Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Canada/The 10,000 Challenge

Welcome

Welcome!!♦ Dr. Blofeld 19:09, 10 November 2016 (UTC)

Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame

Hey, Jlvsclrk, there seem to be some holes in Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame. Maybe you'll find something there to suit your interests.—Anne Delong (talk) 22:35, 19 November 2016 (UTC)

Great idea. Do you think the horses in there should have a Canadian sports scope as well as a horse-racing scope? Jlvsclrk (talk) 04:59, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

Jlvsclrk, if you are talking about categories, it seems that in the category tree we have Sports > Sport by place > Sports by country > Horse racing by country > Horse racing in Canada. So, it seems that horse racing is already a subcategory of Sports, but the tree divides by sport first, then by country. If you were not talking about categories, sorry.—Anne Delong (talk) 14:20, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

• Jlvsclrk, I stumbled onto this: Draft:1961 Queen's Plate. No idea if this is a notable topic.—Anne Delong (talk) 01:01, 29 December 2016 (UTC)
  • Sorry for the delay replying. I don't think it's particularly notable – if I was doing expanded articles for the Queen's Plate (like we do for the Kentucky Derby), I'd start with years where it was won by Triple Crown winners and Hall of Fame horses. Jlvsclrk (talk) 05:11, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

Pokito

Is this article Canadian enough for the list? The inventor is a Canadian, but everything else is in the UK.—Anne Delong (talk) 19:00, 23 November 2016 (UTC)

Articles for improvement

Spirit River, Alberta

This challenge states "The main focus is on improving existing article quality for Canada, fleshing out those stale old stubs or bloated/poorly sourced material and clean up, though all articles are welcome. Quality new content is welcome, but please try to avoid creating shorter stubs and unsourced material." There are also the goals of the challenge. I think we've had a good faith entry of an article achievement – the addition of a notable person – that doesn't appear to be significant enough to align with the focus or goals of the challenge. Am I wrong? If so, looks like we need more explicit detail of what doesn't qualify. If no, how many of my November edits to articles then qualify? Hwy43 (talk) 06:40, 27 November 2016 (UTC)

I agree that there should be some minimum level of improvement specified, although I'm not sure how it should be worded. I have read the main page for this "Challenge", and although the word contest is used, there appears to be no prize or reward for individual contributors. One approach to minor changes like the one above would be to mark an entry for further improvement; then an an editor could make some more improvements of that article and add his or her name on the same line, so as to make the item legit.—Anne Delong (talk) 14:38, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

I've removed the entry, though I would support its reemergence in a new section where minor improvements are parked until such time as more substantial improvements are made to elevate it to the achievements list. Hwy43 (talk) 07:48, 2 December 2016 (UTC)

Canadian is the world's first woman aircraft designer?

FYI see :Talk:Elsie_MacGill#World.27s_first_woman_aircraft_designer.3F. Ottawahitech (talk) 16:00, 6 December 2016 (UTC)please ping me

Drafts

There are a lot of pages in Draft space on Canadian topics. Some of them just need a little sprucing up to make them suitable articles.—Anne Delong (talk) 04:46, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

@Anne Delong: Thanks! I searched for and checked a few of the Canada wiki-drafts and to my surprise none had any wikiproject banners on their talkpage, sigh… Ottawahitech (talk) 16:36, 11 December 2016 (UTC)please ping me

Ottawahitech, I'm not sure if the problems of WikiProject templates not dealing well with draft space have been fixed. Apparently there was no class=draft parameter, leading to messed up statistics. Most of the new users don't know about the banners, and the AfC reviewers know that the review script makes it really easy to add project banners while moving a draft to mainspace.—Anne Delong (talk) 17:04, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

@Anne Delong: Yes I see that some of the larger WikiProjects (see for example: Wikipedia:WikiProject_Canada#WikiProjects_and_assessments) have added a Draft class/quality, but some of the smaller ones are still missing Drafts on their assessment tables. I posted at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Council#Adding_proj_banners_to_Draft_articles, so hopefully someone more knowleable will chime in soon. Ottawahitech (talk) 01:07, 12 December 2016 (UTC)please ping me

Long list - what to do?

