User talk:Smurdah/Archives/2009/March

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Wikipedia Signpost — 2 March 2009

This week, the Wikipedia Signpost published volume 5, issue 9, which includes these articles:

Books extension enabled
News and notes: Stewards, Wikimania bids, and more
Wikipedia in the news: Wikipedia's role in journalism, Smarter Wikipedia, Skittles
Dispatches: WikiProject Ships Featured topic and Good topics
Wikiproject report: WikiProject Norse History and Culture
Discussion report: Discussion Reports And Miscellaneous Articulations
Features and admins: Approved this week
Technology report: Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News
Arbitration report: The Report on Lengthy Litigation

Delivered by §hepBot (Disable) at 20:46, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

The WPVG Newsletter (February 2009)

The WikiProject Video games Newsletter

The WikiProject Video games Newsletter
Volume II, No. 2 - February 2009

Archive before | Archive after

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Project At a Glance

As of February 2009, the project has:

Changes to Featured and Good content

Promoted FA/FL:

List of Metroid media, Sam & Max: Freelance Police, Star Wars: Rogue Squadron

Promoted FT:

Myst series

Demoted FA/FL/FT:

List of Metal Gear Solid characters

Promoted AA:

Super Mario 64 DS, Super Mario Kart

Promoted GA:

Advance Wars: Dual Strike, Alan Kotok, Alisia Dragoon, Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney, Braid (video game), Brain Age 2: More Training in Minutes a Day!, Discography of the Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles series, Fast inverse square root, Left 4 Dead, Luke Smith (writer), Mario Kart DS, Metroid Fusion, Metroid II: Return of Samus, Metroid: Zero Mission, Myst Online: Uru Live, Pong, Shadow the Hedgehog (video game), Star Trek: Voyager – Elite Force, Super Mario Bros. 3, Super Metroid, WarioWare: Smooth Moves, What's Cooking? with Jamie Oliver

Promoted GT:

None

Demoted GA/GT:

Crystalis, Duck Hunt, Game Boy Micro, P.N.03, Super Mario RPG, Yoshi Touch & Go

News

There were 193 new articles in February 2009
Inactive project cleanup: Proposal to consolidate inactive projects and taskforces. Project page can be found here.
- Old "left over" project pages have been added to a clean up page to discuss appropriate courses of action. Come help out and voice your thoughts.
Several video game articles appeared on Wikipedia's main page this month. Congratulations to the contributing editors.
- A fact from Elebits: The Adventures of Kai and Zero appeared in the Did you know? column on Feb 8.
- A fact from Maressa Orzack appeared in the Did you know? column on Feb 8.
- A fact from Neighborhood Games appeared in the Did you know? column on Feb 10.
- A fact from Runes of Magic appeared in the Did you know? column on Feb 12.
- A fact from Luke Smith (writer) appeared in the Did you know? column on Feb 18.
- A fact from Super Mario Bros. theme appeared in the Did you know? column on Feb 20.
- Agatha Christie: And Then There Were None was featured on the Main Page as "Today's featured article" for Feb 20.
- A fact from Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games appeared in the Did you know? column on Feb 22.
- A fact from Fast inverse square root appeared in the Did you know? column on Feb 23.
- A fact from Moorhuhn appeared in the Did you know? column on Feb 24.
- A fact from BloodSpell appeared in the Did you know? column on Feb 26.
- A fact from Pokémon appeared in the On this day column on Feb 27.

Feature: Weekly Collaboration

The VG Project Collaboration of the Week is a new effort to improve important video game articles of low quality. Every week, an article is random selected by AnomieBOT from the Stub-, Start-, and C-class categories that are rated either High- or Top-importance. Such topics can offer a reader a good deal of encyclopedic information about video games, but are often too underdeveloped or lacking the proper level of writing and sourcing to accomplish this.

All editors are welcome and encouraged to participate by offering their insights and suggestions. Having a pool of different editors, both old and new, will help maximize improvements to the articles as well as our editing skills.

History

Collaborative efforts have come and gone within the VG project several times before. The first such effort, the "Gaming collaboration of the week", began in October 2004 as a result of the several other weekly collaborations popping up on Wikipedia. It proved to be quite successful at improving articles to meet Wikipedia's standard at the time, but the effort eventually saw less and less participation. A second effort, the "Improvement Drive", began in August 2005 with the intent of improving articles to FA-quality. However, few nominations and articles were selected. The decline in participation in the collaborations and peer reviews resulted in a third effort. It began in February 2006 as a workshop, but never got off the ground.

Numerous discussions have taken place on at WT:VG to jump start collaborations and improve the process to prevent its decline again. While previous collaborations selected any video game article, most editors felt focus should be on video game topics more encyclopedic in nature—topics that are also generally in poor shape because of lack of attention. A common problem mentioned was that previous nomination processes were lengthy and hindered participation. The current idea to automate the process was brought up by JohnnyMrNinja, which was further discussed to iron out the details.

Current collaboration

The current collaborative efforts began in mid-January 2009, and several articles have been improved by editors. The random choice is intended to minimize the selection process, which allows editors to focus on article improvement. Improvements include better organization of content, massaging and copy editing the prose, removing excess non-free images, and much more. The random choice is also meant to encourage participation from editors of varying interest and help prevent burnout. If the present selection is not to your liking, wait until next week. Editors are encouraged to add Template:Collab-gaming to their watchlist to see which article is selected. Recently selected articles are:

Week of January 19, 2009:
Video game genres – See how it improved
Week of January 26, 2009:
History of video game consoles (fourth generation) – See how it improved
Week of February 2, 2009:
Action-adventure game – See how it improved
Week of February 9, 2009:
Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss – See how it improved
Week of February 16, 2009:
Joust (video game) – See how it improved
Week of February 23, 2009:
Cartridge (electronics) – See how it improved

Things you can help with:

Summary of Video games WikiProject open tasks

AfDs

Jackpot World (1 participant)
Bejeweled Stars (5 participants)
Melee (game terminology) (3 participants)
Solo leveling: Unlimited (4 participants; relisted)
Godzilla 2: War of the Monsters (4 participants; relisted)
Godzilla: Monster of Monsters (4 participants; relisted)
Araya (video game) (3 participants; relisted)
Crazy Bus (12 participants; relisted)

Merge discussions

Other discussions

No major discussions

Wikipedia Weekly Episode 71

Wikipedia Weekly Episode 71: We have no shame has been released. You can listen and comment at the episode page, and, as always, listen to all of the past episodes and subscribe to the RSS feed at wikipediaweekly.org. WODUPbot 05:30, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

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Wikipedia Signpost — 9 March 2009

This week, the Wikipedia Signpost published volume 5, issue 10, which includes these articles:

News and notes: Commons, conferences, and more
Wikipedia in the news: Politics, more politics, and more
Dispatches: 100 Featured sounds milestone
Wikiproject report: WikiProject Christianity
Discussion report: Discussion Reports And Miscellaneous Articulations
Features and admins: Approved this week
Technology report: Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News
Arbitration report: The Report on Lengthy Litigation

Delivered by §hepBot (Disable) at 00:51, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia Signpost: 23 March 2009

From the editor: Reviewing books for the Signpost
Special report: Abuse Filter is enabled
News and notes: Flaggedrevs, copyright project, fundraising reports, and more
Wikipedia in the news: Alternatives, IWF threats, and more
Features and admins: Approved this week
Arbitration report: The Report on Lengthy Litigation

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Delievered by SoxBot II (talk) at 04:50, 24 March 2009 (UTC)