Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/FritzpollBot: Difference between revisions
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'''Result''': {{tick}} '''Approved''' |
'''Result''': {{tick}} '''Approved''' |
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For editors who are willing to work as a team to develop and take some responsibility for organizing or developing FritzPoll bot please sign here. This may include editors from relative wikipojects who may have a specific interest in working on one country as part of the project or editors who have a general interest in working as a team to achieve new objectives: |
For editors who are willing to work as a team to develop and take some responsibility for organizing or developing FritzPoll bot please sign here. This may include editors from relative wikipojects who may have a specific interest in working on one country as part of the project or editors who have a general interest in working as a team to achieve new objectives: |
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#[[User:Blofeld of SPECTRE| <span style="border:1px solid blue;padding:1px;"> < |
#[[User:Blofeld of SPECTRE| <span style="border:1px solid blue;padding:1px;"> <span style="color:#fef;background:black;">'''''♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦'''''</span></span>]] <sup>[[User talk:Blofeld of SPECTRE| <span style="font-size:x-small; color:Black;">'''$1,000,000?'''</span> ]]</sup> 14:18, 4 June 2008 (UTC) |
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# -- [[User:Tinucherian|'''<em style="font-family:Kristen ITC;color:#ff0000"> TinuCherian </em>''']] <sup> [[User talk:Tinucherian| (Wanna Talk?) ]] </sup> - 14:35, 4 June 2008 (UTC) for [[WP:INDIA]] |
# -- [[User:Tinucherian|'''<em style="font-family:Kristen ITC;color:#ff0000"> TinuCherian </em>''']] <sup> [[User talk:Tinucherian| (Wanna Talk?) ]] </sup> - 14:35, 4 June 2008 (UTC) for [[WP:INDIA]] |
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# [[User:Calaka|Calaka]] ([[User talk:Calaka|talk]]) 14:45, 4 June 2008 (UTC). I will not be a big help unfortunately, but I will try to contribute in any small way I can. |
# [[User:Calaka|Calaka]] ([[User talk:Calaka|talk]]) 14:45, 4 June 2008 (UTC). I will not be a big help unfortunately, but I will try to contribute in any small way I can. |
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# --[[User:NickPenguin|< |
# --[[User:NickPenguin|<span style="color:darkgreen;">Nick</span>]][[User talk:NickPenguin|<span style="color:darkblue;">Penguin</span>]]<sub>([[Special:Contributions/NickPenguin|<span style="color:blue;">'''contribs'''</span>]])</sub> 14:48, 4 June 2008 (UTC) Grunt work is my specialty, and I can dedicate a few evenings a week to this project. |
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# [[User:Llywrch|llywrch]] ([[User talk:Llywrch|talk]]) As I've mentioned elsewhere, I have materials about Ethiopia, although I can contribute to Eritrea settlements (which badly needs attention -- our Eritrean specialists seem to have dropped out of Wikipedia). |
# [[User:Llywrch|llywrch]] ([[User talk:Llywrch|talk]]) As I've mentioned elsewhere, I have materials about Ethiopia, although I can contribute to Eritrea settlements (which badly needs attention -- our Eritrean specialists seem to have dropped out of Wikipedia). |
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#[[User:EJF|EJF]] [[User talk:EJF|(talk)]] 17:08, 4 June 2008 (UTC) (signed as IP, on wikibreak) |
#[[User:EJF|EJF]] [[User talk:EJF|(talk)]] 17:08, 4 June 2008 (UTC) (signed as IP, on wikibreak) |
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*'''Support'''. Even if flawed, this proposal will set things in motion, while eventual mistakes will be fixed (Wikipedia ''can'' do that). --[[User:Qyd|Qyd]] ([[User talk:Qyd|talk]]) 15:19, 2 June 2008 (UTC) |
*'''Support'''. Even if flawed, this proposal will set things in motion, while eventual mistakes will be fixed (Wikipedia ''can'' do that). --[[User:Qyd|Qyd]] ([[User talk:Qyd|talk]]) 15:19, 2 June 2008 (UTC) |
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*'''Support''' - Would give a kick-start to certain places with deficiencies. [[User:Morrismaciver|MRM]] ([[User talk:Morrismaciver|talk]]) 15:28, 2 June 2008 (UTC) |
*'''Support''' - Would give a kick-start to certain places with deficiencies. [[User:Morrismaciver|MRM]] ([[User talk:Morrismaciver|talk]]) 15:28, 2 June 2008 (UTC) |
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*'''Absolutely strongest possible support'''. The world is not ending folks, it is merely getting added to Wikipedia. Uniformly, ''human assisted-ly'', using Wiki-botcode. Good freeking grief, get over yourselves. |
*'''Absolutely strongest possible support'''. The world is not ending folks, it is merely getting added to Wikipedia. Uniformly, ''human assisted-ly'', using Wiki-botcode. Good freeking grief, get over yourselves. <small><span class="autosigned">— Preceding [[Wikipedia:Signatures|unsigned]] comment added by [[User:Keeper76|Keeper76]] ([[User talk:Keeper76|talk]] • [[Special:Contributions/Keeper76|contribs]]) </span></small><!-- Template:Unsigned --> |
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*'''Support''' - There's enough human intervention involved here for common sense to prevail on notability where it's needed. I'd like to see the functionality I mention below included. ''[[User:Pfainuk|Pfainuk]]'' <small>''[[User Talk:Pfainuk|talk]]''</small> 15:57, 2 June 2008 (UTC) |
*'''Support''' - There's enough human intervention involved here for common sense to prevail on notability where it's needed. I'd like to see the functionality I mention below included. ''[[User:Pfainuk|Pfainuk]]'' <small>''[[User Talk:Pfainuk|talk]]''</small> 15:57, 2 June 2008 (UTC) |
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::They're already on my notepad to be implemented [[User:Fritzpoll|Fritzpoll]] ([[User talk:Fritzpoll|talk]]) 15:59, 2 June 2008 (UTC) |
::They're already on my notepad to be implemented [[User:Fritzpoll|Fritzpoll]] ([[User talk:Fritzpoll|talk]]) 15:59, 2 June 2008 (UTC) |
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*'''Support''', it sounds a fine idea and I expect the creation of these stubs to act as a catalyst to increase input from existing editors with knowledge of the country, as well as helping recruit new editors. This should help a great deal with the serious problem that is our US/European bias. [[User:TimVickers|Tim Vickers]] ([[User talk:TimVickers|talk]]) 18:41, 2 June 2008 (UTC) |
*'''Support''', it sounds a fine idea and I expect the creation of these stubs to act as a catalyst to increase input from existing editors with knowledge of the country, as well as helping recruit new editors. This should help a great deal with the serious problem that is our US/European bias. [[User:TimVickers|Tim Vickers]] ([[User talk:TimVickers|talk]]) 18:41, 2 June 2008 (UTC) |
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*'''Support''' - Why wouldn't I support expanding Wikipedia's coverage of notable topics? These stubs will be a great asset. [[User:Okiefromokla|Okiefromokla]] <small><sup>[[User talk:Okiefromokla|complaints]]</sup></small> 19:00, 2 June 2008 (UTC) |
*'''Support''' - Why wouldn't I support expanding Wikipedia's coverage of notable topics? These stubs will be a great asset. [[User:Okiefromokla|Okiefromokla]] <small><sup>[[User talk:Okiefromokla|complaints]]</sup></small> 19:00, 2 June 2008 (UTC) |
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*'''Support''' - Why not? Stubs can always be expanded, and this paves the way for interested writers. |
*'''Support''' - Why not? Stubs can always be expanded, and this paves the way for interested writers. [[User:David Fuchs|<span style="color:#cc6600;">Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs</span>]]<sup> <nowiki>(</nowiki><small>[[User talk:David Fuchs|<span style="color:#993300;">talk</span>]]</small><nowiki>)</nowiki></sup> 19:01, 2 June 2008 (UTC) |
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*'''Support'''. Although I think this proposal is a little restrictive/conservative and is too bureaucratic. IMO, this bot should operate like any other upload bot. Certainly, groups of Wikipedians going through its uploads is useful, but this shouldn't be used in policy to limit the activity of the bot before-the-fact. Ultimately, we need articles on all ''designated'' geographic locations regardless of population size (rather meaningless, IMO - many geographic locations are unpopulated but significant). The purpose of using sources such as US GNS is that significance is inherent in geographic data from these. Every action on Wikipedia is reversible and I trust the bot maintainer to be responsible. --[[User:OldakQuill|Oldak]] [[User_talk:OldakQuill|Quill]] 19:16, 2 June 2008 (UTC) |
*'''Support'''. Although I think this proposal is a little restrictive/conservative and is too bureaucratic. IMO, this bot should operate like any other upload bot. Certainly, groups of Wikipedians going through its uploads is useful, but this shouldn't be used in policy to limit the activity of the bot before-the-fact. Ultimately, we need articles on all ''designated'' geographic locations regardless of population size (rather meaningless, IMO - many geographic locations are unpopulated but significant). The purpose of using sources such as US GNS is that significance is inherent in geographic data from these. Every action on Wikipedia is reversible and I trust the bot maintainer to be responsible. --[[User:OldakQuill|Oldak]] [[User_talk:OldakQuill|Quill]] 19:16, 2 June 2008 (UTC) |
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*'''Support''', and I supported the original proposal.-< |
*'''Support''', and I supported the original proposal.-[[User talk:gadfium|<span style="font-family:cursive; color:#808080;">gadfium</span>]] 19:18, 2 June 2008 (UTC) |
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*'''Support''' if Fritzpoll implements all minor improvements he promised (see his reply to concerns below).[[User:Biophys|Biophys]] ([[User talk:Biophys|talk]]) 19:45, 2 June 2008 (UTC) |
*'''Support''' if Fritzpoll implements all minor improvements he promised (see his reply to concerns below).[[User:Biophys|Biophys]] ([[User talk:Biophys|talk]]) 19:45, 2 June 2008 (UTC) |
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*'''Support'''. I like cheese. [[User:JKBrooks85|JKBrooks85]] ([[User talk:JKBrooks85|talk]]) 19:48, 2 June 2008 (UTC) |
*'''Support'''. I like cheese. [[User:JKBrooks85|JKBrooks85]] ([[User talk:JKBrooks85|talk]]) 19:48, 2 June 2008 (UTC) |
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*'''Support''', for the most part this new proposal resolves my concerns in that it establishes more than bare coordinates as sources. I'm less concerned about lower population limits; sometimes such stubs should be created for completeness. (Rambot made a good start on [[Alva, Oklahoma]], population 5,000, for several authors to add to, and even [[Amorita, Oklahoma]] is better than having nothing there.)--[[User:Prosfilaes|Prosfilaes]] ([[User talk:Prosfilaes|talk]]) 21:38, 2 June 2008 (UTC) |
*'''Support''', for the most part this new proposal resolves my concerns in that it establishes more than bare coordinates as sources. I'm less concerned about lower population limits; sometimes such stubs should be created for completeness. (Rambot made a good start on [[Alva, Oklahoma]], population 5,000, for several authors to add to, and even [[Amorita, Oklahoma]] is better than having nothing there.)--[[User:Prosfilaes|Prosfilaes]] ([[User talk:Prosfilaes|talk]]) 21:38, 2 June 2008 (UTC) |
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*'''Support''', although: would it not be possible to hide these places from "random article" until someone else than the bot has edited them at least once?--[[User:Aqwis|Aqwis]] ([[User talk:Aqwis|talk]] – [[Special:Contributions/Aqwis|contributions]]) 21:51, 2 June 2008 (UTC) |
*'''Support''', although: would it not be possible to hide these places from "random article" until someone else than the bot has edited them at least once?--[[User:Aqwis|Aqwis]] ([[User talk:Aqwis|talk]] – [[Special:Contributions/Aqwis|contributions]]) 21:51, 2 June 2008 (UTC) |
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*'''Support'''; I think the new proposal takes the original idea and gives it a higher quality. I think this project will do a good job of creating articles about locations that wouldn't otherwise get articles, because the people who live there may not be part of Wikipedia/even have access to it. As these places are often underrepresented, I think this project will do a very good job of filling out the ranks of Wikipedia's article on places. -- [[User:Natalya|Nataly< |
*'''Support'''; I think the new proposal takes the original idea and gives it a higher quality. I think this project will do a good job of creating articles about locations that wouldn't otherwise get articles, because the people who live there may not be part of Wikipedia/even have access to it. As these places are often underrepresented, I think this project will do a very good job of filling out the ranks of Wikipedia's article on places. -- [[User:Natalya|Nataly<span style="color:green;">a</span>]] 23:44, 2 June 2008 (UTC) |
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*'''Support'''. As per previous discussion all my thoughts still stand. While this modfied version will reduce the speed of article creation, that was never a goal (e.g. to be the fastest bot in the world or whatever) it will hopefully lead to increase in quality. [[User:Calaka|Calaka]] ([[User talk:Calaka|talk]]) 01:32, 3 June 2008 (UTC) |
*'''Support'''. As per previous discussion all my thoughts still stand. While this modfied version will reduce the speed of article creation, that was never a goal (e.g. to be the fastest bot in the world or whatever) it will hopefully lead to increase in quality. [[User:Calaka|Calaka]] ([[User talk:Calaka|talk]]) 01:32, 3 June 2008 (UTC) |
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*'''Support'''. This proposal is awesome. [[User:Wrad|Wrad]] ([[User talk:Wrad|talk]]) 01:34, 3 June 2008 (UTC) |
*'''Support'''. This proposal is awesome. [[User:Wrad|Wrad]] ([[User talk:Wrad|talk]]) 01:34, 3 June 2008 (UTC) |
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*'''Support''' As I have noted before. The U.S. has articles on every little place that were bot generated (not saying every article; just saying a similar bot ran a similar task on a smaller scale without all of the fuss). The same respect should be given to the rest of the world in some sort of fashion. < |
*'''Support''' As I have noted before. The U.S. has articles on every little place that were bot generated (not saying every article; just saying a similar bot ran a similar task on a smaller scale without all of the fuss). The same respect should be given to the rest of the world in some sort of fashion. [[User:Stepshep|<span style="color:green; font-family:Comic Sans MS;">§hep</span>]] • [[User talk:Stepshep|<span style="color:green; font-family:Comic Sans MS;">¡Talk to me!</span>]] 02:12, 3 June 2008 (UTC) |
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*'''Support''' as per previous straw poll. Eyes will have to be kept after it, but I believe it will benefit the project overall. <span style="white-space:nowrap">— [[User:Huntster|Huntster]] <small>([[User talk:Huntster|t]] • [[Special:Emailuser/Huntster|@]] • [[Special:Contributions/Huntster|c]])</small></span> 02:25, 3 June 2008 (UTC) |
*'''Support''' as per previous straw poll. Eyes will have to be kept after it, but I believe it will benefit the project overall. <span style="white-space:nowrap">— [[User:Huntster|Huntster]] <small>([[User talk:Huntster|t]] • [[Special:Emailuser/Huntster|@]] • [[Special:Contributions/Huntster|c]])</small></span> 02:25, 3 June 2008 (UTC) |
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*'''Support''' A great way for Wikipedia to improve its coverage of the world's towns and cities. [[User:Captain panda|<font color="orange" face="comic sans ms">Captain</font>]] [[User talk:Captain panda|<font color="red" face="Papyrus">panda</font>]] 03:00, 3 June 2008 (UTC) |
*'''Support''' A great way for Wikipedia to improve its coverage of the world's towns and cities. [[User:Captain panda|<font color="orange" face="comic sans ms">Captain</font>]] [[User talk:Captain panda|<font color="red" face="Papyrus">panda</font>]] 03:00, 3 June 2008 (UTC) |
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*'''Support''' As you say, start with large towns, cities, and see how it goes (I foresee up to a million pages within a year or two is within reason). I think this is a great effort, as mentioned it helps with infobox standardization enormously. I am for a more or less fixed population limit. (perhaps established cities, towns, 1000+ or 5000+; I assume that is still a large quantity of articles.) [[User:Danski14|Danski14]]<sup>[[User talk:Danski14|(talk)]]</sup> 03:07, 3 June 2008 (UTC) |
*'''Support''' As you say, start with large towns, cities, and see how it goes (I foresee up to a million pages within a year or two is within reason). I think this is a great effort, as mentioned it helps with infobox standardization enormously. I am for a more or less fixed population limit. (perhaps established cities, towns, 1000+ or 5000+; I assume that is still a large quantity of articles.) [[User:Danski14|Danski14]]<sup>[[User talk:Danski14|(talk)]]</sup> 03:07, 3 June 2008 (UTC) |
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*'''Support''' The original proposal was flawed but this one is much better, and it will be of a greate help to many countries --[[User:TheJosh|TheJosh]] ([[User talk:TheJosh|talk]]) 03:19, 3 June 2008 (UTC) |
*'''Support''' The original proposal was flawed but this one is much better, and it will be of a greate help to many countries --[[User:TheJosh|TheJosh]] ([[User talk:TheJosh|talk]]) 03:19, 3 June 2008 (UTC) |
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*'''Strong support''' Informative, accurate and sourced articles should be welcomed with open arms. Predictions that these articles will somehow attract the vandalism boogyman, nationalist edit wars, wikidust, and outright misinformation apply no more than they do with any other article. Perhaps even less so. Wikiprojects will be organized and mobilized, and this will produce high quality stubs. --[[User:NickPenguin|< |
*'''Strong support''' Informative, accurate and sourced articles should be welcomed with open arms. Predictions that these articles will somehow attract the vandalism boogyman, nationalist edit wars, wikidust, and outright misinformation apply no more than they do with any other article. Perhaps even less so. Wikiprojects will be organized and mobilized, and this will produce high quality stubs. --[[User:NickPenguin|<span style="color:darkgreen;">Nick</span>]][[User talk:NickPenguin|<span style="color:darkblue;">Penguin</span>]]<sub>([[Special:Contributions/NickPenguin|<span style="color:blue;">'''contribs'''</span>]])</sub> 03:25, 3 June 2008 (UTC) |
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*'''Strong support''' per my comment before --[[User:penubag|'''<span style="background:#00CCFF;color:#0066FF;font-size:84%"> penubag </span>''']] ([[User talk:penubag|talk]]) 04:19, 3 June 2008 (UTC) |
*'''Strong support''' per my comment before --[[User:penubag|'''<span style="background:#00CCFF;color:#0066FF;font-size:84%"> penubag </span>''']] ([[User talk:penubag|talk]]) 04:19, 3 June 2008 (UTC) |
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*'''Support''' Fritzpoll has met some of the concerns I raised in my [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28proposals%29/FritzpollBot&diff=prev&oldid=216460588 earlier edit]. I have compiled a collection of information on several hundred Ethiopian settlements that I would like to share with Fritzpoll so the bot could add those articles; an example of the minimum the bot would create with this data is [[Softu]]. (And hopefully the bot can update all of the Ethiopian articles when the results of the 2007 Ethiopian census is published.) -- [[User:Llywrch|llywrch]] ([[User talk:Llywrch|talk]]) 04:27, 3 June 2008 (UTC) |
*'''Support''' Fritzpoll has met some of the concerns I raised in my [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28proposals%29/FritzpollBot&diff=prev&oldid=216460588 earlier edit]. I have compiled a collection of information on several hundred Ethiopian settlements that I would like to share with Fritzpoll so the bot could add those articles; an example of the minimum the bot would create with this data is [[Softu]]. (And hopefully the bot can update all of the Ethiopian articles when the results of the 2007 Ethiopian census is published.) -- [[User:Llywrch|llywrch]] ([[User talk:Llywrch|talk]]) 04:27, 3 June 2008 (UTC) |
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*'''Support''' per my archived comments.. where ever they went to...-- [[User:Ned Scott|Ned Scott]] 06:22, 3 June 2008 (UTC) |
*'''Support''' per my archived comments.. where ever they went to...-- [[User:Ned Scott|Ned Scott]] 06:22, 3 June 2008 (UTC) |
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*'''Support''' As per archived comments. '''[[User:Lugnuts|< |
*'''Support''' As per archived comments. '''[[User:Lugnuts|<span style="color:#002bb8;">Lugnuts</span>]]''' ([[User talk:Lugnuts|talk]]) 07:16, 3 June 2008 (UTC) |
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*'''Support''' Even basic geographic information is useful in its own right, it also provides a framework for many small diverse contributions. ChrisHodgesUK 12:04, 3 June 2008 (UTC) |
*'''Support''' Even basic geographic information is useful in its own right, it also provides a framework for many small diverse contributions. ChrisHodgesUK 12:04, 3 June 2008 (UTC) |
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*'''Support''' - It will improve Wikipedia's coverage and per my other comment it will produce consistency and stubs of high ''quality''. I also trust the people behind this proposal to progress thoughtfully and carefully. [[User:Suicidalhamster|Suicidalhamster]] ([[User talk:Suicidalhamster|talk]]) 13:11, 3 June 2008 (UTC) |
*'''Support''' - It will improve Wikipedia's coverage and per my other comment it will produce consistency and stubs of high ''quality''. I also trust the people behind this proposal to progress thoughtfully and carefully. [[User:Suicidalhamster|Suicidalhamster]] ([[User talk:Suicidalhamster|talk]]) 13:11, 3 June 2008 (UTC) |
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*'''Support''': a much needed project. Having watched users like Blofeld spend so many hours/days/weeks doing this manually, this would free up all of us to progress to the next step, which is researching and expanding individual places. This is the skeleton which must be built for the encyclopedia to expand. [[User:T L Miles|T L Miles]] ([[User talk:T L Miles|talk]]) 14:30, 3 June 2008 (UTC) |
*'''Support''': a much needed project. Having watched users like Blofeld spend so many hours/days/weeks doing this manually, this would free up all of us to progress to the next step, which is researching and expanding individual places. This is the skeleton which must be built for the encyclopedia to expand. [[User:T L Miles|T L Miles]] ([[User talk:T L Miles|talk]]) 14:30, 3 June 2008 (UTC) |
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*'''Support'''; great idea. The bot-generated articles about geographical places in the US are helpful and a good starting point; the same ought to be true of the articles created this way. The human involvement in notability decisions will help keep things from getting out of hand. --[[User:Spangineer|Spangineer]]<sup>[[:wikisource:User:Spangineer|ws]]</sup> |
*'''Support'''; great idea. The bot-generated articles about geographical places in the US are helpful and a good starting point; the same ought to be true of the articles created this way. The human involvement in notability decisions will help keep things from getting out of hand. --[[User:Spangineer|Spangineer]]<sup>[[:wikisource:User:Spangineer|ws]]</sup> [[User talk:Spangineer|<span style="font-size:smaller; color:brown;">(háblame)</span>]] 14:38, 3 June 2008 (UTC) |
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*'''Support''' Its a rather repetitive task. The data on these settlements would be tedious at best to create the articles by hand. Additionally, Wikipedia is [[WP:NOTPAPER]], so there should be no concern about the number of articles and Wikipedia is [[WP:NOTINARUSH]], so I have no qualms about stubs sitting around for years. --[[User:Jayron32|Jayron32]].[[User talk:Jayron32|<small>talk</small>]].[[Special:Contributions/Jayron32|<small>contribs</small>]] 15:34, 3 June 2008 (UTC) |
*'''Support''' Its a rather repetitive task. The data on these settlements would be tedious at best to create the articles by hand. Additionally, Wikipedia is [[WP:NOTPAPER]], so there should be no concern about the number of articles and Wikipedia is [[WP:NOTINARUSH]], so I have no qualms about stubs sitting around for years. --[[User:Jayron32|Jayron32]].[[User talk:Jayron32|<small>talk</small>]].[[Special:Contributions/Jayron32|<small>contribs</small>]] 15:34, 3 June 2008 (UTC) |
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* '''Support.''' The arguments in opposition are unconvincing. We need these articles eventually, and well-crafted stubs based on reliable sources and <u>with human oversight</u> strikes me as probably the best way to go about it. <small><span style="border:1px solid black;padding:1px;">[[User:Sandstein|< |
* '''Support.''' The arguments in opposition are unconvincing. We need these articles eventually, and well-crafted stubs based on reliable sources and <u>with human oversight</u> strikes me as probably the best way to go about it. <small><span style="border:1px solid black;padding:1px;">[[User:Sandstein|<span style="color:white;background:blue;font-family:sans-serif;">''' Sandstein '''</span>]]</span></small> 16:28, 3 June 2008 (UTC) |
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* '''Support without reservation'''. Remember that the first stage of an article is an uncreated one; this is often difficult to surmount (especially because of the inability for anon users to create pages -- people from rural areas will be more likely to edit their own pages, but many may do so anonymously). By moving these articles to the "created, but stub" stage, we help promote the expansion of these articles. The proposal seems to be very well thought out, so I see no reason to oppose. [[User:nneonneo|nneonneo]] <sup>[[User_talk:nneonneo|talk]]</sup> 16:33, 3 June 2008 (UTC) |
* '''Support without reservation'''. Remember that the first stage of an article is an uncreated one; this is often difficult to surmount (especially because of the inability for anon users to create pages -- people from rural areas will be more likely to edit their own pages, but many may do so anonymously). By moving these articles to the "created, but stub" stage, we help promote the expansion of these articles. The proposal seems to be very well thought out, so I see no reason to oppose. [[User:nneonneo|nneonneo]] <sup>[[User_talk:nneonneo|talk]]</sup> 16:33, 3 June 2008 (UTC) |
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*'''Support''' [[User:John Carter|John Carter]] ([[User talk:John Carter|talk]]) 19:17, 3 June 2008 (UTC) |
*'''Support''' [[User:John Carter|John Carter]] ([[User talk:John Carter|talk]]) 19:17, 3 June 2008 (UTC) |
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*'''Support''' [[User:Amalthea|Amalthea]] ([[User talk:Amalthea|talk]]) 00:52, 4 June 2008 (UTC) |
*'''Support''' [[User:Amalthea|Amalthea]] ([[User talk:Amalthea|talk]]) 00:52, 4 June 2008 (UTC) |
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*'''Support''' [[User:Trevor MacInnis|Trevor]] [[User talk:Trevor MacInnis|MacInnis]] <small>([[Special:Contributions/Trevor MacInnis|Contribs]])</small> 02:09, 4 June 2008 (UTC) |
*'''Support''' [[User:Trevor MacInnis|Trevor]] [[User talk:Trevor MacInnis|MacInnis]] <small>([[Special:Contributions/Trevor MacInnis|Contribs]])</small> 02:09, 4 June 2008 (UTC) |
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*'''Support''' necessary infrastructure. I frequently link to the original U.S. articles. '''< |
*'''Support''' necessary infrastructure. I frequently link to the original U.S. articles. '''[[User:Royalbroil|<span style="color:#000000;">Royal</span>]][[User talk:Royalbroil|<span style="color:#FFCC00;">broil</span>]]''' 02:15, 4 June 2008 (UTC) |
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*'''Support''' - much better to involve WikiProjects. Let them decide how far down they want to go the rabbit hole (ie how low/high set the population requirement for the settlements). I can't wait to see what this bot has to offer for [[WP:LITH]]. [[User:Renata3|Renata]] ([[User talk:Renata3|talk]]) 02:39, 4 June 2008 (UTC) |
*'''Support''' - much better to involve WikiProjects. Let them decide how far down they want to go the rabbit hole (ie how low/high set the population requirement for the settlements). I can't wait to see what this bot has to offer for [[WP:LITH]]. [[User:Renata3|Renata]] ([[User talk:Renata3|talk]]) 02:39, 4 June 2008 (UTC) |
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*'''Support'''. The idea of involving WikiProjects in this process is ideal since it allows for more discussion about what gets added and what doesn't before the bot adds the stubs and more adherence to notability guidelines. '''[[User:Kalathalan|<span style="color:#a8a8a7">Kal</span>]]''' <sup>[[User_talk:Kalathalan|<span style="color:#919191">(talk)</span>]]</sup> 04:41, 4 June 2008 (UTC) |
*'''Support'''. The idea of involving WikiProjects in this process is ideal since it allows for more discussion about what gets added and what doesn't before the bot adds the stubs and more adherence to notability guidelines. '''[[User:Kalathalan|<span style="color:#a8a8a7">Kal</span>]]''' <sup>[[User_talk:Kalathalan|<span style="color:#919191">(talk)</span>]]</sup> 04:41, 4 June 2008 (UTC) |
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*'''Support''' These articles should be written. As a bot can do it better (that is, 100% coverage once we determine what to cover), let the bot do it. --[[User:Falcorian|Falcorian]] <sup><small>[[User_talk:Falcorian|(talk)]]</small></sup> 06:52, 4 June 2008 (UTC) |
*'''Support''' These articles should be written. As a bot can do it better (that is, 100% coverage once we determine what to cover), let the bot do it. --[[User:Falcorian|Falcorian]] <sup><small>[[User_talk:Falcorian|(talk)]]</small></sup> 06:52, 4 June 2008 (UTC) |