Is there a plan for what to do when the list of "article achievements" gets too long? Will the older ones be archived by month, or in groups of 100 (or 200)? —Anne Delong (talk) 02:34, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

@Anne Delong: Are we the only editors participating in this discussion, LOL. Good question about Wikipedia:WikiProject_Canada/The_10,000_Challenge#Article achievements. Ottawahitech (talk) 03:46, 20 December 2016 (UTC)please ping me

@ User:Dr. Blofeld - what is the normal procedure in this case? Llammakey (talk) 11:57, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

See the Wikipedia:The 50,000 Challenge list, can be condensed every 500 or so.♦ Dr. Blofeld 13:03, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

I have learned from experience with my own talk page that collapsing a chunk of text doesn't work in the long run, because Wikipedia loads the entire page before collapsing it. The page you linked is already up to 115,000 bytes. People with slow connections or mobile devices won't be able to participate. Eventually I had to stop collapsing content and archive it.—Anne Delong (talk) 19:14, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

Long list proposal - create subsections

The list of article achievements is now over 1000 items long. I spend too much time waiting for the edit window to load and save, and I am tired of scrolling up and down. I propose that we create a subsection for the first 1000 items, and then another subsection for those beginning at 1001. That way I can just edit the current subsection. I know that the numbering would begin again, but if the subsections are labelled it should be okay. We can always reassemble the complete list later to showcase our 10,000 items.—Anne Delong (talk) 04:39, 19 August 2017 (UTC)

 Done I mostly do cleanup and copyedit, so I took a crack at the list and put it in collapsable sections. At least that makes the current portion of the list smaller and easier to edit. (Alas, I'm one of those editors with a slow connection and also have javascript disabled, so those collapse boxes are always open for me.) – Reidgreg (talk) 12:18, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, Reidgreg. While the page takes just as long to load, at least the edit window responds less sluggishly and saving uses up less of my mobile internet bandwidth.—Anne Delong (talk) 15:25, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

Can you bookmark this direct link which should take you straight to the edit window for the current section of the list? It should work until the section layout is changed. – Reidgreg (talk) 16:27, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

Changed the page layout, the new link to directly add to the list is this URL. – Reidgreg (talk) 14:34, 30 September 2017 (UTC)

Userbox

This user is participating in the
WP Canada 10,000 Challenge

Ottawahitech, I didn't find a userbox for this project. How's this one?—Anne Delong (talk) 21:47, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

Creating Canadian geography articles from those created by Lsjbot in the Cebuano and Swedish Wikipedias

Lsjbot made numerous articles pertaining to Canadian geography on the Cebuano and Swedish Wikipedias. For example, the English Wikipedia doesn't have an article for Ned Island, but there are two articles each for Ned Island for both the Swedish and the Cebuano Wikipedias: https://www.google.ca/search?q=allintitle:+%22Ned+Island%22+site:wikipedia.org&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&gws_rd=cr&ei=nhumWI25EYy4jwSrlKXABA

Lsjbot is responsible for making the Cebuano and Swedish Wikipedias the second- and third-largest in article count.

We can take those articles and expand them a little. We can even ask @Lsj: as well, since his bot created more articles pertaining to Canada than any of us here. Johnny Au _{(talk/contributions)} 21:39, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

I looked at the article about Ned Island, Ontario in the Swedish encyclopedia. It is an uninhabited chunk of rock which would not qualify for an article under the notability guidelines. The article about it doesn't have any information about the island anyway except the GPS co-ordinates; the rest is about the general area, and it is a waste of time and space duplicating this kind of data for every named item in the world, instead of redirecting to the municipality, in this case Burpee and Mills, population 308. Canada has an uncounted but huge number of small islands (according to the [Canadian Encyclopedia], just one side of nearby Georgian Bay has about 30,000 of them). If this is a sample of the kind of article the bot has created, I don't think we should add these to the English Wikipedia. However, if an editor was working on an already existing but not well developed article about a notable place, perhaps it would be worth checking its article in the Swedish encyclopedia for some climate, time zone, GPS, etc.—Anne Delong (talk) 12:13, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

Standards and recognitions

I suppose the minimum to be "counted" would be to destub an article – expand from stub to start class, with enough citations to demonstrate notability so the article won't be at risk of deletion. Every article on the list should ideally go through assessment, but I have no experience in that area. (It sounds like a lot of work, but perhaps it can be coordinated with those already doing assessment?)

