Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Wales/Archive 2016

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Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals/Northern Railways

FYI, Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals/Northern Railways. --Redrose64 (talk) 00:21, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

Category:Geography of Merthyr Tydfil

Category:Geography of Merthyr Tydfil and related categories, have been nominated for possible renaming. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the Categories for discussion page. Thank you. Sionk (talk) 18:21, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

List of Welsh people on Wikidata

I added a new list to the current List of Welsh people, but as it had become too big, I moved it to it's own list, as the data is taken in from Wikidata. Please take a look as it's up for deletion! PS It's on 3 other language wikis, with no fuss or rumpus! Llywelyn2000 (talk) 18:07, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

Guys, any chance somebody could create a list of Welsh women on wikidata, or create a missing article list of women who have articles on Welsh wikipedia but not in English? This is being requested from the Women in Red project, and may result in a good number of articles being created if we can be given a list. Somebody?♦ Dr. Blofeld 16:49, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

Let's breathe new life into Wales

I'm thinking of making a grant application to wikimedia UK/or and Welsh councils/organizations to fund something which I envisage will dramatically improve content on wikipedia. We desperately need to have more quality articles on wikipedia. Part of that would go towards hosting an editathon/contest for Wales every 3 months, perhaps with a focus on a specific preserved county of Wales each time. Amazon vouchers would be given to the editors who produce the most content/the best content in a given editathon. Events would be well publicized, and local councils contacted/even flyers given out in local places. There would be a specific focus on listed buildings and settlements, with more points for getting Grade I listed buildings to GA or major towns, or simply core articles which are deemed valuable and a destubbing effort. We could also give a prize at the same time for the person who produces the most photographs of monuments in a given area- a realistic attempt to try to get a photograph for every listed building. The grant will also covers the costs of buying masses of books that I will get myself, travel costs to photograph monuments and lots of phone calls and publicity related stuff to various organizations to publicize it for an entire year. With a focus on a given area of Wales for three months, I would contribute heavily myself for two and then be willing to judge an editathon for the final month myself, after which I will give fairly generous prizes to the most prolific editors to try to attract more contributors. If I can get the funding, I would also try to encourage similar activity on other language wikipedias, and try to get them to produce quality articles and translations for Wales, though I'd probably need further funding from the Welsh tourism board or others to take care of that. If anybody would support this please say so and we can drum up interest.I think this could really do a great deal to improve the quality of coverage of Wales and photographs of monuments in the long term.♦ Dr. Blofeld 11:28, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

Great idea, and I'm sure that Wikimedia UK would look favourably on such a project, especially payment of receipts incurred, prizes etc, depending on community enthusiasm etc. I personally think such a focus and such cooperation is good and can only improve the content on Wikipedia and Commons. Great stuff! John Jones (talk) 13:17, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

Thanks. I think for it to be a real success though we're going to need to get local councils involved too. Imagine what could be achieved if a local council publicized an editathon and helped fund prizes to get people to contribute content and take photographs. We could bring in loads of new contributors, with an incentive for them to edit. I'll do my best to try to set something up. Hopefully WMUK will see the overall potential of it. I'd love to see lots of local councils and bodies involved too over time.♦ Dr. Blofeld 13:24, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

Hopefully, any new initiative would learn from, and not merely replicate, the Monmouthpedia initiative of a few years ago - which brought some short term publicity, not all of it good, and a plethora of new articles (like, um, this article about a tree) - but didn't really do anything to recruit new long term editors. Ghmyrtle (talk) 13:45, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

Yes, quite. If we had editathons/contests with higher points for tackling the more important articles though that might give people an incentive to not just create stubs on every little pub, house or tree.♦ Dr. Blofeld 13:47, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

Bear in mind that some of us loath "incentives", and will carry on anyway, just as we want to.... Ghmyrtle (talk) 13:58, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

As a PS: Did Monmouthshire Council ever produce a report summarising the costs and benefits of their involvement in Monmouthpedia? It may exist, but I've never seen it. If cash-strapped local councils can't see any direct financial benefit to them or their communities, they are unlikely to provide much in the way of direct support for any new initiative. Ghmyrtle (talk) 15:16, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

Local councils might not provide the funding but they might show an interest in building up local resources.♦ Dr. Blofeld 15:24, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

My involvement post-Monmouthpedia, as a local councillor who was known to have some connection to "that Wikipedia thing", was deeply negative. I stayed as far away from it all as I could, but I felt tarred by my association with WP. The local follow-on projects to Monmouthpedia are notable by their absence.

Rather than councils, the local history groups might be more fruitful. Monmouthshire and Caldicot are pretty active. Andy Dingley (talk) 16:06, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

If you think so badly about wikipedia why the hell are you here? You'd not visit the site at all if it was that bad.♦ Dr. Blofeld 20:43, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

So if I'm called a fraudster in a public meeting a QR code's throw from Monmouth just because I'm a WP editor, that's my fault? This attitude (which seems widespread in the upper echelons of WMUK) is why I keep asking myself just that question! If you think I'm making baseless accusations, I wasn't the one who brought up Gibraltarpedia. If you think that WP Wales needs more editors, why do you seem to think that there are two too many? Andy Dingley (talk) 22:29, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

As a trustee of a local history group, and at the risk of being accused of being negative again, I will merely say... hmmm...... Ghmyrtle (talk) 16:09, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

PS: Seriously... most people involved in local history groups are pretty elderly, and many (including ex-teachers) are either actively hostile towards WP, or have absolutely no interest in "anything to do with computers". It might be a more fruitful approach to try to involve schools... where everybody uses WP in one way or another. Ghmyrtle (talk) 16:23, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

I too will ignore any editathon, and Real Life will usually conspire to stop me writing what I'd like to. But I would like to see per-project lists of redlinks to "Important Articles" that aren't yet covered, and to have somewhere to put notes or sources on such, even before there's a stub. Andy Dingley (talk) 14:55, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

Some people dislike incentives, but it is a fact that the vast majority of people don't edit wikipedia. Something as a prize might at least attract a few people to the project or make a few existing editors make the extra effort.♦ Dr. Blofeld 15:17, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

Great idea, Dr. Blofeld! When people pull together they achieve much more! If making an application for reimbursement of payments, you could include books, travel costs, prizes and even refreshments for the editathons. Take a look at this page here on Wikimedia UK's website. This project may well wake up the Dragon! Llywelyn2000 (talk) 14:13, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

Lovely comment Llywelyn about the dragon!! Thanks! Perhaps WMUK will be supportive if we can get several of the Welsh institutions on board too. Ideally we'd have several coordinators including myself forming agreements with local councils and getting them to help fund the editathons too and helping quickly educate people in how to edit wikipedia. Ideally each county council of Wales would show an active interest in this, as improving coverage of local monuments and settlements can only help promote tourism and interest too. Getting a photograph of every listed building in Wales would be a part of the development. There's a lot of potential in this anyway. I'd be willing to contribute a great deal myself too and could buy the whole lot of Pevsner books by county. Feel free anybody to brainstorm more ideas on how we can realistically bring in the people we need to mass improve content on here and get people contributing. There does need to be strong coordination with local libraries and councils I think if we are to have any success.♦ Dr. Blofeld 14:38, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

I think this is a fantastic idea! WP:Monmouthpedia was very successful, and this could be modeled after that to some extent. I'll bet other language Wikipedias may like to be involved so perhaps WMUK could have a poster for it at Berlin in April to bring some of the other Chapters in the loop. Redlink lists would be important, as well as a unique logo, perhaps a quarterly blog, and a Signpost article at the end of the year. Although 2016 is the Year of Science, I think WMUK could make a case for simultaneously devoting a year to a whole country as I think there will be a lot of interest in this proposal if properly promoted. --Rosiestep (talk) 15:28, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

