![]() |
Essays Low‑impact ![]() | |||||||||
|
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Five million articles page. |
|
This is a combination of two messages proposed to be published once 5 million articles have been reached. The original two pieces are:
Spirit of Eagle ( talk) 02:26, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
I think we should use the opportunity to highlight another aspect of "not done" : articles need to be translated into other languages in order to reach additional communities to those who need access to free knowledge. John Vandenberg ( chat) 06:26, 12 September 2015 (UTC)
A (possibly simplified) version of the Wikipedia globe with '5 000 000' in different number systems replacing the letters: this can then be adapted for future million-points. Jackiespeel ( talk) 16:15, 5 October 2015 (UTC)
About this: Wikipedia:Requests for comment/5 millionth article logo. Eman235/ talk 02:13, 21 October 2015 (UTC)
It's not the right thing to do - we have many valued contributors. The 10 millionth person to cross a bridge is NOT important. Samsara 17:19, 23 October 2015 (UTC)
Actually have been thinking about this - one way for someone to write is to do it in a stream-of-consciousness way...from Persoonia terminalis to Persoonia to Persoon...or Lawrie Johnson or the little village of Torrington (damn...I drove this way once...). Cas Liber ( talk · contribs) 14:11, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
Pine, there are over 125,000 active-editors on WP en. alone, and millions of registered-editors on en.
27M may be fat because of some deadwood but it's closer than "thousands".
"Thousands" really downplays the numbers.
Ping me back. Cheers! {{u|
Checkingfax}} {
Talk}
05:38, 27 October 2015 (UTC)
As it stands the message has one line that actually celebrates the accomplishment of 5 million articles ("The English Wikipedia community thanks the millions of anonymous and registered editors whose 796,651,464 edits over the past 14+ years to the English Wikipedia have made this remarkable accomplishment possible."), and the rest is information on how to start editing. I think the info on editing should stay, but we need to flesh out the celebratory paragraph(s) more. We could include more on previous achievements for example, or references to other milestones such as the millionth article, or give a brief History of Wikipedia and how that has led us to where we are. Doesn't need to be longer than a few sentences to a paragraph or two, but the initial focus of the message should be primarily celebratory, and then we should move on to how others can help. — Preceding unsigned comment added by DiscantX ( talk • contribs) 07:54, 28 October 2015 (UTC)
I really think the page would look better without this section, or at least with the section trimmed down massively. This is a celebration for the English Wikipedia: mentioning Wikidata, de, VE, Commons copyright licenses (!) is tangential. My eyes glazed over and skipped past it, and I'm an established editor already. This section will bore too many people and obscure the overall message of the page, which is "How you can help". At most, I think the section should say:
— Bilorv (talk) (c) (e) 09:20, 29 October 2015 (UTC)
The new font yells at me on my laptop. Everything looks bold and the bold no longer pops out. I preferred the crisper oversized font we started out with. Can we switch back? Other than that, it's looking great. We should hit 5M tonight or tomorrow morning. Great job, folks. Cheers! {{u|
Checkingfax}} {
Talk}
20:53, 31 October 2015 (UTC)
Is there a reason {{ •}} is used instead of {{ flatlist}}? Eman235/ talk 02:26, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
Since we are probably hitting it soon, this thread is to discuss how to determine the 5 millionth article. Some notes to help:
-- Fuzheado | Talk 11:47, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
This one Persoonia terminalis? File:English Wikipedia 5 million article log.png. emijrp ( talk) 12:28, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
I believe it's not hard to figure out at all and whatever was the newest article the first time it reached 5,000,000 is the winner. Unless that gets deleted quickly in which case the next one that doesn't get deleted quickly wins. There's at least 5 articles centered on what I think was 5 million that don't look embarrassing to WP like a porn star or something so we might be 5 for 5 in not having a difficult choice to make. It can't keep changing for years into the future when one of those original 5 million get merged or something. WP:millionth article FAQ Sagittarian Milky Way ( talk) 12:40, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
9ec X 2) Surely it is a matter of aligning the log of new pages with deletions...oh and those pesky drafts.....and userfied articles...and....(I didn't even get a chance to fire off all the damn Eucalypts of New South Wales yet :P....damn)
Showing my math, going by
[1] which showed
Venezuela Municipal Museum at 4999994:
-- Fuzheado | Talk 12:42, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
Congratulations Casliber!♦ Dr. Blofeld 12:45, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
Congratulations to all :-) emijrp ( talk) 12:56, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
It's worth noting that both Dr. Blofeld and Casliber were busy with the mass creation of stubs (on villages in Turkey, and species of shrubs, respectively) three years ago as well, in the run up to the four millionth article. 223.227.116.203 ( talk) 17:21, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
I fortunately woke up just in time to watch the exponential growth start and to finish off the last draft. I've got to say, it was amazing to watch the exponential growth, especially in the last 30 or 40 articles. Things really picked up; looks like we were doing 2-3 per second. And in the second when it happened, it looks like 14 articles were created! Spectacular. -- Jakob ( talk) aka Jakec 13:03, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
Well done all. Now only if all the one-line articles created in those frenetic minutes could be expanded. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.192.184.248 ( talk) 13:15, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Five million articles is linked to from the main page, but it's not actually hugely noticeable. If we can't get the link from clicking on the logo to lead here, is there any other way of helping readers to find their way here? Maybe some redirects like 5,000,000 articles (or hatnotes from pages like 5 Million that already exist)? I'm not really sure many people will get to this page from {{ Main page banner}}. — Bilorv (talk) (c) (e) 13:23, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
Template:Million milestones has already been edited to reflect the five-millionth article, but the only milestone article talk pages where it shows up are the talks of Forced settlements in the Soviet Union and Beate Eriksen. It doesn't show up on the talks of the other milestone articles. TVShowFan122 ( talk) 13:34, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
Is it really a good idea to direct new editors to our vital articles? These articles are usually larger in scope, require knowledge of what constitutes a reliable source, need a good grasp of writing from a neutral point-of-view, and are much more likely to be reverted on. I propose that we instead replace that link with a link to our stubs. Opencooper ( talk) 14:05, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
Are all of those affiliates listed at the bottom skilled at dealing with the press? Tony (talk) 14:10, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
Is there a consensus somewhere as to how long the celebratory logo should stay? Sam Walton ( talk) 15:45, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
How was it done to show the logo on there? Seems this one does not reflect in File:Wiki.png. Shinjiman ⇔ ♨ 00:45, 2 November 2015 (UTC)
Congratulation to you all from Italy! Great job, we're now ready for the next 5,000,000 articles! The English Wikipedia is a beacon of hope in this world of overflowing information and yet widespread ignorance, and a guiding light for each other Wikimedia project. Let's celebrate this November 1 the millions "saints" who donated part of their time, thus their very life, in the creation of this tool of freedom, and gave it to future generations. :-) -- Phyrexian ɸ 17:51, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
Congratulations form Cyprus. You are the best!! Xaris333 ( talk) 20:22, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
Warmest wishes from el-wikiedia -- FocalPoint ( talk) 20:31, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
Congratulations from Norway as well! -- Tarjeimo ( talk) 23:52, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
Congratulation to you all from Cek, in the Quba Rayon of Azerbaijan! Great job, we're now ready for the next 5,000,000 articles! Keep the good work! --► Cekli 829 05:04, 2 November 2015 (UTC)
Whether on Firefox, Chrome or Edge, the video just won't start, although on Chrome I can get the audio. Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 21:23, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
Congrats on 5 million articles, everybody. We made it.
Now I know there's some "Congratulations on 5 million" barnstars going around. Are there any left for me, by any chance? I think I feel honored. ;) epic genius ( talk) 03:17, 2 November 2015 (UTC)
All of the following pages were created at 12:27, 1 November 2015 (UTC), the minute that saw the creation of the 5 millionth article.
7 by Rodw
|
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1 November 2015
|
6 by Dr. Blofeld
|
---|
1 November 2015
|
6 by Casliber
|
---|
1 November 2015
|
4 by Jakec
|
---|
NOTE:The following articles were created by copy-pasting content from userspace, the history of which has now been
merged to the articles' history. As a result, these articles are no longer shown to have been created at 12:27.