For prizes or rewards, why not stay with the theme and distribute {{The Maple Leaf Award}} barnstars? They're on a geometric scale so you don't really have to worry about devaluing them (compared to the monthly drives of The Guild of Copy Editors and Articles for Creation). Reds for smaller contributions, silvers for a FA or cleanup of a category of articles, gold for substantial work over months or years. And it that's not enough, there's always the CanCon award. Unfortunately, this would require a bit of administrative work to keep track of contributions and awards given. – Reidgreg (talk) 12:46, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

If it's decided to give out awards, we could wait until the 10,000-improvements goal has been met and then count contributions once. This would make the job simpler and also encourage editors who like barnstars to keep working toward the goal. I don't have any opinion about the FA since I rarely work on these.—Anne Delong (talk) 12:22, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

I was hoping (on a very loose, no-rush schedule) to first get these pages cleaned up a bit and made easier to use; then to do a bit of advertising in October, and give out awards in November (the one-year anniversary of the challenge's commencement). Awards can also serve as advertising, as editors visiting participants' talk pages will see them and can follow the links here. It could be a few more years before the challenge reaches its goal, and I'm not sure a lot of editors stay active that long. – Reidgreg (talk) 11:55, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

I am happy to go along with whatever is decided about this.—Anne Delong (talk) 03:09, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

Layout for challenge page

@Hwy43, Llammakey, Anne Delong, Magnolia677, OhanaUnited, and Bearcat: pinging frequent contributors. I'd like to check what participants want for the challenge page. There have been concerns about the size of the page and ease of loading and updating the list. I can see others wanting a full list and came across a compromise. There is a way to transclude a subpage – essentially, to have a reasonably short list in one location which is loaded as part of a full list in another location. I can see a few ways of laying it out:

1. Everything on one page (status quo)
2. Move the end part of the list (the active/editable list, hereafter the "current list") to a subpage which will appear on the main challenge page. Frequent contributors can link to that subpage, which will be easier to load and edit. The main page would essentially be unchanged for everyone else.
3. Move/archive the finished parts of the list to a subpage. Optionally, the current list could be transcluded (loaded as part of that list) so that subpage displays a complete/master list. The main page would then have the intro/participants/instructions and the current list.
4. Archive the finished list to a subpage and the current list to another subpage, with the main page having only the intro/instructions/participants.
5. Separate province and territory lists, each on their own subpages linked from the main page. Another subpage could display all of those province/territory lists in one place but there would be no Canada-wide chronological list.
6. Switch from numbered lists to a wikitable that could be sorted by date, user, province, article name, type of improvement, or other fields. There would be subpages for the most-recent month or two (for new entries) and the archive portion of the table (which would take a while to load). Adding entries would require precise formatting.

There is a mockup of Proposal 4 at my sandbox. I'm not particularly favouring Prop 4, but it was the most-complicated – it's easy enough to simplify for the other earlier proposals. Feel free to test it, add hypothetical articles to lists, etc. I appreciate any time you can spare for this. – Reidgreg (talk) 21:53, 22 August 2017 (UTC) OhanaUnited made a mock page for Prop 5 (main page only).

