Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Forestry/Archive 1

Archive 1

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Welcome

Just an initial edit to create this page. Guettarda (talk) 13:19, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

tree-stub nominated for deletion

Having a stub type for trees may not make sense in terms of taxonomy, but if there is a need for a Forestry project, there is presumably more to trees than just what family they are in. Respond at Wikipedia:Stub types for deletion/Log/2009/July/3. Kingdon (talk) 12:17, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

List of Forest Regions and Forest Districts of British Columbia

I created this long-overdue list, for now a list of redlinks, as the Forest Districts are far more important than the regional districts which too many wikipages have been using as locational references and as if somehow the regional districts were all that important in the BC political geographic scheme of things (which they are not). Each item listed can have its own writeup/content, re ecology, annual allowable cut, FSRs, workforce, value, local issues etc, and the BC Ministry of Forests (actually right now named the BC Ministry of Forests and Range) needs its own article, as do other BC ministries. This will be a component of List of administrative regions of British Columbia, which will also have Ministry of Environment Regions, EMR Mines Districts, Tourism Districts; there's already the Health Regions. Too much weight has been given regional districts in Wikipedia with the result that a lot of content placing things in regional districts constitutes original research/synthesis; the other types of regions are far more powerful, especially in terms of land management but also in relation to political power, budgeting, economics etc.....and in use as geographic descriptions/locators, where MoF districts especially are commonlyu used (though the primary reference used by all govt sources, including the federal level, is Land Districts. Note the use of full capitals in the title; Forest District denotes a legal entity, "forest district" or "forest region" is not a formally-defined entity but could just be a general "region of forest" etc....Skookum1 (talk) 14:02, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Note also Biogeoclimatic zones of British Columbia.Skookum1 (talk) 14:08, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

WP 1.0 bot announcement

This message is being sent to each WikiProject that participates in the WP 1.0 assessment system. On Saturday, January 23, 2010, the WP 1.0 bot will be upgraded. Your project does not need to take any action, but the appearance of your project's summary table will change. The upgrade will make many new, optional features available to all WikiProjects. Additional information is available at the WP 1.0 project homepage. — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:19, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Opinions needed on an arboricultural matter

There's a boring little edit war happening at the tree shaping article. If you go to this discussion on the "Conflict of Interest noticeboard" and read my "RECAP" you should get an immediate sense of what's going on. The neutral opinions of people who know anything about trees...or at this point anything about anything...might help to dissolve the current impasse. Thanks. --208.59.93.238 (talk) 22:24, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

I'll certainly agree with boring little edit war (I was hoping that it would be about something juicy, like "how dare you do that to a poor defenseless tree" or the like). Looks like the page is protected for the moment, which I suppose is fair enough under the circumstances. Kingdon (talk) 21:07, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

A tricky article namng issue - deforestation vs forest management

See Talk:Deforestation_by_region#.22Deforestation.22_vs._.22Forest_management.22. Casliber (talk · contribs) 20:15, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Forest history?

Hello, I'm interested to know where/ how forest history might fit in to this WikiProject. Currently, there is an interesting & useful short section on "History" under Forestry. This could be expanded, however. Thanks. DA Sonnenfeld (talk) 00:04, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

I've considered on more than one occasion creating the page History of forestry, although what honestly has kept me from actually doing it is it seems like an overwhelming task (and being a perfectionist doesn't really help with that). What I considered for it was breaking it up into historical periods- perhaps into "ancient" forestry (Chinese dynasties) and into modern forestry, coinciding with the creation of forestry schools. Could probably break that one down even further, such as how it has evolved with the introduction of mechanized machinery, ecological forestry, etc. Could probably throw in some of the seemingly useless knowledge I have about French forestry from the middle ages to the enlightenment.

Therefore I wholeheartedly agree that this task is something the WikiProject should definitely be involved in developing- perhaps we'd like to start an outline/draft in WikiProject space to get an idea of how to approach? Cheers, Minnecologies (talk) 15:38, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

One way to approach this might be to come up with a list of topics (maybe on a subpage of this project) and build those as articles first. The use them to build the main article. That might avoid the problem of balance and (un)due weight. It also breaks the big - and daunting - task into workable chunks. Guettarda (talk) 19:06, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for both of your thoughts; very helpful. Here I'd just like to note the nuanced distinction between Forest history, which I see as a subtopic of Environmental history, and History of forestry, which is a subtopic both of Forest history and Forestry. Tricky! Keep those thoughts & suggestions flowing... DA Sonnenfeld (talk) 23:03, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

oooh! This sounds great. Sonnenfeld makes an important distinction. Each forest has its own natural history, which would be a delight to find on the page of each individual forest, where that history is known. Minnecologies seems to have a good framework already thought out on forestRY history and some fine details. I will help where needed. Duff (talk) 17:42, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Subpage created as per Guettarda's suggestion- recommend we move the discussion to the talkpage. Names of prospective articles are open to improvement. Alright-brainstorm! Minnecologies (talk) 00:49, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

