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We tailored the instructions here specifically to the EB2004 project, but this project page has a broadened scope. They should be revised, but (as the original author) I hesitate to start because I think they are already somewhat too long, and by adding assistance specific to the other sources, they would become just mind-numbing. Does anyone with better organized instructional skills want to make a start at reorganizing them, maybe? David Brooks 02:58, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I noticed that Britannica uses full Russian names, complete with "father name", so in many cases a simple redirect is enough. Maybe a bot should be used to do that. It shoulkd do the following
I think this procedure would greatly reduce the numbers of missing articles. Grue 16:25, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)
WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles |
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Miscellaneous |
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I just made this template, its for the main project page, the list pages and your user pages. I think it is a great idea, because when the weekly focus page and "Todo" gets changed, it will be changed on every instance of the template, and of course it will provide much advertising, it also provides all the useful links. I put it on here first because I'm sure it can be vastly improved/tweaked. thanks Bluemoose 18:12, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I just added an instruction to this effect, but remember: don't consolidate duplicate entries in the lists (or, if you do, add a comment as I just did to /Q). They represent two articles with the same name but different topics. For WP they will need a disambig pointing to two (non-empty) content articles. David Brooks 18:26, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I have recently created the RABot to help manage requested articles pages (i.e. sort lists, remove created articles, cleanup formatting, etc.). With only minor modifciations, I could run it on all the encylcopedia pages you have here to wipeout the completed requests. Since it only operates under manual control, it never runs faster than about a minute per page (and considerably slower if I have to stop to correct mistakes), so it is not something that I am likely to do often, but occasionally going through and clearing out the encyclopedia request pages seems like a reasonable thing to do.
However, I didn't want to do so without coming here and making sure it would be okay with the community for me to clear out all the requests that have been fulfilled. Dragons flight 06:23, Jun 17, 2005 (UTC)
P.S. If you want to know how your encyclopedia requests compare to the other requested articles, you might enjoy taking a look at the stats page that I have created.
Okay, some time over this weekend (hopefully) I'm going to put together a sample by processing two pages of each encyclopedia except EB04. Assumming there are no complaints, and I wouldn't expect there to be any, then I'll go through and do the rest of those encyclopedias. Dragons flight 00:34, Jun 18, 2005 (UTC)
No. I would strongly oppose. We have to check each entry, particularly on '04, to make sure that it reflects the right article Yaka is a good example. Britannica is about an ethnic group, while the Wikipedia entry is about a minor Star Trek character. A bot will not be able to check this. I would not, however, mind if this was done on Nuttall. ( Danny didn't sign)
Encyclopedia | Entries | Active |
---|---|---|
Nuttall | 4166 | 236 |
Britannica 1911 | 9061 | 1104 |
Britannica 2004 | 17430 | 382 |
"General Encyclopedic" | 48376 | 2827 |
Total | 79033 | 4549 |
Sorry, but I am not convinced. I think we should be more careful about what we purge, lest we purge copyright violations (there are some marked in the lists), inadequate redirects, and others. It is worth the time and extra effort to do a good job. I don't believe a bot is adequate. And by the way, I have pruned the African list, and checked when I did it. Danny 05:23, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Inspired by a similar list on the Dutch wikipedia, I've created a list with articles that exist in a large(ish) number of languages, but apparently not in English. I've based this list on a database dump of the French wikipedia. There are many false hits, so I don't know yet if the list can be used to raise the quality of the English wikipedia, but at least we can add a lot of links to the French wikipedia.
I can also make this list for other wikipedias. Should I? Eugene van der Pijll 20:48, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)
It would be useful to also be able to see a listing of Wikipedia articles whose topics appear in no other encyclopaedia. Some of my work on WP has to been to rehabilitate topics dropped by the current Britannica but which are of importance to historians and biographers. How easy would that be, please? Apwoolrich 11:41, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Whee! If you have access to EB, I really can recommend looking up some articles in your field of experience and comparing them with their Wikipedia equivalents that you know are good. I've compared some of my own articles with Brittanica and found enough errors to start a new section ("Languages and linguistics") on the 'Errors in the Encyclopaedia Britannic...' page. I furthermore discovered a particularly grave error in their coverage of Qala'un Mosque, which I created last week for this project, to blue the missing link. Check this out. — mark ✎ 17:20, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Well, Nuttall has been pruned. It would be good if we had another simple project for the Todo square, along with filling in the blanks. One that I would propose is transferring all the computer viruses on the General list to the List of computer viruses page. Some have been done, some are still embedded in the lists, and some are located at the bottom of the page. How about it? And please think of other, similar projects for when we finish that. Oh, and how about those Q's in 2004. Nice work. Danny 05:16, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)
How about adding this to our goals to help Canada: Wikipedia:Canadian wikipedians' notice board/Dictionary of Canadian Biography. Danny 05:18, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I hate to create problems for people doing good work, but has there ever been any serious discussion of the copyright implications of creating lists based on the indices of copyright protected work? Dragons flight 10:27, Jun 19, 2005 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Columbia Encyclopedia article titles was deleted because of copyright concerns Wikipedia:Goings-on/February_29,_2004. Dragons flight 12:09, Jun 19, 2005 (UTC)
I really would like to see evidence of how it is okay now, given that it apparently wasn't a year ago March. In my own professional life, I have been confronted with a very similar situation and we ended up scrubbing a project because the risk of copyright liability was judged to be too high, based on arguments very similar to those raised in opposition on the mailing list and during the copyright discussion linked above. Those arguments seem right to me, and if they aren't I would like to understand why not. Or in the alternative, if the community (or perhaps the Wikimedia foundation and Jimbo specifically) have decided to accept the risk that these pages might be a copyright violation but intend to proceed anyway, then I would like to see an acknowledgment/discussion of that which comes more recently than the deletion of the Columbia article list. I would like to imagine that these lists are not simply an act of quiet opposition by people disinclined to consider the copyright implications. Dragons flight 18:15, Jun 19, 2005 (UTC)
I sent an email to WikiEN-l in regards to this topic. If you aren't on the list yourself, you can follow the discussion here: [2]. Of course anyone who wants is also free to join: [3] Dragons flight 18:48, Jun 25, 2005 (UTC)
Chill ppl - let a possible DMCA take-down notice answer the question. Until then you better get busy writing! lots of issues | leave me a message 30 June 2005 13:25 (UTC)
Nuttall is 73% complete because 73% of articles in Nuttall are in Wikipedia. EB2004 is 38% complete because 38% of articles that were missing at the start of the project have now been covered. Different measurements, but no big deal I suppose. It would interesting to know though what stage we are at in the EB project if we used the Nuttall measurement... to do this all we need to know is how many articles there are in EB2004 in total. Pcb21| Pete 10:50, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Our goal is to create articles and content, not to smudge over content. That is why we should be careful when creating (and checking) redirects to make sure that they are to the same article. They should not be smudged into something related, just for the sake of knocking another one off the list. For instance, I was checking the Battle of Rio Salado and I came across a link to Nasrid Dynasty. You will see that it redirects to the modern town of Granada, which was once the seat of the Nasrids. While the two are interrelated, they are not the same. In fact, it is a lot like having George Washington redirect to the United States or Tudor dynasty redirecting to United Kingdom. EB has articles for both, and so should we. And this is not the only example I can think of ... On a similar note, and I am guilty of this too, the literary characters in Nuttall are being redirected to their books. For instance, I redirected Uncle Toby to The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. Upon reflection, if we can have articles for every minor character in the Lord of the Rings or Star Wars, we could afford to do some major literary figures as well. Danny 18:25, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)
1) I think we need a place to dump Nuttall entries that are innappropriate for wikipedia, even for redirects. E.g. Bulls and Bears refers to Bull markets and Bear markets, no one would ever search for "Bulls and Bears" its just plain silly. there are plenty of others that i think would never be more than dic defs as well, although thats more debatable. The page would be a link from the Nuttall page such as Wikipedia:Nuttall Encyclopedia topics/innappropriate, and would need a quick description of why it is innappropriate. your thoughts....