"...Monmouthpedia was very successful". By whose criteria? Ghmyrtle (talk) 15:40, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

Are you anything but negative Ghmyrtle? Monmouthpedia might have had its controversies/flaws but it did produce a lot of local content. That in my book is a success.♦ Dr. Blofeld 15:41, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

Yes, I am. But quantity=/=quality. Ghmyrtle (talk) 15:52, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

Yes, there needs to be a strong emphasis on quality. Perhaps we could start with a one-off editathon contest for March coinciding with St David's Day? A points system in which editors who produce GAs or FAs on the really important topics get more points. I know some people dislike "contests" and "incentives", wikipedia isn't a race, but I'm just trying to think of a way we can get people contributing and a significant improvement in coverage, something which will make people make an extra effort.♦ Dr. Blofeld 15:54, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

Guy is an absolute ray of sunshine compared to me! Andy Dingley (talk) 16:08, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

Oh eck ;-)♦ Dr. Blofeld 16:13, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

I definitely support this idea and am happy to boost the coverage of listed buildings on both cy.wp and en.wp. There isn't even complete coverage of Wales's castles in either language yet; Carmarthen and Hay castles, both listed at Grade I, only have dedicated articles in German!

I spoke to the Events Officer at National Museum Cardiff today and both she and the museum's Librarian are on board with the idea of holding a historic buildings editathon at the museum, with books provided by the museum's library. We talked about possibly holding it during Cadw Open Doors in early September; alternatively, a later date would allow for it to appear in the museum's public What's On booklet. Dr. Blofeld, I can pass the Event Officer's details on to you. It would would also be worth getting in touch with User:Jason.nlw, Wikimedian in Residence at the National Library of Wales. Hope this helps! Ham II (talk) 16:46, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

This all sounds great! - exactly the kind of campaign that is needed to get more people working on articles relating to Wales. I am sure the National Library would help in anyway it can, and i certainly will help out. Please see my Project page to get an idea of the kind of work that is already happening to improve content relating to Wales Jason.nlw (talk) 17:23, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

Hi Jason - I've just remembered it was you who put up the St Woolos (Newport) tithe map from mid 19th century. Very interesting, especially when you look at the early OS maps showing the expansion and industrialisation of Newport. Any chance of the equivalent for Llanfrechfa (my home parish)?! Robevans123 (talk) 20:30, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

Great Ham and Jason! Editathons at places like the museum are good, especially with the resource material there but what I was thinking of is very much online for people around Wales and elsewhere and throughout an entire month with prizes for the best articles/most photographs. If local councils can help publicize that there is say £250 in Amazon vouchers up for grabs in producing the best article I'm sure it would lure in a lot of people to contribute. Then though we would need some personnel here to quickly train newbies in editing. Quite a few people might need books potentially too. Online I think we could start with a trial editathon with prizes and see how it goes. Ideally every listed building in Wales would be of Castell Coch quality, which I'm proud of! The focus I think though needs to be destubbing and getting articles to Good article standard. And a points system for the contest/editathon in which greater points are given to working on the more core articles and for quality.♦ Dr. Blofeld 20:38, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

No worries; presumably the museum editathon could still complement the larger effort (it would be using a lot of the same books), and articles improved during it could be eligible for the contest? If that sounds good to you, is there any particular date (post-September) that would work with what you've got in mind for the bigger project? Ham II (talk) 16:52, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

I think this is a tidy idea. The coverage and depth of articles about Wales is quite variable to say the least, and it would be great to see a concerted effort over a few months on a particular area (and I think the preserved counties approach is a good one).

I'm definitely up for a significant effort on Gwent (I'm from Cwmbran originally) and know there are plenty of thin areas to work on which I never quite get round to. Would also be willing to help out in other counties but would have less local knowledge (and don't have the sort of sources (Pevsner, Hando, Chris Barber etc that I have for Gwent)) for other areas, but can do a fair bit of online digging for details.

I'm neither enthused or disheartened by the offer of prizes, but can see why it might discourage others. I think we could benefit from some input from Ghmyrtle and Andy Dingley on what didn't work. I was going to ask Ghmyrtle for some examples, and then the tree in St James Square appeared! Oh dear. I've passed that tree many times (even sung under it in the choir for Remembrance day), and was still nodding off. Having said that, a couple of hours editing could cut that down to 25% and then it could be just a section in the article on the surrounding square. Also, I've been attacking lots of typos recently, and compared to some articles I've seen, the Monmouth tree would be ranked as Good! And to be honest the articles about Monmouth that I've gone to by choice have been pretty good.

I wonder if the problem with the Monmouthpedia experiment was that it was perceived as being a bit separate from Wikipedia by new contributors, so leading to few or no new editors being retained?

It would be great if we could combine at least some of this possible effort with the cy.wp, and arrange to have most improved/significant articles from both being translated to the other. Maybe a chance to get some learners to translate parts of articles from their second language to their first. Would certainly get kudos from government agencies etc if we make at least some of the work bi-lingual. Robevans123 (talk) 21:05, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

The focus with Monmouthpedia was seemingly mass of content, to produce an article on everything. That ended up producing a lot of articles on minor buildings and topics which might not really interest people further afield. Not that I don't think they have a place on wikipedia, I think eventually we should have that sort of level of coverage. But the focus really does need to go on the more important articles and towards quality, rather than sheer mass of content, though there's many Grade II listed buildings which are notable and really need to be started. A prize for the editor who destubs the most articles though would be a good thing, as there's a lot of crappy stubs, particularly on villages. Yes Rob, into Welsh too, and potentially other languages, I think the Welsh government would be interested in other countries reading articles about places in Wales too, particularly into German and Dutch.♦ Dr. Blofeld 21:32, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

As well as the lessons of Monmouthpedia, you (plural) would do well to study what happened with Gibraltarpedia, which was along the lines as what I think you're proposing. While Monmouthpedia had positives and negatives, Gibraltarpedia could politely be described as an unmitigated PR disaster which gave the impression that Wikipedia editors were pocketing taxpayer's money in return for advertorial, and if the WMF or WMUK get the idea you're planning anything similar they're likely to come in all guns blazing, particularly if there's any way the prizes could be construed as payments in exchange for securing favorable placement on the front page of Wikipedia or anywhere else (Jimbo's words). ‑ Iridescent 21:54, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

Yes, though that was blown out of proportion on ridiculous levels and things wildly exaggerated.♦ Dr. Blofeld 22:13, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

Sure, but perception is the thing; Jimmy and Lila don't want to be put in a position where they're having to answer questions again about whether Wikipedia editors are taking bribes, and will stomp on anything that looks like it might lead down that road. Bear in mind that after the Grant Shapps fiasco relations between the WMF and the British press are not at their best, so you can assume the Telegraph and Guardian will put the worst spin on anything they can; plus, the pondlife who frequent User talk:Jimbo Wales will no doubt start whining again about "paid editing". ‑ Iridescent 22:23, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

The reality is that 99% of people don't edit wikipedia. We're grossly underachieving as a resource and just lack the manpower needed to really tackle what needs to be tackled. Is there any surprise the encyclopedia is this way if people like you and the "pondlife" object to absolutely anything which might actually bring in new contributors and motivate people to produce content? What would you suggest instead? Because the current editorial situation is pretty dismal. There's barely a handful of people doing the work and promoting articles to GA/FA. In the real world, people are motivated to get off their arses and work in compensation for something. And people enter competitions and do work towards things in return for opportunities to win something or achieve something of esteem. If you don't attach any value to anything or give people any incentive to edit then most people are not going to do it. We desperately need new contributors and we desperately need them to develop core articles and even up quality. Without anything given back to the community articles will largely remain stale and woefully inadequate. We have a goal we need to achieve on here-that's a quality article for everywhere, so why shouldn't we reward people who make that extra effort to get articles there which would otherwise remain stale?♦ Dr. Blofeld 23:19, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