In case you don't have the project subpage talk watchlisted, asking for input on which topic articles to get started on. Minnecologies (talk) 20:29, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

Milestone: WikiProject Forestry's first GA

... is Forestry in the United Kingdom.—S Marshall T/C 15:52, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

Wow, I am so embarrassed I did not even notice this (despite the fact that I was caught up in "real world" happenings at the time). It seems to have come a very long way in a relatively short period of time. Kudos to you as the page creator and one of the principal editors! Nice to know the WikiProject finally has one. Minnecologies (talk) 16:50, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Forestry in Pakistan

Please, somebody give an assessment to Forestry in Pakistan. Farjad0322 (talk) 16:35, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

I've taken a shot at this, but if anyone wants to take a look who assesses more forestry articles, or wants to spend more time reading over the criteria, feel free to revise up or down. Kingdon (talk) 01:31, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

I think it's fair as per the standards put forward by WP:ASSESS. I assessed a lot of the forestry articles about 15 months ago, and defaulted to using the "mid" level of importance for all the Forestry of country articles using the {{Template:Importance scheme}} criteria. Although I'm sure the importance of these articles will change as the project (and wikipedia) matures, for now I think it's correct. > Minnecologies^Talk 13:36, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

Forestry articles have been selected for the Wikipedia 0.8 release

Version 0.8 is a collection of Wikipedia articles selected by the Wikipedia 1.0 team for offline release on USB key, DVD and mobile phone. Articles were selected based on their assessed importance and quality, then article versions (revisionIDs) were chosen for trustworthiness (freedom from vandalism) using an adaptation of the WikiTrust algorithm.

We would like to ask you to review the Forestry articles and revisionIDs we have chosen. Selected articles are marked with a diamond symbol (♦) to the right of each article, and this symbol links to the selected version of each article. If you believe we have included or excluded articles inappropriately, please contact us at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8 with the details. You may wish to look at your WikiProject's articles with cleanup tags and try to improve any that need work; if you do, please give us the new revisionID at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8. We would like to complete this consultation period by midnight UTC on Monday, October 11th.

We have greatly streamlined the process since the Version 0.7 release, so we aim to have the collection ready for distribution by the end of October, 2010. As a result, we are planning to distribute the collection much more widely, while continuing to work with groups such as One Laptop per Child and Wikipedia for Schools to extend the reach of Wikipedia worldwide. Please help us, with your WikiProject's feedback!

For the Wikipedia 1.0 editorial team, SelectionBot 23:02, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Reference for forest pathology

I was checking some references, when I come across this one at Forest & Shade Tree Pathology This seems to be a fairly large site with lots of good info published by an expert [1]. I thought this site may be of interest to your wikiproject. Blackash have a chat 04:12, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

cutoff point for merchantable timber

the article Biltmore Stick states that a log is merchantable down to 4 inches. a forester with the ohio dnr recently told me 10 inches inside the bark is the cutoff for merchantability of a log. which is correct? Timmytuber (talk) 19:41, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Both- it depends on what the log is going to be used for, as well as the tree species (or more loosely hardwood vs. softwood). According to this, logs that will be used for making wood veneer need to be 12 inches d.i.b. (diameter inside bark) (see p.10). In the Biltmore stick article- 4" is the cutoff for what can be used as pulpwood. In general, the bigger the logs from the tree, the more it can be used for. > Minnecologies^Talk 21:10, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Invitation to participate!

Hello! As you may be aware, the Wikimedia Foundation is gearing up for our annual fundraiser. We want to hit our goal, and hit it as soon as possible, so that we can focus on Wikipedia's tenth anniversary (January 15) and on our new project, the Contribution Team.

I'm posting across WikiProjects to engage you, the community, in working to build Wikipedia not only through financial donations, but also through collaboration in building content. You can find more information in Philippe Beaudette's memo to the communities here.

Please visit the Contribution Team page and the Fundraising page to find out how you can help us support and spread free knowledge. ⇒DanRosenthal ^{Wikipedia Contribution Team} 18:05, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

• Are you going to post this to every Wikipedia article? I like wiki but this seems out of place. Seems like free (and largely eternal) advertizing to me! --71.245.164.83 (talk) 04:43, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

Caulk boots

I'm inviting members of your project to help out in improving this article on a tangentially related foresty topic. Please see the talk page. We have an editor who might benefit from some other opinions besides the article's main contributor (me). Thanks! Valfontis (talk) 02:22, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

the clearcut article...

