Wikipedia talk:Science collaboration of the month/Archive 1

Archive 1

Best of Luck

Just wanted to wish you all the best of luck with this new collaboration. I like science (especially cosmology or theoretical physics), so I'll see what I can do to help out. --pie4all88 04:42, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Some science articles that need love

A few that come to mind (I won't nominate them here because I'm sort of cynical on these COWs in general and don't want to obligate myself), are heredity (very sad article for such a topic with so many angles; biology, history, sociology, controversy), natural philosophy (the root of modern scientific enterprise, in only six sentences!), and an article on the discovery of oxygen would be great (who discovered it? Lavosier, Priestly, someone else? do you have to know what you have discovered to have discovered it? it's a tough question, one that gets at the difficulty of assigning priority). Just throwing those out there! --Fastfission 17:44, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

History of science

Ooo, discovery of oxygen, indeed. I just tried to use that as an example in a subarticle of history of science, and realized there wasn't good coverage yet. Speaking of which, history of science could also use some help. -- Beland 06:06, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Resurrection

I've resurrected this project, created a pruning process similar to that off other collaborations, posted instructions on how to nominate, and have reorganized it. Toothpaste 6 July 2005 05:37 (UTC)

It's still listed under inactive collaborations and is therefore not in the list of collaborations. You might want to add it to Template:COTWs to raise awareness. Jacoplane 6 July 2005 06:15 (UTC)

Thanks. I learned how to make templates just today when I made the ones for our collaboration, so I forgot about editing that one. It's been done. Toothpaste 6 July 2005 07:10 (UTC)

Seeing as this is a new collaboration (or resurrected) I think you should wait a bit until you launch the first collaboration. You could launch reproduction at the end of the week if it has the most votes, but there will probably not be too many people contributing. I say give it two weeks. Maybe you should write something on the project page about when the first collaboration will be launched. Jacoplane 7 July 2005 04:53 (UTC)

I updated the first page with information about the first collaberation and made a new template for collaboration information, like the others have. Toothpaste 7 July 2005 05:23 (UTC)

Dating

You're adding seven days to the second nomination because of the delay, right? Should I add seven to the first nomination, then? Toothpaste 7 July 2005 06:16 (UTC)

Um, if the first nomination will not be until the 20th, it doesn't make much sense to have it require a certain amount of votes until the 13th. That's why I increased the no. I think it's fine like this. On the 20th, the article with the most votes becomes the collaboration. If there are any other nominations, then add +7 (if they managed to get at least 3 votes per week). Jacoplane 7 July 2005 06:39 (UTC)

Toothpaste, thanks for that change. I've been too used to the numeric date system. -Deryck C. 7 July 2005 11:10 (UTC)

You're welcome. This way, I think, both Europeans, Asians, and Americans get something easily recognizable. Also, Jacoplane, I hadn't noticed that the 3 votes:7 days ratio had been kept when you added 7 days to each nomination, because at first I didn't notice that you changed the date, too. Now it makes much more sense. Toothpaste 7 July 2005 11:15 (UTC)

I didn't change dates. I just added one more article. BTW, in the WP:HKCOTW only 2 votes are needed for the second and third week and one each afterwards. Deryck C.

Yeah it might be a good idea to do that here too, at least at first when there are few people helping with the collaboration. On the hk page the text is:

Pruning

The nomination will be moved to /Removed if it has not received 3 votes after 7 days on the list, 5 votes after 14 days, 7 votes after 21 days, and so on.

Probably we'll want something similar. I've mainly been involved with the gaming collaboration, but there we have many people voting so the 3per week limit works well. Jacoplane 7 July 2005 11:38 (UTC)

In fact in the HKCOTW nothing have ever reached 7 votes despite some candidates had been there for a month. I think we should lower the limit (esp. for week 2 and afterwards) for SCOTW (as you see, SCOTW has even fewer participants than HKCOTW).

