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This is the third archive of the discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles.

Books

Books. This is a thought. How do we get a good reliable list of books that are encyclopedic? Gutenberg is pretty patchy - they'll take anything PD, and I think we can all agree there's a lot there to be ignored. There's a list of The Penguin Classics Library Complete Collection, which we seem to have pretty good coverage of, and this is probably a good first-order guess at "material which is probably worthy of an encylopedic article". Perhaps we could try asking various educational bodies for lists of the books they teach, and see what we're missing? Shimgray | talk | 17:23, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

  • A couple weeks ago, I asked the Literary Encyclopedia if they could send their index of books/writers to us so we could expand our content. They (or, at least, the one person I talked to) took it very oddly, as if we were a competitor trying to buy them out. I think I may have straightened them out. We'll see in the next week. — BRIAN0918 • 2005-11-5 18:33
You may want to combine their list and some of the lists at http://www.interleaves.org/~rteeter/greatbks.html, as well as some of the items that are not in their index (which is itself a combination of multiple lists). This would eliminate copyright concerns if they decide not to allow a direct copy of their list. --Reflex Reaction (talk)• 17:26, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

Oxford World Encyclopedia

I recently realized that I have access to the Premium edition of the online Oxford World Encyclopedia. Since I don't know for how much longer I will have access, I will be copying the index to YAL (yet another list) for us to complete. This will probably be one of those "higher priority" lists, though, since it is from a reputable source. — BRIAN0918 • 2005-11-8 18:39

  • Actually, I have access to all of Oxford's references, which include dictionaries of agriculture, art, etc. While these are not called "encyclopedias", they are no different from encyclopedias, and entirely different from dictionaries. Is anyone opposed to adding these contents to our lists? — BRIAN0918 • 2005-11-8 18:41
    • Sounds great to me. – Quadell (talk) (bounties) 18:51, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
      • These lists will surely be deleted unless we merge them in with something like we did for the hotlists. Martin 18:54, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
        • Why would that be? How about if I put them all under the heading of "Oxford Reference Online" or something like that? These are all specialized encyclopedias (I will still keep the Oxford World Encyclopedia separate). — BRIAN0918 • 2005-11-8 18:57
          • We had lists from Encarta, Hutchinson and Encyclopedia Britannica, but they were deleted as copyright violations (fortunately Quadell came to the rescue and merged them into the hotlists to avoid the violation), I think if you merged them it would probably still be too risky as they are all from the same company. Martin 19:25, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
            • Actually, I don't think they will be copyright violations because I am reordering them and rearranging titles to fit with our article-naming style. If necessary, I will merge them all together under a "2nd hotlist". -- BRIAN0918  19:33, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
              • I reordered and changed to our article name style on the Britannica list before I put it here, but it was still deleted... bogdan | Talk 19:40, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
                • I can't just put it under my userspace? That doesn't get copied to third party sites. -- BRIAN0918  19:56, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
                  • There's nothing to stop a third-part site copying userpages, and many do - remember the Nazipedia fuss? The issue is more, AIUI, with Wikipedia/Wikimedia generally hosting the list, which is Not Popular with the legal folks. I'd contact juriwiki-l for advice if you're unsure if this is legitimate or not, but personally I'd advise against it. Shimgray | talk | 20:18, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
                    • How is it that 2004xEncarta is allowed, but this isn't? — BRIAN0918 • 2005-11-8 20:24
  • (Resetting indent)
  • Beats me. The relevant discussions were on WikiEN-L back in August and September - I can't recall if you're on that list or not - which might be worth reading. I asked for clarification if this applied to lists such as "Articles missing from both Encarta and Britannica" - personally I suspect it does - but didn't IIRC get a reply. It may be worth noting a comment by David Gerard, though: If xsomeone could email these pages to me (...), I will put them up in private web space of my own and say "fuck 'em". If it's hosted offsite, the potential violator is you and not Wikimedia. Shimgray | talk | 20:35, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
    • If it's hosted off-site, what's the point? There won't be any red/blue links. — BRIAN0918 • 2005-11-8 20:38
    • From what I recall from other lists in the article space, the argument was that even though all of the names in the list were encyclopedic, it was the fact that the company put those names in a specific order and published them that makes it copyrighted. I suspect that if I combine several of their lists into one list, reorder, and prune, then it would be alright to post. — BRIAN0918 • 2005-11-8 20:40

Alright, I've talked to some of the folks at Wikimedia. Danny in particular stated that if I combine lists together into one "hotlist", then it is alright. So, I will do that, but it is going to be a lot of work. — BRIAN0918 • 2005-11-9 04:44

