Skiriotissa Mine, South of
Nicossia, a former copper mine.
Edinburgh University School of GeoSciences Honours Geology and GPG excursion to Cyprus Field Guide, I have that sat on my desk at the moment, don't suppose your in G4 by any chance? If so I imagine you'll have my abstract already, however if not I can forward it if you like, "Metallogenesis associated with the Troodos Ophiolite" summary of Constinou.
Might be able to help out with Cyprus just sat an exam on it yesterday.
ClimberDave 16:38, 24 April 2007 (UTC)reply
I've cleaned up your
Voice of the Seven Woods article – fixed the infobox and sorted the discography layout. The image was deleted by someone else – see the article history for an explanation. This artist may not meet
WP:BAND guidelines for inclusion on Wikipedia, please read them as your article may be nominated for deletion.
exolon 21:25, 26 March 2007 (UTC).reply
Hello, MeanStreets, 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 name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out
Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question and then place {{helpme}} after the question on your talk page. Again, welcome!
Jhamez84 00:44, 4 April 2007 (UTC)reply
Hello, MeanStreets. An automated process has found and will an image or media file tagged as nonfree media, and thus is being used under
fair use that is in your userspace. The image (
Image:Mean1.gif) was found at the following location:
User:MeanStreets. This image or media will be removed per criterion number 9 of our
non-free content policy. The image or media will be replaced with
Image:NonFreeImageRemoved.svg , so your formatting of your userpage should be fine. This does not necessarily mean that the image is being deleted, or that the image is being removed from other pages. It is only being removed from the page mentioned above. All mainspace instances of this image will not be affected Please find a free image or media to replace it with, and or remove the image from your userspace.
User:Gnome (Bot)-talk 21:33, 16 May 2007 (UTC)reply
Hi MeanStreets. You are listed as a participant in WikiProject Geology. Maybe you to please consider helping to improve the
oil shale article. This article has developed quite well, but some more expert assistance is needed. Thank you in advance.
Beagel 17:19, 31 May 2007 (UTC)reply
Hello fellow
WikiProject Greater Manchester participant! T=You may or may not be aware that our Manchester article has recently obtained
official good article status! This is a great acheievement, but we don't want to stop there! We're hoping to spend the next few weeks as a team to raise the standard of this article to
featured standard! It will only be possible if we work together, and hope you can take a moment to look both at the
FA criteria, and the Manchester article and aid us in this feat! Any problems, feel free to raise them at
Talk:Manchester! Good luck!
Jza84 23:19, 10 September 2007 (UTC)reply
May seem like old news now, but Manchester was recently listed as a good article, try and make as much effort as you can with trying to make it featured.
Manchester Airport has seen unprecedented vandalism from anonymous editors recently, on 24th September it was protected by
MastCell for a period of 1 week. Make sure to visit the page (after that date) regularly so we can stamp out any "bad edits".
Try to invite more members to this project. As much as a streamlined team is good, the more editors we have the broader the range we can cover.
Onnaghartalk !
ctrb !
er 16:38, 1 October 2007 (UTC)If you do not wish to receive this monthly distribution please put two * by your username on the project
mainpagereply
The project now has 31 members. 3 new participants enrolled last month, they can be viewed
here.
Andrew has also created another template for your
talk page (even though this links to your userpage) which displays for all to see that you are a member of the project. You can add it to your page by including {{
WPGM Talk}} to the page. It may be difficult to see the true effects of these welcoming messages, but I'm estimating that since the introduction of these that 12 new users have joined, all 100% have accepted their invitations, and therefore they are 100% successful in their aim.
Greater Manchester Article News
Once again, the project has been subject to much praise from three newly promoted featured articles, and one more good article.
Oldham (
nom),
Manchester (
nom),
M62 motorway (
nom) and
Chat Moss (
review) have all passed with flying colours. Featured articles now make up 0.03% more of the overall articles that there are relating to the project, than last month. Of all 791 pages which are tagged with
this template, 100% have been assessed with the new scale which was introduced last month. It may also be worth noting two others pages that are undergoing transformations are:
List of companies based in Greater Manchester and
Belle Vue Zoo.
Current Debates
There was a lengthy debate over
Manchester Airport this month, which lead to three article for deletions, second nominations viewable
here and deletion review viewable
here. Basically, what happened was there was quite a great misunderstanding of what the purpose of the lists actually were. They were to compile a list of the destinations served by each terminal and linked along into a sub-page, where it would seem the overview page (i.e.
Manchester Airport) would look less cluttered, as was the suggestion at the peer review. Some participants at the first AFD, stated that reviews shouldn't be carried out upon unless there is consensus, and as they are not authorative should only be used as a guide. It was soon sorted though and all three daughter-lists were deleted. There has also been a change to the projects aims, which took a dramatic overhaul this week following the FA pass of Manchester. The
change was performed by
Jza84. It is now recognised that we should bring not only top importance articles to
FA standard but also ones that have been long-since reviewed, like
Altrincham and
Stretford. And if you're wondering why Salford is there it's due to the fact that there is a consensus among the project members that as Salford is in such close vicinity to the City of Manchester, that it's our "duty" to help promote it. The change came about about after
this discussion.
Monthly Challenges
New this month, we have to get Greater Manchester upto Featured Article Standard. However, with Manchester now rated as
FA-Class and the proposed "skipping" of the GA process, it may not be too long before we see this under the success section on the project mainpage. It would be ideal if all 791 articles were at least GA standard, but that will never happen in the next month! But please if you can, assess your ability to understand an article and if you're acquauinted with the task in hand and potentially long wait for a writing and for a review, go ahead! Be
bold. The progress monitor can be seen
here.
Once again, Portal:North West England has been subject to much exposure on behalf of it's editors. The current status of the portal is looking good and it has so far gained unanimous support at it's
FPOC. Hopefully, it'll be promoted and we'll have yet another success on our hands. Also, most major articles that are relevant have been tagged with a shortcut to the Portal mainpage, by Jza.
And finally, have a Very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Happy New Year to all our Greater Manchester Wikipedians! The project now has 34 members. 5 new participants enrolled last month, they can be viewed
here. On behalf of the team I hope they have prosperous and enjoyable usership and wish them well with their forthcoming work!