2) How about a focus article, where we could find a page that another encyclopedia has, but Wiki has no equivalent, then work on it and hopefully bring close to featured article quality. We could have a new one every week, or 2 weeks if it moves a bit slower. I know this may mean people might spend less time making new redirects/stubs, but i think this project has no specific focus on quality at the moment, its all about quantity, so it would be a good addition.
The article would have to be;
What do you think?
Bluemoose 18:47, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)
The thing is, Nuttall sucks in terms of information. But, with a little work, you can really make something good out of its little stubs. I am proud of this one Nation of shopkeepers. When you come across something short, add to it. It can get a lot better. Danny 04:18, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Hi
I was looking through the EB page 18 to do list, and noticed Marwell Zoological Park was on there. There was already a page for Marwell Zoo so I moved the text from that one to the Park name (since that is the official name) and redirected the Marwell Zoo page.
Do I take the link off the list of missing pages now? Do I need to do anything else? Thanks MyNameIsClare talk 11:00, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)
This project is really taking off. I want to propose that this Friday (June 24) be declared Nuttall Friday. On this day, we make a concerted effort to do real damage to the Nuttall lists. Danny 02:24, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Anyone else notice that the % done for EB 1911 doesn't match in the project page and the info box? Which is correct? -- Avocado 23:42, 2005 Jun 25 (UTC)
The main goal of this project is to ensure that Wikipedia has a corresponding article for every article in every other encyclopedia available.
It is tempting to add all sorts of missing article lists to this project (e.g. music articles), but that is outside it's scope. This is about articles that other encyclopedias have and we dont. The missing music articles for example could esily have its own project. Otherwise this project will turn into an "every missing article" project, which is basically what the whole of wikipedia is, if you understand my meaning. thanks Bluemoose 10:07, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I have been working on these lists for a lot longer than most people, so I think I have a right to add my $0.02 here. The purpose of these lists, and the project in general, is to give wikipedia the most possible coverage, by ensuring that we have everything that EB, Nuttall, Grove, Encarta, Columbia, and other encyclopedias have. This includes specialist encyclopedias, like music, art, or Judaism (see below). Hell, I just order an historical dictionary of India off of E-Bay for precisely this purpose. I agree that most of our current efforts should be on 2004, however, it does not harm in the least to have the other encyclopedias listed. In fact, they will help the overall effort. I know that the General Encyclopedia, Nuttall, and EB have been helpful to each other. Why not add some more? Maybe they will attract people to the wider goals of this project--ensuring the most extensive WP coverage on all topics. Danny 02:22, 27 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Hello. As a participant in this project, you may have noticed that there a quite a few Jewish subjects in EB2004 waiting to be bluelinked. If you come across missing topics related to Jewish history, religion, culture, or biography, you may wish to consult and adapt the material from the public domain Jewish Encyclopedia when you are creating the corresponding articles for Wikipedia. Although the JE was published in 1901-6 and urgently requires updating in places, some of the historical research it contains (especially on Jewish life in the Middle Ages and the Enlightenment) cannot be found with such clarity or convenience anywhere else on the English-language internet.
To avoid duplication of effort, I would like to ask if anybody has already compiled a list of topics treated in the Jewish Encyclopedia in order to compare it with Wikipedia's coverage of Jewish subjects. Would there be an efficient way to create such a list without having to slowly copy the 15000 titles manually, only ten of which can be displayed at a time by the browse feature on the Jewish Encyclopedia website? -- Defrosted 01:34, 27 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I made Boy bishop a while ago for Nuttall, then noticed it was on 1911 and 2004! Does anyone have any way of estimating how much overlap there is between the lists? Bluemoose 28 June 2005 07:56 (UTC)
This is a valid project, but you should remember that an topic isn't more deserving of anarticle simply because it appears in another encyclopedia. Check out Wikipedia:Requested articles from time to time as well. They should all get articles too! Superm401 | Talk July 3, 2005 01:40 (UTC)
Yes, they should. Perhaps a project could be organized to help them along. One does not contradict the other. Danny 3 July 2005 23:07 (UTC)
Just a note to let you all know that Nuttall is progressing nicely. In fact, there is some overlap between the two lists, which is nice to see. Personally, I like smaller lists. Thta is why I broke up the lists alphabetically. It seems to be working too. On EB, we have already finished 3 letters and are making nice progress on a fourth, in addition to filling out the standard pages. That said, I would like to draw people's attention to Wikipedia:Nuttall Encyclopedia topics/1. Just thirteen to go out of a full page. Take a look, make a link, and enjoy. Danny 3 July 2005 23:07 (UTC)
P.S. Done!!!
I have no time to really get into this project but I had a look at various lists (I have my own list I periodically check through preview). Sometimes there is only a difference of capitalization ( Abyssal Zone in the List of Encyclopedia Topics and already existing abyssal zone, for example). Some encyclopedias use the plural form when WP often uses the singular ( Basilian Monks and Basilian monk - I already fixed that).
