Disputatio Usoris:Amahoney/1000 Paginae epitome

A most useful page!

Macte, amica! This is a most useful page. I hadn't noticed it until now. Are the numbers up-do-date? IacobusAmor 20:13, 28 Decembris 2011 (UTC)

Yes -- in fact as I just updated it, they are correct as of about an hour ago. The comparison to the average of other pages comes from the list in Meta so those averages are from the start of the month, but information about our pages is completely current. Glad you like it! A. Mahoney 20:16, 28 Decembris 2011 (UTC)

Now that I've gotten Vicipaedia's (meager) selection of beetles & butterflies more or less squared away, textwise & categorywise, maybe in the remaining moments of 2011 I can work a little on the bottom of the list (as defined in both the pertinent columns). Any additions there will raise the mean, which in Vicipaedia is much lower than for most wikis closely surrounding it in the 1000-page standings. Praeterea: it would be helpful to know the median, which we can raise merely by boosting the size of the pages immediately beneath it. (Boosting the size of pages near the bottom won't affect the median.) IacobusAmor 20:29, 28 Decembris 2011 (UTC)

The simplest way to get that would be to put a count column: then the median is between the sizes of numbers 500 and 501! And we could see quartiles and so on as well if we cared. (At the moment I believe the median is 3509, as you've probably already counted out for yourself.) It might also be worth totalling up pages in the various categories and counting the score. Those are going on my list for the next programming session; I'm also still accounting for all the various ways we can refer to illustrations (which is why some pages say "non habet" even though they do have pictures -- much of that got fixed today, but it's not done yet). I note that our median is not much lower than that of nearby wikis, and we're the only one in our size range to have all the articles -- so there are some measures on which we're doing OK. A. Mahoney 20:41, 28 Decembris 2011 (UTC)

Yes, the median is in the ballpark, but the mean is 6,416, as opposed to 9,244, 8,551, and 9,396 immediately above and 7,546, 7,569, and 9,286 immediately below. Raising the mean isn't easy, since the addition of 1000 characters nudges the average upward by just 1 notch. IacobusAmor 21:12, 28 Decembris 2011 (UTC)

If you want (relatively?) easy points, by the way, see if you can find 3,000 characters to put into Religio Islamica, which has been close to the edge for months now. A. Mahoney 20:41, 28 Decembris 2011 (UTC)

In October of 2010, I raised Religio Islamica from 5,814 to 27,798, but then got sidetracked. :/ IacobusAmor 21:12, 28 Decembris 2011 (UTC)

I intend to build up Liber in the next couple of weeks. This is another one that's close to the target. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 20:59, 28 Decembris 2011 (UTC)

And I'm working on Feles today, hoping to get it over the edge. A. Mahoney 15:42, 30 Decembris 2011 (UTC)

Now that the January figures are available, is there a chance you could run the program again? IacobusAmor 22:17, 7 Ianuarii 2012 (UTC)

Not from home, but when I'm next in the office I will; that will be in the next week or so, or at the latest when our semester starts late next week. A. Mahoney 19:28, 10 Ianuarii 2012 (UTC)

I've added mean, median, and counts. I see Liber and Bellum Indosinense II have grown to the 30K level already this month, and Oceanus has come all the way from 1091 to 23,290: this is nifty! I'm tackling Sophocles next, myself. A. Mahoney 15:43, 13 Ianuarii 2012 (UTC)

I call dibs on the oceans (several of which are among the 1000 pages), but as the semester is about to begin, my free time is about to diminish for a while. :( IacobusAmor 15:49, 13 Ianuarii 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, me too; my semester starts Thursday. But the good news is I've got a Latin class that I'll turn loose on Vicipaedia. :-) A. Mahoney 15:53, 13 Ianuarii 2012 (UTC)

Caveat computator

It should be noted that these numbers are not exactly the same as the ones calculated by Meta, but are sometimes a little bit bigger, less often a bit smaller. For example, Meta has Cultura at 148,837 but I calculate 153,156. Meta has Asia at 3664 but I get 3661. I'm not sure why since I'm using the same algorithm as the posted source code. In any case, the averages and the sizes of individual pages in this table should be taken as approximate. A. Mahoney 15:53, 13 Ianuarii 2012 (UTC)

Magnitudo Inhabilitatis (27.5) falsa videtur, quia commentarius manifeste est longior. IacobusAmor 16:04, 13 Ianuarii 2012 (UTC)

Oh, I see -- 27.5 is the length of the redirect page, which is what en:Disability directly links to, as of two days ago. This needs to be fixed. First of all I'll make the program smarter about redirects! But would we prefer to have the other Wikiversions link to Invaliditas (our actual title)? I believe it's easy to change that: if we change it in one other version (say, English), bots will sooner or later propagate the change everywhere else. (Hold off for an hour or so, though, until I fix the code bug.) A. Mahoney 16:24, 13 Ianuarii 2012 (UTC)

Yes, the most direct link should surely be best, even if it saves only a few nanoseconds! IacobusAmor 16:25, 13 Ianuarii 2012 (UTC)

Both fixed. A. Mahoney 17:30, 13 Ianuarii 2012 (UTC)

This morning I discovered that my routine wasn't correctly accounting for multi-line comments, making some of our pages (like Trigonometria) appear a whole lot longer than they actually are. I've fixed the problem, bringing these figures even closer to those of the table at Meta. The one significant surprise is that Bellum Indosinense II no longer appears to be over 30K but shows up at 21,125: this is correct, because the commented-out infoboxes at the head of the page are about 10K long. So although our apparent score here is a bit lower, it is now much closer to our actual score. A. Mahoney 15:43, 20 Ianuarii 2012 (UTC)

The infobox in Bellum Indosinense II was commented out because its structure hadn't yet been adapted to Vicipaedia, and so it wouldn't print correctly. Now that noster Robert.Baruch has done the programming, we can uncomment it out, though not without first converting some of its English phrases into Latin. Then it'll be around 30,000, and I'll see about adding another few paragraphs to guarantee that it exceeds the cutoff. The problem here is that the first weeks of a semester take a certain toll on one's free time. :/ IacobusAmor 20:12, 20 Ianuarii 2012 (UTC)

Good: I was afraid you were going to be unpleasantly surprised; I remember the discussion in Taberna about those infoboxes, so I know the comments will turn into properly Latin boxes sooner or later. I'm dealing with start-of-term stuff too so am entirely sympathetic: we just started yesterday and I've already got Greek homeworks to grade! A. Mahoney 21:30, 20 Ianuarii 2012 (UTC)

Try Bellum Indosinense II now! IacobusAmor 16:42, 22 Ianuarii 2012 (UTC)

Wow -- a portal for the whole war: lots of goodies there and place for plenty more. I love having really good bibliographies. (And of course we'll get our 9 raw points for it, too!) A. Mahoney 17:53, 22 Ianuarii 2012 (UTC)

Well, 0.05 points, since we should already have gotten the first 0.04 at the end of December. If developed, the article could be a pagina mensis someday. It's exceedingly long in Wikipedia. IacobusAmor 18:32, 22 Ianuarii 2012 (UTC)

Up from the bottom, bootstraps, etc.

I've done a little work on the smallest of the 1000 pages so the bottom of the list doesn't look so embarrassingly thin. Last month's bottom, Mythistoria, had 373. In turn, I've added hundreds or thousands to Solidum (was 383), Mel (384), Radiatio ultraviolacea (386), Vis fortis (388), Vis imbecillis (389), Plasma (389), Caro (392), Akira Kurosawa (400), Litrum (409), Domus (410), Salus (4220, Radiatio infrarubra (430), Lignum (446), and Argentum (449), so that the smallest of the 1000 (except for the problem with Inhabilitas, noted above) is now Puellus (452). I might do a few more down there, if time permits. This work in all but a few cases doesn't affect the median, but it does raise the mean. IacobusAmor 16:04, 13 Ianuarii 2012 (UTC)

Don't spend any time on Wattium (another very small article) unless you're particularly interested in it, since it's likely to be dropped from the list. Otherwise, euge! -- and I'm trying to pitch in with illustrations (at least) for the teeny-tinies. A. Mahoney 16:18, 13 Ianuarii 2012 (UTC)

To be sure of not duplicating our efforts, don't bother with, say, the bottom ten (Puellus, Graviditas, Karachi, Alimentum, etc.), since that's where I'll start, if time becomes available, and I always try to import illustrations if they're available. They don't always transfer correctly, though, as you see with today's "singing candle" (Candela canens). :/ IacobusAmor 16:22, 13 Ianuarii 2012 (UTC)

Because the fluff-balls over in English-land have their own pictures, instead of putting everything in Commons like we virtuous ones do! A. Mahoney 16:27, 13 Ianuarii 2012 (UTC)

Maybe we should fight fire with fire. I've taken a few pix that I wouldn't mind putting up here, as long as they couldn't be used in other wikis. Some of my pix, if I do say so myself, would be better for encyclopedic purposes than the ones now available elsewhere, and new ones could easily be taken to order, as for en:Laogai Museum, which has no picture in any wiki and is located across the street from where I happen to be sitting right now. =:o IacobusAmor 16:46, 13 Ianuarii 2012 (UTC)

I've been putting mine right into Commons (OK, only a couple of them so far; one's in Feles for example); it just seems simplest. But I always add a description in Latin! A. Mahoney 17:10, 13 Ianuarii 2012 (UTC)

There are two good reasons for putting pictures in Commons. One is that they are available to all (and, let's admit it, that's a very good thing). The other is that the very few of us on Vicipaedia have no time to police the copyright status of images, and that's what someone would have to do. More policing, less writing. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 18:47, 13 Ianuarii 2012 (UTC)

Horrifying thought about the means over at Meta

It's in the back of my mind that I once read that the means given for each wiki at Meta aren't the means of all 1000 topics but the means of howsoever many of the 1000 articles happen to exist. (Articles having a value of zero are disregarded in the computations!) If that's true, the means of the wikis can't easily be compared. For example, a wiki having 850 articles with a mean of 9000 and 150 articles with a mean of zero will be reported as being a wiki having a mean of 9000, whereas the true mean of all 1000 items taken together would be 7650. Since Latin has articles for all 1000 topics (many of them quite small) but the wikis ranked nearby don't, this may be why Latin's mean looks deficient compared with the other wikis in the neighborhood. Something to look into (and argue against) if it's in fact what's going on in the computations! IacobusAmor 16:14, 13 Ianuarii 2012 (UTC)

Yes, if the algorithm hasn't changed since the source code was posted (updated last September), that is exactly what's happening. This gives Hindi, in particular, an inflated mean (since Hindi is missing 152 of the 1000) -- but on the other hand they have more long articles than we have (70 vs. 54 in the official table from the first of the month). Is it worth arguing about, or should we just keep pushing up our own mean? A. Mahoney 17:45, 13 Ianuarii 2012 (UTC)

Would we in any case eventually solve this by improving the shortest articles in the list? I was thinking of doing that ... Sorry if it doesn't help: you can tell I'm no mathematician. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 18:26, 13 Ianuarii 2012 (UTC)

Precisely: every time we add 1,000 characters to an article (or to several articles), we add 1 to our mean. So we can improve the mean length even without getting score points. The underlying issue, though, is that a short article gets averaged in with the others, thus lowering the mean, while a missing article gets ignored, not lowering the mean. If we (hypothetically!) deleted our seven smallest of the 1000-page set, we would actually raise our mean score, because instead of averaging in those seven little numbers and dividing by 1000, we'd only count the 993 other, larger numbers (and divide by 993). That's one reason the means of the Hindi, Malayalam, and Thai versions are so much larger than our mean: we've got 50 to 150 more small articles. (So if we want to look better on this measure, one way to do so would be to add the missing articles to the competing Wikipedias; anybody around who can write one of those languages?)