There is a major bias issue with the discussion of the Negative side to clear cutting. I understand that its purpose is to discuss what negative impacts the practice can have, but it digresses into editorialization and opinio, while using very biased language (the repetition of "unfortunately", "forrest powerhouses", etc.).

It also troubles me that the first reference cited is another wiki.

While I know this is a passionate topic for many, an encyclopedia is not the place to practice activism (or, more correctly, shouldn't be).

I would have edited it myself, but I only have my cellphone and a 2g connection is rather painful to use for such purposes.

Some parts of it suffer from biased writing, although it usually isn't too hard to tone that down. The bigger problem is just poor and vague writing (the section on seeding is particularly painful as it wanders along without clearly stating different ways to reseed and the consequences of each choice). One thing that might help (but which is not a small task) is to merge the positive and negative sections, per WP:NPOV#Article structure. Kingdon (talk) 03:58, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Definitely not a small task but one that does need to get done; that Richiewiki reference (and the blog one two below) I noticed about a year ago when I added a lot of material. It bothered me then, but as what they were in reference too was essentially correct I left it all in. I intended to come back to it, but it obviously has slipped my mind. I will put that on the to-do list for the week. Minnecologies^t,c 18:29, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Citation templates now support more identifiers

Recent changes were made to citations templates (such as {{citation}}, {{cite journal}}, {{cite web}}...). In addition to what was previously supported (bibcode, doi, jstor, isbn, ...), templates now support arXiv, ASIN, JFM, LCCN, MR, OL, OSTI, RFC, SSRN and Zbl. Before, you needed to place |id={{arxiv|0123.4567}} (or worse |url=http://arxiv.org/abs/0123.4567), now you can simply use |arxiv=0123.4567, likewise for |id={{JSTOR|0123456789}} and |url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/0123456789 → |jstor=0123456789.

The full list of supported identifiers is given here (with dummy values):

• {{cite journal |author=John Smith |year=2000 |title=How to Put Things into Other Things |journal=Journal of Foobar |volume=1 |issue=2 |pages=3–4 |arxiv=0123456789 |asin=0123456789 |bibcode=0123456789 |doi=0123456789 |jfm=0123456789 |jstor=0123456789 |lccn=0123456789 |isbn=0123456789 |issn=0123456789 |mr=0123456789 |oclc=0123456789 |ol=0123456789 |osti=0123456789 |rfc=0123456789 |pmc=0123456789 |pmid=0123456789 |ssrn=0123456789 |zbl=0123456789 |id={{para|id|____}} }}

Obviously not all citations needs all parameters, but this streamlines the most popular ones and gives both better metadata and better appearances when printed. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 02:50, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

World forestry

Hello all. In the course of working with a grad student on international forestry policy, I've noted somewhat of a hiatus in Wikipedia in the area of World forestry. As a small step towards assembling some critical mass in the area, I've set up a new Category:World forestry. Additional category entries welcome! (And I hope by jumping in with this, I haven't stepped on any toes, here.) Surprised to find no entry for Jack Westoby or his book, "Introduction to World Forestry". Kind regards, DA Sonnenfeld (talk) 18:27, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

Looks fine to me. Kingdon (talk) 18:47, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

Logging vs Forestry

I started Category:American loggers, Category:Logging in the United States etc without realizing that the categories for forestry had been created. Pardon my lack of knowledge, but are forestrers and loggers essentially the same job or are they different enough to warrant separate categories?--TM 19:32, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

Hello, and welcome! It's all there... Follow the links at Category:Forestry. DA Sonnenfeld (talk) 10:57, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

WikiProject Forestry article importance assessment criteria?

In reviewing current importance ratings/ rankings for WikiProject Forestry articles, I'm concerned that most human and institutional dimensions of forestry seem to be currently ranked 'low' in importance. This seems systematic and is different than how I would approach it. As such, I would like to kindly request guidance and/or discussion on this topic from WikiProject Forestry editors who've been involved in importance-ranking activity for this WikiProject. Could you please lay out and open up for discussion your importance-ranking criteria for WikiProject Forestry? Thanks very much. DA Sonnenfeld (talk) 11:40, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

Self-thinning

Just wondering if anyone could provide some insight on self-thinning. I was thinking of making an article on the subject, but not sure if it might be contained in an article elsewhere, or if the subject isn't relevant enough for it's own article but should be included elsewhere. Just covered the concept in class and it seems to be a pretty important phenomenon. Thanks for any help. Bfrank72 (talk) 01:02, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Request for feedback: List of forestry universities and colleges

I've posted a number of style and scope questions on Talk:List of forestry universities and colleges. Would appreciate feedback from WP Forestry members on those questions. Thanks! DA Sonnenfeld (talk) 07:46, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

Outline of forest history?