If I remember correctly, somebody somewhere had a script that checked the database dump and still-red links for differences in capitalization and the like and created a list of red links and possibly connected existing articles. Could that be useful? - Skysmith 5 July 2005 10:24 (UTC)
I've been one of those burning through Nuttall, but tomorrow (Jul 6) I leave on vacation to England, mostly for family-duty stuff, and Normandy/Brittany for fun. Back on Aug 1. One thing you can sort out while I'm away: having two parallel lists means that important notations and warnings have to be added twice. Is there any way of fixing that? David Brooks 6 July 2005 03:18 (UTC)
The list of K's in Nuttall has only 4 articles left, thanks to some help from the Polish Wikipedia, which added Kunowice. We can finish that easily~ Danny 9 July 2005 04:44 (UTC)
Some help would be appreciated in knocking out the rest of the A's in Nuttall. I think we can do it in less than a week. Danny 01:07, 10 July 2005 (UTC)
And we did! No more A's. Now, how about the E's? Danny 11:31, 14 July 2005 (UTC)
All 4 big nuttall pages have had focus now (and we made great progress!), I personally think we should move on to 1911 now, if only for a few weeks, as magnus added some very useful links, and it obviously has a generally great public domain source (plus it overlaps with nuttall quite a bit anyway), so I think we will storm through it. What do you think?
p.s. I am up for adminship at the moment, if you care to vote! Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/Bluemoose
Bluemoose 22:24, 18 July 2005 (UTC)
I have selected the first list from EB 2004. While we are doing quite well there informally, let's see how well we can do with a full frontal attack on the opening list. Can we reach 60 percent? 70 percent? I have also selected List 3 from Nuttall, i.e., the B's. This is the biggest list on Nuttall, with 248 articles--about 10 percent of the total remaining articles. I wonder if we should also consider adding a 1911 list too. One word of caution. I have just restored Gavin Hamilton to the list. He is a Scottish painter according to EB, not just a cricket player, as we currently have him. Last night I noted that Jean Leclerc is not just a minor television actor but also an important Belgian biblical scholar. I have encountered a few other examples of this. Please check all names before removing them from the list. Otherwise, we can lose valuable information. Better to be a little slow and more thorough than quick and miss some. Danny 10:59, 19 July 2005 (UTC)
I'm working on preparing lists of missing articles from the Hutchinson Encyclopedia (acquired here). Progress so far at User:OpenToppedBus/HutchinsonA, User:OpenToppedBus/HutchinsonB and User:OpenToppedBus/HutchinsonL. Aiming to have this ready to work on by the end of the week. OpenToppedBus - My Talk 16:18, July 25, 2005 (UTC)
We are making really good progress in the Nuttall encyclopedia. Unfortunately, however, the excitement about finishing it is leading to a few little problems. Nuttall is almost 100 years old. Its information about geographical locations is often even older. This can pose a problem, since it is tremendously out of date. For instance, when removing some of the Y's, I came across "a district in German East Africa." I am quite confident that it is not in German East Africa anymore. Please check places carefully, and do not just copy and paste Nuttall text there. It may take a bit longer, but at least we can be relatively accurate. Danny 01:22, 26 July 2005 (UTC)
Magnus has created 1911xNuttall, 1911x2004xNuttall and 1911x2004 lists. I think we should only focus on these for a bit for a number of reasons; 1) they should be easy having multiple sources; 2) 2 or 3 for the price of 1 will be good; 3) the fact they are in more than one other encyclopedia means they are probably more high profile.
I have added one as a focus, but maybe we should do all three? Bluemoose 10:20, 26 July 2005 (UTC)
It seems to me that the small lists get done really quickly, while we plod through the longer ones. Look how well we did on the various small letters in 2004 (Q, U, X, Z). With that in mind, and given how much harder it is becoming to find links, I would like to propose that we focus on smaller amounts in upcoming collaborations of the week, for instance Section 3 of 2004's page 2. With a more specified concentration, we are sure to make a larger dent in good time. So, whaddya think? Danny 01:33, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
To attempt this, I have divided page 4 into sections of 60 articles, breaking up the final section to distinguish between B articles and C articles. I then placed the focus on a particular section, 3, and removed the blue links. Only 44 left. If we finish that before Tuesday, someone can easily pick another section. Danny 11:38, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
In the spirit of the Jewish Encyclopedia project, I'm wondering if there shouldn't there be a Catholic Encyclopedia effort to include this work as part of the project. Similar to the intent of the Jewish project not every topic should included but be used as a reference for of interest Catholic topics. The original text is in the public domain but the only online version [6] is copyright. A word of warning though: because it was written to serve the Roman Catholic Church and reflect its doctrine nearly every article has a distinct POV and no article should included word for word. -- Leonsimms 19:29, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
I've just added the topic lists- arranged alphabetically to a new project page. I've also added the project to the Project Template. Any assistance is appreciated, though I'm hoping that clearning out Britannica and Encarta will clear out some of the remaining blues, but perhaps interested Catholics will work to add some info.
Leonsimms
18:57, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
I feel like a midget standing on the shoulders of giants. I have spent the last few weeks trimming blue links from the Catholic encyclopedia and it seems like that every third article has {{1911}} at the bottom of the page. The work everyone has done has been extremely impressive and thorough and I just wanted to put out my thanks. Reflex Reaction 14:30, 7 September 2005 (UTC)
Will be Eric Weisstein's online encyclopedias also included in this project? Samohyl Jan 14:02, 31 July 2005 (UTC)
The only main reason I see for this Wiki project is to outperform the other encyclopedias rather than looking for a harmonic coexistence with them. -- Abdull 21:34, 1 August 2005 (UTC)
Just a little bit of good news. 10 lists in 2004 have passed the 50% mark. While only one has passed 60 (and we haven't even concentrated on it yet), quite a few more are on the verge of hitting 50%, which means that we are halfway there! That is why, this week, I want to encourage people to check out some of the other lists too, to see if we can bring them all, or at least most of them, to this landmark figure. Danny 12:42, 2 August 2005 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Maintenance collaboration of the week is nominating for focus projects of the week, at the moment it is to wikify pages (see the Wikipedia:Community Portal). I have just nominated this project, go and vote fo it now! Martin (Bluemoose) 09:53, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
Those interested, please see User:Hoziron/List_of_entries_in_Encyclopedia_of_Modern_Jewish_Culture. I do not have access to the actual work. Based on Google searches, I have added identifying notes for the red links from A to K. -- Hoziron 03:30, August 8, 2005 (UTC)
As i am sure you all noticed, Eugene pushed 2004 past 50% yesturday, which is great, but I wonder if we will get to 100% before wikipedia gets to 1 million articles?. I think it is important for our credibility that we do, as it will be a bit of a fly in the ointment if the general media report that we have 1 million articles yet don't cover all 100,000 articles that EB do.
Wikipedia:Million pool on average seems to predict May 2006 for 1 million, these lists have been around for 5 months, another 5 months (optimistic) takes us to early 2006, so it may be possible, but I have a feeling it will be close. Martin (Bluemoose) 16:09, 12 August 2005 (UTC)
I just erased a bunch of links from one of the pages. Checking them against Britannica, I see that we really did not have links for some, and failed to include important information. Please be careful before erasing that each link is checked against the Britannica entry. It is worth taking a bit more time but doing a job well done than just erasing links. Danny 04:50, 13 August 2005 (UTC)
I have seen contributors creating half-line substubs on topics from these lists (using the Created as part of the WikiProject Missing articles edit summary), and don't see the point in that when EB 1911 actually has more information that can be used. It will just give the mistaken impression that Wikipedia has an article on the topic, leading (presumably) to the items being removed from the lists. Isn't it better to work slower in creating new articles and actually make something of each articles? Uppland 06:11, 20 August 2005 (UTC)
Just so you all know; Isaiah Bowman, Judah Leon Magnes, Pirate Perch, Society of the Sacred Heart, Ferenc Herczeg, Arthur Erdélyi, Sandor Szalay, African literature were created by User:Dubaduba and are all direct copyvios, so don't delete them from the lists. Maybe we need bigger warnings not to copy text from other sources? Martin - The non-blue non-moose 08:54, 22 August 2005 (UTC)
I'm a user from catalan wikipedia. I was lookking for some articles and i got to "more than 2 years wanted articles pages" I just got shocked! Two years and people didn't create the articles!! But then I got to this page (by maintenance tables), and I just can say CONGRATULATIONS. This is an excellent project!!!!