By the way, the same applies to the mean lengths of particular articles. The mean size of, say, Civitates Foederatae Americae is 24,189 language-weighted characters, but that does not count the 37 Wikipedias that don't have that article at all, such as Akan and Romani. A. Mahoney 19:02, 13 Ianuarii 2012 (UTC)

Woohoo! See how we've risen in the standings!

And we even got the third-place award for improvement! And already for next month, I've (probably) raised Oceania from 0.01 to 0.09. IacobusAmor 12:52, 3 Februarii 2012 (UTC)

Yes!!! Just noticed this myself (and am recalculating the table). We've cracked the top 40, our mean is up by over 300 characters, and we're still not missing any articles even though the list changed on the 31st. Onward and upward! A. Mahoney 13:07, 3 Februarii 2012 (UTC)

You noted it was an "update to reflect 1-Feb update in Meta"—but the way the numbers work in Meta, they seem to be valid for midnight at the end of the month, despite when they're actually calculated (usually the second or third day of the next month), so you didn't have to run the program again. However, if you can find the time, running updates every week (or two) would be appreciated, since they help confirm our progress. Already this month, I think I've added 0.49 points, but I can't be sure, since one can't always tell whether one has added quite enough material to cross an intended threshold. IacobusAmor 19:13, 9 Februarii 2012 (UTC)

In fact, the program looks at the "Neglected" page, specifically the list of "popular" articles, so the "1-Feb update" really means "when that page is updated." In particular, as I'm running the program right now, it will not know about the changes in chemistry, since those pages aren't listed in the "popular" table. I haven't figured out how I want to handle this -- call it a known limitation for the moment.

As for checking up on a particular page, if you've got Perl and can install the MediaWiki package, I've got a little routine that will give you the size of a single page -- I wrote it because I find myself doing that all the time. I will post the source code (here) in case it's useful. A. Mahoney 20:21, 9 Februarii 2012 (UTC)

Pearls I know. Purls I've heard of. Perl is a mystery! IacobusAmor 20:37, 9 Februarii 2012 (UTC)

I have converted this routine into a gadget, using the algorithm from meta:List of Wikipedias by sample of articles/Source code. If you like, you can enable this gadget in your preferences (Specialis:Praeferentiae#mw-prefsection-gadgets) and it will calculate and display the weighted size of an article or section whenever you edit or preview it. Hope you find it useful - if anything is not working as it should, please tell me! Greetings, --UV 23:40, 9 Februarii 2012 (UTC)

Very nice. Even such ignoramuses as Iacobus and I are able to use it now! Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 10:33, 10 Februarii 2012 (UTC)

Don't bet on it! I haven't yet worked up the courage to address it. Maybe over the weekend? :/ IacobusAmor 12:10, 10 Februarii 2012 (UTC)

Thank you! I haven't worked with gadgets yet, so I'll be interested to study how it works (how to make a gadget, that is). A. Mahoney 13:05, 13 Februarii 2012 (UTC)

0.49 points already? Cool. I haven't added anything to our score yet, but Chemia will get past 10k and possibly past 30k fairly soon -- even sooner if I didn't have a stack of essays to mark this weekend! (I suppose I don't get to complain: after all, I was the one who assigned the dratted thing. Students don't just magically hand in papers all on their own!) A. Mahoney 20:21, 9 Februarii 2012 (UTC)

I see Religio Islamica has finally made it to 30k -- even under the proposed new weights. Nice. A. Mahoney 20:29, 9 Februarii 2012 (UTC)

I did that this morning, with Moscua and Ioannes Sebastianus Bach. If you study the way the game is rigged, it's more efficient, pointwise, to push the numerous small articles above 10K than to spend time making the few already above 10K rise above 30K. IacobusAmor 20:37, 9 Februarii 2012 (UTC)

And it looks better, mea sententia, if we don't have over 700 stubs. And it's also a lot easier to say a little, with some bibliography and a nice illustration, than to write a proper long article! A. Mahoney 20:39, 9 Februarii 2012 (UTC)

Yes, that's a good point. With some of the old ones though, it's necessary to rewrite everything that's already there, not just because the style is weak, but because what the texts say is. :/ IacobusAmor 12:10, 10 Februarii 2012 (UTC) IacobusAmor 12:10, 10 Februarii 2012 (UTC)

Helium, Neon, Zincum

I thought these titles had been removed from the list, but they're still printing in your table. IacobusAmor 05:13, 13 Februarii 2012 (UTC)

Yes -- that's the "known limitation" I mentioned above. And I still haven't figured out what to do about it. I could just manually change the list (after the routine reads the "Neglected" page in Meta, remove those three and add the three new branches of chemistry), and then calculate the size and stuff-to-correct columns; the one thing I wouldn't have is the comparison to the sizes of parallel articles in other WP versions. Is this OK for a start? If so, I can put it in between classes over the next couple of days. A. Mahoney 13:05, 13 Februarii 2012 (UTC)

I've implemented this as described. And it looks like we're on track to grow by more than 0.7 points this month! A. Mahoney 18:12, 14 Februarii 2012 (UTC)

If I've counted right, I've added 0.79 so far! IacobusAmor 19:48, 14 Februarii 2012 (UTC)

Actually, make that 0.76. Petropolis didn't grow as much as I'd thought. IacobusAmor 00:45, 15 Februarii 2012 (UTC)

OK, today's addition to Petropolis should put that article above 10K, so call it 0.79 again. ;) IacobusAmor 13:20, 15 Februarii 2012 (UTC)

And I've added a mere 0.06 myself, but that's something anyway, and it's still only the 14th. We might even pass Slovenian this month. A. Mahoney 20:07, 14 Februarii 2012 (UTC)

If only the mysteriously anonymous (possibly Portuguese) geography guy would happen to work on one of the 1000 geographic pages instead of the out-of-the-way places he/she tends to belabor! IacobusAmor 13:20, 15 Februarii 2012 (UTC)

On the other hand, adding pages for every little village, county, river, and so on also contributes to the secondary goal of joining the BIG Vicipaediae with over 100,000 pages -- so that's a good thing too. Today's goal for me is the new pages about branches of chemistry; they may not make it to 10,000 this week but they should become a bit less pathetic, contributing to the mean size if not yet to the score. A. Mahoney 13:30, 15 Februarii 2012 (UTC)

Links for opera

Good grief. Back in August, MerlIwBot abolished the pertinent interwiki link for Opera (39 174 octeti), making Theatrum lyricum (814 octeti) serve as our 1000-pages article on that subject. Since then, this action has been depriving us of 0.08 points in the ranking! I've now fixed the links. Will bots take care of the rest? You'll want to update your own list if that's necessary. IacobusAmor 19:39, 16 Februarii 2012 (UTC)

Bots will fill this in sooner or later; I've updated en:Opera because I think the pages in English get checked sooner than those here. My program doesn't keep a list -- starts from the "Neglected" page table with average sizes, follows the link to English (because that's what's there), then follows the interwiki link from there to Latin. So when I run it again (Monday, say?), we'll pick up the right thing and all those juicy points! A. Mahoney 19:44, 16 Februarii 2012 (UTC)

Excellent! We should show good improvement this month in the rankings. Btw, now that I've boosted Holus a bit, you'll notice that our three smallest articles have something to do with chemistry. IacobusAmor 20:13, 16 Februarii 2012 (UTC)

yes, and pathetically small they are, too, but they're going to wait until this stack of linguistics problem sets gets graded. :-( I also want to keep poking at math, and do more general tidying up; I may not contribute a lot every single day but I will get something more done this month. (And in March we get spring break!) A. Mahoney 20:39, 16 Februarii 2012 (UTC)

It'd help if you'd run your program again on Monday night or Tuesday morning so we could make any last-minute adjustments necessary to ensure that pages intended to stand above the 10K & 30K limits really do. IIRC, this month ends in Vicilandia on Wednesday at 7:00 p.m. EST. IacobusAmor 18:17, 24 Februarii 2012 (UTC)

Sure thing: I can run this early Tuesday, which means something like 8:30 AM Eastern time. And of course I'll run it again when the new results are out, though if that happens Saturday 3 March I won't be able to update the table until the following Monday since I can't run the program on my home machine. A. Mahoney 20:39, 24 Februarii 2012 (UTC)

I've updated the table; it looks like we'll have growth of 1.88 this month! Nice stuff! A. Mahoney 13:23, 28 Februarii 2012 (UTC)

So much as that? Even so, it should move us up only one level in the standings. (The higher in the rankings we go, the bigger the gaps between the wikis and the harder to gain ground against the competition.) If I've counted rightly, I've added 1.51 so far. Where did the other points come from? (The more, the merrier!) I might be able to add 0.03 or 0.06 tomorrow afternoon; not much time today. IIRC, the polls, so to speak, close tomorrow at 7:00 p.m. EST. IacobusAmor 13:36, 28 Februarii 2012 (UTC)

I just added up the numbers from the beginning of this month, and subtracted. I know I added a little bit myself (on Chemia and Analysis). You've been carrying the load this month, though. A. Mahoney 13:45, 28 Februarii 2012 (UTC)

Hmm. I just extrapolated from the table and got +1.54 for February. Subtracting your 0.06 (for Analysis and Chemia) leaves 1.48 for my contributions—which would mean I counted wrongly and included one article that's not >10K. Later on, as time allows, I'll check to see where it might be. Your program makes this kind of last-minute tidying possible. Macte! IacobusAmor 14:26, 28 Februarii 2012 (UTC)

