This is an archive of past discussions with User:Minnecologies. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
Hello, Minnecologies, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:
I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your messages on discussion pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question on this page and then place {{helpme}} before the question. Again, welcome! -- Longhair\talk00:40, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
Forestry
It's nice to see someone actively working on forestry-related articles. While there isn't a forestry-related WikiProject, you might be able to find support, encouragement and suggestions at Wikipedia:WikiProject Agriculture (as they have defined it, forestry falls within their scope, but I'm not sure how active they are), Wikipedia:WikiProject Ecology (not the most active group), and Wikipedia:WikiProject Plants, which is a fairly active group.
I have reverted at least some of the edits you have made to university articles adding a link to a list of forestry universities. I do not think it is appropriate. Lists of universities in particular disciplines would make this too long and it seems spammy. Also the "See also" sections are for the reader to find more information closely related to the subject itself not about stuff like other universities that teach subject X. --Bduke(Discussion)23:34, 21 February 2009 (UTC)
I noticed that the Skid cone article has been proposed for deletion. It strikes me as potentially notable enough, but I really don't know for sure...would you be willing to take a look at the article and see if you think it's worth keeping and improving? I'm going to remove the {{prod}} template so you can have a look at it. If you don't think it worth keeping, I'll restore the prod. Guettarda (talk) 06:57, 23 February 2009 (UTC)
License tagging for File:Quercus suber aka cork oak modified.jpg
Thanks for uploading File:Quercus suber aka cork oak modified.jpg. You don't seem to have indicated the license status of the image. Wikipedia uses a set of image copyright tags to indicate this information; to add a tag to the image, select the appropriate tag from this list, click on this link, then click "Edit this page" and add the tag to the image's description. If there doesn't seem to be a suitable tag, the image is probably not appropriate for use on Wikipedia.
I'm desperately looking for someone willing to maintain a birdseye view of the project. By this I mean keeping a lookout over the OOK and all the outline articles in the encyclopedia, all outline drafts, and all support pages (including the guidelines, the WP:WPOOK and its subpages (especially the Projected outline), and all related talk pages.
It's not time commitment that matters here, but scope.
Sometimes important discussions pop up that affect or even endanger the project, or one of its many branches (each outline page is a branch in the Outline of knowledge). Many editors don't understand the role of outlines on Wikipedia, and some don't even know what an outline is. I can't be everywhere at once (though at one time I thought I could), and so we need others willing to help keep an eye on things. The more eyes on the talk pages especially, the better.
There is a lot going on, and I can no longer keep up with it all. The OOK has grown to around 500 outlines. There are a few hundred more entitled "List of" that haven't been renamed or reformatted yet but which need to be watched along with the rest. There are a couple hundred more outlines that are drafts in the WP:WPOOK's draft space. And there are still more planned that are merely redlinks on the Projected outline. And more to be planned (which is what the projected outline is for).
So your first assignment is to watchlist and watch everything in the OOK system and the OOK project, and familiarize yourself with the big picture and how the whole thing works.
There are watching instructions in the newsletter above.
To help you learn your way around, the main OOK-related pages and their shortcuts are:
I'm sure you have it watchlisted, but I have considered your request and joined the WP:WPOOK as its 24th member :). I think I'll be completely done with the forestry outline within the next 10 days or so. I don't believe I'm as knowledgable in any other one outlinable subject, but could contribute substantially across a lot of related or semi-related topics (in particular I'm intrigued by research). If you have anything specific in mind, let me know and I will be more than willing to contribute. Minnecologies (talk) 21:08, 19 June 2009 (UTC)
I familiarized myself with the OOK structure and policies when the WPOOK template was put on the forestry outline talk page, so I believe I have a pretty good idea of how everything works. I am also quite inclined towards making lists (see my masterpieces here and here), so I've read through all the guidelines pertaining to that. For now I could oversight and watchlist everything, but as the project picks up steam I would like to concentrate on the science outlines, perhaps even making a guideline for how they're to be developed? For now I think I will get started on the merges. Minnecologies (talk) 17:54, 20 June 2009 (UTC)
(You can use the wikicode for the links above as the basis for new searches - just replace "Gibraltar" with any other country or region name).
Request: please redirect the redlinks! (bluelinking...)