My God, the whine is painful as hell. The basic principal put forward by his holiness the Blofeld is that we should reach out and try to embrace others into working on Wikipedia articles and in specific Welsh articles. And in response we have editors finding this a bad idea. It doesn't matter how its done, some bleeding Woolworths vouchers aren't going to bring down the furies upon us. We all hold the same basic view point that we need fresh blood, and over the last five years we all know its the same handful of names that are updating and patrolling Welsh article. What we should be proud of is that we have some damn fine committed editors that other WikiProjects would give their back teeth for. Just because things didn't go as we envisioned previously is a ridiculous argument for not trying to go forward in future. I'm sure we have all learned from past mistakes, but I'd rather return to the sins of the past than sit on my hand and stagnate. There have been some fantastic ideas flashed over this talk page on the last few days, and I support anything that moves this project forward, But I would rather see movement then a talking shop. How many of our best GA articles were sparked by just going for it. Apologies for the rant , but I have government alcohol guidance to ignore. FruitMonkey (talk) 01:21, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

A useful prelude to this work (and a good thing to do anyway) would be to standardise the categories hierarchy for Welsh articles. Would help identify specialist areas to work on and identify areas lacking articles. I'd be interested in doing this. Anyone else up for it? Robevans123 (talk) 18:52, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

• Here's Monmouthshire's latest attitude to Wikipedia, http://www.southwalesargus.co.uk/news/14191777.Gwent__monkey_selfie__photographer_to_sue_Wikipedia/

I note that one of the regular leading lights of WMUK is already stripping postings of this story from talk: pages under "NPA". I wonder if he'll go for this one too? Andy Dingley (talk) 00:01, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

All sounds great from my point of view. I'm already writing articles on a number of key buildings in Wales (though I prefer to create a useful length article that covers the basics and leave the detailed development to someone else). If important resources are made available, that's good news (though some of the Pevsner books are available via Google and the Nat Library has made many Wales newspapers available too). Like Ghmyrtle and Andy Dingley I'm probably inclined to continue doing 'my thang', but don't want to discourage the enthusiasm.

One very sensible and useful idea, suggested by Andy Dingley above, would be to create a page of redlinks for articles urgently required (e.g. all Grade I and Grade II* listed buildings and bridges, any missing villages, missing rivers etc). Sionk (talk) 00:09, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

A useful example of this is List of places in Pembrokeshire, which I am working my way through. Tony Holkham (Talk) 11:04, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

As Fruitmonkey says, content development on Wales on here has been restricted to a small handful of dedicated editors who do their best to tackle a mammoth task but obviously can't cover even 1/1000th of what they'd like to. Considering the population of Wales and the UK and the number actually editing, we desperately need to attract more people and train them to edit and to greatly improve the quality and depth of our coverage. I proposed Amazon vouchers for the fact that people can buy anything they want freely with it, and that includes buying their own books on Wales to feed back into the project for future contests etc. But it could be other things, though I'm sure people would generally prefer a decent Amazon voucher than a Welsh dragon mug or pad and pen! My basic argument is that we need an incentive to lure in new editors and not just expect hundreds to arrive and do what we need, in 15 years, history has shown that this just doesn't happen. If new editors don't choose to stay long, we'd have at least made an effort to try to be more productive. If there are regular contests throughout the year, chances are people will remain interested. I think the "bait" should go primarily towards "Best Article Contributor", "Most Prolific Editor (who destubs the most articles/creates the most start class entries" and "Most Productive Photographer". Banks of articles, existing and missing, would be drawn up, and higher points given for the more core articles or those a group of us agree badly need developing. As Sionk says, a hot list of missing articles too, again with higher points given to editors who start them and develop to minimum 3 kb of readable prose or something. Higher points would be given for those people who photograph listed buildings too. That in turn gives people an incentive to target those to try to win the rewards.

I say we request an initial one off £500 from WMUK purely for giving out as prizes. We hold a month long online editathon for Wales in February, ending on St Davids Day on March 1, or if we need more time planning then host it in March. We do our best to publicize it, and if fairly productive, we could go for a full grant from elsewhere to cover a larger scale operation throughout the year, and annually thereafter, which would also potentially involve local councils and publicity. It would be a trial run, and any problems encountered can be highlighted and plan drawn up to avoid them in future contests and an idea of what works and what doesn't.♦ Dr. Blofeld 11:33, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

This three-day heated debate is quite hard to get to grips with, overall. Here are some thoughts -

• Yes, we need a much clearer idea of what articles need creating and developing (on the latter, there are lists of stubs).
  • There's no reason why we shouldn't have lists of buildings, bridges, etc. which are full of red links.
• Yes, we need more editors dedicated to Wales articles (and it's a Wiki-wide problem)
  • But it takes time for new editors to be proficient enough to create and develop articles.
• It may be that incentives will help both the above.
  • I have no strong feelings about that because I edit for pleasure, not incentive.

My opinion - encourage new editors (including, maybe even especially, IPs) with a Wales-specific welcome message. So many potential new editors are put off because the first thing they see on their talk page is a bite because they have unwittingly transgressed. Perhaps a welcome message first? Tony Holkham (Talk) 15:31, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

Is there a means of identifying Welsh IPs so that they could be given an automated Wales-specific welcome message? SovalValtos (talk) 17:21, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

Only inasmuch as they are making edits on a Welsh article... and I wasn't thinking automated necessarily. Tony Holkham (Talk) 17:08, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

There's been a lot of support for your ideas Dr. Blofeld, and two negative inputs by a couple of users. There are two fronts here: inspiring new users on one hand and focusing existing editors on both creating new articles and developing existing articles on the other. You will know that something similar has been happening on cywiki for a while, and continues to do so - User:Jason.nlw being one of these! - and his work at Aberystwyth is bilingual, with many successful editathons run in both languages. Ham II enabled open licencing at the Coleg Cymraeg a couple of years ago, which continues today and has already contacted the NMW. User:SovalValtos' idea above on geotagging Wales-specific welcome message is something we really need to discuss further, but maybe not here; 'on this day' appears for all Welsh speakers. There's a lot of work going on in the background, but suggestions like this need nurturing, and leaps of faith need to be taken. A few years ago 'The 20/20 Vision of Wales' competition produced over 270 new articles on Welsh places and things - in around 20 languages, and I'll be running something similar before long, probably based on Wikidata. List of Welsh people includes a table which in theory could be included on all 280 lanuages. I suggest you gather all the positives and form an application for funding from Wikimedia UK (£500 seems a lot for prizes, but why not debate it there?) PS I note that Dr. Blofeld was successful in a bid to Wikimedia UK based on 'Golden Holywood', so why not get that one finished and a new application up there? Robin Owain (WMUK) (talk) 06:26, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

Thankyou Robin. Yes, there seems a lot of support here. Perhaps £300 then, but I was also thinking of prizes for photographs and editor who creates the most start class articles, and destubs the most articles aside from Best Article, which with runners up prizes I think that would have put it nearer £500. What I want is to do a trial for a month and see if a fairly handsome prize attracts new editors. I suggest we propose a trial contest for March. That will give us a month to organize it, Jason, Ham and Robin to try to get those others involved and try to maximise productivity. Yes, I have a Golden Hollywood one running, but have been pretty tired starting off this year. I will try to resume with Cary Grant soon. I't's not a case of really finishing that one though, long term I had intended working on more biographies, there's a lot more which could be potentially tackled, and it doesn't just have to be me of course. I ought to demonstrate though that progress is being made with Cary Grant.♦ Dr. Blofeld 12:18, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

Perhaps we could start drawing up some lists of core articles and their current grading status and lists of missing articles? Would the initial contest be all of Wales/any topic, or buildings or what? I think a general one for all of Wales would be fine, but we'll need to identify a hotlist of core articles which are priority for getting to GA status and above.♦ Dr. Blofeld 13:25, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

A contest in March sounds great to me; prime time for photographing buildings before there are too many leaves on the trees! Personally I would prefer to keep the focus on buildings in Wales, still a huge topic; that at any rate is where I'd be concentrating my own attention.

