Hi - many thanks for a very interesting and informative article. I know the area well, having commuted through it more times than I care to think about before I left York. My only criticism of the is that it is unreferenced - if you could add your sources this would make the article even better.
On an unrelated note, have you considered archiving this talk pages? 110 sections dating back nearly two years is rather a lot!
I totally agree with you but I just added the frame based on the roles written in the article. I do not have much ref to Rossini's works - Jay (talk) 17:38, 1 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
A tag has been placed on Template:Mozart Operas wide requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section T3 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because it is a deprecated or orphaned template. After seven days, if it is still unused and the speedy deletion tag has not been removed, the template will be deleted.
If the template is intended to be substituted, please feel free to remove the speedy deletion tag and please consider putting a note on the template's page indicating that it is substituted so as to avoid any future mistakes (<noinclude>{{transclusionless}}</noinclude>).
Thanks for all your input. Do you have further comments on the article? If not, are you ready to support the FA nomination? All the best, -- Ssilvers (talk) 02:39, 21 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the message. It would be tricky to put subheadings in amongst all the images. At this point, after it has been reviewed by so many editors at the FA review, I am afraid to fool around with the article structure, since one of the important criteria for advancement to FA is that it must have settled down and become "stable". Perhaps in the future, a reorganization of the section, such as you suggest, could be discussed. Let's see what Kbthompson thinks, but I have seen him say in other talk page messages that he is loath to shake up the article any further until the FA review is concluded. Best regards, -- Ssilvers (talk) 13:34, 21 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Hi y'all. Let's divide that section by period of management, but later. The ballet and opera were performed concurrently (alternate seasons?), so, difficult to untangle them. Easier to identify the management - but even then, they seemed to enjoy limited 'repeat' engagements in some cases. Thank you for all your good sense and valuable suggestions. They are much appreciated. Kbthompson (talk) 14:20, 21 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I made clear that Haymarket Opera House is an informal name. I suspect the practise grew as an antonym to the Covent Garden Opera House - another building cursed with a string of informal epithets. It wouldn't be too difficult to divide the section by Taylor, Ebbers, Laporte, Lumley, Mappleson. The only criticism of that would be too few paragraphs in each section. Maybe groups Laporte and Lumley together under the Revolutionary committee? Kbthompson (talk) 14:36, 21 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Hi! Thanks for the explanatory note. I just thought it might be easier to deal with if the template itself cleared out the newlines, so that people who use in it don't have to do any special formatting in the articles themselves. My edit to the template seems to have worked, at least; see Iolanthe, which used to have two blank lines at the top and doesn't anymore. What do you think? --Masamage♫01:47, 4 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Assessments: speculative idea . . .
I've been wondering how assessments might be implemented etc. IMO the only way feasible would be to bot-mark all non-stubs (also non GA/FA) as 'Start' class and then promote them individually. Is that something you could support? (With 4,100 articles we need a plan that is practical.) -- Kleinzach (talk) 02:11, 5 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Good. I think that would be sensible basis for moving forward on assessments. Would you make a proposal to the project?
I agree with all your suggestions, except re: "articles where another project has awarded a class other than Start . . . It would seem to me to be polite to replicate any already-awarded class" . That might be technically difficult to do. If the notice says the assessment is made automatically, there should be no misunderstandings. (Also many assessments by other projects tend to be poorly considered.) Another thing I'd suggest putting aside until later is the importance scale. I think that will complicate things if it is included in the initial proposal. -- Kleinzach (talk) 06:03, 6 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
GuillaumeTell...I am currently in the process of writing a user box for all of the colleges that are part of Oxbridge. This template is meant to replace your current college template. Please take a look at the work in progress and comment on it. My main concerns are college abbreviations and color choice. I am using scarf colors for the colleges. Thank you. - LA @ 16:50, 9 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Opera Project welcome doc
I've drafted a welcome doc for new project members. It's here. Let me know if you have any comments - or edit directly on the draft if you prefer. Best. -- Kleinzach (talk) 00:13, 12 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Now that CotM April is out of the way do you want to launch the assessments discussion? Or would you like me to do? Or should I do a draft to show you? Best. -- Kleinzach (talk) 04:02, 12 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the draft. The first two paragraphs are fine, no problems. I am concerned, however that we may be pushing our luck in para 3. How about putting more emphasis on gradualism and working out the details (numbers of assessors, points scale etc.) later. Two reasons. One - we don't want it rejected by the project. Two - Personally, I'm not going to have time to be involved in the actual assessing in the way I was with the Wagner project. What do you think? Best. -- Kleinzach (talk) 05:10, 13 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I think it's good now. Let's post it and see if we can establish a consensus in favour and then get the technicalities worked out with SatyrTN. -- Kleinzach (talk) 00:39, 14 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I will wait until you get back. (Last time I confused SatyrTN if you remember!) This will also give the project a chance to digest the idea. -- Kleinzach (talk) 14:30, 15 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Still no comments so I guess that's a green light for going ahead with the bot marking of 'start articles'. Would you like to talk to SatyrTN? After that's finished we can maybe pressgang people into having a real discussion about assessments. BTW I have marked up some FAs, GAs etc as FA/GA, e.g. List of major opera composers, Agrippina (opera), Venus and Adonis (opera), to make it easier for the bot. --Kleinzach (talk) 03:25, 24 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I'm afraid SatyrTN is getting more and more popular. It's becoming more and more difficult to politely wait one's turn. I had the same problem last time I contacted him February. So yes I think it's necessary to try again. --Kleinzach (talk) 22:50, 26 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
SatyrTN seems really busy, doesn't he? Should I give him a double ping? What are our other options, I wonder? Are there any other similar bots? --Kleinzach (talk) 10:10, 7 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I see he hasn't been online for the past three days so I think we might wait until he's back . . . I can't remember where we originally found him, but it wasn't Bot Requests as far as I know.--Kleinzach (talk) 11:03, 8 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. I'm heavily involved in the big debate about getting rid of the 50,000 image placeholders (the sllhouette 'No Free Image' things) here so I'd really appreciate it if you can handle it. I imagine it will be tricky to explain it all to a new bot, but maybe there will be no alternative. --Kleinzach (talk) 00:13, 12 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Singer categories
If you have a moment I'd be grateful if you could have a look at this as well. It's a similar situation to the assessments in that I'm hoping to take a step forward in sorting out a problem, rather than trying to do it all at once (and going into gridlock). Similar also in that I have a guru lined up to do it all automatically - if the idea is accepted. Thanks. --Kleinzach (talk) 12:41, 24 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The move from Sopranos etc. to Operatic sopranos (plus Oratorio sopranos, Jazz Sopranos and whatever) is intended to be a non-controversial step forward to a more specific cat. I hope it's something we can all agree on - i.e. that it's better to depopulate the top level (Sopranos etc.) and have an exclusively operatic cat (which we can manage/access/count etc) instead of the present mess.
You ask:
(1) ". . . am I to assume that moving singers into categories such as Operatic mezzo-sopranos is a preliminary to combining those categories with French (etc) opera singers to make categories such as French operatic mezzo-sopranos?" Answer - No, that would be subject to further discussion.
(2) "a lot of singers of opera also sing non-opera (Lieder, oratorios, crossover, etc.) and a lot of singers who specialise in non-opera do sometimes sing opera (Martyn Hill and Mark Padmore spring to mind). Does opera in those cases mean necessarily staged opera, or do they count as operatic if they've only appeared in recordings of opera and never on stage?" Answer - strictly speaking we are only responsible for opera on the opera project. Editors are free to add cats as necessary. Lieder is generally neglected on WP so there is a problem much wider than just cats. Oratorio singers could probably be catted quite easily. Crossovers likewise. This would have to be discussed in various places but the point is we would be moving forward not left in gridlock. --Kleinzach (talk) 23:10, 26 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for fixing my article. Yes, I made mistakes but my goal was to write an interesting article not to give you or anybody else work. If it's to much for you just leave it alone ! Marleau (talk) 12:18, 10 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Well, Italo Tajo is just but one article, considering my input (which is considerable) I think the job is on the whole "well done", but I agree there is always room for improvement. Marleau (talk) 15:10, 10 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
MelonBot
Looks good. Regarding the idea of changing Wikipedia:WikiProject Opera/Article ranking, to Wikipedia:WikiProject Opera/Assessment, this seems reasonable. We originally called it ranking because of opposition to doing assessments, but maybe that's no longer a problem. Maybe if you put a note on the talk page to say that it has changed/updated no one will be much bothered? WPBannerMeta sounds OK - but over my head, of course . . . I imagine you will leave a note with SatyrTN explaining why we have defected. --Kleinzach (talk) 03:51, 14 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Mmm. Frustrating. SatyrTN is still not active - only one small edit on 14 April. The only other thing I can think of is to ask the advice of Black Falcon, the techy admin who AWB'ed the singer cats. He doesn't have a bot but might have a friend . . . but maybe you will have a better idea. --Kleinzach (talk) 01:43, 21 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
A direct approach to User:Happy-melon would be a good idea (first?) and I can talk to Black Falcon (I haven't so far). I don't see any point in putting anything on the Opera Project page - I just think that's the wrong place. (AWB may not be relevant but it does enable you to do repetitive edits at a speed of about one a minute. It's good for category editing of course.) BTW How did you set up your snazzy signature?--Kleinzach (talk) 23:12, 28 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, The Tell bit was brilliant - but do you have to put in by hand each time (copy and paste?) or have you automated it in some way? --Kleinzach (talk) 00:16, 30 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Photo-Merchant Venturers Hall
Thanks for correcting me. It is the first ever photo I put on Wikipedia and then into an article, it took me about three hours over two days, so I am not surprised if it is wrong.
I can see you know your York.....
And this is only the second 'talk' I have done so I hope it reaches you.
First, thanks for your feedback on the tenor article. I will fix the errors you pointed out, most of which are not mine as I did not add them to the article. I am afraid that I am not as knowledgable on tenors as I am on other voice types so I appriciate extra eyes.
You recently deleted the "Opera" category from the Wagner's Rhinemaidens article. Since the Rhinemaidens in question are characters in an opera, created by Wagner based on a variety of possible sources (as explained in the article), it seems odd that you consider the Opera category "unsuitable". Can you explain the reasoning? Brianboulton (talk) 22:16, 28 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I noticed this yesterday as well. What about 'Opera critics' or 'Opera writers'? I think they match the other opera people cats which come under the main Opera cat. --Kleinzach (talk) 00:12, 30 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I take your point about Opera writers, but I really think Opera critics is OK for Budden, Newman or anyone else who writes about opera. Isn't opera criticism like literary criticism? --Kleinzach (talk) 00:32, 30 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yes I think Opera critics could come under 'Critics', but also 'Opera' along with Opera singers, Opera directors, Opera managers etc.--Kleinzach (talk) 22:28, 30 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
We originally asked "Should the addition of this box [example right] be allowed? Does the placeholder system and graphic image need to be improved to satisfy policies and guidelines for inclusion? Is it appropriate to some kinds of biographies, but not to others?" (See introduction).