User:Archtransit and
User:Rudget, both part of our team, are current candidates for adminship (see
here for Archtransit and
here for Rudget). We wish them luck with this persuit and hope they will become our latest project participants with admin status!
Simillarly, the
Portal:North West England is now officially a featured portal.
User:Rudget has been overwhelmingly involved with this portal and he too is hereby thanked on behalf of the project for his continued contributions to this page and many others.
There have been a number of debates this month, some of which with a high level of potential impact for the project and its members.
Article assessment for the project became a point of contention when around 1400 articles were tagged by a bot. Most of these artcles were on "minor" association football players. The consensus was that in our state of around 30 participants and as a predominatly geography based project, most of these articles should be untagged, at very least for the time being. Of our 1403 articles now tagged however, only (?) 85% are assessed - a drop of 15%!
Perhaps one of the most notable debates this month was the possibility of... scrapping the project newsletter!
User:Rudget has written the last three editions (that's all of them!) and has decided that he'd like to pass on the responsibility.
It has been proposed that a noticeboard system be introduced to highlight new issues in a near(!)-realtime fashion. I
User:Jza84 am writing what could now be the last GM newsletter for a while. If you're a member of the team, but aren't closely involved with the project, then we'd love to hear from you at
WT:GM with your views on which system of communication is the right way forwards (if any/both!).
Monthly Challenges
As was stated in last months newsletter, the
Greater Manchester remains a key article for the project, and one which has been identified as urgent in our quest for Featured Article status. Sadly, for all our other successes, Greater Manchester has changed little since
this time last year] (!) and is still an article requiring expansion and development. The new
WP:UKCOUNTIES guide may provide new ways in which to channel our efforts. Although we endevour to have
good article status even for our suburbs and hamlets, other articles specifically identified as needing development towards FA include
Salford,
Stretford and
Altrincham.
Many of our most crucial articles about our largest towns are still in poor condition:
Rochdale,
Bury,
Prestwich,
Bolton, and
Wigan are of "start class" standard - much lower than we should have. If you feel you can help, please
be bold and try to improve these.
One final challenge for this month is for all those with new digial cameras for Christmas, or even digial images stored away on a disc!... many of our place articles are still without a single photograph, and www.geograph.org.uk is running low on quality images. Even those with photographs often have a low quality photograph of the local church. MORE ARE NEEDED! Especially townscapes! If you think you can help, a barnstar is up for grabs for best picture added in the next month or so!
We're always looking for potential new project members and ways for greater communication, collaboration and participation.
WP:GM has a strong core of users, but would like to have more input from a wider user-base. If you can think of ways to improve our ways of working, please feel free to mention them at
WT:GM. Simillarly, if you notice a new or unapproached user who is producing sound work related to
Greater Manchester and its consituent parts, please don't forget to ask them if they'd like to join us, either in your own hand, or by adding {{
Welcome WPGM}} to their talk page.
Would you like to write the next newsletter for
WP:GM?? Please nominate yourself at
WT:GM! New editors are always welcome!
Since the January newsletter there has been an increase of 5 featured articles/lists, taking our total number of featured entries upto 16 17 (
Trafford passed today!).
Although WP:GM leads the way in terms of featured content by a local British project, the
Kent and
Yorkshire WikiProjects are close to this total, with 11 and 14 featured entries respectively.
Following a somewhat frenzied collaboration at the start of March, and a nomination by
User:Joshii, Greater Manchester was promoted to GA status. It's the first
metropolitan county to obtain this recognition.
There has otherwise been a reduction in WP:GM nominations for
GA status, something which the project has begun to discuss on the
talk page.
Having completed all but one of our short term aims
set last December, the project would like to look at developing new short term aims. Suggestions have been made here, but there is scope for flexibility. Do you have a entry you would like to see developed?
Two members have left the project however, each for rather different reasons:
Archtransit (
talk·contribs) was an administrator, and project member, who was found to have been abusing his editting and sysop privliges. Following investigation, Archtransit was banned indefinately. A report in The Signpost is found
here.
Rudget (
talk·contribs), also an administrator, decided to leave the project. Reasons mentioned included the demands of admin duties taking over too much time. Rudget helped towards
Didsbury's GA promotion, and
Portal:North West England's FP promotion.
Thanks
This WikiProject, would not be where it is today without each and every one of its members! Thank you to all!
WP:GM is a great project, and is leading the way for local WikiProjects of the UK. However, though the
project talk page is a hub of activity, it is regularly used by only a core of 5-6 editors, which isn't making the most of its potential. Indeed, a
study, by the
University of Minnesota found that "One-tenth of 1 percent of editors account for nearly half of Wikipedia's content value". We at WP:GM do not want to follow suit!
There are several editors who have, sadly, not editted since the turn of 2008, and others, which concentrate in areas other than Greater Manchester material (which is quite fine!).
The WikiProject Greater Manchester would like to know if YOU are still around, and if so, if you've like to be more involved, and, if not, why not and what can we do to get you involved and be a bigger part of the team?
Feel free to come by the project talk page and leave us a message on what you're working on and/or what you'd like to see improved. The project is only as strong as its members and we'd like to know if you're still active or if we can help you with your editting.
Images
A picture's worth a thousand words
In our last issue, a plea was made for more images to be submitted to Wikipedia/WikiCommons to improve the quality and context of our articles. Many of our
Top priority articles are still lacking in quality images, if any!
www.geograph.org.uk is an online resource of photographs of places in the UK, which we can use. Www.flickr.com also has some images we are permitted to use. Do you have a digital camera however? Can you take photographs of townscapes and landmarks in your local area that can be used here?
Middleton,
Hulme and
Rochdale all have examples of images in their lead that help give a sense of place and improve the context to our readers.
Simillarly, many of our most crucial articles about our largest towns are still in poor condition:
Stockport,
Bury,
Prestwich,
Bolton, and
Wigan are of "start class" standard with short lead sections and
unreferenced sections - a much lower standard than we should allow! If you feel you can help, please be
bold and try to improve these. There is
a list of resources that can help.
