Wikipedia talk:Version 0.5

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Why this version?

I think it is better to make a good quality of Wikipedia in general. Wikipedia is always online, so why is this version needed? I have discussed about it with a friend of mine User: Radiant!. I think that Wikipedia need to be better organized. Maybe it is possible to create organizations within Wikipedia with a hierarchy, appointed tasks and deadlines, so editing will be teamwork instead of a chaotic free walhalla for editors.--Daanschr 07:59, 10 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Most of the people on Earth doesn't use internet. Wikipedia (in my opinion) is not just an online encyclopedia, but an encyclopedia. We have to reach people, we need a version that everybody can read, and they will see, we are much better than other encyclopedias. That's why we work on it now. NCurse_work 09:26, 10 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Most of the people that doesn't have internet, doesn't have a computer either. So, where should they put the cd?--Daanschr 10:59, 10 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There are no on-line costs using a CD disk in the cd drive. The wiki cd is potientally useful and free for many people who have a computer but who do not have an internet connection or who have got a slow pay-as-you-go internet connection. The wiki licience permits the cd disk to be copied and shared. Snowman 11:27, 10 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

timeline?

Hi fellow editors

I'm new to this project, so please forgive my ignorance. Is there a timeline for the stages of the project? Will there be an opportunity for final perusal and judgement of the candidate articles for the trial CD?

Tony 09:21, 10 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

First we create a Version 0.5, where we will see our fault, the complicated parts of the projects. Then we switch to Version 1.0. In these two stages, an article will be reviewed at least 3 times. And then, we can end up with the CD. Briefly, we work like that. :) Welcome in the team, and good work. We need contributors, so ask any time. :) NCurse_work 09:28, 10 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Software for CD version (0.5, 1.0)

I see the job as too big to be done via hand selection. I am also more interested in coverage than quality - I figure the quality will just get better. So, I want automated methods, both for selecting good coverage, and (less important at the moment) version selection. I also would like to target a size - 128Meg, 512Meg, 600Meg, 1Gig, 4Gig. I am also interested in post-processing - stripping redlinks, including main article references on core articles, like History of South Africa etc. I want to be able to tweak parameters, then press a button and get a new CD (from my downloaded XML dump of en and a picture collection, and possibly via a live mediawiki snapshot of that content).

This is what I have tried, mostly with available tools, and a bit of perl.

Download recent XML dump.
Download list of articles from category (currently using the WPCD template)
Trim the full dump to the above article list (natively performed by mwdumper --exactlist)
Import this to mysql
import (full) category dump to mysql (sql dump downloaded from wikipedia)
Use mediawiki/maintenance/dumpHTML.php to convert this to HTML
perl script removes categories with less than four included items from HTML dump
redlink removal by un-anchoring HTML with class=new (red links) - but not Categories (that always seem to appear red)

Problems I have come across:-

templates (particularly {{main|History of Country}} and the like) do not make it through dumpHTML.php. Maybe I have to hack the php.
Remove all the dross at the end, like inter-wiki links.

Could this be done by tweaking the CSS from dumpHTML ?

Any other ideas ? Wizzy…☎ 14:16, 13 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think the approach here could be explained as relying on hand selection by the whole Wikipedia community. We at WP:WVWP are just starting to contact the WikiProjects one by one, soliciting nominations. I think that way we will dig up a lot of articles that we might otherwise miss, while also giving ownership of this project to the whole of the community (important IMHO!). In the long term this will be very valuable for expert peer review of every article - indeed with help from the bot we already have several thousand articles that have been assessed by subject experts. I agree that our approach will leave a lot of holes in our coverage for V0.5, I suspect mainly in Arts, Humanities and Business, and we will need to allow in some weaker articles for the sake of completeness (as with Saturn, proton, etc.).