Can someone clarify how these lists were generated? Bluemoose?
Ok, so someone asked a question. That is harmless enough. I am more worried right now about people posting copyrighted material, or removing items from the list without checking them. Danny 00:47, 24 August 2005 (UTC)
There is an implied question here: is EB's list of encyclopedia topics copyrightable? The answer is not immediately obvious, even to someone well-versed in copyright law, but I think the prepondance of the case law indicates that such a list is indeed copyrightable. But I don't think these Wikipedia pages violate that copyright. I'll explain.
(First, as a side note, be aware that using this list to fill in holes in Wikipedia is not a violation of anything. Only publishing the list could be. So Wikipedia could hypothetically be required to delete the list itself, but the articles created because of this list would not be in jeopardy.)
In Feist Publications v. Rural Telephone Service it was decided that a mere collection of information was not copyrightable (in this case, a list of all subscibers and their phone numbers), since there was not even a modicum of creativity in assembling the list. The list included every subscriber, and no creative decisions were made in assembling the list. The debate over at Talk:FHM-US's 100 Sexiest Women 2005 seemed to reach the conclusion that FHM's list was uncopyrightable because it was determined from user surveys, and not by FHM's own decisions, and therefore had no creativity in its creation (although one lawyer at Wikipedia disagrees).
The list of articles at EB, however, is chosen by the company. It seems to me like an obviously creative decision. Is the 4th Earl of Lancaster worthy of inclusion? This is not an automatic choice, and, arguably, exceeds the minimum threshold of creativity required for copyright protection. (American Dental v. Delta Dental [7] found that a taxonomic list of dental codes is copyrightable because of the choices made in assembling the taxonomy.)
But this page is not a verbatim copy of EB's list. Not only are the entries often renamed, but many encyclopedia entries are omitted. Any claim of infringement would be vastly weakened by this fact.
However, the creator of this list might have violated copyright law in assembling the list. (Although I doubt it. I think fair use would apply.) With that in mind, if I had assembled the list, I would personally not describe how I assembled it without talking to a lawyer. – Quadell ( talk) ( sleuth) 19:16, August 26, 2005 (UTC)
Could someone explain the reasoning behind the deletion of the Encarta and Britannica projects? The only (partial) explanation I've found is on this web page. Mateo SA | talk 15:53, August 28, 2005 (UTC)
I am away at the moment, so dont have time to comment properly; while this is annoying, if it is deemed a copyvio risk, then i have no problem in the lists being removed, hopefully while we find a way around the problem. In the meantime the public domain lists are absolutly fine (i assume), good luck guys, i'll join the melee properly next thursday, thanks. Martin - The non-blue non-moose 10:03, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
Given the possible copyright violation of the following pages
As well as the deletion of two previous project pages (Encarta and Columbia)
I think that the list of topics from these pages need to be reorganized or merged into a new fashion. I am willing to do the work of creating the list, but I want to be sure that
I have several proposals.
I personally favor the first proposal. There should only be one list of "General topics" so that a link only has to be trimmed once and not from several pages. Can you imagine a General_Topics_1 X General_topics_2 cross? The problem is that I don't know the "multiple sources" that were used to create the General list and whether it was a strict redlink list or whether the list was somehow vetted before it was release. I wasn't here when the project started but I know that a lot of work was put into creating and clearing these list and I don't want to have do double work but I can't see any other way around it. Reflex Reaction 15:31, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
Hey - I'm a bit new here, so if this has already been done, then I apologise in advance. I read somewhere a note that just because an entry is listed as a "missing entry", it may still exist under a different language. I think it'd be beneficial to make another list of entries, being those that do exist, yet do not exist in English. In fact, a list of all the topics in every language could be generated automatically, and each language could have its own list (also automatically generated) which would display all of the wikipedia entries that exist only in other languages. This could also be done in another pair of automated lists, where stubs (instead of wholly missing articles) could be listed - that is, list all the non-stub articles that other languages have, that the language in question does not have a non-stub article for. When clicking on items in these lists, you might get another list, which would link to those articles which were found in other languages.
I hope that was somewhat clear - at any rate, I believe it would be a very useful list, as people who speak more than one language could also do translation work. This would open up another field of opportunity for people to contribute, and more ways of contribution are always good - perhaps some people who have not been contributing would begin to do so if this particular method of contribution were available, since perhaps they feel more comfortable in it, or would like to practise translation, etc.
On the same note, there should be a watch-list of translated articles (from one language of wikipedia to another). I'm not sure if this exists either, but it would be good to have - and if it were displayed somewhere convenient, then that would also be beneficial. For example, "edit this page" is very evident on an article. "Translate this page" should be just as evident, and perhaps even another tab at the top could be added for it.
The Wikipedia project is absolutely fantastic, in my *humble* opinion - the goals are very direct and clear. Among those goals are to provide the free equivalent of every single topic or article that can be found in commercial counterparts. I'm not sure if there's a list of goals, or if this is already one of them - but I believe another goal should not only be to provide an encyclopedia for every language, but also to have every one of those languages as complete as the rest. These automated lists could help with that.
The merged file is just about ready. This new encyclopedic list will contain entries from the following copyrighted encyclopedias:
It also contains info from a few other smaller lists as well. This master list will contain around 80,000 entries before duplicates are removed.
There also exists Wikipedia:List of encyclopedia topics, although some have debated its importance in comparison with the above. I don't know what sources were used for creating it. So the question is, should the two general encyclopedic lists be merged? (This would slow things down a bit.) Or should they stay separate? Comments are welcome. – Quadell ( talk) ( sleuth) 13:36, September 1, 2005 (UTC)
Please vote Support or Oppose for the merging of the proposed General topics list with the existing General Topics list Voting will end in 5 days. 20:30, 6 September 2005 (UTC).