On en.wp, happy to help with compiling a hotlist of core articles for improvement. Perhaps we should start by looking at the Top-, High- and Mid-importance Wales articles? Wikipedia:WikiProject Wales/Popular pages unfortunately seems not to have been generated yet, despite being listed here.

For cy.wp, I've started to draw up a list of red links here. I've found 36 castles without articles (but haven't checked the lists of Scheduled Monuments yet) and 112 Grade I-listed churches without articles. Based on this, I'm not sure if getting an article for every Grade I-listed building would be feasible yet, but I think we should aim for full coverage of castles, as well as for a selection of other listed buildings.

We should also try to get images to fill gaps in these articles. And Welsh versions of these could be generated using Wikidata – there could be a drive to create all the necessary Welsh labels.

I intend to press ahead with plans for the Museum editathon for historic buildings and am thinking of Friday 9 September as a date. How does this sound? Ham II (talk) 17:31, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

Hi Ham, any editathon is a good idea of course. If either you or Jason could arrange an editathon anywhere for March during the contest this would be great too, not essential, but anything which increases participation. I think for this trial contest we'd be better allowing anything, to allow for greater diversity and interest, but we can certainly place a higher value and points for improving/starting photographing certain key listed buildings. Another thing I think is to place a high number of points for getting the counties and preserved counties of Wales, which are Top importance, up to decent quality. I was thinking that this would be exclusive to English wikipedia only as I don't speak Welsh myself, but I do think we could potentially include Welsh wikipedia in with it. We'd need somebody to judge the Welsh entries meet the contest guidelines and act as a go between though as I think the contest would be based at Wikipedia:WikiProject Wales/Awaken the Dragon. The more I think about this the more I think it would be best to go with a pure points system. Certain points are given for good articles, expanding stubs on a hotlist, creating new articles from a hotlist and photographing certain monuments, and bonuses for certain things. We simply give £150 for first place, £50 for second, £25 for third, £15 for fourth and £10 for fifth to the editors who amount the most points. That system would place a value on quality and core articles and photographs more than others but ultimately be open to any contribution and be easier to judge. New articles to comply would need to be minimum 1.5 kb of readable prose and expansions at least by 3kb or whatever. What we want to avoid of course is the Monmouthpedia approach of making it a stub fest for any old place, or street, however minor. While all articles would be welcome of course, the points approach which places value on the core articles and quality, people might be less likely to produce those sorts of articles in abundance. We might need some extra funding to help assist editors with books and potential editathons. I think also we might need it to be nearer 6 weeks in total if editors are going to be waiting for books to arrive, but I think we should aim to start it on 1 March. Over the next month we can draw up the hotlists of articles and the contest rules/guidelines and publicize it.♦ Dr. Blofeld 17:16, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

Photographs

Ham II has made a good point, that buildings wil be more visible to photograph before the trees sprout their leaves. Obviously Category:Wikipedia requested photographs in Wales already lists a number of buildings that require photos. This won't capture articles that lack an image request, not will it pick up on articles about important buildings that have yet to be written. I'm happy to look through the articles in Category:Listed buildings in Wales to add any missing image requests - though one would imagine most important buildings would have images available on geograph.org.uk - the next step would be to see whether images were already freely available (before we head out with our cameras). Sionk (talk) 23:01, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

Yes, that would be great Sionk. As part of the contest points would be given for photographing certain monuments. Grade I buildings without a photo/interiors we might give more points for, and me might have some bonus points or something for photographing certain settlements ot buildings which we desperately need photographs for in particular. If you could take care of the photograph side of things and start organizing the needed photographs by importance we can arrange a points system and work it into the contest.♦ Dr. Blofeld 17:19, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

@Sionk:/@Ham II: OK, I've created a photographs section of Wikipedia:WikiProject Wales/Awaken the Dragon. Feel free to reword/elaborate/create Wikipedia:WikiProject Wales/Awaken the Dragon/Missing photograph hotlist and identify much needed photographs by area of Wales/Grade listing and give some rank of importance/priority so we can assign points accordingly later.♦ Dr. Blofeld 11:30, 29 January 2016 (UTC)

Project started

OK, I've started Wikipedia:WikiProject Wales/Awaken the Dragon. Assistance drawing up banks of core articles will be welcome. We can create a few "levels" for importance, leve1 is roughly the top importance ones, Level 2 roughly can be high importance, but we can also include some mid importance rated ones in with things or a Level 3 one can be created for mid. I suggest that we include all Grade I listed buildings or give extra points for people who tackle Grade I listed buildings. If there's still articles missing please list them on the page. I think we should probably draw up a Wikipedia:WikiProject Wales/Awaken the Dragon/Missing article hotlist for all those missing articles we badly want started, organized alphabetically by topic. Sionk if you could start doing something with photographs, identifying buildings we need photographs for, participants can get extra points for that too.♦ Dr. Blofeld 09:46, 29 January 2016 (UTC)

Just see that the spplication is here. As an editor of WP, I think this project could kindle the soul. I support this project. Llywelyn2000 (talk) 18:16, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

Pembrokeshire places

Partly with the contest in mind, but because it should be helpful to those interested in Pembrokeshire, I have added to the lead of List of places in Pembrokeshire and annotated articles that are currently overt or covert redirects, but may well be sufficiently notable for their own articles. Tony Holkham (Talk) 14:54, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

Awaken the Dragon contest approved

OK this has been approved by WMUK. We now need a quick show of hands here on whether we want to run it in March or April.♦ Dr. Blofeld 16:48, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

Congrats and llongyfarchiadau! A lot of hard work, Dr. Blofeld, and others. Now the fun begins! Llywelyn2000 (talk) 14:14, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

Cariad cywir

Can anyone help establish that this article meets WP:NSONG or WP:GNG? Best wishes, Boleyn (talk) 13:19, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

Hi. i can verify that it's one of the nicest songs, especially when sang to me by my grandmother! As far as enwiki rules - no idea, (notability is very different in Welsh!) but I can say that it has been recorded and performed by the big guns many times. I'd place this one in the above Awakening the Dragon project. Llywelyn2000 (talk) 14:17, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

@Llywelyn2000: Added it to the Culture section. If there's any more songs you think should be added please identify them!♦ Dr. Blofeld 15:30, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

Announcing the contest on Welsh wikipedia

Can somebody announce it on Welsh wikipedia and invite people? We're definitely going to run it anyway, but I do hope it is approvedwith prizes within a few days.♦ Dr. Blofeld 17:25, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

I'll do this, but I'll need the rest of the weekend to finish translating the project page – I hope that's OK. Ham II (talk) 08:20, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

Cheers Ham II♦ Dr. Blofeld 16:48, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

@Ham II: Oes na rywbeth fedra i wneud? Llywelyn2000 (talk) 14:18, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

@Llywelyn2000: Diolch am y cynnig! I'll switch to English to keep everyone on this wiki in the loop. The core articles list in Welsh is now here. I've got up to the economy section and am now working on translating the geography list.

I wanted to display more than just the Welsh wikilink so I experimented with different formats and finally discovered {{illm}} on the English Wikipedia (though I actually saw it first on the French). I've added it to the Welsh Wikipedia as {{dai}} and you can see it in use in the section Yr economi.