I hope that work on the SOS CD will continue in parallel with this, and we can share article lists as we proceed. I hope we will be releasing two CDs this autumn, one (V0.5) for adults, and for older children an expanded version of the SOS CD as planned at Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Test Version. Regarding size, User:BozMo said that 5000 articles would probably fit on one CD using the same software as before, so I am taking that to be a target size for Version 0.5 also - though I don't expect us to reach that. Since this really is a test of a whole new approach to working as well as the technicalities, I don't mind if we "only" get 2000 or even just 1000. If the system works well, is scalable and is growing, then we have a viable way of producing static versions of Wikipedia. Regarding the more technical aspects of producing the CD, I'll have to let some others comment, those who understand such things! I'm really glad there are some people out there like you who do know how to do this! Thanks a lot, Walkerma 17:09, 13 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Unbalanced sections

As a result of the overly-large "social sciences and society" section, relative to the other over-sections, the current list looks poorly-organized and unbalanced. Could I, perhaps, take a shot at a stylistic restructuring? -Silence 17:53, 18 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I won't block your way. :) Just do as you wish, and we will see at the end. NCurse_work 19:23, 18 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Nice work, but one question, should war and military go under history instead? Thanks Jaranda ^{wat's sup} 19:48, 18 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Only if "politics and government" also goes under history. All wars are historical only insomuch as all politics and movements and such are; there are articles for ongoing wars, still-existing milarities, modern weapons, and universal battle stategies. "History" is terribly generic, making it largely useless for actually finding a specific article; it should therefore be avoided as much as possible, whenever there's another section it could conceivably go under: if something could go under either "physics" or "history" (like Einstein's annus mirabilis), put it under "astronomy"; if something could go under either "war" or "history", put it under "war"; etc. Also, war is very much a social/societal activity, and has a strong relationship to politics/government (to the extent that our article on humans currently has "war" as a subsection of "politics and government"); so it just goes very well under the "Society" heading. -Silence 20:03, 18 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Great! Detailed list. It'll be easy to work with it. Thanks. NCurse_work 19:56, 18 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I was meaning to bring this up before - I'd like to see television and films moved from Socsci into Arts. In the Work via Wikiprojects group we list these under arts (largely because that is how the WikiProjects classify themselves), I think that's a better place. We may want to include something for journalism and the like under Socsci, but something like Casablanca (film) belongs under Arts IMHO.

Another thing (mentioned by Silence), I find it very hard to categorise some articles on historical political figures. To judge from nomination positions, others are confused too. Should FD Roosevelt go under History or Politics? What about William of Orange, or Justinian the Great? Is Napoleon military, political or history? If Silence could suggest some clearcut guidelines, I'd be grateful. I think something like World War II belongs under "War" but for Adolf Hitler it's harder to decide. One more radical solution is to consider double counting - e.g., put Roosevelt under BOTH History and Politics. The bot shouldn't double count them I don't think, so I don't think it's a problem, though I'm not sure if the template could handle 2 cats at once!

One thing - all V0.5 articles are currently tagged with their category (we're not using that yet, but we will as the project gets bigger). If Star Wars etc. gets moved from Socsci to Arts, then the template at Talk:Star Wars etc. needs to be changed to make it correspond. The categories are all listed nicely at {{V0.5}}.

You may or not be aware of how we chose the ten categories - they were discussed at great length (several archives full!) at core topics talk before we put things to a vote here. I'd like to keep the ten categories, but I'd love to see you reorganise things within the ten.

Overall, I'd say go ahead, this revamp is needed. Walkerma 03:31, 19 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

"If Silence could suggest some clearcut guidelines, I'd be grateful." - In general, because "history" is such a broad (and therefore unhelpful) categorization, and because just about every article on Wikipedia has some historical aspect to it, I'd recommend that whenever an article would go equally well under "history" and under another category, we should put it under the other category. Ideally, the "history" section would actually be completely empty, though in practice that's probably impossible because there are some pages that don't fit neatly anywhere else. -Silence 01:16, 21 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Food for thought: It could be good to put all the biographies in one section. Maurreen 02:56, 21 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What do you mean? Aren't there too many? If a section's too long, it could be hard to navigate. (If we're considering reorganizing the "biographies" section, though, I could, on the other hand, see an argument made for moving all the people to non-people-specific sections, e.g., all the philosophers to "Philosophy". I'm not sure it's necessary, but it would be consistent with what we've already done for the major religious figures, like Jesus. *shrug*) -Silence 03:04, 21 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Having tried the new layout for this page, I think I prefer the original layout for the sections. We had about 100 kB (many hours of typing!) of discussion here, here, here, here and here, before we agreed (by unanimous vote) here on the ten-category system, and it is (therefore) the default throughout the Wikipedia 1.0 project. It is the system we use on the nominations page, and also for the categories generated by the template. On a more practical level, I also find it hard to find things in the new page. I think the "imbalance" is not really much of an issue in practice because the no. of articles is not unbalanced in the same way, and as I mentioned we can probably put films and TV under Arts rather than Socsci. Do people mind if I revert the categories back? Walkerma 04:44, 24 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If you find it difficult to navigate the new organization, the WP:GA organization method is vastly superior to the "half-and-half" method we had before I redid the listings. I have no strong opinion as to whether we should use "overcategories" or just leave everything at the same order of hierarchy in a simple alphabetized list, but going halfway just leads to inconsistency and makes the list a heck of a lot harder to navigate for users who are new to the listing—and those users are the ones who will most need the layout to be tailored to them, since they, unlike older users, won't be accustomed to however the page is laid out. -Silence 05:00, 27 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I don't mind, this format is ok but I do agree with Walkerma that it's hard to find things. Thanks Jaranda ^{wat's sup} 04:13, 27 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Can you explain what you mean by "half-and-half"? Are you referring to alphabetising things? We copied most of the setup from WP:GA, and we tried to match the GA listings as best we could to the ten WP:1.0 categories. Thanks, Walkerma 07:06, 27 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Organization problems