I'm willing to help, if you think this is a task that 2 can do asynchronously. Personally I think it should be folded into the existing hotlist. What do you think about that idea? – Quadell (talk) (bounties) 12:52, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
I would rather keep them separate, rather than refill the old hotlist with previously pruned entries. We can always cross the two lists to see what entries are in both, in order to provide an immediately useful list. Do you have access to Oxford Reference Online? If you are on a college IP, then you likely do have access. If you get a login at [1], then you don't have access, although it seems to take a few refreshes and/or closing/opening browser before it recognizes you. Let me know if you have access, then we can really coordinate this. — BRIAN0918 • 2005-11-9 13:07
I don't have access, I'm afraid. I do have access when I'm sitting at the Library, however. But I'm not there much, sadly. – Quadell (talk) (bounties) 15:30, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
That's alright. I found a way to speed up the process and take myself almost entirely out of the loop of copying and pasting. Rather than merge all the various topics into one giant hotlist, I'll merge similar topics together into their own lists. This seems like the best option. I'm finished with the Art & Architecture list, which has about 13800 entries, and will be uploading that. — BRIAN0918 • 2005-11-9 23:14

The A&A Hotlist looks great! Nice job! – Quadell (talk) (bounties) 01:32, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

Can we please auto-prune some of these lists by automatically removing the blue links? I know we've been over this in the past, but now that there are so many lists, I hope the consensus might have turned.

Or could we at least move the blue links to a separate sub-page? We could call it "unverified blue links" or something. That would be highly preferable, in my opinion. – Quadell (talk) (bounties) 15:30, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

I've set up Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles/Hot/Q that way, so you'll see what I mean. (Except that the blues would go on a separate page.) – Quadell (talk) (bounties) 15:30, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
I like what you've done with the Qs, if that's fairly straightforward. I still think it's worthwhile having all the blues manually checked. --OpenToppedBus - Talk to the driver 15:54, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
Okay, I've checked and removed all the blue Q's now, so look at Y or W if you want to know what it looks like. – Quadell (talk) (bounties) 23:04, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

I'm alright with separating them, so that people who want to do one job can, but I'd rather not automatically delete blue links. We'd only be hurting ourselves if we assume that we fully cover all the content of other encyclopedias. — BRIAN0918 • 2005-11-9 23:10

Okay, now that I've worked with it a bit, it looks to me like about 1 in 40 blue links in the Hotlist are "false positives", with an external encyclopedia covering a topic that the Wikipedia article doesn't mention. IMO, that's too high of a false positive rate to do auto-pruning. Also, when I separate the blue and red links, it makes it much easier to manually prune, so that will go a lot faster. – Quadell (talk) (bounties) 14:30, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

1911 Britannica images

I've talked with the people at Wikimedia, and they will soon be creating a domain name and hosting the scanned images of every page of the 1911 Britannica. I purchased the DVD containg all 30,000 scans, and will be uploading the 4GB once everything is set up. — BRIAN0918 • 2005-11-9 04:44

Excellent stuff Brian! Being able to have an electronic copy free from the restrictions imposed by LoveToKnow etc will be a real boon. Once you've got the data safely uploaded we'll have to work on how to OCR or other wise catalogue the content. Pcb21| Pete 09:32, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
Don't forget about the thousands of illustrations! The person who originally scanned these images in the 90s also OCR'd them, producing high quality, low typo results, but they didn't come with my DVD, and I can't find them anywhere. — BRIAN0918 • 2005-11-9 09:47
Don't forget the EB1911 project on Wikisource! Apwoolrich 18:31, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
This is wonderful! Wikisource has already begun correcting the currently OCRed portion of EB1911 against live copies, and this will make the work go much quicker. As very few Wikisource users actually have access to one of these books, very few can actually take part in it. This will allow anyone to be able to contribute to the project. Do we know when this will be all set up?—Zhaladshar (Talk) 22:35, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
I'm not sure yet. Tim Starling made it sound like I'll be uploading it to their server in a few days, and then they'll probably set it up in the following week or two. Expect delays :) — BRIAN0918 • 2005-11-9 23:11
Is the full text of the 1911 Britannica anywhere online? Astrokey44 23:40, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
A couple sites have OCR text, which is full of typos or complete manglings of text. So, no, it is not. And none of the thousands of illustrations are available anywhere. — BRIAN0918 • 2005-11-10 01:08
oh ok, I had thought about buying the CDs, I saw them on ebay for $20 or so Astrokey44 02:10, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

So it's something like this (which is for the Knight's American Mechanical Dictionary, from 1876), but for EB1911? – Quadell (talk) (bounties) 01:34, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

  • Well, that's the basic idea, but ours will be much more user-friendly, making entries much easier to find, and allowing for the option to download the entire thing (4 GB) in one click, I believe. — BRIAN0918 • 2005-11-10 02:03

Update on progress: I'm now uploading the files to the Wikimedia server. — BRIAN0918 • 2005-11-10 05:38

4GB, I hope you're not on dial-up! Martin 15:01, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
4 volumes down, 25 to go. — BRIAN0918 • 2005-11-10 15:50
11 down, 18 to go. — BRIAN0918 • 2005-11-10 23:28
So where are they located? -- Astrokey44|talk 08:22, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

