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Hello! I noticed that your userpage mentions that you are interested in LGBT issues. Would you be interested in joining WikiProject LGBT studies? The WikiProject's been a bit inactive recently and some of us are trying to get it going again. We'd love to have you on board! Dev920 (Have a nice day!) 21:42, 3 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
We are a growing community of Wikipedia editors dedicated to identifying, categorizing, and improving articles of interest to the LGBT community. Some points that may be helpful:
Our main aim is to help improve LGBT-related articles, so if someone asks for help with an article, please try your hardest to help them if you are able.
Monthly Challenge: Find 5 editors to LGBT articles and invite them to the project! Check out our recruitment tips if you need them. Good luck!
Project News
With such rapid development of the project, it was decided that a Coordinator was needed to ensure all the fiddly maintenence was kept up. Elections were held and Dev920 (talk·contribs) has been elected Coordinator for the next three months. She said "I am honoured and proud to be at the helm of such a fantastic WikiProject and look forward to our future". Congratulations Dev!
The assessment system continues to be a great success, we have tagged over 5200 articles! Please tag any LGBT related articles you come across by adding {{LGBTProject | class=}} to the talkpage. Please see the Assessment Department for how to assess an article according to the grading system.
Jumpaclass is proving to be quite successful! The winner at the end of the year gets to pick the January collaboration, so sign up and get going! Or challenge another user to see how far you can jump a stub!
A new Community department has been set up to foster community amongst our members. It mostly acts as other WikiProjects' Outreach department, but also has a Quilt to which every member is entitled to add a square containing anything of their choice.
The peer review is not getting much custom - please notice you can cross-list other peer reviews from different projects that also fall within our scope.
Many people still seem to be unaware that the Deletion sorting subpage exists for XfDs to be listed: please use and watch that page instead of issuing "alerts" for ordinary AfDs on the project talkpage.
WP:FILM has a current drive to give every film article an infobox. WP:LGBT successfully gave all 105 LGBT infoboxless films infoboxes, so a big thank you to everyone who participated.
A new template, LGBT, has been created for articles which are becoming to cluttered with infoboxes. Thanks to WJBscribe and SatyrTN for creating it.
A very basic resources page has been started. Please add to it as you come across useful sites.
A promotional poster for the project has been created: http://wplgbt.tripod.com/Wikipedianeedsyou.doc (you have to directly cut and paste the url, or it won't let you download it). Please distribute anywhere and everywhere you desire, such as gay libraries, cybercafes, community centres and so on. Also, please let Dev920 know where you have put it up, so she can keep track of our coverage.
An LGBT Publications Taskforce has been proposed. Please sign up here if you are interested in being involved.
An LGBT WikiProject has been set up on the Spanish Wikipedia! Set up by Raystorm, it has already gained six members and is developing an assessment system. If you speak any Spanish, please consider going up and lending a hand if you can!
To stop receiving this newsletter, or to receive it in a different format, please drop me a line. If you have any news or any announcements to be broadcast, do let Dev920 know.
DavidShankBone deserves kudos for his current drive to provide quality LGBT photos from the NYC area. One of the more recent photos is posted on Michael Musto, and you can check out the gallery on David's user page.
Project News
There is now the beginning of a list of core topics to possibly be included in the Wikipedia 1.0 release. Your suggestions are welcome; there may be many core LGBT topics still missing.
SatyrTN identified all the articles that were in subcategories of Category:LGBT but not yet tagged with the project's banner, about 1,400 articles. These have been completed, though SatyrBot will make periodic runs through the cats to find any new entries. Thanks Satyr!
The number of articles within our project's spectrum (6,667 currently) should now be relatively stable and only grow with article creation. However, if you find a category that should be included, please let SatyrTN know so it can be included in the bots runs.
Work is underway to improve the LGBT Portal. Please add any good quality (free) photos you come across on LGBT articles to the gallery here. Also if anyone would like to volunteer to help in maintaining the portal, please make yourselves known on the Portal's talkpage.
To stop receiving this newsletter, or to receive it in a different format, please drop me a line. If you have any news or any announcements to be broadcast, do let Dev920 know.