Discussion/alternatives and Support or Oppose:

• I'd also argue that some of the entries in the list as it stands right now don't really belong there and should be removed. Some of them amount to "updated the population statistics on a community to the 2016 census figure" — which is just something that's expected to happen, not a major improvement that warrants being listed here as any sort of quality upgrade. Bearcat (talk) 21:56, 22 August 2017 (UTC)

• But the purpose of this drive is to improve the quality of articles. Updating population does accomplish this goal. (Heck, sometimes I run into articles that still had 2006 figures.) OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 02:40, 23 August 2017 (UTC)

• Yes, updating with a well written, comprehensive paragraph based on properly interpreted 2016 census figures and removing a stale and often poorly written paragraph or list of 2006 (and even 2001) census figures, regularly with mischaracterized data, constitutes an improvement on the quality of an article. It is not like these contributions were simply updating infobox entries with the associated reference. Frankly there are more contributions of similar nature to other community articles that I could add to the challenge list that I haven't gotten around to. The power of using MS Excel concatenation formulae to quickly build the necessary wikicode to blast meaningful content into 345 municipality articles in a single day, using raw census tables from StatCan, is an accomplishment. Promptly improving all municipality articles in a province on the same day the census results are first released is worthy of at least pat on the back. Thank you, OhanaUnited, for recognizing the efforts. Hwy43 (talk) 07:23, 27 October 2018 (UTC)

• What about splitting the entries according to their province/territory (plus one for meta/things that can't fit into a particular province) and then have a link to each subcategory on main page? That way, we can cut down the loading time and also make it easier for us to tally how many were improved from each province. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 02:50, 23 August 2017 (UTC)
  • That'd be easier than creating separate 1,000 challenges, but it still sounds like extra work. The U.S. 50k challenge has separate region and state lists which appear to be updated manually – only about half of the U.S. entries made that transition, so it seems to be a flawed system (too much work for volunteers to maintain). Ohana's proposal is in the other direction – it's easier to start with many lists and merge them than to start with a big list and split it. However, if we really want to see breakdowns of data (not just provinces) then we'd be talking about changing from a simple list to a sortable wikitable (something I was hoping to avoid). – Reidgreg (talk) 15:40, 23 August 2017 (UTC)
    • @Reidgreg: I'm not suggesting separate 1,000 challenges per province/territory (it will be tremendously difficult to improve 1000 Nunavut and PEI pages). I have drafted a mock page of how it would look in the new scheme. Scroll to the bottom and you will see that each province will have its own subpage (and tally inside the subpage). I don't mind doing the extra work and sort through the submitted articles into the various provinces/territories if it's greenlighted. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 18:00, 23 August 2017 (UTC)
      • I understood. And I appreciate your volunteering to sort through the list. I'm not sure that it provides useful information, though. It might be interesting, but how would you use the information (ie: act upon it)? Other ways of organizing the data (including the current chronological approach) seem more useful to me. Btw, I don't suppose you know if there's a way to scan a list of articles for categories and gather data that way? Reidgreg (talk) 22:20, 23 August 2017 (UTC)
        • Don't think category would work if it's not tagged or mistagged. Sorting it by province will generate more info about which province gets more attention and highlight the others who can benefit from more eyes. It's not that different than the Europe, Asia and Africa pages in which they place the country's flag in front of the article. At the end, someone will count, using computer, how many country flags (out of 10,000) does each country have and figure out how many pages were improved. Right now, we have no idea how many Alberta or BC articles were improved. If we know, we can target specific WikiProject groups and ask them for additional help. In addition, we have more information to report beyond stating "we have improved 10,000 Canadian-related articles" and add more background to this project. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 22:54, 23 August 2017 (UTC)
          • Okay, but (1) smaller populations are going to have fewer notable subjects and we shouldn't expect equal "attention", (2) equal attention by province and territory isn't a goal of this challenge, and (3) we should be advertising to all provincial and territorial WikiProjects regardless. If it's decided to go with this option, though, I'll volunteer to do the page coding (I feel the input box and edit notice on my mockup will make it easier to add to the list(s)). Reidgreg (talk) 14:50, 24 August 2017 (UTC)
          • I have another concern with the multiple entry-list approach. I feel that a large appeal of drives and challenges is the sense of working together with a group. When you add to a list, you can see what other people are doing and take encouragement at being part of a team working toward a common goal. If we split the list into provinces and territories, we won't see as much of that progress and in some cases there may be only one editor adding to a particular list. In a case like that, the editor may question why they're in the challenge at all since it seems they're working by themselves. So I feel this could defeat the appeal and spirit of the challenge, dividing the user group instead of bringing it together. Reidgreg (talk) 14:50, 24 August 2017 (UTC)
            • If we don't go the separate list path, we can tag the entries with provincial or territorial flag. I added an entry on the main page with {{flagicon}} to illustrate how it would look. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 05:01, 25 August 2017 (UTC)
              • List entry format might be another discussion, after deciding on layout for the page(s). (Keep in mind, though, this started over concerns of loading times and ease of adding entries.) – Reidgreg (talk) 12:47, 25 August 2017 (UTC)
• I like the second option, as long as it's easy to add new items, but I will be happy with any solution that leads to quicker load times. Whether some items should or shouldn't be removed doesn't affect this discussion, because eventually we do want the list to have 10,000 items, so it will be very long if we don't organize it somehow.—Anne Delong (talk) 05:41, 23 August 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose 1 for accessibility issues to low-bandwidth editors; Oppose 5 as divisive and slightly less easy-to-use; Oppose 6 as overly complicated. Support 2–4 with preference toward 4. Prop 4 could give a tidier intro page with room for more help/links, and a quick and easy page to add entries. – Reidgreg (talk) 20:59, 28 August 2017 (UTC)
  • It seems Proposal 2 is leading with one support and one "like".

