic, they can be acceptable.

Bingo. Actually I covered exactly that point in my first draft of the howto. The mindset should be obvious: imagine the man in the street typing some title into the Go box, and being redirected to a different title. It should be immediately clear that he has found what he was looking for (actually, this is a high standard that many existing redirects do not adhere to). If it can't be made clear, there are other approaches: refactor the existing article, for example, or write a stub-sized but complete article with a seemain. In the end, the result should be an editorially consistent encyclopedia, and the fact there is a list of EB topics should disappear. David Brooks 03:54, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

What about redirecting to sections? Acceptable? I have done it quite a bit but am thinking about stopping because the software seems to have off-again, on-again approach to making them work correctly! Alternatively I could write a stub -with a seemain#subtopic as you suggest but am afraid that people unrelated to this project might vfd them as these little pages, essentially navigation pages, are not the way we typically do things. Pcb21| Pete 09:56, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Right now, section redirect seems not to be working, and ISTR a how-to that said it doesn't. If it were, I'd still apply the man-in-the-street test. I think it would be OK if the subsection's title is essentially the same as the original query, otherwise it would be more likely to cause confusion. If you are in the middle of a page, you presumably don't see the "(Redirected from..." hint. I say presumably because, if it were fixed, I suppose there's a possibility the hint could be tacked onto the section title. But that's all moot.

On the vulnerable short pages, I think that's a problem caused by the pseudo-standard "every page must be linked to". Best I can suggest is to make the summary tag reference this project. David Brooks 18:40, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I think that this project is reaching the maturity such that a "don't (immediately) remove your own blue links" guideline wouldn't be too burdensome. It will increase the chances of getting two opinions on each title. Pcb21| Pete 18:59, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Two ideas

1) I think we need a place to dump Nuttall entries that are innappropriate for wikipedia, even for redirects. E.g. Bulls and Bears refers to Bull markets and Bear markets, no one would ever search for "Bulls and Bears" its just plain silly. there are plenty of others that i think would never be more than dic defs as well, although thats more debatable. The page would be a link from the Nuttall page such as Wikipedia:Nuttall Encyclopedia topics/innappropriate, and would need a quick description of why it is innappropriate. your thoughts....

2) How about a focus article, where we could find a page that another encyclopedia has, but Wiki has no equivalent, then work on it and hopefully bring close to featured article quality. We could have a new one every week, or 2 weeks if it moves a bit slower. I know this may mean people might spend less time making new redirects/stubs, but i think this project has no specific focus on quality at the moment, its all about quantity, so it would be a good addition.

The article would have to be;

Non existent in wikipedia (obviously).
Potentially a really good article.
Researchable on the internet.
Generally popular.

What do you think?

Bluemoose 18:47, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Hi. If you think the article is absolutely inappropriate, like Bulls and Bears, then delete it from the list. I have deleted quite a few slang terms already from the general list--how many different redirects do we really need for vomit? I like the second idea a lot, and suggest we start with Nasrid Dynasty, about which I explained above. Nothing wrong with a little book research either. Danny 18:49, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Main article Nasrid with Nasrid Dynasty a redirect, or vice versa? As it happens I created Antequera early in the project, and I have some nice pictures of Granada, so I guess I should put it on my todo list. David Brooks

I tend to lean on the side I've being extremely cautious in deleting articles without "blue-ing" them. For example, you say "no one would ever search for bulls and bears". However to my mind that sounds like a very natural thing to for a savvy searcher to search for - by including both "bulls" and "bears" in my search I am much more likely to get results about the markets than about animals. And this applied in general - what you think is trash others might not - so be cautious, it doesn't matter if the lists stay longer than they should for just a little while, after all no one is offering us a prize for finishing by Christmas.

As for the second idea. A tough task indeed but heck that doesn't tend to stop people attracted to this project! Let's give it a whirl. Pcb21| Pete 19:08, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I added a bit to the project page about having a focus article. Feel free to edit it mercilessly. Bluemoose 07:50, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I see the Nasrid dynasty has been named as a focus article. I think the focus on the dynastic line misses something about the Nasrids. What's missing is their effect on the region's art (including pottery and architecture) and politics. They aren't mentioned by name in al-Andalus, which is itself the subject of a dispute; they're not mentioned in Alhambra either. EB1911 The Nasrides is about the politics. Proposal: a Nasrid main article that outlines the events and effects of the period, with the dynasty listing as a stand-alone see-also. Otherwise we could outline the culture in the existing article, but I'm not convinced it's the right title. Unhelpfully, most mentions in existing EB articles are references to specific members of the dynasty. Sorry this is more talk than editing: a new job is taking much of my oxygen. David Brooks 15:04, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Nuttall

The thing is, Nuttall sucks in terms of information. But, with a little work, you can really make something good out of its little stubs. I am proud of this one Nation of shopkeepers. When you come across something short, add to it. It can get a lot better. Danny 04:18, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Cool little article, thanks Danny. Those fun little articles need to get linked to, maybe as see also from Napoleon, Wealth of Nations and Psychology of the British? Pcb21| Pete 07:07, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Marwell

Hi

I was looking through the EB page 18 to do list, and noticed Marwell Zoological Park was on there. There was already a page for Marwell Zoo so I moved the text from that one to the Park name (since that is the official name) and redirected the Marwell Zoo page.

Do I take the link off the list of missing pages now? Do I need to do anything else? Thanks MyNameIsClare talk 11:00, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Hi Clare. Thanks so much for joining in the project. You are welcome to remove the link from the list if you want to (many users find making one item shorter gives a little sense of satisfaction). However if you want to leave it for someone else to remove that's even better - it gives someone a chance to see what people have been working on, maybe check your work is ok etc.

Just so you know for the future: The best wave to move a page is to use the "move" button on the row of tabs at the top of page. This is better than doing a "copy and paste move" because it preserves the history of everyone who has contributed to the article (see the "history" tab). Pcb21| Pete 11:48, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Thanks Pete, I didn't see the move button there but I will use it in future MyNameIsClare talk 11:53, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Nuttall Friday

This project is really taking off. I want to propose that this Friday (June 24) be declared Nuttall Friday. On this day, we make a concerted effort to do real damage to the Nuttall lists. Danny 02:24, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Would anyone have objection to me merging all 25 pages onto 4 larger pages, reason being that then i could easily add some useful searches, as i find it very tedious going at the moment. Bluemoose 08:50, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

No objections here. Pending some unforeseen occurrence, I'll dedicate the whole day to Nuttall articles - though I might need some reminding. Ambi 15:18, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Danny, how about handing out sections to the regulars? (those of us who can put in some work Friday, anyway — not sure if you can count on me yet). David Brooks

Best to pick and choose according to interests, I think. :) Ambi 16:30, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

This is cool

Type Nuttall encyclopedia into Google. We're NUMBER ONE!! Just wait till Friday. ... Danny 01:13, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)