User talk:Walkerma/Archive24

This archive covers up to the end of Aug 2008. Topics include rollback rights, CAS-Wikipedia collaboration, 1.0 (style issues, vandalism, exemplars, changes to assessment, etc), Zotero, Dispatch. For other talk page archives see User talk:Walkerma/Archives. Other close archives include: Archive10 — Archive11 — Archive12 — Archive13 — Archive14 — Archive15 — Archive16 — Archive17 — Archive18 — Archive19 — Archive20 — Archive21 — Archive22 — Archive23 — Archive25 — Archive26 — Archive27 — Archive28 — Archive29

A-Class

Thanks for leading the discussion and structuring it into "one question per day". This will really be helpful, as we'd just go insane from trying to make sense of the discussion. I'm not quite sure what you mean by my comments on the MOSCHEM, but I'm glad you've found them helpful. Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 07:55, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

A little light relief on article assessment

You might like to take a look at the lede section I've written for WP:MEASURE/A: as this is for WikiProject Measurement, after all, I thought a little jargon and technical discussion wouldn't go amiss! Physchim62 (talk) 14:25, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

A-class discussion

Given the development of the discussion today, with some editors (quite understandably) convoluting the idea of A-class with the mechanism for "awarding" it, and other editors working towards a separation of project and community scales, I think it's getting quite urgent to open a discussion on "What would be an appropriate A-class review system for a WikiProject?". There must obviously be an express proviso that "one size might not fit all". Whaddya think? Physchim62 (talk) 01:49, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Another view of an assessment

Perhaps you would look at the history of the talk page and the WikiProject assessments for Talk:2009 Bank of Ireland robbery. I left the WikiProject Ireland assessment and the other two were left by someone else, but I disagree with Psb777's poor rating of the assessment, and especially his reasoning: no useful criticism of the article has been provided. As I pointed out in a reply further down the page, if we were to comment on all assessments, we would never get anything constructive done but I welcome individual requests for advise. Anyway, your opinion would be appreciated. Just leave me a "talkpage" note on my talk page and I will look at your reply. Thanks ww2censor (talk) 02:07, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

My point is that it is a mistake to think that any assessment of any body of work (not just that of a WP article) is constructive if the reasoning behind the assessment is not apparent. It seems obvious to me that a (proper) assessment of an article against the guidelines must take a non-trivial amount of time. If so it would be hardly any extra work to make notes during the assessment and make these available with the assessment. What a waste of time if this is not done. The assessor has determined what is wrong with the article but (s)he denies this info to the editors of the article! As that is patently a ridiculous behaviour it is more likely true that the assessor is not taking enough time to assess the article! A shoddy and unreasoned job is being done on the great majority of assessments. Nothing particularly constructive is actually going on. Paul Beardsell (talk) 05:18, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

I will definitely do this, but not tonight as I'm very busy and I want to look over it carefully. Please ping me if I don't respond by Tuesday. Cheers, Walkerma (talk) 02:47, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Cheers, thanks. ww2censor (talk) 03:33, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Hi Martin, it's Tuesday! ww2censor (talk) 00:13, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm not Martin, but I did see this note and I happen to know that Martin is quite busy at the moment. Allow me to be his secretary! I would assess the article 2009 Bank of Ireland robbery as C-class, as it is now. I had to remove some BLP violations as I was doing the assessment. I didn't formally assess it against B-class criteria, as it would be ridiculous to do so on an article marked as {{currentevent}} – who knows how it will change over the coming hours? The article isn't bad at all, but a higher assessment would be premature at this stage. Care needs to be taken about BLP issues, and about referencing and context (both of these are OK at the moment, but need to be kept that way). I hope this helps. Physchim62 (talk) 00:35, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

OK! But why is it a B and not a C? Paul Beardsell (talk) 05:18, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

I replied on your talk page, as requested. What a storm in a teacup! Walkerma (talk) 07:45, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