The Art & Architecture outline now apparently includes the complete outline for the page.
Also, I'd like to suggest that the "Music" section be changed to "Performing Arts", but it's not clear to me how to change it. Maurreen 13:16, 21 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I changed music to Performing Arts. NCurse_work 18:36, 21 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. Maurreen 02:46, 22 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm unconvinced that "Music -> Performing arts" is a smart move. Film is both mass media and performing arts, so under the new scheme, where would it go? -Silence 02:53, 22 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I could go either way with Film, but GA puts it in Mass Media.

I don't see why Music should have a higher-level category than Film, Theater or Dance. Maurreen 03:14, 22 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

GA's opinion doesn't matter one bit in this issue, because GA doesn't have a "performing arts" section: there's no way of knowing what it would have put under it if it did. "Performing arts" is an extremely broad category, encompassing dance, theatre, television, radio, film, music, and numerous other disciplines; its current implementation seems to be both hasty and inconsistent. Until you've decided what, exactly, goes under it (it was implemented without even bothering to add theatre, or anything else, to it in addition to "music", thus making it merely misleading and confusing for anyone who sees the music notes and etc.), I strongly recommend keeping the listing at "Music". Practicality is more important than silly worrying about whether music "deserves" a higher-level placement than film or theatre or dance (and, incidentally, it does!, at least for film and dance); our categorization is a matter of usefulness, not objective importance. -Silence 03:22, 22 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It looks like you and I operate from different approaches. I recommend agreeing to disagree.

As far as what is confusing, please see the section under "Art and Architecture", which lists all of the following:

"Contents [hide]

1 1.1 Architecture 1.2 Art 1.3 Artists 1.4 Museums and galleries 2 2.1 Food 2.2 Drink 3 3.1 Alphabets and transliteration 3.2 Languages 3.3 Linguistics 4 4.1 Literature 4.2 Writers and critics 5 5.1 Actors, models and celebrities 5.2 Cinema 5.3 Fictional characters 5.4 Film 5.5 Journalism 5.6 Television 6 6.1 By nation, people, region or country 6.2 Genres, styles and eras 6.3 Instruments 6.4 Music festivals 6.5 Performers and composers 6.6 Recordings and compositions 7 7.1 Philosophers 7.2 Philosophical thought and movements 8 8.1 Sport and game people 8.2 Computer and video games 8.3 Games 8.4 Festivities 8.5 Sports 8.6 Sports teams 9 9.1 Divinities 9.2 Myths 9.3 Religious disputes 9.4 Religious figures and leaders 9.5 Religious movements, traditions and organizations 9.6 Religous texts 10 10.1 Continents 10.2 Countries 10.3 Geographers and explorers 10.4 Geography 10.5 Parks, conservation areas, and historical sites 10.6 Places 11 11.1 Geology and geophysics 11.2 Mineralogy 12 12.1 Archaeology 12.2 Historians, chroniclers and history books 12.3 Historical figures 12.4 Africa 12.5 Americas 12.6 Asia and Oceania 12.7 Europe 12.8 World history 13 13.1 Atmospheric scientists 13.2 Climatology 13.3 Meteorology 13.4 Tropical cyclones 14 14.1 Biologists and medical scientists 14.2 Biology 14.3 Evolution and reproduction 14.4 Health and medicine 14.5 Organisms 15 15.1 Chemicals 15.2 Chemists 15.3 Chemistry 15.4 Materials science 16 16.1 Cryptography 16.2 Hardware and infrastructure 16.3 Programming 16.4 Software 16.5 Websites and the Internet 17 17.1 Engineering 17.2 Engineers and inventors 18 18.1 Mathematicians 18.2 Mathematics 19 19.1 Astronomers and physicists 19.2 Astronomy 19.3 Physics 19.4 Planets 20 20.1 Air transport 20.2 Bridges and tunnels 20.3 Maritime transport 20.4 Railroad transport 20.5 Road transport 21 21.1 Military decorations 22 22.1 Business 22.2 Businesspeople 22.3 Economics 23 23.1 Education 23.2 Educational institutions 24 24.1 Crime, criminals and punishment 24.2 Law 24.3 Lawyers, judges and legal academics 25 25.1 Politically significant people 25.2 Politics and government 26 26.1 Psychologists 26.2 Psychology 27 27.1 Heraldry 27.2 Royalty and nobility 28 28.1 Peoples 28.2 Social phenomena, movements and subcultures 28.3 Social scientists 29 29.1 Armies and military units 29.2 Biographies of military people 29.3 Conflicts, battles and military exercises 29.4 Legal issues and treaties 29.5 Military camps, tribunals and facilities 29.6 Military history 29.7 Weapons and military equipment 30 Related articles "