Peterloo Massacre was nominated for FAC on 6 April. So far it has received support for FAS but feel free join the discussion
here.
The reduction of WP:GM GAs, mentioned in the last issue, has been tackled with
Buckton Castle and
Oasis (band) being passed on 9 March and
Upper Brook Street Chapel, Manchester on 7 April. We now have 13 GAs due to hard work of our contributors. Well done!
WP:GM still is still the leading local British WikiProject. As far as featured content goes, we have a lead of 6 on
London and
Yorkshire who have 15 FAs each. Although taking the lead in FAs, WP:GM is still lacking GAs and falls behind
London by 6. This topic was at the front of the new aims discussion (
here) and is an important issue for WP:GM.
As mentioned above, new aims have been decided. See the right hand column for more details.
Member News
There are now 44 members of WikiProject Greater Manchester! A warm welcome to the 5 new members that have joined us since March:
Would you like to write the next newsletter for
WP:GM?? Please nominate yourself at
WT:GM! New editors are always welcome!
New Aims
The completion of all but one of the short term aims set last December resulted in
a discussion on
WT:GM to set new aims for the WikiProject. They are:
Obtain GA status for a third of Greater Manchester's Metropolitan Boroughs.
It took us four months to get our last aims completed, why not try and see if these can be done in less time than before! All input is welcome but if anyone has any books or photos etc specifically related to these topics, they would be extra-specially welcome.
But before rushing ahead with these new aims, let's not forget the one that got away last time: to obtain B -> GA status for
Rochdale,
Wigan,
Bury,
Bolton and
Stockport. Most of these articles are in poor condition and in need of repair. Good quality images are urgently needed also. Let's make sure that this aim doesn't stay off our radar much longer.
Don't Forget...
Images! The shortage of good images was mentioned in the last issue and still hasn't been resolved! 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 in common.
Assessment "Assess and review all relevant articles for quality, importance and progress" is one of our mid-term aims. At the present moment, there are only 43 unassessed articles. This task could be completed well before the next newsletter is out.
The
Peterloo Massacre article was promoted to
FA on 12 April. One of our top priority articles, it had previously been only start class. The process began on 25th March and since then underwent over 700 edits before the end of April, with
Jza84,
Malleus Fatuarum, and
Richerman making significant contributions to the rapid development of the article.
Ddstretch and
Mr Stephen also contributed to discussions on the article talk page.
Perhaps the most unusual event of April 2008 for the project has surrounded the
Denshaw article. Denshaw is a village of about 500 people in
Saddleworth,
Oldham, which attracted media attention due to vandalism of the stub class article. Once this was brought to the project's attention, efforts were made to improve the article which led to a successful DYK? nomination and might even advance it to
GA status with a bit more effort. In April there were over
19,000 visitors who saw the project in action. Contributors included
Jza84,
Ddstretch,
Malleus Fatuarum,
Hassocks5489,
Nev1 and
Mike Peel.
Also this month 5 articles featured on the DYK? section of the front page:
Hulme Arch Bridge,
Peterloo Massacre,
Bolton and Leigh Railway,
Barnes Hospital,
Denshaw, and
Platt Fields Park. This certainly puts into perspective one of the project's previous mid-term aims "feature on the Did you know? section with at least three articles related to Greater Manchester". If you've expanded an article 5 fold or started one with at least 1.5kb of prose in the past 5 days and it has an interesting and referenced fact don't hesitate to read the conditions of DYK? and nominate it
here. It gets the project noticed!
WikiProject Greater Manchester is still leading local British WikiProjects. As far as featured content goes, we have a lead of 7 on
London and
Yorkshire who have 15 Featured Articles each. Although taking the lead in FAs, WP:GM is still lacking GAs and falls behind
London by 6 (we have 14, London 20). If you see an article that you think deserves to be a GA, don't hesitate to nominate it at
WP:GAC!
Member News
There are 45 members of WikiProject Greater Manchester. One new member has joined the project this month:
Kieran5676 on 30th April and is interested in south Manchester.
The project is always looking for new members, and if you spot an editor who makes good changes to Greater Machester related articles why not invite them to join up by adding this template to their talk page {{SUBST:Welcome WPGM}}.
Thanks
A rather large "thank you" goes out to all the editors who edited article related to
Greater Manchester, or who edit the project itself.
Obtain GA status for one third (1/3) of Greater Manchester's Metropolitan Boroughs.
It took us four months to get our last aims completed, why not try and see if these can be done in less time than before! All input is welcome but if anyone has any books or photos etc specifically related to these topics, they would be extra-specially welcome.
Most of the articles covered by our new aims haven't experienced much activity in the past month, if you thing you can help improve an article
be bold and get editing. Articles such as List of people from Bolton and List of railway stations in Greater Manchester already appear very close to FL status and may just require an editor to guide them through the
FLC process.
Our highest priority article is of course Greater Manchester, there is a peer review from March with issues still to be addressed before it can be put forward as a featured article candidate. Salford is another top priority article because it's the county's second city; it's under gone a lot of editing but still has a way to go before it reaches GA. Also active this month has been the
City of Salford article – part of our aim to get 1/3 of Greater Manchester's Metropolitan Boroughs to GA &ndash.
Although these are the project's explicit short term aims, we endeavour to "improving all wikipedia articles that are concerned with Greater Manchester", so every edit is valuable.
Reminders...
Images! The rate of good images has gone up since it was mentioned in the last issue, but more images are needed! The
requested photographs category lists some of the articles needing images.
Assessment When this section was written, there was only 1 unassessed article! This task has probably already been finished, but it might now have. To check click
here.
Old Trafford,
Murrays' Mills and
1990 Strangeways Prison riot all passed
GAC last month! In previous newsletters, the issue of WP:GM's lack of GAs has been raised numerously, so a large 'well done' to all those who contributed, be it little or large!
Also,
Milnrow and
City of Salford have been nominated at
WP:GAC. Feel free to join in with their discussions
here and
here respectively. To 'obtain GA status for a third of Greater Manchester's Metropolitan Boroughs' is one of WP:GM's short-term aims, let's hope the
City of Salford won't be the last borough with this status.