Bibliographies

You two will know better about this than I do but I just thought it worth remarking: I see Iacobus adding some really huge bibliographies, nearly all in English. 34,000 characters in the case of Elvis Presley! Assuming the page is in a poor state to begin with, as this one certainly was, I don't see that it does us any harm; but does it do us any good? Don't they have a routine for rejecting pages that seem to be mainly in the wrong language? And how does this look to human visitors? I know I've done some of this myself, though not on such a massive scale; so any criticism falls on me too. Some might well think the bibliography at Gulielmus Shakesperius excessive, and that, too, is (I think) all in English. It would be, of course! As would Presley's. I just worry a bit about this. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 20:02, 19 Februarii 2012 (UTC)

Sources are sources, in whatever language we find them. (The article on Elvis is indeed weak, but time to tidy up the text was lacking; maybe some other day.) Of the twenty-six items I added to Atomus, twenty-five are in English and one is in German—but the lot came from the German wiki! One usually tries to localize bibliographies by changing New York to Novi Eboraci (locative), January 22 to 22 Ianuarii, Retrieved to Accessum, etc. Such things aren't always easy when what we're importing is tabular. For example, in Elvis's bibliography, one had to change "vcite" to "cite" more times than one might have wished; the alternative was to leave it and worry the programmers. IacobusAmor 20:28, 19 Februarii 2012 (UTC)

Yes, all quite true. Atomus is a nice example :) Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 22:16, 19 Februarii 2012 (UTC)

I make a point of dragging in bibliography in as many languages as possible, just as I would when writing a journal article -- but the journal articles I write are in classics, and other fields have different conventions. I think a large bibliography can be really useful, if someone is actually using our articles as an orientation to a subject; thus it's particularly appropriate for a top-level page. If, say, Musica Rock has a really good bibliography, then Elvis Presley doesn't need quite as much. But, yes, we can only cite the sources that exist: I'm sure there's far more scholarship on Shakespeare in his own tongue than in any other.

And thanks, Iacobe, for filling in Atomus: real life and class prep are interfering with chemistry this weekend, but once I get out from under Quintus Horatius Flaccus in my survey class, I should be able to make more progress. A. Mahoney 21:35, 20 Februarii 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments, both of you. I'm happy to be reassured, and I think what you two have been doing to raise us in the ratings is magnificent. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 15:17, 21 Februarii 2012 (UTC)

For my part, that may be too generous a characterization, though, if I've counted correctly, I've singlehandedly raised our score by 1.13 so far this month, more than we've collectively managed in most months. Next month, alas, won't offer so much free time. The sine qua non here is the epitome giving statistical particulars on each of the 1000 paginae. Without that, we're just shooting in the dark. IacobusAmor 15:40, 21 Februarii 2012 (UTC)

If I've counted rightly, I added 1.72 in February. March, however, despite spring break in the middle of it, may be another story, though I just boosted Oceanus Australis above 10K, for a gain of 0.03. IacobusAmor (talk) 13:56, 1 Martii 2012 (UTC)

We have a shot at the blue ribbon for growth this month: we'll find out in a day or so! A. Mahoney (talk) 15:21, 1 Martii 2012 (UTC)

That always depends on the "luck of the draw." A couple of years ago, IIRC, we had a huge gain, enough in most months to take first place—but in that month, good enough only for third. :/ IacobusAmor (talk) 15:38, 1 Martii 2012 (UTC)

By the way, "untranslated English" is unlikely to be a problem here. The algorithm looks for a high percentage of common English words (like "the, is, and," and so on) within the text; book titles generally have relatively few of those. The algorithm won't recognize the difference among, say, "Mathematica," "Mathematics," "Mathematik," "Mathématiques" since this isn't a word on the match list. A. Mahoney 15:29, 21 Februarii 2012 (UTC)

Where was the consensus?

So within hours of the time that I made an effort to boost Alphabetum above 10K, this user named "Fryed-peach," whose page says his knowledge of English is at the 1-level (which might well mean that he has trouble perceiving essential nuances of the discussion over at the pertinent page), made a switch from en:Alphabet to en:Writing system—and thereby stole 0.04 from our score for February? Is that what happened? IacobusAmor (talk) 20:35, 1 Martii 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, pretty much. And I have no idea how en:Writing system is supposed to differ from en:Writing (our Scriptura). I found a redlink on Systema scripturae so created the page and crucial inter-wiki link, but with very little enthusiasm. I missed the change when it happened, presumably because there was another minor change shortly thereafter and my watchlist only showed me the most recent (I've fixed my preferences so that shouldn't happen again); otherwise, I would have added the stub in time for it to count, so we'd only lose 0.03 and not have any missing articles. Meow. A. Mahoney (disputatio) 21:05, 1 Martii 2012 (UTC)

I've gone to the appropriate discussion page and proposed rescinding the change and computing the scores according to the previous list. There are precedents for recomputing scores after the initial computation (which hasn't even happened yet), so it's not all that radical a proposal. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 21:31, 1 Martii 2012 (UTC)

I saw that (do you not use a global account, btw?) and think it's a good idea; depending on when the program runs, we might even get credit for the stipululum, though of course it does muck with our mean as well as our score! A. Mahoney (disputatio) 13:16, 2 Martii 2012 (UTC)

If they haven't yet counted, can someone else simply reverse Fryed-peach's move? Meta is a wiki, after all ... Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 13:40, 2 Martii 2012 (UTC)

Well, I just did it. See what happens :) Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 13:50, 2 Martii 2012 (UTC)

Good job. I don't know when the count actually happens: the table gets updated somewhere around the second or third of the month, for what that's worth. If it were me, I'd have an automatic job kicking off at the same time every month to do the calculations, then check the result and update the page manually; if that's how it's done, then the count will have taken place already (or at least started, depending on how long it takes). And I really am confused about the several relevant articles over in English WP, which look for all the world like two people wanted to write about the same topic and didn't co-ordinate.

Now I have to get back to notes on Suetonius for this afternoon! A. Mahoney (disputatio) 13:59, 2 Martii 2012 (UTC)

Good news: the score table includes en:Alphabet so we get points for Alphabetum. Bad news: even with an astounding 2.25 growth, we're only in second place for growth this month, as Ukrainian had an even bigger month. But we're up to 38th place ("with a bullet," as the Billboard charts used to say), not missing any articles, and continuing our string of increasing the mean and median every month (since July at least). Updated table coming shortly. A. Mahoney (disputatio) 13:16, 5 Martii 2012 (UTC)

It was more growth than expected in these quarters, as I reckoned my own contribution at 1.72 and yours tentatively at 0.06 and other pertinent changes hadn't come into view, so some improvements must have escaped notice on my screen. A rise of 2.25 would have gained the blue ribbon in many months, but (as noted above), the outcome owes much to "the luck of the draw." A repeated rise on the same scale would probably vault Latin above four other wikis. Aside from a few good days of spring break in midmonth, March will be too busy for me to keep going at the pace of February, though I'll do what I can. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 13:48, 5 Martii 2012 (UTC)

I hope to have more time in March than in February and will try to do my share. A. Mahoney (disputatio) 13:57, 5 Martii 2012 (UTC)

I have a bit more spare time after the middle of the month. If Fryed-peach's suggestions are finally accepted I would be happy to have a go at en:Translation, which seems not to exist here as yet (Translatio is one of those very old discretiva pages). Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 13:31, 5 Martii 2012 (UTC)

I agree with Fryed-peach about this and would love to see a good article on translation here -- particularly if someone more expert than I gets to write it! :-) I also think we might consider making our Scriptura the "writing system" page, since that's really what it's about; I would have expected en:Writing to be more like en:Literature, or something. A. Mahoney (disputatio) 13:56, 5 Martii 2012 (UTC)

Calculation error?

The table shows that Moles Trium Angustiarum is only 0.02 the size of the average article on the subject, but that can't be right, can it? It means that the average article on the subject is 808,800 characters long: highly improbable, and even a tenth of that (80,880) would be improbable! IacobusAmor (disputatio) 03:22, 16 Martii 2012 (UTC)

No, that's not a calculation error -- but an estimation error! As you know (because you added the article), this is new on the list, so it's not yet in the table in Meta from which I pull the sizes of the other WPs' pages. I also don't want to divide by zero (for obvious reasons). So to fill in the "ratio" column, I suppose that the average size is a million characters; this make the ratio (our size)/(average of all sizes) really small, which seemed more prudent than making it too large. Once Meta calculates the average size for me next month, the figure in the table will get corrected. (Sorry to be so long in replying: I'm usually logged in nearly every day, but I've been at a conference this weekend.) A. Mahoney (disputatio) 22:36, 18 Martii 2012 (UTC)

If this happens again, I'd suggest using an average length closer to 10,000, but maybe the actual number could be determined from the numbers available on the Meta page. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 12:39, 28 Martii 2012 (UTC)

The point is that the Meta page doesn't have the sizes for new articles. Look at the page now --- en:Three Gorges Dam (Moles Trium Angustiarum) is not there, nor is en:Submarine (Navis submarina). I am not running over all the WP versions to get information here: that takes too long; instead, I'm using this handy-dandy table with the titles and average sizes already compiled for me. But it's only updated once a month along with the "scores" table, so any changes to The List aren't reflected until the first of the month. A. Mahoney (disputatio) 13:00, 28 Martii 2012 (UTC)

Running the script

Is there a chance you could run the script on Friday, before leaving the almighty office computer for the weekend? I might be able to find a few hours on Saturday (the last day of the month), and an up-to-date list would suggest which article(s) could most profitably be augmented in a short time. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 12:39, 28 Martii 2012 (UTC)

Yes, certainly -- I'm curious too. A. Mahoney (disputatio) 13:01, 28 Martii 2012 (UTC)

I've updated it; if I have a chance (and if I remember), I'll do it again after my afternoon class. A. Mahoney (disputatio) 14:46, 30 Martii 2012 (UTC)

Cutting hidden text

You'll note that yesterday someone cut Bellum Centum Annorum by 4571. Two others immediately made adjustments, rendering reversion to the status quo ante problematic. The (downward) trend could be detrimental to Vicipaedia's score, since you have it standing at 15191 before these edits, but since many of the cut characters had already been hidden, maybe the effect won't be large. It bears watching. ¶ Cutting the hidden text has the effect of ensuring that editors, especially anglophones, will be less likely to lengthen the article further. A major purpose of hidden text is to make it easy for editors to pop in, convert a phrase or a sentence or two, and pop out again. To accomplish the same effect in this article now requires much more effort: crossing over to the English version and reading both texts comparatively to discover where the Latin text remains defective. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 11:12, 5 Aprilis 2012 (UTC)