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*'''Strong support''' - As before, the best thing we can do to address systematic bias towards the United States and the UK and put wikipedia on the right path that attempts to cover the world evenly in which any decent encyclopedia should. Not only this but the plan to set up a wikiproject involving all of the different country porjects and possibility of using a bot and humans working at improving and making existing articles consistent before new content is generated is a massively needed thing in itself. I can't see how people could object to a team which will improve existing articles first.[[User:Blofeld of SPECTRE| <span style="border:1px solid blue;padding:1px;"> < |
*'''Strong support''' - As before, the best thing we can do to address systematic bias towards the United States and the UK and put wikipedia on the right path that attempts to cover the world evenly in which any decent encyclopedia should. Not only this but the plan to set up a wikiproject involving all of the different country porjects and possibility of using a bot and humans working at improving and making existing articles consistent before new content is generated is a massively needed thing in itself. I can't see how people could object to a team which will improve existing articles first.[[User:Blofeld of SPECTRE| <span style="border:1px solid blue;padding:1px;"> <span style="color:#fef;background:black;">'''''♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦'''''</span></span>]] <sup>[[User talk:Blofeld of SPECTRE| <span style="font-size:x-small; color:Black;">'''$1,000,000?'''</span> ]]</sup> 10:08, 4 June 2008 (UTC) |
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:*'''Comment''' - Ethiopia is extremely difficult to get accurate information regarding place names (which have changed repeatedly, and without notice nor available documentation from the Ethiopian government). [[User:Badagnani|Badagnani]] ([[User talk:Badagnani|talk]]) 10:12, 4 June 2008 (UTC) |
:*'''Comment''' - Ethiopia is extremely difficult to get accurate information regarding place names (which have changed repeatedly, and without notice nor available documentation from the Ethiopian government). [[User:Badagnani|Badagnani]] ([[User talk:Badagnani|talk]]) 10:12, 4 June 2008 (UTC) |
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:::This is the same for many non english countries, whether it is Iran, Vietnam, Laos, Saudi Arabia or whatever. For some places over ten different spellings of a place or transliterations exist. Obtaining |
:::This is the same for many non english countries, whether it is Iran, Vietnam, Laos, Saudi Arabia or whatever. For some places over ten different spellings of a place or transliterations exist. Obtaining |
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"official" names for many countries is indeed difficult when many variations exist and ther eisn't an abundance of data. This is why people who may have specific knowledge from the wikiprojects who may be a nativ eof that country may be able to help sort things out before creation [[User:Blofeld of SPECTRE| <span style="border:1px solid blue;padding:1px;"> < |
"official" names for many countries is indeed difficult when many variations exist and ther eisn't an abundance of data. This is why people who may have specific knowledge from the wikiprojects who may be a nativ eof that country may be able to help sort things out before creation [[User:Blofeld of SPECTRE| <span style="border:1px solid blue;padding:1px;"> <span style="color:#fef;background:black;">'''''♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦'''''</span></span>]] <sup>[[User talk:Blofeld of SPECTRE| <span style="font-size:x-small; color:Black;">'''$1,000,000?'''</span> ]]</sup> 10:24, 4 June 2008 (UTC) |
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*'''Support''' Can't see any problem, except think a decent starting cutoff would be >1000 (have a look around Europe, this is well and truly within current practise).--[[User:Bsnowball|Bsnowball]] ([[User_talk:Bsnowball|talk]]) 10:27, 4 June 2008 (UTC) |
*'''Support''' Can't see any problem, except think a decent starting cutoff would be >1000 (have a look around Europe, this is well and truly within current practise).--[[User:Bsnowball|Bsnowball]] ([[User_talk:Bsnowball|talk]]) 10:27, 4 June 2008 (UTC) |
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*'''Support'''. Some information about a place, even if it is just a semi-automated stub, is better than no information. --[[User:Itub|Itub]] ([[User talk:Itub|talk]]) 10:36, 4 June 2008 (UTC) |
*'''Support'''. Some information about a place, even if it is just a semi-automated stub, is better than no information. --[[User:Itub|Itub]] ([[User talk:Itub|talk]]) 10:36, 4 June 2008 (UTC) |
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*'''Support'''. I quite often find myself redlinking to towns and villages around the world which I am sure would have had an article. This bot will solve that and I am sure many of the stubs will find tehmselves expanded by local residents over time - [[User:Dumelow|Dumelow]] ([[User talk:Dumelow|talk]]) 10:39, 4 June 2008 (UTC) |
*'''Support'''. I quite often find myself redlinking to towns and villages around the world which I am sure would have had an article. This bot will solve that and I am sure many of the stubs will find tehmselves expanded by local residents over time - [[User:Dumelow|Dumelow]] ([[User talk:Dumelow|talk]]) 10:39, 4 June 2008 (UTC) |
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*'''Support''' Interesting idea - [[User:Dinnerbone|Dinnerbone]] (<sup>[[User_Talk:Dinnerbone|Talk]]</sup>/<sub>[[Special:Contributions/Dinnerbone|Cont]]</sub>) 11:54, 4 June 2008 (UTC) |
*'''Support''' Interesting idea - [[User:Dinnerbone|Dinnerbone]] (<sup>[[User_Talk:Dinnerbone|Talk]]</sup>/<sub>[[Special:Contributions/Dinnerbone|Cont]]</sub>) 11:54, 4 June 2008 (UTC) |
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*'''Support''' As long as point #8 is adhered to, we should be fine. |
*'''Support''' As long as point #8 is adhered to, we should be fine. [[User:Shoy|<span style="color:blue;">sho</span>]][[User talk:Shoy|<span style="color:green;">y</span>]] 13:26, 4 June 2008 (UTC) |
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*'''Support''' [[User:Randomblue|Randomblue]] ([[User talk:Randomblue|talk]]) 13:51, 4 June 2008 (UTC) |
*'''Support''' [[User:Randomblue|Randomblue]] ([[User talk:Randomblue|talk]]) 13:51, 4 June 2008 (UTC) |
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*'''Support''': Stubs can always be expanded. I will help as much I can -- [[User:Tinucherian|'''<em style="font-family:Kristen ITC;color:#ff0000"> TinuCherian </em>''']] <sup> [[User talk:Tinucherian| (Wanna Talk?) ]] </sup> - 14:34, 4 June 2008 (UTC) |
*'''Support''': Stubs can always be expanded. I will help as much I can -- [[User:Tinucherian|'''<em style="font-family:Kristen ITC;color:#ff0000"> TinuCherian </em>''']] <sup> [[User talk:Tinucherian| (Wanna Talk?) ]] </sup> - 14:34, 4 June 2008 (UTC) |
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*'''Strong support''', people are always more likely to edit a stub than start a new page. --'''[[User:Padraic|Padraic]]''' 21:24, 4 June 2008 (UTC) |
*'''Strong support''', people are always more likely to edit a stub than start a new page. --'''[[User:Padraic|Padraic]]''' 21:24, 4 June 2008 (UTC) |
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*'''Support''' +1. [[User:Charea|Charea]] ([[User talk:Charea|talk]]) 22:19, 4 June 2008 (UTC) |
*'''Support''' +1. [[User:Charea|Charea]] ([[User talk:Charea|talk]]) 22:19, 4 June 2008 (UTC) |
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*'''Support''' As I had done with the [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28proposals%29/FritzpollBot&diff=prev&oldid=216391348 previous one]. Regards, < |
*'''Support''' As I had done with the [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28proposals%29/FritzpollBot&diff=prev&oldid=216391348 previous one]. Regards, [[User:Ganeshk|<span style="color:navy;">Ganeshk</span>]] <span style="color:navy;">([[User talk:Ganeshk|<span style="color:navy;">talk</span>]])</span> 22:33, 4 June 2008 (UTC) |
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*'''Support''' with a trial run. A bot can easily be written to make high quality stubs. This will only help wikipedia--[[User:Fabrictramp|<font color="#960018" face="comic sans ms">Fabrictramp</font>]] | [[User talk:Fabrictramp|<font color="#960018" face="Papyrus">talk to me</font>]] 23:03, 4 June 2008 (UTC) |
*'''Support''' with a trial run. A bot can easily be written to make high quality stubs. This will only help wikipedia--[[User:Fabrictramp|<font color="#960018" face="comic sans ms">Fabrictramp</font>]] | [[User talk:Fabrictramp|<font color="#960018" face="Papyrus">talk to me</font>]] 23:03, 4 June 2008 (UTC) |
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*'''Support''' These places would eventually need an article anyway. This way, the articles would be consistent. [[User:Patken4|Patken4]] ([[User talk:Patken4|talk]]) 00:43, 5 June 2008 (UTC) |
*'''Support''' These places would eventually need an article anyway. This way, the articles would be consistent. [[User:Patken4|Patken4]] ([[User talk:Patken4|talk]]) 00:43, 5 June 2008 (UTC) |
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*'''Support''' Why anybody would be against this is beyond me, lets do it. [[User:Redekopmark|Redekopmark]] ([[User talk:Redekopmark|talk]]) 04:23, 6 June 2008 (UTC) |
*'''Support''' Why anybody would be against this is beyond me, lets do it. [[User:Redekopmark|Redekopmark]] ([[User talk:Redekopmark|talk]]) 04:23, 6 June 2008 (UTC) |
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:Yeah, well, policy might have something to do with it. [[User:MickMacNee|MickMacNee]] ([[User talk:MickMacNee|talk]]) 15:14, 8 June 2008 (UTC) |
:Yeah, well, policy might have something to do with it. [[User:MickMacNee|MickMacNee]] ([[User talk:MickMacNee|talk]]) 15:14, 8 June 2008 (UTC) |
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*'''Support''' new articles improve the wiki. < |
*'''Support''' new articles improve the wiki. [[User:Exit2DOS2000|<span style="background-color:#ddcef2;font-weight:bold;color:#000;">Exit2DOS2000</span>]]<small><small><sup>•[[User Talk:Exit2DOS2000|T]]•[[Special:Contributions/Exit2DOS2000|C]]•</sup></small></small> 07:20, 6 June 2008 (UTC) |
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*'''Support without reservation''' Finally, someone is trying to do something about the systemic bias. This is probably the best thing that could happen to Wikipedia. -- [[User:TakuyaMurata|Taku]] ([[User talk:TakuyaMurata|talk]]) 08:23, 6 June 2008 (UTC) |
*'''Support without reservation''' Finally, someone is trying to do something about the systemic bias. This is probably the best thing that could happen to Wikipedia. -- [[User:TakuyaMurata|Taku]] ([[User talk:TakuyaMurata|talk]]) 08:23, 6 June 2008 (UTC) |
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*'''Support''' Great idea. [[User:Time3000|Time3000]] ([[User talk:Time3000|talk]]) 08:32, 6 June 2008 (UTC) |
*'''Support''' Great idea. [[User:Time3000|Time3000]] ([[User talk:Time3000|talk]]) 08:32, 6 June 2008 (UTC) |
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*'''Strong support''' - An ingenious idea. Could we perhaps have a more complete disclosure at the bottom of each new article that reads: ''“This location article is a stub generated by bot. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.”'' --[[User:Poeticbent|< |
*'''Strong support''' - An ingenious idea. Could we perhaps have a more complete disclosure at the bottom of each new article that reads: ''“This location article is a stub generated by bot. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.”'' --[[User:Poeticbent|<b style="font-family:Papyrus; color:darkblue;">Poeticbent</b>]] [[User_talk:Poeticbent|<small><span style="color:#FFFFFF;background:#FF88AF;border:1px solid #DF2929;padding:0.0em 0.2em;">talk</span></small>]] 14:45, 6 June 2008 (UTC) |
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*'''Support'''.[[User:Glane23|Glane23]] ([[User talk:Glane23|talk]]) 14:54, 6 June 2008 (UTC) |
*'''Support'''.[[User:Glane23|Glane23]] ([[User talk:Glane23|talk]]) 14:54, 6 June 2008 (UTC) |
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*'''Support''' [[User:Maksim-e|Maksim-e]] ([[User talk:Maksim-e|talk]]) 18:53, 6 June 2008 (UTC) |
*'''Support''' [[User:Maksim-e|Maksim-e]] ([[User talk:Maksim-e|talk]]) 18:53, 6 June 2008 (UTC) |
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:So, [[Stockton, California]] would get an article; [[Saint Petersburg]] would not. I love the idea, but this metric is ridiculous. Let's just pick a number--I'd say a population over 1,000 should suffice--and be done with it. But what a great idea for a bot in general. [[User:Matt Yeager|<b><font color="#DF0001">Matt Yeager</font></b>]] [[Special:Random|<b><font size="3" color="#B46611">♫</font></b>]] [[User_talk:Matt Yeager|<font color="#00AA88">(Talk?)</font>]] 22:28, 2 June 2008 (UTC) |
:So, [[Stockton, California]] would get an article; [[Saint Petersburg]] would not. I love the idea, but this metric is ridiculous. Let's just pick a number--I'd say a population over 1,000 should suffice--and be done with it. But what a great idea for a bot in general. [[User:Matt Yeager|<b><font color="#DF0001">Matt Yeager</font></b>]] [[Special:Random|<b><font size="3" color="#B46611">♫</font></b>]] [[User_talk:Matt Yeager|<font color="#00AA88">(Talk?)</font>]] 22:28, 2 June 2008 (UTC) |
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* The absurdness mainly comes from the "Half" and "Capital": 5-10 percent of largest city gives better results. However, I agree with Matt and others, that the metric is not good: cutoffs are essential if percentages are used. See [[WP:Village pump (proposals)/FritzpollBot#Size limits]] for more details. Other than that, the proposal addresses, at least in principle, all of my earlier reservations. ''[[User talk:Geometry guy|Geometry guy]]'' 22:37, 2 June 2008 (UTC) |
* The absurdness mainly comes from the "Half" and "Capital": 5-10 percent of largest city gives better results. However, I agree with Matt and others, that the metric is not good: cutoffs are essential if percentages are used. See [[WP:Village pump (proposals)/FritzpollBot#Size limits]] for more details. Other than that, the proposal addresses, at least in principle, all of my earlier reservations. ''[[User talk:Geometry guy|Geometry guy]]'' 22:37, 2 June 2008 (UTC) |
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*Per Matt Yeager's excellent points. Relations to capitals aren't the way to go here. Absolute numbers may be arbitrary, but they're probably less biased. --[[User:Bfigura|< |
*Per Matt Yeager's excellent points. Relations to capitals aren't the way to go here. Absolute numbers may be arbitrary, but they're probably less biased. --[[User:Bfigura|<span style="color:green;">'''B'''</span><span style="color:blue;">figura</span>]] <sup>([[User talk:Bfigura|talk]])</sup> 00:40, 3 June 2008 (UTC) |
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:::Obviously I '''support''' as above but the only thing I don't like is the 50% thing which is not a good idea given that every country is different, somebody used Mexico City as an example I agree with you completely. 1000 people would be a decent cut off point for adding articles on most of the towns in the world of note, . The problem arises when there are some places which may have population of 250 where there would be a great deal to write about and a town with a population of 40,000 there may be little to write. |Each country is different but it needs to be worked out before hand individually I think. [[User:Blofeld of SPECTRE| <span style="border:1px solid blue;padding:1px;"> < |
:::Obviously I '''support''' as above but the only thing I don't like is the 50% thing which is not a good idea given that every country is different, somebody used Mexico City as an example I agree with you completely. 1000 people would be a decent cut off point for adding articles on most of the towns in the world of note, . The problem arises when there are some places which may have population of 250 where there would be a great deal to write about and a town with a population of 40,000 there may be little to write. |Each country is different but it needs to be worked out before hand individually I think. [[User:Blofeld of SPECTRE| <span style="border:1px solid blue;padding:1px;"> <span style="color:#fef;background:black;">'''''♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦'''''</span></span>]] <sup>[[User talk:Blofeld of SPECTRE| <span style="font-size:x-small; color:Black;">'''$1,000,000?'''</span> ]]</sup> 11:07, 4 June 2008 (UTC) |
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* My reservation: How long is it going to take to create one article, from start to finish? [[User:SYSS Mouse|SYSS Mouse]] ([[User talk:SYSS Mouse|talk]]) 02:27, 3 June 2008 (UTC) |
* My reservation: How long is it going to take to create one article, from start to finish? [[User:SYSS Mouse|SYSS Mouse]] ([[User talk:SYSS Mouse|talk]]) 02:27, 3 June 2008 (UTC) |
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::If the bot is given a decent run. About 6 seconds and all articles created will have a standard infobox, map, references and hopefully as many details as possible. [[User:Blofeld of SPECTRE| <span style="border:1px solid blue;padding:1px;"> < |
::If the bot is given a decent run. About 6 seconds and all articles created will have a standard infobox, map, references and hopefully as many details as possible. [[User:Blofeld of SPECTRE| <span style="border:1px solid blue;padding:1px;"> <span style="color:#fef;background:black;">'''''♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦'''''</span></span>]] <sup>[[User talk:Blofeld of SPECTRE| <span style="font-size:x-small; color:Black;">'''$1,000,000?'''</span> ]]</sup> 11:09, 4 June 2008 (UTC) |
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*I like it in general. It's good to get the WikiProjects closely involved. But the capital city metric needs to be discussed further. [[User: Zagalejo|Zagalejo]]'''[[User talk:Zagalejo|^^^]]''' 02:48, 3 June 2008 (UTC) |
*I like it in general. It's good to get the WikiProjects closely involved. But the capital city metric needs to be discussed further. [[User: Zagalejo|Zagalejo]]'''[[User talk:Zagalejo|^^^]]''' 02:48, 3 June 2008 (UTC) |
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*After opposing, I'm now giving the bot my cautious support for three reasons. First: Fritzpoll is a trustworthy, intelligent editor, not some zealot bent on shoving 2 million micro-stubs here; he has shown himself willing to listen to the many suggestions that are sure to come about from such a large undertaking. Second: while the bot alone cannot judge notability, this will be a deliberative, interactive process, done in close consultation on a country-by-country basis. Some countries with more complex administrative systems, or which are already sufficiently covered here, might be skipped entirely, while the bot would be very useful indeed for the 36,780 [[Communes of France]]. Third: if something goes awry, the process can be stopped or even reversed. At bottom it's a matter of trust, and I am confident the bot will be used wisely, so I endorse its implementation, at least on an experimental basis. [[User:Biruitorul|Biruitorul]] <small><sup>[[User talk:Biruitorul|Talk]]</sup></small> 06:23, 3 June 2008 (UTC) |
*After opposing, I'm now giving the bot my cautious support for three reasons. First: Fritzpoll is a trustworthy, intelligent editor, not some zealot bent on shoving 2 million micro-stubs here; he has shown himself willing to listen to the many suggestions that are sure to come about from such a large undertaking. Second: while the bot alone cannot judge notability, this will be a deliberative, interactive process, done in close consultation on a country-by-country basis. Some countries with more complex administrative systems, or which are already sufficiently covered here, might be skipped entirely, while the bot would be very useful indeed for the 36,780 [[Communes of France]]. Third: if something goes awry, the process can be stopped or even reversed. At bottom it's a matter of trust, and I am confident the bot will be used wisely, so I endorse its implementation, at least on an experimental basis. [[User:Biruitorul|Biruitorul]] <small><sup>[[User talk:Biruitorul|Talk]]</sup></small> 06:23, 3 June 2008 (UTC) |
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*::''Comment to all''' - yes, the suggested metric is a bit daft. The 50% was plucked out as an example, and I just wanted to show that I was open to the idea of some metric. Let the discussion lower down the page determine what criteria need to be met, and let's look past my ill thought-through suggestion relating to percentages of capital cities :) (hides in shame and ignomy) [[User:Fritzpoll|Fritzpoll]] ([[User talk:Fritzpoll|talk]]) 11:22, 3 June 2008 (UTC) |
*::''Comment to all''' - yes, the suggested metric is a bit daft. The 50% was plucked out as an example, and I just wanted to show that I was open to the idea of some metric. Let the discussion lower down the page determine what criteria need to be met, and let's look past my ill thought-through suggestion relating to percentages of capital cities :) (hides in shame and ignomy) [[User:Fritzpoll|Fritzpoll]] ([[User talk:Fritzpoll|talk]]) 11:22, 3 June 2008 (UTC) |
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* '''Support, but''' the % idea is rather limiting in general. I don't see what the problem is with little communities, at least as long as they're verifiable: look at [[Royal, Nebraska]], just 0.013% of [[Washington, D.C.]] and 0.0044% of [[Nebraska]]. Moreover, I'm not sure of how the populations can easily be done in less developed countries with less common or less reliable censuses. I support the entire idea as long as we completely look past the suggestion relating to percentages of capital cities :) [[User:Nyttend|Nyttend]] ([[User talk:Nyttend|talk]]) 13:41, 3 June 2008 (UTC) |
* '''Support, but''' the % idea is rather limiting in general. I don't see what the problem is with little communities, at least as long as they're verifiable: look at [[Royal, Nebraska]], just 0.013% of [[Washington, D.C.]] and 0.0044% of [[Nebraska]]. Moreover, I'm not sure of how the populations can easily be done in less developed countries with less common or less reliable censuses. I support the entire idea as long as we completely look past the suggestion relating to percentages of capital cities :) [[User:Nyttend|Nyttend]] ([[User talk:Nyttend|talk]]) 13:41, 3 June 2008 (UTC) |
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* '''Support, but with reservations''' I would like to point out that 50% population can big a threshold. There could be sparsely populated areas, which would be quite notable, but not have the sufficient population. I'd suggest employing other "minimum" criterion as well, viz., '''area''' of the region/locality. If a place qualifies in any of the criteria, it should be automatically considered ''"notable"''. In all other aspects, I extend '''strongest possible support''' as such a format would bring in lot of standardization, and somewhat compensate for lack of initiation&mdash''("How do I begin?")'' that might be resulting in people not coming forward to start articles. Also, the idea of starting this as a separate project is a good idea. Later, features from the "main" Wikipedia articles can be merged with this project's article. All the best! <span style="font: small-caps 15px times;">'''[[User:KC Panchal|< |
* '''Support, but with reservations''' I would like to point out that 50% population can big a threshold. There could be sparsely populated areas, which would be quite notable, but not have the sufficient population. I'd suggest employing other "minimum" criterion as well, viz., '''area''' of the region/locality. If a place qualifies in any of the criteria, it should be automatically considered ''"notable"''. In all other aspects, I extend '''strongest possible support''' as such a format would bring in lot of standardization, and somewhat compensate for lack of initiation&mdash''("How do I begin?")'' that might be resulting in people not coming forward to start articles. Also, the idea of starting this as a separate project is a good idea. Later, features from the "main" Wikipedia articles can be merged with this project's article. All the best! <span style="font: small-caps 15px times;">'''[[User:KC Panchal|<span style="color:#8A2BE2;">—Ketan</span><span style="color:#000000;">Panchal</span>]][[User talk:KC Panchal|<sup style="color:#2F4F4F;">''<small>t</small>aL<big>K</big>''</sup>]]'''</span> 14:19, 3 June 2008 (UTC) |
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* '''Support, but with reservation: Can we get enough volunteers for each country/city? especially from areas with less participation on wikipedia?''' Well generally I believe that this is an excellent idea which may as well culminate in having wikipedia an article on each geographic location but my only fear of un-proportionate volunteer participation in respect of different areas. For example countries with a developed countries backdrop may find a high response in terms of material to be added and in turn the quality of the article which comes up from such participation. However countries and areas which are less connected to internet and about which not much is known globally would face the dangers of being represented by stub articles for a long (if not perpetual) time till some non-originating volunteer decides to take up the task of putting in stuff for that area. [[User:Tarun2k|Tarun2k]] ([[User talk:Tarun2k|talk]]) 14:08, 3 June 2008 (UTC) |
* '''Support, but with reservation: Can we get enough volunteers for each country/city? especially from areas with less participation on wikipedia?''' Well generally I believe that this is an excellent idea which may as well culminate in having wikipedia an article on each geographic location but my only fear of un-proportionate volunteer participation in respect of different areas. For example countries with a developed countries backdrop may find a high response in terms of material to be added and in turn the quality of the article which comes up from such participation. However countries and areas which are less connected to internet and about which not much is known globally would face the dangers of being represented by stub articles for a long (if not perpetual) time till some non-originating volunteer decides to take up the task of putting in stuff for that area. [[User:Tarun2k|Tarun2k]] ([[User talk:Tarun2k|talk]]) 14:08, 3 June 2008 (UTC) |
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*:Hi - thanks for your comments. The volunteers should come from WikiProjects related in some way to the given country. If not enough volunteers could be found, then work on that country would not proceed, so the stubs would not be created in the first place. The idea is to find volunteers to take on the articles before creating them [[User:Fritzpoll|Fritzpoll]] ([[User talk:Fritzpoll|talk]]) 14:12, 3 June 2008 (UTC) |
*:Hi - thanks for your comments. The volunteers should come from WikiProjects related in some way to the given country. If not enough volunteers could be found, then work on that country would not proceed, so the stubs would not be created in the first place. The idea is to find volunteers to take on the articles before creating them [[User:Fritzpoll|Fritzpoll]] ([[User talk:Fritzpoll|talk]]) 14:12, 3 June 2008 (UTC) |
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*:Hi Tarun and Fritzpoll! I believe, if a region has lesser "English-using" population, articles on that region are less likely to come by the conventional process, which would require an even greater command over English. So, in this regard, a bot created article would be better. It could also be done that the "BOT" would create infoboxes that can be used as a database to develop further articles. This would make the article, more of semiautomated rather than fully automated. But, well to be honest, I don't know what stage of development the BOT is in, and if the users would be notified what "point" (like population, religion, languages, etc.) are planned to be included. If such a bot is going to be created, it'd be better to include all such points by consensus as it might prove difficult to incorporate changes later in the already created articles. Even though, it has been told that it'd be difficult to give example, it'd be nice to give a demonstration of how the bot works, say using a fictitious land like the ''"Wikiland"''. Looking forward to replies. <span style="font: small-caps 15px times;">'''[[User:KC Panchal|< |
*:Hi Tarun and Fritzpoll! I believe, if a region has lesser "English-using" population, articles on that region are less likely to come by the conventional process, which would require an even greater command over English. So, in this regard, a bot created article would be better. It could also be done that the "BOT" would create infoboxes that can be used as a database to develop further articles. This would make the article, more of semiautomated rather than fully automated. But, well to be honest, I don't know what stage of development the BOT is in, and if the users would be notified what "point" (like population, religion, languages, etc.) are planned to be included. If such a bot is going to be created, it'd be better to include all such points by consensus as it might prove difficult to incorporate changes later in the already created articles. Even though, it has been told that it'd be difficult to give example, it'd be nice to give a demonstration of how the bot works, say using a fictitious land like the ''"Wikiland"''. Looking forward to replies. <span style="font: small-caps 15px times;">'''[[User:KC Panchal|<span style="color:#8A2BE2;">—Ketan</span><span style="color:#000000;">Panchal</span>]][[User talk:KC Panchal|<sup style="color:#2F4F4F;">''<small>t</small>aL<big>K</big>''</sup>]]'''</span> 14:35, 3 June 2008 (UTC) |
