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Wikipedia talk:Collaboration of the week/Archive 3

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This page contains old talk from 12 August to 29 September 2004, archived from Wikipedia talk:Collaboration of the week (previously known as Wikipedia talk:Article of the week).

Results of vote

Completely forgot about the votes which ended on 18 August.

Issue 1: Renaming

Results

  • "Collaboration of the week" has won with 15 votes.
  • "Project of the week" obtained 10 votes, with the others much further behind.

Comments

  • The consensus is not entirely clear, particularly as multiple voting was permitted. Before making the move, would anyone who strongly objects to moving to changing the name of "Article of the week" to "Collaboration of the week" comment below. Absent a signifiant number of strong adverse views, I would suggest that the move takes place when the next candiate is chosen at 18:00 UTC on Sunday 22 August. -- ALoan (Talk) 13:41, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC) [Some minor corrections by PFHLai 14:18, 2004 Aug 20 (UTC)]
    • Agree. -- PFHLai 14:21, 2004 Aug 20 (UTC)
  • Completely disagree. The name change will be to Collaboration because it beat even the 2nd place by a convincing number. Votes such as the above would be agonisingly pointless and frustrating if we meet these sorts of objections time after time and nothing would ever get done on a structural level. Incidentally, I found this page too late to vote and I think "Collaboration of the week" is an ugly, yuck title. But I rapidly accept I am in the minority. --[[User:Bodnotbod|bodnotbod » .....TALKQuietly)]] 17:56, Aug 20, 2004 (UTC)
    • Er - you are in favour of the move, yes? I am not proposing another vote: Wikipedia operates on consensus, and a straight vote cut across that unless there is a clear majority. In this case, 15:10 is hardly a convincing majority (3:1 would be a lot better). I just want to make sure that there are no good reasons not not to make the move, and the next day or two gives us the opportunity to fund out (unless you are proposing to move the page yourself now? Incidentally, I am away from this evening, so someone else will have to do the moves :) -- ALoan (Talk) 21:23, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC)
      • I'm in favour of the move on the basis that it won the vote. --[[User:Bodnotbod|bodnotbod » .....TALKQuietly)]] 18:39, Aug 24, 2004 (UTC)

Issue 2: Tie-breaking

Results

  • "Seniority" (the status quo) has won with 13 votes.
  • "Extension" (mostly for 1 extra day / 24 hours) received 11 votes.

Comments

  • Again, the consensus is hard to determine. In order to respect everyone's views, I would suggest that the official policy ought to be to extend the deadline for 24 hours, and then to decide by seniority. If anyone strongly objects, please comment below. Absent a signifiant number of strong adverse views, I would suggest that the policy change becomes effective when the AotW (soon to be CotW) is chosen at 18:00 UTC on Sunday 22 August. -- ALoan (Talk) 13:41, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC)
    • Agree. Perhaps extensions, if any, should be announced at the VillagePump ? -- PFHLai 14:24, 2004 Aug 20 (UTC)
      • Excellent idea, PFHLai. [[User:Siroxo|—siroχo

—siroχo]] 18:51, Aug 24, 2004 (UTC)

        • Thank you, Siroxo. -- PFHLai 07:27, 2004 Aug 25 (UTC)

I used that link for the first time just now and was disappointed that it took me to an edit of the whole page. For me that makes the editing harder than the section editing.

Now, I suspect someone will say "ah, it's there for the new users who do not understand your wise section editing ways". Well, come on, those section edit links are pretty clear. I would have faith in new potential editors with a view to share to see that edit link and be able to intuit what it will let them do.

So, on that basis, I think the "helpful" link currently leads new users into a more difficult situation than they would otherwise be in without it. --[[User:Bodnotbod|bodnotbod » .....TALKQuietly)]] 17:51, Aug 20, 2004 (UTC)

Excuse me, User: Bodnotbod, where is this "helpful" link ? It's not here on Wikipedia talk:Article of the week, right ? Please point me to the right place. Maybe we can fix it. Thanks. -- PFHLai 01:38, 2004 Aug 21 (UTC)
No, sorry, it's on the project page itself, not this talk page. --[[User:Bodnotbod|bodnotbod » .....TALKQuietly)]] 18:36, Aug 24, 2004 (UTC)
Oh, that one.... I don't like it, either. Maybe better to replace that bad link with a link that jumps to the bottom of the page. Does anyone have any idea how to do this ? -- PFHLai 07:33, 2004 Aug 25 (UTC)
I've just removed that bad link. -- PFHLai 07:49, 2004 Aug 25 (UTC)

AOTW -> COTW

I have just executed the name change and moved AOTW to COTW. Can someone check if I have missed any other pages in Wikipedia that needs editing as a result of this re-naming, please ? Thanks. -- PFHLai 14:26, 2004 Aug 23 (UTC)

Increasing needed votes per week?