The same editor didn't want Ioanna de Arc (another of the 1000 paginae) to have a link to Cantata, but I've restored the link. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 12:18, 5 Aprilis 2012 (UTC)

Let's face it, hidden text in another language (e.g. English) is best avoided. We are Latinists, we are not all English speakers, and the English Wikipedia is not our model, though it's often very useful of course. I frequently remove hidden text (though in this case it wasn't me); it's a necessary step in improving any article, which is what the editor concerned is clearly doing. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 11:34, 5 Aprilis 2012 (UTC)

Removing hidden text is not a necessary step in improving any article, and it can have a deleterious effect: making it less likely that an editor will (come back to) augment the text by translating the hidden material. ¶ The same editor on the same day worked on Ioanna de Arc but left in place a few passages of hidden French text; that user's page indicates a distaste for the English language, not a disapproval of hidden material. ¶ To words & phrases newly devised for modern concepts, we often add hidden text to show the term that was being translated, in case a later editor can improve the diction. Would you rather we not? IacobusAmor (disputatio) 12:18, 5 Aprilis 2012 (UTC)

Non-Latin hidden text may well be very useful to any of us in a page we're still working on, but I'd say it's best avoided from around the time the page is released into the community :)

NB Satis (et plus) hic Anglice locuti sumus de labore editoris qui se Anglice loqui nolere dixit. Eum bene fecisse censeo; si abnuis, oportet in pagina disputationum illius editoris ... disputare. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 12:48, 5 Aprilis 2012 (UTC)

No worries. A. Mahoney (disputatio) 12:23, 5 Aprilis 2012 (UTC)

No worries? The same contributor has removed 2975 unhidden characters within the hour! IacobusAmor (disputatio) 17:34, 9 Aprilis 2012 (UTC)

Iacobe, scribendi de opere alii editoris, in lingua huic usori ignota et in pagina ad quam hoc editor nondum convocatur, finem fac. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 18:45, 9 Aprilis 2012 (UTC)

Quis effatur? IacobusAmor (disputatio) 14:18, 20 Maii 2012 (UTC)

Next time you run your program, let's see whether the total dips below 10K and costs us 0.03 points. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 17:37, 9 Aprilis 2012 (UTC)

Quick and dirty check using the Gadget that UV created: it's 11293 characters, a bit smaller than it was on 27 December (15079 by the same technique), but still over 10K. A. Mahoney (disputatio) 12:11, 10 Aprilis 2012 (UTC)

As far as I can see, pretty much everything that was deleted in Bellum Centum Annorum was commented-out English text, and that does not affect the "official" size. As of this moment, I calculate the size of the page at 14554, or only about 600 language-weighted characters smaller than before, and still in the same score category. I haven't looked at Ioanna de Arc this morning.

Andrew, I agree about removing commented-out non-Latin text. I occasionally put comments in Latin as a placeholder for future work (see Symmetria for example), but I don't pull in paragraphs from the other WP versions and leave them in situ. Of course if I am translating an article, I often start by pasting its text into my edit window, but then I replace it (or at least I intend to replace it: I can't guarantee that I've never forgotten to remove the scaffolding!). But, Iacobe, I see you putting bunches of English into pages you're working on -- it seems like you and I doing the same thing, just on a different time scale. In any case, the presence or absence of comments does not affect the score. A. Mahoney (disputatio) 12:23, 5 Aprilis 2012 (UTC)

June 2012

I've just updated the table one last time for May: I'll be away over the first of the month, so won't get to update our stats until about the 2nd week of June. (And if anything changes in The List, I won't notice that either until I get back.) I will be quite out of contact -- no email, no computer, no nothing -- for a while but will pick everything back up when I return. A. Mahoney (disputatio) 12:34, 20 Maii 2012 (UTC)

OK, thanks for updating it once again—and enjoy your absentation! In the meantime, perhaps Noam Chomsky and Musica classica will exceed the 30K barrier. We were once thinking of concentrating on the 1000 pages in June, but our schedules now make that unlikely (the last week of June is problematic here). Maybe July or August? IacobusAmor (disputatio) 14:18, 20 Maii 2012 (UTC)

I'm hoping to work on Musica classica tomorrow (not today: I'm just on campus for commencement) and as it only needs 6K more I should be able to nudge it over the line. I'm teaching in July, so will work on some pages relevant to the course (Horatius and Ioannes Pascoli, in particular); what about August for a push on the 1000? A. Mahoney (disputatio) 14:55, 20 Maii 2012 (UTC)

Normally I'd update this table right about now, but it's not possible as my work machine is in the shop with hardware problems. I have high hopes of being back to normal next week; meanwhile, I can report that Vir is over 10k. And I'll update the table as soon as I can, because I want to know where we are! A. Mahoney (disputatio) 21:48, 29 Iunii 2012 (UTC)

I do too, but it wouldn't matter here, as time for Latinizing is short, what with the festival on the Mall and such. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 11:53, 30 Iunii 2012 (UTC)

Well, we're still in 38th place despite rather small growth last month. I've got a working machine again and have just started my summer course, so I'll be around for updates to the table and (at least as important!) to the actual pages. Note that figures in Meta are messed up because the name of HIV/AIDS has a slash in it in English -- so only 999 pages got counted; I've fudged our table to account for that, though there's no global average size for this article. A. Mahoney (disputatio) 17:33, 3 Iulii 2012 (UTC)

Is that the reason we lost one article >30K and thereby gave up 0.05 points? IacobusAmor (disputatio) 00:15, 4 Iulii 2012 (UTC)

Yes :-( -- but everyone else who had this page is affected too. "MarsRover" knows about the problem and a fix has been proposed. And (unlike, say, Catalan) we didn't lose anything as a result of the newly-added page because we've always had Hector Berlioz. A. Mahoney (disputatio) 19:09, 4 Iulii 2012 (UTC)

The ratio for SCDI is still being misreported. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 19:49, 26 Iulii 2012 (UTC)

Yes, it is, alas, because the length in the master-page in Meta is still wrong (that page is only updated at the start of the month). MarsRover says it should be fixed for August. Meanwhile, though, en:HIV/AIDS is getting ignored, so its interwiki links are getting ignored, so there are no figures for that page at all in Meta, but the scores are being counted on the basis of the other 999 pages, so we're not penalized for the disappearance from the list. My routine doesn't have a problem with a file name containing a slash, so it found the link from the English page over to our page, so I'm counting it. I see no reason to ignore a perfectly good page! But I've set up the ratio to avoid dividing by zero -- in my experience, computers really don't like trying to divide by zero! A. Mahoney (disputatio) 20:20, 26 Iulii 2012 (UTC)

If Metawiki's system is ignoring this article, then it's true that the scores for all the wikis will be calculated on the basis of 999 articles instead of 1000—but we shall be losing 0.09, whereas many other wikis will be losing 0.04 or 0.01 or even 0.00. :( IacobusAmor (disputatio) 11:18, 27 Iulii 2012 (UTC)

But think of the pleasure we will experience when they get it right at last! Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 11:23, 27 Iulii 2012 (UTC)

True -- to say nothing of the easy points! We gained ground last month anyway, despite the error with this article, so I don't think it's a large problem. The error was so visible, and the work-arounds so obvious (and a real fix shouldn't be hard either), that I expect it will be OK when the job runs again next week. A. Mahoney (disputatio) 21:36, 27 Iulii 2012 (UTC)

Ratio

Quid est "ratio" in hac tabula? :-) Mattie (disputatio) 04:14, 27 Iulii 2012 (UTC)

(I gave this a shot in Latin on the page itself; let's see if I can be clearer in English.) It's the ratio (size of page in Latin)/(average size for everybody), where that average size comes from meta:List of Wikipedias by sample of articles/Neglected -- one of the two big tables, updated every month, in Meta. This is not the "league table" of Wikipedias but the subsidiary list that you get to if you click on "Mean Article Size" in that list -- it's the page that shows "neglected" articles in each WP. At the top of that page is another big table showing, for each of the 1000 pages, the number of WPs that have this page (at each "point" category), its average size over all WP where it is present, and the 4 largest versions.

From time to time a given article will be missing from the table in Meta. For example, if there's a change to The List, the reports in Meta won't know about the new page -- but we want to have it in our report here. In the case of SCDI and en:HIV/AIDS, the report program in Meta got confused by the slash and couldn't find the page in English, thus couldn't find any inter-wiki links to anybody's version of the page, and just reported everything as zero. Hypothetically, if we added something to The List that actually didn't exist in English WP, the same thing would happen.

In such a case, I assume the average size is a million, figuring it's better to report an artificially low ratio -- this is certainly better than dividing by zero (Meta's current notion of the average size) or leaving the page out altogether. That million is as arbitrary as every other number in this whole exercise :-) -- 1000 pages, 10000 characters, 4 points, 30000 characters, 9 points, and even (as a practical matter) the "language weights." In fact the idea of reporting this ratio at all is sort of arbitrary -- as I was writing the program, I realized I could calculate this, so figured it might be interesting.

If there are other manipulations or calculations that might be interesting, and that don't involve crawling through all the other WP versions or all the pages in Vicipaedia, let me know: I have further ideas in mind myself and may well do up some ancillary tables at some point.

Does this make sense? A. Mahoney (disputatio) 21:36, 27 Iulii 2012 (UTC)

I see! Oh hey, look :D

235	5,725	Noam Chomsky	192	55	19	19	la:103,489 -- en:96,837 -- fr:93,591 -- pt:86,824

... then again, his size in our article is partly due to me having kept all the original English quotes in the references, heh. Mattie (disputatio) 17:54, 7 Augusti 2012 (UTC)

Yaay! And I heartily endorse having the original quotes, even without the beneficial effect on our score! A. Mahoney (disputatio) 18:09, 7 Augusti 2012 (UTC)

Boosting the bottom

So far this month, I've added nonnegligible numbers of characters to the smallest nine articles, raising some of them above 10K. Will you be running the script every week so we can see our progress? IacobusAmor (disputatio) 13:00, 7 Augusti 2012 (UTC)

Sure: although my summer class ends Thursday, I figure on coming to campus frequently before fall starts, and will certainly update the table. I also expect to get more time for writing articles; I'm doing Sophocles because I'm teaching him in the fall, but will work on the other teeny-tinies as well.