The redlinks need to be bluelinked where possible. The most useful way is to create redirects leading to the material (which is usually included in a section of an article - see Wikipedia:Redirect#Redirects to page sections. That way, when the redirect pages are replaced by the actual articles, the links will already point to the right places.
Highfields is integrating the OOK into the encyclopedia by deorphanizing outlines by placing a {{main}} link in the see also section of the subject articles that have a corresponding outline.
The current consensus is that we can't place a hatnote leading to an outline at the top of a subject articles unless the outline being presented is of at least the same quality-level as the article.
What's next...
Improve outline quality by completing them.
Place hatnotes for the outlines of high enough quality.
Guidelines pertaining to outlines need to be updated. Outlines emerged as a class of pages only a few months ago, and most of the relevant guidelines don't cover them specifically. For example, Wikipedia:Stand-alone lists is incredibly out of date.
Invite wikignomes, wikielves, and wikifairies (all 2500+ of them) to help on the outlines .
Identify 600 more subjects with coverage extensive enough to justify outlines, create rudimentary drafts for them, and post notices to the corresponding WikiProjects and subject talk pages to help build them.
Convert outlines titled "List of" to outline articles, and add them to the OOK. There are a few hundred of these. Conversion instructions are needed.
Hello Minnecologies - Nice message on a nice day. Thank you, nice of you to offer! Yes, I do need to find ot more about Wikipedia and will read to learn more on Wikiprojects. Pls let me know how I can find out, when your proposition has become a wikiproject. Hope responding here is ok, too! Isiaunia (talk) 22:38, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
Hello Minnecologies and sorry it has taken me so long to reply! Thanks for the invite, for which I am thankful. I certainly would like to participate and even refer this initiatives to others who may be interested in adding to it! Thanks for complimenting the WFC job, although it can certainly be ameliorated... and it will be, little by little! What do I need to do in order to join, please?Isiaunia (talk) 18:33, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
Please post a request to each of those WikiProjects' respective talk page.
Creating a rudimentary draft first would be even better. Helps jump-start things, because editors don't sit their scratching their heads about how to create the outline - it's so much easier to modify what's already there.
The two above nomenclatural terms apply strictly to plants used in agriculture, forestry and horticulture. You may not use them but removing forestry as a category does not do the words a service. I have put the category back as it is definitely relevant to forestry. Granitethighs (talk) 22:25, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
Re joining WikiProject Forestry
I appreciate your suggesting my joining the Project. Although I have done some work in the past and would be very interested in taking part, I am a little pushed for time at this moment for personal reasons. I would however love to take part and will do so as soon as I can. Thank you. Dieter Simon (talk) 23:44, 5 July 2009 (UTC)
Outline Update - Exhausted - 07/10/2009
I'm sorry that I haven't been available to assign tasks lately. For the past 3 days (not including today) I've been almost totally consumed in discussions concerning the location and very existence of outlines. Today I finally broke free and got back to work on outlines. Felt good.
A great deal has been happening with outlines and behind the scenes. I just don't have time to tell you all about it this time around. Here's the best I can do...
How to watch what's going on with outlines
If you'd like a bird's eye view of everything that's happening with respect to outlines, see this page:
WP:OOKWL - watchlist for copying and pasting into your raw watchlist.
Or go to these pages (and click on "Related changes" in the sidebar's toolbox menu):
WP:OOKRC - a version of the above watchlist for use with "Related changes".
WP:OOKDIR - a list of key pages related to the OOK, along with their shortcuts.
WP:OOKDISC - list of discussions pertaining to outlines.
Recently converted to outlines
These outline articles, which were named "List of...", have been converted to an OOK format:
There are a lot of "List of" articles that are outlines. Some of them are on the same subjects as the "Outline of" articles. The following one have been recently merged:
Hi. I just replaced a few indents that you removed here. Not a big problem at all, I'm just curious as to why it is happening?! Is it a script doing something odd, or are you trying to manually give some structure to the comments that I don't instantly intuit? Thanks. (reply here :) -- Quiddity (talk) 22:05, 20 July 2009 (UTC)
If you were trying to break up my wall-of-text, I'd recommend sticking to just adding linebreaks between paragraphs. When you altered the indent depth, it made it look like I was replying to myself, or as if someone was interspersing their replies into my original post. Replies always go one level deeper than their parent (See Wikipedia:Talk_page#Indentation for explanatory details and examples), until it gets ridiculous at which point we [undent] back to the single-level and start again. :) At least, that's how it works until mw:Extension:LiquidThreads arrives... (eta unknown).