How about 2 votes per week, then? Toothpaste 7 July 2005 11:53 (UTC)

Good idea. (Please restart the indentation...)Deryck C. 7 July 2005 11:55 (UTC)

Thanks a lot. I forgot the minimun 2 votes per week. Deryck C. 7 July 2005 12:17 (UTC)

Reproduction

I'm terribly sorry, but in a mixed blessing, after I nominated this, someone added another support vote to the nomination (despite it having reached its expiration date), and that was the one vote it needed to live on to become one of the Collaborations of the Week. I'm for deleting the nomination and putting up a notice in the template at the top of the article. Toothpaste 18:52, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

I would not take it off yet. It may be useful to further improve the article after it has been on COTW. There is probably at least some polishing to do. If you cancel a nomination, it might drive people away - it's always problematic to just eliminate a nomination, I think (unless the page is protected and it is technically impossible to work on it). There is a similar case with Lhasa which will, as it looks now, become COTW next week and IDrive winner the week after that. Maybe in future we should develop some rule that articles may only be listed on one cotw at a time. --Fenice 21:00, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

I suggest using it the week after the COTW. Because the COTW is not as active as it is earlier in the year and so there will likely still be significant holes that would be perfect size for a smaller collaboration. Falphin 22:27, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

Anyway it went on COTW now. Just go! I'll write about the reproduction in Humans. Deryck C. 01:26, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

Reproduction article

I wonder if the reproduction article should take up these 6 gapping days and become the current scotw until 20th when another article is chosen.

The reproduction article is good enough already (as it's already been split to approx. 7 articles from the original 6 or 7 sections). In my opinion we SCOTW people should now go into the reproduction article (and its subarticles) to see if anything should be fixed.

Deryck C. 12:07, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

Finally

Well, 20 July comes and also comes the first SCOTW!!! Deryck C. 08:06, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

Interest

It doesn't appear that these articles are generating much interest. Perhaps more general science subjects should be nominated that would be more accessible to a larger audience? — RJH 21:11, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

Deryck for Admin!

Deryck for Admin!!!!

Go and support Deryck at

Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Deryck Chan!!!

Yeh, the administrator of this page (myself) is nominated to be a sysop. Please support me! Deryck C. ^RfA 01:45, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

STATUS!?

What Is the current 'official' status of this project?! I have seen this project do great things, and don't wish for it to fall apart now. With the recent Nature coverage of Wikipedia's science articles, now is the time to shine. I would be up for assuming some/if not all of the responsibility of this project, I just need to know what the status is now, and to come... Adenosine | Talk 09:49, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Whats going on with this project --ZeWrestler ^Talk 19:16, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

I am sure that there is still potential for this collaboration so I have restarted it and updated it. I need help though.--Fenice 13:09, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

how to vote?

How do I vote for a Science collaboration of the week nominee? Liisa Mari 15:34, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

• You just add your signature (four tildes or you click on the second button to the right on the bar on top of the edit window).--Fenice 16:51, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
• explicitly, ~~~~ . Deryck C. 09:31, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

BTW you can vote for as many articles as you like. There's no objection vote. Deryck C. 09:33, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

I'll try my best for now

Hi,

Since Fenice seems to have left, I'll do my best to take this over for now. Since a few days have already passed, I'll leave Human Genome up for a little longer and then continue in the usual rhythm. If anyone else wants to take this on, please put your hand up now! - Samsara _contrib ^talk 09:55, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Should we change this to a fortnightly collab? Calling a COTW seems a little ridulous, considering the history of this collaboration page. ike9898 21:02, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Split this collaboration?

Maybe "science" is too broad a topic for a collaboration of the ___. Most science-minded contributors can only make significant contributions to topics in a small part of the 'science universe'. Would it be better to break this collab up into the major areas of science? The argument against this proposal is that it would split up the already small pool of participants in this collaboration. However, I think a more focused collaboration might attract more new participants. Opinions? ike9898 21:17, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

I would be willing to follow your proposal if we had more participants. At the moment, I don't think it's feasible. What I'll do for now is get this advertised on the science and biology portals; maybe that will draw in more participants. Please feel free to do likewise on other science portals! - Samsara _contrib ^talk 21:49, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Guys, vote! The candidates are dying.