Conclusions to centralized discussions are either marked as 'policy', 'guideline', 'endorsed', 'rejected', 'no consensus', or 'no change' etc. We should now decide for this discussion.
WP:YORKS is a leading local British WikiProject in terms of the total number of articles supported (3343 on April 27th). WP:GM has the lead in FAs. WP:YORKS is lacking in the area of GAs and falls well behind WP:LONDON. This topic was at the front of the new aims discussion and is an important issue for WP:YORKS.
As mentioned above, new aims have been decided. See the right hand column for more details.
Member News
There are now 45 members of WikiProject Yorkshire! A warm welcome to the 2 new members that have joined us since March:
No users left the WikiProject this month, but the list may need trimming to account for the one user who was permanently blocked and one who seems not to exist. There are also several who have not contributed to Wikipedia for some months.
The format of the member list has been altered to:
allow easier editing for new members
assist members to communicate more easily (by including members talk pages)
allow member to keep up to date with each other's contributions
The number has been kept deliberately low to give us a fighting chance of improving them to GA status, also so we can concentrate our efforts on these first.
Don't Forget...
Monitor Use the watchlist to keep an eye on changes to the project's articles so that vandalism can be removed as quickly as possible.
Images! There is a shortage of good images in Yorkshire related articles, particularly on pages about smaller settlements. A good place to start would be the requested photographs category but please remember that there are many articles not within this category that have the same need.
Assessment Assess and review Assessment of Yorkshire related articles has been brought up to date recently, but needs constant maintenance.
Last but not Least... Please remember that the list of stubs needing expansion is in permanent need of attention. Please take a look and see what you can do.
Delivered May 2008 by ENewsBot. If you do not wish to receive the newsletter, please add two *'s by your username on the Project Mainpage.
→ Please direct all enquiries to the WikiProject talk page. → This newsletter/release was delivered by ENewsBot · 10:55, 1 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
WikiProject Opera assessment
Tie down your pigs! I think my code for project banner assessments is finally ready to go. There's just one caveat at the moment though: for various technical reasons (mainly because it's still in development and I anticipate having to keep stopping and starting the script, and don't want it to keep going back to the beginning of the list), I need to convert the banners from one template name to another. I want to use {{WikiProject Opera}}, as it's a redirect to {{WikiProject Opera}} already, and as you can see from CAT:WPB it's also the most popular naming convention for wikiproject banners. In a nutshell, I want to convert the banners from {{WikiProject Opera}} to {{WikiProject Opera|class=B|importance=}}. The existing template will still work fine, it just makes my life a hell of a lot easier when I have to keep stopping the script to error check. If you're ok with that caveat, I can start work immediately. Happy‑melon10:30, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
This is how the script is normally set up to work:[reply]
If the article uses a stub template, replace {{WikiProject Opera}} with {{WikiProject Opera|class=Stub}}
If the article appears in the FA list, replace {{WikiProject Opera}} with {{WikiProject Opera|class=FA}}
If the article appears in the GA list, replace {{WikiProject Opera}} with {{WikiProject Opera|class=GA}}
If there are other banners on the talk page, which agree on their rating, copy that rating to the new banner
Otherwise, leave unassessed (replace {{WikiProject Opera}} with {{WikiProject Opera|class=}})
Any of those steps can be disabled if you don't want to use them. The plan is to run that script fully, then it will be an easy job to go through Category:Unassessed Opera articles and replace {{WikiProject Opera|class=}} with {{WikiProject Opera|class=Start}} if that's what you want to do. I'll do a run of 50 articles since I need to submit a test of that size for the bot approval request, so you can take a look at those at the same time as BAG is reviewing it. I'll hopefully be able to do that short run this evening (UTC). Happy‑melon12:08, 7 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, I've done a short run, which can be found at the top of Special:Contributions/MelonBot for the time being. The first run didn't regrade all the |class= templates as |class=Start, but I have run a simple find-and-replace to do that. Let me know if you see anything wrong with the trial. I also converted {{WikiProject Opera}} to use {{WPBannerMeta}} - I hope you like it! Happy‑melon21:18, 8 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Once this run is finished, I'd be more than happy to search Category:Opera and subcats for lost articles - that's what the code is really designed to do. Vis comments, it is very easily possible to add the comment feature to WPBannerMeta banners using |COMMENTS=yes, but note that this is an all-or-nothing option: if comments do not exist for a page, the banner will display a note asking for editors to add them. If this is not what you want, I could code something up for you and hang it on |BOTTOM_TEXT= (or, since it seems like a good idea generally, add it to {{WPBannerMeta}} itself). Happy‑melon18:33, 9 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. I've had a look at your message to HM and it looks fine. I agree that we should ignore other project ratings - that's important in my view.--Kleinzach (talk) 22:56, 7 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Composers and conductors
I've just noticed that a lot of composers are getting opera project banners, presumably because they are in opera composer cats. Was that intended? I thought we were leaving composers with the composers project, just as conductors are apparently left to Classical Music. I don't have any strong feelings about this, but I thought I should check with you. Of course the talk pages all have multiple banners now . . . --Kleinzach (talk) 23:35, 8 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Banner comments link
I see we don't have a link on the banner to 'Comments' as we had with the Wagner banner. Is the intention to add this later? --Kleinzach (talk) 23:48, 8 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Start-rated articles
HM is doing some high-profile articles such as Opera. (Actually I can't make out how he is selecting titles). This is going to attract attention. Should we alert people and say they can manually change some obviously wrong assessments? What do you think? Would this interfere with HM's work?--Kleinzach (talk) 03:17, 9 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
For reference, I'm just running down the list of Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:WikiProject Opera. Articles are sorted within that list by their pageid number, which is loosely related to creation date; consequently, your oldest (and consequently best-developed) articles are likely to be retemplated first. If you want to add something to |MAIN_TEXT= in {{WikiProject Opera}}, that wouldn't disturb the tagging process at all; alternatively, you can edit any talk page transcluding {{WikiProject Opera}} with impunity (but note that anything you do to a {{WikiProject Opera}} banner will be lost), so you can just edit Talk:Opera to say {{WikiProject Opera|class=B}} if that would be easier. Happy‑melon08:20, 9 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
It's slightly more server-efficient, and also more reliable (it's possible for a page to be categorised into that category without having {{WikiProject Opera}} on it, which could throw some interesting exceptions!). It's also impossible to separate pages that have been retemplated from those that haven't. Happy‑melon13:52, 9 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Importance
Thanks for your various comments, to pick up on the last one: I think it would be a step too far right now to start an importance scale. I'm also not convinced that an importance scale would be useful for us. IMO we need to finish the present run first, then explain it carefully to the project . . . --Kleinzach (talk) 03:05, 10 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Banner comments link/2
I've reworded this to match the Wagner Project banner, however I'm wondering if it's working the same way. Do you remember how we created the Comments pages initially? --Kleinzach (talk) 04:29, 16 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I didn't put any comments on La gazza ladra. There's no redlink on the banner. That's why I was asking whether you remembered how it was set up for the Wagner Project. --Kleinzach (talk) 12:19, 17 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
OK. I must be wrong about this. I thought a red link to 'Comments' appeared first on the banner before any assessment had been written. Obviously I was wrong. Sorry to have confused you. Opera was obviously anomalous in that some old comment page existed prior to the (new) banner. What is the next stage? Will HM go through all the articles substituting 'WikiProject Opera' for 'Opera'? --Kleinzach (talk) 23:18, 17 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
OK. I understand your logic. One minor concern: the text "See comments for details ' is stuck on a line below "This article has been rated as Start-class on the quality scale." I think it would look more balanced if both sentences were on the same line, but I haven't been able to work out how to do this. How do you feel about this? Any ideas? --Kleinzach (talk) 12:06, 18 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I'd forgotten about this but {{singer}} and {{singer1}} were still in operation as redirect to {{WikiProject Opera}}. I've now redirected them to {{WikiProject Opera}}. I hope that was the right thing to do. Would it be better to replace them altogether? I guess there are 100-200 of them.--Kleinzach05:26, 22 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your reply. (I removed the banner from Sarah Brightman!) You write: "The only problem with the re-redirect is if HappyMelon only deals with the old Opera template, but if the articles have Opera cats they'll get picked up on the category trawl if they haven't already been done on the template trawl." What was the result with that? Regarding the problem with the comments line, it was the odd positioning stuck on the bottom corner of the box that was the problem, not the size of the typeface. Something will have to be done with it - but more on this later. As for the Portal link, I agree. It should be easy enough to add it. Let me know if you have any trouble with it and I'll have a go with it. --Kleinzach03:40, 26 May 2008 (UTC) P.S. Voce thinks my sig. is over the top. What do you think? It's a real challenge getting the code within 255 characters![reply]
Project banners done
Mission accomplished - you now have 4,511 articles transcluding {{WikiProject Opera}}, of which 2,847 are currently unassessed. I wrote a fix to also handle redirects, so pages transcluding {{castrato}}, {{russian opera}}, etc, have also been retemplated. Have fun with your new assessment scale! Happy‑melon21:16, 25 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Well there's no desperate need to do anything with them - they're completely harmless as they stand, and it would make old versions confusing if I deleted them. Happy‑melon10:28, 27 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
While you're here, a couple of things seem to have gone wrong:
All those unassessed articles: we were expecting them to have been given Start-class, which is what you did in the original trial. Could you fix this, please.
The articles automatically-rated Stub have an unwanted extra semi-banner on the Talk page (I think caused by the auto parameter). We don't need this for Stub or Start - can you get rid of these, too?
This is the code adapted from Template:WikiProject Philadelphia which produces a low key small print text at the bottom of the box. Would it be possible to add it (or similar) to the existing banner? I haven't done it myself because I don't want to mess anything up.
{{{{FULLPAGENAME}}/Comments}}
|<!-- ELSE: comments do not exist -->
{{#ifeq: {{{class|}}}|
|<!-- THEN: no comments AND no rating -->
The article has not been rated for quality yet. Please rate the article and then leave comments <span class=plainlinksneverexpand>[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title={{FULLPAGENAMEE}}/Comments&action=edit here]</span> to explain the ratings and/or to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the article.
|<!-- ELSE: no comments but has rating -->
The article has been rated for quality but has no comments yet. If appropriate, please review the article and then leave comments <span class=plainlinksneverexpand>[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title={{FULLPAGENAMEE}}/Comments&action=edit here]</span> to <!--explain the ratings and/or to -->identify the strengths and weaknesses of the article and what work it will need.