Rich Farmbrough 19:48, 1 September 2005 (UTC)
This page is getting quite lengthy and finding the new discussions are becoming quite difficult. Could an experienced wikipedian with some history in the project move some of the older discussions to an archived talk page? Presuambly this very suggestion would be moved to that same page. Reflex Reaction 14:45, 7 September 2005 (UTC)
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 | Archive 3 | → | Archive 5 |
We tailored the instructions here specifically to the EB2004 project, but this project page has a broadened scope. They should be revised, but (as the original author) I hesitate to start because I think they are already somewhat too long, and by adding assistance specific to the other sources, they would become just mind-numbing. Does anyone with better organized instructional skills want to make a start at reorganizing them, maybe? David Brooks 02:58, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I noticed that Britannica uses full Russian names, complete with "father name", so in many cases a simple redirect is enough. Maybe a bot should be used to do that. It shoulkd do the following
I think this procedure would greatly reduce the numbers of missing articles. Grue 16:25, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)
WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles |
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Miscellaneous |
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I just made this template, its for the main project page, the list pages and your user pages. I think it is a great idea, because when the weekly focus page and "Todo" gets changed, it will be changed on every instance of the template, and of course it will provide much advertising, it also provides all the useful links. I put it on here first because I'm sure it can be vastly improved/tweaked. thanks Bluemoose 18:12, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I just added an instruction to this effect, but remember: don't consolidate duplicate entries in the lists (or, if you do, add a comment as I just did to /Q). They represent two articles with the same name but different topics. For WP they will need a disambig pointing to two (non-empty) content articles. David Brooks 18:26, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I have recently created the RABot to help manage requested articles pages (i.e. sort lists, remove created articles, cleanup formatting, etc.). With only minor modifciations, I could run it on all the encylcopedia pages you have here to wipeout the completed requests. Since it only operates under manual control, it never runs faster than about a minute per page (and considerably slower if I have to stop to correct mistakes), so it is not something that I am likely to do often, but occasionally going through and clearing out the encyclopedia request pages seems like a reasonable thing to do.
However, I didn't want to do so without coming here and making sure it would be okay with the community for me to clear out all the requests that have been fulfilled. Dragons flight 06:23, Jun 17, 2005 (UTC)
P.S. If you want to know how your encyclopedia requests compare to the other requested articles, you might enjoy taking a look at the stats page that I have created.
Okay, some time over this weekend (hopefully) I'm going to put together a sample by processing two pages of each encyclopedia except EB04. Assumming there are no complaints, and I wouldn't expect there to be any, then I'll go through and do the rest of those encyclopedias. Dragons flight 00:34, Jun 18, 2005 (UTC)
No. I would strongly oppose. We have to check each entry, particularly on '04, to make sure that it reflects the right article Yaka is a good example. Britannica is about an ethnic group, while the Wikipedia entry is about a minor Star Trek character. A bot will not be able to check this. I would not, however, mind if this was done on Nuttall. ( Danny didn't sign)
Encyclopedia | Entries | Active |
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Nuttall | 4166 | 236 |
Britannica 1911 | 9061 | 1104 |
Britannica 2004 | 17430 | 382 |
"General Encyclopedic" | 48376 | 2827 |
Total | 79033 | 4549 |
Sorry, but I am not convinced. I think we should be more careful about what we purge, lest we purge copyright violations (there are some marked in the lists), inadequate redirects, and others. It is worth the time and extra effort to do a good job. I don't believe a bot is adequate. And by the way, I have pruned the African list, and checked when I did it. Danny 05:23, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Inspired by a similar list on the Dutch wikipedia, I've created a list with articles that exist in a large(ish) number of languages, but apparently not in English. I've based this list on a database dump of the French wikipedia. There are many false hits, so I don't know yet if the list can be used to raise the quality of the English wikipedia, but at least we can add a lot of links to the French wikipedia.
I can also make this list for other wikipedias. Should I? Eugene van der Pijll 20:48, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)
It would be useful to also be able to see a listing of Wikipedia articles whose topics appear in no other encyclopaedia. Some of my work on WP has to been to rehabilitate topics dropped by the current Britannica but which are of importance to historians and biographers. How easy would that be, please? Apwoolrich 11:41, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Whee! If you have access to EB, I really can recommend looking up some articles in your field of experience and comparing them with their Wikipedia equivalents that you know are good. I've compared some of my own articles with Brittanica and found enough errors to start a new section ("Languages and linguistics") on the 'Errors in the Encyclopaedia Britannic...' page. I furthermore discovered a particularly grave error in their coverage of Qala'un Mosque, which I created last week for this project, to blue the missing link. Check this out. — mark ✎ 17:20, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Well, Nuttall has been pruned. It would be good if we had another simple project for the Todo square, along with filling in the blanks. One that I would propose is transferring all the computer viruses on the General list to the List of computer viruses page. Some have been done, some are still embedded in the lists, and some are located at the bottom of the page. How about it? And please think of other, similar projects for when we finish that. Oh, and how about those Q's in 2004. Nice work. Danny 05:16, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)
How about adding this to our goals to help Canada: Wikipedia:Canadian wikipedians' notice board/Dictionary of Canadian Biography. Danny 05:18, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I hate to create problems for people doing good work, but has there ever been any serious discussion of the copyright implications of creating lists based on the indices of copyright protected work? Dragons flight 10:27, Jun 19, 2005 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Columbia Encyclopedia article titles was deleted because of copyright concerns Wikipedia:Goings-on/February_29,_2004. Dragons flight 12:09, Jun 19, 2005 (UTC)
I really would like to see evidence of how it is okay now, given that it apparently wasn't a year ago March. In my own professional life, I have been confronted with a very similar situation and we ended up scrubbing a project because the risk of copyright liability was judged to be too high, based on arguments very similar to those raised in opposition on the mailing list and during the copyright discussion linked above. Those arguments seem right to me, and if they aren't I would like to understand why not. Or in the alternative, if the community (or perhaps the Wikimedia foundation and Jimbo specifically) have decided to accept the risk that these pages might be a copyright violation but intend to proceed anyway, then I would like to see an acknowledgment/discussion of that which comes more recently than the deletion of the Columbia article list. I would like to imagine that these lists are not simply an act of quiet opposition by people disinclined to consider the copyright implications. Dragons flight 18:15, Jun 19, 2005 (UTC)
I sent an email to WikiEN-l in regards to this topic. If you aren't on the list yourself, you can follow the discussion here: [2]. Of course anyone who wants is also free to join: [3] Dragons flight 18:48, Jun 25, 2005 (UTC)
Chill ppl - let a possible DMCA take-down notice answer the question. Until then you better get busy writing! lots of issues | leave me a message 30 June 2005 13:25 (UTC)
Nuttall is 73% complete because 73% of articles in Nuttall are in Wikipedia. EB2004 is 38% complete because 38% of articles that were missing at the start of the project have now been covered. Different measurements, but no big deal I suppose. It would interesting to know though what stage we are at in the EB project if we used the Nuttall measurement... to do this all we need to know is how many articles there are in EB2004 in total. Pcb21| Pete 10:50, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Our goal is to create articles and content, not to smudge over content. That is why we should be careful when creating (and checking) redirects to make sure that they are to the same article. They should not be smudged into something related, just for the sake of knocking another one off the list. For instance, I was checking the Battle of Rio Salado and I came across a link to Nasrid Dynasty. You will see that it redirects to the modern town of Granada, which was once the seat of the Nasrids. While the two are interrelated, they are not the same. In fact, it is a lot like having George Washington redirect to the United States or Tudor dynasty redirecting to United Kingdom. EB has articles for both, and so should we. And this is not the only example I can think of ... On a similar note, and I am guilty of this too, the literary characters in Nuttall are being redirected to their books. For instance, I redirected Uncle Toby to The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. Upon reflection, if we can have articles for every minor character in the Lord of the Rings or Star Wars, we could afford to do some major literary figures as well. Danny 18:25, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)
1) I think we need a place to dump Nuttall entries that are innappropriate for wikipedia, even for redirects. E.g. Bulls and Bears refers to Bull markets and Bear markets, no one would ever search for "Bulls and Bears" its just plain silly. there are plenty of others that i think would never be more than dic defs as well, although thats more debatable. The page would be a link from the Nuttall page such as Wikipedia:Nuttall Encyclopedia topics/innappropriate, and would need a quick description of why it is innappropriate. your thoughts....