Anyone watching this page, vote, dammit! We have three suggestions all of which will expire the day after tomorrow if nobody votes. If we don't have the votes, this project must die (and I mean it). - Samsara _contrib ^talk 21:52, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Page seriously needs updating. I would do it, but I would have to read up to do it properly. --DanielCD 00:49, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

What we need is a bot. The maintenance is very monotonous... There is some python source here, and a perl interface here. - Samsara _contrib ^talk 14:01, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

A bot sounds good, but why are the candidates 'dying'? I see a bunch of great candidates with alot of support on the main page. Protein Purification has been there since Sept. and Chronospecies since Aug. (albeit with less support)! I think Nutrition looks like a great article, and I realize I;m not doing the work on this project so it's not my purogative, but why have we skipped over such good articles that need help?! Adenosine | Talk 07:00, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Most of them have timed out. We may have to lower the voting requirement to one per week. - Samsara _contrib ^talk 12:32, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

My wikibreak

Guys, I'm quite ill with a flu and since Wikipedia isn't helping, I'm on a proper wikibreak now. Sorry to leave this unmaintained for now. Cheers, - Samsara _contrib ^talk 12:32, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

I seem to have recovered somewhat and am soldiering on with this project. - Samsara _contrib ^talk 13:49, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

Replacing template section

I've replaced the following with concrete maintenance instructions. Pasting here for reference.

Templates of SCOTW

{{CurrentSCOTW}}: Displays the current SCOTW.

{{SCOTW}}: To be put onto the candidate article.

{{Current-SCOTW}}: To be put onto the currently collaborated article.

{{SCOTWvoter}}: please place this template on the talk pages of voters when you update the collaboration to a new topic

{{Wikipedia:Science collaboration of the week/current}}: Displays the name of the currently collaborated article. Collaboration change is done to this template.

{{Wikipedia:Science collaboration of the week/lastweek}}: Displays last week's collaboration and a link for viewing improvements done to that article during the week.

- Samsara _contrib ^talk 13:44, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

Awsome. --DanielCD 14:59, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

Note on bot development

I'm working on the maintenance section half with the bot at the back of my mind. I think pretty much all of the tasks are automatable. - Samsara _contrib ^talk 16:39, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Scientific peer review

A scientific peer review has been started and we're looking for Wikipedians who are members of the scientific academic community to run for the board. If you want to give it a shot come over and post a little about yourself. New nominations are being accepted until the 00:00 on the 17th March.

The project aims to combine existing peer review mechanisms (Wikipedia peer review, featured article candidate discussion, article assessment, &c.) which focus on compliance to manual of style and referencing policy with a more conventional peer review by members of the scientific academic community. It is hoped that this will raise science-based articles to their highest possible standards. Article quality and factual validity is now Wikipedia's most important goal. Having as many errors as Britannica is not good–we must raise our standards above this. --Oldak Quill 18:07, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Articles nominated on other collaborations - unmaintain?

Dear All, the currently low traffic and high maintenance demand of said section lead me to conclude that it had better go. The current plan is to leave it for a few more days, by which time it will become quite inaccurate, and then remove. - Samsara (talk • contribs) 09:59, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Because I can't take up the job, remove the list if you don't have time to and can't find anybody else to maintain it. --Deryck C. 14:49, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

The last version is archived here for future reference (if someone could make a bot that removed entries that have been removed from nomination, that would help enormously):

/Articles nominated on other collaborations

Samsara (talk • contribs) 10:05, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

5 to 8?

I noticed that the pruning standard of candidates rose from 5 to 8. I wonder what happened? --Deryck C. 15:19, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

I think one of our problems is that we don't keep people gripped to their seats the way that AID does. People love voting, and people love to see a variety of options when they do vote. Electing the article that's got three votes when there two others that have two votes each just looks to me like we can do better. Specifically, I think we need to make sure that when someone comes to this page, he will find at least one nominee that he would want to vote for, and more specifically, one that he feels he will be able to usefully contribute to when it becomes elected. Protein purification was a tremendously successful collaboration for this reason. I gather we get a lot of people pass through that do not take an interest in any of the candidates. So I'm also trying to nominate articles that represent the breadth of science. The idea is then to contact all the regulars and even advertise this project again on bulletin boards. I've also been thinking about announcing the SCOTW a week in advance so as to allow people to be prepared. At the moment, you just can't tell which one is going to make it, because the votes differ only by one or two.