WikiProject Greater Manchester is still the leading local British WikiProject! As far as featured content goes, we have a lead of 8 on
London! Although taking the lead in FAs, WP:GM is still flagging a little in GAs and falls behind
London by 3. This is the closest we have ever got to taking the lead in local British GAs, if you see an article that you think deserves to be a GA, don't hesitate to nominate it at
WP:GAC!
And don't forget that the
Manchester congestion charge article will need all input possible to keep it up to date with the government's new legislation (grumble grumble)...
Member News
There are 46 members of WikiProject Greater Manchester. Our newest member is:
Let's not forget that
Jza84 became an administrator this month! Congratulations on your new role.
The project is always looking for new members, and if you spot an editor who makes good changes to Greater Machester related articles why not invite them to join up by adding this template to their talk page: {{SUBST:Welcome WPGM}}.
Thanks
A rather large "thank you" goes to all the editors who help make this WikiProject what it is; no edit goes unnoticed..
Obtain GA status for one third of Greater Manchester's Metropolitan Boroughs.
Most of the articles covered by our new aims haven't experienced much activity in the past month, except for
City of Salford being nominated at
WP:GAC. If you think you can help improve an article,
be bold and get editing! Articles such as
List of people from Bolton and
List of railway stations in Greater Manchester already appear very close to
FL status and may just require an editor to guide them through the
FLC process.
Greater Manchester is, of course, our highest priority article.
Mr Stephen posted some milestones to getting this article up to
FA status a while back. Please
check them out and see what you can do.
Although these are the project's explicit short term aims, we endeavour to "improving all Wikipedia articles that are concerned with Greater Manchester", so every edit is valuable.
Reminders...
Images! The rate of good images has gone up since it was mentioned in the last issue, but we'll need more if we're going to get a "lead/static image in every infobox of every town in the county"! The
requested photographs category lists some of the articles needing images.
Assessment As of 12th April, we have had 100% of our articles assessed for quality! Even so, we still 151 of our 1551 article unassessed for importance. Please
take a look and see what you can do.
Delivered on June 12, 2008 by
Polishname. If you do not wish to receive the newsletter, please add two *s by your username on the Project Mainpage.
Cambrian explosion task force
Hi,
I'm posting this message because you're listed as a participant in
WikiProject Geology. I've set up
a task force aiming to improve Wikipedia's coverage of the
Cambrian explosion, and I was wondering whether you may be interested in helping out? If you would like to help in any way, you could cast an eye over
the task force page and see if there are any articles or tasks that take your fancy! Any contributions would be greatly appreciated.
It's been three months since the last newsletter, but there's been a lot going on...
Promoted articles:
Greater Manchester is one of our project's top priority articles, the Greater Manchester article comprehensively covers everything to do with the county, from culture and history, to transport and demography.
Manchester United F.C. records and statistics is about the records of one of Greater Manchester's best know clubs, which feats like "the club currently holds the record for the most FA Cup triumphs with 11".
City of Salford is about the local government area and Greater Manchester's second city. Getting
Salford to GA is one our the aim's of our project, so hopefully this may help.
Manchester, Bolton and Bury Canal is about the history and modern restoration of the disused canal running through the county. (It's now at FAC, so please improve the article if you can!)
Manchester Mummy is about Hannah Beswick, whose macabre fear of being buried alive lead to her demanding that her body was kept above ground and checked periodically for signs of life.
Milnrow is a small town in
Rochdale with a long history. The wool trade was important to the town and was the basis of much of its industry. (It's also the first GA for Rochdale!)
Ordsall Hall is an important Tudor hall in Salford with a reputation for being haunted!
Bert Trautmann is the German goalkeeper who broke his neck playing for Manchester City... and carried on playing!
The
Peterloo Massacre appeared on the front page on 16 August! Well done to everyone who contributed to the article about a key moment of Greater Manchester's history and managed to get it showcased.
A new
portal has been set up! The
Greater Manchester portal showcases some of the best articles to do with the county. Thanks to
Polishname for single-handedly getting it up and running.
There is a proposal to move members who haven't edited for a while to an inactive members list, so if you've not been edited recently but still want to be a member let us know!
WikiProject Greater Manchester is still the leading local British WikiProject! As far as featured content goes, we have a lead of 5 on
Yorkshire and 11 on
London! WP:GM now is the leading project in terms of GAs too with 5 more than London and 7 more than Yorkshire! If you see an article that you think deserves to be a GA, don't hesitate to nominate it at
WP:GAC!
WT:GM: The project's talk page is a forum for discussion and to keep up to date with the latest project developments and initiatives put it on your watchlist! Recently there have been discussions on articles to be deleted, the
congestion charge, how to get members involved and working together, and plenty of other stuff.
Although the project has had a lot of GAs and FAs recently, most of the articles covered by our short term aims haven't experienced much activity recently.
Baby has undergone some change, but has a long way to go, and
List of railway stations in Greater Manchester is very close to FL quality. If you think you can help improve an article,
be bold and get editing! Articles such as
List of railway stations in Greater Manchester already appear very close to
FL status and may just require an editor to guide them through the
FLC process.
Although these are the project's explicit short term aims, we endeavour to "improving all Wikipedia articles that are concerned with Greater Manchester", so every edit is valuable.
Member News
There are 53 members of WikiProject Greater Manchester. Since 12 June, the project has gained 7 new members:
Welcome to everyone, and let's remember to make these new members feel included in the project! If you need help, you can go to the
project talk page, or perhaps look at the
list of members to see if anyone can help.
The project is always looking for new members, and if you spot an editor who makes good changes to Greater Machester related articles why not invite them to join up by adding this template to their talk page: {{SUBST:Welcome WPGM}}.
Thanks
A big "thank you" goes to all the editors who help make this WikiProject what it is; no edit goes unnoticed.
Reminders...
Images! There are some good images around, but more are still needed if we're going to get a "lead/static image in every infobox of every town in the county"! The
requested photographs category lists some of the articles needing images.
Assessment As of 1st September, we have had 99.5% of our articles assessed for quality! Even so, we still 157 of our 1662 article unassessed for importance. Please
take a look and see what you can do.