I hope everyone noticed we're already tied with Esperanto? Onward & Upward! A. Mahoney (disputatio) 18:09, 7 Augusti 2012 (UTC)

Esperantica contunda est! IacobusAmor (disputatio) 19:19, 23 Augusti 2012 (UTC)

Turris Eiffelia

I think the edit-conflict fix is OK now. Is there a way of making the "Infobox building" work? I tried changing it to "Infobox aedificium," but no luck. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 19:19, 23 Augusti 2012 (UTC)

I noticed we'd both been in there, and backed off! But I got to Basho ahead of you :-) I don't find an "infobox" or "capsa" formula for a building, at least not by a brute-force search -- it might exist but it's not currently obvious to me. Perhaps look at another page that could be using such a formula? My next page to work on will be Logica, I think (which needs wholesale re-writing), probably over the weekend; logging off right now to do errands, so you can have the last 4 sub-1000-character pages all to yourself. Looks like we're probably past Esperanto and in fact closing in on Danish! A. Mahoney (disputatio) 19:29, 23 Augusti 2012 (UTC)

Danica quoque contunda est! :) IacobusAmor (disputatio) 19:33, 23 Augusti 2012 (UTC)

Changes in the list

Oh dear. With the changeover from Abecedarium to Systema scripturae, we've traded a raw score of 13,528 octeti for a raw score of 3,805, lowering the mean and giving away 0.03 points! IacobusAmor (disputatio) 20:48, 26 Augusti 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, and Systema scripturae isn't exactly our best page either (though it's about 2K longer than it was 2 days ago). But Interpretatio is a worthy subject; for the title see the discussion at VP:1000, and if you have a better idea, do move the page! I like the idea that we always have all the 1000, so I've added this one, confident that somebody will flesh it out and correct it. We've still got a few days to make up ground, and we'll gain in relative terms because other versions probably won't account for the new pages right away. Onward and upward toward Danish! A. Mahoney (disputatio) 22:17, 26 Augusti 2012 (UTC)

Someone over in Meta has decided that the 25th is too close to the end of the month, and un-done this change -- so we're back to Abecedarium for the moment, buying some time to improve Interpretatio and Systema scripturae for next month. I'm pleased that people are taking the "no-last-minute-changes" idea seriously. At the moment it looks like our score is an astounding 27.25, which would put us 33rd if nobody else changes, though obviously all the other Wikis are changing too. Particular kudos to IacobusAmor, who's done the lion's share of all this! A. Mahoney (disputatio) 15:13, 29 Augusti 2012 (UTC)

My count puts us at 26.69, still a big improvement. (But a few more articles are still in view, to be enlarged before Friday's deadline.) August is traditionally my 1000-paginae month. September should be another story! IacobusAmor (disputatio) 15:29, 29 Augusti 2012 (UTC)

I'm planning some more work as well, though the start-of-term meetings are already going on and classes start Tuesday; in any case, we've made a big dent in the list! A. Mahoney (disputatio) 15:32, 29 Augusti 2012 (UTC)

Yes, much credit to Iacobus, who manages to expand several pages each day. Astonishing improvement. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 16:24, 29 Augusti 2012 (UTC)

Unless someone gets in before me, I'll work on Lutetia tomorrow. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 20:34, 29 Augusti 2012 (UTC)

Please do: I brought that up to 10K in the last push but would love to see it turn into a really good page. I hope to get back to Logica, myself, and some of the other smaller mathematical pages. A. Mahoney (disputatio) 20:59, 29 Augusti 2012 (UTC)

Is there a chance for a final run, later today or early tomorrow, so we can make last-minute adjustments? If not, I'm sure we'll make do. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 15:19, 30 Augusti 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I'll run it this afternoon and again tomorrow -- not a problem! A. Mahoney (disputatio) 15:23, 30 Augusti 2012 (UTC)

Discrepancy

How is it that your count has 271 articles between 10K and 30K, but the official count has 272? Where can the official count be finding an extra article? Our likeliest candidate, the one that's next below the 10K cutoff, is Nialus Armstrong, with what you say = 8279.7 octeti—and that's a nonnegligible gap! IacobusAmor (disputatio) 12:22, 4 Septembris 2012 (UTC)

Whoa! You've just run the program again, and now you count only 270, instead of 272. What's up with that? IacobusAmor (disputatio) 12:26, 4 Septembris 2012 (UTC):

Hmmm, that's weird -- hadn't noticed that! I know that my figures don't always agree with Meta's (or with those from UV's nifty gadget), but I've never seen a 25% discrepancy! Meta doesn't list stubs or medium-size articles when there are more than about 100, so I can't see which ones they're counting. I suppose it's possible that something changed between the time the list was created in Meta and this morning when I ran this. (I have run it twice just now, once with the list of articles shown in Meta, and once with manual insertion of Interpretatio and Systema scripturae, as the master list changed after the stats were calculated. So that's why we've gone from 271 to 270 -- but there's still one missing somewhere.) I'll poke around after I get my notes printed up for the morning's classes. A. Mahoney (disputatio) 12:31, 4 Septembris 2012 (UTC)

Got it: Turris Eiffelia was over 10K until 2 September, when the infobox got commented out (and therefore stopped contributing to the length of the page); that infobox wasn't actually shown, of course, since we don't have the relevant formula, so commenting it out makes sense, but it happens to have brought the page below the size limit. Since this happened right after the table in Meta was updated, we didn't lose points, and we've now got the rest of the month to tidy up the page -- ideal timing! A. Mahoney (disputatio) 12:51, 4 Septembris 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps whoever commented it out will add enough to regain those 0.03 points. ;) IacobusAmor (disputatio) 13:20, 4 Septembris 2012 (UTC)

Well, well. I must say that I didn't realise that a not-yet-created formula (whose text is therefore unseen) would be counted as if real. Therefore it might well have been I who did this ... but in this case it wasn't.

I gather it was done after the crucial score was calculated. But let's take it as a warning :) When seeing a page that contains uncreated formulas, non-Commons images etc. etc. (often put there by a tiro or out of carelessness) those concerned for the presentation of Vicipaedia don't like just to leave them. There are three correct ways to deal with them: (1) create the missing item: but not everyone knows how to do that, and not everyone's time is well-used in that way, and not everyone may think the missing item is needed; (2) find a substitute formula or image; (3) delete the mess or comment it out. All three solutions might result in a lower score -- the last, of course, undoubtedly would. So, to play the game we're playing here, good text, Commons images with captions, and existing formulae, are certainly rewarding -- those other things may or may not be. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 18:00, 4 Septembris 2012 (UTC)

In this case, unless anyone else cares to, I could certainly add a bit more to Turris Eiffelia. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 18:05, 4 Septembris 2012 (UTC)

Go ahead, if you like, Andrew; several of us Lutetiophiles have worked on that page, and the more the merrier! I tend to agree with you about infoboxes -- so I don't generally create them -- but I'd left this one in place figuring sooner or later somebody would. Yes, it's true: all the score-calculation utilities, both here and in Meta, count just what they see, with no regard to whether the formula (or the image) actually exists or not. So a bogus, but effective, way to boost scores would be to add a bogus formula, say {{RaiseOurScore}} with the entire text of the second Verrine tucked inside it. :-) Nothing would show up on screen, but we'd get all kinds of points! A. Mahoney (disputatio) 19:16, 4 Septembris 2012 (UTC)

Wow! How about doing that on the 31st March, and undoing it on 2nd April? Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 19:33, 4 Septembris 2012 (UTC)

You'd need a bot that would do it every Prid. Kal. and undo it a couple days later, forever! A. Mahoney (disputatio) 19:53, 4 Septembris 2012 (UTC)

Just the one for April Fool's, I think. Kudos to Andrew for making me laugh! :) IacobusAmor (disputatio) 20:37, 4 Septembris 2012 (UTC)

what, is it so hard to make you laugh, that it's such an achievement?  :-) A. Mahoney (disputatio) 12:52, 6 Septembris 2012 (UTC)

End of the year

I've updated the table so we can see where we are (in good shape, in fact, thanks for example to Andrew's work on Angkor Wat and Utilo's on Mahatma Gandhi). I don't expect to be in the office again until mid-January so this table won't get updated again until then. I do hope to be able to work on actual articles, such as Algebra linearis and Logica. Cordial best wishes to all for the end of the semester, the new year, and whatever-all other holidays strike your fancy! A. Mahoney (disputatio) 20:38, 19 Decembris 2012 (UTC)

Changes in English WP affect this list

English WP is now getting its inter-wiki links from Wikidata rather than listing them at the bottom of the page. This is a Good Thing, and some day we should do it too. But at the moment I can't figure out how it works (just what in the English pages, such as en:Chess, calls for the IWL to be inserted). I've been creating this list by going through the page at Meta that shows the current sizes of the 1000 Pages, going from there to the English pages, and following their IWL back to us. I may instead have to rely on our list of the names of the 1000 Pages, and use our IWL to get the English titles to match up with the stats in Meta. This is way more programming than I can do in the next few days. :-( Hence no updates for a while, until I figure this out.

Does anybody know how the Wikidata IWL business works? Is it a new feature in the code or something? Or what am I missing? (en:Template:Sister project links is not relevant.) A. Mahoney (disputatio) 20:02, 14 Februarii 2013 (UTC)

At the foot of the iw links on the reading screen (not the edit screen) of en:Chess, you see "Edit links". You click on that and you are taken to wikidata:Chess. There, if you look through the list of links you find that the English one is "chess". So does that English link, simply by existing, cause the rendering of the page en:Chess to include that list of interwiki links? I'm sure you have got this far too, and probably much further, but that's as far as I can see :) Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 20:57, 14 Februarii 2013 (UTC)

Nothing in the English pages, such as en:Chess, calls for the IWL to be inserted. Instead, as Andrew correctly suspected, it is the Wikidata entry (in this case d:Q718) containing a sitelink to en:Chess that causes all the sitelinks present in this wikidata entry to be pushed to en:Chess (unless they are overridden or explicitly excluded there).

