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How do you nominate an article?

I want to nominate Dubai for lack of information in modern history and not much info about the artificial islands and the Dubai Waterfront. How do you do it? It should be told how to on the page, like the COTW does. Would you please tell me how to? --Weirdperson11 00:40, 3 January 2006 (UTC)


Who archived everything?

This is an empty discussion page. I like to see waht happened last. WAS 4.250 03:54, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

Suggestion for improvement

I would like to suggest Criticism of Wikipedia for improvement. Imagine it as featured article. I'm serious. WAS 4.250 03:54, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

Those who vote for the promotion of featured article candidates have to have an account and, by definition, are Wikipedians. I am not sure a Wikipedian can ever be impartial enough to determine whether an article criticising something to which they spend their free time contributing should be featurable. I am not criticising individuals, and am not suggesting that Wikipedia has no impartial members, I just believe it is a decision we can never make. However, if you do want to make a suggestion that we work on this article as an AID project, then suggest it on the project page. --Oldak Quill 13:49, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
I think those with the most familiarity to Wikipedia know its flaws the best. I know myself that the only reason I believe it is important to contribute to Wikipedia is that it is full of holes and misinformation, and that this can be corrected with effort. I do not think I am alone in not sharing the opinion that wikipedia will ever "replace" other encyclopedias, but will rather continue to serve as a good starting point for research on a topic. Wikipedia is a fascinating experiment and I believe that while it would be nice to have a sizable group of experts impartially analyze the methodology, phenomology, and results, the closest we have are individuals who have significant experience with the project, especially those that do not follow its tenets with fanaticism. - JustinWick 15:26, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

removed nominations-->remove template?

if a nomination is removed from the page the template in the article should be removed too? (i.e. Talk:Terra_cotta) --Melaen 23:04, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Yes, most of the times I forget this, but basically they should all be removed. --Fenice 10:16, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Time of Selection

Exactly when will the next candidate be selected? The date given directly under the "Nominations" section: 1) is completely wrong (says "December 4, 2005) and 2) doesn't give a specific hour-and-minute time. -- King of Hearts 00:38, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

"stays until"

How does "stays until" margine function? I doesn't seem to be explained anywhere... If I want to vote, what do I do with it? If I want to propose an article, how do I set it initialy? --Dijxtra 20:02, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

Yes, can anyone link to an explanation of the system? In "needs x votes by y", how is x determined; is y always increased by 1 week? Which article is selected? I'm just curious. Conscious 20:47, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
Oh, I'm sorry. I've just read the answers, they aren't hidden far away =) Conscious 20:53, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

new inline citation

check this out, might make our lives slightly easier. in particular with citing sources. In particular, when we have to do the Hurricane Katrina article. --ZeWrestler Talk 17:29, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

place to put the {{AIDnom}} template

Is {{AIDnom}} put on article main page or talk page? --Dijxtra 13:26, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

I prefer the article page but you can put it wherever you like.--Fenice 10:15, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

The links from the AID box at the top of nominated articles do not seem to go to the article's entry on the AID page, only to the top of the AID page. In contrast, they seem to work fine for COTW nominated pages? Jtneill - Talk 01:18, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

That is because we have the vote counts next to the heading and that is constantly updated. Having the number of votes in the TOC gives a good overview.--Fenice 10:14, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Allow anons to vote?

I am copying this discussion here from the main page under Roma (people):

On what possible basis are anon votes considered invalid? Marskell 09:43, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Because only registered users can vote, it says so on top. This is supposed to reduce sockpuppetry which we have had a problem with in the past. I informed the user to consider voting again once he or she has registered. If the user does not regiser and vote again, I will still inform the user with a voter template and invite the user to contribute, in case the article wins. That is why these votes should not be completely removed.--Fenice 09:51, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
I hadn't noticed the sentence sorry, but I must say it is poor, un-wiki policy. Anons can vote on AfD and RfA which are of greater import than AID. Of course, these will be scrutinized and often discounted but to bar anons from doing anything ought to require a very high bar. Marskell 10:00, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
Should we change it then?--Fenice 10:12, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Well, we can wait for some more input but I'd say yes. You're not going to get an incredible amount of anons here anyway so it's largely a matter of principle. What you're doing now is a kind of manual semi-protection. If sockpuppetry is that bad you should actually request semi-protection--if it's not so bad then the no anon rule doesn't make sense. Marskell 11:21, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

I agree with the principle and there really has not been any sockpuppetry (that I know of) for more than six months. Let's have a straw poll:--Fenice 11:26, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Should anons be allowed to vote on WP:AID?
Yes

  1. Fenice 11:25, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
  2. Marskell 11:35, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
  3. Silence 15:45, 17 January 2006 (UTC) — Only so long as there is no reason to believe (which is usually the case) that any specific anonymous user or vote is disingenuous, in which case those votes alone can be struck. AID does not have a significant problem with sockpuppetry currently, so we shouldn't jump at shadows. The reason AfD and RfA and FAC all allow anonymous votes is not only because there are many anonymous users with very insightful and significant viewpoints, but also because such votes are great ways to get users more involved in the Wikipedia process and let them "test the waters" before they decide whether to create an account. It also emphasizes the inclusive and open nature of Wikipedia, and helps keep things simple: the fewer requirements (especially where those requirements differ greatly from one voting system to the other), the better. The other reason I don't think ignoring all anonymous votes is a good idea is because it promotes the assumption that non-anonymous sockpuppets are rarer than anonymous ones. This just isn't true; we should be just as worried about vote-tampering by registered users as by anonymous users.
  4. Until there are more stringent requirements for anons editing Wp in general, disallowance at this point is inappropriate. E Pluribus Anthony | talk | 15:38, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
  5. I agree with Anthony. If general WP policy still supports anon voting on a wide variety of other things, this shouldn't be set apart. The difference in trustability (both in terms of likelihood of good faith and in terms of good WP judgment that comes with experience) is much greater between a newly registered user and a user with 50 edits than between an anon and a brand new registered user.--ragesoss 01:50, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