I've also been getting a bit fed up at the fact that I need to visit the current SCOTW article regularly and make a small change just to push it to the top of people's watchlists and keep them contributing. I should not have to do this, as I have articles that I can more usefully contribute to in that time. - Samsara (talk • contribs) 16:22, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

This project is now unmaintained

Don't take the job. It's jinxed! - Samsara (talk • contribs) 02:23, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Not really, or otherwise I wouldn't have ran it for three months without dying before I went onto the wikibreak and you took up the job. If you'd leave, I can get back to it. --Deryck C. 15:48, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Okay, I've decided to take up the SCOTW. --Deryck C. 15:00, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Sorry

Today I made changes to a number of pages and reverted them by myself. Sorry for the confusion caused. I originally thought that the March 20 update wasn't done yet due to the date for the next collaboration shown, but in fact it has already been done by Samsara on the 21st. I'm sorry for any problem caused by these editions and reversions. --Deryck C. 15:10, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Sorry about that, although this kind of oversight will probably keep happening until we have a well-trained bot. - Samsara (talk • contribs) 17:52, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

I think a bot would more easily make mistakes when compared to us. BTW I thought you've already left? --Deryck C. 15:42, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Logo

I'd like to make you aware that a better version of the image that you use for your logo is available here.--HereToHelp 21:38, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

That is a nice-looking image. Thank you. :) — RJH 14:35, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Looks like it would need to be copied over the existing "Image:Chemistry-stub.png" in the commons to be loaded. The {{Chem-stub}} has already been updated. Any objections to a swap? — RJH 19:19, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Nobody squawked, so I went ahead... :-) — RJH 22:22, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Address Book

Is there any way to join? I'll contribute to what I can. --Keflavich 00:25, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Update

I noticed this project could do with a little bit of updating, for example a new SCOTW should have been chosen on the 8th. Although I'm pretty new, I'm happy to help maintain this project if Deryck would like a hand. --Scot^t 13:12, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Since a new selection only seems to happen once a month, maybe it should be renamed as such? I.e. "Scientific collaboration of the month". Seriously. :) — RJH 14:34, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

I'd agree with that --Scot^t 18:39, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Of the month? That seems too scarce. btw I'm updating it now, but in fact anybody interested can update it if you can see that the updating date is overdue. --Deryck C. 15:12, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps every fortnight? Scot^t 16:48, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

For comparison, the Rugby CotW is every fortnight. Texas is monthly. :) — RJH 19:10, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

We are capable of weekly

Guys, this project ran successfully weekly for some time, and the amount of contribution was quite sufficient:

• Nutrition (15 February 2006)
• Natural selection (20 February 2006)
• Protein purification (27 February 2006)
• Hydrosphere (6 March 2006)
• Pheromone (13 March 2006)

In fact, I think the project is more likely to die down if you let it slow down. I've lined out in the instructions how it can be promoted, e.g. keep regular contributors posted, remind people of things they voted for when they become SCOTW. Applying minor changes to the current SCOTW at regular intervals keeps it at the top of people's watchlists and thus helps to keep people involved. You also need to try and find excuses for listing it on the community bulletin board as often as possible.

I'll never forgive you if you chicken out on this! - Samsara (talk • contribs) 10:37, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

I guess I'm plucked. ;-) — RJH 18:01, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

%(*()&

I haven't got a lot of time, so I'll make this short. I would like my name OFF your list of regulars, and I would like said list placed in a more accessible location; say, a subpage linked to by that template you put on people's userpages. Finally, as SCOTW founder (I am... I think! Check!) I'd just like to say that you should be ashamed for stooping to spamming ex-voters to get people's attention. You should at least ask people if they want to end up on a semipermanent mailing list of contacts. -Litefantastic 23:16, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

I've added an option telling message receivers how to list their names so as not to receive any more messages. --Deryck C. 16:36, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Uhm, I think you edited the wrong template - I think Litefantastic was referring to this solution. I'm going to tentatively revert. - Samsara (talk • contribs) 12:24, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