You might start from the page at meta as before, and then go to [1] (be sure to pick not the labels but the sitelinks) or more specifically to [2] (try experimenting with the &format= parameter to find a presentation that you can easily process in your program, see the documentation at [3]). On either of these two pages, the name of the lawiki page that corresponds to enwiki page Chess is listed. Both these pages are primarily intended for computer programs; humans might want to use d:Special:ItemByTitle/enwiki/Chess instead. --UV (disputatio) 22:44, 14 Februarii 2013 (UTC)

One last warning taken from d:Wikidata:Main Page: “Please note that the API for accessing the data will change!” – so the two links given above might stop working (i.e. might have to be modified) one day. --UV (disputatio) 22:48, 14 Februarii 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, UV; yes, I did finally figure out that it's a new MediaWiki code module that's causing the call to Wikidata, and that the simplest way to connect English and Latin page titles will ultimately be from there. Short term, I do have a list of matching titles in various languages that I can work from. And I realize all this is new and therefore the API is still being figured out -- as a former run-time-library developer, I completely understand how that works. Doing all this "right," so to speak, will ultimately be easier for all of us, I'm sure. A. Mahoney (disputatio) 13:12, 15 Februarii 2013 (UTC)

If anyone's curious, I finally remembered Usor:Amahoney/1000 Paginae tituli, a list of matching English and Latin names that I could use to map from Meta to here. This is much faster than looking up the inter-wiki links, whether from :en or from Wikidata. I will use Wikidata to update that "tituli" page, but that only has to happen when something changes, which is relatively uncommon. So this chart is back in business :-) A. Mahoney (disputatio) 21:11, 19 Februarii 2013 (UTC)

New feature in the table

I'm now marking pages that have the {{dubsig}} formula as paginae corrigendae; there are surprisingly many -- perhaps because so many of the 1000 Pages deal with things neither Cicero nor Erasmus has left us a word for! A. Mahoney (disputatio) 13:16, 28 Februarii 2013 (UTC)

Page move

A few days ago I moved Honglou meng in accordance with a discussion we had (a while back) about titles of works in non-Roman scripts. I just noticed that it's on Wikidata under the old title, and it is in your list under the old title, so I have moved it back again to the old title so that everything agrees. Touch wood. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 21:52, 28 Februarii 2013 (UTC)

Or you could update Wikidata. But the relevant programs are generally good about redirects, so it shouldn't be a problem either way. I have been wondering whether the program that generates the tables in Meta knows about Wikidata yet -- MarsRover (its author/maintainer) may run into the same problems I did, if he's still expecting to read IWL to get to the various pages. This could cause a delay in updating the charts! A. Mahoney (disputatio) 14:06, 1 Martii 2013 (UTC)

5000 et 10,000

Re "1000 Paginae, bring median over 5000." I think I accomplished that last night, just before the deadline, but more effort can't hurt. (Excelsior!) Also, I'm hoping I nudged the mean above 10,000 yesterday. Those big numbers might have a psychological effect on outside observers. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 14:21, 1 Martii 2013 (UTC)

Between us we did bring the mean up to 10,000 yesterday, which is excellent. We might lose ground in the standings, though, since there hasn't been a lot of growth this month -- we've all been working at the small articles but haven't brought much up over the category lines. Maybe over spring break next month.... A. Mahoney (disputatio) 16:14, 1 Martii 2013 (UTC)

My last effort last night, on Depressio oeconomica magna, was 58 minutes too late to count for February (the clocks here weren't correctly synchronized with Europe's!), but at least the boost that the text received is in the bank for March, and its effects will show up the next time you run your program. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 17:06, 1 Martii 2013 (UTC)

It might count -- I'm not sure whether the program takes the state of the various pages precisely at the start of the month, or at whatever time it reaches them. Probably the latter. And since it has some 285,000 pages to read (at least in principle), it can take a long time to get to any given page! But, as you say, what doesn't count for February counts for March. A. Mahoney (disputatio) 18:22, 1 Martii 2013 (UTC)

We moved up to 31! Well done, everybody!

PS: But don't relax. I think the real reason was a sudden decline in Old Belarussian, which has (no doubt temporarily) lost 104 of its stubs. I guess they'll bounce back. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 13:47, 4 Martii 2013 (UTC)

yes, I think due to the Wikidata change-over (as I noted at VP:1000). But we'll take it! A. Mahoney (disputatio) 14:27, 4 Martii 2013 (UTC)

Misc.

The cited reduction in lengths prolly reflects my tidying, but not to worry: those pages are still close to the boundary and will be easy to build back up with actual text. Also, the built-back-up versions will have a better structure, not so tail-wagging-the-dog-ish with expedient (mostly bibliographic) padding. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 14:00, 30 Ianuarii 2014 (UTC)

Spiffy; I'd noticed that you were re-formatting bibliographies -- a Good Thing of course -- and I figure you know what you're doing! :-) I haven't had much time to work on this lately but am at least poking at pages relevant to what I'm teaching; hoping for more leisure over the Washington's Birthday weekend. A. Mahoney (disputatio) 14:41, 30 Ianuarii 2014 (UTC)

Sadly, teaching will be taking too much time this semester, so I'll mostly be darting in & out at random times, often doing nearly mindless tasks, like tidying. :/ IacobusAmor (disputatio) 15:01, 30 Ianuarii 2014 (UTC)

I think in a couple of cases your tidying may have inadvertently lost some text -- in those cases I've restored it from the history (Primum bellum mundanum, Afgania). Please glance at them! If you intended the deletion -- and you could well be right, at that -- by all means revert my edit, but explain briefly on the talk page?

I agree with Anne, the reformatting of those bibliographies is a Good Thing, or even a Very Good Thing! Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 16:21, 30 Ianuarii 2014 (UTC)

Both deletions involved lists that seemed to duplicate material already given. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 20:35, 30 Ianuarii 2014 (UTC)

Yes, you could well be right. Seeing no explanation, I thought it possible these were slips of the keyboard. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 21:24, 30 Ianuarii 2014 (UTC)

Having found amazingly large chunks of duplicated text in Mexicum, I was on the lookout for anything similar. :) IacobusAmor (disputatio) 22:11, 30 Ianuarii 2014 (UTC)

Tandem plus 30.00! Macte! IacobusAmor (disputatio) 11:29, 6 Martii 2014 (UTC)

Euge! Bene fecimus omnes -- vel potius bene fecitis, quod ego ipsa pauca tantum verba hoc mense addi :-( A. Mahoney (disputatio) 13:21, 6 Martii 2014 (UTC)

Run it again?

Run it again now and see if we didn't gain that 0.03 back! ;) IacobusAmor (disputatio) 17:43, 30 Aprilis 2014 (UTC)

Got it and more: we both went for Atomus immediately, of course. A. Mahoney (disputatio) 18:37, 30 Aprilis 2014 (UTC)

A double whammy!—and the text is now comfortably >10K. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 19:42, 30 Aprilis 2014 (UTC)

Vinum

I see that you had it at 29,812 characters, so I added 747 to push it above 30K. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 00:18, 15 Ianuarii 2015 (UTC)

cool: now you've already ensured positive growth for the month! A. Mahoney (disputatio) 13:29, 15 Ianuarii 2015 (UTC)

Cur tantum 28,162 video, cum "historiam inspicere" premo?--Utilo (disputatio) 16:00, 15 Ianuarii 2015 (UTC)

28,162 est pretium verum, sed pro comparatione adversus alias vicipaedias debes multiplicare per 1.1; aut fontem recensens, vide "magnitudinem" sub capsa editoria. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 17:34, 15 Ianuarii 2015 (UTC)

Gratias! Ut philosophus (quis?) dixit: Consenesco cotidie addiscens aliquod.--Utilo (disputatio) 18:23, 15 Ianuarii 2015 (UTC)

Fuit Solon Athenensis: γηράσκω δ' αἰεὶ πολλὰ διδασκόμενος. A. Mahoney (disputatio) 16:31, 16 Ianuarii 2015 (UTC)

Inde Cicero De senectute 8.26 "... ut Solonem versibus gloriantem videmus, qui se quotidie aliquid addiscentem dicit senem fieri: ut ego feci, qui Graecas literas senex didici." Ut ego, qui usum Vicipaediae didici. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 19:21, 16 Ianuarii 2015 (UTC)

Why, one wonders,

Why, one wonders, are both Metallum and Metallurgia among the 1000 most important pages? Wouldn't one suffice? IacobusAmor (disputatio) 13:22, 8 Maii 2015 (UTC)

Indeed. You could propose this over at Meta, on the list's talk page. It's been pretty quiet there for a while. A. Mahoney (disputatio) 17:53, 8 Maii 2015 (UTC)

#38

Re: "August numbers are out: we've lost points but are still 38th in the standings." I believe I've just now added enough letters to Zoroastrismus to gain back the 0.03 that had disappeared. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 21:24, 6 Augusti 2015 (UTC)

Good: I didn't manage to figure out which page it was, since I was finishing up my summer class (Catullus and his reception in later Latin, Horace to Pascoli: great fun). We've been mouldering in the upper 30s for some months; wonder if we could manage to get to 30th some day? A. Mahoney (disputatio) 19:15, 8 Augusti 2015 (UTC)

Commentarius en:Name

Speaking of #38, under Anthropologia et psychologia / Lingua / Res generales, #37, en:Name seems to correspond here with Nomen proprium, as en:Name, despite its first paragraph, is all about proper nouns, generally ignoring philosophical issues relating to the naming of common things, like apple, and ideas, like motherhood. So should we declare Nomen proprium to be equivalent to en:Name, fix it with a link, and thereby improve our standings? (Our Nomen currently redirects to Titulus.) IacobusAmor (disputatio) 11:36, 9 Augusti 2015 (UTC)

It has to look right, or at least not evidently wrong, to Wikipedians in other languages. (If it looks wrong, sure as eggs, someone will change it back.) I think your idea probably would pass that test, though it's a fact (for whatever good or bad reason) that en:wiki currently also has a page en:Proper noun, to which "Proper name" is redirected, and to which our page Nomen proprium is currently linked ...

But it would perhaps look righter [sic] to other Wikipedians if we delete the redirect from "Nomen" to "Titulus", then move "Nomen proprium" to "Nomen", and then make the interwiki change that you suggest. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 11:55, 9 Augusti 2015 (UTC)

If you think the redirect at "Nomen" should be deleted to make this move possible, just say. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 12:57, 9 Augusti 2015 (UTC)

By all means, if that's the necessary first step! IacobusAmor (disputatio) 13:06, 9 Augusti 2015 (UTC)

OK, I've done that and I will now link it to Name at Wikidata. It's all yours now. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 19:14, 9 Augusti 2015 (UTC)

Comparative/historical linguistics

Confusion reigns here. Under Anthropologia et psychologia / Lingua / #17, en:Comparative linguistics links to our Linguistica historica, which in turn links to en:Historical linguistics, leaving us with no article equivalent to #19, en:Comparative linguistics, and the heading "Linguistica historico-comparativa" in our Linguistica historica links to Methodus historico-comparativa (and btw, on that title, L&S say methodus is postclassical, and Cassell's & Traupman agree that 'method' is ratio). If these articles can be sorted out, points will be gained with no, or almost no, new writing. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 11:56, 9 Augusti 2015 (UTC)

There was an unwanted local link to la: on the en:Comparative linguistics page, which I have now removed. Our Methodus historico-comparativa links to en:Comparative method (linguistics), which seems OK to me. The problem is sometimes that there are too many overlapping articles on en:wiki, and the people choosing the 1000-page lists have to choose one. But, anyway, we could now write a new page equivalent to en:Comparative linguistics, if there is indeed room for that. The en: page is rather short. I suspect most other wikipedias have either the "method" article equivalent, as we have, or the "comparative linguistics" article equivalent, which is the one the 1000-page specialists happened to choose. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 12:55, 9 Augusti 2015 (UTC)