No

  1. Dijxtra 17:05, 16 January 2006 (UTC) I say no, but I'd say no to anon voting on AfD and RfA too. But, then again, AfD and RfA are not pure vote counting but the consensus has to be reached. And here we have pure vote counting, no consensus. So, go figure.
  2. ZeWrestler Talk 17:08, 16 January 2006 (UTC) I say no as well. Its not that hard for me to get up and go to another computer sign on with a completly different ip addy and make a vote.
  3. Samsara 15:21, 17 January 2006 (UTC) I think it's fair for voting to carry a cost, if only that of setting up a sockpuppet Yahoo/Hotmail account and filling in a few registration details here on Wikipedia.
  4. Juppiter 20:40, 16 January 2006 (UTC) It's not that hard to sign up for an account.
But a core principle of the wiki is that you don't have to if you want to make edits. Marskell 09:54, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
Well, creating new pages (which is not allowed for anon users) is a good precedent... --Dijxtra 10:15, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
But the onus in every case has been on those who want to restrict anon access--purported harm must out-weigh respect for the "anyone can edit" principle. "It's easy to create an account" simply is not a reason to disallow anon voting here. Marskell 10:28, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
Hmmm... OK, lets put it this way. I fully understand your position. But, I just don't feel like leting anons vote. And I won't change my oppinion. I feel like having an icecream and don't feel like leting anons vote. I understand you think I'm wrong. And I'm fully aware that if you go to ArbCom, you will probably win. And, if the issue is that important to you, if you are willing to go to the ArbCom, I'll just drop my vote, as the issue is really not that important to me. But, in the mean time, I reckon no as I like the status quo (observe that, after all, you are proposing a change in a system that funcions well...). --Dijxtra 11:02, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

Comment

  • How does not allowing annons stop sockpuppetry? What is to stop a user just setting up lots of differnt accounts? If sockpuppetery really is a problem (it doesn't currently seem to be) then shouldn't it also be required that the reg' user has made a significant number of edits?--JK the unwise 16:02, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
This underscores the point above: if this is seriously a problem, go and actually request semi-protection. It's a still evolving policy but it exists finally and should be the required procedure for barring anons from anything. Marskell 16:07, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
Actually, that seems like the worst of all possible ideas. Even if we do negate anonymous voting, we should never semi-protect pages like this. First of all, even if anonymous votes don't count, anonymous comments certainly do, and should be allowed. Second of all, the best way to explain to anonymous users clearly why their vote can't count is to just let anonymous users vote and to clearly mark their votes as not counting and send them a message instructing them to get a user account if they want to vote. Protecting the page would just confuse and drive away the vast majority of anonymous users, who won't be familiar enough with page-protection nuances to understand how they can vote, and certainly won't understand why they aren't allowed to vote without a name. -Silence 17:58, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Hmm, as a thought, how about we have a section on the voting that annons can support. just so there is an idea of an intrest for an article. Or maybe, we can have annon votes count for 1/2 a vote or something like that. --ZeWrestler Talk 16:37, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
Silence, don't misunderstand. I don't for a second think a request protect would be acted on for this page and I don't believe at all that it should be protected. My comment was procedural: if you're instituting a kind of manual semi-protection on a page, the reasoning ought to pass muster on the policy page that deals with protection. Given that this page wouldn't pass muster there, this page shouldn't be protected from anons in a back-door way. Make sense? Marskell 15:34, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
Actually, you just confused me royally--ZeWrestler Talk 15:42, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

LOL. OK, policy says X criteria must be met to institute some restriction. That restriction is manually instituted anyway despite X criteria not being met. That's basically how I see disallowing anon votes here. Does that make sense? Marskell 15:56, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

    • People can just go to 10 different comupters in libraries and computer labs and buddies' houses and get ten++ votes per person! Hey, allowing anons to vote does work! (sarcasm) --DanielCD 15:26, 3 March 2006 (UTC)


Does this page actually allow for "Oppose" votes?

Just wondering whether this page actually allows for an "Oppose" vote.... I have nominated Cold War for AID and, in addition to 15 votes supporting, it has also attracted 3 votes in opposition. This seems to be a peculiar feature for this particular topic.... Can anyone clarify whether an "Oppose" vote is actually allowed for? I would have thought under the current approach that any opposition to an article going to AID would be placed within the Comments section... Comments / suggestions anyone? Paul James Cowie 09:45, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

There's no law against someone making an "oppose" section or putting it in bold, but such votes are not counted. Only support votes are counted—so if you wanted to vote "oppose" to a single topic, effectively, the way to do this would actually be to vote "support" for every topic except the one you're against. But the only real value of voting against something would be: to try to convince other people to not vote for a certain topic. In other words, just move those "oppose" votes into the "comments" section, since they're the same as any other comment saying "I don't think this should be the AID article". -Silence 10:18, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
From the page, "Opposing votes are not counted; see approval voting" So an opposing vote is a comment I suppose. They might have a role to play if they act as arguments for other poeple not to vote for the article in question.--JK the unwise 10:17, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
Hm. Interesting question. Opposing votes are not counted, that's for sure. I think that "Opposing votes are not counted" sentence sould be changed to "Opposing votes are not allowed". Just so we don't have questions like this one. --Dijxtra 10:19, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
Disagree. Opposing votes are allowed. They're just not counted. In the same way, you could say below an AID nom, "I VOTE FOR THIS AID NOM TO BE TURNED INTO A PURPLE MUFFIN". You'd be allowed to make such a comment, but it wouldn't be counted as a genuine vote. -Silence 10:25, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
Support:I vote for Dijxtra and Silence both to be turned into giant purple muffins.--JK the unwise 10:29, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
That would make them yummy and tasty...! Somebody might eat them!!@ --DanielCD 16:19, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