Nuttall

Congrats on completing Nuttall topics! I put it back in the template because its encouraging to see something 100% done Astrokey44 22:05, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

{{MEA-expand}}

I've created a stub template, {{mea-stub}}. When you find stubs that are listed on these pages (or when you make a new stub article from a title listed on Missing Encyclopedic Articles), you can add the mea-stub template to it. – Quadell (talk) (bounties) 03:01, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

Be choosey though. If the article is of only marginal importance, it shouldn't get the tag. – Quadell (talk) (bounties) 03:07, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
Handy. Very useful for revisiting articles started or identified by this project. Not sure of the wording though, particularly the "has an article in a major encyclopedia" (since this would depend on the source of the entry on the list, and whether it is from a "major" encyclopaedia), but definitely useful. Perhaps for those entries not identified from Britannica, Encarta, or something similarly "major", if we can't get a better wording, then there should at least be something on the talk page to the effect of "This article was initiated as part of WP:MEA", just so we can track them all down, even after the stubs have grown. Chris talk back 18:16, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

Well, it looks like this stub notice has been listed for deletion. Care to vote? – Quadell (talk) (bounties) 12:50, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Result was delete, with a second-place showing for rename. It'd seem somewhat silly to start emptying the category immediately, however, until this project's had a chance to take steps to replace the same functionality. I'd say that Chris's suggestion of a talk-page template, with such a wording, is an excellent one. Or a renamed non-stub article-space template, if that's people's preference. A new associated category would be required in either case. Alai 05:09, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

Ouch I am sorry about that. The delete result was brought about by people taking umbrage at my stupidly aggressive approach to the stub project, which is very precious to them. It would inded by idiocy to empty the category. I am happy with any category/template talk/non-talk calling them "stub"/not calling them "stub" approach - essentially all I want is some tag to collect mea-stubs. I suspect Quadell might still have more specific requirements. Pcb21 Pete 08:27, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

Oops, was a day "previous": someone moved the marker up early, and I failed to do the maths for myself. But that aside... The wording on the template text and category page you can obviously craft at your leisure, but it would be better to decide on a name for both sooner, rather than (too much) later. I'd suggest that a talk-page template is preferable, as it gives one as much space as one wishes to be as precise as one might desire about the nature of the tag. Can I, largely by way of getting the ball rolling, suggest {{MEA-expand}}, {{MEA-short}}, {{MEA-partial}}, {{MEA-start}}, or something along those lines? Or if one wants to apply it to all articles originated by this project, simply {{MEA}}? Alai 04:41, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

Any thoughts on this? Anyone...? This won't stay undeleted for ever, and some input on a desirable move target would be handy. Alai 06:27, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

I'm attempting to do a cleanout of WP:SFD and this is an item still left over. As Alai has mentioned, the concensus seems to be to delete. It would be a waste of effort on the part of both projects if this were done, so the secondary option of a rename seems to be an attractive option. Is there anyone who would care to comment on this? --TheParanoidOne 22:54, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Hotlist of Mythology & Folklore

Yet another list :) This one has more duplicates than others, mainly due to the varying scopes of the sources. — BRIAN0918 • 2005-11-13 07:39

New lists - comments/complaints?

I've created a few lists (Albums, Films, TV stations, Newspapers, TV shows) in the last few weeks and look to creating a few more in the future. While it looks most of the discussion has already happened with the schools, I don't want to step on toes wouldn't mind any comments about some of the proposed lists. Thanks! --Reflex Reaction (talk)• 17:26, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

Intro

The intro to this project page says Wikipedia can't claim to be the most comprehensive encyclopedia on the planet if it doesn't contain information that another encyclopedia contains! That plainly isn't true - to be "most comprehensive", WP simply needs to have more (better, whatever) articles athan any otehr. not every article. How should it be re-worded? Andy Mabbett 17:37, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

Replace "can't" by "shouldn't"? Pcb21 Pete 17:52, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
Or "To be the most comprehensive encyclopedia on the planet, Wikipedia ought to contain articles on topics that other encyclopedias contain." Scans better imho. – Quadell (talk) (bounties) 23:07, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
I've been bold (or foolish!) and updated the intro based on Quadell's suggestion. Hope it reads better now. --G Rutter 11:43, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

1911xLoET

Would any care to help prune this list? It's down to about 54. — BRIAN0918 • 2005-11-19 21:56

  • 15 left on this list. — BRIAN0918 • 2005-11-20 03:31

Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles/GeneralxHotlist

This is another list that could really use some pruning. Perhaps a focused effort could get most of it done. Danny 11:00, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

I've made it this week's focus after updating some the search characteristics. --Reflex Reaction (talk)• 15:47, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

Thanks to everyone for their contributions to last weeks focus. There's pruning left to be done, but it made a significant dent if the work left to be done. --Reflex Reaction (talk)• 12:33, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Do you speak French?