To the contrary! No teacup. Someone is going to release WP 1.0 based on these unreasoned assessments! Paul Beardsell (talk) 05:18, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Indeed, great response. Thanks ww2censor (talk) 13:26, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Award

		Wikipedia Motivation Award
		For keeping everything organized and writing excellent summaries of discussion, keeping everyone on track in an effort to improve Wikipedia's assessment system, I hereby award you this motivation award. Great work! -Drilnoth (talk) 22:48, 3 March 2009 (UTC) Seconded Physchim62 (talk) 23:39, 3 March 2009 (UTC) Thirded Orderinchaos 04:40, 4 March 2009 (UTC) add my praise too --KrebMarkt 10:16, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks a lot, it's nice to hear that one's work is appreciated! Walkerma (talk) 07:43, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

One more thing about the Core Contest

I justed wanted to thank you for your work judging the Core Contest. I almost hate to bring it up, but I was looking through the images in the Commons the other day and I found a cool picture of an apple core and I thought that might be a good basis for a Core Contest award (which Matt Lewis said he was going to do, but didn't). I made the award "template" and was wondering if you would mind filling them in and placing them on the named winner's talk pages, I would do it but it would look kind of lame if one of the participants awarded the thing. I asked Proteins as well, but it doesn't look like he's been around much lately, and if you don't have time I will just do it. Let me know what thoughts you have. Thanks.

		2008 Core Contest Winner Award
		Let it be known that [[User:____|____]] was awarded ________ in the first Wikipedia Core Contest. This award is based on their outstanding work in improving [[______]]. Thanks for your hard work in making Wikipedia's core articles better.

Earthdirt (talk) 02:41, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

• Never mind, looks like you are busy, I went ahead and awarded them. Earthdirt (talk) 15:11, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

No worries, I was not offended or anything. I appreciate all your hard work in judging the contest and being the only original person to stick with it throughout. Peace, Earthdirt (talk) 12:58, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

The work of deleting IP vandalism on chem element pages

Since you're involved, I wonder if you'd like to comment on this discussion on semi-protection for element articles: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Elements Thanks! SBHarris 23:39, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Kudos

I've been trying to keep up on the A-class discussions and like where the consensus is turning. While doing that, I realized just how much time and care you and Physchim62 have been expending to try to keep the discussion on track and productive. Please keep up the great work! :) --mav (talk) 15:43, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks mav - that means a lot, especially coming from someone I respect greatly. Cheers, Walkerma (talk) 02:48, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

thoughts on 0.8

I left some comments at Wikipedia_talk:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team#Thinking_about_0.8. I have been working on the new WP 1.0 bot this evening. I think I will have the alpha version quite soon. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:43, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I had an edit conflict as I was trying to post at the same time! Lots of great ideas, we will have to talk about all of these things once 0.7 is out. I'm really glad that you're able to start on the alpha version of the "second generation" bot. We should also talk about the possibility of the bot recording if an article has GA or FA status. This idea has been around since the start of GA, but it has become much more important since the recent A-Class discussion. this proposal looks to be dead in the water, but it represents a large body of opinion that would like to separate Wikipedia-wide assessment from WikiProject assessment in the assessment scale. I'll post on the "second generation" bot talk page. Thanks, Walkerma (talk) 03:00, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

The new bot already tracks whether an article has FA or GA status. For example this list shows that Pythagorean theorem is rated A-class by the math project and is also a good article. — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:07, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Hey, that looks fantastic! I'm really thrilled to see that! Also - with a table like that, we could even show several release versions, not just the latest one! I think many other people will be thrilled with all the new features - this bot is VERY widely used. Cheers, Walkerma (talk) 03:29, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

File:Phosphine structure.gif listed for deletion

An image or media file that you uploaded or altered, File:Phosphine structure.gif, has been listed at Wikipedia:Files for deletion. Please see the discussion to see why this is (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry), if you are interested in it not being deleted. Thank you. Skier Dude (talk) 18:10, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, Walkerma. You have new messages at Drilnoth's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