Skiriotissa Mine, South of
Nicossia, a former copper mine.
Edinburgh University School of GeoSciences Honours Geology and GPG excursion to Cyprus Field Guide, I have that sat on my desk at the moment, don't suppose your in G4 by any chance? If so I imagine you'll have my abstract already, however if not I can forward it if you like, "Metallogenesis associated with the Troodos Ophiolite" summary of Constinou.
Might be able to help out with Cyprus just sat an exam on it yesterday.
ClimberDave 16:38, 24 April 2007 (UTC)reply
I've cleaned up your
Voice of the Seven Woods article – fixed the infobox and sorted the discography layout. The image was deleted by someone else – see the article history for an explanation. This artist may not meet
WP:BAND guidelines for inclusion on Wikipedia, please read them as your article may be nominated for deletion.
exolon 21:25, 26 March 2007 (UTC).reply
Hello, MeanStreets, 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 name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out
Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question and then place {{helpme}} after the question on your talk page. Again, welcome!
Jhamez84 00:44, 4 April 2007 (UTC)reply
Hello, MeanStreets. An automated process has found and will an image or media file tagged as nonfree media, and thus is being used under
fair use that is in your userspace. The image (
Image:Mean1.gif) was found at the following location:
User:MeanStreets. This image or media will be removed per criterion number 9 of our
non-free content policy. The image or media will be replaced with
Image:NonFreeImageRemoved.svg , so your formatting of your userpage should be fine. This does not necessarily mean that the image is being deleted, or that the image is being removed from other pages. It is only being removed from the page mentioned above. All mainspace instances of this image will not be affected Please find a free image or media to replace it with, and or remove the image from your userspace.
User:Gnome (Bot)-talk 21:33, 16 May 2007 (UTC)reply
Hi MeanStreets. You are listed as a participant in WikiProject Geology. Maybe you to please consider helping to improve the
oil shale article. This article has developed quite well, but some more expert assistance is needed. Thank you in advance.
Beagel 17:19, 31 May 2007 (UTC)reply
Hello fellow
WikiProject Greater Manchester participant! T=You may or may not be aware that our Manchester article has recently obtained
official good article status! This is a great acheievement, but we don't want to stop there! We're hoping to spend the next few weeks as a team to raise the standard of this article to
featured standard! It will only be possible if we work together, and hope you can take a moment to look both at the
FA criteria, and the Manchester article and aid us in this feat! Any problems, feel free to raise them at
Talk:Manchester! Good luck!
Jza84 23:19, 10 September 2007 (UTC)reply
May seem like old news now, but Manchester was recently listed as a good article, try and make as much effort as you can with trying to make it featured.
Manchester Airport has seen unprecedented vandalism from anonymous editors recently, on 24th September it was protected by
MastCell for a period of 1 week. Make sure to visit the page (after that date) regularly so we can stamp out any "bad edits".
Try to invite more members to this project. As much as a streamlined team is good, the more editors we have the broader the range we can cover.
Onnaghartalk !
ctrb !
er 16:38, 1 October 2007 (UTC)If you do not wish to receive this monthly distribution please put two * by your username on the project
mainpagereply
The project now has 31 members. 3 new participants enrolled last month, they can be viewed
here.
Andrew has also created another template for your
talk page (even though this links to your userpage) which displays for all to see that you are a member of the project. You can add it to your page by including {{
WPGM Talk}} to the page. It may be difficult to see the true effects of these welcoming messages, but I'm estimating that since the introduction of these that 12 new users have joined, all 100% have accepted their invitations, and therefore they are 100% successful in their aim.
Greater Manchester Article News
Once again, the project has been subject to much praise from three newly promoted featured articles, and one more good article.
Oldham (
nom),
Manchester (
nom),
M62 motorway (
nom) and
Chat Moss (
review) have all passed with flying colours. Featured articles now make up 0.03% more of the overall articles that there are relating to the project, than last month. Of all 791 pages which are tagged with
this template, 100% have been assessed with the new scale which was introduced last month. It may also be worth noting two others pages that are undergoing transformations are:
List of companies based in Greater Manchester and
Belle Vue Zoo.
Current Debates
There was a lengthy debate over
Manchester Airport this month, which lead to three article for deletions, second nominations viewable
here and deletion review viewable
here. Basically, what happened was there was quite a great misunderstanding of what the purpose of the lists actually were. They were to compile a list of the destinations served by each terminal and linked along into a sub-page, where it would seem the overview page (i.e.
Manchester Airport) would look less cluttered, as was the suggestion at the peer review. Some participants at the first AFD, stated that reviews shouldn't be carried out upon unless there is consensus, and as they are not authorative should only be used as a guide. It was soon sorted though and all three daughter-lists were deleted. There has also been a change to the projects aims, which took a dramatic overhaul this week following the FA pass of Manchester. The
change was performed by
Jza84. It is now recognised that we should bring not only top importance articles to
FA standard but also ones that have been long-since reviewed, like
Altrincham and
Stretford. And if you're wondering why Salford is there it's due to the fact that there is a consensus among the project members that as Salford is in such close vicinity to the City of Manchester, that it's our "duty" to help promote it. The change came about about after
this discussion.
Monthly Challenges
New this month, we have to get Greater Manchester upto Featured Article Standard. However, with Manchester now rated as
FA-Class and the proposed "skipping" of the GA process, it may not be too long before we see this under the success section on the project mainpage. It would be ideal if all 791 articles were at least GA standard, but that will never happen in the next month! But please if you can, assess your ability to understand an article and if you're acquauinted with the task in hand and potentially long wait for a writing and for a review, go ahead! Be
bold. The progress monitor can be seen
here.
Once again, Portal:North West England has been subject to much exposure on behalf of it's editors. The current status of the portal is looking good and it has so far gained unanimous support at it's
FPOC. Hopefully, it'll be promoted and we'll have yet another success on our hands. Also, most major articles that are relevant have been tagged with a shortcut to the Portal mainpage, by Jza.
And finally, have a Very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Happy New Year to all our Greater Manchester Wikipedians! The project now has 34 members. 5 new participants enrolled last month, they can be viewed
here. On behalf of the team I hope they have prosperous and enjoyable usership and wish them well with their forthcoming work!