At the moment we have almost 30 candidates on this page, and most of them are far from being pruned. The collaboration of the week seems to get much more attention (and therefore votes) that it got just a few weeks ago, so maybe we should increase the needed votes per week to 5 to "balance this out" a bit? --Conti|✉ 19:28, Aug 24, 2004 (UTC)

I agree. Furthermore, five is a better number to count. (I can't count...) However, I'd wait till after September before changing anything. We may lose a number of younger voters when their summer vacation is over. I hope they stay, though .... then, we may need 6 votes per week ?!? -- PFHLai 20:02, 2004 Aug 24 (UTC)
Maybe a soft transition: old candidates keep 4 votes/week limit and candidates after day x need 5 (or 6) votes/week? Or is it a bit unfair? --Farside 21:59, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I like this. 5 votes/week from now on, 4 votes/week for the existing nominations. Ambi 07:48, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Oh, and one other thing I forgot. I think we need to set some sort of anti-sockpuppet guidelines. I'm inclined to suspect that a couple of these nominations have been bumped over the line a few times thanks to the use of sockpuppets. Get rid of sockpuppet votes, and I think we'll see a drop in the survival rates of nominations. Ambi 09:53, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I agree with the 5 and the soft transition, though I'm not sure it'll make much of a difference. I don't think it's so much an issue of sock puppets keeping stuff alive as just that people see that something needs just a few more votes that day to stay in and sort of pities it another week. I've noticed surges with some of my own nominations right at the cut-off mark. Sarge Baldy 19:35, Aug 25, 2004 (UTC)

Hmm, we could increase the needed votes per week to 5 on September 1, so people will have a little more time to add to this discussion (and because it's the start of the month :-P ). --Conti|✉ 23:40, Aug 25, 2004 (UTC)

That's 2 days from today. Does anyone object ? -- PFHLai 02:25, 2004 Aug 30 (UTC)
Sounds good to me. • Benc • 17:27, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I increased the needed votes per week to 5 on the CotW page now. --Conti|✉ 21:03, Aug 31, 2004 (UTC)

Does the new pruning policy apply to existing nominees ? Or are they under a 'grandfather clause' to continue with 4 votes per week ? In other words, when I update the header for History of feminism, the first candidate on the COTW page right now, should it be changed to "Week 7: need 28 votes by September 8" or "Week 7: need 29 votes by September 8" ? I suggest the latter, to speed things up. I am now more concerned with nominated articles outgrowing their "stubbiness" after 6, 7 or even 8 weeks of voting, than with losing voters when kids go back to school. (If I don't see any objections posted here at the end of today and no one has updated the headers yet, I'll update them by adding 5.) -- PFHLai 02:40, 2004 Sep 1 (UTC)
If we apply the new pruning policy to existing candidates, then "History of feminism" would have needed 30 votes until today and therefore would get pruned. As proposed above, I like the soft transition, only candidates nominated after today need 5 votes per week. --Conti|✉ 10:47, Sep 1, 2004 (UTC)
I agree with ContiE. It's unfair to those otherwise. Ambi 11:50, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Ah - look what happens when you go away for a week :) Yes, I was concerned that the pruning threshold would need increasing before I went away: I think the threshold should continue to be 4 votes/week for candidates nominated before 1 September but should become 5 votes/week for candidates nominated on or after 1 September. -- ALoan (Talk) 14:09, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Two articles per week?

Another possibility to consider is picking two collaborations of the week. I know this was discussed earlier, but CotW traffic has increased since then. If we have enough CotWers, we might as well give them a choice of articles to work on. Livestock took 56 days to get voted up; that's a pretty good indicator that we have a glut of good candidates. One article per week may not be fast enough to prevent a continued increase in time lag. If we run short of candidates (not likely), we can eventually go back to one article per week. • Benc • 17:27, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I am concerned with diluted attention. The quality may go down. Then, we'll have more old COTW articles for the 'Fix-it' week (below). -- PFHLai 03:05, 2004 Sep 1 (UTC)
I agree - I'd rather wait and see how things pan out over the next few weeks, rather than risk diluting attention. -- ALoan (Talk)
I'm sure I remember replying to this yesterday. I think we just can't afford to dilute what attention we do have, or we'll never get anything featured as a part of COTW. We've had some successes, but we're not there yet, and to split the effort at this stage would be the death of this. Ambi 00:09, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)
The more attention the page gets and more nominations, the more likely we'll get an COTW article that will attract the maximum amount of editors - increasing the likelihood of featured status of the end result. Davodd 18:30, Sep 5, 2004 (UTC)

The {{COTW}} tag

Should the {{COTW}} tag be placed on the talk page of a candidate article (current policy), or on the article ? I think we should move it to the article to increase visibility. Comments, anyone ? -- PFHLai 18:23, 2004 Aug 28 (UTC)