1 November 2015
|
4 by Andrew Davidson
|
---|
1 November 2015
|
2 by Emijrp
|
---|
1 November 2015
|
103.6.159.67 ( talk) 14:19, 2 November 2015 (UTC)
Wait a minute, are you folks able to see the transclusions of relevant parts of Special:Contributions within those collapsed boxes above? When I posted this section, I was able to see them well, but now they are just rendering as links, which are quite less useful. 103.6.159.89 ( talk) 14:46, 3 November 2015 (UTC)
While I remember, here are some notes on mine. I warmed up on the previous day by creating several fresh articles:
At that time there were about 700 articles to go and I supposed that there might be a big surge at any time. By creating articles throughout this period, I hoped to strike lucky but the surge didn't happen that day. As the pace still seemed quite slow – about one a minute – I went to bed as usual. The following morning the pace still seemed slow. I had brunch while browsing around and it was during this session that I found this page ( WP:5MILLION) This seemed useful for tracking progress so I watched it while wondering whether I could go out, as planned. I had several drafts prepared offline and so started to get them ready. I then noticed Dr. Blofeld start his batch of Turkish villages and we were off to the races.
Blofeld's bot didn't seem as fast as I'd feared so I had plenty of time to get ready. I had three drafts prepared
Cas Liber then joined in with his shrubs but the pace was still quite moderate and so I had time to add another fish and chip shop to my batch, cloning it from one of the others. These were set up in separate browser tabs where I previewed them to check the format so that they just needed saving. I expected the rate to spike as it did and so started saving when there was about 21 articles to go. My batch then bracketed the 5 million mark quite nicely. Close but no cigar...
Andrew D. ( talk) 18:50, 4 November 2015 (UTC)
{{u|
Checkingfax}} {
Talk}
22:19, 20 November 2015 (UTC)My four articles weren't anything special: just the next four in my endeavor to create articles on all named streams in Pennsylvania (there are more than 60,000 streams, but only 800 articles!). I did try to time my work so that I'd be writing articles on creeks not completely in the wilderness, in case one of them happened to be the 5,000,000th and someone happened to want to do a meetup at the article's location. (So, for instance, Swale Brook was right in Tunkhannock.)
When I woke up on the morning of the 1st, Dr. Blofeld was starting his string of Turkish village stubs, and there were about 280 articles to go. It seemed that articles were already coming in fast, so I scrambled to finish South Branch Tunkhannock Creek and finally got it into a mainspace-able state at 7:25 AM (12:25 UTC). I then copy-pasted my articles into the edit mode in mainspace and obsessively five million counter, until it went to 4,999,950, at which point I began refreshing Special:Statistics about once a second. (I know, I was a bit obsessed...but it was fun to see the article count rising so fast.)
I made my move after 4,999,990 and started hitting the 'save page' button. Seems I was too late, though: Persoonia terminalis was written at 7:27:37/38 (EST) and my first one (Swale Brook) was saved at 7:27:40/41 and became the 5,000,003rd. And the other three I had written got saved within ten seconds of that.
I guess for the 6,000,000th article race (In June 2019, I predict), I'll try to have more articles ready to go (perhaps a dozen or so?), though I'm not sure how to hit "save page" fast enough. -- Jakob ( talk) aka Jakec 19:06, 4 November 2015 (UTC)
{{u|
Checkingfax}} {
Talk}
22:10, 20 November 2015 (UTC)
Article creation is a critical activity for registered users to carry out, for several reasons. The first and most trivial of these is that for several years now, only autoconfirmed users have been able to create articles. Another major reason is that in some subjects, article creation activity has been moved away from Wikipedia and towards Wikia or entirely independent wikis. For instance, for information about notable photographic cameras, lenses and other apparel, there are now no fewer than two non-Wikipedia wikis whose coverage is more comprehensive than ours ( Camerapedia and Camera-wiki.org). Two things are true about this. Firstly, it's good to have information redundantly stored in independently maintained wikis. However, fragmentation of knowledge across different sites runs counter to the original idea of the wikilink as the unifying principle of all knowledge. Therefore we should ensure that we attract relevant topic editors to Wikipedia. One essential way of doing this is giving them a starting point for an article that can be expanded - thus they can contribute even as an IP or newly registered user. Evidence so far shows that there is some take-up for this, and vandalism is minimal in this topic area (knock on wood). Recruitment campaigns on relevant forums will be a necessary second step once the current article creation backlog has been cleared to a reasonable extent.