User:Archtransit and
User:Rudget, both part of our team, are current candidates for adminship (see
here for Archtransit and
here for Rudget). We wish them luck with this persuit and hope they will become our latest project participants with admin status!
Simillarly, the
Portal:North West England is now officially a featured portal.
User:Rudget has been overwhelmingly involved with this portal and he too is hereby thanked on behalf of the project for his continued contributions to this page and many others.
There have been a number of debates this month, some of which with a high level of potential impact for the project and its members.
Article assessment for the project became a point of contention when around 1400 articles were tagged by a bot. Most of these artcles were on "minor" association football players. The consensus was that in our state of around 30 participants and as a predominatly geography based project, most of these articles should be untagged, at very least for the time being. Of our 1403 articles now tagged however, only (?) 85% are assessed - a drop of 15%!
Perhaps one of the most notable debates this month was the possibility of... scrapping the project newsletter!
User:Rudget has written the last three editions (that's all of them!) and has decided that he'd like to pass on the responsibility.
It has been proposed that a noticeboard system be introduced to highlight new issues in a near(!)-realtime fashion. I
User:Jza84 am writing what could now be the last GM newsletter for a while. If you're a member of the team, but aren't closely involved with the project, then we'd love to hear from you at
WT:GM with your views on which system of communication is the right way forwards (if any/both!).
Monthly Challenges
As was stated in last months newsletter, the
Greater Manchester remains a key article for the project, and one which has been identified as urgent in our quest for Featured Article status. Sadly, for all our other successes, Greater Manchester has changed little since
this time last year] (!) and is still an article requiring expansion and development. The new
WP:UKCOUNTIES guide may provide new ways in which to channel our efforts. Although we endevour to have
good article status even for our suburbs and hamlets, other articles specifically identified as needing development towards FA include
Salford,
Stretford and
Altrincham.
Many of our most crucial articles about our largest towns are still in poor condition:
Rochdale,
Bury,
Prestwich,
Bolton, and
Wigan are of "start class" standard - much lower than we should have. If you feel you can help, please
be bold and try to improve these.
One final challenge for this month is for all those with new digial cameras for Christmas, or even digial images stored away on a disc!... many of our place articles are still without a single photograph, and www.geograph.org.uk is running low on quality images. Even those with photographs often have a low quality photograph of the local church. MORE ARE NEEDED! Especially townscapes! If you think you can help, a barnstar is up for grabs for best picture added in the next month or so!
We're always looking for potential new project members and ways for greater communication, collaboration and participation.
WP:GM has a strong core of users, but would like to have more input from a wider user-base. If you can think of ways to improve our ways of working, please feel free to mention them at
WT:GM. Simillarly, if you notice a new or unapproached user who is producing sound work related to
Greater Manchester and its consituent parts, please don't forget to ask them if they'd like to join us, either in your own hand, or by adding {{
Welcome WPGM}} to their talk page.
Would you like to write the next newsletter for
WP:GM?? Please nominate yourself at
WT:GM! New editors are always welcome!
Since the January newsletter there has been an increase of 5 featured articles/lists, taking our total number of featured entries upto 16 17 (
Trafford passed today!).
Although WP:GM leads the way in terms of featured content by a local British project, the
Kent and
Yorkshire WikiProjects are close to this total, with 11 and 14 featured entries respectively.
Following a somewhat frenzied collaboration at the start of March, and a nomination by
User:Joshii, Greater Manchester was promoted to GA status. It's the first
metropolitan county to obtain this recognition.
There has otherwise been a reduction in WP:GM nominations for
GA status, something which the project has begun to discuss on the
talk page.
Having completed all but one of our short term aims
set last December, the project would like to look at developing new short term aims. Suggestions have been made here, but there is scope for flexibility. Do you have a entry you would like to see developed?
Two members have left the project however, each for rather different reasons:
Archtransit (
talk·contribs) was an administrator, and project member, who was found to have been abusing his editting and sysop privliges. Following investigation, Archtransit was banned indefinately. A report in The Signpost is found
here.
Rudget (
talk·contribs), also an administrator, decided to leave the project. Reasons mentioned included the demands of admin duties taking over too much time. Rudget helped towards
Didsbury's GA promotion, and
Portal:North West England's FP promotion.
Thanks
This WikiProject, would not be where it is today without each and every one of its members! Thank you to all!
WP:GM is a great project, and is leading the way for local WikiProjects of the UK. However, though the
project talk page is a hub of activity, it is regularly used by only a core of 5-6 editors, which isn't making the most of its potential. Indeed, a
study, by the
University of Minnesota found that "One-tenth of 1 percent of editors account for nearly half of Wikipedia's content value". We at WP:GM do not want to follow suit!
There are several editors who have, sadly, not editted since the turn of 2008, and others, which concentrate in areas other than Greater Manchester material (which is quite fine!).
The WikiProject Greater Manchester would like to know if YOU are still around, and if so, if you've like to be more involved, and, if not, why not and what can we do to get you involved and be a bigger part of the team?
Feel free to come by the project talk page and leave us a message on what you're working on and/or what you'd like to see improved. The project is only as strong as its members and we'd like to know if you're still active or if we can help you with your editting.
Images
A picture's worth a thousand words
In our last issue, a plea was made for more images to be submitted to Wikipedia/WikiCommons to improve the quality and context of our articles. Many of our
Top priority articles are still lacking in quality images, if any!
www.geograph.org.uk is an online resource of photographs of places in the UK, which we can use. Www.flickr.com also has some images we are permitted to use. Do you have a digital camera however? Can you take photographs of townscapes and landmarks in your local area that can be used here?
Middleton,
Hulme and
Rochdale all have examples of images in their lead that help give a sense of place and improve the context to our readers.
Simillarly, many of our most crucial articles about our largest towns are still in poor condition:
Stockport,
Bury,
Prestwich,
Bolton, and
Wigan are of "start class" standard with short lead sections and
unreferenced sections - a much lower standard than we should allow! If you feel you can help, please be
bold and try to improve these. There is
a list of resources that can help.