It seems like the forest history subpage may be far enough along to spin off as an Outline of forestry history. Thoughts? Thanks, DA Sonnenfeld (talk) 13:38, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

Hello all, anyone up for a collaborative project to launch an 'Outline of forestry history'? DA Sonnenfeld (talk) 16:38, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

Material from the above-referenced work page has been integrated into the Outline of forestry, under the History of forestry section. Thanks, DA Sonnenfeld (talk) 02:17, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

New forestry-related lists

I've created two new forestry-related lists: List of forestry technical schools and List of forestry journals. Contributions welcome to both! Thanks, DA Sonnenfeld (talk) 13:38, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

And two more: List of types of formally designated forests and List of historic schools of forestry. The latter may be of particular interest to folks in this WikiProject interested in the history of forestry/ history of forestry education. Thanks, DA Sonnenfeld (talk) 20:32, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

Forests and culture

Now here's a question for anyone: This WikiProject is focused primarily on the 'art and science of forestry'. Any idea where articles on forests and culture might fit in? I'm thinking of mythology, but also literature, and even more deeply, e.g. forest-dwelling peoples... Thanks for your thoughts and suggestions. DA Sonnenfeld (talk) 13:44, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:HighBeam

Wikipedia:HighBeam describes a limited opportunity for Wikipedia editors to have access to HighBeam Research.
—Wavelength (talk) 17:47, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

Research forests & forestry researchers

I've created a new Category:Research forests as a first step towards stronger coverage of Research forests. Category additions welcome! Anyone interested in starting a new article on the topic? DA Sonnenfeld (talk) 06:23, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

To go along with it, another new category, Category:Forestry researchers, for forestry scientists who are not necessarily Forestry academics.

Now I'm wondering, is there a need for Category:Demonstration forests? There seem to be quite a few of Wikipedia articles on them, too. Is there a clear distinction between research and demonstration forests? I would guess that the latter are more for 'trying things out' and for forestry education, while the former include forests that are left in a more or less natural state for research purposes. Input, suggestions most welcome! DA Sonnenfeld (talk) 13:35, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

• And one more variation: Experimental forest. Should these be lumped together? Or are there important distinctions? Thanks, DA Sonnenfeld (talk) 03:54, 29 April 2012 (UTC)
• And another: Teaching forest. Same (or similar) to Demonstration forest? DA Sonnenfeld (talk) 05:55, 29 April 2012 (UTC)
• And yet another! Once you start looking... Model forest. This one seems similar to Demonstration forest and is a formal definition used by the FAO (see: http://www.fao.org/forestry/modelforests/29565/en/). Hmmm... DA Sonnenfeld (talk) 06:30, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

As a partial, working solution, I've decided to include both Research Forests and Experimental Forests in Category:Research forests. DA Sonnenfeld (talk) 05:55, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

As another step towards addressing this, I'm going to create a List of types of formally designated forests and move the discussion to that article's talk page. Contributions most welcome! Thanks, DA Sonnenfeld (talk) 06:59, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Forest portal

Hello, I have created a portal:Forest anyone interested to contribute? --Rougieux (talk) 19:08, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

Nice start, Paul! I will try to think of suggestions... Kind regards, DA Sonnenfeld (talk) 19:35, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

Can't seem to get the 'Selected Biography' window to work. I may just not understand how. Thanks, DA Sonnenfeld (talk) 20:37, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

Knowledge of Dipterocarpaceae

Hello, How are you? I need your help. I ask you if you could enlarge Dipterocarpaceae article making better known this group of trees in Wikipedia, adding links to "Dipterocarpaceae" and information about "Dipterocarpaceae" existence on topics as trees articles in tropical articles or botanical or biodiversity articles. Do you know people that could be interested about Dipterocarpaceae article? They are welcome too. Thank you very much.Curritocurrito (talk) 18:50, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

• You can write everything over tropical trees, you can work the article in the way that you like it: why are they important? what habitat are they living? what animals do they eat their seeds? are they important economically? what minerals or grounds do they need? ...whatever. I'm not an expert en Botany or Biology, but it is good to know why they are important, how they are, I think that is a bad thing that species die. It must be an article to get in love with trees, but the article must be true, besides. Thank you very much.