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*:: Excellent idea Ketan, I am sure an illustration would be really helpful in allowing wikipedians to come to a consensus. Afterall as of now we all are contemplating our own notions as to the output of the bot but surely if we see how an illustrative page comes out, we can add more to the idea of what all to include and what not, given the fact that we agree in first place to agree to the idea. And @ Fritzpoll, I really like your idea of finding volunteers for the project but I am not sure about the practicalness of the idea. I mean it requires too many ground-rules etc. like (i) how many minimum number of volunteers required for starting the bot on the area, (ii) the time we wait for volunteers to respond, (iii) what of those cases where those areas do not have a wiki project, etc. etc. Don't count me as a critic but the simple reason for my apprehensiveness is that if there were enough volunteers to come up with the area coverage, there would not have been the need for this bot of the discussion in the very first place. But the fact of the matter is that we lack requisite number of volunteers to handle all areas and it is for this reason that the idea to have a bot has started in the first place. Therefore waiting for and finding the requisite and able volunteers to for most areas is what I apprehend is quiet a longish process. Hope you understand. [[User:Tarun2k|Tarun2k]] ([[User talk:Tarun2k|talk]]) 17:38, 3 June 2008 (UTC) |
*:: Excellent idea Ketan, I am sure an illustration would be really helpful in allowing wikipedians to come to a consensus. Afterall as of now we all are contemplating our own notions as to the output of the bot but surely if we see how an illustrative page comes out, we can add more to the idea of what all to include and what not, given the fact that we agree in first place to agree to the idea. And @ Fritzpoll, I really like your idea of finding volunteers for the project but I am not sure about the practicalness of the idea. I mean it requires too many ground-rules etc. like (i) how many minimum number of volunteers required for starting the bot on the area, (ii) the time we wait for volunteers to respond, (iii) what of those cases where those areas do not have a wiki project, etc. etc. Don't count me as a critic but the simple reason for my apprehensiveness is that if there were enough volunteers to come up with the area coverage, there would not have been the need for this bot of the discussion in the very first place. But the fact of the matter is that we lack requisite number of volunteers to handle all areas and it is for this reason that the idea to have a bot has started in the first place. Therefore waiting for and finding the requisite and able volunteers to for most areas is what I apprehend is quiet a longish process. Hope you understand. [[User:Tarun2k|Tarun2k]] ([[User talk:Tarun2k|talk]]) 17:38, 3 June 2008 (UTC) |
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*:::I don't think that simply the worry that relying on significant human intervention in this project would cause it to take too long is enough to justify going to the opposite extreme (in fact, nothing is enough, but this worry in particular is not so significant). [[WP:DEADLINE|Wikipedia has no deadline]], and we shouldn't try to rush out low-quality articles simply because we fear it would take too long to do it well. [[User:Ryan Reich|Ryan Reich]] ([[User talk:Ryan Reich|talk]]) 18:37, 3 June 2008 (UTC) |
*:::I don't think that simply the worry that relying on significant human intervention in this project would cause it to take too long is enough to justify going to the opposite extreme (in fact, nothing is enough, but this worry in particular is not so significant). [[WP:DEADLINE|Wikipedia has no deadline]], and we shouldn't try to rush out low-quality articles simply because we fear it would take too long to do it well. [[User:Ryan Reich|Ryan Reich]] ([[User talk:Ryan Reich|talk]]) 18:37, 3 June 2008 (UTC) |
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*<s>'''Big improvement but still a no'''</s> (moved to complete oppose because of [[WP:OWN]]ership issues -- the scope of the new proposal is closer to right and far less likely to be disruptive to the whole project than 2 million articles; however, I think the proposal needs at least a rough estimate of the size before people can let the bot loose; I would support something in the order of 10,000-30,000 (e.g., something like the number of Pokemon articles we have :). It's a number I can forsee being expanding in the near future. And hey if a good % of the 10k get expanded, I'll happily say I'm wrong and let the next run be 100k. And, in addition to most of the reasons from the "strong oppose" camp, I'm bothered by this quote in the proposal, to "clean up the existing articles on settlements, adding references/infoboxes to existing articles to improve quality": For me, 95% of the quality of Wikipedia comes from prose, from editorial judgments about what is important or not about a location or settlement (is it the largest producer of linen in the region? is it known for its great sports teams? its ancient mosque?) -- those that believe that in-line references and (in particular) infoboxes are what make Wikipedia useful and important are spending too much time playing editor here and not enough time using the encyclopedia. -- [[User:Mscuthbert|Myke Cuthbert]] <small>[[User_talk:Mscuthbert|(talk)]]</small> 15:43, 4 June 2008 (UTC) |
*<s>'''Big improvement but still a no'''</s> (moved to complete oppose because of [[WP:OWN]]ership issues -- the scope of the new proposal is closer to right and far less likely to be disruptive to the whole project than 2 million articles; however, I think the proposal needs at least a rough estimate of the size before people can let the bot loose; I would support something in the order of 10,000-30,000 (e.g., something like the number of Pokemon articles we have :). It's a number I can forsee being expanding in the near future. And hey if a good % of the 10k get expanded, I'll happily say I'm wrong and let the next run be 100k. And, in addition to most of the reasons from the "strong oppose" camp, I'm bothered by this quote in the proposal, to "clean up the existing articles on settlements, adding references/infoboxes to existing articles to improve quality": For me, 95% of the quality of Wikipedia comes from prose, from editorial judgments about what is important or not about a location or settlement (is it the largest producer of linen in the region? is it known for its great sports teams? its ancient mosque?) -- those that believe that in-line references and (in particular) infoboxes are what make Wikipedia useful and important are spending too much time playing editor here and not enough time using the encyclopedia. -- [[User:Mscuthbert|Myke Cuthbert]] <small>[[User_talk:Mscuthbert|(talk)]]</small> 15:43, 4 June 2008 (UTC) |
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::As I take it you are referring to me, no, the goods of an articles come from paragraphs of text you are absoltely right. What I am talking about is adding infoboxes containing data on population, area, district, mayor, with a decent locator map and referencing this and adding some new paragrpahs of text in one line stub articles which are unreferenced and plain useless which we have in abundance. If you don't think that is useful and an improvement then thats your problem. Who wouldn't want to see every article expanded fully '''with''' proper details which are referenced. For somebody to make a judgement of me who has contributed numerous FA articles and GA'S to wikipedia to give a lecture that I think infoboxes are the be all and end all of wikipedia is quite something. [[User:Blofeld of SPECTRE| <span style="border:1px solid blue;padding:1px;"> < |
::As I take it you are referring to me, no, the goods of an articles come from paragraphs of text you are absoltely right. What I am talking about is adding infoboxes containing data on population, area, district, mayor, with a decent locator map and referencing this and adding some new paragrpahs of text in one line stub articles which are unreferenced and plain useless which we have in abundance. If you don't think that is useful and an improvement then thats your problem. Who wouldn't want to see every article expanded fully '''with''' proper details which are referenced. For somebody to make a judgement of me who has contributed numerous FA articles and GA'S to wikipedia to give a lecture that I think infoboxes are the be all and end all of wikipedia is quite something. [[User:Blofeld of SPECTRE| <span style="border:1px solid blue;padding:1px;"> <span style="color:#fef;background:black;">'''''♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦'''''</span></span>]] <sup>[[User talk:Blofeld of SPECTRE| <span style="font-size:x-small; color:Black;">'''$1,000,000?'''</span> ]]</sup> 16:26, 4 June 2008 (UTC) |
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:::Actually, no, I wasn't referring to you, I was referring to the quote from the proposal above that I quoted directly. Though now that you're asking for comments about you, I do wish you wouldn't feel the need to personally rebut every statement you disagree with--it's hardly a community discussion when one person feels the need to say every other word and take every disagreement as a personal attack. -- [[User:Mscuthbert|Myke Cuthbert]] <small>[[User_talk:Mscuthbert|(talk)]]</small> 01:02, 5 June 2008 (UTC) |
:::Actually, no, I wasn't referring to you, I was referring to the quote from the proposal above that I quoted directly. Though now that you're asking for comments about you, I do wish you wouldn't feel the need to personally rebut every statement you disagree with--it's hardly a community discussion when one person feels the need to say every other word and take every disagreement as a personal attack. -- [[User:Mscuthbert|Myke Cuthbert]] <small>[[User_talk:Mscuthbert|(talk)]]</small> 01:02, 5 June 2008 (UTC) |
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:::Well that proposal was written by me so it clearly is [[User:Blofeld of SPECTRE| <span style="border:1px solid blue;padding:1px;"> < |
:::Well that proposal was written by me so it clearly is [[User:Blofeld of SPECTRE| <span style="border:1px solid blue;padding:1px;"> <span style="color:#fef;background:black;">'''''♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦'''''</span></span>]] <sup>[[User talk:Blofeld of SPECTRE| <span style="font-size:x-small; color:Black;">'''$1,000,000?'''</span> ]]</sup> 10:33, 5 June 2008 (UTC) |
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*'''Oppose''' At first I thought this was a very exciting project which I thought could see a substantial improvement to the coverage of wikipedia on these subjects. Then I immediately started to think about the key problem of notability. I'm afraid my concerns got even worse when I saw that [[WP:NPT]] - the notability guideline mentioned - was only a proposed guideline, and seems to be quite a way off approval! Going to the core, approved, guideline ([[WP:N]]), what it states is that a topic is notable if it has "''received significant coverage in reliable secondary sources that are independent of the subject''". Unfortunately the only subject being given for these places is a ''primary'' source - a census, with some kind of "presumed" level of notability based on population size. Frankly I think this is the wrong way to go about creating a large number of notable place articles - a better place to start might be a secondary source like a guide book. [[User:AndrewRT|AndrewRT]]([[User talk:AndrewRT|Talk]]) 22:47, 4 June 2008 (UTC) |
*'''Oppose''' At first I thought this was a very exciting project which I thought could see a substantial improvement to the coverage of wikipedia on these subjects. Then I immediately started to think about the key problem of notability. I'm afraid my concerns got even worse when I saw that [[WP:NPT]] - the notability guideline mentioned - was only a proposed guideline, and seems to be quite a way off approval! Going to the core, approved, guideline ([[WP:N]]), what it states is that a topic is notable if it has "''received significant coverage in reliable secondary sources that are independent of the subject''". Unfortunately the only subject being given for these places is a ''primary'' source - a census, with some kind of "presumed" level of notability based on population size. Frankly I think this is the wrong way to go about creating a large number of notable place articles - a better place to start might be a secondary source like a guide book. [[User:AndrewRT|AndrewRT]]([[User talk:AndrewRT|Talk]]) 22:47, 4 June 2008 (UTC) |
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*:I was hoping that by including people from the WikiProjects who wanted the articles created, they would want them created for a reason - namely expansion. I guess I did mention this in my proposal above, but looking at it now, it is kinda long-winded! [[User:Fritzpoll|Fritzpoll]] ([[User talk:Fritzpoll|talk]]) 16:09, 2 June 2008 (UTC) |
*:I was hoping that by including people from the WikiProjects who wanted the articles created, they would want them created for a reason - namely expansion. I guess I did mention this in my proposal above, but looking at it now, it is kinda long-winded! [[User:Fritzpoll|Fritzpoll]] ([[User talk:Fritzpoll|talk]]) 16:09, 2 June 2008 (UTC) |
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*: Every place is ''potentially'' notable, and certainly has a lot of reason to be notable, but for the purposes of Wikipedia, that has to be determined by reliable secondary sources. The idea that places can be ''inherently'' notable is a subversion of the principles of Wikipedia. Since a determination of inherent notability is part of the proposal, I want to start a discussion at [[#Inherent notability]] to the effect that the idea should not and does not need to exist. [[User:Ryan Reich|Ryan Reich]] ([[User talk:Ryan Reich|talk]]) 17:03, 2 June 2008 (UTC) |
*: Every place is ''potentially'' notable, and certainly has a lot of reason to be notable, but for the purposes of Wikipedia, that has to be determined by reliable secondary sources. The idea that places can be ''inherently'' notable is a subversion of the principles of Wikipedia. Since a determination of inherent notability is part of the proposal, I want to start a discussion at [[#Inherent notability]] to the effect that the idea should not and does not need to exist. [[User:Ryan Reich|Ryan Reich]] ([[User talk:Ryan Reich|talk]]) 17:03, 2 June 2008 (UTC) |
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*'''Oppose''', although this variation of the proposal is better than the last one. I still don't like the idea of a bot writing our articles, as it takes away the need for human editors. Even with population, elevation info and such, the articles are still going to be rather stubby, and most of them will never be expanded or improved. [[User:Juliancolton|Juliancolton]] [[User talk:Juliancolton|< |
*'''Oppose''', although this variation of the proposal is better than the last one. I still don't like the idea of a bot writing our articles, as it takes away the need for human editors. Even with population, elevation info and such, the articles are still going to be rather stubby, and most of them will never be expanded or improved. [[User:Juliancolton|Juliancolton]] [[User talk:Juliancolton|<sup style="color:#666660;">'''T'''ropical</sup>]] [[Special:contributions/Juliancolton|<sup style="color:#666660;">'''C'''yclone</sup>]] 16:44, 2 June 2008 (UTC) |
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*For reasons I have already given. '''[[User:Seresin|seresin]] ( [[User talk:Seresin|¡?]] )''' 19:19, 2 June 2008 (UTC) |
*For reasons I have already given. '''[[User:Seresin|seresin]] ( [[User talk:Seresin|¡?]] )''' 19:19, 2 June 2008 (UTC) |
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*'''Strong oppose'''— there are already issues with [[special:random]]; do we really want more problems? Furthermore, there would be far too many stubs, and this would affect the [[WP:5MP|Five-million]] and [[WP:10MP|Ten million pool]]. In short, the cons outweigh the pros, and I believe we shouldn't have an automated bot doing the work we should be doing, albeit tedious. Why not have bots write the rest of Wikipedia for us? --[[User:Mizu onna sango15|<font color="red">Mizu onna sango15</font>]]/'''[[User_talk:Mizu onna sango15|<font color="black">水</font><font color="red">女</font><font color="black">珊瑚15</font>]]''' 19:52, 2 June 2008 (UTC) |
*'''Strong oppose'''— there are already issues with [[special:random]]; do we really want more problems? Furthermore, there would be far too many stubs, and this would affect the [[WP:5MP|Five-million]] and [[WP:10MP|Ten million pool]]. In short, the cons outweigh the pros, and I believe we shouldn't have an automated bot doing the work we should be doing, albeit tedious. Why not have bots write the rest of Wikipedia for us? --[[User:Mizu onna sango15|<font color="red">Mizu onna sango15</font>]]/'''[[User_talk:Mizu onna sango15|<font color="black">水</font><font color="red">女</font><font color="black">珊瑚15</font>]]''' 19:52, 2 June 2008 (UTC) |
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I've said this to other editors who don't like the idea of a bot. Can I just say that the idea of the bot creating a few articles automatically is so many editors such as myself can no longer spend all our time creating articles on geo stubs and trying to address the huge bias on here, but can focus on quality, on building up stubs to start class articles. I dedicate a lot of time to wikipedia and creating new articles but if I could soley spend my editing time on here writing the articles that exist, things would be looking a lot better. |
I've said this to other editors who don't like the idea of a bot. Can I just say that the idea of the bot creating a few articles automatically is so many editors such as myself can no longer spend all our time creating articles on geo stubs and trying to address the huge bias on here, but can focus on quality, on building up stubs to start class articles. I dedicate a lot of time to wikipedia and creating new articles but if I could soley spend my editing time on here writing the articles that exist, things would be looking a lot better. |
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Perhaps the millions of articles thing was overly ambitious. It would take over a year to create that many and to expand each and every one of them would be a difficult task indeed, time which you or I haven't got. What we can do however it do several thousand at a time and get the wikirpojects involved so we can aim to get a team working at expanding a sensible number of articles of the most notable articles e.g towns with a poulation over 1000 that could quite feasibly be expanded and not remain permastubs. Ideally I;d love to have full and detailed articles on everywhere, but the huge problem is access to knowledge. Realistically if we could get many onto to here like this, it would give us a firm basis to build upon sensibly. I think the new proposal has a lot of positice points, I agree bots are stupid, even Mr Fritz. the bot programmer is the first to say this. But if it is used in the right way and coordinated and regulated closely it can be a very powerful and efficent tool in setting up a foundation to build upon as of course we write the articles!!. I have spent many weeks laone trying to adding infoboxes and refs to the geo articles which already exist by country and the biggest problem by far is lack of consistency and general shoddiness of starting them. Some editors don't get me wrong cna start articles correctly and get things off to a good start but the majority are not done in a manner expected of wikipedia and it takes weeks to sort out the mess. But if we have a bank of articles under the whim of wikiprojects and along with the editors like myself who work on geo articles we can try to build the best we can which help people in the most efficient and consistent way we can. Whatever is thought of me, I would rather not create 2 million perma stubs either and am here to build an encyclopedia of the highest quality and depth. It should be done in stages but we need to start from somewhere. Best regards [[User:Blofeld of SPECTRE| <span style="border:1px solid blue;padding:1px;"> < |
Perhaps the millions of articles thing was overly ambitious. It would take over a year to create that many and to expand each and every one of them would be a difficult task indeed, time which you or I haven't got. What we can do however it do several thousand at a time and get the wikirpojects involved so we can aim to get a team working at expanding a sensible number of articles of the most notable articles e.g towns with a poulation over 1000 that could quite feasibly be expanded and not remain permastubs. Ideally I;d love to have full and detailed articles on everywhere, but the huge problem is access to knowledge. Realistically if we could get many onto to here like this, it would give us a firm basis to build upon sensibly. I think the new proposal has a lot of positice points, I agree bots are stupid, even Mr Fritz. the bot programmer is the first to say this. But if it is used in the right way and coordinated and regulated closely it can be a very powerful and efficent tool in setting up a foundation to build upon as of course we write the articles!!. I have spent many weeks laone trying to adding infoboxes and refs to the geo articles which already exist by country and the biggest problem by far is lack of consistency and general shoddiness of starting them. Some editors don't get me wrong cna start articles correctly and get things off to a good start but the majority are not done in a manner expected of wikipedia and it takes weeks to sort out the mess. But if we have a bank of articles under the whim of wikiprojects and along with the editors like myself who work on geo articles we can try to build the best we can which help people in the most efficient and consistent way we can. Whatever is thought of me, I would rather not create 2 million perma stubs either and am here to build an encyclopedia of the highest quality and depth. It should be done in stages but we need to start from somewhere. Best regards [[User:Blofeld of SPECTRE| <span style="border:1px solid blue;padding:1px;"> <span style="color:#fef;background:black;">'''''♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦'''''</span></span>]] <sup>[[User talk:Blofeld of SPECTRE| <span style="font-size:x-small; color:Black;">'''$1,000,000?'''</span> ]]</sup> 20:08, 2 June 2008 (UTC) |
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: I agree with the large part of the point you are trying to make: the bot will relieve the tedium for human editors who want to populate geography articles with basic information, freeing their efforts to expand these stubs. My core reservation is that the stubs will be created ''without'' any plan for further expansion, but merely the hope that they will attract some interest. This bot should be the mechanical core of a much larger organizational effort centered around the national WikiProjects to attach editors to these new stubs and flesh them out. This effort needs some advance planning, namely, the location ''before'' creating the stubs of sufficient reliable secondary sources to establish notability claims for each town. Any article for which this cannot be done is an immediate candidate for being what you don't want: a permastub. The community needs to come to a consensus around this point before this bot can be run. [[User:Ryan Reich|Ryan Reich]] ([[User talk:Ryan Reich|talk]]) 20:21, 2 June 2008 (UTC) |
: I agree with the large part of the point you are trying to make: the bot will relieve the tedium for human editors who want to populate geography articles with basic information, freeing their efforts to expand these stubs. My core reservation is that the stubs will be created ''without'' any plan for further expansion, but merely the hope that they will attract some interest. This bot should be the mechanical core of a much larger organizational effort centered around the national WikiProjects to attach editors to these new stubs and flesh them out. This effort needs some advance planning, namely, the location ''before'' creating the stubs of sufficient reliable secondary sources to establish notability claims for each town. Any article for which this cannot be done is an immediate candidate for being what you don't want: a permastub. The community needs to come to a consensus around this point before this bot can be run. [[User:Ryan Reich|Ryan Reich]] ([[User talk:Ryan Reich|talk]]) 20:21, 2 June 2008 (UTC) |
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* The more I think about this, the more I don't like it. Even creating only lists isn't all that great. What's wrong with just letting Wikipedia expand at a natural rate? The [[Volapük Wikipedia]] was heavily criticised (and IIRC almost deleted and restarted) for using bots just like this to create thousands of stubs (I think they were even geographcal places too). Why would we want to bring that here? Wikipedia has content based on what its users want, because its created by its users. This will likely lead to a systemic bias toward English speaking areas. I think that as a problem, its overhyped. I would venture a guess that the Arabic Wikipedia is biased toward the Middle East and the Russian Wikipedia is biased toward Russia. Its perfectly natural and, while it does need to be addressed somewhat, using a bot like this as some sort of full frontal assuault against bias isn't a very good idea. We also have to consider how this will affect Wikipedia's image. We generally make a press release for every X millionth article, how is it going to look when we release 2 of those a few months apart and the articles are bot created stubs? Yes, we'll have 4 million articles, but only half will be created in the real wiki tradition. [[Storden, Minnesota]] (a rambot article picked entirely at random) is a good example of what's likely to happen to most of these articles - Since it was created almost 6 years ago, 17 of its 21 edits have been by bots, only 1 human edit has actually added any new [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Storden%2C_Minnesota&diff=184282780&oldid=178665971 text], 1 sentence about a highway, and even that wasn't done until earlier this year. If someone wants thousands of automatically generated and maintained articles about towns, that's a fine idea for a website, but not for Wikipedia. <font face="Broadway">[[User:Mr.Z-man|Mr.]][[User talk:Mr.Z-man|'''''Z-'''man'']]</font> 20:12, 2 June 2008 (UTC) |
* The more I think about this, the more I don't like it. Even creating only lists isn't all that great. What's wrong with just letting Wikipedia expand at a natural rate? The [[Volapük Wikipedia]] was heavily criticised (and IIRC almost deleted and restarted) for using bots just like this to create thousands of stubs (I think they were even geographcal places too). Why would we want to bring that here? Wikipedia has content based on what its users want, because its created by its users. This will likely lead to a systemic bias toward English speaking areas. I think that as a problem, its overhyped. I would venture a guess that the Arabic Wikipedia is biased toward the Middle East and the Russian Wikipedia is biased toward Russia. Its perfectly natural and, while it does need to be addressed somewhat, using a bot like this as some sort of full frontal assuault against bias isn't a very good idea. We also have to consider how this will affect Wikipedia's image. We generally make a press release for every X millionth article, how is it going to look when we release 2 of those a few months apart and the articles are bot created stubs? Yes, we'll have 4 million articles, but only half will be created in the real wiki tradition. [[Storden, Minnesota]] (a rambot article picked entirely at random) is a good example of what's likely to happen to most of these articles - Since it was created almost 6 years ago, 17 of its 21 edits have been by bots, only 1 human edit has actually added any new [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Storden%2C_Minnesota&diff=184282780&oldid=178665971 text], 1 sentence about a highway, and even that wasn't done until earlier this year. If someone wants thousands of automatically generated and maintained articles about towns, that's a fine idea for a website, but not for Wikipedia. <font face="Broadway">[[User:Mr.Z-man|Mr.]][[User talk:Mr.Z-man|'''''Z-'''man'']]</font> 20:12, 2 June 2008 (UTC) |
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*'''Strong Oppose'''. In a nut shell, you want to create a bot that creates articles that no one finds interesting enough to create. I cannot oppose this idea more strongly. I'm not strictly a creationist per say, but in most cases I believe that if some<u>one</u> wants to create an article on a subject that interests them, then they should be allowed to, so long as its not nonsence or other such vandalism, but if no one wants to create an article on a topic, that means its doesn't need to exist. |
*'''Strong Oppose'''. In a nut shell, you want to create a bot that creates articles that no one finds interesting enough to create. I cannot oppose this idea more strongly. I'm not strictly a creationist per say, but in most cases I believe that if some<u>one</u> wants to create an article on a subject that interests them, then they should be allowed to, so long as its not nonsence or other such vandalism, but if no one wants to create an article on a topic, that means its doesn't need to exist. |
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[[User:Ferdiaob/My_Musings|☯]][[User:Ferdiaob|Ferdia O'Brien]] <small><sup>[[User_talk:Ferdiaob|(T)]]</sup></small>/<small><sub>[[Special:Contributions/Ferdiaob|(C)]]</sub></small> 10:11, 3 June 2008 (UTC) |
[[User:Ferdiaob/My_Musings|☯]][[User:Ferdiaob|Ferdia O'Brien]] <small><sup>[[User_talk:Ferdiaob|(T)]]</sup></small>/<small><sub>[[Special:Contributions/Ferdiaob|(C)]]</sub></small> 10:11, 3 June 2008 (UTC) |
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::::Can I just say that why do you think it was proposed if "nobody is creating these articles". Such an outlook shows little awaremness of what is actually happening on wikipedia.The bot was created precsiely because '''people are and will be adding these articles'''. There are many editors who create articles on a daily basis on such places that will be covered by the bot and many are done so badly withou proper references and infoboxes that it takes a lot of time to clean them up. The bot was proposed actually to make it more efficient as people are and will add these articles on a daily basis. It is seriously narrow minded to suggest you know the interests of everybody who uses wikipedia and who will be developing these articles. Many editors want these articles, and many editors will develop them, A focus on real world content outside America or the UK [[User:Blofeld of SPECTRE| <span style="border:1px solid blue;padding:1px;"> < |