I don't know how that happened. But the format is confusing to me. So, if someone else knew how, it could be practical to fix that. Thanks. Maurreen 16:41, 22 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Tito, thanks for fixing that. Maurreen 11:26, 24 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Suggestions

There are over 1.2 million articles on Wikipedia, so it shouldn't be too tough to find a few to pick out and turn into good/featured articles...yet I can't quite find "just the right one." Any suggestions? I'm especially looking for things with lots of published resources that have a short/nonexistent WP article. Please leave some suggestions on my talk page...thanks! Paul 17:12, 21 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The front page states "There is also an alternative listing and statistics table updated automatically from the talk page templates by Mathbot at around 3:30am every morning.". 3:30 am what? If whoever wrote it could give a time zone it would clarify for the rest of wikipedia--Tmchk 01:51, 23 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I added a mention that it is UTC, also often seen in signatures on Wikipedia. Thanks, Walkerma 02:59, 23 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The Holocaust copyright problems

This article is listed on the project page under the History section. The images in the article have incorrect copyright tags, some claim the autor died over 100 years age, some use obsolete PD tags and other claim fair use with out rationale. I have left a message on the article talk page advising that this issue exists, it needs to be addressed or lose GA status. Gnangarra 15:50, 22 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you! We will be reviewing copyright when we go to press, but it's helpful to know of these problems in advance! I've added a comment to our table. Thanks, Walkerma 02:56, 23 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Publishing

I passed Publishing, but I'm not sure I did the template right. Maurreen 15:16, 27 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Now fixed. The class=B was right, but for the category you must use one of the ten "tree top" categories we voted on, see {{V0.5}} for a list of them and their abbreviations. Thanks for helping with reviews, Walkerma 16:34, 27 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Disputes page

What happened with the disputes page that was going to be created? Someone passed Ethanol, which admittedly had been assessed as {{A-Class}} by WikiProject Chemistry, but it had several problems with wikification, a few severe problems with wikimarkup (some of which I've fixed already), and several "citation needed" templates sprinkled all over it. I would have failed it on quality, and encouraged a new submission after problems were fixed, but I was "beaten to the punch" in a way. What do we do about these cases? Tito xd^(?!?) 03:29, 2 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Consider it an inevitable part of having a test release and ignore it for the time being? Relatively minor problems shouldn't really be an issue; if we could afford to reject articles based on them, we could have just restricted the field of candidates to FAs. Kirill Lokshin 03:33, 2 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There are some I would have passed that others failed - and vice versa - this is to be expected with a single review system. I suggest we leave things as they are for now, and once nominations have closed (less than two months now!) we can discuss any anomalous choices. If an article is classed by a WikiProject as A-Class it should usually be fine (though it was assessed as A about a year ago, I think). Being "alcohol" this article probably attracts a lot of vandalism, but that also makes it high on importance. As an organic chemist myself I'll try and fix it. But yes, it is a test release and it will have flaws in it, and I think BozMo's script takes out unused wikilinks and CitationNeededs anyway.