–Drilnoth (T • C) 11:45, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

And at mine. Ncmvocalist (talk) 15:54, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Hello, Walkerma. You have new messages at Qchristensen's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Consistent assessments

When you return perhaps you can advise me on one thing. I understood that when an article is assessed by more than one WikiProject the quality rating is consistently rated across all projects. I don't recall ever seeing this in writing but I have seldom noticed any disparity and when I have seen it I have equalised them. I ask because Omagh bombing was a start-class for most of last year and after much editing was reassessed as a B-class, then it was listed as a GA but quickly delisted within days. That is not the point at issue. From the edit history you will see that One Night In Hackney, a "retired" editor now signing as "2 lines of K", has demoted the Irish Republicanism project rating to start-class a number of times even though the other 3 projects now rate it at B-class. He justifies this demotion with various summary comments claiming that both class and importance vary by project when I understood that only importance varies by project. What's you take on this, or please point me to the appropriate guideline or policy, because I don't agree with ONIH's demoting one project out of sync with the others. Am I right? ww2censor (talk) 04:06, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

There is no reason that assessments should be the same, though it's true that they usually are. I would say, don't change another project's assessments except at the Stub/Start levels. Let's consider the main B-Class definition, "The article is mostly complete and without major issues". The usual reasons for differences at this sort of level are the following:

• From the perspective of project X, the article IS mostly complete, and all of the main points are reliably sourced. But from the perspective of project Y, there are several major topics missing, or the areas of most concern to them have little or no sourcing.
• Project X rates something as C-Class (or GA-Class or A-Class), but Project Y rates it as B-Class, because C-Class (or GA or A, whatever) is not part of project Y's assessment scheme. This is rare, but it does happen - Military History doesn't have C-Class, for example.

I think ONIH could make a strong case that for the first of these. Looking at the article, and ONIH's "laundry list", it seems to me more like an A-Class review than a B-Class review. In other words, to a relative outsider like myself, at a glance it looks B-Class to me, even after reading ONIH's comments. Some people think B should be "almost perfect", but I've always regarded it as "getting there", and that's how the rubric is written. Reasons for this discrepancy may include personal perspective (for example, ONIH seems to regard certain sources as more important than others, yet another knowledgeable person may disagree) and depth of knowledge (if ONIH is indeed very knowledgeable on the topic, he/she may see many details that are wrong with the current article that are less obvious to someone a little more distant). There can be a third reason for high assessments, something I've seen referred to as "grade deflation" - some assessors just like to take a very strict line on assessment, much stricter than the norm. These three issues are all difficult to deal with.

I would say, don't worry about this, just leave the assessment as it is, and treat ONIH's review as a valuable critique of the article. It's not worth a fight, IMHO (assessments just aren't worth fighting over!). If there is project interest in this article (which I'd consider pretty important - I'd have said higher than "Mid"!), then the project could address each item on the "laundry list" in turn. Once the work has been done, you might consider rating the article as A-Class, and then perhaps submit it at WP:FAC. In the meantime, it would be great if you could get ONIH to be active again, to work on preparing articles for FAC!

The 1.0 project will in fact pick up the article as B-Class from the other projects, and if it's important enough, it will make it into the offline releases. As we said before, at this level assessment is only supposed to be a fairly quick process, and not a painful analysis line-by-line. I don't know why WP:IR has so much controversy on assessments - this is really quite unusual! I think your approach is close to the norm, though. You've got me thinking, we should probably write a nice FAQ page for assessment, to help deal with these sorts of situations. Walkerma (talk) 06:09, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the long reply. Indeed you are correct that assessments are not really worth fighting over. I get the impression that some people feel they somehow own, or have control over, certain articles they have contributed extensively to. I very much doubt ONIH will return any time soon as he is ill though this has not stopped him from specifically targeting this article above most others. An assessment FAQ would be good for guidance that we can point assessors to in future. Cheers & thanks again ww2censor (talk) 15:46, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