Outcome

It seems this discussion has run its course. I've made changes to the list along the lines of Proposal 2, putting the most-recent portion of the list on a sub-page. This should make it easier to add to the list, while maintaining the appearance of the challenge page. In other words, it addresses the complaints while being least intrusive for the silent majority. (I'm still concerned about the size of this page, and the issue may have to be revisited as the list continues to grow.)

If anyone wants to save even more loading time, bookmark this URL which should have the same result as clicking on the "Submit an article" input box. Otherwise, make additions at the sub-page Wikipedia:WikiProject Canada/The 10,000 Challenge/Recent additions. Please report any problems to me. Thanks. – Reidgreg (talk) 14:31, 30 September 2017 (UTC)

Advertising

I've advertised to the Canadian Noticeboard and the talk pages of active editors who had signed up for the challenge but hadn't submitted an article yet, and am pleased to report two new contributors and several new entries within a few hours. – Reidgreg (talk) 15:03, 1 October 2017 (UTC)

A targeted mass message has gone out to about 150 content-creators, and it looks like we've gotten a surge of 50+ submissions in a few hours. I'm calling that a success. I'll try to check for the next couple days to make sure the list doesn't break (fixed one break so far). – Reidgreg 22:33, 5 October 2017 (UTC). Okay, I ended up fixing four problems (so far). It's my fault, I should have anticipated edit conflicts. If I ever do this again, I'll stagger the mass message delivery times. – Reidgreg (talk) 00:41, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

@Reidgreg: Maybe we should create a talkpage template like {{WPEUR10k}}? OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 03:20, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

@OhanaUnited: I think it's a good plan - if you need any help let me know. Jon Kolbert (talk) 03:36, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

@OhanaUnited and Jon Kolbert: I think I mentioned this when we were talking about flags, and was going to post about it after finishing the awards (I can't ask people to volunteer for too many things at once). Besides the banner, the template adds pages to Category:Articles created or improved during WikiProject Europe's 10,000 Challenge. I was going to get some Wikipedia:Petscan queries to show how this can be used, but you can get an idea just from these incategory searches:

• WikiProject Food 11 hits
• WikiProject Italy 61 hits
• WikiProject Sicily 4 hits
• good articles 11 hits
• featured articles 4 hits

I could make a search box so it's easier. However, I'd note that only only about half of the pages from the European Challenge list have their template, so for whatever reason it isn't being done consistently. If we're going to do it, I'd like to do it systematically and ideally do a little talk page cleanup while we're at it (e.g.: banner layout per Wikipedia:Talk page layout; I'll summarize when we're ready to start). Our banner would look something like this:

With three people in favour and willing to volunteer, it sounds like enough to go ahead. My only hang-up is that I want to get the awards out in November, while there doesn't seem to be any rush on this, and I could really use volunteers checking articles for the awards. But in the meantime, I'll see about setting up the template and category. – Reidgreg, 13:42, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