Outline Update - Basking in the light of knowledge - 07/28/2009
Phase two of outline integration (de-orphanizing outlines by adding links leading to them into article see also sections) is nearly complete. The better that outlines are integrated into the encyclopedia, the more use they will be to readers.
Due to greater exposure through outline integration, and with most of the OOK team on school summer vacation, development activity on outlines has increased a lot...
New members
Be sure to welcome our newest members to the team:
The outline was nominated for deletion for being too general in scope. The consensus was overwhelmingly for keeping it.
The most memorable comment was posted by Mandsford: I like the poetic name, anyway. [Outline of Palestine]. "Master Plan of Pakistan" and "Rough Sketch of Bangladesh" would be good too.
Special thanks to Tiamut for greatly improving the outline, and helping to save it from AfD.
To keep track of outline AfDs and other outline-related discussions, see WP:OOKDISC.
It would be nice to get the most prolific Wikipedians involved with WP:WPOOK. If you can, find a good reason to contact one or more of them, and invite them to work on a relevant outline - or all 500!
Who's been up to what?
Buaidh, Highfields, and Gimme danger have been working on the government sections of the country outlines. Being that there are about 240 of these, with critical information being filled in on each, this is by far the hardest and most important chore of this WikiProject right now.
Penubag is working on a redesign of the top OOK page.
There are a lot of "List of" articles that are outlines. Some of them are on the same subjects as the "Outline of" articles. The following articles have been recently merged into OOK pages:
Tags are requests to fix a problem or improve an article in a particular way. Unless we want the tags to sit there for an extended period of time cluttering up the outlines (we don't), it is up to us to fulfill those requests or attend to underlying misassumptions (if any).
With so many outlines (now over 500), and a growing number of support pages (guidelines, wikiproject pages, etc.), I can no longer keep up. I need your help watching over it all.
If you'd like to omnisciently view everything "from above", see this page:
WP:OOKWL - watchlist for copying and pasting into your raw watchlist.
Or go to these pages (and click on "Related changes" in the sidebar's toolbox menu):
WP:OOKRC - a version of the above watchlist for use with "Related changes".
WP:OOKDIR - a list of key pages related to the OOK, along with their shortcuts.
WP:OOKDISC - list of discussions pertaining to outlines.
What's next?
There are a lot of contradictions in guidelines related to outlines. I'll be turning my attention to fixing those.
The number of "Outline of" articles is rapidly catching up to portals, and will probably pass them by the end of the summer!
I just read your post about WP:PROL at WT:WPOOK, and I thought this might be a good time to talk about the goals of the WikiProject.
In my mind, they break down into four areas:
Outline integration
Outline development
Outline administration
Outline interfacing
Here are my thoughts on each...
Outline integration
This is linking to outlines. Linking them together, and linking to them from other pages in Wikipedia.
There are 8 namespaces the outlines need to be integrated into: main & talk (articles), portal and portal talk, template and template talk (navigation templates), wikipedia and wikipedia talk (WikiProject pages, intro & help pages, policies and guidelines, and directories).
Outline development
This includes maintaining and refining existing "Outline of" articles, merging other lists that are actually outlines into the corresponding "Outline of" articles, converting/renaming structured lists into "Outline of" articles (when one does not yet exist), and creating new outlines.
Program features for outline support, and for outliner-style display and editing (applicable to all articles, while retaining standard wiki-file formatting). These would be additional features, rather than modifying the default modalities (though the prevailing paradigm may shift to this over time).
First things first, second things not at all...
The priority in each area, based on overall impact and on dire ramifications (if not done), may be considered to be:
In outline integration: deorphanize outlines (many aren't linked to from the main namespace at all)
In outline development: the government branches sections of the country outlines (executive branch, legislative branch, judicial branch) - these outlines were generated by template and these sections include the data that matched the most countries, which makes that data in error for all the rest! This erroneous information must be corrected ASAP.