  • Keep it on the talk page. We must remember that articles are created primarily for readers, and not editors. There is thus a longstanding policy against adding material only relevant to editors in the article namespace. - SimonP 20:11, Aug 28, 2004 (UTC)
    • What about the {{stub}} tags ? They are almost 'ubiquitous'. It's a way to invite readers to participate in improving what they read by becoming editors. I don't see much problem with having one extra line on the article. It's temporary, anyway. -- PFHLai 21:29, 2004 Aug 28 (UTC)
    • How about modifying the {{stub}} tag for a COTW candidate ? -- PFHLai 21:46, 2004 Aug 28 (UTC)
  • I agree that if the message is directed at editors, it can still go in the article space as it could well turn readers into editors... and isn't that what we want to do wherever possible? TPK 05:20, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • Hmm... I'm generally opposed to tagging articles except when absolutely necessary. OTOH, there will only be one article with {{COTW}} on it at a time. I don't see the harm; why not? • Benc • 17:30, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • I am aware of the policy against adding materials in the article namespace for the sake of the readers. But, if there are lots of things to read, the article won't be a stub and won't be a candidate for COTW. I think it's okay to put one line there without bothering the readers. I am thinking of a new {{COTW}} tag to be place in the article namespace, right after the {{stub}} tag. Together they may expand to :
This article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.
This stub is also a candidate for collaboration of the week. Please visit that page to support or comment on the nomination.
I can also merge the two lines and form a new {{COTW-stub}} tag. Comments, anyone ? -- PFHLai 03:02, 2004 Sep 1 (UTC)
I would prefer to have two separate messages, {{COTW}} and {{stub}} rather than another special stub message (just look at Wikipedia:Template messages#Stubs) but yes, adding the {{COTW}} flag to the article page rather than the talk page - like {{Current-COTW}}would be a good idea, I think. -- ALoan (Talk) 14:09, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Whoa ! I didn't know that we have so many different Stub tags now. .....
Anyway, i would like to see more support (here, please) before I start moving the {{COTW}} tag out of the talk pages and into the article page. Are there many silent supporters of User:SimonP's view (please see above) ? -- PFHLai 00:37, 2004 Sep 3 (UTC)
Personally, I don't see the need for "special" stub messages for every eventuality, but there we are. If you want more support/dissent, it would be worth asking on Village Pump. -- ALoan (Talk) 10:25, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Fix-it week

I was glancing over the trophy page and noticed that we have a rather abysmal track record — out of the 16 CotWs we've finished, only 2 of them are featured articles!

The main reason for this is probably that we simply forget to submit finished CotWs to Wikipedia:Featured article candidates. However, some of the articles might not quite be feature-quality yet.

I'm was planning to look into this more and work on any CotW graduates that need it. However, I thought of a better idea: one week soon, instead of picking the article with the most votes, let's have a "Fix-it week". (Better name suggestions welcome.) The goal of this week would be to get all of these articles up to snuff, then submitting all of them to FAC.

We could work with FAC on this one, adding a notice to the top of the page to the effect of: CotW will be submitting 14 articles at once a week from now, want to help smash out the kinks early?

What do you think? • Benc • 17:45, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I think we should submit them all anyway. Let the reviewers there help us identify the kinks in each article.  :-)
Then we'll know exactly what to do during the "Fix-it week".
BTW, shall we make it a policy to submit a COTW to Wikipedia:Featured article candidates right after its week of collaborative makeover ? We don't need to go thru' a round of internal review, eh ? ..... -- PFHLai 03:14, 2004 Sep 1 (UTC)
Plenty of the finished AOTWs are far from featured article standard, and thus, are not worth submitting. However, there's several that we've done (such as Renaissance) which probably are, and I think we should get around to submitting them ASAP. There's enough of us on hand to fix up any issues that are raised. Ambi 11:55, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Now, of the ones that are of potentially suitable length:

  • Diplomacy isn't bad, but it still seems a little brief
  • Medieval warfare has a poor lead section, as well as "to-do" details throughout the article
  • Cairo has a good history section, but is still so short on everything else as to be barely worth considering
  • Iranian Revolution is probably our best bet at the moment, but needs a decent lead section and pictures
  • Soup has potential, but is going to need some more fleshing out
  • but most of all, Renaissance could be nominated now, I think - it's fantastic