Peterloo Massacre was nominated for FAC on 6 April. So far it has received support for FAS but feel free join the discussion
here.
The reduction of WP:GM GAs, mentioned in the last issue, has been tackled with
Buckton Castle and
Oasis (band) being passed on 9 March and
Upper Brook Street Chapel, Manchester on 7 April. We now have 13 GAs due to hard work of our contributors. Well done!
WP:GM still is still the leading local British WikiProject. As far as featured content goes, we have a lead of 6 on
London and
Yorkshire who have 15 FAs each. Although taking the lead in FAs, WP:GM is still lacking GAs and falls behind
London by 6. This topic was at the front of the new aims discussion (
here) and is an important issue for WP:GM.
As mentioned above, new aims have been decided. See the right hand column for more details.
Member News
There are now 44 members of WikiProject Greater Manchester! A warm welcome to the 5 new members that have joined us since March:
Would you like to write the next newsletter for
WP:GM?? Please nominate yourself at
WT:GM! New editors are always welcome!
New Aims
The completion of all but one of the short term aims set last December resulted in
a discussion on
WT:GM to set new aims for the WikiProject. They are:
Obtain GA status for a third of Greater Manchester's Metropolitan Boroughs.
It took us four months to get our last aims completed, why not try and see if these can be done in less time than before! All input is welcome but if anyone has any books or photos etc specifically related to these topics, they would be extra-specially welcome.
But before rushing ahead with these new aims, let's not forget the one that got away last time: to obtain B -> GA status for
Rochdale,
Wigan,
Bury,
Bolton and
Stockport. Most of these articles are in poor condition and in need of repair. Good quality images are urgently needed also. Let's make sure that this aim doesn't stay off our radar much longer.
Don't Forget...
Images! The shortage of good images was mentioned in the last issue and still hasn't been resolved! 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 in common.
Assessment "Assess and review all relevant articles for quality, importance and progress" is one of our mid-term aims. At the present moment, there are only 43 unassessed articles. This task could be completed well before the next newsletter is out.
The
Peterloo Massacre article was promoted to
FA on 12 April. One of our top priority articles, it had previously been only start class. The process began on 25th March and since then underwent over 700 edits before the end of April, with
Jza84,
Malleus Fatuarum, and
Richerman making significant contributions to the rapid development of the article.
Ddstretch and
Mr Stephen also contributed to discussions on the article talk page.
Perhaps the most unusual event of April 2008 for the project has surrounded the
Denshaw article. Denshaw is a village of about 500 people in
Saddleworth,
Oldham, which attracted media attention due to vandalism of the stub class article. Once this was brought to the project's attention, efforts were made to improve the article which led to a successful DYK? nomination and might even advance it to
GA status with a bit more effort. In April there were over
19,000 visitors who saw the project in action. Contributors included
Jza84,
Ddstretch,
Malleus Fatuarum,
Hassocks5489,
Nev1 and
Mike Peel.
Also this month 5 articles featured on the DYK? section of the front page:
Hulme Arch Bridge,
Peterloo Massacre,
Bolton and Leigh Railway,
Barnes Hospital,
Denshaw, and
Platt Fields Park. This certainly puts into perspective one of the project's previous mid-term aims "feature on the Did you know? section with at least three articles related to Greater Manchester". If you've expanded an article 5 fold or started one with at least 1.5kb of prose in the past 5 days and it has an interesting and referenced fact don't hesitate to read the conditions of DYK? and nominate it
here. It gets the project noticed!
WikiProject Greater Manchester is still leading local British WikiProjects. As far as featured content goes, we have a lead of 7 on
London and
Yorkshire who have 15 Featured Articles each. Although taking the lead in FAs, WP:GM is still lacking GAs and falls behind
London by 6 (we have 14, London 20). If you see an article that you think deserves to be a GA, don't hesitate to nominate it at
WP:GAC!
Member News
There are 45 members of WikiProject Greater Manchester. One new member has joined the project this month:
Kieran5676 on 30th April and is interested in south Manchester.
The project is always looking for new members, and if you spot an editor who makes good changes to Greater Machester related articles why not invite them to join up by adding this template to their talk page {{SUBST:Welcome WPGM}}.
Thanks
A rather large "thank you" goes out to all the editors who edited article related to
Greater Manchester, or who edit the project itself.
Obtain GA status for one third (1/3) of Greater Manchester's Metropolitan Boroughs.
It took us four months to get our last aims completed, why not try and see if these can be done in less time than before! All input is welcome but if anyone has any books or photos etc specifically related to these topics, they would be extra-specially welcome.
Most of the articles covered by our new aims haven't experienced much activity in the past month, if you thing you can help improve an article
be bold and get editing. Articles such as List of people from Bolton and List of railway stations in Greater Manchester already appear very close to FL status and may just require an editor to guide them through the
FLC process.
Our highest priority article is of course Greater Manchester, there is a peer review from March with issues still to be addressed before it can be put forward as a featured article candidate. Salford is another top priority article because it's the county's second city; it's under gone a lot of editing but still has a way to go before it reaches GA. Also active this month has been the
City of Salford article – part of our aim to get 1/3 of Greater Manchester's Metropolitan Boroughs to GA &ndash.
Although these are the project's explicit short term aims, we endeavour to "improving all wikipedia articles that are concerned with Greater Manchester", so every edit is valuable.
Reminders...
Images! The rate of good images has gone up since it was mentioned in the last issue, but more images are needed! The
requested photographs category lists some of the articles needing images.
Assessment When this section was written, there was only 1 unassessed article! This task has probably already been finished, but it might now have. To check click
here.
Old Trafford,
Murrays' Mills and
1990 Strangeways Prison riot all passed
GAC last month! In previous newsletters, the issue of WP:GM's lack of GAs has been raised numerously, so a large 'well done' to all those who contributed, be it little or large!
Also,
Milnrow and
City of Salford have been nominated at
WP:GAC. Feel free to join in with their discussions
here and
here respectively. To 'obtain GA status for a third of Greater Manchester's Metropolitan Boroughs' is one of WP:GM's short-term aims, let's hope the
City of Salford won't be the last borough with this status.