A taskforce dealing with LGBT publications has been proposed. If you are interested in getting involved, consider signing up at the projects' page.
Our core topics list is looking good. It's still a bit slim on LGBT history articles, non-American LGBT media, and important LGBT biographies. Do you have suggestions?
David Shankbone has done an amazing job taking photographs of LGBT celebrities. Thanks David! People interested in collaborating with him and setting up a photography taskforce should contact him or drop a note at the project's talkpage.
The LGBT Portal still needs a bit of love and attention :-). Again, any good quality (free) photos you come across on LGBT articles can be added to the gallery here. Volunteers to help out with the Portal are extremely welcome- make yourselves known on the Portal's talkpage. Updates to the current news items are helpful.
Deputy coordinator elections
WikiProject LGBT studies is looking for new Deputy Coordinators to help out with various essential tasks in organising the project. To nominate yourself or contribute to the discussion, please go to: Wikipedia:WikiProject LGBT studies/Coordinator/May 2007. The deadline for nominations is May 5 and the elections will last a week after that.
The elections will be pretty simple- everyone just endorses their favourite candidate(s). The three with the most votes at the end of the week are the new deputy coordinators, who will assist Dev920 in keeping the project running.
To stop receiving this newsletter, or to receive it in a different format, just ask Dev920. If you have any news or any announcements to be broadcast, do let her know.
Monthly Challenge: June Stub Review! Take a moment and sift through the roughly 3,600 Stub-class LGBT articles. Are they still stubs? If not, make an assessment change. Even better, do you see anything you can add/edit to increase the rating? Let's see if the project can lower the number of stubs down below 3,000!
Project News
WP:LGBT Exceeds 200 Members!!
Two editors have been selected by project members as co-coordinators. Their duties are still a bit unclear, but having a few more janitors around the project will help keep us running smoothly. Please feel free to message Fireplace or SatyrTN if you have any project questions or concerns.
To stop receiving this newsletter, or to receive it in a different format, just ask Dev920. If you have any news or any announcements to be broadcast, do let her know.
Monthly Challenge: Submit an article to our Jumpaclass competition! Languishing unloved, it is a great way to improving that article you always meant to improve but never got round to. Challenge someone else to go head to head and see who can improve their article most!
Our Deputy Coordinators have been doing a fabulous job so far. Well done!
The portal is now looking very snazzy, well done to Fireplace for all his hard work.
The list of LGBT people to be sorted has now beed reduced by 20%. Please help us with it, all of us adding just one person a day would have a dramatic effect!
The Core Topics is now largely complete. The original aim of getting some kind of publication out of it is extremely long term - any short term uses we can make of it are welcome on the project talkpage.
A suggestion was made this month that we start our own wiki. Although the conclusion was that we felt we were a part of Wikipedia rather than a stand alone organisation, it seems there is an LGBT wiki already, at http://lgbt.wikia.com/wiki/Main_page . Members may be interested in getting involved there.
The Collaboration is now getting rather short on suggestions. Article nominations for August through December would be welcome on the talkpage.
There is now a list of Missing LGBT Topics. Help is needed to work out which topics can be made redirects or need to be created. Please contribute is you can.
An LGBT banner that was created for Wikipedia's internal ads system has now been adapted so it can be placed on blogs and websites. The html is <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:LGBT"><img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/76/Qxz-ad48.gif" height="53" width="445"></a> Please credit Miranda and link to her userpage: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Miranda">Miranda</a>. The banner can be seen in action here. If you have a blog or a website, please consider adding the banner, either in a post or as part of your profile.
To stop receiving this newsletter, or to receive it in a different format, please let us know here. If you have any news or any announcements to be broadcast, do let Dev920 know.
Message from Coordinator: It's been almost two months since the last newsletter came out, so there are a fair few people who haven't really been kept up with our project. I'd like to welcome all those who have joined and those who have returned, and strongly reccommend that you use the talkpage for any queries or problems you have. Happy editing!