This project

Here are the instructions:

  1. On sunday at 18.00 GMT you are supposed to do a socalled rollover, that is switching the template to a new collaboration. All voters need to be informed and you need to change all the templates in the section called "templates for maintenance" at the bottom of the page. Fill in the new article in the history section and add the diff to the old.
  2. Every day, you should check to update the vote count and voting requirement. New nominations need to have a template (there would have been an option just to omit that template but you are obviously just into warring so we can't have that option). So they will need to have a template, nominators put them on talk or article page, whichever one is ok, but you should check for them to be complete.
  3. The voting goes more or less automatic right now. If the page looses contributors to a point where it might die (will happen in approximately 5 months, since it is really well established now), you need to start advertising: put information about the nomination on project pages: WikiProjects, there is a link to the list, and put some info on related articles.
  4. Also, you need to develop the project further in order for it to become successful and actually produce featured articles, you will have to develop some kind of strategy to get people to actually work on it. This works for one by advertising and accumulating voters, but you also need to develop some other strategy, I was only starting to develop this and so you will have to experiment. Start by developping a todo box while the articles are listed and try to get editors to decide upon a strategy, while the article is listed, because there are things you can't just put in the todo-box. The first attempts in this direction were unbelieveably and surprisingly successful, so I suggest to really explore that alley further. Create the todo box immidiately after the article is listed, and start filling it in some systematic way. People will pick up on it and go along.
  5. And one further thing: there needs to be some kind of a box on AID which summarizes the criteria for a FA. The existing boxes on FA will not do, see discussion of this somewhere on old talk pages, it was discussed before even my time and I never got around to developing it. You may consider putting this box on the talk page of the nominated article also.

--Fenice 11:37, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

I fully agree on the 'todo box'. It is extremely helpful knowing exactly what needs to be done, instead of general expanding. Gflores Talk 19:53, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Some more instructions

Here are detailed instructions for the rollover:

  1. Remove {{AIDcur}} from old AID article
  2. Add {{Past AID|date|year}} on talk page of old AID article
  3. Add old AID article to /History page
  4. Edit this section
  5. Fix Template:IDRIVEtopic
  6. Fix Template:AIDvoter
  7. Put {{AIDcur}} on new AID article
  8. Put {{to do}} on new AID article's talk page if it doesn't exist already
  9. Remove new AID article from project page and put content you removed to new AID article's {{to do}}
  10. Remove {{AIDnom}} from talk page
  11. Fix Template:Aid-summary: copy/paste introduction of new AID article to it and change the picture (just replace the image name, don't change image size)
  12. Put {{subst:AIDvoter}} on talk page of people who voted for new AID article

--Dijxtra 21:06, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

The changed format of this page, including both article name and the current voting situation in the section heading, breaks the automatic "#ArticleName" section of the link in the AID nomination templates. I got confused when getting here from one and thought the article was no longer a candidate, so I mistakenly removed the template from the article's page. Maybe the voting situation could be a subsection of each article situation, so the number of votes would still be in the summary box at the top, but the links would work correctly.--ragesoss 23:16, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Lifting the barrier to 4 votes per week

Hi there,

I propose to lift requirement of 3 votes per week to 4 votes per week. At the moment there are 38 active proposals for Article Improvement Drive and I find that too much. If we all agree to that, I propose we just change the rule, put a giant notice on top of this page informing of the change (put it there for, let say, a week) and ignore the fact that there are articles which entered the list while the rule was different. Anybody else thinks this is a good idea? --Dijxtra 10:46, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

I agree. —Nightstallion (?) 11:07, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
Four articles should have already been removed, and a similar number expire in the next three days. That is neither pro- nor anti-, just an aside. There are a lot of articles nominated at the moment, but isn't that a good reflection on the AID page for becoming notable? Anyway, many of the pages listed do need expansion, so just because there are a lot shouldn't mean that there aren't lots of worthy candidates. From what I've seen, there is an influx of new candidates every so often, then few/none for several days. It may even itself out. However, I am not against the proposal in principal, but my general philosphy is if it ain't broke, why fix it? -Estrellador* 17:56, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
I'm not very agile to do this reform myself either, but I think it might be a good idea because if we had (a bit) less (not significanty less) number of articles, people could spot articles they are intrested in more easily. Just a thought. I'd like to see the number of articles reduced to, saaay, 20, but, as you said, the system isn't broken and I won't cry if we decide to leave as is... --Dijxtra 20:48, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
Agree. Gflores Talk 19:31, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
Keep it at 3. Many articles that became very successful AID recipients would have never made it past the first week or two (and thus been given the time to accumulate enough attention and focus to get a significant number of votes) if the requirement had been 4-per-week instead of 3 (which adds up to require that every article that would have survived for three weeks needs to accumulate enough votes for a whole extra week just to survive). For example, one of the current leading candidates for AID, History of Africa, would have failed in its very first week if the requirement had been 4 votes instead of 3; it took over a month for HoA to receive enough attention to rise above the "about to be deleted" region, and now it's not unlikely that it'll be our AID. -Silence 09:15, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
I say make it 4. Too many bad ideas are getting too far. Juppiter 02:31, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
Lifting it to 4 would, relatively speaking, make just as many bad ideas survive as currently do, but fewer bad and good ideas will make it past the first few weeks, meaning much less potential and vitality to the system, as fewer options would be available for voters. Also, which "bad ideas" are you refering to, specifically? You recently criticized the successful CotWing of History of art, which I don't really understand. -Silence 11:24, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
Which ones are bad ideas? Do we need to elect a censorship board? =) — RJH 15:48, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Anon votes