}}<!-- end if rating/no rating test -->
I enabled the template's built-in comments feature, which is similar in function to the raw code you've got there. The current functionality is configured to display the comments if they exist (in a collapsible box, which is neater than the code from {{WikiProject Philadelphia}}) and nothing otherwise. IIRC we had a discussion before and decided that it was best not to display a redlink to the comments if they didn't exist; but if you decide you do want this, just define |COMMENT_FORCE=yes. Happy‑melon13:11, 30 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, but can we use the two texts above? If I do |COMMENT_FORCE=yes it says: "Please rate this article, and then leave comments here to explain the ratings and/or to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the article." which is not really what we want here. An explanation is more relevant here than a request.
Also, when there are already comments as in Talk:Opera can we reposition and balance the text so many people will understand what edit/history/watch/purge are referring to? I can probably do this myself if you can direct me to the relevant code. Can we also link to actual Comment pages rather than see the assessments in a box? We did it this way for the Wagner Project, e.g. Talk:Lohengrin (opera) and Talk:Lohengrin (opera)/Comments. The latter shows the length of assessment we will probably be seeing. --Kleinzach14:28, 30 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Kleinzach and I need to discuss this further - I did indeed ask (I think with his approval) for no redlink if there is no comments page, and I'm not sure that the Philadelphia stuff is an improvement. Meanwhile, are you agreeable to a Melonbot trawl through Category:Opera and its subcats, adding the banner to articles which don't currently have it (as I requested on your Talk page)? --GuillaumeTell16:44, 30 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The code for comments display is located at Template:WPBannerMeta/comments; but remember that anything that's changed there is changed for all projects which use the comments feature. Adding the "The article has not been rated for quality yet" phrase might be a good idea; the two passages are otherwise, as far as I can see, identical. If you do decide that the functionality built into WPBannerMeta is not quite what you want, then you can code up anything else you want and pass it to |BOTTOM_TEXT=, like the basic switch I added initially. If you need any help coding anything, do let me know. Vis the category run; yes, I can do it. But it's not as simple as it looks; unlike the previous run, where pages which had been 'handled' were removed from the list of pages transcluding {{WikiProject Opera}}, there is no such activity here. There are 874 subcategories of Category:Opera, and 14,000 pages are categorised into them. Accounting for duplicates, there are 5,736 pages which have to be processed (which implies that about 1,200 templates will be added), all in one go. If I have to stop the script for any reason, it'll have to go back to the beginning; so as you can guess I'm planning to start it early one morning and hope to high heaven that it's done by the end of the day :D. But yes, it's on my to-do list. Happy‑melon21:06, 30 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
OK. I think we should deal with the second matter first. I've made some suggestions to GuillaumeTell and I hope he will then follow it up here, thereby avoiding crossing any more wires. --Kleinzach03:20, 31 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I'm surprised that there are an extra 1,200 or so pages that need the banner. Would this include the categories themselves? And/or redirects? And/or other things we aren't expecting and don't want to add the banner to? Could you possibly produce a list of the 874 subcats for us? SatyrTN did one during the previous exercise and it might be useful to compare the two and see if there are any obvious problems. --GuillaumeTell09:52, 31 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, run is in progress (starting for the fourth time :D). I've added a quick hack to try and exclude talkpages that already have {{Wagner}} - I can't guarrantee that it'll catch everything, but it should get the bulk. There's a raw, unformatted list of subcategories below. There are 874 unique categories, but 925 total subcategories, so quite apart from anything else you have quite a lot of tree-splitting going on - where a category has two or more parent categories which themselves have a common parent. Might be something to look into. The category talk pages themselves will not be tagged, but anything in them will be. Any desperate problems, ping me (or if it's literally chewing something up and I'm not at home, ping MelonBot). Happy‑melon11:25, 31 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Category:People associated with Gilbert and Sullivan
Category:Works by W. S. Gilbert
Category:Works inspired by Gilbert and Sullivan
Category:Zarzuelas
Category:Opera houses in Paris
Category:Opera houses in the Republic of Ireland
Category:Australian opera singers
Category:Spanish opera singers
Category:Turkish opera singers
Category:Opera in London
Category:Albanian opera singers
Category:American opera singers
Category:Argentine opera singers
Category:Armenian opera singers
Category:Austrian opera singers
Category:Azerbaijani opera singers
Category:Belgian opera singers
Category:Brazilian opera singers
Category:British opera singers
Category:Bulgarian opera singers
Category:Canadian opera singers
Category:Chilean opera singers
Category:Chinese opera singers
Category:Croatian opera singers
Category:Cuban opera singers
Category:Czech opera singers
Category:Danish opera singers
Category:Dutch opera singers
Category:English opera singers
Category:Estonian opera singers
Category:Faroese opera singers
Category:Finnish opera singers
Category:French opera singers
Category:Georgian opera singers
Category:German opera singers
Category:Greek opera singers
Category:Hungarian opera singers
Category:Icelandic opera singers
Category:Iranian opera singers
Category:Irish opera singers
Category:Israeli opera singers
Category:Italian opera singers
Category:Japanese opera singers
Category:Korean opera singers
Category:Latvian opera singers
Category:Lithuanian opera singers
Category:Maltese opera singers
Category:Mexican opera singers
Category:Moldovan opera singers
Category:New Zealand opera singers
Category:Northern Irish opera singers
Category:Norwegian opera singers
Category:Peruvian opera singers
Category:Polish opera singers
Category:Portuguese opera singers
Category:Puerto Rican opera singers
Category:Romanian opera singers
Category:Russian opera singers
Category:Scottish opera singers
Category:Slovak opera singers
Category:Slovenian opera singers
Category:South African opera singers
Category:South Korean opera singers
Category:Swedish opera singers
Category:Swiss opera singers
Category:Ukrainian opera singers
Category:Uruguayan opera singers
Category:Welsh opera singers
Category:Yugoslavian opera singers
Category:American operatic baritones
Category:Canadian operatic baritones
Category:English operatic baritones
Category:Italian operatic baritones
Category:Russian operatic baritones
Category:Baritones
Category:Bass-baritones
Category:Basses
Category:Contraltos
Category:Countertenors
Category:Falsettos
Category:Mezzo-sopranos
Category:Sopranistas
Category:Sopranos
Category:Soubrettes
Category:Tenors
Category:Heldentenors
Category:Oratorios by George Frideric Handel
Category:Operas based on Pushkin works
Category:Kalidasa Plays
Category:1590s operas
Category:1600s operas
Category:1620s operas
Category:1630s operas
Category:1640s operas
Category:1650s operas
Category:1670s operas
Category:1680s operas
Category:1690s operas
Category:1700s operas
Category:1710s operas
Category:1720s operas
Category:1730s operas
Category:1740s operas
Category:1750s operas
Category:1760s operas
Category:1770s operas
Category:1780s operas
Category:1790s operas
Category:1800s operas
Category:1810s operas
Category:1820s operas
Category:1830s operas
Category:1840s operas
Category:1850s operas
Category:1860s operas
Category:1870s operas
Category:1880s operas
Category:1890s operas
Category:1900s operas
Category:1910s operas
Category:1920s operas
Category:1930s operas
Category:1940s operas
Category:1950s operas
Category:1960s operas
Category:1970s operas
Category:1980s operas
Category:1990s operas
Category:2000s operas
Category:W. S. Gilbert plays
Category:Catalan opera singers
Category:Swedish operatic baritones
Category:Baritones by nationality
Category:English basses
Category:American contraltos
Category:Brazilian contraltos
Category:American countertenors
Category:American mezzo-sopranos
Category:Brazilian mezzo-sopranos
Category:British mezzo-sopranos
Category:English mezzo-sopranos
Category:Welsh mezzo-sopranos
Category:American sopranos
Category:Australian sopranos
Category:British sopranos
Category:Canadian sopranos
Category:English sopranos
Category:French sopranos
Category:German sopranos
Category:Italian sopranos
Category:New Zealand sopranos
Category:Polish sopranos
Category:Romanian sopranos
Category:Russian sopranos
Category:Scottish sopranos
Category:South Korean sopranos
Category:Spanish sopranos
Category:Swedish sopranos
Category:Welsh sopranos
Category:American tenors
Category:English tenors
Category:German tenors
Category:Irish tenors
Category:Italian tenors
Category:Romanian tenors
Category:Welsh tenors
Category:1625 operas
Category:1686 operas
Category:1691 operas
Category:1692 operas
Category:1704 operas
Category:1705 operas
Category:1707 operas
Category:1708 operas
Category:1709 operas
Category:1711 operas
Category:1712 operas
Category:1713 operas
Category:1715 operas
Category:1718 operas
Category:1719 operas
Category:1720 operas
Category:1721 operas
Category:1723 operas
Category:1724 operas
Category:1725 operas
Category:1726 operas
Category:1727 operas
Category:1728 operas
Category:1729 operas
Category:1730 operas
Category:1731 operas
Category:1732 operas
Category:1733 operas
Category:1734 operas
Category:1735 operas
Category:1736 operas
Category:1737 operas
Category:1738 operas
Category:1739 operas
Category:1740 operas
Category:1741 operas
Category:1744 operas
Category:1745 operas
Category:1747 operas
Category:1748 operas
Category:1749 operas
Category:1750 operas
Category:1751 operas
Category:1752 operas
Category:1753 operas
Category:1754 operas
Category:1755 operas
Category:1757 operas
Category:1758 operas
Category:1759 operas
Category:1760 operas
Category:1761 operas
Category:1762 operas
Category:1764 operas
Category:1765 operas
Category:1766 operas
Category:1767 operas
Category:1768 operas
Category:1769 operas
Category:1770 operas
Category:1771 operas
Category:1772 operas
Category:1773 operas
Category:1774 operas
Category:1775 operas
Category:1776 operas
Category:1777 operas
Category:1778 operas
Category:1779 operas
Category:1780 operas
Category:1781 operas
Category:1782 operas
Category:1783 operas
Category:1784 operas
Category:1786 operas
Category:1787 operas
Category:1788 operas
Category:1789 operas
Category:1790 operas
Category:1791 operas
Category:1792 operas
Category:1797 operas
Category:1799 operas
Category:1800 operas
Category:1805 operas
Category:1810 operas
Category:1811 operas
Category:1812 operas
Category:1813 operas
Category:1814 operas
Category:1815 operas
Category:1816 operas
Category:1817 operas
Category:1818 operas
Category:1819 operas
Category:1820 operas
Category:1821 operas
Category:1822 operas
Category:1823 operas
Category:1824 operas
Category:1825 operas
Category:1826 operas
Category:1827 operas
Category:1828 operas
Category:1829 operas
Category:1830 operas
Category:1831 operas
Category:1832 operas
Category:1833 operas
Category:1834 operas
Category:1835 operas
Category:1836 operas
Category:1837 operas
Category:1838 operas
Category:1839 operas
Category:1840 operas
Category:1841 operas
Category:1843 operas
Category:1844 operas
Category:1842 operas
Category:1845 operas
Category:1846 operas
Category:1847 operas
Category:1848 operas
Category:1849 operas
Category:1850 operas
Category:1851 operas
Category:1852 operas
Category:1853 operas
Category:1854 operas
Category:1855 operas
Category:1856 operas
Category:1857 operas
Category:1858 operas
Category:1859 operas
Category:1860 operas
Category:1861 operas
Category:1862 operas
Category:1863 operas
Category:1864 operas
Category:1865 operas
Category:1866 operas
Category:1867 operas
Category:1868 operas
Category:1869 operas
Category:1870 operas
Category:1871 operas
Category:1872 operas
Category:1873 operas
Category:1874 operas
Category:1875 operas
Category:1876 operas
Category:1877 operas
Category:1878 operas
Category:1879 operas
Category:1880 operas
Category:1881 operas
Category:1882 operas
Category:1883 operas
Category:1884 operas
Category:1885 operas
Category:1886 operas
Category:1887 operas
Category:1888 operas
Category:1889 operas
Category:1890 operas
Category:1891 operas
Category:1892 operas
Category:1893 operas
Category:1894 operas
Category:1895 operas
Category:1896 operas
Category:1897 operas
Category:1898 operas
Category:1899 operas
Category:1900 operas
Category:1901 operas
Category:1902 operas
Category:1903 operas
Category:1904 operas
Category:1905 operas
Category:1906 operas
Category:1907 operas
Category:1908 operas
Category:1909 operas
Category:1910 operas
Category:1911 operas
Category:1912 operas
Category:1913 operas
Category:1914 operas
Category:1915 operas
Category:1916 operas
Category:1917 operas
Category:1918 operas
Category:1919 operas
Category:1920 operas
Category:1921 operas
Category:1922 operas
Category:1923 operas
Category:1924 operas
Category:1925 operas
Category:1926 operas
Category:1927 operas
Category:1928 operas
Category:1929 operas
Category:1930 operas
Category:1931 operas
Category:1932 operas
Category:1933 operas
Category:1934 operas
Category:1935 operas
Category:1936 operas
Category:1937 operas
Category:1938 operas