SCOTW Original Author

Yeah, so I just stumbled upon this page and just happened to read this: "The science collaboration of the week was originally started by pie4all88 on November 26 2004." I must say, I was quite surprised, given that I didn't start this collaboration! :) What's even weirder is that it links to Litefantastic's user page instead of mine. I started the Gaming Collaboration of the Week, not this science one. I guess the misunderstanding arose from my comment on the talk page here (the very first one on the page, actually). The SCOTW was formed shortly after I created the GCOTW, and since this was a time where collaborations were created and failing daily (and many people were worried that having a lot of collaborations would distract from the main Collaboration of the Week), I simply gave the producer of this project my best wishes for a successful collaboration. Based on the history, it looks like Litefantastic started this, so I'll fix that on the article page. --pie4all88 01:12, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

Thank you very much. --Deryck C. 08:39, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

You might be interested in taking part. Pruneau 00:35, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Note on election of biopharmaceutical

It was the older nomination, so it had precedence as by the rules. - Samsara (talk • contribs) 21:20, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Is it worth continuing?

Since this project's dropping to the bottom of the collaborations template, interest has waned markedly. Added to that, North America and Europe are showing signs of entering the "summer hole", when all brain activity ceases and people content themselves with getting sunburnt on a sufficiently regular basis. Is it worth carrying on? I think we should definitely do hydrothermal vent, as there seems to be good support for that, but what then?

Also, do people prefer this to be weekly? Can we get enough votes to decide between candidates in that time? - Samsara (talk • contribs) 23:13, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

My view is that any collaboration project that is based on a week is based on a far too short period. I do not work on such articles because I am often too busy and the week goes quickly by. I also think it is too much to select candidates on a weekly basis. I think it should be changed to Science collaboration of the month. Just my 2c as an outsider. --Bduke 00:35, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

I have the same problem. A week is too short and I get distracted and miss things. I think two weeks would be a minimun, but of course "Science collaboration of the fortnight" doesn't have quite the ring to it that "of the week" or even "of the month" does. I'd be okay with a monthly one as it would hopefully focus people on quality and not sheer quantity. pschemp | talk 14:49, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

I believe I've changed everything that should be changed to make it monthly, except for page moves. There'll be a lot of them, and tons of double redirects to fix. If anyone has spare time... - Samsara (talk • contribs) 23:40, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

The move should be correct, as in the past very few things were done onto an article within that 7 days. Moreover there's always delay - usually 2 or 3 days due to the inadequacy of time of the maintainers. I believe changing this to SCOTM would reduce the burden off everybody. --Deryck C. 03:29, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

I've done all the page and template and talk moves and redirect fixing I can find. There may still be a few odd things floating out there I missed though (or got a over-zealous about, oops!), so please keep an eye out. pschemp | talk 03:42, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks a lot! - Samsara (talk • contribs) 11:13, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Corollary to changing to monthly

I suggest that we reduce the guidance number of nominees back down to five (5), since articles nominated five months ago may have improved enough not to need a collaboration. I expect this suggestion to be uncontroversial, as it was mostly I who suggested the change to eight (8) originally.

If we wait until the 1st, we can avoid kicking any of the current nominees off, although it still leaves stdio.h in some danger (the first new nominee could kick it off); however, it may turn out to be more successful on Wikipedia:WikiProject Computer Science/Collaboration of the Week in any case. - Samsara (talk • contribs) 11:20, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

This proposal is fine with me. I think stdio.h would be better for the Computer Science collaboration anyway.pschemp | talk 14:09, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I forgot that it's the articles with the smallest number of votes that go first. So stdio.h is fine for now. antioxidant will be the one to go. - Samsara (talk • contribs) 18:39, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Rollover: no time today

Hydrothermal vent is going to be the new SCOTM, but I don't have time to do the rollover today. I've removed some old nominations so that we'll be in line with the new threshold once the rollover has happened.

If someone would like to take over from here, feel free to do the rollover or even put your hand up for maintenance of this project.