All the others are still significantly short of featured article length, so IMO, are no longer worth worrying about as part of this project. Ambi 12:02, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Hello all - I agree that we should submit any previous AOTWs/COTWs that are up to scratch as Featured article candidates. At the moment, I should have thought that Renaissance is the best bet, but Iranian Revolution, Cairo, Baghdad, Jean-Paul Sartre, Pravda are also reasonably good, and Livestock is also looking to be good by the end of the week. Medieval warfare, Soup, Diplomacy need some work. Having just taken my first FA through the process a couple of weeks ago, I'm willing to propose one of the above - anyone else? -- ALoan (Talk) 14:09, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I suggest proposing Renaissance now, and Iranian Revolution as soon as someone writes a lead section and finds a picture. It's pointless to nominate it before addressing things that would otherwise become inevitable objections.
Of the rest of the ones you mentioned, I don't think Cairo and Baghdad are suitable, for the reasons I mentioned above, and Pravda is still, while a nice article, far too short. Ambi 14:35, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Well, first things first. I'm currently assisting with cricket on Featured article candidates, but I'll propose Renaissance if no-one else wants to. I've added a longer lead section for Iranian Revolution - please edit at will! - but it needs pictures (there must be some of the protests, or the exit of the Shah, or return of Khomeini).
I agree that Baghdad and Cairo are not perfect - perhaps Peer review for them, and Medieval warfare, Soup and Diplomacy? Pravda is small but well-formed - is there more to say? Jean-Paul Sartre? -- ALoan (Talk) 15:25, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)
I agree that it's well formed, but still, too short. It's a difficult one to expand without some serious research, however. Ambi 00:14, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Yeah, let's definitely submit any articles that are ready to go. I don't think we should submit them all to FAC en masse as is. A lot of them will be sent straight to Wikipedia:Peer Review, which is already stuffed to the brim with articles needing review.

On second thought, a "fix-it week" might not be such a great idea since, as pointed out above, there are at least 10 articles needing lots of work. Working on them all at once might be a disorganized Sisyphean mess.

I'll start working on some of the ones that need a little bump to get to featured-quality in a day or two. Maybe we could add a one-liner for each article listed on /History, a brief statement about the approximate amount of work needed to get it featured? I'd really like to improve our collective brag list. • Benc • 15:34, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)

That is a good idea - the two featured articles already have an extra line, so line setting out the status of the others would be a good idea.
We should make sure in future that appropriate ex-COTWs are proposed on WP:FAC or WP:PR immediately after they have been the COTW. -- ALoan (Talk) 16:01, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)
I like ALoan's idea, but I'd caution against submitting them all to FAC. That's just going to annoy a lot of people, seeing we only have one (very nearly two) ready to go.

Okay, third time's the charm. I came up with a new idea, which I've implemented: Wikipedia:Collaboration of the week/To do, which is just a concatenation of all the CotW articles' to-do lists. Actually, none of them had to-do lists, so I created boilerplates to be filled in by whomever feels like peer reviewing. I'll start peer reviewing within a couple days, myself — then start actually improving the articles' text. • Benc • 20:11, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Excellent idea. :) Ambi 00:14, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Well, I nominated Renaissance on WP:FAC last night: if it gets through, I will then nominate Iranian Revolution (assuming that someone finds a picture); if not, I'll try to deal with any unresolved objections. I suggest we concentrate on the next few best articles with a view to submitting to WP:PR and then WP:FAC. -- ALoan (Talk) 08:44, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)

One thing that is sadly lacking in Renaissance is a proper discussion "literature and poetry" (currently section 3.5) - if anyone can flesh it out, I'd be grateful (it is also in the to do list). -- ALoan (Talk) 13:57, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)
I'll do I've done what I can could, though I'm no expert. • Benc • 01:43, 4 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Changing headings

I propose that we change the headings of the CotW page. The ToC looks very confusing and is pretty big at the moment, so I propose that we merge the title of the nomination and the date when it will be pruned. I also propose to tally the needed votes to avoid pruning immediately and not weekly. So "July 21 (Week 7: needs 28 votes by September 8)" and "History of feminism" would be merged into "History of feminism (needs 32 votes by September 15)". As the candidate already has 28 votes by now the heading should be changed accordingly. Another example would be "Gestapo (needs 40 votes by October 21)". It already has 37 votes, and I don't really see why the heading should still say that it might get pruned in a few days when it is clear that that won't happen. The drawback of this would be that every candidate needs to get its own individual heading, even when they are started on the same day. What do you think? --Conti|✉ 01:06, Sep 4, 2004 (UTC)