I have started this little project on the basis of our lists and in an effort to destub some of our existing stubs by translating material from French. Please list any stubs that you find which have more significant content in French to this list. Do you speak projects in other languages are also welcome. Danny 13:14, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

Don't know if you are aware of it, Danny, but Wikipedia:Translation in English Wikipedia:Translation into English already exists. Has a broader focus than MEA of course so maybe having both works. Pcb21 Pete 14:12, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
I do know about that, but this is a good way to expand the list, and perhaps get some more destubbing done. Danny 14:30, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
I've translated a few articles during the Nuttall push, and rediscovered the truism that translation is hard, if you want to end up with something that you would have been proud of if you'd originated it. Thanks for the pointer. David Brooks 17:18, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
It would be cool if we'd have a "Hotlist of topics x fr.wiki" (also with de, es and it). I could help with translations from Italian, French and Spanish. bogdan 17:20, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
There's also Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles/fr, which has an equally worthy goal. David Brooks 17:48, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

One of the reasons that I believe this new project is important is that we may fill in missing articles with stubs, but this also offers us a chance to expand existing articles that are stubs into more comprehensive encyclopedic information. Both adding and expanding are worthy goals here. Danny 18:22, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

User:Piotrus/List of Poles

I just realized that there is an entire giant wikiproject doing what I have been doing since few month ago :) On the bright side, my project is limited to a single (if large) Polish biographical dictionary ([[Polski Słownik Biograficzny). I will go over your project guidelines when I have some time, but if you can 'intergrate' what I did at User:Piotrus/List of Poles sooner, feel free to do so.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 17:57, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

New pedia-like ref

This list should be implemented out of the 'Sports Culture: An A-Z Guide' book. ISBN 0415181690. 132.204.227.45 16:56, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

I've put it into my todo list with a few sites that I would compile. --Reflex Reaction (talk)• 15:38, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Featured articles in other languages

This is a related project, which a nice lists of some articles that are missing at en, but are FA elsewhere.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 18:19, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

Literary Encyclopedia

Yet another list of topics provided to us by the press staff of Literary Encyclopedia. We have good coverage on the people, and bad coverage on their works. — BRIAN0918 • 2005-11-26 21:58

New subproject: Indexing scanned encyclopedias

I've created a new subproject, Distributed indexing, which will coordinate efforts to create editable-text indexes to the several scanned online encyclopedias. These will then become lists used in the project to determine missing articles/redirects/content. If you are confused about what to do, please wait for one of the subsections to be completed first. — BRIAN0918 • 2005-11-29 21:34

  • I've added my completed list of words for the first section of Volume 1. When you type your list, each word should be on its own line, but in Wikipedia will look like a huge block of text. — BRIAN0918 • 2005-11-29 21:50
    • I am dubious about the appropriateness timing of this project. We are writing an encyclopedia, not an human OCR team looking for potential topics in an ancient tome. This should be the work of Project Gutenberg not Wikipedia. When they are finished, we definitely can use the topics from this and other old encyclopedias but we need not create it now with so much other work to do. Just my 2 cents --Reflex Reaction (talk)• 22:38, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
      • All paper encyclopedias are inhibited by the fact that they have limited space/money/time, and so have to cut back on what they can cover. The same is true of modern encyclopedias. They can't cover everything that was important in the past, because they would become too large. This subproject isn't just for Cyclopaedia. There are more recent online encyclopedias dating to around the time of 1911EB and Nuttall, but just aren't accessible like those two were. Does that mean we should ignore them? I don't think so. In any case, nobody is being forced to take part. If people are interested, they'll do as they please. — BRIAN0918 • 2005-11-29 22:55
      • Also, Project Gutenberg is for doing an entire book. We only want the index. Why wait 2-3 years for what can be had in a few weeks? — BRIAN0918 • 2005-11-29 22:57
      • Also, as for the appropriateness, how do you think other encyclopedias get their lists of topics? They don't just copy other lists; they go out and find topics to cover, by consulting references/academia/other sources. This is the exact same thing. — BRIAN0918 • 2005-11-29 23:02
        • Perhaps I should clarify; I agree with most of your points but my main contention is that we or anyone should be spending weeks developing topic list that is already likely >50% covered. There is other low hanging fruit (and more appropriate fruit) that should be covered first. I'm not disagreeing with the idea, but I wonder about the value that it provides to the project. Since it is a subprobject and everyone is free to contribute their time how it best suits them I don't have a problem with it, but in my mind a topic list is something that can be created in an afternoon not over weeks. --Reflex Reaction (talk)• 00:18, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
          • "a topic list is something that can be created in an afternoon not over weeks"... The staff of Encyclopaedia Britannica might disagree with you on that one. I am simply trying to provide another outlet for those who would rather do this than prune lists. It's the same way with the specialized lists; certain people like certain topics and will move toward those. As long as it generally brings attention to the main project, it should be alright. The weekly focus should always remain the most important list for the week. Also, from what I have seen in Cyclopaedia, it does cover terms that have fallen out of use today and thus are not as likely to be covered in Wikipedia, but may still be useful in a historical sense. — BRIAN0918 • 2005-11-30 01:06
            • Yes but Britannica has to work so hard refining their topic list because it constrained by size, we are not and creating topics list has been easy because almost everything can be included. I just question the utility of the subproject when there is so much other work to be done. In the end, Brian, I think we agree, let's not waste any more time discussing a moot point. I'm not going to "contest" the addition, in fact I think it will ultimately be useful, but I am questioning its timing. --Reflex Reaction (talk)• 04:07, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
          • Also, for a heads up, I am almost finished indexing the entire Oxford English Dictionary. The main purpose is for use on Wiktionary as a "missing words" list, but many of its entries are more encyclopedic than dictionarial, so I could, for example, extract all the pronouns and make a list from that to use here, or all of the multiple-word entries, etc. — BRIAN0918 • 2005-11-30 01:06