2) How about a focus article, where we could find a page that another encyclopedia has, but Wiki has no equivalent, then work on it and hopefully bring close to featured article quality. We could have a new one every week, or 2 weeks if it moves a bit slower. I know this may mean people might spend less time making new redirects/stubs, but i think this project has no specific focus on quality at the moment, its all about quantity, so it would be a good addition.
The article would have to be;
What do you think?
Bluemoose 18:47, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)
The thing is, Nuttall sucks in terms of information. But, with a little work, you can really make something good out of its little stubs. I am proud of this one Nation of shopkeepers. When you come across something short, add to it. It can get a lot better. Danny 04:18, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Hi
I was looking through the EB page 18 to do list, and noticed Marwell Zoological Park was on there. There was already a page for Marwell Zoo so I moved the text from that one to the Park name (since that is the official name) and redirected the Marwell Zoo page.
Do I take the link off the list of missing pages now? Do I need to do anything else? Thanks MyNameIsClare talk 11:00, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)
This project is really taking off. I want to propose that this Friday (June 24) be declared Nuttall Friday. On this day, we make a concerted effort to do real damage to the Nuttall lists. Danny 02:24, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Anyone else notice that the % done for EB 1911 doesn't match in the project page and the info box? Which is correct? -- Avocado 23:42, 2005 Jun 25 (UTC)
The main goal of this project is to ensure that Wikipedia has a corresponding article for every article in every other encyclopedia available.
It is tempting to add all sorts of missing article lists to this project (e.g. music articles), but that is outside it's scope. This is about articles that other encyclopedias have and we dont. The missing music articles for example could esily have its own project. Otherwise this project will turn into an "every missing article" project, which is basically what the whole of wikipedia is, if you understand my meaning. thanks Bluemoose 10:07, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I have been working on these lists for a lot longer than most people, so I think I have a right to add my $0.02 here. The purpose of these lists, and the project in general, is to give wikipedia the most possible coverage, by ensuring that we have everything that EB, Nuttall, Grove, Encarta, Columbia, and other encyclopedias have. This includes specialist encyclopedias, like music, art, or Judaism (see below). Hell, I just order an historical dictionary of India off of E-Bay for precisely this purpose. I agree that most of our current efforts should be on 2004, however, it does not harm in the least to have the other encyclopedias listed. In fact, they will help the overall effort. I know that the General Encyclopedia, Nuttall, and EB have been helpful to each other. Why not add some more? Maybe they will attract people to the wider goals of this project--ensuring the most extensive WP coverage on all topics. Danny 02:22, 27 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Hello. As a participant in this project, you may have noticed that there a quite a few Jewish subjects in EB2004 waiting to be bluelinked. If you come across missing topics related to Jewish history, religion, culture, or biography, you may wish to consult and adapt the material from the public domain Jewish Encyclopedia when you are creating the corresponding articles for Wikipedia. Although the JE was published in 1901-6 and urgently requires updating in places, some of the historical research it contains (especially on Jewish life in the Middle Ages and the Enlightenment) cannot be found with such clarity or convenience anywhere else on the English-language internet.
To avoid duplication of effort, I would like to ask if anybody has already compiled a list of topics treated in the Jewish Encyclopedia in order to compare it with Wikipedia's coverage of Jewish subjects. Would there be an efficient way to create such a list without having to slowly copy the 15000 titles manually, only ten of which can be displayed at a time by the browse feature on the Jewish Encyclopedia website? -- Defrosted 01:34, 27 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I made Boy bishop a while ago for Nuttall, then noticed it was on 1911 and 2004! Does anyone have any way of estimating how much overlap there is between the lists? Bluemoose 28 June 2005 07:56 (UTC)
This is a valid project, but you should remember that an topic isn't more deserving of anarticle simply because it appears in another encyclopedia. Check out Wikipedia:Requested articles from time to time as well. They should all get articles too! Superm401 | Talk July 3, 2005 01:40 (UTC)
Yes, they should. Perhaps a project could be organized to help them along. One does not contradict the other. Danny 3 July 2005 23:07 (UTC)
Just a note to let you all know that Nuttall is progressing nicely. In fact, there is some overlap between the two lists, which is nice to see. Personally, I like smaller lists. Thta is why I broke up the lists alphabetically. It seems to be working too. On EB, we have already finished 3 letters and are making nice progress on a fourth, in addition to filling out the standard pages. That said, I would like to draw people's attention to Wikipedia:Nuttall Encyclopedia topics/1. Just thirteen to go out of a full page. Take a look, make a link, and enjoy. Danny 3 July 2005 23:07 (UTC)
P.S. Done!!!
I have no time to really get into this project but I had a look at various lists (I have my own list I periodically check through preview). Sometimes there is only a difference of capitalization ( Abyssal Zone in the List of Encyclopedia Topics and already existing abyssal zone, for example). Some encyclopedias use the plural form when WP often uses the singular ( Basilian Monks and Basilian monk - I already fixed that).