Regarding a disputes page, I think we should have one, though we haven't had a lot of need for it (thankfully). We will definitely need one for Version 1.0. If someone would like to create one and to monitor it, that would be great (and also to set up a page for Chuck's idea on getting two opinions). From my perspective it's yet another job to be done and another page to be moderated, and I personally can't handle any more committments. A much bigger priority for me is getting us up to 500 articles approved by July 31st, because right now (IMHO) lack of coverage is a much bigger problem than article quality. As for Kirill's point, I go regularly to WP:FA, WP:GA, WP:VA or WP:CORE and try to nominate a few more, I would encourage others to do the same. There are still many important-topic FAs that haven't even been nominated. Cheers, Walkerma 04:47, 2 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

?

Pardon my naivete, but what exactly is V0.5?--Josh Rocchio 19:53, 5 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

We would like to publish Wikipedia's best articles. To create a CD or DVD with our best works. Now we're making a Version 0.5 where we can find out our faults, the hardest parts of the nomination procedures in order to get ready for Version 1.0 which could be released on CD. Let's join! :) NCurse_work 20:16, 5 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ahhh, publish where, exactly? Thanks for the quick reply!--Josh Rocchio 21:01, 5 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe on CD. But our goal is to creat a stable version of the best works. It is not defined exactly, where to publish. NCurse_work 21:24, 5 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Finding a publisher for V0.5 won't be hard, it will just be a single CD containing the most important quality articles on Wikipedia. The Germans found that their DVD release went straight to #1 last year on amazon.de, so I think publishers will be glad to work with us! A test CD has already been released in English by a kids' charity, and they are advising us here. As for the longer term, a new Static content subcommittee is being assembled at Meta right now, in order to help organise these things across different language groups. Walkerma 05:20, 6 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I was going to ask exactly the same question as Josh Rocchio... Maybe this question should be answered in this article? :) --ZeroOne 01:27, 11 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

About the purpose -- some of are interested in the most important articles, not just the best articles. Maurreen 02:30, 11 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Kerala and Krakatoa in Europe?

Why are Kerala and Krakatoa listed under Europe? They are both in Asia. --Ideogram 06:02, 19 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

A bit of continental drift perhaps? Now fixed, thanks, Walkerma 06:41, 19 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

"Miscellaneous" category

We have a miscellaneous category on the talk page. I passed the article Space exploration, and I couldn't find a place to put it. I put it under engineering. Should there be a separate miscellaneous section?

The misc section on nominations is mainly needed because many people nominating will not be familiar with the layout - but the people assigning sections at V0.5 are reviewers who are more familiar with things. I think you made the right choice for now, but at some point we should probably create an appropriate section for space-related articles like that. One trick - if it's a GA, see where it is located there. Since we stole our layout from them, you should be able to put it in the same place! Thanks, Walkerma 03:50, 20 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

How many days left?

I'm just curious. Maybe we should close recent nominations first before nominate new ones. NCurse_work 17:40, 20 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Warning on statistics!

I noticed that an error in the template {{0.5 set nom}} was causing the bot to consider each set nominee to be already passed. This has inflated our statistics temporarily. I think I have fixed the problem, but that means our numbers may be down temporarily. However, once we start passing some of these the numbers will bounce back - there are over 50 articles listed in the European Countries listing. Please try to nominate and review at the V0.5 Set Nominations page to help this process along - the Euro countries have been up for two days with no comments from our review team so far! I am considering the Continents passed. Walkerma 03:31, 21 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Disputes page again

Well, I would quite like to dispute the quality of an article which has already been selected, The Giver, if I could figger out where and how. It's a FA, but I've just put it on WP:FAR for review.[1] Bishonen | talk 18:30, 23 July 2006 (UTC).[reply]

Thanks. We will have a look at it after the FAR. We refresh FA articles in Wikipedia:Version 0.5 FA Review, so we will see it at the end of version 0.5. NCurse_work 18:39, 23 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Mmm, why not let the FAR run its course first, rather than spreading discussion on the article's qualities (or lack thereof) over multiple pages? Kirill Lokshin 18:38, 23 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Since this idea keeps coming up, is anyone opposed to having a page for disputes? Maurreen 19:26, 23 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, Kirill Lokshin, I wasn't trying to spread the discussion, that's why I didn't mention what problems I see with The Giver. Bringing it here after the FAR is what I had in mind. It does seem like it would be convenient to have a disputes page for things like that. Meanwhile, perhaps people who frequent this page here might like to join in over at FAR, since the article is one of "yours"? Bishonen | talk 20:17, 23 July 2006 (UTC).[reply]