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

I have just realised I have access to this through both my library card and the Athens system. It contains ~59 000 biographies, an index of which I can obtain via "browse". Will anybody reformat it if I supply the raw, unWikified index with the following construction:

Abbey, John Roland (1894–1969), book collector

There is, of course, also the possibility of integrating it into a hotlist of some description? --Oldak Quill 23:46, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

I would guess that there might be copyright issues with doing that (but IANAL). It would perhaps be better if somebody could compile an index for the old, copyright-free DNB and use that to begin with. It probably includes the vast majority of the pre-20th century people included in the ODNB. u p p l a n d 00:04, 2 December 2005 (UTC)
As per the above discussion, I'm not sure it'd be copyright if it were incorporated into a hotlist. --Oldak Quill 00:08, 2 December 2005 (UTC)
No, it wouldn't be a copyright problem if you mixed up the lists. I also think I have access to this resource. I've used a scripting program before to copy stuff from the Oxford site, so if you don't want to learn all of that, and just want me to copy it, I can do it. — BRIAN0918 • 2005-12-2 01:05

Bibliography

Would it be a copyright violation to make a MEA list out of the bibliography of a book that is not in public domain? Is a bibliography — the list of books which a published work cites as its sources — copyrightable? The case Feist Publications v. Rural Telephone Service noted that the author's choice of which facts to cover is protected, but it can be said that the choice is already made in the process of writing the book, and the bibliography is more of an after-the-work summary, hence is not copyrightable. In other words, the choice is expressed in the content of the book itself, and the bibliography is merely a summary of the choice. I would appreciate any advice. --BorgQueen 09:36, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

Oh well, nevermind, I'm going to compile them into a hotlist. The main idea is that, if the name of a book comes up in multiple bibliographies then it is likely important, ergo should be included. I have access to quite a few bibliographies — hundreds, actually — I am doing them manually so it will take some time though. --BorgQueen 00:25, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

Notable books - History of medicine

I just added Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles/List of notable books on history of medicine to the project page. Some of the books listed might not be suitable so feel free to prune mercilessly. The ideal would be having lists of notable books on various subjects in one place and I will do that as soon as I finish them. --BorgQueen 07:06, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

A note on titles - some of these are done in "catalogue capitalisation" - "The myth of mental illness: foundations of a theory of personal conduct" - and some in "normal capitalisation" - "American Physicians in the Nineteenth Century : From Sects to Science". It might be worth either standardising these or putting in both forms of the title, so we can create redirects. (Also watch out for things like that space colon space, common in cataloguing but not in normal usage...)
Otherwise, smart idea! I assume these are "books on the history of medicine" rather than "medical books of historical significance"? The latter might be a useful list... Shimgray | talk | 17:18, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
Actually it's mixture of both... the Vesalius' book belongs to the latter while Drugs in America belongs to the former. Yes, you have a good point — I should do something about the points you raised as soon as I regain my clear consciousness (I just woke up from bed) Thank you. --BorgQueen 20:14, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

VCencyclopedia

The VCencyclopedia is a wiki at Vassar College, whose work (though often signed), is licensed under the GFDL. Presumably we would need to incorporate article histories from it if we were going to use the content, but that should be quite manageable. I've noticed a couple articles on MEA lists that they have, such as Sarah Gibson Blanding([2]) and Lucy Maynard Salmon([3]). I wonder if we should, for starters, look into incorporating their content into Wikipedia, but I also wonder if someone would be interested in checking the MEA lists against their article list in some kind of automated fashion. What do you think? Chick Bowen 23:52, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

  • We would not need to incorporate article histories. The word "history" used in the GFDL is not the same as our history page. This is according to Jimbo. — 0918BRIAN • 2006-03-16 17:48

Progress page

I admit it, I am proud to be part of this project and how much it has contributed to Wikipedia. The only thing is that it's pretty hard to tell that from the project page, so I made a progress table detailing successes and work yet to be done. Thanks to everyone who contributes and makes this project possible. --Reflex Reaction (talk)• 22:04, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