Cheers,

Samsara (talk • contribs) 14:54, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Done but no notifications sent out yet. - Samsara (talk • contribs) 13:51, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

WikiProject Biography

Let us know if you happen to pick an article on a person and we'll alert our members! plange 06:01, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

We'll. Thanks! :) NCurse _work 06:59, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Is there an interest in the Archimedes article? One of the all time great human thinkers in history; his page deserves to be at least up to GA status. (In fact I just talked myself into nominating him for ACID. :-) — RJH (talk) 20:20, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

managing deadlines - suggestion

I was just making some updates on the MCB collaboration page and realized there's an existing template from the article improvement drive, {{acid}}, that automatically updates expiry dates each time the vote count is updated. Since this project requires changing the date manually and people always forget, maybe this would be a more efficient way of keeping track. (The 'overdue' functionality may not be necessary here, depending on the volume of nominations.) Opabinia regalis 03:45, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

We'd need to either copy and adapt the template, or make it accept more parameters (since our parameters are different to the defaults). Is there a manual for these esoteric features somewhere? I think I know everything other than assignment, which would be necessary for making a more flexible template. Samsara (talk • contribs) 03:56, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Sure, we'd need a local copy - the MCB version is at {{MCB CoM}}. Aside from formatting, I'm not sure what we'd need to change except the delay between subsequent votes. The closest thing to a 'weird template stuff' manual I've found is m:ParserFunctions and related pages. Opabinia regalis 04:25, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Dumped an example with the easy stuff changed in my userspace here (obviously you need to update the current time when using it). I forgot about the 'no expiration with <5 nominees' thing though; I can't think of a good way to integrate that into the existing template. I'm also pretty sure I could prevent that situation from occurring any time in the near future :) Opabinia regalis 04:58, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Semiprotection

To curb a huge number of votes from previously unregistered folding@home supporters, I have semi-protected the page. Samsara (talk • contribs) 01:08, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Unprotected. Please don't complain to me when this goes sour. Samsara (talk • contribs) 17:27, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

I'll watch the page closely too. Don't worry. :) NCurse _work 17:52, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Folding@Home nomination

I honestly think the nomination for Folding@Home should be removed. Between the spamming by forum members and the attempt on FA at the same to to get it worked on, its become a pretty useless nomination. I'm certainly not willing to do other's dirty work. If this is picked, it will sit for a month while about two real editors do the job the forum people should be doing while they sit back and laugh at us chumps doing their work for them. pschemp | talk 19:05, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

• I have not been following this issue, but now will. Please remind me how the winner of the month is determined or who determines it. I've been thinking it was like an AfD where despite the votes of yea or ney, another party made the final decision. But, from your post of concern, I'm gathering that is not the process at all. Regards, Keesiewonder 19:40, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

From August, it has been my job to determine the winner. "Collaborations will be selected every month by whichever one has the most votes. In the event of a tie, the earlier nomination wins." In this case, Folding@Home nomination is not against our rules just it's suspicious to be a spam voting. That's all. NCurse _work 20:06, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

• Sounds fine; I wonder if in this case, should F@H win, you and whomever tends to do the most work here can make an executive decision. As you can tell, I'm new to wiki politics ... Maybe I should go vote for all the other nominations, and recruit others to do the same ... ? Keesiewonder 21:01, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Me, I'd rewrite our policy as "Any registered user who has at least 100 major edits can nominate an article and can vote for the nominated articles." And would apply it from the next nominations. BTW, please do not recruite people regarding WP:NOVOTE. NCurse _work 21:10, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

• That sounds reasonable too, the 100 major edits clause. I wasn't thinking of recruiting in the wrong way ... Rather I was thinking of confirming awareness of this collaborative voting area on some other portals, projects, groups, etc. I expect that was probably done long ago! But it is like making sure the biology folks know what the molecular biology folks are voting on, for example. So ... I wonder if I have 100 major edits. How would you figure that out? I do have a statistics kind of link off my user page. Keesiewonder 21:19, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

• Ouch - bite marks! pschemp, you are jumping to conclusions about F@H participants. Should this article win, there will be plenty of input from the F@H side. Agreed, Records was out of line - but kindly assume intelligence and good faith on the part of other F@H people. This could be a nice opportunity for wikipedia to recruit highly qualified biochemists, physical chemists, software developers to edit the article, unless you drive them away now with harsh words. Now, a procedural question: If Records were to withdraw the nomination, would that action remove it without any penalty against a future nomination? TIA for your reply. susato 21:35, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