A disputes page is much needed, can someone set one up? I'm pretty busy right now, and I also still need to set up the Core Topics review page I promised? Thanks, Walkerma 04:40, 24 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Done. Please see Wikipedia:Version 0.5/Disputes. Maurreen 06:40, 24 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! Hopefully we won't need it too much... Walkerma 15:54, 24 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Don't say that! I started to use it with 3 articles. :) NCurse_work 16:09, 24 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Template

The template also adds articles to BozMo's CD, Category:Wikipedia CD Selection. Could someone better at templates than I am change the template so that it makes the same categories as 0.5 for Category:Wikipedia CD Selection? Thanks. Maurreen 17:57, 25 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Realignment period

Following on from discussions here, I would like to propose a realignment period during September (and October if consensus is that we need it). Here are some of the points, mostly copied from before: Walkerma 04:59, 2 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Copied from earlier discussion, new material in italics

My original goal for the project was around 2000 articles, but that began to look unlikely, and I envisaged 1000 articles as a minimum. My secret goal for V0.5 as of July 1 was for us to reach 500 articles by month's end, and we instead made 600! Thanks to all who have helped with that! Things had slowed down, but the new FA review page has really helped people speed up the process. I think the 1000 articles is attainable, especially bearing in mind that we will keep reviewing after nominations close.

However, the new system has one down side - most articles are passing on quality rather than importance. Thus we have an article on Ann Arbor, Michigan - a notable place, but surely much less notable than many US cities we don't have such as Philadelphia, (B-Class). If we simply carry on our current track we will be quite productive, but our test release will be quite unbalanced. That isn't a disaster - we can point out that it is a test release - but I would like also to test out systems for achieving balance. Some of those systems are already in place - the new Core Topics Review page, for example, where we can assume importance is OK and we only need review for quality (in effect the reverse of the FA page). Another thing we can all do is to nominate more of the important topics - particularly sets of important topics (like capital cities in Asia, or the 30 most important chemical elements). I would like us to consider having a realignment period after August 31st, where we would focus on the question, "What still needs to be in V0.5?" We can perhaps set up a list - sort of "Vital articles plus" and work through that list. We aim to edit/review that by September 30th, or later if it looks really long. Meanwhile we can leave the general nominations page open - we don't have a torrent of nominations! Once that realignment list is all checked off, we go to press. Thoughts? Ideas? Walkerma 16:34, 27 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I agree overall. I have been concerned about the balance of 0.5. On later releases, or editions, I would suggest using importance as the primary factor, or baseline list to work from, over quality. Maurreen 16:56, 27 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

End of copied section

What do people think about this issue? Should we close nominations after August 31, as originally proposed, or keep things open? Do people have any ideas for helping us achieve more balance- VA reviews, lists of top-importance topics from top-level WikiProjects? Thanks, Walkerma 04:59, 2 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There a few ways this could be done. I'm ruminating on more of a reply, but I think a large factor is how much time you want to give it, which could help decide other things. I'm guesstimating maybe 400 articles were approved in one month and 200 the second month, so it might be able to continue at the pace of 200 per month. Maurreen 05:11, 2 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Numbers are as follows: Began on May 25. We had 75 by Jun 1st, then another 208 added by Jul 1st and a further 334 added by Aug 1st. Qualitatively that's an initial flurry, then a slowdown, then a clear pickup in speed. If you (Maurreen) & I were to look over just the countries, that would add a lot to the total. The same would apply to the Core Topics, which have assessments to hand to make the job even easier. Personally I don't want the project to drag on past the autumn, as long as we have the countries and core topics as a bare minimum of balance. Walkerma 05:25, 2 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I would lean toward closing the general nominations the sooner the better, but with at least a week's notice. I'm not sure I (Maurreen) am up to giving half the countries a quality review. We might not need all the core topics. See the next section, list below.

Also, we might consider supra sections -- roughly speaking, a microcyclopedia that is balanced, plus a showcase (the stuff that is not balanced). Maurreen 09:21, 2 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

For the sake of efficiency and balance, we could handle coutries essentially similarly to how FAs are now being handled. That is, include them unless decided otherwise. Maurreen 16:00, 2 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]