I'm from Spain, my emglish language is not good, in spanish we have a proverb "que los arboles no te impidan ver el bosque" "that trees will not prevent you from watch the forest" I think that forest are important too, besides the forest have many different families of trees.Curritocurrito (talk) 19:20, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

Tropical Families and tropical genera

Hello, I need your help. I thank you your help in the articles and I hope you will write about genera and families again in future. I ask you: Can you find more people willing writing in tropical trees, genera and families? I ask you if you could enlarge some articles making better known this group of trees in Wikipedia, adding links to genera and families and writing information and asking people if they are interested in writing about topics as tropical trees articles, tropical forest articles or botanical or biodiversity articles. Do you know Wikipedia forums that could be interested about these type of articles? They are welcome too. I thank you very much.

I am from Spain and my mother language is not English language. Many country side areas, and Natural areas and Living beings are in Countries where population cannot collaborate with Wikipedia, but their Natural World and its highly economically valuable species are very important too in the human knowledge and developtment of the mankind, besides they need protection. People should have information because these matters are important, not just a curiosity only. But to me the main aim is to gather the abundant information disperse about living communities and living beings that have existed for millions of years because they are disappearing and in 20 years they will are not longer exist. In a more practical way this information and sample photos, are already on wikipedia, but are not in the place where people seek the information. please, you can help, yo not need to be an expert. Curritocurrito (talk) 09:06, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

List of U.S. state soils

We need some images over there. If you have a camera and a shovel, or one of those new camera-shovels, please help.

• Talk:List of U.S. state soils#Images

Many thanks, Anna Frodesiak (talk) 17:51, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

Some vandalism

Some editors, intending a joke I suppose, highjacked debarking (lumber) (newly renamed today to avoid ambiguity with yet another definition) into removing the bark from a dog devocalization! Just thought I'd point that out. This has apparently been going on (and off) for several years! Student7 (talk) 14:31, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up & solution. This no longer seems to be a problem. DA Sonnenfeld (talk) 02:34, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

Native Tree Society

The article on the above-referenced, forestry-related organization has been PRODed. If any WP:Forestry editors wish to help develop the article and validate the organization's notability, contributions are welcome. Regards, DA Sonnenfeld (talk) 02:25, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

Comment on the WikiProject X proposal

Hello there! As you may already know, most WikiProjects here on Wikipedia struggle to stay active after they've been founded. I believe there is a lot of potential for WikiProjects to facilitate collaboration across subject areas, so I have submitted a grant proposal with the Wikimedia Foundation for the "WikiProject X" project. WikiProject X will study what makes WikiProjects succeed in retaining editors and then design a prototype WikiProject system that will recruit contributors to WikiProjects and help them run effectively. Please review the proposal here and leave feedback. If you have any questions, you can ask on the proposal page or leave a message on my talk page. Thank you for your time! (Also, sorry about the posting mistake earlier. If someone already moved my message to the talk page, feel free to remove this posting.) Harej (talk) 22:47, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

coverage of forest industry/politics in British Columbia lacking

Please see Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_British_Columbia#Forest_industry_and_MoF.Skookum1 (talk) 04:15, 24 November 2014 (UTC)

Are company records proof of the highest number of trees recorded in British Columbia?

I hope I'm not being too petty but one of my proudest moments was when I planted 8100 Trees in 2001. Ingenika BC. That story came up recently and some people I've met find it difficult to believe that I planted 8100 trees, so out of curiousity I wanted to see if there were any high numbers recorded on the Internet and was disappointed to see that 7500 as being highest number claimed on Wikepedia. My record stood with Bugbusters Pest Managment for a very long time. I'm not even sure if it was beaten, but they were a big company and they amalgamated with another company to form Spectrum Reforestion. I left that company but continued to plant for several seasons. I remember someone who was previously working with Spectrum, recognized my last name at the top of a list of company record holders with our corresponding records. I was told the list is posted at the main office in Prince George for everyone to see. Spectrum's website list a couple of managers who were with the company at the time and I'm 100% certain that either one of them can verify my claim. Maybe there is even a higher records I don't know about, but I swear I planted 8100 in BC and I was in a camp with about 80 others present. Spectrum's website is http://srgi.ca/. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gimme5Bubba (talk • contribs) 09:21, 30 November 2014 (UTC)

Launch of WikiProject Wikidata for research

Hi, this is to let you know that we've launched WikiProject Wikidata for research in order to stimulate a closer interaction between Wikidata and research, both on a technical and a community level. As a first activity, we are drafting a research proposal on the matter (cf. blog post). Your thoughts on and contributions to that would be most welcome! Thanks, -- Daniel Mietchen (talk) 02:15, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

Expert attention

This is a notice about Category:Forestry articles needing expert attention, which might be of interest to your WikiProject. It will take a while before the category is populated. Iceblock (talk) 19:19, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

WikiProject X is live!

