Wikipedia talk:WikiProject European Union/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Archive 4

This page is an Archive of the discussions from WikiProject European Union talk page (Discussion page). (January 2008 - December 2008) - Please Do not edit!

195 European Parliament constituency templates

After much hard work, infobox templates have been created for each of the approx 195 European Parliament constituencies since 1979. These templates contain sources, creation/dissolution dates, and numbers of MEPs for each constituency. User:Green Giant has questioned their existence as single-use templates. While I disagree (the whole reason for spinning them off into templates was to allow them to be used multiple times), I will be away from my terminal until late Friday/Early saturday and so will not be able to save them should they be nominated for speedy deletion. Given the work they represent, it would be difficult to resurrect the data should it be deleted. Given that, may I ask the users of these pages to maintain a watching brief on the templates in my absence and take copies should they be deleted in my absence? They can be found here. Kind regards, Anameofmyveryown (talk) 01:06, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

AfD nomination of European Union member states at the 2004 Summer Olympics

European Union member states at the 2004 Summer Olympics, has been listed for deletion. If you are interested in the deletion discussion, please participate by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/European Union member states at the 2004 Summer Olympics (2nd nomination). Thank you. Paulbrock (talk) 16:29, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Federal Europe

I just came across the article Federal Europe (formerly called United states of Europe). I notice it is part of wikiproject Europe, but not wikiproject European Union. This seemed to me odd, since essentially it is discussing the prospect of the EU becoming a state. Comments? Sandpiper (talk) 20:51, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes I agree.. But the article is also about the violent unifications of Europe throughout history, so I'm not sure whether being an article of the EU project would be approperiate. I don't know. - $\mathrm {S}$ $\mathrm {Solberg}$ $\mathrm {J}$ 00:43, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

I posted a comment here rather than simply tagging it, because I didn't know how people here feel about this. It seems to me though, that if it even has just a section about the EU, then the EU project ought to be interested in the article because of that section. The lead definition sentence is currently Federal Europe is a speculative scenario where a politically united Europe, usually in the modern context of the European Union (EU), would acquire the full features of a federation, which puts the issue of the EU squarely at the heart of the article. Sandpiper (talk) 09:36, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Kosovo

In light of Kosovo's declaration of independence expected today, there would no doubt be a lot of updating of terms on Wikipedia. However, of course, there would be a lot of disagreements given not every country would recognise it. I'd propose that for articles under our scope we do of course make the necessary clarification but where we face problems we follow the policy of the majority of EU states.- J Logan ^t: 11:14, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

So then in articles on the scope of this wikiproject we would say kosovo is an independent country , right? Since the majority of the EU recognizes it this way --Cradel 13:12, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

I think you would still have to explain that this is disputed. There are a number of EU states with cause to worry whether parts of them might be hankering to become countries. However, the EU as an organisation seems to have a policy of making Kosovo a country and a member and is expending a lot of resources on this. This foray into world affairs is somewhat underplayed in EU articles from what I have seen. (of course, they would no doubt also like the remainder of Serbia to join, and will be pushing that too.) Sandpiper (talk) 09:23, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

TfD nomination of Template:Euro coins

Template:Euro coins has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. —Bkell (talk) 21:46, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

The discussion has been closed as a Speedy keep, per the arguments put forth in the previous TfD. In addition, the concern over the use of non-free images outside the mainspace has been resolved. If you are aware of any articles that this template was transcluded onto in the past, but from which it has now been removed, please feel free to restore it. Happy‑melon 13:20, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Stub for "non-elected" people

These are the two stub templates for EU politicians:

The first one is obviously very useful, but I think the latter one screams "eurocracy" and "democratic deficit". I think the word "non-elected" is misleading since every leader and commissioner in the Commission is democratically appointed. The President of the Commission is chosen (in line with the result of the Europarl elections) by the directly elected European Council, and can be fired by the directly elected European Parliament. The president chooses the commissioners, who must be approved by the European Council and the European Parliament. I'm not sure if the template is used for (non-commissioner) people who just do practical jobs in the Commission or the Parliament, but in that case it makes even less sense to underline that they are "non-elected."