Good idea. I agree that the headings are an eyesore as is. I support your proposal to do away with the "September X (Week Y: needs Y*Z votes by September X+Y*7)" section headers. (Where Z = 4 or 5, depending on when the article was nominated.) However, I don't think we need the "(needs Y*Z votes by September X+Y*7)" in the header at all. Pruners have to scroll down to the section to see the vote count anyway, so why not keep the section headers clean?
To illustrate, instead of this:
===August 12 (Week 4: needs 16 votes by September 9)===
====American Old West====
#...
Comments:
*...
Let's do this:
===American Old West===
Nominated August 12; needs 16 votes by September 9 (week 4, minimum 4 votes per week)
#...
Comments:
*...
I'm okay with the idea of tallying the votes at any time as part of the pruning process, though this shouldn't be mandatory. In any case, pruning will remain a daily task, right? The votes will always be re-tallied then anyway. Instant tallying seems like a little bit of extra work — arguably a form of m:instruction creep, which is a Very Bad Thing (TM). • Benc • 02:00, 4 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Side note: removing the pruning date from the section header would make the page cleaner, but a small bit harder to prune. However, pruners can simply search for "September 9" (Ctrl-F on IE) to find all articles needing pruning that day. • Benc • 02:26, 4 Sep 2004 (UTC)
I also propose deprecating the practice of adding "Reason for removal: Lack of votes after Y weeks. ~~~~", in favor of simply adding "(X votes over Y weeks)" or "(not a stub)" to the section header. Less work for pruners. • Benc • 02:39, 4 Sep 2004 (UTC)
This sounds ok too, but do we really need to mention on which week the candidate is and how many votes it needs per week? Usually every candidate needs the same amount of votes per week, so this doesn't really needs to be mentioned IMHO. I agree that tallying shouldn't be mandatory, everyone who wants to tally the votes if needed should feel free to do so though. I also agree on the proposed procedure for the removed candidates. --Conti|✉ 12:25, Sep 4, 2004 (UTC)
Implemented. To avoid confusion, I think we should still mention how many votes each candidate needs per week, at least until all the pre-September 1 candidates are either promoted or pruned. • Benc • 01:06, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Sounds ok to me. If no one objects, I'll tally the nominations that have enough votes to survive this week. No one should feel obliged to tally on sight, but it can't hurt either IMHO. --Conti|✉ 16:14, Sep 9, 2004 (UTC)

Increased growth of this page

We're starting to see rather significant growth in nominations, and more than that, rather significant growth in votes. This page is going to become very, very long if all these current articles hang on, and with the way they're going, I can't see many of the new ones getting pruned soon. I think it might be time to look at upping the pruning limit to six. Ambi 08:43, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

4 new nominations just today, 43 nominations at the moment.. Although we just increased the pruning limit, I strongly agree. --Conti|✉ 13:40, Sep 10, 2004 (UTC)
Perhaps a nomination should be required to get 10 votes the first week, then 5 votes per week thereafter to sustain the nomination? Davodd 14:44, Sep 10, 2004 (UTC)
I've been worrying about this, there are far too many - and the entire thing is working too well, articles are taking so long to win the vote that they're being expanded well beyond stub status. I suggest we seriously crack down on the articles nominated, make it so articles HAVE to be stubs or they'll be withdrawn immediatly (no "this section needs expanding" or "this article isn't quite good enough"). Tom- 14:55, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)
How do we define a stub? A paragraph or less of information? Davodd 16:42, Sep 10, 2004 (UTC)
Yes, the page is essentially serving its purpose, in that it attracts attention to articles needing help, but then they often don't need help (or at least not help that the "average Wikipedian" could provide without major research) once they win the vote. The Wikipedia:Find or fix a stub page defines a stub as generally one paragraph, and also suggests a threshold of 200 characters (which seems REALLY short to me). Maybe we could be a little more lax on CotW candidates -- if they grow beyond two paragraphs / 1000 characters they are "real" articles and not needing the kind of help they'd get as a CotW? -- Mpolo 16:57, Sep 10, 2004 (UTC)
I like it that non-stubs can become COTW as well (like Gestapo). I think it would be better to raise the pruning limit, maybe even to 7 or more. --Conti|✉ 17:31, Sep 10, 2004 (UTC)
I tend to agree with Conti. So long as the articles aren't on for too many weeks, then they won't grow so much, and people can vote or not vote on the basis of the length and standard of the article without it growing and improving much before it becomes a CotW. Warofdreams 17:52, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)
If it's not enforced, then we should remove the phrase, "This is a specific topic which either has no article or a basic stub page," from the main project page. Still, my vote is for the requirement that the article either be a stub (2 paragraphs or less or fewer than 1000 characters) or non existant at time of nomination be enforced. The idea, if I'm not msitaken, of COTW is for us to bring a stub or non article up to featured-quality in one week. Other projects already exist for non-stubs or articles that need attention or expansion. this project needs strict guidelines to set it apart from other WP projects and needs to enforce them or it will continue to become more and more out of hand and spill over into the territory of existant WP projects. Davodd 19:41, Sep 10, 2004 (UTC)

How about reducing the length of time articles are worked on? Two articles a week, or an article of the day? Warofdreams 17:57, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Doesn't WP already have a featured daily article linked on the Main Page that anyone can improve upon? Davodd 19:41, Sep 10, 2004 (UTC)
Yes, but that article has to already be of a high standard. I like the suggestion below, though. Warofdreams 15:59, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I'm for 1 article lasting 7 days to get maximum input from the WP community (many of whom only contribute on weekdays/weekends or once a week). I also believe that the bar should be raised on nominations (but not too high). Since most of the new nominations will never make it as far as Feminism or Space race, we should help that weeding process along by making the inital bar higher. My fear is if we set the weekly goal too high, for some quality nominations, 80 votes may not be enough to keep from being - wheras the folowing week an arictle with fewer nominations may be chosen as COTW. 