The article creation backlog I'm referring to is actually a "neat" example of systemic bias. In terms of lens articles, Canon is very well covered, with Nikon a clear second place in spite of their similar market share. Until I focused some of my attention on this problem, there were very few articles on lenses by Olympus, Pentax, Fujifilm, Panasonic, Sigma, Tamron, Zeiss and others. This echoes situations in other areas of consumer products, such as laptops, where any brand other than Apple is extremely poorly covered - Apple being the absolute exception and being rather well covered - even long before they clearly dominated the market!
This is why the proximate objective of the lens article drive is not to create a small number of fully formed articles that do not need further improvement, but rather to create a large number of stub articles that could engage new editors and interest them in contributing to Wikipedia on a regular basis. Given strong brand loyalties among photographers, getting them interested should not be too hard, but I expect WP:NPOV and WP:V/ WP:RS to be principles occasionally requiring attention.
Notwithstanding the above focus on lens articles, the single article topic I would like to draw attention to in this write-up is current DYK nominee Operation Eikonal - very topical given the WMF's recent court action against the NSA over just this kind of internet surveillance, and part of a range of topics of high contemporary relevance that we've been far too reluctant to adequately tackle. Given Wikipedia's position as a top electronic medium and central element of the internet revolution, I find our sometimes patchy coverage of such subjects hard to accept. If half the editors dedicating their time to Middle Eastern politics would divert their energy towards questions of the eletronic frontier, Wikipedia as a whole would be a much more interesting and balanced read.
Insofar as this is the opportunity to publicise a wishlist, it would have those two items: (1) more balanced coverage across a greater range of commercial products, and (2) better coverage of the electronic frontier, particularly issues relating to electronic security and privacy. Thank you for reading.
Samsara 18:37, 20 November 2015 (UTC)
{{u|
Checkingfax}} {
Talk}
22:00, 20 November 2015 (UTC)
Here's an archived link to Wikipedia's Main Page on November 1, sporting the logo and Main Page banner. Mz7 ( talk) 01:36, 21 November 2015 (UTC)
![]() |
Essays Low‑impact ![]() | |||||||||
|
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Five million articles page. |
|
This is a combination of two messages proposed to be published once 5 million articles have been reached. The original two pieces are:
Spirit of Eagle ( talk) 02:26, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
I think we should use the opportunity to highlight another aspect of "not done" : articles need to be translated into other languages in order to reach additional communities to those who need access to free knowledge. John Vandenberg ( chat) 06:26, 12 September 2015 (UTC)
A (possibly simplified) version of the Wikipedia globe with '5 000 000' in different number systems replacing the letters: this can then be adapted for future million-points. Jackiespeel ( talk) 16:15, 5 October 2015 (UTC)
About this: Wikipedia:Requests for comment/5 millionth article logo. Eman235/ talk 02:13, 21 October 2015 (UTC)
It's not the right thing to do - we have many valued contributors. The 10 millionth person to cross a bridge is NOT important. Samsara 17:19, 23 October 2015 (UTC)
Actually have been thinking about this - one way for someone to write is to do it in a stream-of-consciousness way...from Persoonia terminalis to Persoonia to Persoon...or Lawrie Johnson or the little village of Torrington (damn...I drove this way once...). Cas Liber ( talk · contribs) 14:11, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
Pine, there are over 125,000 active-editors on WP en. alone, and millions of registered-editors on en.
27M may be fat because of some deadwood but it's closer than "thousands".
"Thousands" really downplays the numbers.