As far as I've seen, the template is only used for former commissioners, so I propose that we change it to simply "This article about a European Commissioner is a stub." - $\mathrm {S}$ $\mathrm {Solberg}$ $\mathrm {J}$ 21:39, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps you should change the syntax to

• {{MEP-stub}}
• {{EU-org-bio-stub}}

in your comment to avoid this talk page being so categorized. Unfortunately, that doesn't display the actual template message. I also notice that the EU-org-bio-stub (unlike MEP-stub) is not categorized as an EU-stub, but I'm not sure of rules governing stub sorting. I agree that "non-elected" might send the wrong message but I do think we need a general category and I can't think of a better term.--Boson (talk) 07:19, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

European Parliament groups

At Template:European Parliament groups there is a long list of political groups of the European Parliament. Most of these articles are well-referenced but badly written. There is a lot of mistakes and they all need to be rewritten and wikified. Good work to all of you! --Checco (talk) 13:17, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

President of the European Council

I'm looking for a little help with the President of the European Council article. A new user has added information about Bertie Ahern, which while mostly factual, is unrelated to the article. I've tried to explain this but they have repeatedly reverted edits to restore their information. Please help.--Patrick Ѻ 17:06, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Request for consensus

A question has arisen concerning classification of groups in the European Parliament. A discussion has opened up in Talk:Political groups of the European Parliament. Your input is requested there. This notification falls under the "friendly notice" clause of WP:CANVASS. Regards, Anameofmyveryown (talk) 02:04, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Twenty-eighth Amendment of the Constitution Bill, 2008

Irish voters reject the Treaty of Lisbon in a referendum, and this is the main article. However, the article does not explain the reasons for those Irish and political parties to object the treaty. Anyone can help expand the article concerning the reasons? Salt (talk) 07:31, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

The reasons are a matter of some dispute. I'm not sure discussing them in an article is a good idea. Blue-Haired Lawyer 13:24, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Please watch this page tomorrow

Can people please watch the European Commission page tomorrow, it is going on the main page so will attract lots of vandalism no doubt. Thanks- J Logan ^t: 10:26, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

AFD nomination on Europe – Democracy – Esperanto

Just to let you know that this article has been nominated for deletion here. Thanks, Pfainuk talk 14:15, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Texts of the founding treaties

It might interest some of you to know that there's a new (?) website that has copies of all the original treaty texts that you can't find on Eur-lex. Blue-Haired Lawyer 09:12, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Articles flagged for cleanup

Currently, 1300 articles are assigned to this project, of which 304, or 23.4%, are flagged for cleanup of some sort. (Data as of 14 July 2008.) Are you interested in finding out more? I am offering to generate cleanup to-do lists on a project or work group level. See User:B. Wolterding/Cleanup listings for details. More than 150 projects and work groups have already subscribed, and adding a subscription for yours is easy - just place a template on your project page.

If you want to respond to this canned message, please do so at my user talk page; I'm not watching this page. --B. Wolterding (talk) 16:29, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

...at European level

I have put an entry of CfD proposing that the category Category:Pan-European advocacy groups be renamed to Category:Advocacy groups at European level. CfD's proceed by consensus, but very few people have contributed to the discussion, so no consensus has arisen. It would be a good idea if you could go to Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2008_August_1#Category:Pan-European_advocacy_groups and give your opinion of the proposed rename. Regards, Anameofmyveryown (talk) 19:32, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Simple Wiki - please pop over

Lord, now I remember why I never venture into the Simple English wiki. Does someone want to dare to fix it up a bit?: simple:European Union. I just did some minor changes to other articles but I can't stand writing on basic terms when the job is so big. I might try to go back again later as there are loads of factual errors around - if someone else could also help in patching up such holes?- J Logan ^t: 22:26, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

An important reason to create the EU was "The need to have a common economic area that might become as strong as the United States of America". Haha. I fixed that one. But seriously, the errors of the simple english article are nothing compared to the crimes in the two Norwegian editions. - SSJ ☎ 00:21, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps we need some kind of interwiki group, polygot project members who can scour other wikis to check other versions of articles for factual errors and then, if they're fixed, log it back here that it is okay so people know its okay and can go check other articles? I know I know, hard enough to mobile people as a unit on en, let alone get them working elsewhere.- J Logan ^t: 15:28, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia Release 1.0

I was just thinking, what articles should we try to get into the next release version of Wikipedia? Nominations for 0.7 are still open, I reckon when the finally finish the 1.0 version we should have a decent array of EU articles on their list - however most need improving first. Anyone got ideas on what we should add to the list and hence work on?- J Logan ^t: 20:49, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

If I understand it correctly, the following articles with a project tag have already been selected:

• Euro
• European Parliament
• List of European Union member states by accession
• €2_commemorative_coins
• Portugal
• Spain
• Brussels

and the following have been nominated:

• European Commission
• Institutions of the European Union

How about European Union?

How many should we select? My next choices would be

• European Court of Justice
• European Central Bank
• Treaties of the European Union and possibly some of the idividual treaties (e.g. Amsterdam Treaty, Maastricht Treaty

To clarify some confusion, it might be a good idea to include the articles:

• Council of the European Union
• European Council
• Council of Europe (yes I know that's not EU).

It might also be nice to have some people, though not living people, of course.