4-Fluoromethcathinone

Saw 4-Fluoromethcathinone on new page patrol and thought I'd put it on your radar. Hiding T 22:09, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

Cerium(III) chloride

Hey,

Sorry, I forgot to include my reference, but I got it from: Pradyot Patnaik. Handbook of Inorganic Chemicals. McGraw-Hill, 2002, ISBN 0070494398

This book was published in 2002, so I assumed it was accurate. But if you have a pure sample with you, I can't argue with that... and you're sure your sample is the heptahydrate?

Here is what it says:

Uses
Cerium(III) chloride is used to prepare cerium metal and other cerium salts. It also is used as a catalyst in olefin polymerization, and in incandescent gas mantles.

Physical Properties
White, very fine powder; hexagonal crystal system; heptahydrate is yellow orthogonal crystal and hygroscopic; density of anhydrous salt 3.97 g/cm3; melts at 817°C; vaporizes at 1,727°C; heptahydrate begins to lose water above 90°C and becomes anhydrous at about 230°C; soluble in water and alcohol; hexahydrate has greater solubility in these solvents.

Thricecube (talk) 22:22, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Alright, I removed the yellow from the infobox, but I'm unsure on whether or not both the anhydrous and the heptahydrate are hygroscopic. Thricecube (talk) 05:01, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

GA Sweeps invitation

Hello, I hope you are doing well. I am sending you this message since you are a member of the GA WikiProject. I would like to invite you to consider helping with the GA sweeps process. Sweeps helps to ensure that the oldest GAs still meet the criteria, and improve the quality of GAs overall. Unfortunately, last month only two articles were reviewed. This is definitely a low point after our peak at the beginning of the process when 163 articles were reviewed in September 2007. After nearly two years, the running total has just passed the 50% mark. In order to expediate the reviewing, several changes have been made to the process. A new worklist has been created, detailing which articles are left to review. All exempt and previously reviewed articles have already been removed from the list. Instead of reviewing by topic, you can consider picking and choosing whichever articles interest you.

We are always looking for new members to assist with the remaining articles, so if you are interested or know of anybody that can assist, please visit the GA sweeps page. In addition, for every member that reviews 100 articles or has a significant impact on the process, s/he will get an award when they reach that threshold. If only 14 editors achieve this feat starting now, we would be done with Sweeps! Of course, having more people reviewing less articles would be better for all involved, so please consider asking others to help out. Feel free to stop by and only review a few articles, something's better than nothing! Take a look at the list, and see what articles interest you. Let's work to complete Sweeps so that efforts can be fully focused on the backlog at GAN. If you have any questions about the process, reviewing, or need help with a particular article, please contact me or OhanaUnited and we'll be happy to help. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 08:52, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Q about boron

I have a question about chemistry entirely unrelated to WP 0.7. Apparently there is a dispute on the Boron article about the first discovery of a a new phase of Boron. At wikipedia this is spilling over to articles like Gamma boron discovery controversy. What is the perspective on this academic community? — Carl (CBM · talk) 18:02, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

I'll try to look at that tonight, on some of the reputable chemistry news sites. Regards, Walkerma (talk) 18:41, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

File:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Assessment listed for deletion

An image or media file that you uploaded or altered, File:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Assessment, has been listed at Wikipedia:Files for deletion. Please see the discussion to see why this is (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry), if you are interested in it not being deleted. Thank you. 6.1.1993 (talk) 14:58, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

This is one of the odder things I have seen lately... —Ed 17 ^{(Talk / Contribs)} 20:57, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I thought this was priceless - being informed of a non-existent file being deleted! Only on Wikipedia! Walkerma (talk) 22:47, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Editorial Assessment Questions

Hi Walker,

I spotted the reviewer spot, and since me being bored, I decided I might as well do something. I'm sort of confused on all of the reviewing procedures as well as the nominations.