::::Can I just say that why do you think it was proposed if "nobody is creating these articles". Such an outlook shows little awaremness of what is actually happening on wikipedia.The bot was created precsiely because '''people are and will be adding these articles'''. There are many editors who create articles on a daily basis on such places that will be covered by the bot and many are done so badly withou proper references and infoboxes that it takes a lot of time to clean them up. The bot was proposed actually to make it more efficient as people are and will add these articles on a daily basis. It is seriously narrow minded to suggest you know the interests of everybody who uses wikipedia and who will be developing these articles. Many editors want these articles, and many editors will develop them, A focus on real world content outside America or the UK [[User:Blofeld of SPECTRE| <span style="border:1px solid blue;padding:1px;"> <span style="color:#fef;background:black;">'''''♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦'''''</span></span>]] <sup>[[User talk:Blofeld of SPECTRE| <span style="font-size:x-small; color:Black;">'''$1,000,000?'''</span> ]]</sup> 12:25, 3 June 2008 (UTC) |
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:::::Many people add articles about cars. I recently saw a comprehensive list of automobiles deleted for notability reasons. What you're now saying is all anyone has to do is find a couple of databases about cars, write a bot, and we're golden, the stubs can stay in perpetuity, on the defence that people create car articles. This applies to hundreds of other topics, I'm not seeing the special justification for places, unless you sign up to the inherent notability clause. Which seems to be driven by [[political correctness]] and reflects no actual practical demonstrated need or use, beyond some creative crystal ballery. The fact that people create these articles does not a bot justify. The fact they are messy and people have to tidy them up, well welcome to wikipedia, it's how it works. Other projects get around this with templates, FAQs, style guides and new article patrollers. What you're pushing here is not a usefull tool for geo-stubs, its a complete change to how wikipedia is built. I think it might help if people actually recognised this. [[User:MickMacNee|MickMacNee]] ([[User talk:MickMacNee|talk]]) 12:41, 3 June 2008 (UTC) |
:::::Many people add articles about cars. I recently saw a comprehensive list of automobiles deleted for notability reasons. What you're now saying is all anyone has to do is find a couple of databases about cars, write a bot, and we're golden, the stubs can stay in perpetuity, on the defence that people create car articles. This applies to hundreds of other topics, I'm not seeing the special justification for places, unless you sign up to the inherent notability clause. Which seems to be driven by [[political correctness]] and reflects no actual practical demonstrated need or use, beyond some creative crystal ballery. The fact that people create these articles does not a bot justify. The fact they are messy and people have to tidy them up, well welcome to wikipedia, it's how it works. Other projects get around this with templates, FAQs, style guides and new article patrollers. What you're pushing here is not a usefull tool for geo-stubs, its a complete change to how wikipedia is built. I think it might help if people actually recognised this. [[User:MickMacNee|MickMacNee]] ([[User talk:MickMacNee|talk]]) 12:41, 3 June 2008 (UTC) |
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:Please do not do this to Wikipedia. <span style="font: 13pt 'Arial';">«</span> '''[[:User:dtrebbien|D. Trebbien]] ([[:User_talk:dtrebbien|<span style="color: #000;">talk</span>]])''' 15:09 [[2008]] [[June 3]] (UTC) |
:Please do not do this to Wikipedia. <span style="font: 13pt 'Arial';">«</span> '''[[:User:dtrebbien|D. Trebbien]] ([[:User_talk:dtrebbien|<span style="color: #000;">talk</span>]])''' 15:09 [[2008]] [[June 3]] (UTC) |
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::But articles like [[Aliyu Amba]] and many others from the same country of a similar size are. There is a fine line between a starter stub and a bit of develpoment. We ar enot talking months or years here. MOst could be expanded within minutes. Wikipedia is not set in stone for life. We already know articles can develop profoundly within days from stub class articles to GA type articles that occassionaly people put in the DYK column. I think we should be trying to achieve wonders with wikipedia and allow articles to develop not hide 95% of the world . The comment that "This type of information is already on the Internet". Search through wikipedia I don't know where you're looking but the vast majority of this encyclopedia is compiled from information already available over the Internet. Personally I'd rather see more paper sources but information has to be verifiable. The prupose of wikipedia is fact reporting, I have no idea what your idea of wikipedia should be is. I also have absolutely no idea where you are looking but look through most of the city category by country and the vasy majority are not properly referenced or with an infobox and map and I've spent weeks trying to sort out the uneven mess created by humans with geo articles. In regard to towns and cities around the world, humans have clearly shown extreme inconsistency and ability to generate articles consistently. Do you have any idea how many articles I;ve added infoboxes, maps and references to? As for French communes, Dear God if a bot had created the articles with infoboxes, references and some line sof info, weeks of work would be saved in trying to make them all bare minuimum level and more time spent on expanding them into start or B class articles. [[User:Blofeld of SPECTRE| <span style="border:1px solid blue;padding:1px;"> < |
::But articles like [[Aliyu Amba]] and many others from the same country of a similar size are. There is a fine line between a starter stub and a bit of develpoment. We ar enot talking months or years here. MOst could be expanded within minutes. Wikipedia is not set in stone for life. We already know articles can develop profoundly within days from stub class articles to GA type articles that occassionaly people put in the DYK column. I think we should be trying to achieve wonders with wikipedia and allow articles to develop not hide 95% of the world . The comment that "This type of information is already on the Internet". Search through wikipedia I don't know where you're looking but the vast majority of this encyclopedia is compiled from information already available over the Internet. Personally I'd rather see more paper sources but information has to be verifiable. The prupose of wikipedia is fact reporting, I have no idea what your idea of wikipedia should be is. I also have absolutely no idea where you are looking but look through most of the city category by country and the vasy majority are not properly referenced or with an infobox and map and I've spent weeks trying to sort out the uneven mess created by humans with geo articles. In regard to towns and cities around the world, humans have clearly shown extreme inconsistency and ability to generate articles consistently. Do you have any idea how many articles I;ve added infoboxes, maps and references to? As for French communes, Dear God if a bot had created the articles with infoboxes, references and some line sof info, weeks of work would be saved in trying to make them all bare minuimum level and more time spent on expanding them into start or B class articles. [[User:Blofeld of SPECTRE| <span style="border:1px solid blue;padding:1px;"> <span style="color:#fef;background:black;">'''''♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦'''''</span></span>]] <sup>[[User talk:Blofeld of SPECTRE| <span style="font-size:x-small; color:Black;">'''$1,000,000?'''</span> ]]</sup> 15:29, 3 June 2008 (UTC) |
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:::Sorry. I meant "already on the Internet ''in one place''", otherwise, where would the bots get the information? |
:::Sorry. I meant "already on the Internet ''in one place''", otherwise, where would the bots get the information? |
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:::As for the claim that bot-generated content is more consistent, I have a good example from [[botany]]-related articles that it is not. Take a look at [[:Category:Rubiaceae]] and you will find subcategories for [[genus|genra]], which is considered to be an unmanageable practice. Eg. the first one, [[:Category:Alleizettella]], which has only one article, ''[[Alleizettella rubra]]''. ''[[Alleizettella rubra|A. rubra]]'' was generated by [[User:Polbot]] in 2007. [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Alleizettella_rubra&diff=152508842&oldid=152482547 This edit] was an immediate clean up, then [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Alleizettella_rubra&diff=next&oldid=152508842], finally [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Alleizettella_rubra&diff=188821977&oldid=178975000]. The other edits were made by bots. |
:::As for the claim that bot-generated content is more consistent, I have a good example from [[botany]]-related articles that it is not. Take a look at [[:Category:Rubiaceae]] and you will find subcategories for [[genus|genra]], which is considered to be an unmanageable practice. Eg. the first one, [[:Category:Alleizettella]], which has only one article, ''[[Alleizettella rubra]]''. ''[[Alleizettella rubra|A. rubra]]'' was generated by [[User:Polbot]] in 2007. [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Alleizettella_rubra&diff=152508842&oldid=152482547 This edit] was an immediate clean up, then [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Alleizettella_rubra&diff=next&oldid=152508842], finally [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Alleizettella_rubra&diff=188821977&oldid=178975000]. The other edits were made by bots. |
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*'''Oppose''' per reasons above; ''Robots are not to be trusted''. --<small><span style="border: 1px solid">[[user:ShadowJester07|'''<span style="background-color:White; color:#003333"> ShadowJester07 </span>''']][[User talk:ShadowJester07|<span style="background-color:#00004d; color:#df6108"> ►Talk </span>]] </span></small> 01:48, 4 June 2008 (UTC) |
*'''Oppose''' per reasons above; ''Robots are not to be trusted''. --<small><span style="border: 1px solid">[[user:ShadowJester07|'''<span style="background-color:White; color:#003333"> ShadowJester07 </span>''']][[User talk:ShadowJester07|<span style="background-color:#00004d; color:#df6108"> ►Talk </span>]] </span></small> 01:48, 4 June 2008 (UTC) |
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*'''Oppose''', it will only create articles which will never get edited by a human except for vandalism, which then will stay unnoticed for ages and only give Wikipedia a bad image. Wikipedia is big enough already to attract enough human editors to get the places worth noting to be added manually. [[User:Ahoerstemeier|andy]] ([[User talk:Ahoerstemeier|talk]]) 10:39, 4 June 2008 (UTC) |
*'''Oppose''', it will only create articles which will never get edited by a human except for vandalism, which then will stay unnoticed for ages and only give Wikipedia a bad image. Wikipedia is big enough already to attract enough human editors to get the places worth noting to be added manually. [[User:Ahoerstemeier|andy]] ([[User talk:Ahoerstemeier|talk]]) 10:39, 4 June 2008 (UTC) |
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:::Can I just say that I have no idea how you think that articles which will '''never''' be edited by humans and unlikely to attract a lot of attention in your view would suddenly be a hot spot for vandals. This is a contradiction Andy. Most vandals are not particularly intelligent, and I doubt many would spend there time browsing through articles on places in obscure places which as you say are completely underinteresting. If you conducted a survey of the history of vandalism on wikipedia I wnder what proportion would be on biographies, topics related to America or the UK or popular culture articles and what proportion would be on starter articles villages in Kreblakistan. [[User:Blofeld of SPECTRE| <span style="border:1px solid blue;padding:1px;"> < |
:::Can I just say that I have no idea how you think that articles which will '''never''' be edited by humans and unlikely to attract a lot of attention in your view would suddenly be a hot spot for vandals. This is a contradiction Andy. Most vandals are not particularly intelligent, and I doubt many would spend there time browsing through articles on places in obscure places which as you say are completely underinteresting. If you conducted a survey of the history of vandalism on wikipedia I wnder what proportion would be on biographies, topics related to America or the UK or popular culture articles and what proportion would be on starter articles villages in Kreblakistan. [[User:Blofeld of SPECTRE| <span style="border:1px solid blue;padding:1px;"> <span style="color:#fef;background:black;">'''''♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦'''''</span></span>]] <sup>[[User talk:Blofeld of SPECTRE| <span style="font-size:x-small; color:Black;">'''$1,000,000?'''</span> ]]</sup> 14:06, 4 June 2008 (UTC) |
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::::Look at the rambot articles. I cited one in my comment above. In nearly 6 years, it had 21 edits, 17 of which were by bots (I think it has some more now that its been linked to from here). Only 1 human edit added any actual text. Everything else was templates and interwiki links. As for vandalism, vandals don't have to be interested in the topic. The more unwatched articles like these we add, the higher the likelihood vandals will get one by clicking [[Special:Random]]. <font face="Broadway">[[User:Mr.Z-man|Mr.]][[User talk:Mr.Z-man|'''''Z-'''man'']]</font> 18:16, 4 June 2008 (UTC) |
::::Look at the rambot articles. I cited one in my comment above. In nearly 6 years, it had 21 edits, 17 of which were by bots (I think it has some more now that its been linked to from here). Only 1 human edit added any actual text. Everything else was templates and interwiki links. As for vandalism, vandals don't have to be interested in the topic. The more unwatched articles like these we add, the higher the likelihood vandals will get one by clicking [[Special:Random]]. <font face="Broadway">[[User:Mr.Z-man|Mr.]][[User talk:Mr.Z-man|'''''Z-'''man'']]</font> 18:16, 4 June 2008 (UTC) |
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:::::That's a tiny sample; look at [[Alva, Oklahoma]] for another example. For a population of 5,000, it's had a lot of development around the basic form that Rambot gave it. It seems likely that any population limit of a few thousand would keep in these cities and exclude the one you're pointing to. On the other hand, I see nothing fatal about [[Amorita, Oklahoma]]; the one hit of vandalism was reverted in 12 hours, and there's no evidence that they wouldn't have just hit another set of articles. Or that they won't come back sometime and put good information about where they live, encouraged by the fact the articles exist.--[[User:Prosfilaes|Prosfilaes]] ([[User talk:Prosfilaes|talk]]) 18:31, 4 June 2008 (UTC) |
:::::That's a tiny sample; look at [[Alva, Oklahoma]] for another example. For a population of 5,000, it's had a lot of development around the basic form that Rambot gave it. It seems likely that any population limit of a few thousand would keep in these cities and exclude the one you're pointing to. On the other hand, I see nothing fatal about [[Amorita, Oklahoma]]; the one hit of vandalism was reverted in 12 hours, and there's no evidence that they wouldn't have just hit another set of articles. Or that they won't come back sometime and put good information about where they live, encouraged by the fact the articles exist.--[[User:Prosfilaes|Prosfilaes]] ([[User talk:Prosfilaes|talk]]) 18:31, 4 June 2008 (UTC) |
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:::You cannot possibly compare articles on '''American''' towns taking into account the level of traffic on here which dominates from '''America''' and can argue that villages in Kreblakistan will get the same traffic as articles on America. If nobody could be bothered to develop articles after Rambot thats a huge shame given the amount of American users on here. If less people spend all their time in discussions and confict at ANI they'd be expanded in no time at all. Americans, or potential American vandals will naturally look up their own village or community on wikipedia and may leave it a major threat from vandalism but to imagine vandals are going to be going through every settlement created in a place like Guinea or Liberia or something is far less likely. [[User:Blofeld of SPECTRE| <span style="border:1px solid blue;padding:1px;"> < |
:::You cannot possibly compare articles on '''American''' towns taking into account the level of traffic on here which dominates from '''America''' and can argue that villages in Kreblakistan will get the same traffic as articles on America. If nobody could be bothered to develop articles after Rambot thats a huge shame given the amount of American users on here. If less people spend all their time in discussions and confict at ANI they'd be expanded in no time at all. Americans, or potential American vandals will naturally look up their own village or community on wikipedia and may leave it a major threat from vandalism but to imagine vandals are going to be going through every settlement created in a place like Guinea or Liberia or something is far less likely. [[User:Blofeld of SPECTRE| <span style="border:1px solid blue;padding:1px;"> <span style="color:#fef;background:black;">'''''♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦'''''</span></span>]] <sup>[[User talk:Blofeld of SPECTRE| <span style="font-size:x-small; color:Black;">'''$1,000,000?'''</span> ]]</sup> 20:32, 4 June 2008 (UTC) |
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::::Whose point are you trying to prove? If Americans aren't improving the thousands of American town stubs, I can't imagine that they'd improve stubs about towns in other nations. You obviously didn't read my comment at all. Vandals aren't going to be "going through" anything. If we add 500,000 of these town articles in the next few months, the odds of getting one on a [[Special:Random]] click (assuming it is truly random) are probably about 1 in 6. <font face="Broadway">[[User:Mr.Z-man|Mr.]][[User talk:Mr.Z-man|'''''Z-'''man'']]</font> 23:12, 4 June 2008 (UTC) |
::::Whose point are you trying to prove? If Americans aren't improving the thousands of American town stubs, I can't imagine that they'd improve stubs about towns in other nations. You obviously didn't read my comment at all. Vandals aren't going to be "going through" anything. If we add 500,000 of these town articles in the next few months, the odds of getting one on a [[Special:Random]] click (assuming it is truly random) are probably about 1 in 6. <font face="Broadway">[[User:Mr.Z-man|Mr.]][[User talk:Mr.Z-man|'''''Z-'''man'']]</font> 23:12, 4 June 2008 (UTC) |
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*'''Oppose''' - I have a number of issues with the project proposal as it currently stands. I'm a bit torn in this situation - after all, I ran a bot which was intimately involved with the concept of geographical place articles. I had it easy, however, as sourcing for information regarding incorporated places and census-designated places in the United States is readily available and rock-solid. Where things get fuzzier is when we start talking about "other", unofficial towns and villages and settlements around the nation, places for which no sources other than vast lists of placenames can be found. Even more harrowing is the prospect of sorting out not hundreds or thousands but ''hundreds of thousands'' of such questionable settlements. The sourcing being proposed here is pretty thin, in my opinion, and practically impossible to verify on a case-by-case basis. I am also quite inclined to side with those making the argument that creating thousands of articles with content such as "'''Place''' is a town in [[country]]". Allowing for a slower, more natural growth of the encylopedia - such as allowing folks to make articles on obscure places as the need/desire arises, armed with whatever information and sources they may have on hand - seems preferable to me. Finally, it seems to me that the scope of this project is just far, far too broad. Already the discussion indicates that we are running into many ''apples and oranges'' comparisons between different geographical units such as French communes, United States census designated places, Phillipino barangays, and so on. An attempt to handle these diverse problems ''en masse'' may be a futile attempt from the get-go due to the minute but important differences in the way each country handles its geographic subdivisions. Perhaps the proponents of this proposal would have better luck attempting to digest this problem in bite sized portions, engaging in the proper discourse on how to handle, say, French communes, processing them, and moving on to repeat the process with the barangays of the Phillipines. This would allow for the individual problems caused by each case to be handled in a unique fashion rather than attempting to apply the same fix to every little problem. While I must sympathise with those who are trying to go forward with this project, it just feels like they are trying to bite off more than any of us can chew and the proposal has too many problems to move forward as is. [[User:Arkyan|<b |
*'''Oppose''' - I have a number of issues with the project proposal as it currently stands. I'm a bit torn in this situation - after all, I ran a bot which was intimately involved with the concept of geographical place articles. I had it easy, however, as sourcing for information regarding incorporated places and census-designated places in the United States is readily available and rock-solid. Where things get fuzzier is when we start talking about "other", unofficial towns and villages and settlements around the nation, places for which no sources other than vast lists of placenames can be found. Even more harrowing is the prospect of sorting out not hundreds or thousands but ''hundreds of thousands'' of such questionable settlements. The sourcing being proposed here is pretty thin, in my opinion, and practically impossible to verify on a case-by-case basis. I am also quite inclined to side with those making the argument that creating thousands of articles with content such as "'''Place''' is a town in [[country]]". Allowing for a slower, more natural growth of the encylopedia - such as allowing folks to make articles on obscure places as the need/desire arises, armed with whatever information and sources they may have on hand - seems preferable to me. Finally, it seems to me that the scope of this project is just far, far too broad. Already the discussion indicates that we are running into many ''apples and oranges'' comparisons between different geographical units such as French communes, United States census designated places, Phillipino barangays, and so on. An attempt to handle these diverse problems ''en masse'' may be a futile attempt from the get-go due to the minute but important differences in the way each country handles its geographic subdivisions. Perhaps the proponents of this proposal would have better luck attempting to digest this problem in bite sized portions, engaging in the proper discourse on how to handle, say, French communes, processing them, and moving on to repeat the process with the barangays of the Phillipines. This would allow for the individual problems caused by each case to be handled in a unique fashion rather than attempting to apply the same fix to every little problem. While I must sympathise with those who are trying to go forward with this project, it just feels like they are trying to bite off more than any of us can chew and the proposal has too many problems to move forward as is. [[User:Arkyan|<b style="color:#0000FF;">Ark</b>]][[User_talk:Arkyan|<b style="color:#6060BF;">yan</b>]] 19:59, 4 June 2008 (UTC) |
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::What part didn't you read about treating each country individually and working on each country at a time and gaining the respective views of the relative wikiprojects or potential natives of these countries and working together with them in planning what is notable and organizing content before hand. Of course you can't do the world in one go like that. Eahc country is different and may require some thought, and it will be planned out taking each country at time, which will be done, whether you happen to oppose to developing wikipedia or not [[User:Blofeld of SPECTRE| <span style="border:1px solid blue;padding:1px;"> < |
::What part didn't you read about treating each country individually and working on each country at a time and gaining the respective views of the relative wikiprojects or potential natives of these countries and working together with them in planning what is notable and organizing content before hand. Of course you can't do the world in one go like that. Eahc country is different and may require some thought, and it will be planned out taking each country at time, which will be done, whether you happen to oppose to developing wikipedia or not [[User:Blofeld of SPECTRE| <span style="border:1px solid blue;padding:1px;"> <span style="color:#fef;background:black;">'''''♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦'''''</span></span>]] <sup>[[User talk:Blofeld of SPECTRE| <span style="font-size:x-small; color:Black;">'''$1,000,000?'''</span> ]]</sup> 20:23, 4 June 2008 (UTC) |
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:::You might want to rethink your response there, it's coming across as being dangerously close to [[WP:CIVIL|incivility]]. Are you insinuating that merely because I am opposed to this proposal I am somehow opposed to "developing Wikipedia"? I resent that. [[User:Arkyan|<b |
:::You might want to rethink your response there, it's coming across as being dangerously close to [[WP:CIVIL|incivility]]. Are you insinuating that merely because I am opposed to this proposal I am somehow opposed to "developing Wikipedia"? I resent that. [[User:Arkyan|<b style="color:#0000FF;">Ark</b>]][[User_talk:Arkyan|<b style="color:#6060BF;">yan</b>]] 20:40, 4 June 2008 (UTC) |
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*'''No I cannot support''' There is a place for bots on this project BUT Wikipedia should consist of articles that are initially started by humans who care. Indeed in my view it is often the fact that a small place has no wikipedia article that causes new editors to arise and (a) start such articles then, (b) stay on board to edit other links to that article, and (c) edit articles generally available on the project. Indeed I would go further and say it is the fact that an editor started an article that keeps them coming back and adding to that page - and places of interest, birth, death, family background, etc are often the most likely articles to cause that continued interest.--[[User:VirtualSteve|<strong>VS</strong>]] <sup>[[User_talk:VirtualSteve|talk]]</sup> 22:57, 4 June 2008 (UTC) |
*'''No I cannot support''' There is a place for bots on this project BUT Wikipedia should consist of articles that are initially started by humans who care. Indeed in my view it is often the fact that a small place has no wikipedia article that causes new editors to arise and (a) start such articles then, (b) stay on board to edit other links to that article, and (c) edit articles generally available on the project. Indeed I would go further and say it is the fact that an editor started an article that keeps them coming back and adding to that page - and places of interest, birth, death, family background, etc are often the most likely articles to cause that continued interest.--[[User:VirtualSteve|<strong>VS</strong>]] <sup>[[User_talk:VirtualSteve|talk]]</sup> 22:57, 4 June 2008 (UTC) |
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*'''Oppose''', while I recognize that the idea is unquestionably in good faith, I just don't believe it's a good idea. If we really want a "gazetteer", let's do it in the proper form—a tabled list, with links to the ones that really do have more sourced information available than a few census standards. We've got enough permastubs already, thank you very much, and this will just give us more merging to do later. (If the bot ''could'' create tabled lists, on the other hand, I might well be interested...) [[User:Seraphimblade|Seraphimblade]] <small><sup>[[User talk:Seraphimblade|Talk to me]]</sup></small> 01:11, 5 June 2008 (UTC) |
*'''Oppose''', while I recognize that the idea is unquestionably in good faith, I just don't believe it's a good idea. If we really want a "gazetteer", let's do it in the proper form—a tabled list, with links to the ones that really do have more sourced information available than a few census standards. We've got enough permastubs already, thank you very much, and this will just give us more merging to do later. (If the bot ''could'' create tabled lists, on the other hand, I might well be interested...) [[User:Seraphimblade|Seraphimblade]] <small><sup>[[User talk:Seraphimblade|Talk to me]]</sup></small> 01:11, 5 June 2008 (UTC) |
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::For the record, this can be easily done, and I'm perfectly happy to implement it [[User:Fritzpoll|Fritzpoll]] ([[User talk:Fritzpoll|talk]]) 14:57, 2 June 2008 (UTC) |
::For the record, this can be easily done, and I'm perfectly happy to implement it [[User:Fritzpoll|Fritzpoll]] ([[User talk:Fritzpoll|talk]]) 14:57, 2 June 2008 (UTC) |
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:::This sounds like a good idea, but think this can be done most simply in articlespace. How would an uncreated article get linked to an autogenerated draft, and how would a "random" user discover this draft in order to benefit from it? I think this would just double or triple the number of pages necessary to add these articles, and I think there are other ways to improve this proposal. --[[User:NickPenguin|< |