Llywelyn2000, if I finish translating the first five sections on Wikipedia:WikiProject Wales/Awaken the Dragon/Core articles (including making the formatting of the earlier sections consistent), would you mind translating the last four, using the {{dai}} template? Yr economi is the model to follow. Diolch o galon eto! Ham II (talk) 14:54, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

@Ham II: Can you give me another week or two to really complete the core lists? You can then copy them. I don't want to annoy you by finishing it for a while and adding ones and you finding it difficult to keep track of" I think it's best you finish the core list in Welsh once the final core list on here is definitely just about complete! Architecture though to geography though should be just about complete, though I just added a song on Llewelyn's recommendation. If it helps Ham, shall I change the bullets to numbers so you can match them up and make it easier to spot ones missed later? Perhaps then you can do it progressively from now and it shouldn't be too difficult to match up with the numbers?♦ Dr. Blofeld 15:34, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

@Dr. Blofeld: Sorry for my very fitful replies lately! Happy to hold fire on translating the later sections; I'll just take it up to Geography. I don't mind keeping track of minor changes to the lists after I've done the translations; numbers instead of bullet points, though, would be a massive help.

@Llywelyn2000: Change of plan from above; instead of the lists, would you be happy to translate Wikipedia:WikiProject Wales/Awaken the Dragon at cy:Wicipedia:Deffro'r Ddraig? WP:DRAIG would be a great shortcut. Ham II (talk) 16:00, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

No worries Ham. Yes, I'll convert to numbers for you, we can also then see how many articles we have for each section.♦ Dr. Blofeld 16:08, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

Happy St David's Day

Just to wish you all a Happy St David's Day. May the next month be productive!♦ Dr. Blofeld 12:43, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

Classification of importance of topic

I am a little unclear about the classification system used in this WikiProject, and the inclusion critera.

On the classification system. I refer to the following articles - T GWYNN JONES (Rated: Start-class, Low-importance), ROBERT WILLIAMS PARRY (Rated start class, ??? for importance), THOMAS EVAN NICHOLAS (NICLAS Y GLAIS) (Rated Start-class, Low-importance) T H PARRY-WILLIAMS (Rated Start-class, Low-importance) SAUNDERS LEWIS (Rated Start-class, Low-importance).

On the inclusion criteria, I refer to the article on WALDO WILLIAMS (not included in the project).

What these articles have in common is that they relate to Welsh people who wrote in the Welsh language.

They include some of the towering and best-loved figures in Welsh language poetry and culture over the last 100 years - including its greatest poets. They range politically from Saunders Lewis (founder President of Plaid Cymru, the Welsh Nationalist Party) to T E Nicholas (prominent in the ILP and the CP).

I do have concerns about the low priority accorded to these articles in WikiProject Wales (and the failure to include Waldo Williams at all).

Has any Welsh-speaking person participated in the classification exercise?

Gwedi elwch (talk) 18:03, 23 March 2016 (UTC)

Hi Gwedi elwch. The simple answer to this is 'who knows'. Most often the creator of an article will either not create a talk page for the article or will link the project group and allow others to decide on the level of importance as often the originator may be too close the topic and over-rate it. Often a person linked to one of the other projects will rate an article and not understand the importance of the article to Welsh culture, just seeing an author of vague, unfashionable children's stories for example. The thing is these are not set in stone in any way. If you are unhappy then change them, just give a brief comment in your update when you do so. Yours, FruitMonkey (talk) 18:34, 23 March 2016 (UTC)

If you are interested in some light homework, and some practice at rating articles, you could do worse then visiting Category:Unassessed Wales articles and Category:Unknown-importance Wales articles. They need some help. FruitMonkey (talk) 18:41, 23 March 2016 (UTC)

I've included Waldo Williams in WikiProject Wales. Tony Holkham (Talk) 19:36, 23 March 2016 (UTC)

I've amended Saunders Lewis' "importance" rating, because he certainly seems fundamental to Welsh nationalism, Welsh politics and known outside of Wales. The WikiProject Cardiff seems to have a better guide to measuring importance, because the Wales criteria doesn't apply easily to things or people. Sionk (talk) 10:39, 25 March 2016 (UTC)

All the writers mentioned ought to be rated at Mid-importance at least. This sentence from Wikipedia:Systemic bias seems pertinent: "the version of the world presented in the English Wikipedia will always be the Anglophone Wikipedian's version of the world". We need to counter this bias, in this instance by giving equal weight to Welsh-speakers' and English-speakers' views of Welsh culture. I think that these articles should therefore be rated as being of High importance to the Wales WikiProject. Ham II (talk) 16:03, 25 March 2016 (UTC)

Trouble finding references? The Wikipedia Library is proud to announce ...

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Wikipedia Visiting Scholars

The National Library of Wales is looking to appoint the UK's first Wikipedia Visiting Scholar. We are looking for enthusiastic volunteers to improve content relating to Wales on Wikipedia (in English or Welsh). Successful applicants will be given access to Library collections, online resources and staff expertise. This is a voluntary position. Visiting scholars can work remotely and at their own pace. Jason.nlw (talk) 09:45, 1 April 2016 (UTC)

Six Nations

Would anybody here be interested in involving Wales in a sort of Six Nations editathon/contest on wikipedia with Scotland, Ireland, England, France and Italy? It would be a similar format to the Dragon one. Early days at the moment but I could see something like this really bringing about an enormous improvement to the encyclopedia. The prize could be something substantial for a WikiProject and allow them to get free books up to a certain value for the project or something. Each country could have a team against each other for the duration of the week or even month and a points system for quality of articles/output. The winner each week would get points like in the Six Nations and then there be an overall winner at the end. With France and Italy I would allow French and Italian wikipedia to submit articles in their own languages too, though of course we want English wikipedia to benefit too.♦ Dr. Blofeld 07:59, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

Could be fun. In the spirit of cooperation, maybe "away" points could count double? That is, a Welsh contributor improving an article on an Italian subject would get double points. We'd always be struggling against a big English team, but we like being the underdog! Robevans123 (talk) 10:36, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

That does sound good, I like that, and that could bring Wales new contributors and vice versa, and give editors a broad field to contribute to for variation and enjoyment. OK I'll give this some thought throughout the month. Further ideas and comments from people will be welcome in the meantime. I think something like we're seeing with Wales this month happening for those other five countries at the same time would be something. I think we should strive to make editing as fun and rewarding as possible, there's too much doom and gloom on this site.♦ Dr. Blofeld 10:42, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

Could be interesting, although the admin burden could be quite heavy and I'd suggest that you find some volunteers first. You'd also need to decide if you want to focus on a targeted article list as in Awaken the Dragon or go with a more general connection to each country. And using country-related stubs can be a problem as many articles aren't well tagged. Forex ships aren't categorized as English, Scottish or Welsh, only as British.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 13:03, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

Yes, there is that, but I would go by where the ship was built for categorizing that.♦ Dr. Blofeld 13:10, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

• This is of course based on the rugby. I'm something of a steady plodder and would prefer a more sequential development. After we've completed Wales, we could then cover Scotland, then possibly Ireland. In a year or two, when everyone has begun to realize the potential, we could launch something like the international cup you're suggesting. But why base it on rugby? It could also be on rowing or skiing where the Scandinavians would have a chance of competing.--Ipigott (talk) 17:58, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

It's not intended to be rugby oriented, but I thought the nations it covers in particular would really benefit from this sort of thing, especially France and Italy on English wikipedia. Anyway let's see how this one goes first!♦ Dr. Blofeld 18:13, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