Category:1939 operas
Category:1940 operas
Category:1941 operas
Category:1942 operas
Category:1943 operas
Category:1944 operas
Category:1945 operas
Category:1946 operas
Category:1947 operas
Category:1948 operas
Category:1949 operas
Category:1950 operas
Category:1951 operas
Category:1952 operas
Category:1953 operas
Category:1954 operas
Category:1955 operas
Category:1956 operas
Category:1957 operas
Category:1958 operas
Category:1959 operas
Category:1960 operas
Category:1961 operas
Category:1962 operas
Category:1963 operas
Category:1964 operas
Category:1965 operas
Category:1966 operas
Category:1967 operas
Category:1968 operas
Category:1969 operas
Category:1970 operas
Category:1971 operas
Category:1972 operas
Category:1973 operas
Category:1975 operas
Category:1976 operas
Category:1977 operas
Category:1978 operas
Category:1980 operas
Category:1981 operas
Category:1982 operas
Category:1983 operas
Category:1984 operas
Category:1985 operas
Category:1986 operas
Category:1987 operas
Category:1988 operas
Category:1989 operas
Category:1990 operas
Category:1991 operas
Category:1992 operas
Category:1993 operas
Category:1994 operas
Category:1995 operas
Category:1996 operas
Category:1997 operas
Category:1998 operas
Category:1999 operas
Category:2000 operas
Category:2001 operas
Category:2002 operas
Category:2003 operas
Category:2004 operas
Category:2005 operas
Category:2006 operas
Category:2007 operas
Category:2008 operas
Category:American baritones
Category:Australian baritones
Category:Austrian baritones
Category:British baritones
Category:Canadian baritones
Category:German baritones
Category:Italian baritones
Category:Russian baritones
Category:Swedish baritones
Category:English baritones
Category:Scottish baritones
Category:Welsh baritones
As I've explained to GT, it's important to avoid any singer cats that don't have opera/operatic in their names. Italian singers, American contraltos etc are likely to be mainly popular, non-operatic. --Kleinzach14:25, 31 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, it looks we've made something of a mess :S. MelonBot has tagged 338 pages today, all of which need to be checked for sanity before we can continue. You two are vastly more familiar with the topic than I am, so I would appreciate any help you can give me in checking for any more silly taggings in today's run; if you think it would help, I'd be happy to give you rollback, Kleinzach (looks like GuillameTell already has it). I, meanwhile, am going to have a closer look at the Category:Opera descendence tree, and then rewrite my category parser so I can exclude whatever subcategory James Blunt is in :D. Happy‑melon16:12, 31 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Just got back from a tasty Yorkshire asparagus (yes, it exists) lunch. Kleinzach, who lives in Japan, has gone to bed. I am on UK time, as are you, I think. I'll have a look at the run, but I have this feeling that rollback is the answer for now, so that we can regroup. Expect some comments here before 7pm BST. Festina lente is the watchword, I think. --GuillaumeTell16:32, 31 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
You spent five and a half hours eating lunch? Lol! For some reason I thought you were on GMT-5, and were American or Canadian :D. Oh well, someone thought I was a girl in my RfA so it just goes to show how easy it is to get things in a twist here! Good luck with the review... I just wish there was a way I could add something along the lines of
Lunch starts at 1200 UTC here - 1 1/2 hours eating it, 1/2 hour shopping, 1 hour on a digestif, 1/2 hour reading messages from Kleinzach and you ... anyway, I've rolledback the banners on articles that shouldn't have had them (and added the G&S banners where appropriate), but it's been rather wearisome, so I'm stopping for now - Paolo Fanale is my next one to look at. (I haven't yet checked through the Unique cats above, as rollback seemed the first thing to do - wow, my edit count is now nearly 6000!). Categories that I've met that shouldn't have the banner (unless there's also one that should have it on the same article) so far: anything connected with Gilbert and Sullivan, English male singers, New Zealand sopranos, Oratorios, Oratorios by ..., Tenors, Austrian singers, English baritones, American sopranos, American male singers, American baritones, Sopranos, American tenors, French sopranos, Opera crossover singers, Falsettos, Scottish male baritones. As Kleinzach says above, "opera/operatic" is key for the singers, though Opera crossover singers should not get the banner, unless there's another, legitimate, cat. I'll go through the rest after dinner (i.e. in about 3hr from now, assuming my flaky BTVision box will connect me) if I'm not doing anything else. Meanwhile, I'll just put on my flat cap, feed the whippets and check that there's enough coal in the bath... --GuillaumeTell18:01, 31 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I've just got back. Yesterday I asked "Is it possible to run the bot in reverse (so to speak)?" . Did Happy-melon see this, I wonder? It looks to me as if it will take hours to check the articles individually, though it might be possible if (1) we had a list, and (2) we divided it up. --Kleinzach08:04, 1 June 2008 (UTC) who is very tempted to say . . . .[reply]
I've been busy this morning and didn't fit many in yesterday evening, but can devote the afternoon today to the job. The list is here. The 338th and last is Elena Gerhardt on the next page - she did sing opera in her early days, but I've debannered her as she's not in Opera Grove and her cat was Category:Mezzo-sopranos, not Operatic mezzo-sopranos. If you've any time to spare, you could start at the bottom and work up. I've done the 48 starting at the top (the next is Paolo Fanale, whoever he is) - a lot of them are unfamiliar and have to be checked. Has HM given you rollback? That does make it a little easier. --GuillaumeTell10:49, 1 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
(ec)I saw it, but the anwer is "not really". I could give my bot rollback and tell it to revert all the tags it placed yesterday, but that's not really the right approach - it just makes more mess. From the work GuillaumeTell did yesterday, it looks like about 20% of the taggings were valid and have not been reverted. I posted a link to the list above, it's here also. I've just given you rollback, Kleinzach (don't beat anyone up with it :D), so you can now see for yourself which edits are still at the top of the history. Looks like GuillaumeTell started at the top and got as far as Paolo Fanale, so if you started at the bottom and worked up, you'd meet somewhere in the middle. In terms of continuing, I've looked at the category tree more carefully, and it seems to me that any dodgy subcats are likely to be in Category:Operas, Category:Opera genres or Category:Opera singers. If someone can confirm whether or not there are any dodgy subcats of Category:Operas (which has the lion's share of both subcategories and total articles), then I can start doing the categorisation a bit more piecemeal. Happy‑melon11:17, 1 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Just seen your message but am about to go to bed. Don't understand what rollback is but perhaps I will tomorrow. There probably aren't any dubious subcats of Category:Operas or Category:Opera genres (the main problems are with the singers) but I think it would be much safer to check off the cats individually. (If we have a list I can check it.) I know which ones have non-opera articles. I could explain in detail why we having these problems but that won't necessarily help. Peter Cohen and I did do a hand check of all the cats before the SatyrBot run, so we were able to avoid this situation. --Kleinzach15:03, 1 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Got as far as Tbilisi Opera and Ballet Theatre, about #223. Probably no more time for this until after lunch tomorrow. NB a few articles needed their cats altering. --GuillaumeTell21:49, 1 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, I've started another run. I had a false start with Category:Kalidasa Plays, another distant subcategory with little or no relevance, but I've coded up an easy way to exclude categories, so we should be in business. I've added the G&S categories to the exclude list, and my hack should cause it to skip pages that already have a {{G&S-project}} or {{Wagner}} banner on them, assuming it works correctly. Did you find on your travels any pages where a {{WikiProject Opera}} banner was added to pages already containing one of these banners? Happy‑melon13:11, 2 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
As I have explained, it would be better to stop this bot run and check the categories before going any further. There's no point in doing another blind hit-or-miss bot run. It would only takes 10 minutes to check a category list. That what we did with SatyrTN and we didn't make any mistakes. --Kleinzach14:01, 2 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I'll have a look at the categories. However, all the problems last time were caused by a) non-operatic singers, b) Oratorios and c)G&S categories (plus a few where the articles themselves were wrongly categorised, which don't count). All those have been attended to as far as I can see. There is no sign of any widespread chaos happening this time, or have you spotted something that I haven't? --GuillaumeTell14:24, 2 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Well I'm not sure you'll be able to get through this list in ten minutes, but that's a complete list of all subcategories being analysed on the current run, so you're welcome to go through it. As GuillaumeTell says, there doesn't seem to be too much chaos ensuing this time. If there are any obvious problems with that list, do let me know and I'll add them to my new exclude list. Happy‑melon14:30, 2 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The list looks basically clean. (Presumably the red linked, unravelled accent cats are inactive?) I thought Yiddish theatre articles might be linked to operetta but could only see one article which we can debanner by hand. Opera Recordings, another suspect hierarchy, looks OK. --Kleinzach15:03, 2 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The redlinked cats are just because wikipedia and python fonts don't interface very well: wikipedia uses UTF8 which can represent just about any character under the sun, while python uses a much smaller subset. If python spots a character it doesn't recognise it prints it like that, which mediawiki then translates into those character strings. When the script queries the site directly it just sends the title as it receives it and doesn't try to understand it, so it doesn't 'realise' that it doesn't understand the character. So those categories will be parsed correctly, even if they don't display correctly (and it crashes the script if it tries to print the category name to the screen :D). Just another quirk of working with bots on wikipedia. Fortunately all the redlinked categories look completely benign. Only about 1,300 pages left to review! Happy‑melon15:12, 2 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Let's not panic. Those singers all have an "opera singers" category, which they shouldn't have. The bot is ignoring the Crossover category but not the e.g. Category:Swiss opera singers one. One thing this exercise is throwing up is a number miscategorised articles. I've now removed those cats from the singers' articles. Portamento is in Category:Opera terminology and should have the banner. --GuillaumeTell15:55, 2 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Bot run is done, number of articles tagged this time: 338 again, bizzarely enough. Looks like much less disruption was caused this time around. If you need anything else, do let me know. Have fun with your new assessement scheme! Happy‑melon16:13, 2 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. I thought they were in Grove but they're not. Curiously I see Evangelimann is in Oxford so I may have something to add if you can start it. I see there's a substantial article in de. here so maybe we can get something up after all. --Kleinzach11:30, 29 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, my queston is not about the bot tagging, but rather I am merely trying to get a consensus about the burlesques as to what we wish to do. Can you give your opinion on the talk page, please? Your opinion is very important to me. No rush, though, if you want to give the issue some thought. Thanks! -- Ssilvers (talk) 18:11, 31 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the message. Re: G&S, thanks for the info; however, there are *some* articles that could have both a G&S tag and an opera tag; for instance: Charles Manners, Valerie Masterson or Gillian Knight were G&S performers who went on to substantial opera careers. I understand that you are busy with the Melon-bot program, so if you can't think about the burlesque policy issue, then I'll have to wait. All the best, -- Ssilvers (talk) 18:22, 31 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
As I seem to living on this page at the moment, let's avoid double bannering. If a singer is more G&S than gen. opera then the article can have a G&S banner, or vice versa.--Kleinzach08:07, 1 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Repeated bannering by MelonBot
Jay has already noted the repeat bannering of the Opera Portal. I also see the redirect Talk:Russian Private Opera has just been rebannered for the third time. It's strange that the number of bannered articles this time (338) is identical to last time. I am continuing to check by hand, but I think we need to find out why the bot is behaving in this way. --Kleinzach23:20, 2 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Portal:Opera is in Category:Opera. I'm not clear what is wrong with it having the banner. Isn't it part of the Opera Project?