I have added estimated finish dates for all the projects as well. Take those numbers with a mountain of salt though, because many of the estimates are based on "pruning progress" which is much different than "article creation" progress. Speculating can be so fun! The big number is that since the start of the project, on average, 850 300 links are removed every day! For over 200,000 links over the life of the project. Give yourselves a big pat on the back--Reflex Reaction (talk)• 15:42, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
I would be very wary of these dates. I have started pruning the Art & Architecture Hotlist, and have removed over 750 links in the last few days. However, aside from redirects I haven't created a single article, so the figure is just a little misleading as an indicator of progress! Still, I agree with you that this project is making a great contribution, and I too am glad to be part of it :: Supergolden 12:26, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Question about dots

Hi. I have a question. Why at Wikipedia:Missing science topics/Maths2 and related places some articles names are incomplete, like Completely multiplicat.... That is not very helpful. Thanks. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 20:32, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Maybe you should ask User:Bluemoose, who created the page. bogdan 22:04, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
I asked here because I could not get an answer on his talk page. But he replied after a day. Thanks. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 16:27, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Los Angeles A to Z: An Encyclopedia of the City and County

Hey folks, just wanted to let you know that I'm making a list of all the articles in Los Angeles A to Z: An Encyclopedia of the City and County, Leonard and Dale Pitt, UC Press, 1997. I assume that this will be primarily of use to Wikipedia:WikiProject Southern California, but it might be of wider interest, so here's a link for anyone interested: User:Jengod/Topics in LAAZ. jengod 02:12, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

done?

Can we declare 1911xMusic to be done? I've dealt with everything I could that remains; the rest are too obscure to do anything with, I think (see my notations there). Note that everything that remains on that list is something for which the music entry is obviously not actually the same thing that is contained in 1911. Chick Bowen 02:06, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

I agree, I have noted it as completed on the main and project pages. Thanks for finishing the project. --Reflex Reaction (talk)• 16:12, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
And 4 days earlier than predicted. Thanks for everyone who contributed to the completion of the 1911xMusic crossover list. --Reflex Reaction (talk)• 16:19, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Endorsement

I just wanted to endorse Wikipedia:Computer help desk; Triddle just wrote a marvelous little tool to help me track my MEA edits so I could figure out which hotlists I hadn't been through yet. They might be able to help with other kinds of automation as well. Chick Bowen 04:22, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

2004xEncarta is now done

Chalk another one up! The Encarta - Britannica 2004 crossover is now complete. Thanks to everyone who contributed to the project, though I would like to personally like to thank Bogdangiusca who worked hard to see the completion of the project.

According to my very innaccurate progress chart, the next one that should be compete is the Black history biographies, though I'm thinking that 1911xCatholic will probably be next to be done. --Reflex Reaction (talk)• 16:45, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

ONLY Eight articles remain for the 1911xCatholic Crossover. Help complete another project! --Reflex Reaction (talk)• 18:29, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
Down to three now. And they strike me as actually needing expansion, not creation. --maru (talk) Contribs 21:53, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

For anyone interested in Wiktionary

I've created a Wiktionary hotlist in the same style used here, listing 300,000 entries that need to be pruned/created. If you feel like a change, check it out. --BRIAN0918 04:29, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Missing science articles

I have a list of missing science articles, if anyone is interested. There are terms from just about every discipline, though a large portion are related to energy. I prefer to keep it on my userspace because I am fixing errors, removing inappropriate terms and adding new ones. Once I do most of the fixes, hopefully in a week or two, I may split the list up so that it will load faster. However, right now it's easier for me to work on it this way. If you duplicate the list, I strongly recommend that you check for updates to avoid wasted effort. -- Kjkolb 17:03, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

The list has been updated. I've removed almost all inappropriate terms and mistakes. The page loads okay for me, so I guess I'll leave it like it is for now. If you have problems, you can copy it into a text document and use it offline. I'm still updating it periodically. The finished articles are removed, a few more terms are added and more mistakes are fixed. -- Kjkolb 06:51, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Should this be in the main article space?

I came across these lists from the Canadian Dictionary of Biography, see List of people in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography - A while flicking through random pages, they appear to be being used like lists for a missing article project. The CNDB is copyrighted although there are provisions for non-commerical use, I think that they probably need to be moved out of the main namespace. I though someone here might know what to do with them after that. --nixie 05:27, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

How to easily create a new list?