There is no problem with inviting people to contribute to a collaboration. There is a problem with fishing for votes on fan forums. That's because the votes are meant to be an indication of expected participation in a collaboration. Just one month of a lame participation can really put projects like this to sleep for months. Please be clear on this distinction between participation and vote fishing, and do not put the blame on the maintainers of this page, or on wiki politics. It's all down to how you guys handled this. You shot yourselves in the foot by inviting once-off anons that you probably wouldn't have even needed to "win". I'm sure you appreciate that we somewhat feel you've been pissing in our well, something we like to avoid. Why not give the other candidates a fair chance? As for action needed, just remove surfergeek's vote (it is literally a once-off account at the time of this writing), and susato can put a post on the forum to explain that votes need to come from established users, but that everybody is invited to contribute to the collaboration. And NCurse can consider putting the 100 edit clause in the instructions (this is routinely done on some wikipedias in other languages anyway). Btw, I don't think the "two votes needed every week to stay alive" is stated explicitly in the rules - I think it was two votes every week? Samsara (talk • contribs) 01:16, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

• I needed to check this out for my own understanding and foundation ... being new to this page and the F@H article and all. Here's what I found. Amongst the current 8 users voting for F@H, all users but 2 have been a posting WP member for more than 1 week. The other 6 members posted their first edit anywhere between 8/16/03 and 10/24/06. The number of unique articles posted to by those 6 members ranges between 8 and 3,338 {8;25;73;180;497;3,338}. The total number of edits, again for those 6, appears to be between 43 and 10,924 {43;90;141;529;694;10,924}. Maybe this is obvious to everyone else, but looking at it this way helped me. Regards, Keesiewonder 23:36, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

I don't know about the '100 major edits' criterion, since it's hard to quantify 'major' and is rather labor-intensive to enforce. I suggest just leaving the page semi'd to make the de facto criterion an account registered more than 4 days ago, which prevents short-term external solicitation but seems low enough for all reasonable purposes.

I posted similar comments on susato's talk page, but calling the influx of F@H votes 'spam' is a little extreme; to be fair, they didn't necessarily know in advance that Records' nomination was problematic. I'm not sure the current nomination should stand with the extra votes, but there should be no prejudice against a renomination - though, if the F@H people are knowledgeable about the subject, they don't necessarily need to nominate it again. Agree with susato that, since what's done is done, we can treat this as an opportunity to get some expert editors interested in the project. Opabinia regalis 01:29, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

After this "explanation" I am totally opposed to this article being nominated. User continues to spam talk pages for his cause and has admitted personal gain motivations. What's done is Not fixed, there was no rule about this because we expect people to nominate in good faith. This was not a good faith nomination and that has now been made clear. pschemp | talk 03:04, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

At this point I would support closing/removing all of Records' nominations - FAC, SCOTM, MCB collaboration, etc. - as he has admitted deliberately attempting to use Wikipedia and its editors to promote his agenda. That does not in itself have any bearing on the fact that other members of the F@H community should be encouraged to become productive Wikipedia contributors, even if they did first come in contact with us as a result of Records' misbehavior. Opabinia regalis 03:32, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm glad we finally agree on that point. So let's close them down already. Samsara (talk • contribs) 03:36, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Current-SCOTM template format

Could the {{Current-SCOTM}} template be formatted to follow the Wikipedia:Talk page templates guidelines? (Including the "small" option?) Thanks. — RJH (talk) 17:46, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

I've made some corrections, please take a look. But why should it be in small text? NCurse _work 19:52, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

For those who prefer a small template that is located to the side of the talk page. (See Talk:Galaxy for example.) — RJH (talk) 21:33, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

George W. Barlow

His 1968-paper on Ethological units of behavior was reprinted in 1996 in Foundations of Animal Behavior: Classic Papers with Commentaries as one of the 44 most important papers published during the period when the field of animal behavior was in its formative stage, from 1870-1970. Barlow died on July 14, 2007. You can find two weblinks here: [1] . --De.Gerbil 21:37, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

If you would like to nominate this article, first please create it, because we can only work on existing articles. Thank you! NCurse _work 06:22, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Biology collaboration

I notice we have three collaborations for subfields of biology but no Biology collaboration of the month. I've suggested we should look at starting one at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Biology. Please drop by if you're interested. Richard001 02:59, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Archive 1