:::This sounds like a good idea, but think this can be done most simply in articlespace. How would an uncreated article get linked to an autogenerated draft, and how would a "random" user discover this draft in order to benefit from it? I think this would just double or triple the number of pages necessary to add these articles, and I think there are other ways to improve this proposal. --[[User:NickPenguin|<span style="color:darkgreen;">Nick</span>]][[User talk:NickPenguin|<span style="color:darkblue;">Penguin</span>]]<sub>([[Special:Contributions/NickPenguin|<span style="color:blue;">'''contribs'''</span>]])</sub> 03:11, 3 June 2008 (UTC) |
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==Global coordination== |
==Global coordination== |
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:[[User:Rambot]] (lots of geography stubs), and [[User:Polbot]] (some US politicians, and then lots of animals and plant species), are the two I can remember. There must be others as well. [[User:Carcharoth|Carcharoth]] ([[User talk:Carcharoth|talk]]) 15:28, 2 June 2008 (UTC) |
:[[User:Rambot]] (lots of geography stubs), and [[User:Polbot]] (some US politicians, and then lots of animals and plant species), are the two I can remember. There must be others as well. [[User:Carcharoth|Carcharoth]] ([[User talk:Carcharoth|talk]]) 15:28, 2 June 2008 (UTC) |
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::From what I've heard, Rambot did it without the human intervention that is proposed for this bot. Not sure though [[User:Fritzpoll|Fritzpoll]] ([[User talk:Fritzpoll|talk]]) 15:31, 2 June 2008 (UTC) |
::From what I've heard, Rambot did it without the human intervention that is proposed for this bot. Not sure though [[User:Fritzpoll|Fritzpoll]] ([[User talk:Fritzpoll|talk]]) 15:31, 2 June 2008 (UTC) |
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:::According to [[Wikipedia:Size of Wikipedia#Notes|this]], Rambot add ~30000 articles in an 8-day period. With 86400 seconds in a day, 8 days, and 30000 article to create, this works out to 23.04 seconds per article. (86400 X 8 = 691200 seconds / 30000 = 23.04) I think it's safe to assume this was done without human intervention. < |
:::According to [[Wikipedia:Size of Wikipedia#Notes|this]], Rambot add ~30000 articles in an 8-day period. With 86400 seconds in a day, 8 days, and 30000 article to create, this works out to 23.04 seconds per article. (86400 X 8 = 691200 seconds / 30000 = 23.04) I think it's safe to assume this was done without human intervention. [[User:Thingg|<span style="color:#3300ff;">Thingg</span>]][[User talk:Thingg|<sup style="color:#33ff00;">⊕</sup>]][[Special:Contributions/Thingg|<sup style="color:#ff0033;">⊗</sup>]] 16:13, 2 June 2008 (UTC) |
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::::Well, I can do simple [[WP:AWB|AWB]] jobs at 6 articles per minute, checking for errors and skipping problems on the way. Give me 23.4 seconds and I have enough time to correct a small error on each edit. :-) Unfortunately I can't do that 24/7 :-) Seriously, though, all bot tasks involve human intervention and human oversight: the bots are error tested, the operation is monitored by the operator, and the bot flags up exceptions when human intervention is needed (or skips and writes to a log). What makes a task a bot task is that most of the time the bot autosaves the edit, without a human check ''before each save''. In the case of this bot, my understanding is that, after much careful preparation, human intervention and error testing, the actual run to generate the stubs will mostly involve autosaving like any other bot task. But please correct me if I am wrong. ''[[User talk:Geometry guy|Geometry guy]]'' 21:52, 2 June 2008 (UTC) |
::::Well, I can do simple [[WP:AWB|AWB]] jobs at 6 articles per minute, checking for errors and skipping problems on the way. Give me 23.4 seconds and I have enough time to correct a small error on each edit. :-) Unfortunately I can't do that 24/7 :-) Seriously, though, all bot tasks involve human intervention and human oversight: the bots are error tested, the operation is monitored by the operator, and the bot flags up exceptions when human intervention is needed (or skips and writes to a log). What makes a task a bot task is that most of the time the bot autosaves the edit, without a human check ''before each save''. In the case of this bot, my understanding is that, after much careful preparation, human intervention and error testing, the actual run to generate the stubs will mostly involve autosaving like any other bot task. But please correct me if I am wrong. ''[[User talk:Geometry guy|Geometry guy]]'' 21:52, 2 June 2008 (UTC) |
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:::::You've nailed it exactly, much more succinctly than I could [[User:Fritzpoll|Fritzpoll]] ([[User talk:Fritzpoll|talk]]) 11:39, 3 June 2008 (UTC) |
:::::You've nailed it exactly, much more succinctly than I could [[User:Fritzpoll|Fritzpoll]] ([[User talk:Fritzpoll|talk]]) 11:39, 3 June 2008 (UTC) |
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::::::heh. wow did I get owned... That ''is'' kind of what I meant btw. I think... ¬_¬ < |
::::::heh. wow did I get owned... That ''is'' kind of what I meant btw. I think... ¬_¬ [[User:Thingg|<span style="color:#3300ff;">Thingg</span>]][[User talk:Thingg|<sup style="color:#33ff00;">⊕</sup>]][[Special:Contributions/Thingg|<sup style="color:#ff0033;">⊗</sup>]] 13:20, 3 June 2008 (UTC) |
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==How to handle blue-links== |
==How to handle blue-links== |
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::This is the direction I've also been going recently, but we still need to settle the issue of whether the raw stubs the bot creates are suitable articles. Otherwise, the geographic wikiprojects may well just do what was originally proposed, each on its own. [[User:Ryan Reich|Ryan Reich]] ([[User talk:Ryan Reich|talk]]) 23:23, 2 June 2008 (UTC) |
::This is the direction I've also been going recently, but we still need to settle the issue of whether the raw stubs the bot creates are suitable articles. Otherwise, the geographic wikiprojects may well just do what was originally proposed, each on its own. [[User:Ryan Reich|Ryan Reich]] ([[User talk:Ryan Reich|talk]]) 23:23, 2 June 2008 (UTC) |
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*In regards to creating a WikiProject to deal with this upcoming flood, [[Wikipedia:WikiProject_Cities]] exists, and would likely be a good centralized location for discussion when the bot begins to run. --[[User:NickPenguin|< |
*In regards to creating a WikiProject to deal with this upcoming flood, [[Wikipedia:WikiProject_Cities]] exists, and would likely be a good centralized location for discussion when the bot begins to run. --[[User:NickPenguin|<span style="color:darkgreen;">Nick</span>]][[User talk:NickPenguin|<span style="color:darkblue;">Penguin</span>]]<sub>([[Special:Contributions/NickPenguin|<span style="color:blue;">'''contribs'''</span>]])</sub> 00:30, 3 June 2008 (UTC) |
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==Is systemic bias bad?== |
==Is systemic bias bad?== |
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:::::I'm not seeing this purported gulf of ability between an editor that can add ''menaingfull information'' to a stub, and one that can create an article. If style is the only issue, create a template and provide a list of resources. Creating thousands of pre-prepared stubs on this level, when we don't do it for any other topic, goes against the core principle of how wikipedia develops. [[User:MickMacNee|MickMacNee]] ([[User talk:MickMacNee|talk]]) 12:18, 3 June 2008 (UTC) |
:::::I'm not seeing this purported gulf of ability between an editor that can add ''menaingfull information'' to a stub, and one that can create an article. If style is the only issue, create a template and provide a list of resources. Creating thousands of pre-prepared stubs on this level, when we don't do it for any other topic, goes against the core principle of how wikipedia develops. [[User:MickMacNee|MickMacNee]] ([[User talk:MickMacNee|talk]]) 12:18, 3 June 2008 (UTC) |
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::::Agreed. Wikipedia could become the definitive resource for information on these sorts of places, attracting readers (and hence editors). To give an analogous example, I don't use Wikipedia for reference on fashion topics (another systemic bias issue, here because of the lack of female contributors), since the coverage is awful. (I'll contribute every now and again though.) If Wikipedia were a place to get information on fashion, maybe more fashion-minded people would come to read, and in the process improve the articles. [[User:Mangostar|Mangostar]] ([[User talk:Mangostar|talk]]) 01:34, 3 June 2008 (UTC) |
::::Agreed. Wikipedia could become the definitive resource for information on these sorts of places, attracting readers (and hence editors). To give an analogous example, I don't use Wikipedia for reference on fashion topics (another systemic bias issue, here because of the lack of female contributors), since the coverage is awful. (I'll contribute every now and again though.) If Wikipedia were a place to get information on fashion, maybe more fashion-minded people would come to read, and in the process improve the articles. [[User:Mangostar|Mangostar]] ([[User talk:Mangostar|talk]]) 01:34, 3 June 2008 (UTC) |
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:Systemic bias ''is'' bad: by failing to counter it, we tacitly accept that there is a geographical and cultural limit on the things we should write about on the 'pedia. In fact, {{U|Scolaire}}'s example of the villages of England and Nepal is rather ironic, in that in itself it shows systemic bias. Yes, schoolchildren in England may not be asked to write about a village in Nepal. But right next door to Nepal is India, which has [[English language|90,000,000 English speakers]], which is 50% more than the entire population of the United Kingdom. The percentage of those people who want to know about a village in Nepal is going to be far greater than those in England. Should we not cater to them as well? |
:Systemic bias ''is'' bad: by failing to counter it, we tacitly accept that there is a geographical and cultural limit on the things we should write about on the 'pedia. In fact, {{U|Scolaire}}'s example of the villages of England and Nepal is rather ironic, in that in itself it shows systemic bias. Yes, schoolchildren in England may not be asked to write about a village in Nepal. But right next door to Nepal is India, which has [[English language|90,000,000 English speakers]], which is 50% more than the entire population of the United Kingdom. The percentage of those people who want to know about a village in Nepal is going to be far greater than those in England. Should we not cater to them as well? <small><span class="autosigned">— Preceding [[Wikipedia:Signatures|unsigned]] comment added by [[User:Aervanath|Aervanath]] ([[User talk:Aervanath|talk]] • [[Special:Contributions/Aervanath|contribs]]) </span></small><!-- Template:Unsigned --> 08:45, 3 June 2008 |
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::Actually, I would be quite happy to substitute India for England in that example. The point is the remoteness of the village, not its proximity to an English-speaking population. If "a far greater percentage" means 0.000001% rather than 0.00000001% then a bot-generated article/stub will still have a usefulness of virtually zero. The systemic bias that I am talking about arises from people's desire to learn, and creating articles ''not'' to be read is only a cosmetic excercise. [[User:Scolaire|Scolaire]] ([[User talk:Scolaire|talk]]) 09:01, 3 June 2008 (UTC) |
::Actually, I would be quite happy to substitute India for England in that example. The point is the remoteness of the village, not its proximity to an English-speaking population. If "a far greater percentage" means 0.000001% rather than 0.00000001% then a bot-generated article/stub will still have a usefulness of virtually zero. The systemic bias that I am talking about arises from people's desire to learn, and creating articles ''not'' to be read is only a cosmetic excercise. [[User:Scolaire|Scolaire]] ([[User talk:Scolaire|talk]]) 09:01, 3 June 2008 (UTC) |
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::::This can be said about any topic, it doesn't just affect place names. As said elsewhere, why not create a concerted translation effort of all the place articles that non English speakers have no doubt created on other wikis, if this is the real concern. [[User:MickMacNee|MickMacNee]] ([[User talk:MickMacNee|talk]]) 12:21, 3 June 2008 (UTC) |
::::This can be said about any topic, it doesn't just affect place names. As said elsewhere, why not create a concerted translation effort of all the place articles that non English speakers have no doubt created on other wikis, if this is the real concern. [[User:MickMacNee|MickMacNee]] ([[User talk:MickMacNee|talk]]) 12:21, 3 June 2008 (UTC) |
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:::Actually I proposed a WP Translation sister project a while back for translation between more language than babelfish and those sites have which would make trnalsation between wikipedias a huge benefit, but Jimbo never responded. Personally i think breaking down the language barrier is perahps the most important step towards knowledge accessibility [[User:Blofeld of SPECTRE| <span style="border:1px solid blue;padding:1px;"> < |
:::Actually I proposed a WP Translation sister project a while back for translation between more language than babelfish and those sites have which would make trnalsation between wikipedias a huge benefit, but Jimbo never responded. Personally i think breaking down the language barrier is perahps the most important step towards knowledge accessibility [[User:Blofeld of SPECTRE| <span style="border:1px solid blue;padding:1px;"> <span style="color:#fef;background:black;">'''''♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦'''''</span></span>]] <sup>[[User talk:Blofeld of SPECTRE| <span style="font-size:x-small; color:Black;">'''$1,000,000?'''</span> ]]</sup> 12:46, 3 June 2008 (UTC) |
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::::I do mean a human effort though, machine translation is next to useless. [[User:MickMacNee|MickMacNee]] ([[User talk:MickMacNee|talk]]) 12:51, 3 June 2008 (UTC) |
::::I do mean a human effort though, machine translation is next to useless. [[User:MickMacNee|MickMacNee]] ([[User talk:MickMacNee|talk]]) 12:51, 3 June 2008 (UTC) |
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:::::Yeah, I've seen some horrific pieces of work handed in at schools and Universities which are so obviously machine translated that it's actually quite funny to read, if disturbing to think the students couldn't be bothered to do it themselves. [[User:Fritzpoll|Fritzpoll]] ([[User talk:Fritzpoll|talk]]) 12:57, 3 June 2008 (UTC) |
:::::Yeah, I've seen some horrific pieces of work handed in at schools and Universities which are so obviously machine translated that it's actually quite funny to read, if disturbing to think the students couldn't be bothered to do it themselves. [[User:Fritzpoll|Fritzpoll]] ([[User talk:Fritzpoll|talk]]) 12:57, 3 June 2008 (UTC) |
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We don't get points for a raw article-count, so why is this being treated as such? Average article depth and quality is the metric we need to be keeping our eyes on. [[User:Girolamo Savonarola|Girolamo Savonarola]] ([[User talk:Girolamo Savonarola|talk]]) 01:01, 3 June 2008 (UTC) |
We don't get points for a raw article-count, so why is this being treated as such? Average article depth and quality is the metric we need to be keeping our eyes on. [[User:Girolamo Savonarola|Girolamo Savonarola]] ([[User talk:Girolamo Savonarola|talk]]) 01:01, 3 June 2008 (UTC) |
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:Lists are good summary tools, but content doesn't exactly blossom on a list, or at least not the same way it does in an article. If the subject is notable, it deserves an article, and then we allow time for the articles to grow. Besides, this proposal will only allow the articles to be created when the relevant WikiProjects have become involved, so it's not like these articles will just get abandoned. --[[User:NickPenguin|< |
:Lists are good summary tools, but content doesn't exactly blossom on a list, or at least not the same way it does in an article. If the subject is notable, it deserves an article, and then we allow time for the articles to grow. Besides, this proposal will only allow the articles to be created when the relevant WikiProjects have become involved, so it's not like these articles will just get abandoned. --[[User:NickPenguin|<span style="color:darkgreen;">Nick</span>]][[User talk:NickPenguin|<span style="color:darkblue;">Penguin</span>]]<sub>([[Special:Contributions/NickPenguin|<span style="color:blue;">'''contribs'''</span>]])</sub> 01:15, 3 June 2008 (UTC) |
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::We merge things all the time - in this case, the articles are bot-operated prosified statistics. There's no good reason why they couldn't be rendered as tables within lists, and then ''when someone wants to expand them'', they can be split off, with human input and further information. Therefore any topic which an editor is willing to actually substantially improve would become an article, while the vast number which many of us are worried will not undergo any significant edits, will not be left in abandoned substubs. [[User:Girolamo Savonarola|Girolamo Savonarola]] ([[User talk:Girolamo Savonarola|talk]]) 01:17, 3 June 2008 (UTC) |
::We merge things all the time - in this case, the articles are bot-operated prosified statistics. There's no good reason why they couldn't be rendered as tables within lists, and then ''when someone wants to expand them'', they can be split off, with human input and further information. Therefore any topic which an editor is willing to actually substantially improve would become an article, while the vast number which many of us are worried will not undergo any significant edits, will not be left in abandoned substubs. [[User:Girolamo Savonarola|Girolamo Savonarola]] ([[User talk:Girolamo Savonarola|talk]]) 01:17, 3 June 2008 (UTC) |
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:::Perhaps this is where we do not see eye to eye. You envision one or two editors contributing a substantial amount of high quality content, while I envision dozens of anonymous users contributing a handful of sentences and corrections. We all dream of Wikipedia being perfect tomorrow, but we forget that it wasn't built yesterday. --[[User:NickPenguin|< |
:::Perhaps this is where we do not see eye to eye. You envision one or two editors contributing a substantial amount of high quality content, while I envision dozens of anonymous users contributing a handful of sentences and corrections. We all dream of Wikipedia being perfect tomorrow, but we forget that it wasn't built yesterday. --[[User:NickPenguin|<span style="color:darkgreen;">Nick</span>]][[User talk:NickPenguin|<span style="color:darkblue;">Penguin</span>]]<sub>([[Special:Contributions/NickPenguin|<span style="color:blue;">'''contribs'''</span>]])</sub> 01:28, 3 June 2008 (UTC) |
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::::I am intrigued by the proposal and am less than vehement in my opposition to it, but I do think it's not the best way to move forward. For the reasons Girolamo Savonarola laid out above, I would support it if it were a question of bot-generated tables. With such a scheme, many or most—perhaps eventually all—of the entries for which an article would be appropriate could get their own articles in due time. Full articles likewise could be based on stubs, but there is an advantage to that only if one believes that stubs have significantly more intrinsic value than items on a list, and I suspect that wouldn't be the case for most of the two million stubs that are proposed. The majority of them, I believe, would still be stubs a decade later. |
::::I am intrigued by the proposal and am less than vehement in my opposition to it, but I do think it's not the best way to move forward. For the reasons Girolamo Savonarola laid out above, I would support it if it were a question of bot-generated tables. With such a scheme, many or most—perhaps eventually all—of the entries for which an article would be appropriate could get their own articles in due time. Full articles likewise could be based on stubs, but there is an advantage to that only if one believes that stubs have significantly more intrinsic value than items on a list, and I suspect that wouldn't be the case for most of the two million stubs that are proposed. The majority of them, I believe, would still be stubs a decade later. |
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The [[WP:TAMBAY|editors of Philippine-related content]] had agreed on a tentative consensus that [[barangay]]s--the lowest level of political unit in the Philippines, currently totaling to 41,995, and are roughly the equivalent of villages in other countries--do not inherently deserve articles. In the next higher level of political units--[[municipalities of the Philippines|municipalities]] and [[Cities of the Philippines|cities]] (total: 1,631)--all of them already have articles with 2000 census info and locator maps. So this proposed bot job will have very little use for our particular needs. --[[User:Seav|seav]] ([[User talk:Seav|talk]]) 07:26, 4 June 2008 (UTC) |
The [[WP:TAMBAY|editors of Philippine-related content]] had agreed on a tentative consensus that [[barangay]]s--the lowest level of political unit in the Philippines, currently totaling to 41,995, and are roughly the equivalent of villages in other countries--do not inherently deserve articles. In the next higher level of political units--[[municipalities of the Philippines|municipalities]] and [[Cities of the Philippines|cities]] (total: 1,631)--all of them already have articles with 2000 census info and locator maps. So this proposed bot job will have very little use for our particular needs. --[[User:Seav|seav]] ([[User talk:Seav|talk]]) 07:26, 4 June 2008 (UTC) |
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Can I point out that this drive is intended to cover countries which have very poor coverage (much of Africa, Asia and Latin America) and the weaker parts of Europe, not those countries like Philippines and Italy which already have articles on all of the smaller towns or communes, Thankyou [[User:Blofeld of SPECTRE| <span style="border:1px solid blue;padding:1px;"> < |
Can I point out that this drive is intended to cover countries which have very poor coverage (much of Africa, Asia and Latin America) and the weaker parts of Europe, not those countries like Philippines and Italy which already have articles on all of the smaller towns or communes, Thankyou [[User:Blofeld of SPECTRE| <span style="border:1px solid blue;padding:1px;"> <span style="color:#fef;background:black;">'''''♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦'''''</span></span>]] <sup>[[User talk:Blofeld of SPECTRE| <span style="font-size:x-small; color:Black;">'''$1,000,000?'''</span> ]]</sup> 09:58, 4 June 2008 (UTC) |
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:Ah, but there is no mention of which countries are '''actually''' included in the scope of this bot discussion. Also, there are no articles on 99% of barangays in the Philippines and barangays are the closest equivalent of the villages that this bot project is intended to create articles on. So I'm right to assume that the Philippines is part of the intended scope of this bot project, and I'm preempting by saying that the Philippine WikiProject would likely opt out of this project given that this project intends to consult the various country-based WikiProjects. --[[User:Seav|seav]] ([[User talk:Seav|talk]]) 10:26, 4 June 2008 (UTC) |
:Ah, but there is no mention of which countries are '''actually''' included in the scope of this bot discussion. Also, there are no articles on 99% of barangays in the Philippines and barangays are the closest equivalent of the villages that this bot project is intended to create articles on. So I'm right to assume that the Philippines is part of the intended scope of this bot project, and I'm preempting by saying that the Philippine WikiProject would likely opt out of this project given that this project intends to consult the various country-based WikiProjects. --[[User:Seav|seav]] ([[User talk:Seav|talk]]) 10:26, 4 June 2008 (UTC) |
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::Your're completely missing the point of what is being proposed. It is exactly the responsibility of the new wikiproject and bot group to discuss with the wikirpojects first whether places are notable enough to start. When we come to the Philippines we ask "Hello WIkiProject Philippines. Which articles are notable or need starting? You reply "99% of barangays ar emissing, but they aren't worthy of note", so we say "OK, moving on with the next country", plain and simple. [[User:Blofeld of SPECTRE| <span style="border:1px solid blue;padding:1px;"> < |
::Your're completely missing the point of what is being proposed. It is exactly the responsibility of the new wikiproject and bot group to discuss with the wikirpojects first whether places are notable enough to start. When we come to the Philippines we ask "Hello WIkiProject Philippines. Which articles are notable or need starting? You reply "99% of barangays ar emissing, but they aren't worthy of note", so we say "OK, moving on with the next country", plain and simple. [[User:Blofeld of SPECTRE| <span style="border:1px solid blue;padding:1px;"> <span style="color:#fef;background:black;">'''''♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦'''''</span></span>]] <sup>[[User talk:Blofeld of SPECTRE| <span style="font-size:x-small; color:Black;">'''$1,000,000?'''</span> ]]</sup> 10:56, 4 June 2008 (UTC) |
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:::No, I get the point. That's why I created this section: to essentially say "skip the Philippines." Read the title of the section. --[[User:Seav|seav]] ([[User talk:Seav|talk]]) 11:11, 4 June 2008 (UTC) |
:::No, I get the point. That's why I created this section: to essentially say "skip the Philippines." Read the title of the section. --[[User:Seav|seav]] ([[User talk:Seav|talk]]) 11:11, 4 June 2008 (UTC) |
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I think this raises a good point, the very countries that wikipedia supposedly has systemic bias against that this will supposedly fix, are the ones that are likely to have no wikiproject editors with the knowledge to work with this bot, and many that do are probaby already done. I think giving example countries might be a very good idea at this time. [[User:MickMacNee|MickMacNee]] ([[User talk:MickMacNee|talk]]) 22:36, 4 June 2008 (UTC) |
I think this raises a good point, the very countries that wikipedia supposedly has systemic bias against that this will supposedly fix, are the ones that are likely to have no wikiproject editors with the knowledge to work with this bot, and many that do are probaby already done. I think giving example countries might be a very good idea at this time. [[User:MickMacNee|MickMacNee]] ([[User talk:MickMacNee|talk]]) 22:36, 4 June 2008 (UTC) |
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*Perhaps we should begin a trial run with some smaller countries, maybe island regions like [[Wikipedia:WikiProject_Council/Directory/Geographical/Americas#Caribbean|the Caribbean]], [[Wikipedia:WikiProject_Council/Directory/Geographical#Melanesia|Melanesia]], [[Wikipedia:WikiProject_Council/Directory/Geographical#Micronesia|Micronesia]], and [[Wikipedia:WikiProject_Council/Directory/Geographical#Polynesia|Polynesia]]? Many of them have WikiProjects to contact. '''EDIT''' Actually, [[Wikipedia:WikiProject_Council/Directory/Geographical|most countries]] have a WikiProject you can contact. --[[User:NickPenguin|< |
*Perhaps we should begin a trial run with some smaller countries, maybe island regions like [[Wikipedia:WikiProject_Council/Directory/Geographical/Americas#Caribbean|the Caribbean]], [[Wikipedia:WikiProject_Council/Directory/Geographical#Melanesia|Melanesia]], [[Wikipedia:WikiProject_Council/Directory/Geographical#Micronesia|Micronesia]], and [[Wikipedia:WikiProject_Council/Directory/Geographical#Polynesia|Polynesia]]? Many of them have WikiProjects to contact. '''EDIT''' Actually, [[Wikipedia:WikiProject_Council/Directory/Geographical|most countries]] have a WikiProject you can contact. --[[User:NickPenguin|<span style="color:darkgreen;">Nick</span>]][[User talk:NickPenguin|<span style="color:darkblue;">Penguin</span>]]<sub>([[Special:Contributions/NickPenguin|<span style="color:blue;">'''contribs'''</span>]])</sub> 00:42, 5 June 2008 (UTC) |
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:Um, I think that's actually '''all''' countries, although [[Mongolia]] doesn't have one specifically devoted exclusively to the extant nation of Mongolia. [[User:John Carter|John Carter]] ([[User talk:John Carter|talk]]) 16:47, 5 June 2008 (UTC) |
:Um, I think that's actually '''all''' countries, although [[Mongolia]] doesn't have one specifically devoted exclusively to the extant nation of Mongolia. [[User:John Carter|John Carter]] ([[User talk:John Carter|talk]]) 16:47, 5 June 2008 (UTC) |
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::Actually, I noticed that you're the only member for a whole lot of those WikiProjects, so I guess you're going to be hearing from us a lot ;P --[[User:NickPenguin|< |
::Actually, I noticed that you're the only member for a whole lot of those WikiProjects, so I guess you're going to be hearing from us a lot ;P --[[User:NickPenguin|<span style="color:darkgreen;">Nick</span>]][[User talk:NickPenguin|<span style="color:darkblue;">Penguin</span>]]<sub>([[Special:Contributions/NickPenguin|<span style="color:blue;">'''contribs'''</span>]])</sub> 22:52, 5 June 2008 (UTC) |
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:::I agree, many were created as subprojects of the existing regional projects, at least in part as ways to allow editors who have an interest in only one country in a region to be able to keep track of the articles of interest to them. All those you mention do however use the regional projects banner. And, it should also be noted, many of these are comparatively new projects. However, the fact that there is so little interest in so many countries, however, is I think one of the reasons why it makes sense to use the automatic creation method, unless we want to continue to see huge, gaping lacks of content regarding several parts of the world. [[User:John Carter|John Carter]] ([[User talk:John Carter|talk]]) 22:56, 5 June 2008 (UTC) |