Hi, I wanted to create a list of missing diseases from the list of diseases to add to this project, but us there an easy way to do that? I mean do I have to remove all blue links by hand or can that be done automatically? Thanks. --WS 13:12, 13 January 2006 (UTC)


There is no easy way to separate the blue and red links. It could be done pretty easily with javascript, although I don't know anything about that. The easiest way that I can think of is to first copy the entire list into a text editor, then go to your User:Wouterstomp/monobook.css, and temporarily add this line in: 

.new { display:none }

Then save that page, and hit CTRL+F5 to refresh. Now go to the list, copy and paste the displayed text into a text editor. This will give you a list of blue links. You can then diff your two lists to find the red links, or you can combine the two lists together and use "find unique lines" (NOT "distinct lines"). I use Boxer Text Editor for this purpose, but there are others that will do this. — 0918BRIAN • 2006-01-13 13:24

Another way which would be easier once you figured it out would be to parse the HTML source of the page, because red links contain class="new". You can do that using regular expressions in text editors. — 0918BRIAN • 2006-01-13 13:35

Thanks for your fast answer. The first method doesn't seem to work. When I do that I don't see the red links anymore, but after a copy/paste they do show up (using firefox, maybe internet explorer does what you say?). The second method sounds effective, but will take me hours to figure out... --WS 13:46, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
You may want to leave a message with User:Magnus Manske who created a number of early lists. Unfortunately I'm not even as smart as Brian in this regard. I just use excel to create and use the list. I can create this list if you are interested but it will not separate blues and reds. I have left a message with the computer desk asking for help, but there haven't been any comments back. Reflex Reaction 14:20, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
I just made a program to do it, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles/Missing diseases. Martin 14:58, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
Thank you very much!! Exactly what I wanted! --WS 16:17, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
Might we have access to this program? It would need to list red links and blue links separately, so that the blue links could be checked. — 0918BRIAN • 2006-01-13 15:02
I usually separate reds from blues using a macro I made for Crimson Editor. Basically I view the page source (not the Wiki source, but the actual HTML source), and edit it with regular expressions, then sort it with a batch file for DOS. I assume Martin's method is much better. ;) I'd also love to have a look at the program - is it a Perl script? – Quadell (talk) (bounties) 15:07, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
Avar is also working on such a program... — 0918BRIAN • 2006-01-13 15:08
Its written in c#2 so you'll need the .NET framework2 on Windows to run it, but at least it's user friendly. Download it here. It only took about 3/4 of an hour to build so Avar's will probably be better. Martin 16:01, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

Besides Bluemoose's program above, Avar has also created one: [4]. Save the script and download ActivePerl to run it, probably using the command: 

perl mw_links "http://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Article"

I haven't tested it :) — 0918BRIAN • 2006-01-13 17:13

A look at the page makes me think that's not what the owner intended it to look like. Is it an IE-only page or something? Quadell 18:39, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
Okay, I tried it, and it's a neat tool, but it's not user-friendly at all. It basically outputs "-Existing", followed by all bluelinks on the page (including the links to other hotlist pages), and then "-Unexisting", followed by all redlinks on the page. But it's a list of the article names, not links. You'd still have to save the output (using a > or something), and format it into a page. Could it be modified to output the page names as links? Quadell 18:49, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
Alright, it's updated to print out links correctly. Enjoy! — 0918BRIAN • 2006-01-13 19:58
Much better! Now that's nice. Thanks! – Quadell (talk) (bounties) 20:13, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

I guess I must be slow on the uptake. When Brian says to save it file, what kind of file does he mean. I've been saving as a text file. Which of the environments do I use, the OLE browser, the Perl package manager? Where do I enter commands and how do I reference the file that I just created. Say if it is located at C:/wiki/mw_links.pl Thanks. Reflex Reaction 20:35, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

Okay, I think I figured part of it out. The file must be named "mw_links.pl". After ActivePerl is installed enter in the command line (Start-->Run-->Type "command" or "cmd". Navigate to the directory where the file is located. Type the name of the program (mw_link) and the page you would like to parse.
My problem is how do I get that information out? I know that the command line shell for windows is pretty basic. Do I need to install another shell? Any recommendations? Thanks in advance. Reflex Reaction 21:04, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
Try something like this in the cmd field:
perl mw_links "http://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Article" > output.txt
That should put the output in a new file called output.txt. Quadell 21:18, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

Woohoo that works! I'm going to go to town with this thing. But I do have a request. This will only work on individual links, which is generally only good for new list which do not have any comments associated with them. Is there a way so that the entire line is perserved until the next "item on the list"? For example:

  1. Link 1 External search for link 1 Comment about link 1 with link to another article]
    Nested comment about link
    Second nested comment
  • Wrongly nested comment
  1. Link2 Notice space has been removed
  2. Link3] Malformed links
  1. Link4 Renumbering because of space

Ideally the entire line including the wrongly nested comment would be preserved. Thanks for the script. You have saved me hours of work. Reflex Reaction 21:44, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

Yes, it can be done, but the program would basically have to be re-written. As it is, the program reads in the page, and then puts all the links from the page into a list, and then processes that list. Instead, it would need to put all the lines in a list, not all links, and process them separately. So it's not a minor change. Then again, it's not a major script, so maybe Brian could whip it up for us? Quadell 00:46, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

Sorting by country

I know this project is labour intensive but I wish to suggest that if the stuff could also be sorted out country-wise, we would get a better response. This has been done for the 1911 EB topics and in 1 week, we've managed to populate 120 odd India-related-topics. Regards, =Nichalp «Talk»=

Wishlist (init 20) 19 left!!!