Russian Private Opera, although a redirect, is in Category: Opera companies. Most redirects don't have categories, but giving it the category means that this title appears in italics in the category listing, which may or may not be a good thing in this case (I've never heard of it). Might be useful for all those Paris opera houses that kept changing their names, for example.
Portal:Opera can't be assessed (I hope!). In any case it already has a neutralized banner made by Jay. And surely the bot should be able to avoid articles that have already been debannered? Categories are not normally used for redirects, though I have no real objection to it. I think it's better we take this to the Opera Project where I've already expressed my concerns. --Kleinzach01:04, 3 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
WP:YORKS is a leading local British WikiProject in terms of the total number of articles supported (up from 3343 last month to 3509 on May 28th). WP:GM has the lead in FAs. WP:YORKS is lacking in the area of GAs and falls well behind WP:LONDON. This topic was at the front of the new aims discussion and is an important issue for WP:YORKS.
As mentioned above, new aims have been decided. See the right hand column for more details.
Member News
There are now 45 members of WikiProject Yorkshire! A warm welcome to the 4 new members that have joined us since the May newsletter:
No users left the WikiProject this month, but the list has been trimmed to account for the one user who was permanently blocked and one who seems not to exist. There are also several who have not contributed to Wikipedia for some months. However it is the exam season :-)
Malcolm Bryant (talk·contribs) does not seem to have registered on Wikipedia.(Let me know if I am wrong.)
Last month the format of the member list was altered to:
allow easier editing for new members
assist members to communicate more easily (by including members talk pages)
allow members to keep up to date with each other's contributions
It had to be changed again before the May Newsletter went out to allow easier, more efficient, circulation by the ENewsBot. The Bot worked like magic last month but slightly complicated the signing up process, particularly for novice users.
Thanks
The Yorkshire Portal continues to be maintained by User:Kaly99 once again, thank you. There has been a number of suggestions on the ToDo list and this has been kept up to date too.
The football and rugby editors have to be congratulated for keeping abreast of most. if not all, of the top clubs.
User:Cyberdemon007 has made a lot of edits to North Yorkshire settlement infoboxes. Thank you.
There have been more WikiProkject Yorkshire editors on vandal patrol on watchlist , just lately. Thanks it's really good to know that you have others in support.
A big "thank you" to all the editors who help make this WikiProject what it is; no edit goes unnoticed. If you patrol the recent changes regularly you "get to know" the editors and their specialities quite well.
York - B - Main problems are lack of references and the lists, also the external links section would need a major prune before a GA review.Maybe ask for peer review when these are done? Bath, Somerset is an FA and a good role model.
Yorkshire and the Humber - Start. The article has been reorganised and expanded (some sections with no text are there on the source page but are commented out at the moment). It could do with more citations.
The number has been kept deliberately low to give us a fighting chance of improving them to GA status, also so we can concentrate our efforts on these first.
Don't Forget...
Monitor Use the watchlist to keep an eye on changes to the project's articles so that vandalism can be removed as quickly as possible.
Images! There is a shortage of good images in Yorkshire related articles, particularly on pages about smaller settlements. A good place to start would be the requested photographs category but please remember that there are many articles not within this category that have the same need. A good old holiday picture of The Spa, Bridlington would be a useful addition to the article.
Assessment Assess and review Assessment of Yorkshire related articles has been brought up to date recently, but needs constant maintenance.
Last but not Least... Please remember that the list of stubs needing expansion is in permanent need of attention. Please take a look and see what you can do. One small edit each session would make a big difference.
Thanks for letting me know. I will leave the starts alone for now. I only removed it as it seemed like such a rediculous grade for such a well developed article. I didn't realise where we were in the assesment process or how it worked. Sorry for stepping on your toes so to speak. My only question is how we know to find articles that have start classes assessed by melon bot and not a person once assessment begins. Unassessed articles are easy to locate which is why I removed the start class.Nrswanson (talk) 11:25, 5 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Conductors/MelonBot run
I've just seen your new Category:Music directors (opera) which I see is under Cat Opera. This pretty much runs a stagecoach (or whatever is the idiom) through the policy of leaving all conductors in the Classical Music Project. I'm concerned about this opening yet another Pandora's box, especially as we don't seem to have a definition for 'music director'. Should we talk this through on the project page?
Incidentally I've just spent the last four hours going though the last MelonBot run and I haven't finished yet. Most of it is non-opera or marginal. Much of it is actually Theatre Project stuff. Hugely time consuming but apparently no one else is doing any checking. Ahem. --Kleinzach04:18, 6 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
1. When one wishes to make a general appeal for information within a WikiProject community, where should one place it, if not the talk page for the Project page? To leave the request on the talk page of the specific article leaves one at the mercy of whether or not that page is on people's watchlists ... or do all members of a wikiproject automatically have all articles within the Project on their watchlist? 2. I've looked at the links at the bottom of the Josephine Barstow page: it's clear that the page has been adapted from her own biog. Would it be useful for me to try to create something more detailed from the information on the other link? Not knowing much about her career (which is why I looked in the first place) I'm wary of creating some ghastly monster. On the other hand, something more structured might attract the truly knowledgeable almost-instinct23:00, 6 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I only saw JB in the flesh once when she played the Kostelnicka for Opera North's Jenufa sometime around 2000/1, and had trouble matching her reputation with what I was hearing: a lot of that role lies quite low and audibility was an issue, the bottom end sounding hollow and brittle, though no doubt the cold, distant acoustic of Manchester's Lowry Centre didn't help. Her interpretation was, on the other hand, blinding, much MUCH superior to what I heard at ENO recently. Later I saw the DVD of the Salzburg Ballo and was astonished; since then I've been intrigued and just feel really hungry for more information. I'm still — as you're probably able to tell! — quite new on WP. One thing that struck me as soon as I started was that the sage's page was in a pretty woeful state; I figured that if it had a clearer and more readable structure then more casual users of Wiki with a proper specialist knowledge of Larkin criticism might feel more inclined to contribute ... but attracting them takes time. While we wait we're enthusiastically debating the legitimacy of “curly inverted commas”. Very WP. almost-instinct10:44, 7 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
PS a propos of very little, I find the careful nuturing of the sense of failure very invigorating. When I read “...and say why it never worked for me” or “where has it gone, the lifetime? Search me” or “Postmen, like doctors, go from house to house” I feel inspired by the clarity of the transfer of deadening dread feelings into words. The perfect poise of the language sometimes makes me laugh. I'm too enthusiastic about the poems to care about the criticism! almost-instinct11:01, 7 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
That AA quote is so good I had assumed that it was one of PL's pieces of baleful self-criticism, and wondered why I hdan't come across it recently! The Alvarez criticism is something that we very much wanted to get into the article; Linuxlad, who remembers it, can't find his copy of The New Poetry, the book it's in. The Motion and Bradford biogs make brief references to it. Maybe I'll put those in and when someone finds a copy of the book they can replace my contribution. I often find myself wanting to know more about things' reception history, not so much for the criticism itself but what it tells us about the differences between now and then. For example I think the page on Gloriana could have an excellent section on its reception history. I wonder if the Opera North programme for the JB production contained a history of performances up to that point? And finding info about the first performance will be in the Humphrey Burton biog, I suppose. (Do I remember reading about alterations being made so that Janet Baker could sing it, or am I getting totally muddled up with Walton's T&C?) Presumably the rate of productions of G has gone up since the Opera North prod? The Ballo DVD is worth seeing for the singing (the more I hear Domingo, the more I think that, basically, he's it and that his sketchy top notes are some kind of cosmic joke ... "there's always some flaw in them. Always something") but the production is shallow beyond belief, verging on the funny. But I've never heard Ballo in the flesh with a proper cast, so you might want to take my opinion with a pinch of salt. almost-instinct10:07, 9 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Lealholm was not promoted to GA status on June 30th
WP:YORKS is a leading local British WikiProject in terms of the total number of articles supported (up from 3509 last month to 3635 on June 29th). WP:GM has the lead in FAs. WP:YORKS is lacking in the area of GAs and falls well behind WP:LONDON. This topic was at the front of the new aims discussion and is an important issue for WP:YORKS.