• I know that I'm supposed to review it, but review it on what? Do I basically proofread it and do an Assessment like I was in a Wikiproject, and if I find it has nothing extremely bad I add it to the release list? I already read the 0.7 Procedures but they didn't really help me at all. And, continuing that..Are we still on 0.7 or are we on 0.8 or higher? It's really confusing to me. Hope you can help. Renaissancee (talk) 02:42, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

WikiProject Chemistry interview

Greetings! I've been doing interviews for the Signpost's WikiProject Report. I've decided to do WikiProject Chemistry. Physchim62 agreed to be interviewed and suggested that you might be interested as well. Would you like to participate? --Cryptic C62 · Talk 16:34, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

Certainly, I can participate. I was away for a couple of days, but I'm now back home again and online. Cheers, Walkerma (talk) 15:25, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Great! The interview will take place here. Instructions can be found at the talk page here. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 17:25, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

I was reading an advance copy of your interview, and agreeing with Physchim62's concerns about the article Diamond referred it to WP:FAR. As what I know about chemistry could be written on the back of a postage stamp, you might want to go take a look. Sorry, I haven't got the link handy but it'll be on the article talk page. Anyhow, Cryptic suggests this might pre-empt a slight adjustment in questions and responses for this week's interview, so that at least should be of some interest. Cheers, - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 19:14, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I thought we should do that, I'm just unfamiliar with the details of the process. Walkerma (talk) 03:26, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

It's ok. I'll just have to beat you. lol

Have a look here. Crash Underride 07:28, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

Care to express how you see this?

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Chemicals#Proposal to remove FA-Class from our Assessment Scheme. Wim van Dorst (talk) 19:53, 24 June 2009 (UTC).

wikEd and e-mail

Have you noticed how wikEd now hides references and long templates — pretty cool!

I sent you an e-mail last week, but it might've gotten eaten by your spam filter. Write me sometime? Thanks, Proteins (talk) 19:12, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedian of the Day

Congratulations, Walkerma! For your kindness to others, your hard work around the wiki, and for being a great user, you have been awarded the "Wikipedian of the Day" award for today, July 9, 2009! Keep up the great work!
Note: You could also receive the "Wikipedian of the Week award for this week!

Happy editing!

Midnight Comet 00:05, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! I'll have to get busy editing after my short holiday! Walkerma (talk) 00:45, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Re:DYK for Neodymium(III) chloride

I am wondering around WP looking where to apply myself. DYK is a recent hobby, which gives me a motivation to write and demonstrates that any article can be made watchable. Lutetium tantalate doesn't even have a CAS number, but was watched >7000 times on its DYK day. Materialscientist (talk) 06:18, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Badwords

I ran the badwords script yesterday, using Lupin's list of regular expressions. The bad news is that it flagged 777 of the articles. The good news is most of those are clearly OK when I look at the match in context. Next I am planning to make a list of the revisions that need to be checked by hand, eliminating the obvious false positives. — Carl (CBM · talk) 20:33, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

Project template

Do you know if the Motorcycling WikiProject template {{Motorcycling}} can be adapted to add the assessment code, so that the popular pages tracking can be used? Apparently it needs the assessment code in the template, according to this post, but as we use a non-usual template name, it might not work. If you know anything about this please let me know or point me to someone else more well versed in this area of work. One way or another we will likely need a project template expert to modify the template for us. Cheers ww2censor (talk) 04:57, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, I'm pretty clueless with templates, and this is light years beyond my humble abilities. There may be someone from the 1.0 project who could solve your problem, though I try and limit how often I bug these people I depend on, for obvious reasons! But if you can't get the problem solved, let me know, and I'll put out the word. Cheers, Walkerma (talk) 15:22, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks indeed. ww2censor (talk) 18:32, 27 July 2009 (UTC)