If I remember correctly, somebody somewhere had a script that checked the database dump and still-red links for differences in capitalization and the like and created a list of red links and possibly connected existing articles. Could that be useful? - Skysmith 5 July 2005 10:24 (UTC)
I've been one of those burning through Nuttall, but tomorrow (Jul 6) I leave on vacation to England, mostly for family-duty stuff, and Normandy/Brittany for fun. Back on Aug 1. One thing you can sort out while I'm away: having two parallel lists means that important notations and warnings have to be added twice. Is there any way of fixing that? David Brooks 6 July 2005 03:18 (UTC)
The list of K's in Nuttall has only 4 articles left, thanks to some help from the Polish Wikipedia, which added Kunowice. We can finish that easily~ Danny 9 July 2005 04:44 (UTC)
Some help would be appreciated in knocking out the rest of the A's in Nuttall. I think we can do it in less than a week. Danny 01:07, 10 July 2005 (UTC)
And we did! No more A's. Now, how about the E's? Danny 11:31, 14 July 2005 (UTC)
All 4 big nuttall pages have had focus now (and we made great progress!), I personally think we should move on to 1911 now, if only for a few weeks, as magnus added some very useful links, and it obviously has a generally great public domain source (plus it overlaps with nuttall quite a bit anyway), so I think we will storm through it. What do you think?
p.s. I am up for adminship at the moment, if you care to vote! Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/Bluemoose
Bluemoose 22:24, 18 July 2005 (UTC)
I have selected the first list from EB 2004. While we are doing quite well there informally, let's see how well we can do with a full frontal attack on the opening list. Can we reach 60 percent? 70 percent? I have also selected List 3 from Nuttall, i.e., the B's. This is the biggest list on Nuttall, with 248 articles--about 10 percent of the total remaining articles. I wonder if we should also consider adding a 1911 list too. One word of caution. I have just restored Gavin Hamilton to the list. He is a Scottish painter according to EB, not just a cricket player, as we currently have him. Last night I noted that Jean Leclerc is not just a minor television actor but also an important Belgian biblical scholar. I have encountered a few other examples of this. Please check all names before removing them from the list. Otherwise, we can lose valuable information. Better to be a little slow and more thorough than quick and miss some. Danny 10:59, 19 July 2005 (UTC)
I'm working on preparing lists of missing articles from the Hutchinson Encyclopedia (acquired here). Progress so far at User:OpenToppedBus/HutchinsonA, User:OpenToppedBus/HutchinsonB and User:OpenToppedBus/HutchinsonL. Aiming to have this ready to work on by the end of the week. OpenToppedBus - My Talk 16:18, July 25, 2005 (UTC)
We are making really good progress in the Nuttall encyclopedia. Unfortunately, however, the excitement about finishing it is leading to a few little problems. Nuttall is almost 100 years old. Its information about geographical locations is often even older. This can pose a problem, since it is tremendously out of date. For instance, when removing some of the Y's, I came across "a district in German East Africa." I am quite confident that it is not in German East Africa anymore. Please check places carefully, and do not just copy and paste Nuttall text there. It may take a bit longer, but at least we can be relatively accurate. Danny 01:22, 26 July 2005 (UTC)
Magnus has created 1911xNuttall, 1911x2004xNuttall and 1911x2004 lists. I think we should only focus on these for a bit for a number of reasons; 1) they should be easy having multiple sources; 2) 2 or 3 for the price of 1 will be good; 3) the fact they are in more than one other encyclopedia means they are probably more high profile.
I have added one as a focus, but maybe we should do all three? Bluemoose 10:20, 26 July 2005 (UTC)
It seems to me that the small lists get done really quickly, while we plod through the longer ones. Look how well we did on the various small letters in 2004 (Q, U, X, Z). With that in mind, and given how much harder it is becoming to find links, I would like to propose that we focus on smaller amounts in upcoming collaborations of the week, for instance Section 3 of 2004's page 2. With a more specified concentration, we are sure to make a larger dent in good time. So, whaddya think? Danny 01:33, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
To attempt this, I have divided page 4 into sections of 60 articles, breaking up the final section to distinguish between B articles and C articles. I then placed the focus on a particular section, 3, and removed the blue links. Only 44 left. If we finish that before Tuesday, someone can easily pick another section. Danny 11:38, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
In the spirit of the Jewish Encyclopedia project, I'm wondering if there shouldn't there be a Catholic Encyclopedia effort to include this work as part of the project. Similar to the intent of the Jewish project not every topic should included but be used as a reference for of interest Catholic topics. The original text is in the public domain but the only online version [6] is copyright. A word of warning though: because it was written to serve the Roman Catholic Church and reflect its doctrine nearly every article has a distinct POV and no article should included word for word. -- Leonsimms 19:29, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
I've just added the topic lists- arranged alphabetically to a new project page. I've also added the project to the Project Template. Any assistance is appreciated, though I'm hoping that clearning out Britannica and Encarta will clear out some of the remaining blues, but perhaps interested Catholics will work to add some info.
Leonsimms
18:57, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
I feel like a midget standing on the shoulders of giants. I have spent the last few weeks trimming blue links from the Catholic encyclopedia and it seems like that every third article has {{1911}} at the bottom of the page. The work everyone has done has been extremely impressive and thorough and I just wanted to put out my thanks. Reflex Reaction 14:30, 7 September 2005 (UTC)
Will be Eric Weisstein's online encyclopedias also included in this project? Samohyl Jan 14:02, 31 July 2005 (UTC)
The only main reason I see for this Wiki project is to outperform the other encyclopedias rather than looking for a harmonic coexistence with them. -- Abdull 21:34, 1 August 2005 (UTC)
Just a little bit of good news. 10 lists in 2004 have passed the 50% mark. While only one has passed 60 (and we haven't even concentrated on it yet), quite a few more are on the verge of hitting 50%, which means that we are halfway there! That is why, this week, I want to encourage people to check out some of the other lists too, to see if we can bring them all, or at least most of them, to this landmark figure. Danny 12:42, 2 August 2005 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Maintenance collaboration of the week is nominating for focus projects of the week, at the moment it is to wikify pages (see the Wikipedia:Community Portal). I have just nominated this project, go and vote fo it now! Martin (Bluemoose) 09:53, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
Those interested, please see User:Hoziron/List_of_entries_in_Encyclopedia_of_Modern_Jewish_Culture. I do not have access to the actual work. Based on Google searches, I have added identifying notes for the red links from A to K. -- Hoziron 03:30, August 8, 2005 (UTC)
As i am sure you all noticed, Eugene pushed 2004 past 50% yesturday, which is great, but I wonder if we will get to 100% before wikipedia gets to 1 million articles?. I think it is important for our credibility that we do, as it will be a bit of a fly in the ointment if the general media report that we have 1 million articles yet don't cover all 100,000 articles that EB do.
Wikipedia:Million pool on average seems to predict May 2006 for 1 million, these lists have been around for 5 months, another 5 months (optimistic) takes us to early 2006, so it may be possible, but I have a feeling it will be close. Martin (Bluemoose) 16:09, 12 August 2005 (UTC)
I just erased a bunch of links from one of the pages. Checking them against Britannica, I see that we really did not have links for some, and failed to include important information. Please be careful before erasing that each link is checked against the Britannica entry. It is worth taking a bit more time but doing a job well done than just erasing links. Danny 04:50, 13 August 2005 (UTC)
I have seen contributors creating half-line substubs on topics from these lists (using the Created as part of the WikiProject Missing articles edit summary), and don't see the point in that when EB 1911 actually has more information that can be used. It will just give the mistaken impression that Wikipedia has an article on the topic, leading (presumably) to the items being removed from the lists. Isn't it better to work slower in creating new articles and actually make something of each articles? Uppland 06:11, 20 August 2005 (UTC)
Just so you all know; Isaiah Bowman, Judah Leon Magnes, Pirate Perch, Society of the Sacred Heart, Ferenc Herczeg, Arthur Erdélyi, Sandor Szalay, African literature were created by User:Dubaduba and are all direct copyvios, so don't delete them from the lists. Maybe we need bigger warnings not to copy text from other sources? Martin - The non-blue non-moose 08:54, 22 August 2005 (UTC)
I'm a user from catalan wikipedia. I was lookking for some articles and i got to "more than 2 years wanted articles pages" I just got shocked! Two years and people didn't create the articles!! But then I got to this page (by maintenance tables), and I just can say CONGRATULATIONS. This is an excellent project!!!!