:::I agree, many were created as subprojects of the existing regional projects, at least in part as ways to allow editors who have an interest in only one country in a region to be able to keep track of the articles of interest to them. All those you mention do however use the regional projects banner. And, it should also be noted, many of these are comparatively new projects. However, the fact that there is so little interest in so many countries, however, is I think one of the reasons why it makes sense to use the automatic creation method, unless we want to continue to see huge, gaping lacks of content regarding several parts of the world. [[User:John Carter|John Carter]] ([[User talk:John Carter|talk]]) 22:56, 5 June 2008 (UTC) |
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::::I am inclined to agree. I also think there's something to the adage that if you build it, they will come. No one (or very few people, it seems) want to join a WikiProject with only one or two articles to edit. --[[User:NickPenguin|< |
::::I am inclined to agree. I also think there's something to the adage that if you build it, they will come. No one (or very few people, it seems) want to join a WikiProject with only one or two articles to edit. --[[User:NickPenguin|<span style="color:darkgreen;">Nick</span>]][[User talk:NickPenguin|<span style="color:darkblue;">Penguin</span>]]<sub>([[Special:Contributions/NickPenguin|<span style="color:blue;">'''contribs'''</span>]])</sub> 22:58, 5 June 2008 (UTC) |
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:::::No, if there not enough editors interested in doing articles on a country, then no one will join the project (except of course JC). [[User:Johnbod|Johnbod]] ([[User talk:Johnbod|talk]]) 02:23, 6 June 2008 (UTC) |
:::::No, if there not enough editors interested in doing articles on a country, then no one will join the project (except of course JC). [[User:Johnbod|Johnbod]] ([[User talk:Johnbod|talk]]) 02:23, 6 June 2008 (UTC) |
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::::::Probably right, although it should be noted that, to date, many haven't done much to publicize themselves. However, as stated elsewhere, it's probably better to have one comparatively inactive project, with a common banner, than a similarly inactive project with its own banner which has to replaced with that same common banner somewhere down the road. However, that would, I think, make it more important to ensure that the articles relating to those areas which are of encyclopedic merit, if not particular popularity, to be geneated somehow, even if by bot if that is the only practicable way to do so, otherwise we will continue to have fairly large, rather unpleasantly obvious, gaps in our coverage, which most would probably prefer not to see. [[User:John Carter|John Carter]] ([[User talk:John Carter|talk]]) 02:45, 6 June 2008 (UTC) |
::::::Probably right, although it should be noted that, to date, many haven't done much to publicize themselves. However, as stated elsewhere, it's probably better to have one comparatively inactive project, with a common banner, than a similarly inactive project with its own banner which has to replaced with that same common banner somewhere down the road. However, that would, I think, make it more important to ensure that the articles relating to those areas which are of encyclopedic merit, if not particular popularity, to be geneated somehow, even if by bot if that is the only practicable way to do so, otherwise we will continue to have fairly large, rather unpleasantly obvious, gaps in our coverage, which most would probably prefer not to see. [[User:John Carter|John Carter]] ([[User talk:John Carter|talk]]) 02:45, 6 June 2008 (UTC) |
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:::::::::::::Which members? How many? For an entire continent. And Blofeld's comments make it absolutely clear to me that he sees this bot as a priority task for wikipedia, but I'm repeating things I've already said. 02:09, 6 June 2008 (UTC) |
:::::::::::::Which members? How many? For an entire continent. And Blofeld's comments make it absolutely clear to me that he sees this bot as a priority task for wikipedia, but I'm repeating things I've already said. 02:09, 6 June 2008 (UTC) |
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Ahh! Diametrically opposed philosophical views are flying! Whatever can we do? Why don't we pick a name for a dedicated WikiProject, and with a fresh slate, the interested parties can find [[Wikipedia:CON|concensus]] on the fine details of the bot. We all promise not to do something crazy. --[[User:NickPenguin|< |
Ahh! Diametrically opposed philosophical views are flying! Whatever can we do? Why don't we pick a name for a dedicated WikiProject, and with a fresh slate, the interested parties can find [[Wikipedia:CON|concensus]] on the fine details of the bot. We all promise not to do something crazy. --[[User:NickPenguin|<span style="color:darkgreen;">Nick</span>]][[User talk:NickPenguin|<span style="color:darkblue;">Penguin</span>]]<sub>([[Special:Contributions/NickPenguin|<span style="color:blue;">'''contribs'''</span>]])</sub> 02:14, 6 June 2008 (UTC) |
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:Personally, I think the project already exists, [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles]]. It is to a subpage of that project that we're placing the lists of places. I have also noted that a few other projects have expressed concerns about their own missing articles. WikiProject Mammals, for instance, has indicated on its talk page that it still has several articles that it believes to be notable which have yet to be created. If, and that is a big if, we can find some sort of public domain source to at least begin articles on the ones which that project believes are more or less required, and I think they were considering those to be the genus as opposed to species articles, then it could potentially help there as well. The same may well be true for any number of other projects. And, like I said, I think that at least I am going to try to ensure that, however long the lists are, I am going to try to ensure that only those which I can verify through sources at hand to me definitely have enough potential content to merit at least a very good stub, and probably a start, will be those which I request be created. However, I do think that it would also make sense to check with all the various geographic projects, including the WikiProjects Rivers, Lakes, Glaciers, Mountains, Volcanoes, and others to see if they wish to participate as well. I know the sites we're using list other geographical features as well, and if nothing else we might be able to add infoboxes to those that don't have them and at least a little content to those which are weak stubs. [[User:John Carter|John Carter]] ([[User talk:John Carter|talk]]) 12:58, 6 June 2008 (UTC) |
:Personally, I think the project already exists, [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles]]. It is to a subpage of that project that we're placing the lists of places. I have also noted that a few other projects have expressed concerns about their own missing articles. WikiProject Mammals, for instance, has indicated on its talk page that it still has several articles that it believes to be notable which have yet to be created. If, and that is a big if, we can find some sort of public domain source to at least begin articles on the ones which that project believes are more or less required, and I think they were considering those to be the genus as opposed to species articles, then it could potentially help there as well. The same may well be true for any number of other projects. And, like I said, I think that at least I am going to try to ensure that, however long the lists are, I am going to try to ensure that only those which I can verify through sources at hand to me definitely have enough potential content to merit at least a very good stub, and probably a start, will be those which I request be created. However, I do think that it would also make sense to check with all the various geographic projects, including the WikiProjects Rivers, Lakes, Glaciers, Mountains, Volcanoes, and others to see if they wish to participate as well. I know the sites we're using list other geographical features as well, and if nothing else we might be able to add infoboxes to those that don't have them and at least a little content to those which are weak stubs. [[User:John Carter|John Carter]] ([[User talk:John Carter|talk]]) 12:58, 6 June 2008 (UTC) |
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::::They are the same thing, using a bot to increase the coverage of wikipedia by auto suggesting articles from databases, exposing the systemic bias argument as a mere makeweight for making changes that go further than just correcting bias in geo-projects, despite the fact no one has an effective argument on whether this supposed bias is a good or bad thing presently, or if it is a priority to fix quickly with bots, or just another facet of the encyclopoedia that anyone can edit, which will improve as we move towards the [[WP:DEADLINE|deadline]]. [[User:MickMacNee|MickMacNee]] ([[User talk:MickMacNee|talk]]) 16:47, 6 June 2008 (UTC) |
::::They are the same thing, using a bot to increase the coverage of wikipedia by auto suggesting articles from databases, exposing the systemic bias argument as a mere makeweight for making changes that go further than just correcting bias in geo-projects, despite the fact no one has an effective argument on whether this supposed bias is a good or bad thing presently, or if it is a priority to fix quickly with bots, or just another facet of the encyclopoedia that anyone can edit, which will improve as we move towards the [[WP:DEADLINE|deadline]]. [[User:MickMacNee|MickMacNee]] ([[User talk:MickMacNee|talk]]) 16:47, 6 June 2008 (UTC) |
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:To address the concern that stubs will never be improved/expanded, can the bot be allowed only if the related-country project has atleast 10 members with 500 edits (or more) and have been active in the last 6 months. This way the project will have to invite/establish members first before requesting a bot-run. Thoughts? Regards, < |
:To address the concern that stubs will never be improved/expanded, can the bot be allowed only if the related-country project has atleast 10 members with 500 edits (or more) and have been active in the last 6 months. This way the project will have to invite/establish members first before requesting a bot-run. Thoughts? Regards, [[User:Ganeshk|<span style="color:navy;">Ganeshk</span>]] <span style="color:navy;">([[User talk:Ganeshk|<span style="color:navy;">talk</span>]])</span> 23:20, 6 June 2008 (UTC) |
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::Doesn't even approach the inherent problem (pardon the pun). How about it can only be used if all members of the project take an oath that they will never attempt to claim that geographic locations are inherently notable, and will only use the bot to create articles about places that have been examined directly and in detail in multiple independent third-party sources? [[User:Kww|Kww]] ([[User talk:Kww|talk]]) 00:04, 7 June 2008 (UTC) |
::Doesn't even approach the inherent problem (pardon the pun). How about it can only be used if all members of the project take an oath that they will never attempt to claim that geographic locations are inherently notable, and will only use the bot to create articles about places that have been examined directly and in detail in multiple independent third-party sources? [[User:Kww|Kww]] ([[User talk:Kww|talk]]) 00:04, 7 June 2008 (UTC) |
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:::Uh, while we're at it, why don't we make them take an oath that they are not and never have been a member of the Communist Party? They can claim whatever they want.--[[User:Prosfilaes|Prosfilaes]] ([[User talk:Prosfilaes|talk]]) 01:48, 7 June 2008 (UTC) |
:::Uh, while we're at it, why don't we make them take an oath that they are not and never have been a member of the Communist Party? They can claim whatever they want.--[[User:Prosfilaes|Prosfilaes]] ([[User talk:Prosfilaes|talk]]) 01:48, 7 June 2008 (UTC) |
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# That this needs wrapping up sooner than I am able to |
# That this needs wrapping up sooner than I am able to |
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:please make notification here. I don't want to spend several hours on this only for an editor to express concerns that I may be biased or unable to consider impartially here. Ta! <small><span style="border:1px solid #0000ff;padding:1px;">[[User:Pedro|<b>Pedro</b>]] : [[User_talk:Pedro|< |
:please make notification here. I don't want to spend several hours on this only for an editor to express concerns that I may be biased or unable to consider impartially here. Ta! <small><span style="border:1px solid #0000ff;padding:1px;">[[User:Pedro|<b>Pedro</b>]] : [[User_talk:Pedro|<span style="color:#accC10; background:#0000fa;"> Chat </span>]] </span></small> 11:31, 7 June 2008 (UTC) |
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::I would only add that I personally think that there might be further modifications to the procedure by which the articles to be chosen to be generated might be selected, and that those modifications, if enacted, might both potentially increase the number of potentially creatable articles, and, at the same time, decrease the number of articles actually created. I base this on the idea, which I think is at least slightly substantiated, that several populated places, such as harbors, might not be listed as populated places, but rather as harbors or whatever, in the various sources. I am e-mailing the creator of the bot with the possibly lengthy and meandering proposal of the revisions I am suggesting. [[User:John Carter|John Carter]] ([[User talk:John Carter|talk]]) 15:09, 7 June 2008 (UTC) |
::I would only add that I personally think that there might be further modifications to the procedure by which the articles to be chosen to be generated might be selected, and that those modifications, if enacted, might both potentially increase the number of potentially creatable articles, and, at the same time, decrease the number of articles actually created. I base this on the idea, which I think is at least slightly substantiated, that several populated places, such as harbors, might not be listed as populated places, but rather as harbors or whatever, in the various sources. I am e-mailing the creator of the bot with the possibly lengthy and meandering proposal of the revisions I am suggesting. [[User:John Carter|John Carter]] ([[User talk:John Carter|talk]]) 15:09, 7 June 2008 (UTC) |
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:Alas, I'm '''not''' going to close this, but would like to give expanded reasoning and hopefully some insight. Firstly, some notes, to save them being wasted; |
:Alas, I'm '''not''' going to close this, but would like to give expanded reasoning and hopefully some insight. Firstly, some notes, to save them being wasted; |
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:'''However''', the supporters cannot be ignored due to a lack of challenge to their support (although there was much, it appears to be more related to wider ranging issues and not the one at hand). Aditionally, one must also factor in that supporters of a given recommendation are often less strong and vocal in their words, but are still passionate in their support - just feeling or assuming that they do not need to be verbose in defining their reasoning. '''Most importantly''', given the level of attention this conversation has received, given that this is a debate that is unlikely to attract "fly-by" comments due to its deep policy/guideline/technical nature, I find a lot of community support. I believe that although there are issues, and this is a tight call, there is probably consensus to move forwards, despite the accurate and passionate concerns of the opposers. |
:'''However''', the supporters cannot be ignored due to a lack of challenge to their support (although there was much, it appears to be more related to wider ranging issues and not the one at hand). Aditionally, one must also factor in that supporters of a given recommendation are often less strong and vocal in their words, but are still passionate in their support - just feeling or assuming that they do not need to be verbose in defining their reasoning. '''Most importantly''', given the level of attention this conversation has received, given that this is a debate that is unlikely to attract "fly-by" comments due to its deep policy/guideline/technical nature, I find a lot of community support. I believe that although there are issues, and this is a tight call, there is probably consensus to move forwards, despite the accurate and passionate concerns of the opposers. |
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:'''Why I must recuse myself from closing'''. Reading back and forth I find I believe that there would be more help than harm in this revised proposal. Were I to have come to this page with the sole intention of commenting I would support the proposal. Given that I have been convinced by the arguments that this should move forth, and given that I, on balance, believe consensus is, in fact, for this to move forth, I must recuse myself. My apologies, but I cannot in good faith now act neutrally, although it would be easy for me to pretend otherwise. |
:'''Why I must recuse myself from closing'''. Reading back and forth I find I believe that there would be more help than harm in this revised proposal. Were I to have come to this page with the sole intention of commenting I would support the proposal. Given that I have been convinced by the arguments that this should move forth, and given that I, on balance, believe consensus is, in fact, for this to move forth, I must recuse myself. My apologies, but I cannot in good faith now act neutrally, although it would be easy for me to pretend otherwise. |
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:I trust that my notes and comments above will be of assisatnce in resolving this debate, one way or the other. <small><span style="border:1px solid #0000ff;padding:1px;">[[User:Pedro|<b>Pedro</b>]] : [[User_talk:Pedro|< |
:I trust that my notes and comments above will be of assisatnce in resolving this debate, one way or the other. <small><span style="border:1px solid #0000ff;padding:1px;">[[User:Pedro|<b>Pedro</b>]] : [[User_talk:Pedro|<span style="color:#accC10; background:#0000fa;"> Chat </span>]] </span></small> 20:18, 7 June 2008 (UTC) |
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::Thanks for your careful reading of all this stuff, comments and integrity in recusing yourself. From my perspective, this proposal can only be judged by actual '''results''' from a limited trial run, and I would urge the proposer to arrange for such a trial in a location of his (or the discussion group's) choice, using (as best he can) the constructive comments and suggestions upthread. It would be interesting to see if the bot could produce something useful. Cheers, [[User:Tillman|Pete Tillman]] ([[User talk:Tillman|talk]]) 23:20, 7 June 2008 (UTC) |
::Thanks for your careful reading of all this stuff, comments and integrity in recusing yourself. From my perspective, this proposal can only be judged by actual '''results''' from a limited trial run, and I would urge the proposer to arrange for such a trial in a location of his (or the discussion group's) choice, using (as best he can) the constructive comments and suggestions upthread. It would be interesting to see if the bot could produce something useful. Cheers, [[User:Tillman|Pete Tillman]] ([[User talk:Tillman|talk]]) 23:20, 7 June 2008 (UTC) |
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:::Why did you waste your time writing that? By "the level [this debate] belongs" did you mean insult?--[[User:Prosfilaes|Prosfilaes]] ([[User talk:Prosfilaes|talk]]) 20:10, 8 June 2008 (UTC) |
:::Why did you waste your time writing that? By "the level [this debate] belongs" did you mean insult?--[[User:Prosfilaes|Prosfilaes]] ([[User talk:Prosfilaes|talk]]) 20:10, 8 June 2008 (UTC) |
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::::No, but again, this fact is clearly passing you by. [[User:MickMacNee|MickMacNee]] ([[User talk:MickMacNee|talk]]) 20:16, 8 June 2008 (UTC) |
::::No, but again, this fact is clearly passing you by. [[User:MickMacNee|MickMacNee]] ([[User talk:MickMacNee|talk]]) 20:16, 8 June 2008 (UTC) |
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::And if this proposal is passed, there's nothing to say that the opposers can't join the discussion in the WikiProject. Their voices would be a welcome balance, if anything. --[[User:NickPenguin|< |
::And if this proposal is passed, there's nothing to say that the opposers can't join the discussion in the WikiProject. Their voices would be a welcome balance, if anything. --[[User:NickPenguin|<span style="color:darkgreen;">Nick</span>]][[User talk:NickPenguin|<span style="color:darkblue;">Penguin</span>]]<sub>([[Special:Contributions/NickPenguin|<span style="color:blue;">'''contribs'''</span>]])</sub> 18:05, 8 June 2008 (UTC) |
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:'''Qualified Support''' I have been highly critical of this project from the start, but after receving assurances from this thead, and messages to my talk page, I am fairly confident that enough has been done to take this from village pump level to "higher up". There is enough consensus hear to indicate that the problems I have may not be resolved, but there is no point using any further argument. This now has to go the next level of Wikipedia, it's too big for the VP to say "yea" or "nea".[[User:Doktorbuk|doktorb]] <sub>[[User talk:Doktorbuk|words]]</sub><sup>[[Special:Contributions/Doktorbuk|deeds]]</sup> 20:24, 8 June 2008 (UTC) |
:'''Qualified Support''' I have been highly critical of this project from the start, but after receving assurances from this thead, and messages to my talk page, I am fairly confident that enough has been done to take this from village pump level to "higher up". There is enough consensus hear to indicate that the problems I have may not be resolved, but there is no point using any further argument. This now has to go the next level of Wikipedia, it's too big for the VP to say "yea" or "nea".[[User:Doktorbuk|doktorb]] <sub>[[User talk:Doktorbuk|words]]</sub><sup>[[Special:Contributions/Doktorbuk|deeds]]</sup> 20:24, 8 June 2008 (UTC) |
Latest revision as of 18:33, 2 April 2023
Result: Approved
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The following is an archived discussion. Please do not modify it. |
What this discussion is about[edit]User:FritzpollBot was recently approved at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/FritzpollBot to create stub articles for most or all of the documented villages and towns in the world in the style of User:Fritzpoll/GeoBot/Example (apparently using data from the NGIA(?)). Since this would have created about 2 million stub articles, broader approval of the Bot was sought from the community. The initial proposal has been changed, and the current proposal, to be found in the section immediately below, is the subject of current discussion. Alternative: a new proposal[edit]This entire page was 12 hours old before I even knew it existed, by which time there were misunderstandings, and raging arguments taking place. I have read what has been said, and believe there is net support for at least the principle of evening up (to a greater or lesser extent) the geographical coverage of Wikipedia. However, there are many legitimate concerns, and I have taken these on board and now present an amended proposal for the community's consideration Proposal[edit]The executive summary of my proposal is this: bot automation driven by WikiProjects, operating within community-defined guidelines. Here is the meat of it. 1. A new WikiProject is created to coordinate the activities of the bot (What bot?). This allows for a central group of volunteers to assist with the generic tasks involved in making this project work (What project?), and gives a centralised palce for questions to be asked, and new proposals and requests to be made The first job of the new WikiProject will be to clean up the existing articles on settlements, adding valuable referenced paragraphs of text, infoboxes with referenced data and locator maps etc to existing articles or existing sub stubs or poor articles to improve quality and consistency by country in collaboration with the wikiprojects before starting work on developing each country. 2. Before beginning work on a new country, the relevant WikiProjects are contacted. These will include the country WikiProjects, continental WikiProjects, and subject-based WikiProjects. We will seek some volunteers - if no, or insufficient volunteers for a country can be obtained, we ignore this country for the time being. 3. Together with the WikiProjects, a collection of sources will be obtained. The default will be an amalgamation of the US GNS data and the census data of various countries obtainable from the following list of resources http://www.census.gov/main/www/stat_int.html. If census data is not available, unreliable, or imcomplete, work on the country will be suspended until it is, or until other, reliable sources can be found to add this kind of data. 4a. Once source collection has occurred, the bot will be tuned to output lists similar in format to those already being created, but with the addition of population data, and hopefully other elements such as elevation data etc. The output will be seperated into subpages, with a subpage devoted to those places the bot is unable to reconclile between databases. 4b. The bot will not upload any data for places where the census data indicates that the dwelling is too small, with size to be determined here by community consensus (not voting!). More on this below. 5. Data will be checked, as per the old proposal, by human editors to ensure correct spellings, check for disambiguation, etc. In the case where the bot cannot automatically reconcile data from the existing sources, human editors must add a reference to their corrections to indicate how they reconciled the data (looking at an atlas, for instance). Most data reconciliation failures are likely to be failures to correlate census data to coordinate data. These references will ultimately also be uploaded by the bot 6. Once the project agrees that the data has been checked, and is ready for upload, relevant parties (such as New Page Patrol) will be given notice of an upload - I propose 30 mins notice - and the bot will automatically create the articles according to a template agreed with the WikiProjects. The articles will include all the above data, and all the references to it. 7. The bot will watchlist the articles to prevent flooding Special:UnwatchedPages and create a list of articles it created - this list will be posted to allow the WikiProject volunteers to watch the pages that they helped to create. 8. When they are first determined, the relevant notability policy will state specifically the initial minimum standards for "inherent notability" of villages, including global standards and any national exceptions. The initial specifics may be more narrow (such as minimum three or four independent reliable sources, What use is this?[edit]The advantages to the above are that, although a little slower, we end up with more than one-line stubs, and because countries can be worked on in parallel by multiple WikiProjects on their own subpage within a separate WikiProject (the new one proposed above), the speed factor is also maintained. Thus there is an increase in quality with a minor cost in speed compared to the old proposals. By involving the WikiProjects in the way described, we ensure that there is sufficient interest in the articles, we obtain new and useful sources, and we ensure that there is someone to watchlist the pages afterwards. The difference, therefore, between this and the old proposal is the increase in quality, and breadth of sourcing. These will not be single-sourced articles, and we will be able to devote our time to finding new and reliable sources of data. The WikiProjects also end up with a series of extra articles that they wanted, in the format they wanted. An example of how the project has already been moving in this direction is a discussion I have had with a member of WikiProject Russia, who is collating a list of sourced data in a database, and we want to help them by uploading the data when it is complete. Other points[edit]This proposal will probably drastically reduce the number of articles created, but I hope people will understand that this proposal by its very nature will not yield a good estimate of the number of articles created. It will be nowhere near the predictions of the first proposal, however. I also hope the community will understand that an example is difficult to give, since I would have to first go and collect the data and sources for an entire country to create a handful of articles. This would not be in the interest of the articles in question. The rough layout of the articles created under this proposal would not be significantly different to the original - there would be an infobox, categories and text. The text would be more substantial given the additional sources, and the external links currently in the article would not exist in this new iteration. Onwards to discussion...[edit]I believe this proposal will qualm the legitimate fears of vandalism, unsure notability and low quality of stubs. The one point about the above, beyond acceptance, that needs to be considered above is point 4b). The easiest automatic criterion is size. There is no need to have a permanent, everlasting limit - a limit that can later be reviewed if it is found to be inadequate is probably best, so that we introduce articles slowly. My suggestion is that the community pick a percentage representing the lowest size of town/village to be included - the percentage would be "as a percentage of the capital city of the country". So if you picked 50%, all dwellings that had a population greater than half the population of the capital city would be included by the bot. The reason for doing this is that it is fairer than selecting a fixed number, like 30,000, since less developed countries will not necessarily have reached the levels of urbanisation that we consider. This proposal should satisfy most of those "on the fence" for the previous proposal, should continue to garner support from those supporting it, and may even address some of the concerns of those who opposed. But let's not make the following discussion divisive. I beg, no more straw polls, no more "voting" - let's just talk about this rationally. Let the games begin! Fritzpoll (talk) 11:53, 2 June 2008 (UTC) Interested editors in joining the new WikiProject[edit]For editors who are willing to work as a team to develop and take some responsibility for organizing or developing FritzPoll bot please sign here. This may include editors from relative wikipojects who may have a specific interest in working on one country as part of the project or editors who have a general interest in working as a team to achieve new objectives:
Straw Poll[edit]
I like it as it stands[edit]
"official" names for many countries is indeed difficult when many variations exist and ther eisn't an abundance of data. This is why people who may have specific knowledge from the wikiprojects who may be a nativ eof that country may be able to help sort things out before creation ♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦ $1,000,000? 10:24, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
I like it with reservations[edit]
I have serious reservations that cause me to vote no[edit]
Serious reservations -- I don't see how you can expect us to support your proposal without some concrete examples of the bot's output. The samples I saw earlier were pretty bad -- most of them should probably be deleted. Pete Tillman (talk) 22:39, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
No, it's just a bad idea[edit]
I've said this to other editors who don't like the idea of a bot. Can I just say that the idea of the bot creating a few articles automatically is so many editors such as myself can no longer spend all our time creating articles on geo stubs and trying to address the huge bias on here, but can focus on quality, on building up stubs to start class articles. I dedicate a lot of time to wikipedia and creating new articles but if I could soley spend my editing time on here writing the articles that exist, things would be looking a lot better. Perhaps the millions of articles thing was overly ambitious. It would take over a year to create that many and to expand each and every one of them would be a difficult task indeed, time which you or I haven't got. What we can do however it do several thousand at a time and get the wikirpojects involved so we can aim to get a team working at expanding a sensible number of articles of the most notable articles e.g towns with a poulation over 1000 that could quite feasibly be expanded and not remain permastubs. Ideally I;d love to have full and detailed articles on everywhere, but the huge problem is access to knowledge. Realistically if we could get many onto to here like this, it would give us a firm basis to build upon sensibly. I think the new proposal has a lot of positice points, I agree bots are stupid, even Mr Fritz. the bot programmer is the first to say this. But if it is used in the right way and coordinated and regulated closely it can be a very powerful and efficent tool in setting up a foundation to build upon as of course we write the articles!!. I have spent many weeks laone trying to adding infoboxes and refs to the geo articles which already exist by country and the biggest problem by far is lack of consistency and general shoddiness of starting them. Some editors don't get me wrong cna start articles correctly and get things off to a good start but the majority are not done in a manner expected of wikipedia and it takes weeks to sort out the mess. But if we have a bank of articles under the whim of wikiprojects and along with the editors like myself who work on geo articles we can try to build the best we can which help people in the most efficient and consistent way we can. Whatever is thought of me, I would rather not create 2 million perma stubs either and am here to build an encyclopedia of the highest quality and depth. It should be done in stages but we need to start from somewhere. Best regards ♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦ $1,000,000? 20:08, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
☯Ferdia O'Brien (T)/(C) 10:11, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
I'm a Luddite[edit]
Discussion[edit]So we just scrap the previous discussions because you didn't see it? Seems strange, at the least. I still oppose the whole plan, per the reasons I already gave. Thanks for the opportunity to voice my opinion, again. IvoShandor (talk) 13:41, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
The watchlisting bit should be removed. Special:Unwatchedpages is already pretty useless, adding them to the bot's watchlist is just a waste of server space and could be misleading if the page is ever made useful in the future. Mr.Z-man 19:18, 2 June 2008 (UTC) Size limits[edit]I would like to see the bot operate with an absolute size limit for population, and move that limit downwards over time. As an initial number, let me toss out 10.000 - that would make sure there isn't two million entries created in the first round, and increase the consistent coverage of Wikipedia. --Alvestrand (talk) 13:49, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
I don't strongly favour fixed population limits and like the idea to get guidance from WikiProjects. However, I do think we need a community-wide approximate default, and that variations around this default (both wholesale changes to the default, and individual exceptions) should be based on the availability of reliable secondary sources. I see the need for percentages for smaller countries, but a percentage doesn't work well across the spectrum from Niue to China: cutoffs are needed. I also think that percentage of total population may be a safer measure than percentage of capital city. I would propose something like the following (the specific figures are just to make the principle easier to understand):
The * is to emphasise that this can be an approximate default. From the point of view of notability, it is important to get the figure "20" right, and this is best left to WikiProjects to demonstrate their sources. From the point of view of not flooding the encyclopedia, it is important to get the figure "1000" right. (My belief is that 1000 is a safe figure here and will result in less than 200000 new stubs, but a higher figure is fine with me: 10000 is certainly safe.) The percentage scale interpolates between these figures in a way that treats medium-sized countries fairly. Geometry guy 22:29, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
I'd rather not have any population limit; Amorita, Oklahoma (for example) is a perfectly fine stub to build on, and it's likely a better stub than what anyone who was going to create the article would create.--Prosfilaes (talk) 17:52, 4 June 2008 (UTC) Relation to existing stubs[edit]There are many place stubs with low quality, and lots of information (census data, references, maps) that FritzpollBot can do better than a human editor. I suggest that for existing places, FritzPollbot place a subpage of the form /AutoGenerated with what it would have generated, and a human editor can "pull up" the stuff that he likes. --Alvestrand (talk) 13:49, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
Global coordination[edit]I think we should have a Wikiproject page for the bot itself, where global issues are addressed. This should link to other participating WikiProjects. There should also be a "single place to go" to see all upcoming scheduled runs of the bot, with advanced notice of at least 24 hours for large runs and at least 30 minutes for runs larger than a handful of articles. This page should also have an emergency-stop switch that would stop the bot and suspend all upcoming runs. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 14:10, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
Thoughts[edit]I might support this (notability has never seemed a problem to me), but I still have questions. 1) Could you please elaborate how it is possible to make sure that all the produced pages will be watchlisted by somebody with enough expertise to detect misinformation in the future? It is still not very clear. Authors normally know something about the places they write about, randomly assigned volunteers don't. 2) What is wrong with the suggestion to create lists with redirects instead of stubs? They are much easier to patrol. 3) How will it be possible to clear the backlog of orphaned stubs? And if we are going to create lists anyway (which may be useful for other reasons, but is an artificial and wrong way to clear the backlog), why do we need the stubs? Colchicum (talk) 14:16, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
Italy experience[edit]I've a similar experience to Llywrch's Ethiopia experience reported above - this year I've spent a lot of time sorting out the place articles in Italy. Which as countries go should be as good as it gets - a highly developed, top 10 economy with one of the most active Wikipedias at it.wikipedia.org, Internet availability is not an issue, massive emigration to anglophone countries and a popular holiday destination to ensure lots of English speakers are interested in it, plus in the top 5 for length of recorded history and archaeology. Everything is in your favour, it must have some of the most notable territory on the planet if you define notability by the availability of sources. And yet.... ...notability for Italian settlements seems to dry up somewhere around the 2000 population mark, even on it.wiki where they have all the "home team" advantages. On a consistent basis anyway, that's just an observation of what seems to "work" out in the field. It gets pretty patchy below that, and often the smaller villages work better merged into a larger administrative area, often the most notable thing in an area doesn't fit neatly into a village in any case. There are advantages in having a broad picture in a single article rather than lots of microarticles. But for the rest of the world, I'd suggest a mental model of somewhere in the 5000-10,000 population mark as being the lower limit for consistent notability, which is nice because that typically corresponds to a unit of municipal administration - the township, commune, municipality, district or whatver. In Italy the equivalent level is the comune - the population of 60m people is spread over 8,101 comuni, an average of 7,400 people per comune, although that's distorted a bit by the likes of Rome and Milan, I guess the median is about 6000 people. That's the level of local administration that has a mayor, town hall etc, and is the level you should be aiming for - we (now, finally!) have an article for all 8101 of those Each of those comuni typically has a couple of subdivisions (frazioni, località and the like, approximating to wards or parishes) so there must be 40,000+ of those - but en.wiki only has about 200 of those, and it.wiki has about 1700 but a lot of those are either- I'd guess that long term the "right" number would be somewhere around 1000 out of 40,000+. However one of my long-term aims would be to create redirects for all 40,000-odd frazioni to the appropriate comune article. Honestly, the comune articles just seem to "work", whereas going down to frazione level tends not to - there are real synergies in not fragmenting the information too finely, and information about the frazioni is still on Wikipedia, it just gets a bit more context from being in the comune article. And that's just from the perspective of Italy, which has so many advantages in proving notability from WP:RS. Perhaps the sensible thing would be to go down to township level for countries like Italy, and down to the step above (counties/provinces/the unit covering 50,000-100,000 people) for countries where WP:RS are more scanty. That way every point on earth is covered by a Wikipedia article, but that article has a chance of being notable in its own right. The debate is not about comprehensiveness, but about the granularity of that comprehensiveness. Obviously in almost every case (perhaps barring the likes of Nauru?) the granularity should be below "country" level, but personally I think "village" level is too fine a cut. And I don't like using geographical entities such as "village" - it doesn't guarantee the WP:CSB comprehensive coverage of the surface of the Earth we want, that you get if you use administrative areas. Governments tend to make sure that all points of their territory are covered by an administrative division, but that's not the case if you rely on geographical points such as "villages". In particular not if you rely on Maplandia Level 3 data. To take a random example, I was in the province of Asti a few months ago. The territory of that province is covered by 118 comuni, which are listed at Category:Communes_of_the_Province_of_Asti. Compare that with Maplandia's coverage of Asti - just in the A's it lists only Asti itself out of 6 comuni beginning with A, and Aie, which I guess is the suburb of Bruno (comune population 379) that Google shows as Borgo Aie some way to the north of where Maplandia has it - even it.wiki doesn't have an article. So a hit rate of 1 in 6, in one of the most developed regions of western Europe! However at first glance their provinces at Level 2 look OK. So another reason to concentrate on getting comprehensiveness at Level 2 level, you can probably hope to get that reasonably "right", but Level 3 will need country specialists. And I would echo Llywrch's comments about the amount of work needed to produce a "clean" list of articles - even in Italy where the government provides handy lists of comuni in Excel format, it still took a lot of work to knock the articles on it.wiki and en.wiki into shape. Despite all the work that had been done on Italian places, there were a few articles missing because people had seen blue links from articles on everything from Chicago supermarkets to Latvian goddesses. And that's before you get onto the typos in the official list, variations in accent use, renamings, a morass of local dialect names for places, bilingual names, and of course WP:COMMONNAMEs in English. The data needs a LOT of cleaning to get it "right", even when it's from an authoritative government source with no problems about transliteration from a non-Roman alphabet. So has someone who's done 1000's of edits to "place" articles in a country where WP:RS are as abundant as anywhere, I would beg you to :
But as long as you don't go mad going down to village level, I fully support the intent, albeit quite not the letter of how the proposal is currently phrased - good luck. FlagSteward (talk) 14:28, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
Precedent[edit]Is there any precedent for roboticly-adding geographic stubs, even on a small scale? If so, can we learn lessons from it? How about non-geographic stubs? davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 15:03, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
How to handle blue-links[edit]I would recommend that instead of "just skipping" blue-links, blue-links can be logged with the blue-link-article sizes, and checked for "#redirect." Redirect- and too-small articles - which might turn out to be garbage articles or stubs of inferior quality to the bot-generated version - can then be visited by hand and if appropriate, replaced by or merged with a bot-created version. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 16:01, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
Talk pages[edit]The bot should create talk pages with the appropriate wikiprojects filled in. It should also add a first section noting the original stub was created by a bot. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 16:01, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
Name conflicts and disambiguations[edit]If a country has two places with the same name, we need to flag that for human intervention and/or have an automated way of handling it. It's not inconceivable that two towns in two different counties or provinces will have the same name. If the country's naming convention is "townname, countryname" that will be a conflict. This will also be a problem for blue-links, where one of the places already has an article and the other does not. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 16:08, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
I am an English teacher who has students create articles for municipalities/towns. I am trying to standardize how we deal with towns that have municipal status (see my talk page for details). At the moment, I have students combine town/municipality as governmentally they are the same and most often have the same or very similar names. I would have to imagine that this bot would generate pages using the town's formal name? If so, this would not be a problem as this is how I am titling the pages I have created although some disagree with doing this.Thelmadatter (talk) 14:48, 5 June 2008 (UTC) Percent of capital city is not the right metric[edit]The size of capital cities depends strongly on whether the city is also the commerce center (such as London, Paris, Tokyo, Moscow) or just a government center (USA, Germany before unification). The difference can be more than an order of magnitude (Bonn has 300K, Berlin 3M people). Better, perhaps, would be a percentage of the largest city. LouScheffer (talk) 16:32, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
Inherent notability[edit]Since a lot of people, including the proposer, are prepared to jump on the bandwagon of "inherent notability" of places, I want to state my arguments that such a concept should not exist. Here is the comment I left at the old discussion:
In addition to this, I have also said that in my eyes, a place article whose only contents are rote information like coordinates and population (or even elevation, etc.) can be considered to be no more than a dictionary definition of the place, and should be treated like we treat dictionary definitions of words: deleted. The principle, here and in the above paragraph, is that the only information which is notable according to WP:Notability is that which comes from secondary sources, and therefore represents some kind of human interest in the subject. On the other hand, geographic locations represent a large body of formally similar subjects, of each of which there is potentially a lot to say; it is dishonest to claim that two similar towns, one with an article and one without, truly differ in notability, but probably more in the amount of expertise of our editors. The question here is how to identify two locations as being "similar", and how to provide for all similar locations the kind of minimal acceptable notable information that we know must exist. Since this information is not rote, by definition including it will require human intervention, but there is still a place for a bot to collect the basic rote data and form the stubs for each article (which must then be raised to acceptable standards by people). Since the resources available to contribute to articles in various countries or regions varies (that is, the resources of the geographic WikiProjects), the determination of "granularity" of coverage must be made on this basis. The observations made in #Italy experience about the utility of administrative regions seem to me to be the key to reconciling these requirements. Here is my suggestion:
The ordering of points 3 and 4 is important: we should not encourage the indiscriminate creation of articles for which there is no guarantee of notability! However, the services of a bot in doing work that no human would want or be able to do are invaluable in facilitating the discriminating creation of articles whose expansion is certain. This method is a lot of work, to be sure, but it will do the most justice to each country according to the maximum extent of the resources we have available to us. Once this "first pass" is completed (hopefully within my lifetime :) we can move on to finer granularities; quite possibly, this project will attract attention to the geographical WikiProjects and there will be more participants the second time around. I admit that this will not counter the systemic bias we already have to the same degree that the original, contentious proposal would have. We will not achieve the same granularity all over the world. Like I said in the first discussion, this is an inevitable consequence of the inherent bias in the world concerning reliable, usable, and available sources for English-speaking readers and editors, and the inherent bias on en.wikipedia of editor expertise. However, it will combat this bias to the fullest extent possible under these circumstances and provide a fair shake for all parts of the world. By covering each country by administrative regions, we create a framework for further expansion and a convenient measure our coverage. As the editor bias is alleviated, the bias in sources will itself lessen (because a broader experience among editors will open up more sources to us, and of course, over time more sources will appear), and the bot can be run again to achieve greater coverage. We can never achieve good encyclopedic content from a fully mechanical process. The bot should be used to make our work easier, not to replace it entirely. Just having articles named after these places is not enough: the articles should be on each place, and that takes human participation. Ryan Reich (talk) 16:21, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
People over at WP:Fiction have been struggling with the same inherent notability concept, and I will again state my opinion that it is not only wrong, it is inherently dangerous. Things achieve notability by being described, directly and in detail, by reliable, independendent, third-party sources. No other criteria can force inclusion. Attempts to decree that something is inherently notable is a shortcut that leads to controversy and strange divisions. Why are towns notable, but not shopping malls? Television episodes? Asteroids? Stars? Garage-rock bands with a really cool MySpace page? It's an effort to force an issue that cannot be supported by logic, and as such will inevitably cause trouble. Kww (talk) 19:02, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
You can find someone to note most any placename[edit]I'm not too keen on flooding the internet namespace with placename articles, considering how difficult it is already becoming to get past all the content-less directory pages out there. But if we do this mechanically, we will in practice take one of the big (semi-)governmental listings, which is going to lead us into two different kinds of errors that these directories contain. But let's try a different angle for a second. By using newspapers, I can source the existence of a lot of small places. For instance, in the vicinity of my present location, I can identify each subdivision (or in some cases clusters of subdivisions) as a named community. They are certainly real, and the newspapers refer to them by name. Are they notable places? Well, they don't fit into the traditional town-centered model of place-ness, so the post office for instance doesn't generally assign them post offices with names. The census isn't that fine-grained. OK, so we go for the government-like sources. Well, using census designated places is a problem, because they do not reflect real borders. I've been working on Columbia, Maryland, whose legal existence, like some other new towns, is peculiar. It would be possible to go through real estate records and determine quite precisely what the boundaries of Columbia are, because it is covenants that determine whether or not any given property is really in Columbia. The CDP map of Columbia is quite "inaccurate" insofar as it shows several areas outside Columbia (e.g. Holiday Hills and Allview) that are geographically distinct; it also assigns part of Clarksville to Columbia, for reasons that aren't at all apparent to me. Meanwhile, the post office keeps trying to reduce the granularity of "place-ness". Their theory of how large Silver Spring, Maryland is, for example, is quite inflated. There are also some blatant mistakes in their assignment of secondary names (e.g. they have Colesville and Cloverly swapped). My sense is that a mechanical translation of these data into articles is going to generate a great deal of argument. If we go with the Census, we will get data, but we'll also get a lot of "places" whose geography is a debatable artifact of statistical collecting convenience. If we use the list of geographic place names, we will produce a ton of stubs, and there will undoubtedly be argument as to whether many of them actually exist. In the meantime, the process is likely to generate a lot of cluttery misinformation. Mangoe (talk) 19:22, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
Asteroids: don't go there[edit]Someone mentioned asteroids above. They provide an excellent reason not to do this. So far there are "only" 544 articles in Category:Asteroids. So far. If one picks an article in the category at random— say, this one— you'll find that it is nothing more than a row out of some catalog. Or rather, a really huge table. A page for each is a really crappy presentation, but these kinds of projects are unstoppable once they get underway, because the effort invested in them protects them from serious criticism. And at least the asteroids are nice, discrete chunks of rock that can be readily differentiated one from the other. Mangoe (talk) 14:49, 3 June 2008 (UTC) How broad or narrow is inherent notability?[edit]I don't think the problem is with inherent notability, but on how it is used. I don't think anyone would have a reasonable problem with very very narrow categories such as "any nondwarf planet in this solar system is inherently notable", which includes 8 members and any planets newly discovered. The issue as Ryan points out is overbroad inherent notability. The community has left the line deliberately vague. This bot indicates it's now time to draw a line. It's probable that a very narrow standard like "all cities with four independent RS and population of 50% of capital city are inherently notable" would gain at least 80% consensus, although it excludes many other notable cities. When you start to tweak it-- 40%? 30%? Percent of national population (probably better, per Geometry Guy)?-- consensus also decreases. However the bot requires the community to take up a position and have the national projects determine hard and fast minimum standards for inherent notability, so that the bot can function within those strict standards. If it's population 500, then 501 gets you autogeneration and 499 doesn't, and if you don't like that, sofixit. After that we can lower the standards later, even if the bot may not pick them up for many moons after the first run. I encourage everyone to consider editing WP:NPT and its talk. JJB 15:11, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
Dissenting comments[edit]I think the mixed use of rhetoric here may be a bit misleading. The idea of inherent notability is that certain classes of subjects can be identified as inherently notable based on shared features. You don't really deny that notable subjects can be identified as such; you seem to be arguing that even though inherent notability can sometimes be demonstrated, our general notability guideline is still a useful one in that it implements some reasonable verifiability standards. There is certainly a correlation between notability and verifiability (hence WP:N), but the two aren't intrinsic intertwined -- there are some notable subjects for which we can't find adequate sources, and visa versa. So it's not really a question of notability that you raise, but essentially one of verifiability. Now, I don't really agree with your comments regarding primary and secondary sources. You're right that Wikipedia articles are generally tertiary in nature, and this is supported as a general principle by WP:V, WP:RS and so on. But I think that a careful analysis of the underlying intent suggests that the principle doesn't apply in this case. Often material from primary sources is subject to widely varying interpretations. The secondary source doctrine was designed to facilitate neutrality efforts mainly in historical-political articles and the like. Another common problem with primary sources is that they tend to be inaccessible -- unpublished interviews are an obvious example. Imagine if editors were to use those methods in, say, the Holocaust denial article -- big trouble would likely ensue. In this context those issues aren't really pertinent -- the primary sourcing involved is used to show that a particular geographic area exists, that it has a certain location, population and so on. The data is easily accessible, it contains few ambiguities, and bits of data could possibly be controvertible tend to be uncontentious and inconsequential in nature (i.e., a possibly skewed population estimate is nothing like a misrepresentation of an author's political philosophy). — xDanielx T/C\R 08:19, 4 June 2008 (UTC) Diversity of data types[edit]My reservation, and it is a small one, is that I'd still like to see more data types integrated than just population and co-ordinates. Depending on region and country, there are potentially many data sets that could be integrated (and referenced) to produce a valuable resource. Economic data, political, religious, linguistic, geographical, for a start, plus there may be local websites that have pages for many towns in a region. This could make the difference between an article being a copy-paste from an existing gazetteer and a new and useful synthesis. Pseudomonas(talk) 17:06, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
Proper sourcing, no spam[edit]The end result should be articles with proper sourcing and no spam. Every claim in the article should exist at a reliable published source whose page is indicated in the References (or Source) section; and no link should be in the article that is not warrented by the information at that link. WAS 4.250 (talk) 17:28, 2 June 2008 (UTC) Also, are you going to clean up the example articles that you have already created that violated this "Proper sourcing, no spam" standard? Or perhaps someone already did? Could links to those articles be placed here for accountability and verification? WAS 4.250 (talk) 17:28, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
Point 8: Clarification?[edit]I'm not sure I understand point 8.