Hello everyone!

You may have received a message from me earlier asking you to comment on my WikiProject X proposal. The good news is that WikiProject X is now live! In our first phase, we are focusing on research. At this time, we are looking for people to share their experiences with WikiProjects: good, bad, or neutral. We are also looking for WikiProjects that may be interested in trying out new tools and layouts that will make participating easier and projects easier to maintain. If you or your WikiProject are interested, check us out! Note that this is an opt-in program; no WikiProject will be required to change anything against its wishes. Please let me know if you have any questions. Thank you!

Note: To receive additional notifications about WikiProject X on this talk page, please add this page to Wikipedia:WikiProject X/Newsletter. Otherwise, this will be the last notification sent about WikiProject X.

Harej (talk) 16:57, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Draft:Climate and White spruce

Hello, tree experts. This old AfC submission will soon be deleted as a stale draft. Is this a notable topic, and should the draft be kept and improved? —Anne Delong (talk) 05:02, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation

The article Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation has undergone a major overhaul in the past year. It is now much less opinionated than before, with (most) POV removed, and now starting off with a rather complete description of the UNFCCC decisions on the topic and a description of its major constituent components. The C-class rating of the article by this project appears to predate the article overhaul and does not recognize its current quality imho; given its High-importance rating it seems to me that a reassessment would be in order. Pvanlaake (talk) 02:50, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

A draft at AFC needs help

Please help to get Draft:Farm Forestry Toolbox into acceptable shape. It seems to be a notable topic but the draft has several problems preventing acceptance - its tone is unencyclopedic in places, it also addresses/instructs the reader in several places and thus violates WP:NOTGUIDE. A cleanup by someone familiar with the topic and experienced in the ways of the wiki would help to get this draft accepted. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 21:52, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

Article in Need of Citations (Interagency hotshot crew)

I don't edit wikipedia much, found this article in need to citations though. Nearly all uncited in the second half.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interagency_hotshot_crew --128.84.124.159 (talk) 07:06, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 3

Greetings! For this month's issue...

We have demos!

After a lengthy research and design process, we decided for WikiProject X to focus on two things:

• A WikiProject workflow that focuses on action items: discussions you can participate in and tasks you can perform to improve the encyclopedia; and
• An automatically updating WikiProject directory that gives you lists of users participating in the WikiProject and editing in that subject area.

We have a live demonstration of the new WikiProject workflow at WikiProject Women in Technology, a brand new WikiProject that was set up as an adjunct to a related edit-a-thon in Washington, DC. The goal is to surface action items for editors, and we intend on doing that through automatically updated working lists. We are looking into using SuggestBot to generate lists of outstanding tasks, and we are looking into additional options for automatic worklist generation. This takes the burden off of WikiProject editors to generate these worklists, though there is also a "requests" section for Wikipedians to make individual requests. (As of writing, these automated lists are not yet live, so you will see a blank space under "edit articles" on the demo WikiProject. Sorry about that!) I invite you to check out the WikiProject and leave feedback on WikiProject X's talk page.

Once the demo is sufficiently developed, we will be working on a limited deployment on our pilot WikiProjects. We have selected five for the first round of testing based on the highest potential for impact and will scale up from there.

While a re-designed WikiProject experience is much needed, that alone isn't enough. A WikiProject isn't any good if people have no way of discovering it. This is why we are also developing an automatically updated WikiProject directory. This directory will surface project-related metrics, including a count of active WikiProject participants and of active editors in that project's subject area. The purpose of these metrics is to highlight how active the WikiProject is at the given point of time, but also to highlight that project's potential for success. The directory is not yet live but there is a demonstration featuring a sampling of WikiProjects.

Each directory entry will link to a WikiProject description page which automatically list the active WikiProject participants and subject-area article editors. This allows Wikipedians to find each other based on the areas they are interested in, and this information can be used to revive a WikiProject, start a new one, or even for some other purpose. These description pages are not online yet, but they will use this template, if you want to get a feel of what they will look like.

We need volunteers!

WikiProject X is a huge undertaking, and we need volunteers to support our efforts, including testers and coders. Check out our volunteer portal and see what you can do to help us!

As an aside...