--Boson (talk) 00:01, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

(Spain, Portugal and Brussels are outside our scope, I've removing the banners)

The ECJ and ECB would need a lot more work I think, though would be worth in terms of notability I think. Could try to nominate anyway to see what their standards are in practice. Treaties is essentially a list with little elaboration - worth it only if we get treaty pages on their list, none of which I think are up to scratch (Rome and Maastricht would be notable enough but they are severely neglected). CoEU, EC and CoE are contenders, a bit of work and we could put them forward if the two I nominated get through. As for living, who were you thinking of? Our articles on the founding fathers are rather sub standard to counter their low notability.- J Logan ^t: 22:23, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Changes to the WP:1.0 assessment scheme

As you may have heard, we at the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial Team recently made some changes to the assessment scale, including the addition of a new level. The new description is available at WP:ASSESS.

• The new C-Class represents articles that are beyond the basic Start-Class, but which need additional references or cleanup to meet the standards for B-Class.
• The criteria for B-Class have been tightened up with the addition of a rubric, and are now more in line with the stricter standards already used at some projects.
• A-Class article reviews will now need more than one person, as described here.

Each WikiProject should already have a new C-Class category at Category:C-Class_articles. If your project elects not to use the new level, you can simply delete your WikiProject's C-Class category and clarify any amendments on your project's assessment/discussion pages. The bot is already finding and listing C-Class articles.

Please leave a message with us if you have any queries regarding the introduction of the revised scheme. This scheme should allow the team to start producing offline selections for your project and the wider community within the next year. Thanks for using the Wikipedia 1.0 scheme! For the 1.0 Editorial Team, §hepBot (Disable) 21:56, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

The new C-Class sounds like a good idea to me. What do others think? --Boson (talk) 20:58, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Doesn't sound necessary, administrative tinkering.- J Logan ^t: 21:37, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

If we do use it, I would think it would have to be accompanied by proper project controls on B class.- J Logan ^t: 21:45, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

B Class

Actually, regardless of whether we bring in C class or not, I'd like to see B class strengthened. Most major projects have controls over it, we can't go for anything too elaborate of course but I propose we simply have a system where the B class has to be justified, with regard to the criteria, and supported by one other project member. Thoughts?- J Logan ^t: 22:23, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

I think it would be a good idea to have the 5 main B-class criteria in the project template, as for instance in WP:MILHIST or WP:GER. In fact, I prefer WP:GER, where the criteria can be displayed (show) for all classes of B or below. I would prefer to reserve formal agreement for A-class. Perhaps it would be sufficient to encourage review of any B-class articles by other project members, who could just re-assess and set the appropriate B-class criterion to "no". I find just having to put a "yes" against "Coverage and accuracy, criterion met" concentrates the mind. It's a strong incentive to look at the references; if there are none or they don't confirm the content, then the references criterion gets a "no"; if they are not accessible to the reviewer and the content looks a bit dodgy, then "Coverage and accuracy" gets "not assessed". Only if someone feels able to confirm that coverage and accuracy are adequate should "B-class" be awarded. But it is possible for different people to assess different criteria. If a non-native domain expert has ticked all the criteria except "grammar", I can tick that (perhaps after correcting a couple of errors) and award B, even though I would not be happy with assessing the content by myself. If a drive-by reviewer awards a B-class without checking the criteria properly, the next person to notice it adds the appropriate variables and reviews the assessment. --Boson (talk) 21:10, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

I agree, WP:GER's system seams to be the best. If someone who knows the template code could steal it for us and then we can go through the articles and rate them up or down. And yes, I suppose agreement should be up on A class, is it possible to include some kind of code where who editors can put their names in the template as a sign off so people can check who has approved it on the page itself? I don't know how complicated that would get, perhaps we should follow other people's system of sub talk pages.- _JLogan^t: 22:02, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Unlinking years

It seems the heavens have renounced the former god of linking years. Inscribed upon a stone tablet I have received are the letters MOS:UNLINKYEARS. For once I agree with the gods and hence will not play heathen and instead carry out the will of the gods (when I'm in the area). Yet, In the interests of consistency, does anyone here wish to split and start our own church of I-will-bloody-well-link-dates-if-I-want-to-I-have-done-this-for-years-and-rather-like-it-thank-you-very-much?- _J.Logan`^t: 12:05, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Oh, and further more. As auto formatting will no longer be present, I propose the project formally back the European style of dates on its pages (i.e. 9 May 1951 not May 9 1951). Perhaps we could include this in a series of general WP:EU style guidelines, such as the use of British/Irish English?- _J.Logan`^t: 16:39, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Definitely, we should do that. - SSJ ☎ 18:08, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Here. - SSJ ☎ 18:14, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, I've reworked a it a bit. If anyone objects to these guidelines, please do so now rather than later.- _J.Logan`^t: 22:29, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia 0.7 articles have been selected for European Union

Wikipedia 0.7 is a collection of English Wikipedia articles due to be released on DVD, and available for free download, later this year. The Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team has made an automated selection of articles for Version 0.7.

