Wikipedia:WikiProject Birds/Outreach/Newsletter August 2008

The Birds WikiProject Newsletter
Issue VI (August 2008)

Welcome to the sixth issue of the Birds WikiProject newsletter. Things were a bit slower in the "Articles of Note" department last month, but many editors were quietly working away on an impressive array of tasks. Casliber (talk · contribs), in particular, has expanded multiple articles—getting many of them featured in the Main Page DYK section in the process.

Articles of note

New featured articles and lists:

  1. Nuthatch (July 25)

New good articles:

  1. Greater Crested Tern (July 15)
  2. Great Spotted Kiwi (July 29)


Bird article statistics


Macaws
Collaboration efforts
  • This month's collaboration is our first group attempt to upgrade a genus level article. Ara is a genus of macaws—spectacularly large parrots which live in the neotropics. Several of the eight living species are highly endangered (at least one is already extinct), and all are beloved by aviculturalists. Help us improve the article about these intriguing birds.
  • In a related note, be sure to vote for September's collaboration, which will be chosen on 21 August. As always, we could use a few new nominations...
WikiProject Birds Cleanup listing

Thanks to Snowmanradio (talk · contribs), there's now a link to the most recent cleanup listing right from the navigation bar. And according to that listing, we've added nearly 100 new bird articles in the past month, with only a small rise in the number of articles needing attention, so we're doing something right! There are still more than 700 articles requiring work though—everything from copyediting and the addition of sources, to requests for expansion and verifications of facts. If you're looking for something helpful to do which takes less time than creating an article from scratch, sorting some of these problems out might be right up your alley. Special thanks to Rabo3 (talk · contribs), who's been plugging away on the neotropical articles, resolving all sorts of issues...

Project news
Improve me!
  • We're finally down to fewer than 30 "stub" bird family articles, thanks to herculean efforts by Sabine's Sunbird (talk · contribs). Can you help to improve the remainder? If so, the list of those needing work is here.
  • A change in Wikipedia's taxobox setup has meant the removal of the IUCN status scale image from all articles. To re-display the scale, add "| status_system = iucn3.1" to the taxobox parameters in any article for which it is appropriate.

Got a suggestion? A correction? Something you'd like to see included in a future issue? Drop a note at the Tip Line with your ideas!

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