A slight majority (5-4) believed we should allow anon votes to stand. May I remove the line? Marskell 08:50, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Mhm... I'd call that a lack of consencus... Darn, I feel like I'm behaving like a dick, but the thing is that current rule is not to allow voting and there's no clear consensus to change that rule... --Dijxtra 09:04, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
Or conversely, there's no consensus to violate Wiki policy, which is to allow anon editing. Marskell 09:05, 23 January 2006 (UTC)


Another milestone

Worth mentioning, anyway: the AID has now existed for 23 weeks' worth of work, tying it for the combined lengths of its earlier incarnations, the TWID and the old AID. Okay, so it's not that big a deal. -Litefantastic 23:49, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Article Improvement Drive needs you!

Check out Maintenance subpage, it looks like a swell idea to me. This way we'll make sure anybody who wants to help won't think "ah, somebody must have done it already". --Dijxtra 14:55, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

AID tag

Does it go on the article page or on the talk page? I don't see this in the instruction area. --DanielCD 20:48, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

If it's the current AID, it usually goes on the article page; if it's being nominated, it usually goes on the talk page. —Wikiacc • • ∞ 21:15, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

In case of a tie

What happens in the case of a tie? Frog and Sofia were tied at 18:00 (when the winner is supposed to be chosen), and the two winning votes were put in later. --liquidGhoul 23:54, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Nobody knows. :-) What do you propose we do? --Dijxtra 10:49, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
I don't know. The fairest thing, I guess, is probably to go off the dates. Either the earliest or the latest "safe until" date would be chosen. However, I am not sure which. --liquidGhoul 13:40, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
It used to be decided by order of seniority (older nominee wins), but that remark on the rules seems to have been lost when they were reworked. --Laisak 14:36, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
I updated the rules. But, to me it seems that younger nominee should win. It's obvious the younger got more votes per day... --Dijxtra 20:14, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
I think the basic idea behind it is that the older nominee might expire and there really is no reason to remove a highly popular nominee. I propose a change in the rule: In case of a tie the winner is decided by order of seniority, but if the younger nominee would expire before next weeks decision, it will be given an extra week. For example if in the previously mentioned example, Frogs expiring date had been February 8, then it would have been given extra time so that it can compete on February 12. This extra time should be written in bold (or even red) so it won't create confusion when someone might update its expiring date. --Laisak 22:05, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
I think that's a really bad idea for two obvious reasons: 1) it's complicated (it's not that complicated, but it is a bit complicated), 2) if we get to the situation that younger winning nominee is about to expire in less then a week, we all better abandon this project and go get drunk. I think that it can be proven by contradiction that situation here described would be possible iff we have just 2 nominees :-)
No, seriously, I thought about it and now I think it's fabulous idea to make older nominee win because the younger one is obviously popular like hell and will win in a week. --Dijxtra 22:21, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
The younger nominee will always have more time than the older nominee. So I guess that is best. --liquidGhoul 23:39, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

Pictures on Template:Aid-summary

People updating Template:Aid-summary need to be careful about adding pictures that are fair use. I removed the picture for Sofia, and I've found others in the history of that page. Fair use does not allow us to use these pictures in the Template mainspace, particularly when the template is only used on community pages (user pages and the community portal.) 198.110.249.201 14:56, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Adjusting the threshold

"Articles need three votes per week to stay on the list."

Considering how long and unmanageable the nomination list has become, perhaps we need to change this to: "Articles need five votes per week to stay on the list."

What do you think? Kaldari 16:13, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