Can someone clarify how these lists were generated? Bluemoose?
Ok, so someone asked a question. That is harmless enough. I am more worried right now about people posting copyrighted material, or removing items from the list without checking them. Danny 00:47, 24 August 2005 (UTC)
There is an implied question here: is EB's list of encyclopedia topics copyrightable? The answer is not immediately obvious, even to someone well-versed in copyright law, but I think the prepondance of the case law indicates that such a list is indeed copyrightable. But I don't think these Wikipedia pages violate that copyright. I'll explain.
(First, as a side note, be aware that using this list to fill in holes in Wikipedia is not a violation of anything. Only publishing the list could be. So Wikipedia could hypothetically be required to delete the list itself, but the articles created because of this list would not be in jeopardy.)
In Feist Publications v. Rural Telephone Service it was decided that a mere collection of information was not copyrightable (in this case, a list of all subscibers and their phone numbers), since there was not even a modicum of creativity in assembling the list. The list included every subscriber, and no creative decisions were made in assembling the list. The debate over at Talk:FHM-US's 100 Sexiest Women 2005 seemed to reach the conclusion that FHM's list was uncopyrightable because it was determined from user surveys, and not by FHM's own decisions, and therefore had no creativity in its creation (although one lawyer at Wikipedia disagrees).
The list of articles at EB, however, is chosen by the company. It seems to me like an obviously creative decision. Is the 4th Earl of Lancaster worthy of inclusion? This is not an automatic choice, and, arguably, exceeds the minimum threshold of creativity required for copyright protection. (American Dental v. Delta Dental [7] found that a taxonomic list of dental codes is copyrightable because of the choices made in assembling the taxonomy.)
But this page is not a verbatim copy of EB's list. Not only are the entries often renamed, but many encyclopedia entries are omitted. Any claim of infringement would be vastly weakened by this fact.
However, the creator of this list might have violated copyright law in assembling the list. (Although I doubt it. I think fair use would apply.) With that in mind, if I had assembled the list, I would personally not describe how I assembled it without talking to a lawyer. – Quadell ( talk) ( sleuth) 19:16, August 26, 2005 (UTC)
Could someone explain the reasoning behind the deletion of the Encarta and Britannica projects? The only (partial) explanation I've found is on this web page. Mateo SA | talk 15:53, August 28, 2005 (UTC)
I am away at the moment, so dont have time to comment properly; while this is annoying, if it is deemed a copyvio risk, then i have no problem in the lists being removed, hopefully while we find a way around the problem. In the meantime the public domain lists are absolutly fine (i assume), good luck guys, i'll join the melee properly next thursday, thanks. Martin - The non-blue non-moose 10:03, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
Given the possible copyright violation of the following pages
As well as the deletion of two previous project pages (Encarta and Columbia)
I think that the list of topics from these pages need to be reorganized or merged into a new fashion. I am willing to do the work of creating the list, but I want to be sure that
I have several proposals.
I personally favor the first proposal. There should only be one list of "General topics" so that a link only has to be trimmed once and not from several pages. Can you imagine a General_Topics_1 X General_topics_2 cross? The problem is that I don't know the "multiple sources" that were used to create the General list and whether it was a strict redlink list or whether the list was somehow vetted before it was release. I wasn't here when the project started but I know that a lot of work was put into creating and clearing these list and I don't want to have do double work but I can't see any other way around it. Reflex Reaction 15:31, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
Hey - I'm a bit new here, so if this has already been done, then I apologise in advance. I read somewhere a note that just because an entry is listed as a "missing entry", it may still exist under a different language. I think it'd be beneficial to make another list of entries, being those that do exist, yet do not exist in English. In fact, a list of all the topics in every language could be generated automatically, and each language could have its own list (also automatically generated) which would display all of the wikipedia entries that exist only in other languages. This could also be done in another pair of automated lists, where stubs (instead of wholly missing articles) could be listed - that is, list all the non-stub articles that other languages have, that the language in question does not have a non-stub article for. When clicking on items in these lists, you might get another list, which would link to those articles which were found in other languages.
I hope that was somewhat clear - at any rate, I believe it would be a very useful list, as people who speak more than one language could also do translation work. This would open up another field of opportunity for people to contribute, and more ways of contribution are always good - perhaps some people who have not been contributing would begin to do so if this particular method of contribution were available, since perhaps they feel more comfortable in it, or would like to practise translation, etc.
On the same note, there should be a watch-list of translated articles (from one language of wikipedia to another). I'm not sure if this exists either, but it would be good to have - and if it were displayed somewhere convenient, then that would also be beneficial. For example, "edit this page" is very evident on an article. "Translate this page" should be just as evident, and perhaps even another tab at the top could be added for it.
The Wikipedia project is absolutely fantastic, in my *humble* opinion - the goals are very direct and clear. Among those goals are to provide the free equivalent of every single topic or article that can be found in commercial counterparts. I'm not sure if there's a list of goals, or if this is already one of them - but I believe another goal should not only be to provide an encyclopedia for every language, but also to have every one of those languages as complete as the rest. These automated lists could help with that.
The merged file is just about ready. This new encyclopedic list will contain entries from the following copyrighted encyclopedias:
It also contains info from a few other smaller lists as well. This master list will contain around 80,000 entries before duplicates are removed.
There also exists Wikipedia:List of encyclopedia topics, although some have debated its importance in comparison with the above. I don't know what sources were used for creating it. So the question is, should the two general encyclopedic lists be merged? (This would slow things down a bit.) Or should they stay separate? Comments are welcome. – Quadell ( talk) ( sleuth) 13:36, September 1, 2005 (UTC)
Please vote Support or Oppose for the merging of the proposed General topics list with the existing General Topics list Voting will end in 5 days. 20:30, 6 September 2005 (UTC).
Rich Farmbrough 19:48, 1 September 2005 (UTC)
This page is getting quite lengthy and finding the new discussions are becoming quite difficult. Could an experienced wikipedian with some history in the project move some of the older discussions to an archived talk page? Presuambly this very suggestion would be moved to that same page. Reflex Reaction 14:45, 7 September 2005 (UTC)