In outline administration: develop the outline article draft - this is the logical place to point to for a detailed description of what outlines are and their applications, and could solve most problems with respect to editor ignorance concerning outlines (which is the root cause of most anti-outline proposals, and support thereof)
In outline interfacing: write design specifications for (outliner-style) interface and editing alternatives for Wikipedia
Of the four essential aspects of the OOK you listed, I find the administrative one most appealing and fitting for myself. I have a good idea of what makes a good outline and what it takes to get there, so I'd be filling to help you out with developing the guideline (in addition to the helpful tips). I am sort of confused though- we have the main outline guideline right now and the draft, were you planning on completely revamping it and then transferring it all to article space? Or are they intended to be separate articles? Minnecologies (talk) 19:06, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
Welcome aboard. I'm very happy that you are taking an interest in the big picture.
I'm in the process of converting the projected outline to the same format as the OOK, to make it more intuitive, and enable the editor to spot at a glance links for outlines (planned or under development) that are not yet in the OOK.
Buaidh created the historical outlines for all of the U.S. States, the U.S. capital, and most of the U.S. insular areas. He has also worked indefatigably day after day, improving all of the outlines of the U.S. States, and the outlines of all of the countries of the world!
Highfields, MacMed, and I worked on the see also sections of the subject articles corresponding to the outlines (adding or updating the links to the relevant outlines and indexes).
Wiki-Zombies
Discussions can sure be frustrating - try getting a proposal through on a guideline's talk page sometime. Most of the time, it seems like the opposition is mindlessly following each other, like...
Yes, it's a proper noun. It's only proper, since we also have an article called Outline of knowledge which is about knowledge generically.
OOK expansion!
After a couple month vacation, I'm ready to slam the gas pedal to the floor. Are you?
Things are speeding up!
Take a look...
New to the OOK
The following outlines have been added to the OOK within the past couple of months or so. Some of them were renames, some of them brand new, and some of them recently discovered after sitting in article space for awhile as orphans.
I was hoping you could do me a favour that requires being able to read Spanish? An editor that shows many indications of being a vandal has added this text to a page, verifying it with a Spanish-language webpage. Would you be able to let me know if it's legit? Previous contributions from the editor have included pretty blatant vandalism, but also an edit that, upon review, turned out to be bogus. Though I'm rather sure it's vandalism, etiquette suggests we get a review.
Given the history of the account, I'm guessing it's simply another attempt to snow the other editors by providing a difficult-to-verify reference that doesn't quite support the text it is attached to. Thanks very much for your assistance. WLU(t)(c) Wikipedia's rules:simple/complex20:35, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
Could I beg one more favour? Could you review this revision to see if the sources adequately justify the points? Much obliged. Seeing as you've been offline for a couple days, I'll probably try my luck elsewhere also; if I am successful I'll let you know. Thanks, WLU(t)(c) Wikipedia's rules:simple/complex11:48, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
There's a reply on my talk page to your question, but also note that I've asked another Spanish-speaking editor (and admin, which would be useful if a block is needed) to look into the content (here). If you have questions about the source specifically, they may be a good person to talk to. They indicated they'd try to get to it today as well, and I'll drop them a reminder later on today. WLU(t)(c) Wikipedia's rules:simple/complex19:03, 30 April 2010 (UTC)
A tag has been placed on VP-9 requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section A1 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because it is a very short article providing little or no context to the reader. Please see Wikipedia:Stub for our minimum information standards for short articles. Also please note that articles must be on notable subjects and should provide references to reliable sources that verify their content. You may wish to consider using a Wizard to help you create articles - see the Article Wizard.
If you think that this notice was placed here in error, you may contest the deletion by adding {{hangon}} to the top of the page that has been nominated for deletion (just below the existing speedy deletion or "db" tag - if no such tag exists then the page is no longer a speedy delete candidate and adding a hangon tag is unnecessary), coupled with adding a note on the talk page explaining your position, but be aware that once tagged for speedy deletion, if the page meets the criterion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself, but don't hesitate to add information to the page that would render it more in conformance with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Lastly, please note that if the page does get deleted, you can contact one of these admins to request that they userfy the page or have a copy emailed to you. Codf1977 (talk) 16:28, 5 June 2010 (UTC)
Thanks for fixing this article, it no longer meets the criteria for WP:CSD#A1, however in fixing it you inadvertently removed the CSD tag on an article that you created. Small point but thought I should point it out. Codf1977 (talk) 18:12, 5 June 2010 (UTC)