I proposed lifting the limit to 4 some time ago. I don't think that lifting the limit to 5 would be good, but I'd back the proposal to lift it to 4. BTW, to cope with this problem I wrote this bot. Feel free to use it when trying to update the votes. --Dijxtra 18:32, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
May be it's time to lift it to 4. If 4 won't work in the future then it can be lifted to 5--Ugur Basak 18:39, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
I think the list has gotten way too large. Although, I agree 5 could be good, it would be best to try out 4 first, as we never know what will happen. --liquidGhoul 10:32, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
Shall we apply this retroactively? See which nominations don't have 4*number_of_weeks_they've_been_nominated limit? Or we apply it from this point on? --Dijxtra 11:13, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
Not merited. Find other ways to make the list more navigable and simple if it's getting overlong, like dividing it into two different pages (say, one for the AID nominees with less than 20 votes and another for the AID nominees for 20 or more). If we're getting more entrees, it's because AID is getting more popular, and we should encourage that by not devaluing votes and not making it overly difficult for new nominations to get past the first few weeks, when they're still at the bottom of the list and are receiving much less attention than they will if they survive for a month or two. In particular, while some nominees hit the ground running, often nominees take a while to build up enough steam to have a shot at being AIDed: Architecture of Africa, a successful recent AID, would never have had the slightest chance of getting enough votes if the requirement had been 4 votes, since for many, many weeks it was very close to not even making it to the next week, barely skirting by several times. Yet in the end it attracted enough attention to receive the week's nomination. The system already naturally compensates for high levels of nomination and voting, by requiring the largest number of votes, rather than a specific number of votes (i.e., a change in the system would be needed if we made every article with 35+ votes an AID and suddenly everything was getting 35+ votes because of an influx of voters), in order to receive the AID. Since that's not an issue, there's no fundamental problem here. If it ain't broken, don't fix it; AID and CotW are very delicate, carefully-balanced processes, and such a major change would inevitably cause a lot of damage to the system's usefulness in the long run, favoring name-recognition much more than the current one does (thus giving Homer Simpson a huge edge over, for example, Meiji Restoration). -Silence 11:21, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
That's a good rant and all, but you gave no solutions. The idea of having two different pages just makes the process more dfficult, not less. Currently, there are 66 nominations! Very, very few of these will become AID, and there needs to be some system to get rid of the ones which are not going to get there quicker. You may not realise this, but maintaining this page is incredibly long and tedious and you don't want to drive away long term contributors to AID because there is too much work involved in updating vote counts and dates. Maybe we should allow for only three votes for the first 12 votes, and then bump it up to four. That way, the slow starters are able to get a foundation. Or maybe we should start off with two weeks, and then add on a week for every 4 votes. I think these are overly complicated, and don't conform with other Wikipedia projects (like CotW), and just tacking on the extra vote is the way to go. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." I'm sorry, but it is broke. --liquidGhoul 11:41, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
"That's a good rant and all, but you gave no solutions." - I gave some solutions, you just didn't like them. :) Also, you haven't proven that there's a problem. 66 nominees is an inconvenience at worst, not a catastrophe. And the system is thriving, as shown by how much activity we're getting! It's WP:CotW that seriously needs help and needs a major reworking if it's going to be effective, as soon by how much less activity and interest there is in that project. WP:CotW doesn't work and WP:AID does (or at least works better), so why are we messing around with this one and ignoring that one? Also, keep WP:CIVIL in mind when considering describing someone's argument as a "rant"; it doesn't offend me much, but you may provoke someone with a looser temper in the future by dismissing his reasoned argument as an overzealous raving. Just a tip.
"You may not realise this, but maintaining this page is incredibly long and tedious" - Since I'm one of the people who helps maintain it, I realize it perfectly well. If you're ever having trouble keeping up with the workload, gimme a ring; I'd be glad to help anytime.
"and there needs to be some system to get rid of the ones which are not going to get there quicker." - Why? The ones that are clearly not going to get there get eliminated pretty fast anyway. I don't see a single nomination listed currently that has no shot at being an AID, and the ones that have a very slim chance will be eliminated before long by the process we already have. Changing it to 4 votes a week rather than 3 wouldn't make any of the junk, obviously-gonna-be-deleted nominations go away faster (they'd still survive just as long: a week), but it will make a lot of very valid and good nominations get eliminated much sooner than they should have, included a lot that would otherwise have made great AIDs if the limit was slightly lower. 3 is the perfect balance between 2 (way too low a threshhold, almost everything will survive) and 4 (way too high a threshhold, numerous great articles will die early). It's the middle ground, and is as close to ideal as we're gonna get. If the page is too cluttered with nominations, fix the layout, not the fundamental AID system itself. The current system gets worthy articles where they need to go and deals effectively and efficiently with other ones while still giving them a chance, so it works perfectly fine; what we're discussing here is a problem with page navigation, not with the AID system itself (no one's argued that we're getting bad ultimate AID results in this discussion, after all, or losing ones that should have made it), so the proper way to resolve the problem is by improving the area where the problem lies (the page navigation!), not tampering with an unrelated area that works just fine as-is.
"Maybe we should allow for only three votes for the first 12 votes, and then bump it up to four." - Actually, I've recommended this solution before, and it's certainly better than a flat requirement of 4 a week from the very first week. However, there's an entirely different problem in upping the requirement for articles that 12+ votes already: if they're got that many votes, there's clearly a lot of interest in them and they'd be successful AIDs if they make it, with a dozen interested users to work on 'em. Enforcing a higher requirement for articles with more votes will still cause problems, as articles that should have made it arbitrarily get knocked off a certain week just because there was a slight dry spell and they only got 3 votes (still a significant amount!) in a week; that's a real waste when things get up to the 20-, 30-vote point. So, overall, it's not only vastly simpler (people would get confused about when and why the 3-requirement changes to 4-, and it would make it more, not less, difficult to keep track of and update all the pages listed on AID), but also less effective, accurate, and balanced. Certainly that's a better suggestion than having 4 votes from the very first week, though; it's just still not ideal (3 has worked, currently works, and will work in the future).
"'If it ain't broke, don't fix it.' I'm sorry, but it is broke." - Nope. AID is getting accurate and useful votes and results, is running efficiently, and has a proper (almost ideal) balance between making it too easy to stick around and making it too difficult. What's broken, if anything, is the page layout and navigation scheme, not the system itself. The system works fine, but the way we organize the voting makes it difficult to deal with large quantities of new nominations. Increasing to a 4-vote system wouldn't solve that problem (since the system could still easily become just as flooded with new nominees, which would then once again balloon the page and TOC even if those pages would be gone within a week or two), it would just cause new problems, breaking something else that worked fine rather than fixing what's already broken. Fix the pipe where it's sprung a leak, don't change the size of the pipe while leaving the leak still there; it's not going to help the actual problem you're talking about, which is that the system has no way to deal with a sudden influx of new nominations. -Silence 12:21, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
I dissagree. You have to break some eggs in order to make an omlet. I'm sure that we'd lose one or two of valuable candidates if we lift the limit. But, we'd lose much more lousy candidates. But, this list is so big that the focus is lost. Over 60 candidates?!? Who would bother going through all of them? And I don't see who quality of this project would deteriorate if we lifted the barier. If somehow miraculously this project goes down the drain if we lift the barier, we'll lower it back to 3. OK, I see we don't have a clear consensus. So, lets vote. --Dijxtra 11:30, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
"But, we'd lose much more lousy candidates." - I'd rather deal with 20 lousy candidates than lose 2 amazing ones. The lousy ones don't cause any lasting harm and are gone before long with either system (a 4-vote system wouldn't have gotten rid of Homer Simpson or John Seigenthaler Jr., so obviously there'd still be the problem of ridiculous entries!), but losing a real nominee actually does harm the encyclopedia, by not letting the community focus on working on an important topic that needs a heck of a lot of attention to get up to snuff. Changing AID in a way that makes AID less effective at doing what it's designed to do (focusing the community's attention on articles that need it) is a bad idea, hence my opposition. It might make page layout and vote-count updating a little easier for the admins to deal with, but it wouldn't be worth the cost to Wikipedia's encyclopedic content (which we'd probably never even realize we were paying while the 4-vote system was in effect, since we'd lose the nominees before most users even got a chance to see them). Think of a different solution to the problem of excessive nominees. -Silence 12:21, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
A 4-vote system most definitely would have eliminated John Seigenthaler Sr.. That article has recieved only 3 votes for several weeks. Kaldari 19:20, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
We lose those two valuable canditates anyway under the current system, it just takes longer. That's the problem. However, with a lower threashold, every article, good or bad, stays longer, and the focus is lost. So, I believe increasing the threashold will help the focus, but not lose articles. (except those that would have been lost anyway) MartinRe 17:45, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
If applied, retroactivitely, the following would immediately drop off the list (Article+recalculated date):
John Seigenthaler Sr. 9 Feb 06,Roma people 23 Feb 06,Great Leap Forward 15 Feb 06,Ego, superego, and id 7 Feb 06,Pop art 15 Feb 06,Homer Simpson 18 Feb 06,Latin America 17 Feb 06,Iran 25 Feb 06,February 15, 2003 anti-war protest 20 Feb 06,Ottoman Empire 22 Feb 06,Babylon 10 Feb 06,Human Genome Project 18 Feb 06,Aztec 12 Feb 06,Terracotta Army 12 Feb 06,Weather 14 Feb 06,GNU Free Documentation License 15 Feb 06,Tallahassee, Florida 17 Feb 06,Telecommunication 18 Feb 06,West Virginia 13 Feb 06,Domestic violence 16 Jan 06,Austria 17 Feb 06,Florence 19 Feb 06,Bucharest 19 Feb 06,Wall Street Crash 24 Feb 06,Personal computer 21 Feb 06,Foreign aid 14 Feb 06,Proportional representation 15 Feb 06,Gautama Buddha 15 Feb 06,Thessaloniki 19 Feb 06,Peanuts 22 Feb 06,Open source 22 Feb 06,Carpal tunnel syndrome 24 Feb 06,Marseille 24 Feb 06,Amazon Rainforest 4 Mar 06,Insect 25 Feb 06
So, doing it as a step jump would be too harsh, imo, but changing it to 4/week for onward weeks might help. MartinRe 12:01, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
OK, I agree, it'd be unreasonable to apply the policy retroactively. --Dijxtra 12:05, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
And just as unreasonable to apply it proactively. By showing how many fantastic nominees would have been deleted in the past, you've given a hint of how many we'll lose in the future with this system. Certainly, it'll be fewer, since to some extent the very mentioning of how many more votes are needed influences how many votes articles get. But to a much greater extent it's simply influenced by how many users go through the page and vote for the articles they like; changing the requirement from "3" to "4" on the page won't cause a huge boom in vote number, so we'll lose dozens of articles over the months that should have made AID, and would have if the weekly requirement hadn't been so steep. -Silence 12:21, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
I disagree that raising the threashold will lose articles, any more than the current system loses articles. If there are more worthy nominations being made than slots available then they will get rejected eventually, worthy or not, regardless of the threashold. This is not about rejecting worthy canditates (which will happen regardless) this is about keeping the list to a managable size. Take for example, all those articles that would drop off the list above. You might say that all of them *should* be on AID, but realistically how many of them *will*? There's 35 articles there, or 8 solid months work, I don't see many of those articles getting another 50-100 votes each, so many of them will eventually run out of votes, and be rejected, not through lack of worth, but lack of time. Also, having a article up for nomination for that long has problems, how many people will work on an article they voted for 6 months ago? Surely more people would be happy to work on something reasonably soon after voting? MartinRe 12:48, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
I like the current voting system. The main expenditure of time for voters is going through the big list of articles, and that only has to be done once: the first time you visit this page. Keeping up with it just means visiting it once a day to check the new nominations, plus a quick scan of the older entries, silently rooting for some, while laying a quiet curse on others. I've only just started contributing to AID, so I don't know much about the behind-the-scenes maintenance of the List, but I'd be happy to assist with it if it's a chore. I enjoy tedious things. Joyous | Talk 16:27, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
Then take a look here :-) The job's just got less tedious with the introduction of the bot, and will certainly get less and less tedious as the bot gets smarter, but for now there's still a lot of work to be done manualy, so you are welcome to help us :-) --Dijxtra 18:18, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