Note that all this refers to the 10,000-page list. And the list at Meta contains Wikidata links, not links to :en or any other individual version. My tables also go through Wikidata. As a result, there's a level of indirection that sometimes makes it hard to see what's actually wanted. In the particular case, I don't see why we need both linguistica historica and "linguistica comparativa" -- or why English does either, but that's not our problem. We could change the link in Wikidata, making our existing page match en:comparative linguistics, or we could change the link on the list in meta, so that it points at "historical" rather than "comparative." I don't have strong feelings either way and it's worth looking around at what other versions do -- whichever Wikidata item has more pages linked to it is probably the better candidate for the list. Further, I'd keep the methodus historico-comparativa article (under this title or "ratio...") as well, perhaps including discussion of the method in biology/anatomy/evolution and in textual criticism: it's always struck me as one of the defining ideas of the 19th c. A. Mahoney (disputatio) 20:09, 10 Augusti 2015 (UTC)

I agree with your analysis in this subject area: we already have the two most needed articles. And I'm sure we'd all agree that it's better to present the most useful articles than to gain a fractional point (which we may anyway lose again when an item is changed at Meta). Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 08:54, 11 Augusti 2015 (UTC)

October 2015: one missing

We're apparently missing "human" -- see my comments at Disputatio:Homo sapiens. A. Mahoney (disputatio) 18:15, 9 Octobris 2015 (UTC)

Still missing; vide paginam disputationis. And the Danes are coming on strong! IacobusAmor (disputatio) 22:26, 6 Novembris 2015 (UTC)

end of March: lost a bit of ground

Because of useful cleanup in Berolinum and Bellum Indosinense II, both of those pages have fallen below 30,000 language-weighted characters; that's why our score is a bit lower at the moment. A. Mahoney (disputatio) 19:22, 28 Martii 2016 (UTC)

That was me in both cases, I think. Sorry, I didn't notice it took them under the limit.

I've had another look at Berlin. For some reason it contained hidden text in Latin. There may have been a reason for this, but heaven knows what, so I have now un-hidden it. That takes Berlin back over the threshold again :) Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 19:53, 28 Martii 2016 (UTC)

As of today, Bellum Indosinense II still needs 536 characters to cross the 30,000 barrier. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 21:36, 10 Aprilis 2016 (UTC)

And let us remember that since all the items in the 1K list are in the 10K list (they are, aren't they?), the other letter-count cutoffs to pay attention to are 8,000 and 16,000. I just now boosted "Moles (agger)" above 8,000, and though it does nothing for the score of the 1K list, it bolsters (by a tiny bit) the score of the 10K list. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 23:43, 28 Martii 2016 (UTC)

Boosting certain other articles would be easy. For example, "Atheismus" needs only 127 characters to exceed 16,000, "Goethius" needs only 164, and "Nix" needs only 167; and to exceed 8,000 characters, "Mamma" needs only 167, and "Moneta (pecunia)" needs only 187. We have supposed articles—pseudostipulae!—with definitions shorter than those. And these are just the raw numbers; because of the language-based correction factor, multiply by about 0.9 to get the numbers actually needed. (A fasciculus with a generous caption would do it for most of the ones named here.) Several more articles in each group need just a few hundred characters to cross a boundary. Alas, time is tight here this month, but maybe this update will encourage others to work along these lines. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 00:00, 29 Martii 2016 (UTC)

As you observe, the weights are different between the 1K list and the 10K list. Here's the calculation: to be 8,000 in the 10K list, a page needs to be 8,250 on the 1K list. In principle, yes, everything on the 1K list is supposed to be on the longer list too, but the lists are independent and I wouldn't want to guarantee that this is always true. So look at Usor:Amahoney/Myrias epitome for what's near the borderline on the longer list. The "competition" table at Meta for the 1K list is calculated just after the first of the month, and around mid-month for the 10K list. Every point helps! A. Mahoney (disputatio) 12:52, 29 Martii 2016 (UTC)

As for the 1K computation of 5 April 2016: we lost 0.05, just enough to enable Danish (+0.07) to leapfrog over us, pushing us down to 39th place. We'd been in 38th place since April of 2015, when we fell from 37th. We'd been in 37th place since about July of 2014, when we fell from 36th. Before that, we were holding 35th place for a while. The trend is down, and it's likely to continue that way unless fresh contributors appear. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 14:43, 6 Aprilis 2016 (UTC)

In the 1K calculations for May, we lost 0.09 points. Apparently one text fell below 30,000, and another one fell below 10,000. Perhaps somebody was tidying and didn't notice the sanctity, so to speak, of those pages. When you run your program again, let's figure out which pages those were and beef them back up. The reductions in wordcounts were probably small, so it shouldn't be hard to do! IacobusAmor (disputatio) 10:28, 7 Iunii 2016 (UTC)

Certainly; I'm away until mid-month but when I'm next at school I'll update everything. A. Mahoney (disputatio) 06:10, 8 Iunii 2016 (UTC)

Update, 15 Maii 2020

Woohoo! Thanks! Right away, we see in the new table that "Virus biologicum" needs only a handful of words to cross a threshold and gain us points, and "Afgania" could probably use a handful more just to be sure that an unexpected glitch at Meta isn't depriving us of extra points. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 14:27, 15 Maii 2020 (UTC)

There are no unexpected glitches at Meta: we always expect them! :-) And remember, only Wikidata counts, which is why "snake"/Serpentes has gone all screwy (see my note on its talk page). I plan to get to the 10K list this week too. A. Mahoney (disputatio) 14:34, 20 Maii 2020 (UTC)

The new figures are out at Meta, and we're in 45th place, where we've been for several months: we haven't lost any ground, and we're not missing any pages. A. Mahoney (disputatio) 15:08, 6 Iunii 2020 (UTC)

Good news! However, we were in 36th place in June of 2013, so the long-term trend hasn't been favorable. ¶ On the Myrias list, we're in 50th place, up from 53rd in July of 2019. I've been concentrating my efforts there, having added one new article from that list on each of the past 340 days (and today's, on the auk family, is almost ready to publish). Your own additions of articles drawn from the mathematics list will help boost our score in the present cycle. Excelsior! IacobusAmor (disputatio) 15:18, 6 Iunii 2020 (UTC)

I agree that the Myrias list is more profitable (so to speak); all the other Wikipediae are jumping over us on the smaller list. Look how many there are with no missing items there. The scoring's quite different, as you realize -- on the Myrias list, we get half the possible points for the mere existence of an article, but on the 1000 list existence only gets us 1/10 of possible points, and it really matters to make the articles longer. Since it's easier to write a short article than to lengthen one that's already pretty fair, we can rack up points on the Myrias list much more quickly. When do you think we can get to 7,000 out of 10,000? A. Mahoney (disputatio) 17:01, 6 Iunii 2020 (UTC)

Well, I'm doing one a day, but as you'll notice if you check out the articles I'm adding, I always try to pass the 8,000-byte barrier so as to get three-quarters of the points on offer, rather than half—not always successfully, but we have only so much free time in the day! Since putting together two or three sentences with appropriate documentation and maybe a picture doesn't take much time at all, it's a little unexpected that we don't have all 10,000 articles by now. Some contributors may not know about the lists (and your good work in compiling them). Maybe advertising on Taberna would help. Meanwhile, I've got dibs on the birds for the next few weeks! :) IacobusAmor (disputatio) 18:46, 6 Iunii 2020 (UTC)

You're more ambitious than I am! I'd love to see us have all 10,000 -- but a realistic goal for this summer might be to make it to 7,000, and go on from there. A. Mahoney (disputatio) 13:06, 8 Iunii 2020 (UTC)

Cladograms

Meanwhile, in translations of certain biological articles, some of the imported cladograms work, and some don't. Any idea what's wrong with the cladogram in, for example, "Laridae"? It's been copied & pasted, but it just won't print! I inserted some links, but they wouldn't ruin the code, would they? IacobusAmor (disputatio) 13:36, 8 Iunii 2020 (UTC)

Likewise in "Alcidae." IacobusAmor (disputatio) 13:39, 8 Iunii 2020 (UTC)

The problem is that it's been copied and pasted! Our formulas are "cladogramma" and "cladus" rather than "cladogram" and "clade" -- try putting the keywords into Latin. A. Mahoney (disputatio) 13:55, 8 Iunii 2020 (UTC)

In "Laridae," I just now tried changing "cladogram" to "cladogramma" and got this response: "Warning: Page using Template:Cladogram with unknown parameter "cladogramma" (this message is shown only in preview)." Maybe I missed something. My memory, however, is that I've copied & pasted cladograms in the past and they've (sometimes) printed OK. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 14:08, 8 Iunii 2020 (UTC)

It looks like you've used formula Clade in the past rather than Cladogram(ma). The only pages I find that actually use the Cladogramma formula are Mygalomorphae and Serpentes, but something like Angiospermae just uses Clade. Try it that way? A. Mahoney (disputatio) 15:49, 8 Iunii 2020 (UTC)

It didn't work, but it did produce a new result:

{{{1}}}

and maybe that's progress? IacobusAmor (disputatio) 16:47, 8 Iunii 2020 (UTC)

To the two pages cited above, we can add "Sterninae." IacobusAmor (disputatio) 00:00, 9 Iunii 2020 (UTC)

Here's a strategic comment, written over coffee. When you have copied-and-pasted a formula that turns out not to work, consider your options at once -- it'll save time and gain points in the end!

1. If you delete it and write some more text instead, that will increase the character count on the page (obviously).
2. If you adapt it yourself, it will be lovely and informative and will increase the character count on the page (obviously).
3. If you just leave it there, not working, it will increase the character count on the page temporarily. But, if you leave a page in an evidently unfinished state, the future editor who wikifies it will remove useless and distracting matter including formulas that don't work. That leaves it to the future wikifier to verify whether the formula is used on so many pages that's it's worth spending time on, or used on so few that it's better to delete it. If the latter, the count will go down again.
4. If you know that you will want to use it on many pages, and you don't want to adapt it yourself, then it's worth asking others to do it for you; bearing in mind that you could ask them instead to write more pages and add more text. Which of these things you might ask them to do would result in greater progress on the Richter scale is a matter of fine judgment, I reckon.

