Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles/Hot

Archive: /1

Plaudits

As one of many editors suffering from missing encyclopedic articles list (MEAL) withdrawal, let me just say thank you to those who put together the new version and brought the project back to life. Job well done! - Bantman 17:01, September 7, 2005 (UTC)

• I'll second that! -- BD2412 ^talk 17:03, 7 September 2005 (UTC)
• Yes, thanks so much for your efforts Quadell et al. Pcb21| Pete 11:07, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, y'all made my day. – Quadell ^(talk) 14:14, September 12, 2005 (UTC)

/Z

/Z is in large part computing terms stuff. Is that the same for the others, or is /Z unusual? I know for example we had finished /Z for 2004, so it might be the latter. Pcb21| Pete 21:23, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

Seems to be worse for z than others, though they all have quite a lot of them. I think some of the computing ones are unencyclopedic, such as Zero administration, and can just be removed. Martin 21:33, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

I've tried to be conservative and create redirects to supratopics if at all possible. But, agreed, there are some we should just dump. Pcb21| Pete 09:00, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, it's unintuitive, but there are topics that exist in some specialized encyclopedias yet are, nonetheless, unencyclopedic. There may be some in Easton's Bible Dictionary like that as well. – Quadell ^(talk) 14:14, September 12, 2005 (UTC)

The more specialized encyclopedias are, the less likely their contents are appropriately encyclopedic for WP. I think we'd all agree that the encyclopedia of D&D magic (does that exist?) has little to offer in this matter. Perhaps the computing encyclopedia straddles the line on this one. - Bantman 23:49, September 12, 2005 (UTC)

What do the numbers mean?

What do the numbers next to the letters mean Quaddell? I thought that they were the remaining amount for the particular letter, which I did for 'Q', but it looks as though you had a different intent. Could you please explain?

Oh, I meant that that was the number which had been done. I guess it's ambiguous. – Quadell ^(talk) 22:39, September 12, 2005 (UTC)

Country based sorting

I think the missing articles should be sorted country-wise and topic wise. There are a number of regional notice boards which would be better equipped to handle the creation of these articles, rather than a long lists in which few would be interested in checking out. =Nichalp «Talk»= 11:44, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

Remember we already have the topic-based Wikipedia:Requested articles. People have liked these lists because they had a definite goal. That goal has been muddied a little by having to merge the lists, but we should leave these lists as is for a whilte to what interest they generate. Pcb21| Pete 12:40, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

The list can stand as it is, I have no probs with that, but the drawback of WP:RA is that it is heavily fragmented. Country-wise sorting has the advantage that the articles can be written by native writers looking for new tasks to handle. Its a dirty job sorting by country, but has a better chance of getting a more fruitful response. Just my thoughts though... =Nichalp «Talk»= 13:07, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

Fair point I can see an advantage of a country-oriented list. The only problem is that it is a very human-intensive task.. people prepared to make such an investment of time are likely to just create articles. Of course, adding notes about topics as we do for the other/old lists is a good idea. Pcb21| Pete 16:38, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

Gotcha to be aware of!

I have noticed that (some?) letters outside of a-z have been dropped in (some?) of the scraping process. This means if the topic is supposed to have accents on it then the spelling can be very strange. For example, I was trying to track down what Zamo was and couldn't, refering back to the original sources I ascertained that it really refered to Zamość but that the last two letters had been dropped (they are quite unusual so maybe there is some unicode issue. I have since found some other examples where the accents have been dropped... it may be unique to Colombia entries... not sure... anyway if you end up racking your brains trying to fathom a topic... think accents! Pcb21| Pete 18:08, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

You are right Pcb21. I tried to fix as many Unicode errors (Firefox was acting funny that day) as possible when I compiled the Columbia entries but there were some that slipped through. So follow Pete's advice and search Columbia if you having a problems. Reflex Reaction 20:08, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

Counting % complete

I was planning to count the number of entries on each page, and update the % complete. The trouble is, someone organized them into sections by letter, and it's now nearly impossible to count. (If this improves things for those creating articles, then I guess it's worth it. Creating articles is more important than counting them, I concede.)