It's a lovely idea and I have some thoughts about how possibly to make it work with multiple languages. Translating the core list from English to Welsh has taken ages and I haven't got to the Transport section yet! What would be helpful would be if there were a new template that would take the link and article name for list items from Wikidata. (I'm afraid I don't have the skills to do this myself.) Ham II (talk) 19:08, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, Yeah the framework would take a while to set up but the beauty of that is that once it's in place it's there to stay and can be used for consecutive contests. I think it would be the next natural step to make, and I think would be even more productive than the dragon contest as there would be different "matches" going on between different countries every week/month, so you might see what we've been seeing for the drgaon contest for Scotland, Ireland and all the others too. It might motivate people to work that bit harder, I mean if England is winning on the last day it might see a big combined effort to produce content for Wales and beat them! You could have different rounds and a different focus with each one, for one it could be destubbing hotels, the next 3 k expansions of listed churches or whatever. And which ever nations tackles the most in one round gets the points. Each round would target a different area, weak areas of the encyclopedia and get them improved and then at the end of each match you could simply have a general editathon and give people the chance to contribute anything and win points back. I think it needs a strong mechanism like this in place which makes editing fun but will get the work done. Wikipedia is not a contest, but there needs to be a strong mechanism in place which gets people to do a large amount of work and enjoy every step of it. I think the national competitive aspect of it would create more content than if they were separate ones. I need to test a few things out with this Dragon one though, see what works and what doesn't. ♦ Dr. Blofeld 20:29, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

Nice idea! Anything that gets people focused on something can only be good. – SchroCat (talk) 08:59, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

100 most popular Welsh articles

Can somebody Ham II, Llewelyn 2000 etc find me the 100 most visited articles on wikipedia for Wales, the most recent figure? I don't know if wikidata has that ability and you can autogenerate a list, but I need a list of the most visited as I'm considering placing new points on them. Those too of course should be one of the priorities with this.♦ Dr. Blofeld 11:50, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

Dobbing Balls

No - this is not a joke - it's a serious enquiry. I came across a reminiscence from a lady who grew up in the early part of the 20th century in Cwmavon (Torfaen) in a book called The Gwent Village Book. She described how, during the depression, men would catch the waste water from a colliery washery into a "dobbing pond". They'd then drain out the water and make dobbin balls (presumably from the coal dust in the water) which could be burnt on the fire to extend the coal used. Apparently they gave out a good heat but would crumble and flare up if prodded. Some google searches didn't show up anything similar. It does seem a feasible idea if there's enough coal dust in the waste water. It's unclear to me what the details of the process would be. Would the coal dust form a sludge that settled on the bottom of the pond? I'm guessing the sludge could be formed into balls but these would then have to be left to dry out before they would be useful. Has anyone heard of a similar process, maybe with a different name? Robevans123 (talk) 17:36, 9 April 2016 (UTC)

I hadn't heard of this practice, but it seems perfectly reasonable. Maybe it is the origin of the anthracite (smokeless) or coal nuts that you've been able to buy in bags for years, which are probably from non-lump coal, ground and compressed. Gleaning from tips would have been considered stealing (only by the mine owner, of course!) so this might have been a sensible and legal alternative to eke out fuel supplies. Tony Holkham (Talk) 18:35, 9 April 2016 (UTC)

A conical late-period washery at Blaenserchan

This wasn't unusual nationally, but it wasn't usually miners doing it.

Coal mining was a wasteful process. "Large coal" could be sold, but "small coal" (we need an article on this) was waste as no-one wanted it. It couldn't be burned easily on an industrial basis, as any boiler or furnace with a good draught blew it straight up the chimney. Even when burned, it gave thick black smoke, enough to get a factory into trouble. So coal mines had lots of small coal available cheaply (there was a local market for this as it was cheap, but not worth shipping). They burned it themselves (a reason why colliery steam engine boilers lagged behind developments elsewhere) and it was used locally. Colliers though always had some free coal for themselves (as they'd only nick it otherwise).

Where a washery emptied beyond the colliery (as was usual back then) there would be a source of very fine dust and yes, this could be collected and hand moulded. It wasn't often done though - notably either during strikes, or by people who weren't colliery families.

Hafodyrynys colliery slimes settling tank

This started to disappear in the 1930s. Briquette manufacturing became an industrialised way of carrying out much the same process. Also washeries became more efficient (mostly after 1948), so used less water and thus has less need to dump it into large off-site ponds. Instead they used closed slimes tanks, like that still surviving at Hafodyrynys. These weren't accessible to outsiders. Andy Dingley (talk) 21:48, 9 April 2016 (UTC)

Thanks guys - interesting. I'd come across some industrial processes on my original searches but never put two an two together and got to the Hafodyrynys slime tank (which fascinated me as a child whenever we drove past it). So a dobbin ball is basically a home made briquette, and not dissimilar to culm balls (culm bombs) - see dancing the culm.

Big Pit National Coal Museum

Can somebody help fill in the remaining needed sources on this? JMWt was doing such a great job and I was tyring to help him by adding citations tags where needed but this seems to have upset him which is a shame.♦ Dr. Blofeld 22:02, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

Catherine Zeta-Jones

Just to let everybody know that this is now a GA. I think Krimuk has done a great job and with further improvement and a vigorous PR it has FA potential.♦ Dr. Blofeld 10:42, 11 April 2016 (UTC)

Oh c'mon you miserable lot, this is a great achievement. Thank Krimuk90 for his good work!♦ Dr. Blofeld 22:04, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

Historic Wales site

The Historic Wales site is searchable with lots of pop-up useful windows, but can't be used as a source because it's all one url. Does anyone know how to resolve this? Tony Holkham (Talk) 13:04, 11 April 2016 (UTC)

Robevans123 found that you can get a url if you save a PDF. Nev1 (talk) 16:38, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

Yes - how to get a ref depends on the type of site (depending on the colour)

• For blue circles (National Monuments Record for Wales), click on the circle, and then click on the link saying "details at Coflein". This will open a new tab with the RCHMAW record and you can copy the url.
• For green circles (Welsh Archaelogical Trusts' Historic Environment Record), do the same, except it says "details at archwilio". Again the record is shown in a new tab.
• For purple circles (Cadw Listed Buildings), the box displayed just says "details", and clicking on this displays a PDF file (still in the Historic Wales window). Click on "Save as PDF", and the PDF opens in a new tab. Now the interesting thing is that the url for the PDF seems to be persistent, so you can use the url in your reference. Useful for listed buildings (they can usually be found on the British Listed Buildings website as well, but that's a messy site with lots of adverts and no guarantee it's up to date)
• For orange circles (Cadw Scheduled Ancient Monuments) it's a lot more complicated... As far as I can tell Cadw have not put these records directly on line. Clicking on the circle does display some details, especially the title of the original record (for example, BLAENAVON UPPER BRICK YARD), and an Id (for example, MM296). A google search for something like "MM296 BLAENAVON UPPER BRICK YARD", can often produce useful results.
• For red circles (National Museum Archaeology Collection), clicking on "details" does supply some extra details, but these cannot be saved as a PDF...

Hope that helps. If anyone is desperate for scheduled monument details and can find nothing else I do have a copy of Cadw's spreadsheet of scheduled monuments in Wales. I can look it up if you have the Id and then send you the text description.