We would like to ask you to review the articles selected from this project. These were chosen from the articles with this project's talk page tag, based on the rated importance and quality. If there are any specific articles that should be removed, please let us know at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.7. You can also nominate additional articles for release, following the procedure at Wikipedia:Release Version Nominations.

A list of selected articles with cleanup tags, sorted by project, is available. The list is automatically updated each hour when it is loaded. Please try to fix any urgent problems in the selected articles. A team of copyeditors has agreed to help with copyediting requests, although you should try to fix simple issues on your own if possible.

We would also appreciate your help in identifying the version of each article that you think we should use, to help avoid vandalism or POV issues. These versions can be recorded at this project's subpage of User:SelectionBot/0.7. We are planning to release the selection for the holiday season, so we ask you to select the revisions before October 20. At that time, we will use an automatic process to identify which version of each article to release, if no version has been manually selected. Thanks! For the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial team, SelectionBot 23:28, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Relations of the European Union

There is a article about the Foreign relations of the European Union, But why no article about the Internal relations of the European Union Mr Taz (talk) 13:58, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

The 'internal relations' of the EU is the EU. Wouldn't that be meaningless? - SSJ ☎ 17:04, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Pan-European political organisations

I think we should either include all official languages of the EU in the infobox, or only English. See for instance the European Liberal Democrat and Reform Party, where German, French, Italian and Spanish are included, but not Polish (which has about the same number of native speakers in the EU as Spanish). Also, it would be useful to have a language tag behind each name to know what name is in which language. So my proposal is to use a format similar to that of the infobox used at European Union. I tried to do this myself once but lacked the required formatting skills... Anybody willing to help? --Roofbird (talk) 11:16, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Over use of EU flag on Category:European Union templates

As per Wikipedia:Manual of Style (icons)#Help the reader rather than decorate I would like to remove flags from the majority of these templates . They are not needed and are not helpful .This sort of flag usage is becoming depreciated and I would like to hear this projects view on these flags Gnevin (talk) 19:27, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Please give some examples of what you mean before you start removing flags willy-nilly. Blue-Haired Lawyer 21:37, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

{{EU_Dependencies}} and {{Political_organisations_at_European_Union_level}}Gnevin (talk) 22:56, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Fair enough. Blue-Haired Lawyer 23:16, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

You gave examples of two templates which did overuse flags. I never agreed to removing all flags from all templates. (At least I never meant to.) An EU template with single flag can hardly count as overuse or clutter. — Blue-Haired Lawyer 17:30, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Example? May I suggest a rule of thumb? EU flag should be removed where another image is equally or more appropriate or where the template is of very low importance/notability.- _J.Logan`^t: 18:15, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Sorry should have said. Mini-edit war going on at Template:European Union topics. — Blue-Haired Lawyer 19:13, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

I linked to the category, I was quite clear about my intentions .It's hardly an edit war now is it ? I just pointed out you agreed to the removal of the flag and then you where re-adding it which didn't add up too me. As I said before this usage is becoming depreciated and their is no need for a flag Gnevin (talk) 21:33, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

That's why I said "mini-edit war". I previously asked for examples because I didn't think you intended to remove all the flags from all the templates. (My mistake.) Enough of us anyway. It'd nice to have a third opinion. — Blue-Haired Lawyer 23:25, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Perimeter (EU Project)

Some clarification may be needed on the notability of this FP7 project. McWomble (talk) 06:26, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

Request for comments

I've made some proposed amendments to the manual of style. Any comments? Blue-Haired Lawyer 17:44, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

Requested moves that may interest project members

A number of articles tagged as being within the remit of this project have been nominated for a name change which involves changing the capitalization scheme used. They are:

• Special Protection Area,
• Area of Conservation,
• Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty,
• Site of Special Scientific Interest, and
• Special Area of Conservation

(the links point to the discussion of the requested moves.) Members may wish to comment on the requests both for and against the proposed moves. I'm not sure where else notices could be posted to get as wide a discussion as possible, both for and against the requests), and so would appreciate people identifying appropriate projects and posting similar messages there.  DDStretch  (talk) 08:58, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Need help in Template_talk:Euro_adoption_future#GBP

Aparently someone is playing words to say that Sweden does not need to adopt the euro (which is incorrect). While I do hope what I am saying is correct, I was wondering if some backup can come from this project into that discussion.

Thanks, Miguel.mateo (talk) 17:10, 26 December 2008 (UTC)