Member News
There are now 47 members of WikiProject Yorkshire! A warm welcome to the 3 new members that have joined us since the June newsletter:
No users left the WikiProject this month, but 1 user was registered twice under different logins and has been consolidated.
Thanks
The Yorkshire Portal continues to be maintained by User:Kaly99 once again, thank you. User:Kaly99 would very much appreciate comments at peer review. There has been a number of suggestions on the ToDo list and this has been kept up to date too.
The football and rugby editors have to be congratulated for keeping abreast of most, if not all, of the top clubs. Also for getting Scarborough F.C. seasons to FL status during the month.
There have been even more WikiProkject Yorkshire editors on vandal patrol on watchlist. Thanks it's really good to know that you have others in support.
A big "thank you" to all the editors who help make this WikiProject what it is; no edit goes unnoticed. If you patrol the recent changes regularly you "get to know" the editors and their specialities quite well.
The number has been kept deliberately low to give us a fighting chance of improving them to at least GA status, also so we can concentrate our efforts on these first.
Informal article viewing and editing statistics for 5 of our priority articles
Rated a B class article. Viewed 40,122 times in May, 2008. Only went below 1,000 viewings on one day, 10th, and achieved 1,600 on the 6th and the 20th. Overall total number of edits 1,818 with 46 in May, 2008.
Rated a B class article. Viewed 38,018 times in May, 2008. On 12 days there were over 1,000 viewings with a sudden peak of 4,200 on the 24th. Overall number of edits 2,269 with 88 in May, 2008.
Rated a B class article. The highest number of monthly viewings for our priority articles at 50,846 for the month of May, 2008. There were consistently over 1,000 daily viewings with a high of 2,000 on the 25th. Overall total number of edits 3,152 with 86 in May, 2008.
Rated an FA class article.Viewed 37,740 times in May, 2008 with usually over 1,000 daily viewings. There were 6 days when over 1,400 viewings were made then a low of 900 on the 10th. Overall total number of edits 2,550 with 44 in May, 2008.
Rated a GA class article and actively being worked on for FAC. Viewed 42,902 times in May, 2008. Consistently over 1,000 daily viewings with 2,000 viewings on the 12th. Overall total number of edits 2,434 with 241 in May, 2008.
Monitor Use the watchlist to keep an eye on changes to the project's articles so that vandalism can be removed as quickly as possible.
Images! There is a shortage of good images in Yorkshire related articles, particularly on pages about smaller settlements. A good place to start would be the requested photographs category but please remember that there are many articles not within this category that have the same need. A good old holiday picture of The Spa, Bridlington would be a useful addition to the article.
Assessment Assess and review Assessment of Yorkshire related articles has been brought up to date recently, but needs constant maintenance.
Last but not Least... Please remember that the list of stubs needing expansion is in permanent need of attention. Please take a look and see what you can do. One small edit each session would make a big difference.
Delivered July 2008 by ENewsBot. If you do not wish to receive the newsletter, please add two *'s by your username on the Project Mainpage.
Good news. If you would fillet something from the Bloomfield piece then I can go through the article from the Larkin Society journal to see if there's anything which expands on/illustrates Bloomfield. It would be better to use BB as the primary source, I would have thought.
Click here for something that might interest you almost-instinct21:41, 29 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
re. your memories of the line "carefully nurtured sense of failure", I found this in Motion (p.281): "The poet Charles Tomlinson, writing the in journal Essays in Criticism in April, had attacked Larkin's 'tenderly nursed sense of defeat' in an article headed 'The Middlebrow Muse'". Maybe he, too, liked AA's line and reworked it?! almost-instinct10:28, 30 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I'm about to go away for a few days, so I had a go at expanding the librarian paragraph. Talk about fulfilment's desolate attic. I look forward to returning to find that a helpful oyster has turned my grain of sand into a beautiful pearl. I'm delighted to see that Larkin at Sixty is now in blue. I'm thinking that the next thing I ought to do is get hold of the good volumes of Larkin critism and piece together good solid assessments without original research for The North Ship, The Less Deceived, The Whitsun Weddings & High Windows. And then for all the notable poems ... or maybe I should find another subject! almost-instinct14:45, 4 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
WP:YORKS is a leading local British WikiProject in terms of the total number of articles supported (up from 3635 last month to 3781 on July 30th). WP:GM has the lead in FAs at 24 out of a total number of 1624 articles. In the area of GAs, at 17, WP:YORKS falls behind WP:LONDON and WP:GM who each have 21.
Member News
There are now 47 members of WikiProject Yorkshire! A warm welcome to the new member that has joined us since the July newsletter:
User:Kaly99 would very much appreciate comments about Yorkshire Portal at peer review which continues to be maintained by Kaly99. Once more, thank you.
There has been a number of suggestions on the ToDo list at Yorkshire Portal and this has been kept up to date too.
The football and rugby editors have to be admired for keeping abreast of most, if not all, of the top clubs.
WikiProkject Yorkshire editors have been busy on vandal patrol at watchlist. Thanks.
A big "thank you" to all the editors who help make this WikiProject what it is; no edit goes unnoticed.
The number has been kept deliberately low to give us a fighting chance of improving them to at least GA status, also so we can concentrate our efforts on these first.
Article improvement
One of the aims of our project was to set up a periodic Article improvement drive. The article on our county town of York is suggested for this month. Please discuss and/or make edits to move towards WP:GA? status for our first selected article.
Please remember...
The project is now subscribed to a clean-up listing which lists articles tagged with various clean-up tags that need attention. The listing is refreshed by a bot on a regular basis.
Monitor Use the watchlist to keep an eye on changes to the project's articles so that vandalism and spamming can be removed as quickly as possible.
Infoboxes Many of our articles would benefit from the addition of an appropriate infobox. Useful ones include:
The new C-Class represents articles that are beyond the basic Start-Class, but which need additional references or cleanup to meet the standards for B-Class.
The criteria for B-Class have been tightened up with the addition of a rubric, and are now more in line with the stricter standards already used at some projects.
A-Class article reviews will now need more than one person, as described here.
References Please remember that the list of stubs needing expansion is always in need of attention. Please take a look and see if you can help. One small edit, such as adding a reference section and reference, to an article each session would make a big difference.
Moves Please be careful when performing articles moves and ensure that you also move all the talk sub-pages and update any image fair use rational. Otherwise the archives, to-do lists, assessment comments and GA reviews get lost and the image may be deleted as it has an incorrect FUR.
Delivered August 2008 by ENewsBot. If you do not wish to receive the newsletter, please add two *'s by your username on the Project Mainpage.
Crumbs, I've just had my head blown off by tonight's prom. Concert performance of Il Tabarro, never heard it before ... found the piece totally mesmerising and convincing from start to finish. And Barbara Frittoli! Another discovery for me, sensational! There have been so many lacklustre proms this year, this took me totally by surprise. Normally, I'd rush out to buy a the best version, but I recorded it and can't see it being beaten. (Sorry, I had to effuse to somebody.) qp10qp (talk) 20:54, 11 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Hmm. Yes I was aware that Hoffmann was an opera. That's why I also left it on the main page. I thought List of operettas and one opera by Offenbach would be a rather silly title . . . . actually I'm not sure that all the other 99 are strictly operettas either . . . . Hope you had a good holiday. --Kleinzach 11:26, 28 August 2008 (UTC) Incidentally, I did put the word opera (next to Hoffmann) in bold to draw attention to it . . . --Kleinzach11:28, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The idea was to keep the title consistent with Category:Lists of operas by composer. Re Hoffmann, I'm sure someone will now put it back in. A no-win situation for your hard-working compiler. We have an article on Robinson Crusoé - don't think it's a 20th C concoction. Perhaps you are thinking of something else? --Kleinzach15:36, 28 August 2008 (UTC) P.S. Are you a walker? I suppose you can see the Highlands from a car but it's not really the same thing. How many days do you have?[reply]
OK maybe we can avoid Christopher Columbus? I'm not quite sure which point I didn't answer, however I've now put Hoffmann in a 'See also'. Hope that's OK. --Kleinzach23:27, 31 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oxford Wikimania 2010 and Wikimedia UK v2.0 Notice
Hi,
As a regularly contributing UK Wikipedian, we were wondering if you wanted to contribute to the Oxford bid to host the 2010 Wikimania conference. Please see here for details of how to get involved, we need all the help we can get if we are to put in a compelling bid.
We are also in the process of forming a new UK Wikimedia chapter to replace the soon to be folded old one. If you are interested in helping shape our plans, showing your support or becoming a future member or board member, please head over to the Wikimedia UK v2.0 page and let us know. We plan on holding an election in the next month to find the initial board, who will oversee the process of founding the company and accepting membership applications. They will then call an AGM to formally elect a new board who after obtaining charitable status will start the fund raising, promotion and active support for the UK Wikimedian community for which the chapter is being founded.
You may also wish to attend the next London meet-up at which both of these issues will be discussed. If you can't attend this meetup, you may want to watch Wikipedia:Meetup, for updates on future meets.
We look forward to hearing from you soon, and we send our apologies for this automated intrusion onto your talk page!
WP:YORKS is a leading local British WikiProject in terms of the total number of articles supported (up from 3781 last month to 4005 on August 27th). WP:GM has the lead in FAs at 25 out of a total number of 1664 articles. In the area of GAs, at 17, WP:YORKS falls behind WP:GM with 27 and WP:LONDON with 22.
To bring all other top priority articles (currently 15 with 2 at FA) to at least Good article status
To set up a weekly or monthly selected article improvement drive
To produce a regular news letter for circulation to members
Yorkshire Portal
The Yorkshire portal helps people navigate through the content related to Yorkshire. The highlighted content is displayed randomly and includes -
Did you Knows
Articles
Biographies
Pictures
Panoramas
Any additions to these would be great. The portal is being prepared for featured portal candidacy so help meeting the criteria, for example, copy-editing or suggestions for new content sections such as Selected anniversaries, On this day, or In the news would be appreciated.
Priority Articles
The top priority articles that have been identified to date are as follows -
The number has been kept deliberately low to give us a fighting chance of improving them to at least GA status, also so we can concentrate our efforts on these first.
Please remember...
The project is now subscribed to a clean-up listing which lists articles tagged with various clean-up tags that need attention. The listing is refreshed by a bot on a regular basis.
Monitor Use the watchlist to keep an eye on changes to the project's articles so that vandalism and spamming can be removed as quickly as possible.
Infoboxes Many of our articles would benefit from the addition of an appropriate infobox.
The new C-Class represents articles that are beyond the basic Start-Class, but which need additional references or cleanup to meet the standards for B-Class.