Vote: lifting the threshold to 4 votes per week

The threshold should be lifted to 4 votes per week. Voting ends one week after first vote cast.

Support
  1. Dijxtra 11:31, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
  2. liquidGhoul 11:42, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
  3. MartinRe 12:10, 26 February 2006 (UTC) (Comment: With the proviso that new nominees are helped get over initial hurdle by having starting template at "Need 8/12/16 votes by +2/+3/+4 weeks", with further increments of +4/+1, similar to now) Clarification: If the two AID/week below gets passed, vote to make threashold remain at 3
  4. Steven 15:38, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
  5. Wikiacc (?) 16:49, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
  6. Since it currently takes months for an article to actually make it to AID, the article is usually completely different by then and may not even need collaboration any more. Besides this is about keeping the list from growing forever, not about getting rid of worthy candidates. Kaldari 19:24, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
  7. Ugur Basak 21:54, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
  8. shaggy 22:35, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
  9. Litefantastic 23:18, 26 February 2006 (UTC) - the AID is beginning to collapse under its own weight.
  10. Aerobird 04:11, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
  11. jacoplane 04:30, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
  12. The only sensible solution.Juppiter 06:40, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
  13. Samsara (talk • contribs) 17:10, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
Oppose
  1. Silence 11:53, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
  2. --Jaranda wat's sup 15:40, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
  3. Lbbzman 16:18, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
  4. Joyous | Talk 16:28, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
  5. See my vote in favour of the alternative proposal below. Samsara contrib talk 16:39, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
  6. JK the unwise 16:49, 27 February 2006 (UTC) (see vote bellow)
Comment