My proposal: The nomination must be a stub or non-existant at time of 
nomination and must get 10 votes or more the first week. 
After that, 5 votes a week to stay in the running. Also, if an article has the 
most nominations on the page - even if it fails to get enough weekly votes, it 
should not be eliminated from the running.

-- Davodd 18:46, Sep 10, 2004 (UTC)

I think this is the best way to go. That would solve most of the issues. I also think that in most cases, we should stick to the stub rule. There's some cases, however - like Gestapo, where it's such a massive hole, particularly with top Google rank, that we really needed action. Ambi 00:34, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)
I'm not completely sure about this, but let's give it a try. :-) --Conti|✉ 14:39, Sep 11, 2004 (UTC)
I guess there is no reason to be anal about the rules all the time... especially if no one objects to occasional bends in the rules. :) Davodd 15:29, Sep 11, 2004 (UTC)

Maybe if no-votes were added too, and after x no-votes or when there are more noes than yesses the article would be pruned. --Farside 04:49, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

We don't have any "no" votes per se — there's just those occasional comments that explain why individual users didn't vote. I don't think we should add an "oppose" section, either: (1) it would bloat the page and (2) it would make the process more political. The COTW is one of the most idealistic places on Wikipedia; it would be best to keep it that way. :-) • Benc • 06:22, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

How about changing 'votes' to 'committments to contribute'? Anyone posting a page would be commiting to contributing to the article if it becomes COTW and everyone voting for it ditto. This should reduce both postings and votes and ensure that the winning article has a pool of folk willing to work to improve it. Filiocht 07:59, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Recent date changes=

I've reverted the recent date changes made to this page, since its only September 10 (or maybe 11 UTC now). Somewhat confusing to have to think that far into the future. —siroχo 00:13, Sep 11, 2004 (UTC)
It was discussed above that such tallying should not be a problem. (I did it myself without getting reverted :) ) --Conti|✉ 00:25, Sep 11, 2004 (UTC)
Actually, I liked those. Allows you to see just how long it's going to survive for unless it receives more votes. Ambi 00:31, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Note for the future: When you revert editors' edits, it is good manners to tell them so on their talk page. Not everyone is as amicable as me when they find their work reverted - especially when they have followed established procedure. Thanks for keeping the reader in mind, though. Davodd 00:34, Sep 11, 2004 (UTC)

Other COTWs

At Wikipedia:Irish wikipedians' notice board we've begun our own "Irish COTW", with a view to perhaps having one each week. Currently it's Culture of Ireland. I created a Template:Current_Irish_COTW, emulating the format here. Now I don't know whether people approve of this or not (it's only an experiment), but I think if other interest groups were to do so also, we could expand Wikipedia "gaps" at a much faster rate than with just the main COTW.

Any opinions? zoney ♣ talk 14:52, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Clearly, as I kind of kicked off the Irish idea, I think it's great. But it also links to thoughts I've been having about COTW in general. Currently COTW is too big and too many minority interest articles get lost after a week or two. I would propose having a number of sub-pages: COTW/Science/Arts and literature/Popular culture/History and politics/Biography for example. Then each page could set its own weekly minimum for commitments to contribute (note:not votes). That way, a lot more articles would get improved, the management of each subpage would be easier, and types of articles that currently have no hope of being COWT would be in with a shout. Also, it would reduce the number of passing interest votes by getting people to say 'I think this needs improving and I'm willing to help.' rather than 'Why not.'. Filiocht 15:03, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)
I support the sub-cotw idea, it sounds great and could work very well. But I most strongly oppose the "commitment to contribute" thing. Wikipedia works because its volunteers contribute as much as they can, without having to feel guilty for "not doing enough". It's an endless bog of "he shouldn't be allowed to vote, he voted last week and didn't contribute at all and blah blah" and feeling bad for not contributing "enough". --Farside 17:37, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)
It appears you are faulting COTW voting process for doing what it was designed to do - weed out topics of limited appeal. The idea behind COTW is to find topics that are very broad and appeal to the largest number of editors. That said, I do not think you need COTW to do what you want to do. But I do think that WP needs an easy way for folks who have an interest or strengths in certain areas to find each other. I believe that's why we have Wikiprojects - to address topics that appeal to a smaller segment of editors. There is nothing stopping you from having a project of the week in the Wikiprojects area dedicated to your wubject of interest. As for sub-English-language COTWs linked from this project, I oppose that idea - just as I would not support an Irish Picture of the Week process or an Irish Peer Review. Any Balkanization of primary WP projects would be detrimental to everyone. Davodd 21:30, Sep 20, 2004 (UTC)
I oppose balkanization of this as well, BUT concentrating a WikiProject on a particular article for a period of time is a good idea, as part of that. Just don't link it here/make it official. Ambi 21:56, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Frankly, COTW is not working as it is. The stated aim is to bring articles up to featured standard, but only two winners have made it so far. So something has to change. I think what I'm suggesting is not balkanization but diversification and I suspect it will help achieve the stated COTW aim more effectively. Filiocht 07:37, 21 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I think the solution is simple - by supporting something, you are pledging to do significant (that is, non-trivial) amounts of editing should the article become the COTW - should be do this, we'll have to devise some kind of enforcement mechanism. Also, I think another thing that would help is if you realize that the only two articles to become featured so far were Academia and Siege, and that (a) they were really good COTWs because they are generic (that is, not requiring a lot of research - knowledgable people can write it off the top of their head), but not too broad, and (b) they had people actively pushing to make them FAs (I looked after seige personally). →Raul654 07:47, Sep 21, 2004 (UTC)
This is what I mean by commitment to contribute: not voting for other people to do work, but saying 'I want this article to meet FA standard and am willing to work with others to make that happen.' And these two article, benefitting from that attitude, became really good FAs. Filiocht 08:07, 21 Sep 2004 (UTC)