The criteria for B-Class have been tightened up with the addition of a rubric, and are now more in line with the stricter standards already used at some projects.
A-Class article reviews will now need more than one person, as described here.
References Please remember that the list of stubs needing expansion is always in need of attention. Please take a look and see if you can help. One small edit, such as adding a reference section and reference, to an article each session would make a big difference.
Moves Please be careful when performing articles moves and ensure that you also move all the talk sub-pages and update any image fair use rational. Otherwise the archives, to-do lists, assessment comments and GA reviews get lost and the image may be deleted as it has an incorrect FUR.
Delivered September 2008 by ENewsBot. If you do not wish to receive the newsletter, please add two *'s by your username on the Project Mainpage.
I don't know whether you have seen the recent activity on this page. I'm not very happy about it, particularly as it's been preventing me working on anything else. I had just recompiled the stats, before the activity started, in preparation for the document I was writing for the 5,000+ celebration. --Kleinzach01:13, 10 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I've reverted back to the 5 Sept version, and Nrswanson has agreed to re-insert his additional operas while doing the stats. I hope his titles are all ex-Grove so there shouldn't be any problems with them. What we don't need are people transferring complete lists of operas from biographical articles onto the corpus. After Nrswanson has finished we can take another look at the criteria to see if they need tightening up, however they've worked reasonably well up to now. --Kleinzach01:01, 11 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Assessments again
I hope we can discuss this more later. I'd like to get everybody (i.e. including Folantin and VDT) behind a scheme. At the moment I'm thinking we should restrict written assessments (using your points method) to 'B-class' (of which there are now 74), not use 'C-class' at all, and have nominal assessments (as now) for 'start'. (After all, 'start' only means 'not-stub', and 'stub' has always been a nominal rating.) I think this might be a workable compromise. --Kleinzach01:12, 11 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
. . . . "Doing the B-class is fine, but what about the GAs? Put them up for peer review, maybe? . . . Or don't you think that trying for FA is worth bothering with? At the very least, it would be good if the GAs had some comments on their /comments pages."
Sorry. Didn't make myself clear. I was assuming that GA/FA processes were already decided. Perhaps I should have said 'down to B'? I'm thinking that people would be free to nominate to B-class. The assessors would then rank them, either sending them back to Start, or confirm B, or promote to GA/FA candidate. The important thing is that we wouldn't have written assessments below B. I just don't think that's do-able. Is this a plan you could agree to? --Kleinzach22:42, 11 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, I don’t know how to say but I think someone should talk to Kleinzach. I think he is withdrawing from Opera project – look at his user page. He has done a lot of work. He is like the key person in Opera project by maintaining the articles, corpus listing, doing assessments and also key person in Wiki project page itself. There are times we have compromise with what we want in order to save a good member – at least that is what I will do in the real life. There are many unorganized projects in Wiki, projects without “somebody” taking care it. At the end, the project is dead. I do not want to see that to happen in Opera project, and for that, I believe we need Kleinzach to continue doing what he always do. I am writing this to you, hoping that you could consider or at least talk to him. When I said, “compromise”, I mean, if the “stub tag by language” isn’t that important compared to losing a good friend, so be it. I genuinely feel that losing a good friend to something that is less important is not worth at all, seriously. I just don’t understand why the tags have been placed in our articles without consensus. We haven’t agreed to it, we are still in the middle of the discussion. That is why I said we have to vote first. I was surprised to see my “watchlist” full with list of “tag added” even I have said clearly that we need an agreement with our active members. I need your opinion about this. - Jay (talk) 13:23, 27 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
WP:YORKS is a leading local British WikiProject in terms of the total number of articles supported (up from 4005 last month to 4085 on September 27th). WP:GM has the lead in FAs at 28 out of a total number of 1678 articles. In the area of GAs, at 21, WP:YORKS also falls behind WP:GM with 28.
The number has been kept deliberately low to give us a fighting chance of improving them to at least GA status, also so we can concentrate our efforts on these first.
To bring all other top priority articles (currently 15 with 2 at FA) to at least Good article status
To set up a weekly or monthly selected article improvement drive
To produce a regular news letter for circulation to members
Wikipedia DVD version 0.7
Wikipedia DVD Version 0.7 aims to be a collection of around 30,000 articles taken from the English version of Wikipedia.
The process of producing the list of articles for the DVD is currently under way and 43 of the project's articles are being
considered for inclusion. The list of selected Yorkshire articles can be seen here.
The selection has been done using a scoring system depending on the project's assessment, the number of incoming links to the article, the number of interwiki
links the article has and the number of times the article has been viewed.
The process of selecting clean versions for each of the selected articles is also being undertaken so that vandalised versions are not put on the DVD.
Some of the articles also have clean-up tags attached to them which need to be dealt with before a version can be used on the DVD. It would be good if members
could address any tags in the selected articles and fix the problem identified. Those articles that are tagged by multiple projects should get a visit by each of the projects involved
so the articles will probably get a lot of activity in the next few days.
The cut-off date for this work is October 20th, but changes to articles following version selection may not be incorporated as there may not be time to reassess them.
Please remember...
The project is now subscribed to a clean-up listing which lists articles tagged with various clean-up tags that need attention. The listing is refreshed by a bot on a regular basis.
Monitor Use the watchlist to keep an eye on changes to the project's articles so that vandalism and spamming can be removed as quickly as possible.
Infoboxes Many of our articles would benefit from the addition of an appropriate infobox.
The new C-Class represents articles that are beyond the basic Start-Class, but which need additional references or cleanup to meet the standards for B-Class.
The criteria for B-Class have been tightened up with the addition of a rubric, and are now more in line with the stricter standards already used at some projects.
A-Class article reviews will now need more than one person, as described here.
References Please remember that the list of stubs needing expansion is always in need of attention. Please take a look and see if you can help. One small edit, such as adding a reference section and reference, to an article each session would make a big difference.
Moves Please be careful when performing articles moves and ensure that you also move all the talk sub-pages and update any image fair use rational. Otherwise the archives, to-do lists, assessment comments and GA reviews get lost and the image may be deleted as it has an incorrect FUR.
Delivered October 2008 by ENewsBot. If you do not wish to receive the newsletter, please add an * before your username on the Project Mainpage.
Hi there. I was wondering if you would like to start up again on doing assessments at the project. We had talked about starting up with assessment in the Fall during this past Summer but it seems to have been forgotten.Nrswanson (talk) 01:20, 23 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for letting me know. I agree that we need a plan of action and I will be giving it some considerable thought. Let me know when you get back. Ciao. Nrswanson (talk) 13:52, 2 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
WP:YORKS is a leading local British WikiProject in terms of the total number of articles supported (up from 4085 last month to 4284 on October 27th). WP:GM has the lead in FAs at 29 out of a total number of 1708 articles. In the area of GAs, at 24, WP:YORKS also falls behind WP:GM with 30.
As mentioned in the October newsletter, Wikipedia DVD Version 0.7, which aims to be a collection of around 30,000 articles taken from the English version of Wikipedia needed work to prepare 43 of the project's articles for the DVD.
The process of producing the list of articles for the DVD is now completed and thanks are due to the many members who made a contribution to the effort. The list of selected Yorkshire articles can be seen here.
The selection was done using a scoring system depending on the project's assessment, the number of incoming links to the article, the number of interwiki links the article had and the number of times the article had been viewed.
Only two of our top priority articles were not selected, Ripon and Wakefield, the others were cleaned up, improved, expanded and copyedited as far as time allowed.
There has again been a number of suggestions on the ToDo list at Yorkshire Portal and this has been kept up to date.
The football and rugby editors have continued keeping abreast of most, if not all, of the top clubs.
WikiProkject Yorkshire editors have been busy on vandal patrol at watchlist. Thanks.
A big "thank you" to all the editors who help make this WikiProject what it is; no edit goes unnoticed.
Priority Articles
The top priority articles that have been identified to date are as follows -
The number has been kept deliberately low to give us a fighting chance of improving them to at least GA status, also so we can concentrate our efforts on these first.
To bring all other top priority articles (currently 15 with 2 at FA) to at least Good article status
To set up a weekly or monthly selected article improvement drive
To produce a regular news letter for circulation to members
Missing co-ordinates
A recent entry on the project talk page Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Yorkshire#Missing coordinates alerted us to the fact that many of our articles do not display any geographical co-ordinates. Many also do not have infoboxes. As locational infoboxes usually have a field for co-ordinates, it was suggested that members might be able to kill two birds with one stone by adding an appropriate infobox at the same time as co-ordinates.
The infobox page usually includes detailed instructions for its use and many of the fields are not mandatory so are not displayed until information is entered.
The geographical co-ordinates for a location can be found on Google Earth.
Open Google Earth and enter the name of the location in the search box. (Quite often the article name can be copied and pasted directly into the search box but sometimes it is useful to add ,UK to the address.)
A results list is displayed beneath the search box.
Click on the right one.
Zoom in to check that the correct feature is being displayed on the image. (Sometimes the supposed feature is not at the centre of the page.)
Place the pointer over the location on the screen image and read the geographical co-ordinates from the panel at the bottom of the screen.
Make a note of the co-ordinates.
Open the tab of the article you are editing and add the co-ordinates in the co-ords field.
Once co-ordinates have been added the template {{coord missing}} should be removed from the article.
Please remember...
The project is now subscribed to a clean-up listing which lists articles tagged with various clean-up tags that need attention. The listing is refreshed by a bot on a regular basis.
Monitor Use the watchlist to keep an eye on changes to the project's articles so that vandalism and spamming can be removed as quickly as possible.
Infoboxes Many of our articles would benefit from the addition of an appropriate infobox.
The new C-Class represents articles that are beyond the basic Start-Class, but which need additional references or cleanup to meet the standards for B-Class.
The criteria for B-Class have been tightened up with the addition of a rubric, and are now more in line with the stricter standards already used at some projects.
A-Class article reviews will now need more than one person, as described here.
References Please remember that the list of stubs needing expansion is always in need of attention. Please take a look and see if you can help. One small edit, such as adding a reference section and reference, to an article each session would make a big difference.
Moves Please be careful when performing articles moves and ensure that you also move all the talk sub-pages and update any image fair use rational. Otherwise the archives, to-do lists, assessment comments and GA reviews get lost and the image may be deleted as it has an incorrect FUR.