You're saying we should have a base global standard for "inherent notablity" and then fine tune it to national cases. I don't think anyone would argue against this, but what that base global standard should be is the point of contention. Your suggestions for initial criteria seem problematic. For instance, there is no city in Hungary or Mexico with anywhere near 50% of population of the capital. Maybe I've misunderstood this point entirely. More importantly, if it will always be broadened to include more locations, why bother creating a global standard to begin with? TheMightyQuill (talk) 18:56, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
Auto-draft, human-patrol, auto-move[edit]Some Wikiprojects may want you to do a run with the output in a separate namespace, maybe wikiprojectname/FritzpollBotresults/articlename, patrol the articles, then robo-move articles successfully patrolled. As part of the patrol process, articles can rejected, moved to a human-assistance-required namespace, or marked "ready to move." Please consider giving this capability to the bot. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 17:19, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
Why not a new Wikimedia sister project, a la Wikispecies?[edit]If the bulk of these articles is simply going to consist of interpolated database info, then it would seem to me that creating a new whole wiki specially designed for this purpose would be more ideal. Locations with Wikipedia articles could be interwiki-linked, and perhaps a bot could create soft interwiki redirects to all locations which exist in that sister project but do not currently have articles here. Nothing would stop human editors with an interest from creating articles here, and this would alleviate any concerns of having tens of thousands, if not millions, of new, unwatched, and likely unmaintained articles here. Girolamo Savonarola (talk) 17:37, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
Interwikis - another asset, even for stubs[edit]It is possible that at least some of these exist on other language wikis. With interwiki links, even a sub-stub could be very useful if it links to an article in another language with which a reader is somewhat familiar (or which could be machine translated). (A lot of locations in Africa have decent articles in French even where the articles here are atrocious, for instance.) It might be worth doing some sort of query of the wiki of the relevant language for all the titles of the articles to be created, so interwikis could be added automatically where appropriate. Mangostar (talk) 17:53, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
Llywrch has been deeply involved in this sort of thing improving our coverage of places in Ethiopia. Even handled at the Wikiproject level, there are many problems as well as payoffs (or as Lyrwich put it in his edit summary: "warning: there be monsters -- & also treasures -- here"). Please see his now-archived comments in response to the first proposal: --A. B. (talk • contribs) 18:44, 2 June 2008 (UTC) 400,000 larger articles vs. 2 million stubs[edit]We should consider who's going to monitor 2 million more articles for vandalism, errors, etc. Merging stub-type data on all these places into fewer, bigger articles might make for better ongoing monitoring and quality control. For instance, an article on Anywhere Township would have a section for Nowhereville and each of the 4 other little hamlets in the township. The 5 hamlets each have a redirect to the township article. --A. B. (talk • contribs) 19:15, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
Ensuring quality articles before their creation[edit]Perhaps each geographical WikiProject that wants to use this bot should have a data check and implementation plan for review by others before unleashing the Sorcerer's Apprentice-bot to create hundreds of articles. --A. B. (talk • contribs) 19:18, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
Underlying Issues[edit]I Oppose the idea, but for different reasons, which i think need to be separate from the main straw poll, because it is part of what i oppose. I think that Fritzpoll has done the communty a service by creating this bot, and bringing the proposal forward, not to mention modifying it dramatically, and taking a lot of flack for making the idea a possibility. So, Thank you, Fritzpoll. Because of the amazing and quick blow-up that happened yesterday, however, i have to oppose: It clearly shows that there are severe underlying issues which need to be resolved:
I think that these issues are far more important to resolve now than the question of whether we let a bot create articles. Perhaps i could be accused of being overdramatic, so i won't say that the future of WP depends on it, but i will say that in any organisation the huge blow-ups are almost always not actually about the apparent trigger. FritzpollBot is our trigger only, not the most important thing we must focus on. Cheers, Lindsay 20:04, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
Is systemic bias bad?[edit]A good deal of this discussion is centred on systemic (or systematic) bias. In general there is an underlying assumption that systemic bias is a BAD THING. The argument is phrased along the lines of "why should a one-horse town in the United States be notable and an equivalent town in Africa not?" It seems at times as though Wikipedia:No systemic bias has become the sixth pillar of Wikipedia. I believe there is also a (mostly) unconscious but still significant association of systemic bias with racial or ethnic prejudice. But the purpose of an encyclopaedia is to inform, not to document, and in order for an article to inform it must first be read. Now, consider two villages: village X in a remote part of England and village Y in a remote part of Nepal.
Of course, the converse is also true. I dearly hope that one day all citizens of Y will have access to broadband internet and that Nepalese Wikipedia will grow to the size of English Wiki, but the usefulness of an article on X in Nepalese Wiki will still be close to 0. This is the nature of systemic bias and it is why systemic bias is a GOOD THING.
For all those who are concerned about how these stubs will make Wikipedia look bad, I would argue to the contrary, and particularly because of the combating systemic bias effect. Systemic bias is bad in part because it makes people take Wikipedia less seriously. Many people believe Wikipedia is all about collecting geeky trivia that is of interest to American 20-something guys or is all about American and British shopping malls or elementary schools because, frankly, that is at least a good chunk of what goes on here. I'm not a big elitist and don't have a problem with that content existing, but think how people's perceptions of Wikipedia might change if it had a reputation for being a premier reference for all places, and the premier reference on places in the developing world instead. Mangostar (talk) 22:41, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
I'll just echo what I said above about bias, since I think it's worth considering: We don't solve systemic bias by having an equal number of articles about ill-covered countries - we solve systemic bias by covering those countries better - both in the articles which already exist, and - where we have enough sources to create substantial articles - by creating new articles about topics in those countries. The bias directive is to improve the coverage, not the article-count. Girolamo Savonarola (talk) 17:52, 5 June 2008 (UTC) Do topics have a "right" to exist as articles?[edit]I think that's what's at the heart of this discussion. I personally don't think that atomic-level topics need to exist on every little thing when the merging, redirection, or collation of such information creates a more useful and complete article. There is nothing inherently great about expanding our article count, but having more encyclopedic information - and more importantly having a higher average quality level - is going to have a large bearing on the public perceptions on and success of this encyclopedia. Exponentially expanding our stubs is not the way to achieve this, nor is it realistic to expect them to be quickly dealt with in any case, given the number of active editors currently on-hand wiki-wide, much less the small percentage of those who would be willing to edit these articles. Adding millions of new stubs into the system without any regard for how the information is organized and broken down into bite-sized articles merely dilutes our overall quality level, and thus creates a much larger system-wide negative factor for all editors, readers, and outside observers (to varying degrees) which cannot be equally mitigated by the small additional utility generated by several million substubs (of which less than 1% are likely to be improved beyond stub-level within any reasonable timeframe). On the other hand, organizing this information more responsibly at a higher regional level, and in lists and tables, where the statistics can not only be laid bare, but actually used for easier and more useful local comparisons, will be able to maintain a higher standard of article quality, generate a far more manageable set of articles, and have a higher utility than a vast array of stand-alone stubs. Furthermore, settlements which can be expanded further and have a human editor interested in pursuing so, can always still split off into their own articles (while presumably leaving the tabled data intact on the regional page). Everyone benefits. We don't get points for a raw article-count, so why is this being treated as such? Average article depth and quality is the metric we need to be keeping our eyes on. Girolamo Savonarola (talk) 01:01, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
(<-)You're right, Rivertorch, better tools will not automatically cause genuine improvement. But they do make the task of genuinely improving the 'pedia far, far easier. The discovery of fire didn't automatically make our ancestors' lives as good as we have it today, but it created the potential where none was there before.--Aervanath lives in the Orphanage 07:22, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
I quite like Girolamo Savonarola's suggestion of creating preliminary lists and tables that can be used a springboards to creating genuine articles. Such a procedure would also provide an opportunity to structure and prioritise which articles should be created. For example, I think it would be worthwhile to prioritise creating articles on Third World places, since they are virtually non-existent at the moment. But the key is this: it is far better to have only a few accurate articles than to have myriad unreliable articles - particularly on "unfamiliar" subjects such as Third World places. I'd like to mention, also, that there are existing Internet resources that provide the type of geographical information we're talking about; one is the Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names (TGN), which provides the most accepted form of each placename, variants, map coordinates, bibliographic sources, and often historical notes about the place (here's an example, for Ougadougou). TGN is scholarly, well-funded (for this type of academic endeavour), very carefully thought out and maintained, but still faces the ongoing problems of keeping up to date with name changes, political developments, etc. If Wikipedia is going to start a wave of new articles of this kind I believe they must be at least as good as those in TGN or else there's no point in doing it at all. Pinkville (talk) 19:35, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
Is NGIA data reliable?[edit]How much do we actually know about NGIA data and where they get their information from? If we're going to base thousands (hundreds of thousands?) of new articles (even partially) on this source, we'd better be sure we know what we're getting. Kaldari (talk) 19:29, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
To bring up Mongolia again, NGIA has a lot of "populated places" whose names contain "Hüryee", "Hiid", or "Dugang" (monasteries and temples), most of which were either destroyed or renamed in the late 1930s. They also have some populated places that contain "örtöö" (postal horse relay station), a name that seems also very much out of fashion now. A quick google maps survey by me, of places whose names contains "Hüryee", gave the impression that most of them are inhabitated, renamed or even that the NGIA location is dozens of kms off. What is maybe worse (but maybe also more specific to Mongolia) is that they call the district centers by their official names rather than by the official name of the district. Mongolians will almost universally use the name of a district both for the district and the district center. If you ask for the right way to "Jargalant" in Khövsgol, people will always send you to the district center of Jargalant district (the official name of which is Orgil), and never to the district center of Tömörbulag district (the official name of which is Jargalant). Same goes for locally-made motorist or tourist maps. NGIA's "BGN standard" does it just the other way 'round. This is not a case of bias, just a case of inclusionism in the case of monasteries and horse relay stations, and poor data in the case of district centers. Yaan (talk) 18:07, 4 June 2008 (UTC) French communes, anyone?[edit]Back in February Blofeld, AlbertHerring and myself created thousands of articles on towns in France. The issue was raised at the AN, and Blofeld etc. were allowed to do so. What makes, say, Burkina Faso different? Because we, not a bot created them? We certainly acted like bots, creating 4 articles a minute when we could've been doing other things. Whether or not the article is created by a bot or a human is no different: it gets created nonetheless. They started out worse than this and look at some of them now. Also, many of the involved Wikiprojects have very few editors (chech out Wikipedia:WikiProject Gabon)...I'm an Editorofthewiki[citation needed] 21:03, 3 June 2008 (UTC) Size limit - poll or algorithm?[edit]First of all, may I say—and I should have said it 24 hours ago—congratulations on putting together a well-thought out and workable project. My one reservation remains that in essence the scheme puts the cart before the horse. Instead of wikiProjects being given the means to create the articles they want, they will be given the articles and must learn to want them—"you marry for duty; love comes later." The key factor in closing the gap between the needs of the users and the output of the bot will be the lower limit of size. I suggest there is a need to develop a robust algorithm to determine the optimal size limit. The current proposal, asking the users, seems to me rather like developing a traffic plan for a major city and then doing a vox pop on the best places to site traffic signals. An algorithm should take account not only of current size limits on the wikiProject, but of related factors such as the quality of the average article at the lower limit, and unrelated factors such as the number of active members (on geography-related articles) and the frequency of article improvement drives. There should not be a need for a separate algorithm for every single wikiProject, but at the same time I would not favour a one-size-fits-all model. I have written above about systemic bias; I believe the algorithm should to some extent incoporate systemic bias. In other words, the requirements of Wikipedia:WikiProject Georgia (country), for instance, will be different from those of Wikipedia:WikiProject Ireland. My own suburb of Dublin has its own article, of which I'm quite fond, but I would be very surprised if WikiProject Georgia were equally enthused about an article on an equally undistinguished suburb of Tbilisi. In summary, an appropriate cut-off, scientifically arrived at, provides the best chance of creating those articles—and only those articles—that will most benefit Wikipedia. Scolaire (talk) 21:16, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
Stubs? A deletionist dream![edit]
See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Amurn. The deletionist challenge has already begun! MWAH-HAHAHAHA! (sorry, evil laugh reserved for Blofeld; never again). But seriously, this really could disrupt the project majorly. I'm an Editorofthewiki[citation needed] 01:39, 4 June 2008 (UTC) If the community approves the bot, then I think deleting its articles will be more difficult based solely on the fact that "consensus has already determined that these articles should be created". *shrug* That's what I'd hope at least. --Falcorian (talk) 02:52, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
I think the Philippine WikiProject will opt out of this[edit]The editors of Philippine-related content had agreed on a tentative consensus that barangays--the lowest level of political unit in the Philippines, currently totaling to 41,995, and are roughly the equivalent of villages in other countries--do not inherently deserve articles. In the next higher level of political units--municipalities and cities (total: 1,631)--all of them already have articles with 2000 census info and locator maps. So this proposed bot job will have very little use for our particular needs. --seav (talk) 07:26, 4 June 2008 (UTC) Can I point out that this drive is intended to cover countries which have very poor coverage (much of Africa, Asia and Latin America) and the weaker parts of Europe, not those countries like Philippines and Italy which already have articles on all of the smaller towns or communes, Thankyou ♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦ $1,000,000? 09:58, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
I think this raises a good point, the very countries that wikipedia supposedly has systemic bias against that this will supposedly fix, are the ones that are likely to have no wikiproject editors with the knowledge to work with this bot, and many that do are probaby already done. I think giving example countries might be a very good idea at this time. MickMacNee (talk) 22:36, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
Notable houses[edit]There are articles about individual houses (see James B. Simmons House for example). So, articles about many small villages would also satisfy WP:Notability. The size of a village is not a consideration. The notability is.Biophys (talk) 04:09, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
End the discussion already[edit]It's quite clear that the majority of viewpoints on this bot are from a philosophical standpoint, and therefore unresolvable if there enough people to blindly support it, which they do so easily and without much supporting text, because there is no tangible 'harm' from the proposal. i.e. thousands of untouched bot created stubs that all look the same will do no harm to wikipedia. And there is actually no consequence for anyone who does support or oppose it, as anyone can walk away and never be affected by this issue again, the stubs created will still be there. People don't appear to be willing to address the major issues raised by this bot about changing how wikipedia creates articles, uses redlinks, encourages stub development, or determines if something is 'worthy of note' (although yes, there is a mini discussion above). People supporting seem content to treat approval of this bot as an issue soley pertinent to geo-stubs, as if there isn't a wealth of other database resources on notable topics out there. If you look at the wikiprojects of some of these supposedly discriminated against and under-represented countries, the only members are Blofeld and one or two others, which casts doubt on the proposed wikiproject particiapation model. The resonse from wikiproject Phillipines only cast further doubt on the merits of this assertion. With Blofeld's many comments on this page, this bot looks to me more and more like a personal tool to make his percieved urgent mission of documenting every place on earth easier (despite the fact wikipedia is in no rush, which is oddly quoted on the support side, but not the opppose), as a counter against the proliferation of pokemons or some other perceived current failing of wikipedia. I personally do not buy the argument that there are millions of users out there just waiting for someone to create a stub of their town, so they can edit it. Nor are there people out there castigating wikipedia for the lack of these stubs. But if others do think that, then lets discuss that for what it is, a fundemental change to the principles of how wikipedia serves the public, and get it enshrined somewhere more concrete than a village pump discussion. Because as I understood it, editors are readers, and vice versa. It is the encyclopoedia you can add to, not the encyclopoedia you wait for others to create the basic framework of before you read it/expand it. Frankly, no one on either side has any practical or documentable evidence for either position, the debate is currently very much an exercise in assertion without proof. I can point at Category:Villages in Botswana as supporting my position, where a single user has mass created 222 virtualy identical stubs by hand, and based on a significant sampling taken before I got bored, not a single one has been expanded since, while one was Afd'd and rejected because "everywhere is notable". And Botswana isn't exactly lacking a healthy amount of citizens/expats with an internet connection, even if they don't necessarily live in these villages. They are all linked to and not orphaned, but only through the use of templates. The only two substantive articles I found, with real world knowledge, and not just statistics and location information (barring the creation info on the presence of a primary school), had actually been created before the mass stub project, so needing a stub didn't seem to put those users off creating/editing. However, supporters will merely point out that these 222 articles have only existed for a few months, and they can presumable all be found on an atlas. So I am saying, even though I oppose it from a philosophical standpoint, let's just approve it now, and move on. With the lack of a higher discussion, if it's a success, great (but in my opinion we'll never really know), and if it's a failure, well, where's the actual harm? (as long as someone recodes special:random) MickMacNee (talk) 16:01, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
Ahh! Diametrically opposed philosophical views are flying! Whatever can we do? Why don't we pick a name for a dedicated WikiProject, and with a fresh slate, the interested parties can find concensus on the fine details of the bot. We all promise not to do something crazy. --NickPenguin(contribs) 02:14, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
Systemic bias?[edit]I have to say that I'm not following the "systemic bias" angle on this. It seems far more likely that if there is any such bias lurking about (which I'm a bit dubious about anyway), michanical and quantity creation is simply going to fulfill the definition of a computer as "a device for the amplification of human error". We're simply going to favor the bias of whatever source it is that we use for the data, except amplified in numbers and made hard to combat because of "garbage in, gospel out." Mangoe (talk) 21:30, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
PLEASE - no more micro stubs[edit]Having trawled through Wikipedia on and off for a while now, there is nothing more frustrating than thinking you are about to read an interesting article about some obscure thing or place only to find that all it lists is the thing's name and location. Please do NOT generate pretend articles which are just reformatted rows out of a massive catalogue of limited data in each row. By all means generate list articles showing the data for all places in a certain subdivision of a country, in a wikitable, for example. I DO support automatically generating NON micro stubs where data from more than one source can be integrated. Preferably from more than two basic sources. Why do we not try to generate start class articles ? Peet Ern (talk) 13:45, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
Consensus - time to assess[edit]You'll all notice that my contributions have been noticeably absent from this page. Partly, this resulted from work committments, but I also think it gave the community more time to respond to the proposal. This debate is not a vote - I objected to the introduction of a straw poll, but was, in essence, overruled! :) As such, I have actually asked an uninvolved admin to assess the consensus of this discussion. I will not overrule the consensus, as I hope many of you will appreciate (especially those participating at my recent RfA). I await the 'result' with interest, and will comment further once an opinion has been rendered Fritzpoll (talk) 14:03, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
I too, have been asked to close this discussion. I would be happy to do so. As I have not been involved with this issue it will take me a several hours to read through it and formulate a decision. I should be finished no later than 36 hours from now. -- ☑ SamuelWantman 00:47, 8 June 2008 (UTC) At the end of the day, the proposal will be passed, (and as above I don't care either way to be honest, because it honeslty doesn't actually have a quantifiable harmfull effect on wikipedia), but in the process, a whole bunch of established principles about how wikipedia works, or what wikipedia is, are going to be junked unilaterally, just because nobody will take this debate on at the level it belongs, above the village pump level, and would rather pretend this is just about a pet project for geo-stubs. MickMacNee (talk) 15:21, 8 June 2008 (UTC)
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