Getting more from COTW

I know that some of you will think this is instruction creep, as it popularily called, but listen. Our collaboration projects that run each week should have better planning. Each COTW proposal that looks like it will be selected for next week should prepare a plan on the article's talk page. This plan should be useful for the writers of the article and to make people aware of what there is to do. Also should we try to keep track of the Wikipedia orientation -- related articles, consistency of facts, gaping holes and lots of red links.

A proper plan could include a to-do list, but also all kinds of draft section structures, image sources, perhaps a list of books related, that if lucky some wikipedian has read.

Yes, I know, this is a lot to do, but you can do what ever you want out of it. I think this will take our projects farther, if we update the plan as the week progresses. Also, we have noted that not all (ehrm..) COTWs end up as featured articles; the plan should make it clear what is critically missing. ✏ Sverdrup 15:22, 21 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Let's require that all COTW nominees have a to-do list on the talk page. It's a useful tool. [[User:Neutrality|Neutrality (talk)]] 16:00, Sep 21, 2004 (UTC)

I agree, and should they survive, as it looks like they will, will do this for my two nominations. I think this could help us get more out of topics. Ambi 21:53, 21 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Disagree. Rule creep should be kept to a minimum. Davodd 19:49, Sep 24, 2004 (UTC)
As I said, this is very little work for each selected COTW (only one article/Week, not every nominee). And I think it's worth it. ✏ Sverdrup 18:10, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)
As many articles as possible should have a todo list when important and identifiable information is missing. To require it, however, may deter people from nominating a cotw because it involves more work. violet/riga (t) 10:36, 27 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Boldly pruning outside of established COTW guidelines

The follow pruning of topics: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia%3ACollaboration_of_the_week&diff=6113297&oldid=6113291

happened before the 7-day limit was up for these nominations and appears to be in violation of the established pruning guidelines for this project. Is it OK for an invididual editor to arbitrarily decide which nominations have merit and which do not, delete them, and not note reason why in this forum or here: Wikipedia:Collaboration_of_the_week/Removed? Do we need to update guidelines to accomdate this sort of pruning activity or should these nominations be restored? -- Davodd 20:03, Sep 24, 2004 (UTC)