Wouldn't it be cool if lists of requested articles could not only be integrated directly with WikiProjects, but also shared between WikiProjects? Well, we got the crazy idea of having experimental software feature Flow deployed (on a totally experimental basis) on the new Article Request Workshop, which seeks to be a place where editors can "workshop" article ideas before they get created. It uses Flow because Flow allows, essentially, section-level categorization, and in the future will allow "sections" (known as "topics" within Flow) to be included across different pages. What this means is that you have a recommendation for a new article tagged by multiple WikiProjects, allowing for the recommendation to appear on lists for each WikiProject. This will facilitate inter-WikiProject collaboration and will help to reduce duplicated work. The Article Request Workshop is not entirely ready yet due to some bugs with Flow, but we hope to integrate it into our pilot WikiProjects at some point.

Harej (talk) 01:58, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 4

Newsletter • May/June 2015

Hello friends! We have been hard at work these past two months. For this report:

The directory is live!

For the first time, we are happy to bring you an exhaustive, comprehensive WikiProject Directory. This directory endeavors to list every single WikiProject on the English Wikipedia, including those that don't participate in article assessment. In constructing the broadest possible definition, we have come up with a list of approximately 2,600 WikiProjects. The directory tracks activity statistics on the WikiProject's pages, and, for where it's available, statistics on the number of articles tracked by the WikiProject and the number of editors active on those articles. Complementing the directory are description pages for each project, listing usernames of people active on the WikiProject pages and the articles in the WikiProject's scope. This will help Wikipedians interested in a subject find each other, whether to seek feedback on an article or to revive an old project. (There is an opt-out option.) We have also come up with listings of related WikiProjects, listing the ten most relevant WikiProjects based on what articles they have in common. We would like to promote WikiProjects as interconnected systems, rather than isolated silos.

A tremendous amount of work went into preparing this directory. WikiProjects do not consistently categorize their pages, meaning we had to develop our own index to match WikiProjects with the articles in their scope. We also had to make some adjustments to how WikiProjects were categorized; indeed, I personally have racked up a few hundred edits re-categorizing WikiProjects. There remains more work to be done to make the WikiProject directory truly useful. In the meantime, take a look and feel free to leave feedback at the WikiProject X talk page.

Stuff in the works!

What have we been working on?

• A new design template—This has been in the works for a while, of course. But our goal is to design something that is useful and cleanly presented on all browsers and at all screen resolutions while working within the confines of what MediaWiki has to offer. Additionally, we are working on designs for the sub-components featured on the main project page.
• A new WikiProject talk page banner in Lua—Work has begun on implementing the WikiProject banner in Lua. The goal is to create a banner template that can be usable by any WikiProject in lieu of having its own template. Work has slowed down for now to focus on higher priority items, but we are interested in your thoughts on how we could go about creating a more useful project banner. We have a draft module on Test Wikipedia, with a demonstration.
• New discussion reports—We have over 4.8 million articles on the English Wikipedia, and almost as many talk pages as well. But what happens when someone posts on a talk page? What if no one is watching that talk page? We are currently testing out a system for an automatically-updating new discussions list, like RFC for WikiProjects. We currently have five test pages up for the WikiProjects on cannabis, cognitive science, evolutionary biology, and Ghana.
• SuggestBot for WikiProjects—We have asked the maintainer of SuggestBot to make some minor adjustments to SuggestBot that will allow it to post regular reports to those WikiProjects that ask for them. Stay tuned!
• Semi-automated article assessment—Using the new revision scoring service and another system currently under development, WikiProjects will be getting a new tool to facilitate the article assessment process by providing article quality/importance predictions for articles yet to be assessed. Aside from helping WikiProjects get through their backlogs, the goal is to help WikiProjects with collecting metrics and triaging their work. Semi-automation of this process will help achieve consistent results and keep the process running smoothly, as automation does on other parts of Wikipedia.

Want us to work on any other tools? Interested in volunteering? Leave a note on our talk page.

The WikiProject watchers report is back!

The database report which lists WikiProjects according to the number of watchers (i.e., people that have the project on their watchlist), is back! The report stopped being updated a year ago, following the deactivation of the Toolserver, but a replacement report has been generated.

Until next time, Harej (talk) 22:20, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

RfC: List of forestry journals

Input from editors associated with this WikiProject on recent edits to the above-referenced article would be appreciated. Thank you, DA Sonnenfeld (talk) 15:18, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 5

Newsletter • October 2015

Hello there! Happy to be writing this newsletter once more. This month:

We did it!

In July, we launched five pilot WikiProjects: WikiProjects Cannabis, Evolutionary Biology, Ghana, Hampshire, and Women's Health. We also use the new design, named "WPX UI," on WikiProject Women in Technology, Women in Red, WikiProject Occupational Safety and Health. We are currently looking for projects for the next round of testing. If you are interested, please sign up on the Pilots page.

Shortly after our launch we presented at Wikimania 2015. Our slides are on Wikimedia Commons.