WikiProject Greater Manchester is still the leading local British WikiProject! As far as featured content goes, we have a lead of 8 on
London! Although taking the lead in FAs, WP:GM is still flagging a little in GAs and falls behind
London by 3. This is the closest we have ever got to taking the lead in local British GAs, if you see an article that you think deserves to be a GA, don't hesitate to nominate it at
WP:GAC!
And don't forget that the
Manchester congestion charge article will need all input possible to keep it up to date with the government's new legislation (grumble grumble)...
Member News
There are 46 members of WikiProject Greater Manchester. Our newest member is:
Let's not forget that
Jza84 became an administrator this month! Congratulations on your new role.
The project is always looking for new members, and if you spot an editor who makes good changes to Greater Machester related articles why not invite them to join up by adding this template to their talk page: {{SUBST:Welcome WPGM}}.
Thanks
A rather large "thank you" goes to all the editors who help make this WikiProject what it is; no edit goes unnoticed..
Obtain GA status for one third of Greater Manchester's Metropolitan Boroughs.
Most of the articles covered by our new aims haven't experienced much activity in the past month, except for
City of Salford being nominated at
WP:GAC. If you think you can help improve an article,
be bold and get editing! Articles such as
List of people from Bolton and
List of railway stations in Greater Manchester already appear very close to
FL status and may just require an editor to guide them through the
FLC process.
Greater Manchester is, of course, our highest priority article.
Mr Stephen posted some milestones to getting this article up to
FA status a while back. Please
check them out and see what you can do.
Although these are the project's explicit short term aims, we endeavour to "improving all Wikipedia articles that are concerned with Greater Manchester", so every edit is valuable.
Reminders...
Images! The rate of good images has gone up since it was mentioned in the last issue, but we'll need more if we're going to get a "lead/static image in every infobox of every town in the county"! The
requested photographs category lists some of the articles needing images.
Assessment As of 12th April, we have had 100% of our articles assessed for quality! Even so, we still 151 of our 1551 article unassessed for importance. Please
take a look and see what you can do.
Delivered on June 12, 2008 by
Polishname. If you do not wish to receive the newsletter, please add two *s by your username on the Project Mainpage.
Cambrian explosion task force
Hi,
I'm posting this message because you're listed as a participant in
WikiProject Geology. I've set up
a task force aiming to improve Wikipedia's coverage of the
Cambrian explosion, and I was wondering whether you may be interested in helping out? If you would like to help in any way, you could cast an eye over
the task force page and see if there are any articles or tasks that take your fancy! Any contributions would be greatly appreciated.
It's been three months since the last newsletter, but there's been a lot going on...
Promoted articles:
Greater Manchester is one of our project's top priority articles, the Greater Manchester article comprehensively covers everything to do with the county, from culture and history, to transport and demography.
Manchester United F.C. records and statistics is about the records of one of Greater Manchester's best know clubs, which feats like "the club currently holds the record for the most FA Cup triumphs with 11".
City of Salford is about the local government area and Greater Manchester's second city. Getting
Salford to GA is one our the aim's of our project, so hopefully this may help.
Manchester, Bolton and Bury Canal is about the history and modern restoration of the disused canal running through the county. (It's now at FAC, so please improve the article if you can!)
Manchester Mummy is about Hannah Beswick, whose macabre fear of being buried alive lead to her demanding that her body was kept above ground and checked periodically for signs of life.
Milnrow is a small town in
Rochdale with a long history. The wool trade was important to the town and was the basis of much of its industry. (It's also the first GA for Rochdale!)
Ordsall Hall is an important Tudor hall in Salford with a reputation for being haunted!
Bert Trautmann is the German goalkeeper who broke his neck playing for Manchester City... and carried on playing!
The
Peterloo Massacre appeared on the front page on 16 August! Well done to everyone who contributed to the article about a key moment of Greater Manchester's history and managed to get it showcased.
A new
portal has been set up! The
Greater Manchester portal showcases some of the best articles to do with the county. Thanks to
Polishname for single-handedly getting it up and running.
There is a proposal to move members who haven't edited for a while to an inactive members list, so if you've not been edited recently but still want to be a member let us know!
WikiProject Greater Manchester is still the leading local British WikiProject! As far as featured content goes, we have a lead of 5 on
Yorkshire and 11 on
London! WP:GM now is the leading project in terms of GAs too with 5 more than London and 7 more than Yorkshire! If you see an article that you think deserves to be a GA, don't hesitate to nominate it at
WP:GAC!
WT:GM: The project's talk page is a forum for discussion and to keep up to date with the latest project developments and initiatives put it on your watchlist! Recently there have been discussions on articles to be deleted, the
congestion charge, how to get members involved and working together, and plenty of other stuff.
Although the project has had a lot of GAs and FAs recently, most of the articles covered by our short term aims haven't experienced much activity recently.
Baby has undergone some change, but has a long way to go, and
List of railway stations in Greater Manchester is very close to FL quality. If you think you can help improve an article,
be bold and get editing! Articles such as
List of railway stations in Greater Manchester already appear very close to
FL status and may just require an editor to guide them through the
FLC process.
Although these are the project's explicit short term aims, we endeavour to "improving all Wikipedia articles that are concerned with Greater Manchester", so every edit is valuable.
Member News
There are 53 members of WikiProject Greater Manchester. Since 12 June, the project has gained 7 new members:
Welcome to everyone, and let's remember to make these new members feel included in the project! If you need help, you can go to the
project talk page, or perhaps look at the
list of members to see if anyone can help.
The project is always looking for new members, and if you spot an editor who makes good changes to Greater Machester related articles why not invite them to join up by adding this template to their talk page: {{SUBST:Welcome WPGM}}.
Thanks
A big "thank you" goes to all the editors who help make this WikiProject what it is; no edit goes unnoticed.
Reminders...
Images! There are some good images around, but more are still needed if we're going to get a "lead/static image in every infobox of every town in the county"! The
requested photographs category lists some of the articles needing images.
Assessment As of 1st September, we have had 99.5% of our articles assessed for quality! Even so, we still 157 of our 1662 article unassessed for importance. Please
take a look and see what you can do.
Doolin