Ping me back. Cheers! {{u|
Checkingfax}} {
Talk}
05:38, 27 October 2015 (UTC)
As it stands the message has one line that actually celebrates the accomplishment of 5 million articles ("The English Wikipedia community thanks the millions of anonymous and registered editors whose 796,651,464 edits over the past 14+ years to the English Wikipedia have made this remarkable accomplishment possible."), and the rest is information on how to start editing. I think the info on editing should stay, but we need to flesh out the celebratory paragraph(s) more. We could include more on previous achievements for example, or references to other milestones such as the millionth article, or give a brief History of Wikipedia and how that has led us to where we are. Doesn't need to be longer than a few sentences to a paragraph or two, but the initial focus of the message should be primarily celebratory, and then we should move on to how others can help. — Preceding unsigned comment added by DiscantX ( talk • contribs) 07:54, 28 October 2015 (UTC)
I really think the page would look better without this section, or at least with the section trimmed down massively. This is a celebration for the English Wikipedia: mentioning Wikidata, de, VE, Commons copyright licenses (!) is tangential. My eyes glazed over and skipped past it, and I'm an established editor already. This section will bore too many people and obscure the overall message of the page, which is "How you can help". At most, I think the section should say:
— Bilorv (talk) (c) (e) 09:20, 29 October 2015 (UTC)
The new font yells at me on my laptop. Everything looks bold and the bold no longer pops out. I preferred the crisper oversized font we started out with. Can we switch back? Other than that, it's looking great. We should hit 5M tonight or tomorrow morning. Great job, folks. Cheers! {{u|
Checkingfax}} {
Talk}
20:53, 31 October 2015 (UTC)
Is there a reason {{ •}} is used instead of {{ flatlist}}? Eman235/ talk 02:26, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
Since we are probably hitting it soon, this thread is to discuss how to determine the 5 millionth article. Some notes to help:
-- Fuzheado | Talk 11:47, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
This one Persoonia terminalis? File:English Wikipedia 5 million article log.png. emijrp ( talk) 12:28, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
I believe it's not hard to figure out at all and whatever was the newest article the first time it reached 5,000,000 is the winner. Unless that gets deleted quickly in which case the next one that doesn't get deleted quickly wins. There's at least 5 articles centered on what I think was 5 million that don't look embarrassing to WP like a porn star or something so we might be 5 for 5 in not having a difficult choice to make. It can't keep changing for years into the future when one of those original 5 million get merged or something. WP:millionth article FAQ Sagittarian Milky Way ( talk) 12:40, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
9ec X 2) Surely it is a matter of aligning the log of new pages with deletions...oh and those pesky drafts.....and userfied articles...and....(I didn't even get a chance to fire off all the damn Eucalypts of New South Wales yet :P....damn)
Showing my math, going by
[1] which showed
Venezuela Municipal Museum at 4999994:
-- Fuzheado | Talk 12:42, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
Congratulations Casliber!♦ Dr. Blofeld 12:45, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
Congratulations to all :-) emijrp ( talk) 12:56, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
It's worth noting that both Dr. Blofeld and Casliber were busy with the mass creation of stubs (on villages in Turkey, and species of shrubs, respectively) three years ago as well, in the run up to the four millionth article. 223.227.116.203 ( talk) 17:21, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
I fortunately woke up just in time to watch the exponential growth start and to finish off the last draft. I've got to say, it was amazing to watch the exponential growth, especially in the last 30 or 40 articles. Things really picked up; looks like we were doing 2-3 per second. And in the second when it happened, it looks like 14 articles were created! Spectacular. -- Jakob ( talk) aka Jakec 13:03, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
Well done all. Now only if all the one-line articles created in those frenetic minutes could be expanded. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.192.184.248 ( talk) 13:15, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Five million articles is linked to from the main page, but it's not actually hugely noticeable. If we can't get the link from clicking on the logo to lead here, is there any other way of helping readers to find their way here? Maybe some redirects like 5,000,000 articles (or hatnotes from pages like 5 Million that already exist)? I'm not really sure many people will get to this page from {{ Main page banner}}. — Bilorv (talk) (c) (e) 13:23, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
Template:Million milestones has already been edited to reflect the five-millionth article, but the only milestone article talk pages where it shows up are the talks of Forced settlements in the Soviet Union and Beate Eriksen. It doesn't show up on the talks of the other milestone articles. TVShowFan122 ( talk) 13:34, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