I've restored three of the four nominations I deleted and apologize; this was done improperly. However, I have not restored penectomy, as it was very clearly not suitable for COTW. [[User:Neutrality|Neutrality (talk)]] 20:19, Sep 24, 2004 (UTC)
Why is penectomy not suitable for CotW? It clearly won't become CotW imho, but that shouldn't be a reason. --Conti|✉ 22:36, Sep 26, 2004 (UTC)
On a similar point, and not pointing fingers, please could I encourage everyone who prunes to check the date and time when a candidate was proposed for CotW - unless unsuited to CotW (not nonexistent or a stub at time of nomination), articles should only be pruned after 7 days (14 days, etc) have passed - I interpret that as meaning the same time, 7 days (etc.) after nomination (please comment if you disagree with this interpretation).
In the last week or two, some candidates have been pruned before (sometimes significantly before) the deadline - for example:
  • Obstetric ultrasonography was nominated at 10:37, 17 Sep 2004 but was pruned after 1 week at 10:08, 24 Sep 2004 (29 minutes early, needing 3 votes to remain);
  • Roald Dahl was nominated at 19:06, Aug 6, 2004 but was pruned after 6 weeks at 17:29, 16 Sep 2004 (1 hour 37 minutes early, needing 2 votes to remain);
  • Abbey Theatre was nominated at 07:50, 10 Sep 2004 but was pruned after 1 week at 17:29, 16 Sep 2004 (over 12 hours early, needing 1 vote to remain);
  • Navy was nominated at 00:00, 10 Sep 2004 but was pruned after 1 week at 17:29, 16 Sep 2004 (over 6½ hours early, needing 1 vote to remain)
It also makes it easier to check that things were not pruned too early if the pruner adds a ~~~~ timestamp on the /Removed page (I know "reasons for removal" are deprecated above, but I don't think it is overly burdensome to ask pruners to cut and paste a short reason and add a timestamp). -- ALoan (Talk) 02:17, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)
To me, counting minutes or even hours is silly -- four weeks is four weeks, and not x hours, y minutes and 0.00 seconds. As long as the margin is less than 12 hours this is nothing, and 24-12 hours is acceptable in all cases except when it's bordeline (needs one vote more). ✏ Sverdrup 20:03, 26 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Exact makes more sense to me, and gives articles an equal time frame to work with. I also don't believe any article should be pruned before its time expires, I don't think it's up to anyone to decide if something is "worthy" of a nomination, so long as the item is an acceptable topic for a Wikipedia article at all (premature prunes being limited to nominations for things such as My Dear Great Aunt Bessie or of course doesn't meet the CotW guidelines). Sarge Baldy 01:03, Sep 27, 2004 (UTC)

Well, four weeks is 28 days is 672 hours is 40,320 minutes - you have to start and stop counting at a definite date and time, and article quite often get one or two votes in the hour or two just before a deadline passes. In principle, articles should not be pruned until the time for meeting a particular level of votes has passed. As it happens, some of these only needed one or two more votes to avoid being pruned - I've added details above. I doubt that any of these article would have become CotW, but we should be consistent (and NPOV regarding "worthiness") in applying the rules. -- ALoan (Talk) 10:20, 27 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I agree. I nominated Abbey Theatre and it soon became clear that it was never going to make COTW, so I went ahead and edited it myself. Nevertheless, I was quite annoyed to see it pruned early. To say 'four weeks is four weeks' is to state that this unit of time should be exactly the same for every candidate, surely? Filiocht 10:28, 27 Sep 2004 (UTC)

By way of contrast, I have just deleted Havana, which obtained 8 votes in 2 weeks (it needed 10). However, when I deleted it, it had 10 votes because two people voted for it after the two weeks were up, my thinking being that it should not have been on the list when the last couple of votes were cast, so the late votes should not retrospectively resurrect it. Comments? -- ALoan (Talk) 21:06, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Havana should be reinstated. We should give votes for articles the benefit if the doubt, and NOT delete "by the 28th" nominations until after the "29th" starts. Sure, some nominess will be on the list longer than others, but I think it avoids voter confusion to wait until the following "day" to actually prune. - Davodd 00:38, Sep 29, 2004 (UTC)
I just re-added Havana. It should be the DAY of the month that counts - not the TIME of day for deadlines. Davodd 00:49, Sep 29, 2004 (UTC)
Well, I disagree with your reasoning (as explained above, I think articles should be pruned 7, 14, etc days after the time and date that it was nominated), but I won't delete Havana again unless the consensus is that it should go. -- ALoan (Talk) 11:10, 29 Sep 2004 (UTC)
I agree it would be more precise to use the time of day, but then this would need to be included in the text that says how many votes the candidate needs by when. Often people vote last-minute to get a candidate over the threshold, so the deadline needs to be specified correctly. However, I wonder whether we need to be so precise about this rule anyway -- it's just some mechanism for pruning the list of candidates, and if someone feels strongly that something should stay around despite one or two votes being a couple of hours late, why not let it stay around and prune it if it fails to get enough votes a week later. If it does get them, fine, it was just having a bad week in between. Fpahl 14:42, 29 Sep 2004 (UTC)
    • I actually commited an act of self-pruning (Duck and Cover) after I was told it wouldn't work because it wasn't a stub. -Litefantastic 14:50, 29 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Space Race tally

So far, this topic attracted the most edits and the most editors of any of the COTW.

  1. September 19 2004: Space Race (46 votes over 28 days)
    • 132 edits made by 43 editors (including 7 anonymous IPs)
    • Size increased from 25 bytes to 73 bytes (size for entire HTML source).

Not only that, but much of the generic space content added to Space Race but not germane to the topic was moved to space exploration. See how that article also was transformed by COTW here.

Wasn't vinegar listed here yesterday?

It seemed like a do-able project. Another do-able suggestion, although sadly also US-centric, is the broad and deep topic of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. jengod 01:45, Sep 29, 2004 (UTC)

Never mind. Found /Removed. jengod 01:47, Sep 29, 2004 (UTC)
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