Done: {{WPCan10k}}. I didn't want to go overboard with parameters for the contributor and date, as that would create much more work in implementation. Category:WikiProject Canada 10,000 Challenge can be used to gather the growing number of pages and templates for the challenge. – Reidgreg (talk) 15:10, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

I'd like to apologize to OhanaUnited and Jon Kolbert for suggesting that you should work on my timetable or follow my priorities or whatever. I support this category approach and if you want to work on it, you should go ahead. The category and template are set up. I also set up a temporary page at User:Reidgreg/sandbox with direct links to save a couple clicks in adding the template to talk pages, though you should feel free to do it your own way. Again, I apologize for being presumptuous. - Reidgreg (talk) 19:11, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

No apologies needed - you're doing great work coordinating this. I want to add a province parameter to {{WPCan10k}} so we can track how much progress has been made for articles related to each province. Jon Kolbert (talk) 19:20, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

If the WikiProject Canada banner has province parameters set then it's not necessary to also have province parameters in the WPCan10k template. You can cross-reference them with Petscan or use a search (eg: search incategory:"Articles created or improved during WikiProject Canada's 10,000 Challenge‎" and insource:"|on=yes" for Ontario.) Easy-peasy. That's why I linked the examples for the Europe10k challenge above. - Reidgreg (talk) 20:21, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

Awards

I've been working on a system to recognize contributors to the challenge. If you are interested in this please see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Canada/The 10,000 Challenge/Awards for more information and discussion. I'd like someone to check my work, and would appreciate a volunteer or two to help check recent submissions to the list. That'll probably be ready in mid-October or so. Thanks. – Reidgreg (talk) 15:15, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

The way I see it is that every little bit, even minor, helps. I have found articles which were citing census population 2 cycles away (from 2006). Updating census population might not sound like a difficult or time consuming task, but bear in mind that Google fetches these infobox data and puts them up whenever a person does a search on this town. Which means that Google will also be displaying outdated information unless the person clicks on more links to find out more recent data. However, if you want to focus on quality, then we have to accept that some articles are more important than others and establish a way to quantify the importance. For example, improving North-West Mounted Police (precursor of RCMP) and Canadian Indian residential school system would be more impactful than writing about a band or a short small-town article. (Those are the "easy" examples I picked and others can be harder to quantify.) We also want to encourage improving articles from the Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut, which are vastly underrepresented in this challenge so far by my individual categorization. Provinces such as PEI, Newfoundland and Labrador and New Brunswick are also underrepresented. To encourage writing about those areas, perhaps we should apply a multiplier like a X3 for the territories and X2 for the provinces that are underrepresented? OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 16:49, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

I can attest from checking articles that many of those updates were for 10 years or more, and definitely improved the quality of the article. I did go by featured-article-equivalence as an FA was the one benchmark specifically mentioned with the Maple Leaf Awards. I tried to list by type of contribution and beyond that it's a bit of a judgement call, so would appreciate second and third opinions. As for the province stuff, that sounds like a lot more work than what I've done; it's too much complication for me. – Reidgreg (talk) 13:59, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

Leave that to me. I can figure out once I finished categorizing the first 1000ish articles. Aiming for FA or GA is a worthy goal, but that shouldn't deter from general improvements especially from underrepresented areas. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 02:11, 22 October 2017 (UTC)

Could you call what you're doing something other than "categorization"? I don't want there to be confusion with the efforts to utilize Wikipedia Categories. Thanks. Reidgreg (talk) 18:39, 22 October 2017 (UTC)

Just like what I have been doing in the sandbox (categorizing which province/territory the article is primary on). And could you not check off "minor edit" when replying to comments? I would have missed it if I didn't click on it and find out what you wanted to say. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 18:15, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

I've added the final articles from October to the awards list and checked them. Last chance if anyone would like to go over what I've done. Replies on the awards talk page, please. – Reidgreg (talk) 15:53, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

Awards have been distributed to 48 editors. If someone would like to give me one, post the following in a new section on my talk page. Thanks again to all contributors, and thanks to Jon Kolbert for the shiny new awards! – Reidgreg (talk) 16:14, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