Then after all that work, we went through the process of figuring out whether we accomplished our goal. We reached out to participants on the redesigned WikiProjects, and we asked them to complete a survey. (If you filled out your survey—thank you!) While there are still some issues with the WikiProject tools and the new design, there appears to be general satisfaction (at least among those who responded). The results of the survey and more are documented in our grant report filed with the Wikimedia Foundation.

The work continues!

There is more work that needs to be done, so we have applied for a renewal of our grant. Comments on the proposal are welcome. We would like to improve what we have already started on the English Wikipedia and to also expand to Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata. Why those? Because they are multilingual projects and because there needs to be better coordination across Wikimedia projects. More details are available in the renewal proposal.

How can the Wikimedia Foundation support WikiProjects?

The Wikimedia Developer Summit will be held in San Francisco in January 2016. The recently established Community Tech team at the Wikimedia Foundation is interested in investigating what technical support they can provide for WikiProjects, i.e., support beyond just templates and bots. I have plenty of opinions myself, but I want to hear what you think. The session is being planned on Phabricator, the Wikimedia bug tracker. If you are not familiar with Phabricator, you can log in with your Wikipedia username and password through the "Login or Register: MediaWiki" button on the login page. Your feedback can help make editing Wikipedia a better experience.

Until next time,

Harej (talk) 09:03, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

Biomass energy

Do you think that biomass energy is a problem to today's society? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.203.38.207 (talk) 17:47, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

New book that may be relevant for U.S. forestry articles

Here's a new book that may be relevant for U.S. forestry articles: Forestry in the U.S. South: A History by Mason C. Carter, Robert C. Kellison, and R. Scott Wallinger, 2015, Louisiana State University Press. Jodi.a.schneider (talk) 20:00, 9 November 2015 (UTC)

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 6

Newsletter • January 2016

Hello there! Happy to be writing this newsletter once more. This month:

What comes next

Some good news: the Wikimedia Foundation has renewed WikiProject X. This means we can continue focusing on making WikiProjects better.

During our first round of work, we created a prototype WikiProject based on two ideas: (1) WikiProjects should clearly present things for people to do, and (2) The content of WikiProjects should be automated as much as possible. We launched pilots, and for the most part it works. But this approach will not work for the long term. While it makes certain aspects of running a WikiProject easier, it makes the maintenance aspects harder.

We are working on a major overhaul that will address these issues. New features will include:

• Creating WikiProjects by simply filling out a form, choosing which reports you want to generate for your project. This will work with existing bots in addition to the Reports Bot reports. (Of course, you can also have sections curated by humans.)
• One-click button to join a WikiProject, with optional notifications.
• Be able to define your WikiProject's scope within the WikiProject itself by listing relevant pages and categories, eliminating the need to tag every talk page with a banner. (You will still be allowed to do that, of course. It just won't be required.)

The end goal is a collaboration tool that can be used by WikiProjects but also by any edit-a-thon or group of people that want to coordinate on improving articles. Though implemented as an extension, the underlying content will be wikitext, meaning that you can continue to use categories, templates, and other features as you normally would.

This will take a lot of work, and we are just getting started. What would you like to see? I invite you to discuss on our talk page.

Until next time,

Harej (talk) 02:53, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 7

Newsletter • February 2016

This month:

One database for Wikipedia requests

Development of the extension for setting up WikiProjects, as described in the last issue of this newsletter, is currently underway. No terribly exciting news on this front.

In the meantime, we are working on a prototype for a new service we hope to announce soon. The problem: there are requests scattered all across Wikipedia, including requests for new articles and requests for improvements to existing articles. We Wikipedians are very good at coming up with lists of things to do. But once we write these lists, where do they end up? How can we make them useful for all editors—even those who do not browse the missing articles lists, or the particular WikiProjects that have lists?

Introducing Wikipedia Requests, a new tool to centralize the various lists of requests around Wikipedia. Requests will be tagged by category and WikiProject, making it easier to find requests based on what your interests are. Accompanying this service will be a bot that will let you generate reports from this database on any wiki page, including WikiProjects. This means that once a request is filed centrally, it can syndicated all throughout Wikipedia, and once it is fulfilled, it will be marked as "complete" throughout Wikipedia. The idea for this service came about when I saw that it was easy to put together to-do lists based on database queries, but it was harder to do this for human-generated requests when those requests are scattered throughout the wiki, siloed throughout several pages. This should especially be useful for WikiProjects that have overlapping interests.

The newsletter this month is fairly brief; not a lot of news, just checking in to say that we are hard at work and hope to have more for you soon.

Until next time,

Harej (talk) 01:44, 24 February 2016 (UTC)