Is it really a good idea to direct new editors to our vital articles? These articles are usually larger in scope, require knowledge of what constitutes a reliable source, need a good grasp of writing from a neutral point-of-view, and are much more likely to be reverted on. I propose that we instead replace that link with a link to our stubs. Opencooper ( talk) 14:05, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
Are all of those affiliates listed at the bottom skilled at dealing with the press? Tony (talk) 14:10, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
Is there a consensus somewhere as to how long the celebratory logo should stay? Sam Walton ( talk) 15:45, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
How was it done to show the logo on there? Seems this one does not reflect in File:Wiki.png. Shinjiman ⇔ ♨ 00:45, 2 November 2015 (UTC)
Congratulation to you all from Italy! Great job, we're now ready for the next 5,000,000 articles! The English Wikipedia is a beacon of hope in this world of overflowing information and yet widespread ignorance, and a guiding light for each other Wikimedia project. Let's celebrate this November 1 the millions "saints" who donated part of their time, thus their very life, in the creation of this tool of freedom, and gave it to future generations. :-) -- Phyrexian ɸ 17:51, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
Congratulations form Cyprus. You are the best!! Xaris333 ( talk) 20:22, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
Warmest wishes from el-wikiedia -- FocalPoint ( talk) 20:31, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
Congratulations from Norway as well! -- Tarjeimo ( talk) 23:52, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
Congratulation to you all from Cek, in the Quba Rayon of Azerbaijan! Great job, we're now ready for the next 5,000,000 articles! Keep the good work! --► Cekli 829 05:04, 2 November 2015 (UTC)
Whether on Firefox, Chrome or Edge, the video just won't start, although on Chrome I can get the audio. Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 21:23, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
Congrats on 5 million articles, everybody. We made it.
Now I know there's some "Congratulations on 5 million" barnstars going around. Are there any left for me, by any chance? I think I feel honored. ;) epic genius ( talk) 03:17, 2 November 2015 (UTC)
All of the following pages were created at 12:27, 1 November 2015 (UTC), the minute that saw the creation of the 5 millionth article.
7 by Rodw
|
---|
1 November 2015
|
6 by Dr. Blofeld
|
---|
1 November 2015
|
6 by Casliber
|
---|
1 November 2015
|
4 by Jakec
|
---|
NOTE:The following articles were created by copy-pasting content from userspace, the history of which has now been
merged to the articles' history. As a result, these articles are no longer shown to have been created at 12:27.
1 November 2015
|
4 by Andrew Davidson
|
---|
1 November 2015
|
2 by Emijrp
|
---|
1 November 2015
|
103.6.159.67 ( talk) 14:19, 2 November 2015 (UTC)
Wait a minute, are you folks able to see the transclusions of relevant parts of Special:Contributions within those collapsed boxes above? When I posted this section, I was able to see them well, but now they are just rendering as links, which are quite less useful. 103.6.159.89 ( talk) 14:46, 3 November 2015 (UTC)
While I remember, here are some notes on mine. I warmed up on the previous day by creating several fresh articles:
At that time there were about 700 articles to go and I supposed that there might be a big surge at any time. By creating articles throughout this period, I hoped to strike lucky but the surge didn't happen that day. As the pace still seemed quite slow – about one a minute – I went to bed as usual. The following morning the pace still seemed slow. I had brunch while browsing around and it was during this session that I found this page ( WP:5MILLION) This seemed useful for tracking progress so I watched it while wondering whether I could go out, as planned. I had several drafts prepared offline and so started to get them ready. I then noticed Dr. Blofeld start his batch of Turkish villages and we were off to the races.
Blofeld's bot didn't seem as fast as I'd feared so I had plenty of time to get ready. I had three drafts prepared
Cas Liber then joined in with his shrubs but the pace was still quite moderate and so I had time to add another fish and chip shop to my batch, cloning it from one of the others. These were set up in separate browser tabs where I previewed them to check the format so that they just needed saving. I expected the rate to spike as it did and so started saving when there was about 21 articles to go. My batch then bracketed the 5 million mark quite nicely. Close but no cigar...
Andrew D. ( talk) 18:50, 4 November 2015 (UTC)
{{u|
Checkingfax}} {
Talk}
22:19, 20 November 2015 (UTC)My four articles weren't anything special: just the next four in my endeavor to create articles on all named streams in Pennsylvania (there are more than 60,000 streams, but only 800 articles!). I did try to time my work so that I'd be writing articles on creeks not completely in the wilderness, in case one of them happened to be the 5,000,000th and someone happened to want to do a meetup at the article's location. (So, for instance, Swale Brook was right in Tunkhannock.)