Ergo, Usor:Machiavelli would say this. If you're confident that this formula will eventually be really useful, leave any pages containing it in as finished a state as possible -- no hidden text, no other formulas that don't work, no unverified links, a consistently formatted bibliography -- so that no other editor feels a need to tidy it up. There the formula will remain, not working but with readable text around it. Other pages also requiring it will gather around, and the future editor will conclude that it's needed and will create it :) Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 09:05, 9 Iunii 2020 (UTC)

The problem is that sometimes copying & pasting a cladogram works, and sometimes it doesn't! The formula in the three articles cited above doesn't work, but it does work in "Pteroclididae." This variability is a mystery unless (as I'd thought) it has to do with the one obvious difference, the framing: in "Alcidae" and "Sterninae," the cladogram is inside a box, and that box is inside another box, with a caption at the bottom; in "Laridae," the cladogram is inside a similarly captioned box, but with a title at the top. In all these cases, the cladogram is printing flush right in the English wikipedia. In "Pteroclididae," however, the cladogram has no box and is printing flush left in Vicipaedia. Apparently, though, the boxes don't matter, because in "Mygalomorphae," the cladogram has a box with a caption and is printing flush right, and in "Serpentes," is has a box with both a caption and a title and is printing flush right. Presumably, some tiny difference (but not the variation among the words "cladogram" and "clade" and "clades"?) is ruining some of our cladograms, but I'm not enough of an expert with formulas to find it. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 10:38, 9 Iunii 2020 (UTC)

In the number of bytes, "Sterninae" is just over the cusp, so hiding or removing the cladogram would likely lose us a point at Meta; the other texts may be secure enough to withstand such hiding. With the cladograms unhidden, a mention of the formula is visible, and in red—and that may be annoying, but it's hardly tragic. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 10:38, 9 Iunii 2020 (UTC)

That sounds complicated, I agree.

Usor:Machiavelli certainly wouldn't hide the formula. Given that I were the future Wikifier of one of these pages, if the formula was there as a redlink, I might check how many other examples currently existed here on Vicipaedia: if many, I might consider creating the formula: the more I found, the better for Usor:Machiavelli's cunning plan. But I wouldn't find any examples that are hidden (that's what hidden means), so if most examples were hidden, it's pretty certain I would delete the few unhidden examples I found. Even if I did still create the formula, the hidden examples of it still wouldn't work!

The classic solution (unless someone else can think of a better one) is, in the circumstances you describe, not to copy-and-paste but to transfer the information manually into a formula that works. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 15:37, 9 Iunii 2020 (UTC)

September 2020

Although the official table in Meta says we're missing one, that's because of an unauthorized change to the list, which has been reverted. Another good month of growth even with that! A. Mahoney (disputatio) 15:50, 7 Septembris 2020 (UTC)

As you know, I've been using your tables to raise articles above the cutoffs, but one such article confirms my worry that your program differs (albeit slightly) from the one at Meta. The list at "Historia paginae Mamma" tells us that "Mamma" has 9,122 raw words; multiplying by the correction factor (1.1) raises that to 10,034.2, qualifying us for three extra points. Your latest printout, however, says that "Mamma" has 9968.2 corrected words—meaning that we aren't getting those points. When time becomes available, I'll add a little to "Mamma" to finesse the problem, so this difficulty isn't worth worrying much about, since your numbers remain quite helpful. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 16:56, 7 Septembris 2020 (UTC)

The byte count in page history includes things like HTML comments, inter-wiki links (though there should never be any of those any more), and extra white space. The tables in Meta don't count those. I'm trying to use the same algorithm as at Meta but the figures have never matched exactly -- though they won't be off by very much. Instead of the page history figures, though, what I use is the editing gadget, another implementation of the same algorithm: it gives you the weighted size right there at the bottom of your edit screen, and you don't even have to multiply. (Only works for the 1000 Pages -- for the 10,000 you do have to multiply because the weights are different.) A. Mahoney (disputatio) 17:16, 7 Septembris 2020 (UTC)

Yes, I've always used that figure at the foot of the edit window -- that was your work too, Anne. For Mamma it gives 10008.9. But I didn't realise, or had forgotten, that it wouldn't be exactly accurate for the 10,000 list, so thanks for reminding us of that.

However, to keep it in proportion, I don't think we'd ever really have expected that just 34 bytes over the plimsoll line (or 8.9 bytes!) would be secure. Apart from any little imprecision in our calculation, such a page could be sunk with a single correction to the bibliography or the external links. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 08:31, 8 Septembris 2020 (UTC)

I've been working on food pages. It was about time. Having started in my own way, I've just now had a look at the 10,000 and am happy to see that many pages on my mental to-do list are crying out for attention. Expect to see improvements in the coming weeks. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 09:31, 8 Septembris 2020 (UTC)

I can't take credit for the editing widget -- I think it was UV. I haven't yet coded anything inside the wiki! A. Mahoney (disputatio) 16:08, 10 Septembris 2020 (UTC)

Sorry, my mistake. Incidentally, UV is busy right now, but will be back soon, I believe! Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 17:31, 10 Septembris 2020 (UTC)

Falling!

The newest figures at Meta are showing that for the first time in twenty-seven months, Vicipaedia's score has fallen. According to the tables, two articles have dropped below the 30,000 cutoff. Is there a chance that you could run your program again soon, so we can find out which articles they are and why they fell? They're probably still close enough to the cutoff that we can fairly easily push them back above it, but first we need to know which ones they are! IacobusAmor (disputatio) 21:16, 6 Maii 2021 (UTC)

I'm on it. What probably happened isn't that our articles got shorter but that something changed in Wikidata so the articles in the list are different. More shortly. A. Mahoney (disputatio) 13:07, 7 Maii 2021 (UTC)

As I thought. Michael Jackson has replaced Elvis, and Heidegger has replaced Chomsky, and that's where we lose ground. I'm about to update this table. A. Mahoney (disputatio) 13:11, 7 Maii 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the alacrity!—but what a bother to have to accommodate the new items, especially because it's impossible to believe that more people want to look up Heidegger than Chomsky! Clearly, the damage would have been worse had we not simultaneously boosted several stubs above the 10,000 barrier. We get 0.03 of a point for that, but 0.05 of a point for crossing the 30,000 barrier—and sadly, right now, we have no articles anywhere near the higher cusp (the gap just below it being huge), so enlarging the closest candidates won't be easy after all. The fastest fix may therefore be to enlarge the articles just below the 10,000 barrier. Here are the largest dozen of those, and therefore the ones begging the most for urgent enlargement (with current size in bytes), being crossed off as they're boosted above the 10K cutoff: Christophorus Columbus (9284), Bellum (9261), Simon Bolivar (9241), Ventus  (9178), Amor (9147), Nagarjuna (8995), Technologia (8995), Marilyn Monroe (8980), Poesis (8890), Linguistica (8862), Influentia (8828), Moles (8813). IacobusAmor (disputatio) 17:00, 7 Maii 2021 (UTC)

Demetrius iam "Christophorum Columbum" auxit. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 17:14, 8 Maii 2021 (UTC)

Ta-daaa! Four items now having been enlarged to have more than 10,000 bytes, Vicipaedia has recovered the points it lost last month because of adjustments to the list at Meta. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 15:36, 9 Maii 2021 (UTC) ¶ Quinque! IacobusAmor (disputatio) 19:35, 9 Maii 2021 (UTC) ¶ Sex! Marilyn Monroe! IacobusAmor (disputatio) 13:11, 13 Maii 2021 (UTC) ¶ Septem! Technologia! IacobusAmor (disputatio) 21:37, 13 Maii 2021 (UTC) ¶ Octo! Ventus! IacobusAmor (disputatio) 23:25, 13 Maii 2021 (UTC) ¶ Novem! Poesis! IacobusAmor (disputatio) 18:30, 16 Maii 2021 (UTC) ¶ Decem! Nagarjuna! IacobusAmor (disputatio) 18:33, 29 Maii 2021 (UTC)

Onward and upward! It is a moving target, though; there's a lot of discussion around the list at Meta right now and more things might end up changing. A. Mahoney (disputatio) 12:32, 10 Maii 2021 (UTC)

Uh-oh. This bears watching! Despite a presumption of goodwill, the enterprise can't reconcile two questions: (a) should the lists contain the most important topics in the world? or (b) should they contain the items that people are the likeliest to look up? If the former, many of those who get to choose the items are less than fully competent to do so; if the latter, the included items can be determined by empirical evidence and will almost certainly exclude items that experts would include in the former. Oh well. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 13:19, 10 Maii 2021 (UTC)

I don't think anyone at Meta is thinking about "what people are likely to look up." The dispute seems to be about what is "most important" -- and there's no agreement about what they should be important for, or whom they should be important to. General sense that whatever affects the writer is more important than anything else, so for example there's a push to replace some other infectious disease or epidemic with Covid-19 because obviously that's the most important epidemic ever, simply because it's the one the Meta commentators know about. This is one of the drawbacks of crowd-sourcing, though, as we all know. A. Mahoney (disputatio) 18:07, 10 Maii 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, but see, that's just another instance of question {b) masquerading as question (a). True, in the past year, more people have probably indeed looked up COVID-19 than have looked up smallpox, or even the Spanish flu, but instead of asking to replace an older disease or pandemic with the current one, why not, in view of question (a), replace Corazon Aquino or Caesar Cui or Osmium, or Caseus aerugosus? I mean; does the list really need four different kinds of cheese plus a basic article on cheese and another one on cream (not to mention butter and milk and even soy milk)? The whole thing in its present configuration is quite uneven in its coverage of topics imaginable under question (a)! IacobusAmor (disputatio) 19:16, 10 Maii 2021 (UTC)

Rectissime dicis, mi Iacobe, sed in Taberna nostra loquens illos, quos suadere vis, non suades! Talia argumenta apud Meta proponere tibi oportet. Caseos aerugosos augebo: si pagina inter 10,000 maneat, optime; si excludatur, minime maerebo. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 10:35, 11 Maii 2021 (UTC)

The computation of 5 June 2021

Woohoo! In the latest computation, we made up last month's loss and scored a good gain, edging out Slovenčina for 44th place! Thanks to those who helped out! Now what can we do for an encore? IacobusAmor (disputatio) 17:36, 6 Iunii 2021 (UTC)

Ah, I was just going to check if the figures were out yet. Nice work. A. Mahoney (disputatio) 16:56, 7 Iunii 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the update!

It let me see that easy additions to "Flumen Amazonum" would raise the total above the 10K threshold and thereby gain some points! Also, it shows that "Petropolis" can easily be boosted above its next threshold (16,000) in the 10K list. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 18:55, 13 Augusti 2021 (UTC)

Rerun?

Any chance of rerunning this program soon? Vicipaedia lost 0.07 points in March, probably because the editing of two articles pushed their total below 10,000 characters, and we may not be able to identify (and rebuild) those articles without new tabulations here. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 13:43, 8 Aprilis 2022 (UTC)