I obtained the spreadsheet legally from a request to Cadw, so I do need to investigate if it is possible to publish this somewhere (maybe extracted into google books?), but I need to check if this is ok with my agreement with Cadw, and the technicalities of maybe converting the spreadsheet into something more accessible (it's one workbook with thousands of sheets, and really hard to work with...) Robevans123 (talk) 17:50, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

Thank you Robevans123 for such a clear exposition. I am sure it took a lot of work. How do other editors save such nuggets of help for the time in the future when they have forgotten where they saw it? SovalValtos (talk) 16:57, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

South Wales Coalfield

I've just added a comment to the talkpage of South Wales Coalfield about various overlapping concepts and similar pages but then realised that nobody has been on the talkpage there for a long time. Does it matter if we've got a page which is all/nearly all rejigging content from other similar pages? JMWt (talk) 20:38, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

Stub sorting

For The Preserved County Challenge I need somebody to help stub sort Category:Welsh building and structure stubs and Category:Wales railway station stubs by county and increase useage of the county struct templates. Category:Buildings and structures in Wales by county needs to be checked and where applicable the relative struct templates added. Perhaps User:Waacstats or User:Ser Amantio di Nicolao could help.♦ Dr. Blofeld 08:41, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

Reducing stubs

Would appreciate some support over the next five days on destubbing geography and other articles for Wales at Wikipedia:WikiProject Wales/Awaken the Dragon/Stub Obliteration/The Preserved County Challenge. I've put in quite some effort to try to get things improved on this front this week. I've expanded a few myself including Conwy Bay and Llandyrnog but we really need numbers on this, even if not competing in the contest. At a later date there may be a contest dedicated solely to destubbing for Wales. There's a day for each preserved county area, so if you feel like doing a few quick expansions this week for any it would be warmly appreciated. Thanks.♦ Dr. Blofeld 12:27, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

Belgian refugees in Wales

Belgian refugees in Wales is a very poor and probably dangerous (COI / Copyvio) article. I can't cope with sorting it out right now. If anyone fancies it... --Tagishsimon (talk) 18:03, 27 April 2016 (UTC)

Finale

The Dragon contest/editathon is entering the Wikipedia:WikiProject Wales/Awaken the Dragon/Finale stage. Let's celebrate Wales over the weekend and Monday with some new articles and improvements on Welsh content and go out with a bang on this! If there's something you've long intended working on now is to time to do so! The focus is on diversity, so a mish mash of anything and everything on any subject or part of Wales is welcome, minor improvements or solid new articles!♦ Dr. Blofeld 09:33, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

Thankyou everybody!!

Just want to thank everybody who has contributed to Awaken the Dragon, from the earlier content producers and people who helped with the lists like Sionk, Ham II, Robevans123, Tony Holkham, RobinLeicester etc to the quality steady writers like FruitMonkey, Aymatth2, The C of E, Deb, Penny Richards etc to the prolific contest leaders like Cwmhiraeth, Sturmvogel and Miyagawa. Also some of the Welsh contributors like Llywelyn2000, John Jones and Dafyddt also deserve some recognition for their work on Welsh wikipedia. We've seen a number of important articles created in Welsh too. You've all played a role in making this a success and it is greatly appreciated. I think this has arguably been the biggest achievement in terms of organized content production/improvement in the time period in the history of wikipedia. To my knowledge we've never seen this level of overall improvement before. Most contests tend to ignore a lot of the existing articles in favour of new stubs and articles. It's been an unbelievable contest, nearly 1100 articles, 150 core article improvements, over 60 GA and FA articles and a number of central core articles like Geography, Clwyd, Ceredigion, Welsh cuisine etc brought up to GA status. I see 17,000 odd WP:Wales tagged articles, I know there's more which aren't tagged but we've effectively covered roughly 1 out of 17 Wales articles and 1 in 5000 odd articles out of the entire encyclopedia. You'd never get that level of improvement for Wales normally. Arguably decades of work for WP:Wales in a month or two. We've demonstrated that with a positive mindset and a format which makes editing fun and makes improving stale articles more attractive it's possible to bring about significant changes. If we had even greater numbers participating we could make this an even bigger success.

At present I'm awaiting feedback from WMUK on this, but if they were willing to continue to support this we could run a few Dragon contest throughout the year and possibly some ones with a more regional focus. I'm considering proposing a Destubathon/Improvement drive for Anglesey/Gwynedd, possibly for 10 days-2 weeks. That could be the start of regional contests run as part of Dragon which really target a given area of Wales and give that area the love and nurturing they typically don't get. I think with that something like a smaller daily prize for most article work might work better rather than a points or main prize system. It's about time that there was a mechanism which rewards sheer hard work, the real hard workers on here deserve to get something back and given more esteem for doing so. Through this we could aim to eliminate virtually all of our stubs given time, including the new footballer ones! I know Rodw has become interested in scaling this to SouthWest England, including Somerset, Devon, Cornwall etc later in the summer. If we can get the backing on that, that might be the next major one to hold. If I get the support I'm also thinking about running Wikipedia:The British Isles De-stub-athon later in the year. But Dragon I think has been too much of a success to die out, we'll hopefully host a few more of these each year, and I would love it if WP:Wales members keep it alive between contests as a scheme for content improvement and continue to work on content and list articles like they did in March.

The winner is yet to be announced on this, it's extremely close between Cwmhiraeth and Sturmvogel 66 on this. Everybody is a winner in my book, and you've all played a role in making this great. Hopefully nobody was too put off by the exotic scoring system and changes made during it for future ones, it needed to run to take shape and see what works and what doesn't. I needed to cram in a few different mini contests to see how things go, and had to come up with some more elaborate bonus systems to get people to target those really important articles nobody wants to improve usually. They all seemed to work, some better than others, but I think it makes the contest more interesting and varied. Even now I have ideas for future ones, A "Mr. Muscle" one I think is badly needed for disinfecting nasty B class articles! High points given for people who are bold in blasting away the shoddier core articles and replacing with clean well sourced content. With more of a framework in place, future ones would be more straighforward and may even focus on one of the "games" throughout. I think the scoring would be more simplified for future ones, and give contestants the full contest run to work out the best way to win it. So everybody who contributed to this please remain interested in competing/contributing and we'll see if we can get the funding needed to bring in new contributors and make it a more exciting contest. Cheers.♦ Dr. Blofeld 08:54, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

And a big Diolch! to Dr. B for not only organising and scoring it all, but getting a far bit of content in as well!Robevans123 (talk) 09:35, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

Photos of Wales

Hello everyone. More than 5,000 photos of towns and buildings in Wales were recently added to Commons. There is a sample gallery below so you get an idea of the quality of the images taken by Nilfanion. The blue counties on the map link to categories on Commons. I hope they're useful for you. Richard Nevell (WMUK) (talk) 10:46, 16 May 2016 (UTC)

• 
  Tinkinswood burial chamber
• 
  Chapel in Abergavenny
• 
  Abergavenny Market Hall
• 
  Chepstow Castle
• 
  Caldey Island Lighthouse
• 
  Boat at Pembroke Dock Heritage Centre

Click on a blue county to view images

Impressive!! Sionk (talk) 03:43, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

I've had a quick look through the Pembrokeshire pics, and there are some interesting ones. I can't find any coordinates, though - are they there or am I just being dim? Tony Holkham (Talk) 11:25, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

No coordinates in the meta data I'm afraid. Richard Nevell (WMUK) (talk) 16:25, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

Yeah, sorry for lack of coords (no GPS on my camera - intend to fix soon). The files are all in the most specific location cat available on Commons; I'm working through them categorising and will look to georeference them eventually too.--Nilfanion (talk) 22:44, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

Thanks Nilfanion, many are obvious but some of the views, in the Preselis for example, would be difficult to caption without coordinates. Amazing collection, though. Congratulations. Tony Holkham (Talk) 22:55, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

Incidentally, Nilfanion, what's the significance of the "Boat at Pembroke Dock Heritage Centre (4067).jpg" pic? It looks as if it may have been a naval craft of some kind originally. Tony Holkham (Talk) 23:02, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

When clicked on, the image not taken by Nilfanion of the boat slung from a crane, in the page; [1] leads to [2] which may help explain and be a source.SovalValtos (talk) 23:20, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

Tony Holkham, I totally agree with you regarding the value of coordinates to more difficult subjects like the Preselis (for what its worth, they are all taken from along the ridge to the west of Foel Cwmcerwyn and on its summit). As for the boat, its listed on the National Register of Historic Vessels. IMO, the list articles associated with the register could be improved.--Nilfanion (talk) 00:31, 21 May 2016 (UTC)

Notice to participants at this page about adminship

Many participants here create a lot of content, have to evaluate whether or not a subject is notable, decide if content complies with BLP policy, and much more. Well, these are just some of the considerations at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship.