Article News
The ongoing effort to create a comprehensive list of LGB people has begun to bear fruit - /A AND the /W-Z lists have been featured! Congratulations to Dev920 and SatyrTN who nominated them respectively. Please consider pitching in the the remaining lists to help us get them finished before the end of the year.
Project News
WP:LGBT now has an IRC channel! It is #LGBTProject on Freenode. Users without IRC or Xchat can use the java app at java.freenode.net to access the channel from their web browser. Hope to see you in there sometime!
David Shankbone has taken a LOT of photos. An idea has been mooted to create a page for listing people who are willing to take images in their area on request, please give your thoughts here.
Considerable discussion has recently been held on our coverage of same sex marriage, civil unions and domestic partnerships. You may be interested to read it.
The list of LGBT people to be sorted has now been reduced by over 30%. Please help us with it, all of us adding just one person a day would have a dramatic effect!
A gay cabal conspiracy ghost has been created to do with what you will. :)
Wooh, massive gay conspiracy...
Member News
Since the last newsletter was released, we have had more members been labelled inactive than who have signed up - please consider recruiting a few more people if you can, a WikiProject is only as good as its members. :)
To stop receiving this newsletter, or to receive it in a different format, please let us know here. If you have any news or any announcements to be broadcast, do let Dev920 know.
The LGBT studies project has been rather quiet of late. Though we've added over 180 new members in the last year, only a small percentage are active participants. If you haven't visited our project or talk page in a while, please stop by for a look. Also, if you happen to bump into another editor who you feel might enjoy working with us, please extend an invitation. There's lot's do do, and the active members would sincerely appreciate some help.
Our Peer review project is struggling at the present, with only a few people reviewing the articles. While it is certainly possible to submit articles for a general peer review, a review by members of the LGBT community can be of additional value for LGBT specific writing. There are several articles currently up for review on a wide range of topics. At the very least, reading the articles will undoubtedly broaden your intellectual horizons :-)
At the moment, David Le Brocq, Malmö Devilants and Trajectory Hermeneutics are up for deletion review. Please take a look at them and make your voice heard at the deletion review. Articles nominated for deletion also present a challenge for improvement. See what you can do, and watchlist our deletion review page.
The Pederasty articles continue to be a point of controversy both within and outside of our community. Various editors have suggested that to include them as LGBT Project related somehow taints the project and brings Wikipedia into disrepute. Other editors have stated that the articles, and especially the Pederasty article, are part of the core of LGBT studies. Well meaning editors continue to remove our tags from the articles themselves as well as the talk pages. If you have time, please read the articles and watchlist them to protect them from vandalism and well meaning but counterproductive edits.
The list of LGBT people has survived its 4th nomination for deletion. Please watchlist this list to protect it from vandalism and unsourced additions. There are many in Wikipedia who would like to see this Featured status list removed from the project. It is up to us to keep it to such a high caliber that it never is removed.
Our project member David Shankbone is now working as a journalist for Wikinews, as well as continuing to improve our project and Wikipedia as a whole with his photographs. A sincere thank you goes out to him for all of his hard work. Wikipedia would not shine nearly as brightly without your contributions, David.
Happy Halloween, everybody! Be happy and celebrate!
The surviving life partner of prominent LGBT rights activist Barbara Gittings recently called one of our editors and, among other things, complimented us on what a great job our project is doing on Wikipedia. Thanks to everyone who contributes to this project, either through their article edits or support for other project members. We really are making an difference here!
Member assistance
Some of our project members have been having difficulties related to editing on the encyclopedia. If you are feeling frustrated or distressed by your editing experience, please don't keep it to yourself. Wikipedia is a collaborative effort, and we are all here to help one another. Drop a line on our talkpage or on another editor's page, and other members of the LGBT project will happily give you the support you want and need.
Lastly, Halloween is just around the corner. More than most holidays, Halloween is a holiday embraced by and tailor made to our community (though God only knows why we are invisible in the Halloween article here. Perhaps somebody would like to rectify that editing oversight). Have fun, everybody, and remember to both trick and treat!
To stop receiving this newsletter, or to receive it in a different format, please let us know here. If you have any news or any announcements to be broadcast, do let Dev920 know.