When I woke up on the morning of the 1st, Dr. Blofeld was starting his string of Turkish village stubs, and there were about 280 articles to go. It seemed that articles were already coming in fast, so I scrambled to finish South Branch Tunkhannock Creek and finally got it into a mainspace-able state at 7:25 AM (12:25 UTC). I then copy-pasted my articles into the edit mode in mainspace and obsessively five million counter, until it went to 4,999,950, at which point I began refreshing Special:Statistics about once a second. (I know, I was a bit obsessed...but it was fun to see the article count rising so fast.)
I made my move after 4,999,990 and started hitting the 'save page' button. Seems I was too late, though: Persoonia terminalis was written at 7:27:37/38 (EST) and my first one (Swale Brook) was saved at 7:27:40/41 and became the 5,000,003rd. And the other three I had written got saved within ten seconds of that.
I guess for the 6,000,000th article race (In June 2019, I predict), I'll try to have more articles ready to go (perhaps a dozen or so?), though I'm not sure how to hit "save page" fast enough. -- Jakob ( talk) aka Jakec 19:06, 4 November 2015 (UTC)
{{u|
Checkingfax}} {
Talk}
22:10, 20 November 2015 (UTC)
Article creation is a critical activity for registered users to carry out, for several reasons. The first and most trivial of these is that for several years now, only autoconfirmed users have been able to create articles. Another major reason is that in some subjects, article creation activity has been moved away from Wikipedia and towards Wikia or entirely independent wikis. For instance, for information about notable photographic cameras, lenses and other apparel, there are now no fewer than two non-Wikipedia wikis whose coverage is more comprehensive than ours ( Camerapedia and Camera-wiki.org). Two things are true about this. Firstly, it's good to have information redundantly stored in independently maintained wikis. However, fragmentation of knowledge across different sites runs counter to the original idea of the wikilink as the unifying principle of all knowledge. Therefore we should ensure that we attract relevant topic editors to Wikipedia. One essential way of doing this is giving them a starting point for an article that can be expanded - thus they can contribute even as an IP or newly registered user. Evidence so far shows that there is some take-up for this, and vandalism is minimal in this topic area (knock on wood). Recruitment campaigns on relevant forums will be a necessary second step once the current article creation backlog has been cleared to a reasonable extent.
The article creation backlog I'm referring to is actually a "neat" example of systemic bias. In terms of lens articles, Canon is very well covered, with Nikon a clear second place in spite of their similar market share. Until I focused some of my attention on this problem, there were very few articles on lenses by Olympus, Pentax, Fujifilm, Panasonic, Sigma, Tamron, Zeiss and others. This echoes situations in other areas of consumer products, such as laptops, where any brand other than Apple is extremely poorly covered - Apple being the absolute exception and being rather well covered - even long before they clearly dominated the market!
This is why the proximate objective of the lens article drive is not to create a small number of fully formed articles that do not need further improvement, but rather to create a large number of stub articles that could engage new editors and interest them in contributing to Wikipedia on a regular basis. Given strong brand loyalties among photographers, getting them interested should not be too hard, but I expect WP:NPOV and WP:V/ WP:RS to be principles occasionally requiring attention.
Notwithstanding the above focus on lens articles, the single article topic I would like to draw attention to in this write-up is current DYK nominee Operation Eikonal - very topical given the WMF's recent court action against the NSA over just this kind of internet surveillance, and part of a range of topics of high contemporary relevance that we've been far too reluctant to adequately tackle. Given Wikipedia's position as a top electronic medium and central element of the internet revolution, I find our sometimes patchy coverage of such subjects hard to accept. If half the editors dedicating their time to Middle Eastern politics would divert their energy towards questions of the eletronic frontier, Wikipedia as a whole would be a much more interesting and balanced read.
Insofar as this is the opportunity to publicise a wishlist, it would have those two items: (1) more balanced coverage across a greater range of commercial products, and (2) better coverage of the electronic frontier, particularly issues relating to electronic security and privacy. Thank you for reading.
Samsara 18:37, 20 November 2015 (UTC)
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22:00, 20 November 2015 (UTC)
Here's an archived link to Wikipedia's Main Page on November 1, sporting the logo and Main Page banner. Mz7 ( talk) 01:36, 21 November 2015 (UTC)