There is currently a discussion going on regarding the project's policy on how information on characters should be represented in articles on Shakespeare's plays. Please take part by clicking Talk:Romeo and Juliet#Character Analysis. Further context, if needed, can be found by scanning the two previous talk sections on the page as well. Sent by §hepBot (Disable) at 04:19, 11 November 2008 (UTC) per request of Wrad (talk)[reply]
Welcome back
Glad to have you around again GuillaumeTell. I'm jealous you got to go see so many operas. Now for assessment. I think that our first goal should be to make sure we like the assessment criteria we have set in place already at Wikipedia:WikiProject Opera/Assessment. In particular I think we need to discuss the new C-class rating and how we want to approach that. The project has not really talked about it. I personally like it. I think our start criteria is a little too high and B class a little too low. C class makes a nice bridge between start and b class as well as enabling the project to raise the assessment of some articles from stub to start. For example, under current criteria for opera singers, Pauline de Ahna is a stub. But in my view this should really be a start article as it is well constructed and discusses the most essential information about the individual pretty thoroughly if not in great detail. It really doesn't reflect the discription of a stub. On the other side we have articles like Emma Carelli whose career is covered more thoroughly than a start article would be but lacks things like photos and a list of roles that one would expect in a B class article. This would make a great C class candidate. I would suggest the following point system:
0-24: Stub
25-49: Start
50-74: C
75-89: B
90+: A
A second thought is on how to assess topics on operas and individuals that may only have a limmited ammount of material available. For example the criteria for opera singers includes a "complete discography". Well that reflects well on singers roughly after 1905 but what about singers prior to then? We may need to construct other models to follow and/or establish a policy that allows reviewers to modify how they rate the article within individual cases. Once we get the criteria established then we can start making a plan to systematically assess articles. I think the best approach to that would be to go through Category:WikiProject Opera articles (which we could divide among interested editors alphabetically). We wouldn't be assessing articles in order of importance that way but we would be less likely to miss any articles. Simultaneously we would also need to assess all new articles to the project under the new criteria for assessment. Otherwise anything new might not get assessed.
I think it would also be good to talk about the practical application of all of this. We're looking at revising the "Articles of the month" tables to include already existing articles that we want to work on improving in quality. This assessment might go a long way in identifying articles that would make good candidates for improvement, even up to GA or FA status. Well that is my two cents for now.Nrswanson (talk) 20:31, 13 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
No problem. :-) Thanks for letting me know. I myself will be on here a limited amount this week due to Thanksgiving here in the US (I am visiting family 1,500 miles away).Nrswanson (talk) 06:43, 24 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Something I've been wanting to do for a while is add some more detail to the pages on the various Yorkshire Dales. While something like Malham Cove is in a decent state, pages like Swaledale need references and I feel a more than a little sorry for pages like Coverdale! I was wondering if you know of a book (or books) on the Dales that you can recommend I should get hold of. I'm looking for something I could use as a solid source for reference ... the Dales equivalent of the Grove Dictionary on Opera ... and like the Opera project filleting Grove I can then systematically steal all the information ;-) I'm not averse to pretty pictures, but something text-rich is what I'm after almost-instinct11:08, 17 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Unfortunately I'm working all day on Friday (and when I say all day, I mean it!) — otherwise given the offer of going to Elektra...! I read a review of it which was nothing but awe-struck compliments. Shame. The idea of the pint was equally agreeable! Next time, eh? I think I once brought this to your attention. The numbers of people who had serious intimate knowledge of PL must be shrinking; as far as I'm aware this chap my friend met through his work hasn't been interviewed by anyone in the Larkin-biography-business: from the Motion book I got the impression recollections like this from that era aren't in abundance. Do you think I ought to try to direct my friend to either Andrew Motion or the Philip Larkin Society so that someone could harvest these memories while they're still available? [If you don't want to answer that on WP I have an email account almost-instinct@hotmail.co.uk which I only created to sign up for WP: I never check it without knowing there's something to find there, so, if you use it, drop me a note on my talk page.] I had not hear of "Such Deliberate Disguises" before—I'll be sure to look into it! Sounds good. You might not have noticed this recently-added link which was full of insights which were new to me. My favourite bit was the observation that "I work all day and get half-drunk at night" sounds like the opening of a blues song. By the way I have to admit I'm not exactly a seasoned rambler myself—the Dales are more of a lost Eden which I occasionally get to visit. I'm sure a misplaced enthusiasm for things remotely admired accounts for a lot of WP's content. (Memories of childhood have a lot to answer for!) It's interesting that I contribute so little to the opera pages: I think this must be because it's in this field above all others that I'm truly aware of where the aching gaps in my knowledge are. almost-instinct11:20, 19 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Harry Graham
Hello GT. Nice to see you at Harry Graham. By all means, feel free to reorganise as you think necessary. I'm curious: Why did you write '(ahem)' after referring to me? Best regards, -- Ssilvers (talk) 18:28, 20 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oops! Don't know why I had separated it from its source those many moons ago, but please consider it an indiscretion of my youth. BTW, I recently worked further on some of the biographies of the Edwardian Musical Comedy composers and librettists with some help from Tim. That corner of Wikipedia has come a long way, and it was you who originally alerted me to the lack of material. Let me know if you think of anything that is still missing from that era. Best regards, -- Ssilvers (talk) 22:13, 20 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
WP:YORKS is a leading local British WikiProject in terms of the total number of articles supported (up from 4284 last month to 4532 on November 27th). WP:GM has the lead in FAs at 29 out of a total number of 1746 articles. In the area of GAs, at 24, WP:YORKS also falls behind WP:GM with 31.
As mentioned in the October newsletter, Wikipedia DVD Version 0.7, which aims to be a collection of around 30,000 articles taken from the English version of Wikipedia needed work to prepare 43 of the project's articles for the DVD.
The process of producing the list of articles for the DVD is now completed and thanks are due to the many members who made a contribution to the effort. The list of selected Yorkshire articles can be seen here.
The selection was done using a scoring system depending on the project's assessment, the number of incoming links to the article, the number of interwiki links the article had and the number of times the article had been viewed.
Since the last newsletter Northallerton has also been selected to go onto the DVD having recently achieved GA status.
Thanks
Thanks for all those who have been adding co-ordinate information to articles as a result of last month's newsletter. The major impact has been on the railway station articles, including disused ones, but other location articles have also been tackled. This effort means that the articles can be accessed directly from external sources such as Google maps and gives them a much higher profile.
There has again been a number of suggestions on the ToDo list at Yorkshire Portal and this has been kept up to date.
The football and rugby editors have continued keeping abreast of most, if not all, of the top clubs.
WikiProkject Yorkshire editors have been busy on vandal patrol at watchlist. Thanks.
A big "thank you" to all the editors who help make this WikiProject what it is; no edit goes unnoticed.
Priority Articles
The top priority articles that have been identified to date are as follows -
The number has been kept deliberately low to give us a fighting chance of improving them to at least GA status, also so we can concentrate our efforts on these first.
To bring all other top priority articles (currently 15 with 2 at FA) to at least Good article status
To set up a weekly or monthly selected article improvement drive
To produce a regular news letter for circulation to members
Co-ordinates
Just to let you know that a bot is currently sub-dividing the articles with missing co-ordinate data into sub-categories for ease of use. You can now find the articles by looking at the categories for each area as — East, North, South and West. From the discussions it looks like only the co-ordinates in the title area are being used by external sites so articles with multiple co-ordinates are not being handled correctly as yet.
Happy Christmas
Just to say thanks for all the effort put in by members on articles covering the Yorkshire area and to wish everyone a happy Christmas. It is time to take a break and to spend some time with family and friends. May be even to indulge yourself in the food and drink that abounds at this time of year or even make that occasional visit to a church. What ever you do over the festive season enjoy it and see you next year.
Though if you are at a loose end then many of you will be getting some new toys to play with which can be used to enhance wiki articles. Those new digital cameras can be used to get photographs for some of the articles which are currently without and for which the Geograph site has nothing suitable. May be it is a new PC that you just need to play with then spend some time checking out the watchlist for vandalism which tends to go unnoticed when there are fewer regular editors around. It may even be a book which can be used to add references to an article. May be you want to do something different then try creating spoken articles see the Spoken article project.
The project is now subscribed to a clean-up listing which lists articles tagged with various clean-up tags that need attention. The listing is refreshed by a bot on a regular basis.
Monitor Use the watchlist to keep an eye on changes to the project's articles so that vandalism and spamming can be removed as quickly as possible.
Infoboxes Many of our articles would benefit from the addition of an appropriate infobox.
The new C-Class represents articles that are beyond the basic Start-Class, but which need additional references or cleanup to meet the standards for B-Class.
The criteria for B-Class have been tightened up with the addition of a rubric, and are now more in line with the stricter standards already used at some projects.
A-Class article reviews will now need more than one person, as described here.
References Please remember that the list of stubs needing expansion is always in need of attention. Please take a look and see if you can help. One small edit, such as adding a reference section and reference, to an article each session would make a big difference.
Moves Please be careful when performing articles moves and ensure that you also move all the talk sub-pages and update any image fair use rational. Otherwise the archives, to-do lists, assessment comments and GA reviews get lost and the image may be deleted as it has an incorrect FUR.
I just came across this latest addition to this page:
However he did not have the weight of voice for the heavier baritone roles; he never sang Don Giovanni but always Leporello and his one attempt at Rigoletto, at Covent Garden in 1965, ended in disaster when his voice failed on the first night, on which occasion he took the unusual step of apoligising to the audience at the final curatin.
This didn't seem quite right to me, so I've amended it to this:
His repertoire covered ground in bass-baritone territory: eg. Don Pizarro, and in Mozart he always sang the lower roles—Leporello rather than Don Giovanni, Figaro rather than The Count. However the weight of his voice did not transfer to the upper reaches of his large range: his one attempt at Rigoletto, at Covent Garden in 1965, ended in disaster when his voice failed on the first night, on which occasion he reportedly took the unusual step of apologising to the audience at the final curtain
Hello. I am coming to you, an experienced assessor of music articles, with a question: How can I list an article for reassessment? I'm interested in having the article, Robert McFerrin, reassessed. It is listed as Start-Class by the WikiProject Opera group, and when I discovered the article I completely agreed with that assessment. Three months ago, however, I added content that expanded the article more than 14 times in length and inserted 45 footnotes. In the subsequent time it has been visited fairly often and received more than 35 edits. It seems to me time for a reassessment, but I don't know where to find a reassessment list. Can you suggest a next step for me? Thank you in advance.Hammerdrill (talk) 14:36, 16 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Guillaume, I am thrilled you are working on the Robert McFerrin article. You are obviously an expert. Question: Is there a list in the opera project where I can submit it for reassessment from Start-Class, or do you think maybe I should put a request on the project discussion page? Thank you.Hammerdrill (talk) 14:05, 18 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
DYK for Albert Reiss
On 23 December, 2008, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Albert Reiss, which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.
Hi. If you are interested I am now working on this page as part of the series of Category:Lists of operas by composer. As you will see, Rossini isn't up to the level of the others so you may possibly like to contribute. Best. P.S. This talk page is now over 200k. Are you going for the record? --Kleinzach05:12, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
.png)