Threshold: You're missing the point

The threshold should be set to whatever number leads to an equilibrium of nomination candidates. If we leave the number at 3, the list will continue to grow indefinitely until there are hundreds of candidates and it takes a year or so to win election. There are only 2 ways to fix this: Set the time that an article is on AID to less than a week or raise the number of votes required to stay on the list. We have to do one or the other. The argument that we will lose worthy candidates is complete nonsense unless you decide to set the time that an article is on AID to less than a week. Otherwise, in the long run, we lose the exact same number of candidates, as we can only have 52 winners per year regardless of how the voting works. Kaldari 19:33, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

Well said! Juppiter 06:38, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Vote #2: Having two AID articles per week

There would be two articles worked on together each week, instead of one. This practice was used by the first version of the AID, but was dropped when it become the TWID (See 'History' for details of this). Voting is now over. The majority consensus is to have two articles per week again.

Support
  1. Litefantastic 13:32, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
  2. MartinRe 13:41, 27 February 2006 (UTC) (that would keep the articles moving through at a higher rate, lose less articles and keep the canditates fresh)
  3. Samsara contrib talk 16:36, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
  4. JK the unwise 16:50, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
  5. --Jaranda wat's sup 01:47, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
  6. DanielCD 02:02, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
Oppose
  1. Juppiter 06:38, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
  2. Dijxtra 08:41, 28 February 2006 (UTC) Yeah, I too just don't feel like this is the right solution...
  3. Kaldari 03:47, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
  4. Gflores Talk 06:17, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
Comment
  • Don't forget that doing 2 a week ultimately contributed to the decline of COTW. The same will happen here. 2 cannot be sustained. To "unclog" AID, simply raise the threshold to 4 votes per week, or maybe 7 votes per fortnight to be less harsh. - Juppiter 06:38, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
    • What decline? COTW has occasionally been doing 2 a week and is doing well. Are you talking about something that happened a long time ago? In any case, it may just be a question of competition. If every collaboration did 2 a week, there'd likely be no problem. - Samsara contrib talk 14:21, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
      • COTW officially switched to two a week in Summer 2005. It quickly proved untenable and COTW went back to one a week. After this stunt failed, COTW has suffered such apathy that it will soon probably have to shut down. Juppiter 00:44, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
        • Yes, but you forget that the AID started with this idea (among a wholly different set of rules than the ones its uses now). It diddn't work very well then because there were so few people. There are now so many that I think widening the bottleneck can only help. -Litefantastic 15:51, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Oppose. I agree with increasing the threshold though. Perhaps there should be some indication of those who are just voting and those who are willing to help edit. In the latter situation, they could gather independently from AID and improve the article instead of waiting months for their article to be selected. Gflores Talk 06:17, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Happy Anniversary!

The AID is one year old today! -Litefantastic 13:35, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Fundamental misunderstanding of how AID works?

Guys, I've thought about this for a bit. Very soon after being introduced to AID, COTW et al., I started having reservations about how they work.

My main gripe at the time was that people love voting and get so absorbed in it that they forget their most crucial role - as editors! I've never had a problem finding things to do on Wikipedia, and so I was wondering what all this voting craze could possibly be adding.

Fast forward to this debate, where we're trying to decide how to control the flood of AID by increasing either threshold or throughput. The problem is that to my eyes, all that is happening is that groups of people who all want to write about a topic, get together here, and once the topic has "won", they start working on an article.

Imagine an alternative model:

  • Anyone can nominate a topic to work on and specify a minimum number of editors that he/she feels are required to complete the article.
  • People volunteer to contribute to the article (analogous to the current "voting").
  • Some people discuss whether the suggested number of people is too high or too low; it may get adjusted.
  • Finally, the threshold is met and the group of friends go off and edit the article.

This is how things should be run! - Samsara contrib talk 15:06, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

I've also wondered about this. I'd agree there is never a shortage of things to do, but I find editing articles a lot easier if there are other active editors, as they can fill the gaps you leave and vice versa, so concentrating efforts is a good idea. However, I think the time elasped between nomination and selection is far too large. If someone votes on an article, will they still be interested to editing it three months later? Chances are if they're interested, they will be editing it while it's still a nominee, because they know it won't be selected for months, so even if ends up being selected it makes little difference. If I put my name down to help on an article, I'd like to know whether or not it's going to happen within a few weeks, I would be less inclined to put my name down for an article if the process meant "wait for a few months, and it may or may not get selected", which is what it is at the moment. Plus, as there are always more worthy canditates than slots available, this means that the list backs up, and is unchanging at the top for the main part. One idea that comes to mind without any major changes is to have an expiry date for every nomination, say four weeks, so that the amount of time any article can remain on the list is limited. Hopefully that would also mean that the voting numbers would more closely match active interest from editors, as currently, there is no guarantee that picking an three month old nomination with 40+ votes, has any more *current* interest than a more recent one with "only" 20 votes. MartinRe 17:42, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
The initiative I describe is currently coming into being at Wikipedia:Join in. See you there and be bold! - Samsara contrib talk 18:26, 28 February 2006 (UTC)


Since nobody reads large paragraph blocks, I'll be succinct. 1: You make a good point. A collaboration based around a 'crtical mass' of editors is a brillaint idea. 2: Revise the rules just a tad. Follow your own suggestion, and allow the nominator to specify the number of people required. Once that number has ammased, someone should notify them all and they can get cracking together, for a set period of time. Your idea:
===[[ARTICLE]]===
====(1 volunteer)====
:''nominated'' [[DATE]]: Expires [[Date four weeks from now]]
::''requires 3 votes by [[Date one week from now]] to remain

; Join in now!
# (sign with four tildes) 

; Comments:
* (put your reason for nomination, sign again)

----

My modifications: 

==[Category]==
===[[ARTICLE]]===
:''nominated'' [[DATE]]: Expires [[Date four weeks from now]]
::''Editor requires [#] of people to begin work.