Anyway, does anyone have any bright ideas for counting the number of remaining entries non-manually? – Quadell ^(talk) 01:45, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

I guess not. Boogers. – Quadell ^(talk) 13:25, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

Quadell, what do you mean by manually? Do mean going section to section adding item up, or do you mean using excel to count the items? If the former there is a relatively easy way to count sectioned lists using excel, just select the entire list, then sort alphabetically. All the topics will sort together because they have a number in front. You can then select the rows with a leading number (topics) to tell how many topics remain. I can explain further if I'm not clear. --Reflex Reaction 16:35, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

Actually that helps a lot. Thanks. – Quadell ^(talk) 17:07, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

Made an article

I created an article for Full Text Search (as it was on the list) and I was wondering weather it was wondering what do I do now: Do I keep it on the list or delete it? Deathawk 04:22, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

• It doesn't matter, you could do either. If you do keep it, though, it'd be good to cross it out (use < s >< /s > tags without the spaces) so people know it's already done. Zafiroblue05 20:02, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

While it doesn't matter whether it is left or removed, I would not recommend putting in the strikethroughs. If it is complete it can simply be removed without the need to "say" that it done with the strikethroughs as it will only mean that someone else will have to remove it later. --Reflex Reaction (talk)• 20:28, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

I agree with RR. By the way, thanks for helping on this project! – Quadell ^{(talk) (bounties)} 20:55, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Leftovers

What should be done with these two pages: Wikipedia:2004_Encyclopedia_topics/B/Baa-Bam Wikipedia:2004 Encyclopedia topics/B/Ban-Bas? —Ruud 20:13, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

I would prefer they be incorporated back into other B pages. – Quadell ^{(talk) (bounties)} 20:25, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Capitalization

Is it possible to fix capitalization? I still note that many articles in this list, if they were capitalized WP-style, would in fact be existing articles. Anybody care to fix this? linas 01:17, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

Each person working the list has to decide whether a redirect from the other capitalisation is appropriate. If it is, create the redirect and delete the entry. If not just remove from the list with a edit summary. We've tried automated re-capitialisation on some of these lists in the past and to be honest it was a disaster - thousands of people with their names in lower case etc. Pcb21 Pete 09:06, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

Counted again

Just finished doing a recount of the table. It appears the old 52% completed figure was off by around 4%, so in reality we're only 48% of the way there. Also, the totals in the last row were recalculated. I'll start removing blue links from all letter categories, and I'll do a recount again later. Marcos Juárez 14:10, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Unverified Bluelinks?

What do these sections mean? I've created some of the missing articles, made them redirects to the appropriate already existing wikipedia articles. Are they going to be moved to the "unverified bluelinks" section to be verified by someone? --Xyzzyplugh 15:43, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

I have decided to answer my own question, and remove my own bluelinks. Never mind. --Xyzzyplugh 14:06, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

SNFI included in remaining?

Have people been including the SNFI in the total remaining number on the project page? Pcb21 Pete 07:49, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Yes! Until it has been removed by another editor, it is still considered part of the items that have not been addressed. Thanks for all your recent edits. --Reflex Reaction (talk)• 13:37, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Ok the total needs to be changed back then, sorry! Pcb21 Pete 13:47, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

SFNI?

Could someone add a section to the guidelines explaining the term SFNI and what it's an acronym for? --Alvestrand 04:36, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Suggestions For Non-Inclusion. As for what to put in that category, use your own common sense and judgement. Pcb21 Pete 11:42, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

I have a problem with this...

"When working on this list, please NEVER simply remove a red link because "we have the article elsewhere"."

Yes, but it also pollutes the wiki namespace with redirs that are unused elsewhere. If this project "goes away", all of those will be left dangling. Surely someone can come up with a better solution? Maury 20:14, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

No, the redirects are useful regardless whether this project exists or not. Pcb21 Pete 16:38, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Theorem name capitalization

People working on this project should be aware the convention on Wikepedia for mathematical theorems is for proper names to be capitalized in the normal way and for all other words, including the word "theorem," not to be capitalized. See Category:Mathematical theorems for many examples.--agr 14:31, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

WP:HOTlist redirect edit summary

I often include the string "WP:HOTlist redirect" in an edit summary when creating a redirect that could be seen as "usual". This string indicates that the unusual redirectee is indexed like that in some other reference work somewhere. Thus, it is a clue to future editors that the redirect has more usefulness than might first be obvious. In short redirects are cheap, please don't delete them! Many thanks.

They may also be a clue that the redirect needs reviewing. Eg, Strbske Pleso redirected to Tatra Mountains instead of Štrbské Pleso. Stevage 12:34, 12 October 2006 (UTC). Also, as Wikipedia is not paper, we can have many more meanings for the same word and therefore we could need a disambiguation page instead of the usual redirection that can be found in paper books, as has happened in the article Tamarou.--Damifb 18:55, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

However, please do not put a WP:HOTlist link on the redirect page itself (or if you do, comment it out with <!-- and -->); see Wikipedia talk:Redirect#Content of redirects: templates, categories, multiple lines for the reason. Russ (talk) 21:17, 8 December 2006 (UTC)