I have my own wishlist now. It's only 20 items. It's vaguely related to this, so I thought you might be interested. – Quadell (talk) (bounties) 18:03, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Daur people are described at Daur (could use improvement). 19!!! David Brooks 18:48, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
OTOH you may have less luck getting an article on Krystal Wakem. David Brooks 19:34, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
That's true, I see. I replaced her with Johnny Dioguardi. – Quadell (talk) (bounties) 22:35, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Dictionary of Scientific Biography

As part of the History of Science WikiProject, I want to start collecting a list of entries in the DSB that don't have corresponding WP articles.

1). Is this a copyright problem? The original selection of which scientists to include in the DSB represents a significant undertaking; would that be part of its copyright?

2). If it is ok to do this, what is the best way to coordinate it with the MEA project?--ragesoss 22:22, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for writing and I think most members of this project would look forward to a possible collaboration. To answer your questions, a direct copy of the index from DSB would indeed be a violation of copyright - Feist vs. Rural. We went through a similar issue with several of our lists (Encarta, Britannica 2004, and Weisstein), archived talk page. The way we have resolved this issue is to combine the indexes from several resources into our own unique lists which have been dubbed hotlists. You may want to combine DSB with some of these lists.
Several of the members including Brian0918, Quadell and myself are active in creating lists and would be able to help you out or give suggestions. As far collaboration what did you have in mind? It will definitely be easier to have a single list maintained by both groups. --Reflex Reaction (talk)• 03:26, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for clearing that up, and for the other biography sources. Yes, a single list would be good; I will start one on the History of Science project page and notify y'all on this page so you can integrate it into your system as well, and help make it conform to your way of doing things, and we can all work on it together like one big happy family. May the Wiki be with you--ragesoss 05:38, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Here is the new list:

Missing Scientist Articles

--ragesoss 20:57, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

I linked to it from Wikipedia:Missing science topics. – Quadell (talk) (bounties) 21:31, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Reorganization of General topics

About three months ago I proposed a reorganization of the General topics list. The ultimate decision was for me to defer to SimonP preferences and keep the old structure. But every time that I come across that page, it always annoys the hell out of me. It's just damn difficult to work with. For example, there are 90 subpages for the hotlist which can be displayed in a single screen (it used to be 150). To see all the subpages for the general list which only has 78 subpages, you have to scroll across two and half screens. The navigation template also is not much help; I have no idea that page 48 corresponds to (Motherby - Naouri) or that page 66 corresponds to (South Ossett - Stambourne Green). Yes, the navigation template can be changed, but that would make it almost as large to display something like 55 Lo-Lub, 56 Lub-Man for all 78 pages.

I don't do much work with the list so I'm willing to defer again, but I think that the page could use some improvements like

  • Search capability
  • Organization by letter
  • Ability to resort by red and blue links
  • Easier totalling and tracking of progress

These developments have all been put into hotlist and allow for easier article creation, navigation and pruning of the lists. Please let me know if you support a new reorganization or if you think nothing broken and am wondering why I'm trying to "fix" it again. Thanks --Reflex Reaction (talk)• 15:28, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

I guess really no one cares. I will stop beating this dead horse and let the project be. --Reflex Reaction (talk)• 01:19, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
Well wait a minute, I think the horse is still twitching. I think that the list is "broken", in the sense that it's not being used much. The question, in my mind, is whether the list is worth salvaging. I would love it if someone found a way to find all article names in both this "cold list" and the Hotlist, and then remove articles found in both from the cold list. See how much is left, and how many of the remaining are just unencyclopedic. If it's worth keeping, then in my mind, it would be best if it were merged into the hotlist. If it's not worth doing that, then I'm not sure why it's still around. – Quadell (talk) (bounties) 14:25, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
Hasn't Magnus already done that with the GeneralxHotlist? I'm sure someone (i.e. not me) could write a script to remove those repeats in the General list? I frankly don't remember if the GeneralxHotlist was all red linked when it was generated or had a mix of both. I tend to think that he prunes the list before posting it. About merging the lists. I'm not so sure anymore, the Hotlist was made from known encyclopedic sources. I don't know what made the General list and merging them would remove that benefit. Probert's encyclopedia I'm sure was part of the General list, but I've seen stuff from a single page encyclopedia of wine and beer. My thought with the reorganization has strictly been "This is a hard list to work with, in terms of navigation and topics. If we clean it up it will be easier to find those gems that are still in the list." --Reflex Reaction (talk)• 14:53, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Who Was Who in America?

There is a book of which most of you are probably aware, Who Was Who in America. It has been released as a number of volumes over the years. Is it the opinion of those in this project that all of the individuals who have articles in this book should be included as well? I have to acknowledge I'm not really sure just how many people are included here, but it is a bundle. Badbilltucker 16:57, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

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