; Join in now!
# (sign with four tildes) 

; Comments:
* (put your reason for nomination, sign again)

----
-Litefantastic 00:12, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
I've copied your suggestion to Wikipedia talk:Join in#Litefantastic's suggestion. I expect we'll continue discussion there. - Samsara contrib talk 02:52, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Sub pages for voting

I guess it's time to use sub-pages for voting just like in WP:Rfa {{Wikipedia:Article Improvement Drive/{{PAGENAME}}}}. If we do, removing unsuccessfull cantidates would be easier. And also its better for archieval. Current removed candidate page is 246 kilobytes long.--Ugur Basak 21:35, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

I absolutely agree. :) I'd help if I knew some idea of how to do it. Gflores Talk 06:18, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
Agree. - FrancisTyers 10:13, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
Done Juppiter 21:39, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
Hm. Now we have two different formats of nominations here? My bot's gonna choke, so will have to do everything by hand... and that's gonna be a whole lot of work... hm. Yes, migrating to subpages for voting is a great idea, but I thing it was done without sufficiant planing. --Dijxtra 21:57, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
I reverted the change. Why? After some thinking I realized that there's no way we can efficiently manage 70 nominations without the bot. Therefore, it is better to keep the status quo until I write a new bot which will manage the subpages. I realized noone of the people actually maintaining this project supported this idea, and they (well, we) are the ones who will suffer without the bot. Therefore, I reverted the proces of nomination.
Bottomline: the subpages idea is great. But, not just like that. The status quo is to remain until I adapt the bot to use subpages. And that will hapen next week. We won't die if we wait for a week. And, I'm not sure how we'll survive without the bot :-) --Dijxtra 22:39, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
I was just trying to be bold. I guess it can wait. Don't put too much into creating a new bot by the way, since we're currently working on a way to reduce the number of nominations. Juppiter 22:42, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
No problem, it's OK, I'm not mad. In fact, at the moment I'm pretty hilarious as my bot just got smarter and updated the votes all by himself! :-) Some more coding and it will do most of the job itself, so the maintenance of AID will be piece of cake. BTW, yes, I know there's a proces of reducing a number of nominees, but... I don't know for you, but got bored of checking the nominations by hand. No matter what the number of those is. And I don't see people rushing to check the nominations.... --Dijxtra 22:53, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
Dijxtra your bot's improving everyday. IMO it can wait a few days --Ugur Basak 11:21, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
Sorry, I didn't quite get you, who can wait for what? :-) --Dijxtra 11:27, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
A little humor :) those proposed sub-pages can wait for a few days (hope it won't take weeks). --Ugur Basak 11:33, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
Ah, OK :-) --Dijxtra 11:39, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

Two AIDs?

We might consider having two AIDs in a week. That way if people aren't interested in one, they might be in the other. May be a good idea, may not be. Just thought I'd toss -t out. --DanielCD 16:47, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Something needs to be done

The number of nominees is constantly growing in last few weeks. The something needs to be done. The vote for lifting the vote barrier is 12:6 in favour of lifting. Vote on 2 AIDs is 6:5 in favour of 2 AIDs. I propose we lift the barrier as protective measure right away, before we reach the number of 100 nominees :-) We need action! I just spent 30 minutes straight updating the nominations. Using the bot! This is unacceptable. If the consensus is not reached by the end of this week, we should execute the measure which has stronger support (currently, that's the barrier lifting measure). --Dijxtra 17:16, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

I completely agree that action needs to be taken tout de suite Juppiter 21:23, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
There, I lifted the barrier. --Dijxtra 09:14, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

Vote #3: Nomination Moratorium?

If we don't adopt either one of the other proposals, I propose that we impose a moratorium on new nominations for a while. That would definitely reduce the number on this page from 70. Juppiter 22:50, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

We shall lift the number of votes required. I found this note in "removed" section (click here and then scroll just a bit upwards):
Starting with articles nominated in August, at least four votes will be needed each week to stay active on the list of nominations.
That shows that old maintenance crew planed on lifting the number of votes. AND except for the fact we have 12:6 in favour for lifting the vote barrier, all of people who do the dirty work voted for the proposal. Therefore, if nobody comes up with very solid argument why not lifting the barier to 4 votes, I'll lift it tomorrow. --Dijxtra 11:18, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
Last resort only! What you're suggesting will lower the number of votes, but you have to understand is that what you're suggesting is to strangle the AID back to a managable size. It will work, oh yes, but you run the possibility of killing the entire operation. If you choke off the roots, the plant will die. Tread carefully here. -Litefantastic 00:03, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
Since both Vote #1 and Vote #2 have passed, I think this idea is now null, yes? -Litefantastic 17:34, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

Note

Vote #2, a motion to double the throughput of the AID, has passed. Henceforth, the two highest-rated nominations will be collaborated on each week. -Litefantastic 17:34, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

Hm. I wouldn't quite call that a consensus... but, OK, if you say so. --Dijxtra 21:08, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
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