So, please consider taking a look at and watchlisting this page:

• Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Optional RfA candidate poll

You could be very helpful in evaluating potential candidates, and maybe even finding out if you would be a suitable RfA candidate.

Many thanks and best wishes,

Anna Frodesiak (talk) 06:24, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

Deletion discussion for Category:Wales castle stubs

Dawynn (talk) 18:52, 1 August 2016 (UTC)

Gareth Edwards

There is presently a discussion going on to move Gareth Edwards to Gareth Edwards (rugby player) to disambiguate him from the new Star Wars film director. I think the rugby player is still the main topic despite not achieving the majority of hits. If you would like to discuss either way, please do so on his talk page. FruitMonkey (talk) 07:47, 22 August 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia:The 10,000 Challenge

Hi there. I've started a new initiative, the Wikipedia:The 10,000 Challenge. It's a long term goal to bring about 10,000 article improvements to the UK and Ireland. Through two contests involving just six or seven weeks of editing so far we've produced over 1500 improvements. Long term if we have more people chipping it and adding articles they've edited independently as well from all areas of the UK then reaching that target is all possible. I think it would be an amazing achievement to see 10,000 article improvements by editors chipping in with whatever area of the British Isles or subject that they work on. If you support this and think you might want to contribute towards this long term please sign up in the Contributors section. No obligations, just post work on anything you feel like whenever you want, though try to avoid basic stubs if possible as we're trying to reduce the overall stub count and improve general comprehension and quality. Thanks.♦ Dr. Blofeld 13:46, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

Repetition of Welsh place names: disambiguation pages or content pages?

FYI, Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)/Archive 53#Repetition of Welsh place names: disambiguation pages or content pages?. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:31, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

Year in Wales articles

I've noticed that the English & British monarchs are not included in the 1720 in Wales to the 2016 in Wales articles. Would it be alright if I add them in, the way they're included in the Year in Scotland articles? GoodDay (talk) 19:54, 18 October 2016 (UTC)

Why? Ghmyrtle (talk) 21:53, 18 October 2016 (UTC)

Per consistency. They're included in the Year in England, Year in Scotland & the more completed Year in Northern Ireland articles. GoodDay (talk) 22:47, 18 October 2016 (UTC)

If it's important that they are consistent, I'm sure other editors can address them. It may not be productive for you personally to edit British-related articles, given your previous experiences. Ghmyrtle (talk) 23:24, 18 October 2016 (UTC)

I'm not sure that consistency with other articles is that important, as the monarchs are included in the Year in the UK and Year in Great Britain series, and the Year in Wales series include a number of other roles that are specific to Wales, and avoids repetition of information in the Year in the UK series.

The Year in Wales series infobox clearly identifies the articles for the given year in the UK, England, Scotland and Ireland (although it should also point to the Northern Ireland page). The England series infobox only identifies the UK series (after the two relevant English football seasons...). The Northern Ireland series infobox only identifies the UK series and the Ireland series. The Scotland series infobox identifies the UK, Ireland, and Wales series. And for completeness, the Ireland series only identifies the Northern Ireland series, and the UK series infobox only identifies the England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales series. Robevans123 (talk) 23:47, 18 October 2016 (UTC)

I considered deleting the monarchs from the other aforementioned articles. But such a move, would've involved more articles. GoodDay (talk) 00:30, 19 October 2016 (UTC)

Indeed, my previous experiences brought me here, instead of making additions to the Welsh articles-in-question. It's not something I would've tried, without agreement. GoodDay (talk) 00:29, 19 October 2016 (UTC)

I've also noticed inconsistency among the Year in Wales articles themselves, concerning the listing of the Prince of Wales. If it's all right with others, I'll fix it up. GoodDay (talk) 12:28, 19 October 2016 (UTC)

I would say go ahead and fix the Princes of Wales. I don't think anyone would object to that. It would certainly be good to get consistency between the England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales year series articles. I'd prefer to get there by consensus rather than majority rule. Maybe if we could get consensus on consistency of the links in the infoboxes (which I'm hoping would be the least controversial proposed change), we could build from there and look at content/structure later. Robevans123 (talk) 13:12, 19 October 2016 (UTC)

I've completed the Prince of Wales & Princess of Wales corrections. Yeah, in terms of the English/British monarchs, an overall consensus would be best. GoodDay (talk) 14:12, 19 October 2016 (UTC)

I found those changes very odd. Referring to them as Charles and Camilla does not sound very encyclopedic. Agathoclea (talk) 14:28, 19 October 2016 (UTC)

But quite accurate. The Prince of Wales is Charles & the Princess of Wales (with the explanation that she does use the title) is Camilla. GoodDay (talk) 14:42, 19 October 2016 (UTC)

That is like saying the chancellor of Germany is Angie. The mere fact that the Duchess of Cambridge uses a full name that does not include the particular title Princess of Wales should make it all the more obvious that just writing Camilla is not enough. Agathoclea (talk) 18:05, 19 October 2016 (UTC)

Actually, it's like saying the German Chanceller is Angela Merkel, instead of 'Angela Merkel, Chanceller of Germany'. GoodDay (talk) 18:27, 19 October 2016 (UTC)

"Prince of Wales - Charles" is absolutely correct (just as "Monarch - Elizabeth II"), but shouldn't it be "Princess of Wales - Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall"? I must admit that the etiquette of royal titling is not my strong point, but that is her official title (except when she's in Scotland when she becomes "Camilla, Duchess of Rothesay").

That can easily be done. Also, I think I may undo my edits to the 2 Carolines, so as to tell them apart more easily. It's trickier with George (II) & his great-grandson George (IV), however. GoodDay (talk) 23:23, 19 October 2016 (UTC)

Waking the Dragon

Since 2012 has been and gone and Wrexham remains stubbornly devoid of dragons the size of the Statue of Liberty, it seems reasonable to assume that Waking the Dragon is no longer accurate. Does anyone with access to the local newspapers know if this is still going ahead (their website still exists, but that doesn't necessarily mean much and it's very vague on dates and specifics), or if it's gone the way of those other "we want our own Angel of the North" vanity projects, White Horse at Ebbsfleet and Star of Caledonia? Either way, the article needs updating. ‑ Iridescent 10:01, 25 November 2016 (UTC)

There's this 2013 revival and this 2016 article saying the planning consent has been renewed, so I guess the plans haven't gone away yet. Sionk (talk) 18:03, 25 November 2016 (UTC)

South Wales Metro

An IP editor updated this page about 10 days ago, removing most of the content and inserting some words that read somewhat like a press release. Can someone who knows about this scheme take a look, please? Or shall I just revert to what was there before? Johnlp (talk) 23:55, 9 December 2016 (UTC)

I don't know much about the subject, but the April version is much better WP style and content. Suggest revert and work from there. Tony Holkham (Talk) 00:18, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

Can you identify the source? If so, is the IP's edit a copypaste job? If so, it's almost certainly a WP:COPYVIO so revert to previous good version. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:42, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

Congratulations to your Welsh-speaking colleagues

The Gender by Language stats show that last week 67 of the 70 new biographies on the Welsh wiki were on women. At over 95%, Welsh did far, far better than any other wiki language.--Ipigott (talk) 09:05, 12 December 2016 (UTC)