Orphans

I noticed that many new articles created in the drive turn out to be WP:ORPHAN. Can page creators please try to link their new pages from existing articles? OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 02:55, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

WIR World Contest concluded

I've sent out ads to the editors who wrote Canadian biographies for the WIR World Contest who hadn't added to this list yet. I think we got an extra hundred articles on the list from that contest, and these last people could mean another fifty. I'd like to welcome WomenArtistUpdates and Big_iron who already found their way here, and also thank MrLinkinPark333 and everyone else who took part in the contest, which was apparently the most-productive editing event there's ever been. Well done! – Reidgreg (talk) 12:31, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

Related project page nominated for deletion

I nominated Wikipedia:WikiProject North America/The North America Destubathon for deletion. Feel free to take a look at the talk page, or contribute to the ongoing discussion. Thanks, ---Another Believer _(Talk) 23:09, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

Tracking totals

Can we implement something similar to US Challenge's state by state total and milestones? Having total by province/territory makes it easier to summarize the results at the end of the challenge. I have done some classification but I no longer have time to do it myself. It's much easier to download the task to whoever submitting the entry to do the classification themselves. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 05:09, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

This has been raised before. That you've run out of time for it I think demonstrates that it's too much work. (Similarly, my idea to apply categories to challenge articles by placing {{WPCan10k}} on talk pages quickly ran out of steam, and the US state by state totals missed a lot of articles.) I feel that pushing the burden for that work onto challenge participants is unfair, particularly to new contributors/editors and may discourage participation. We should be making this as easy and simple as possible, rather than creating extra work. As for the benefit, at the rate we're going the challenge will not be complete for another 6.5 years. By that time, there may be automated tools which could search the articles in the list and return provincial data. So I don't see the point in doing the work now.

Flag icons can be distracting and potentially controversial (MOS:FLAG). My main objection would still be the page size: added complexity and concerns about loading times. This can be a burden for frequent contributors and could overwhelm new contributors. I see you added the flag icons for the 501–1,000 section of the list. Previewing the section without and with flags returns the following stats:

CPU time usage: 0.196 seconds → 0.752 seconds
Real time usage: 0.248 seconds → 0.833 seconds
Preprocessor visited node count: 169 → 23,474
Post-expand include size: 830 → 171,142
Template argument size: 11 → 37,701
Page size (wikicode): 82,459 → 92,253
Page size (html): 158,596 → 423,549

So page-generation time is about 2.5× longer at the Wikimedia servers, though caching will reduce this. Loading time, to display or edit, would be 1.67× longer. So if it normally took 5 seconds to load it'd now take 13 seconds to load. And yes, some of us do have connections that slow. Some of us are even using mobile devices and have to pay for data, so it's costing us that much more.

So, although I Oppose this for the above reasons, I would like to make three suggestions/comments:

1. Remove the links on the flags which are the cause of most of the increased html size. It is unlikely anyone will want to follow those links and they are already provided at the top of the page under Scope.
2. Move the main list off of the main challenge page. I'll write up a proposal below.
3. I am curious about using the data you have obtained in some form of report or newsletter (though the US "milestones" is on a logarithmic scale which is bizarre). I'm not really sure how we would use that data, though, so it may be a project with no ultimate purpose.

Would anyone be interested in reading (or helping to write) a newsletter/report/milestones page? – Reidgreg (talk) 16:05, 22 May 2018 (UTC)

Other than this page, I don't see any pushback from other projects (including those who are contributing from Africa and deals with far slower and unreliable network access and page loading infrastructure than those in Canada, landline or mobile). There were no controversy or hardship caused other than what you continuously perpetrating with no evidence except personal anecdotal. And just because I don't have time to do it doesn't mean proof anything. Bots doing automatic categorization can never replace the editor who submitted the entry (and I won't believe such a tool will exist even 6 years from now, unless someone on this page knows how to code). Using MOS Flag as justification is a straw man argument, as it only applies to article spaces. Finally, please don't worry about performance because someone is paid to do that job. So yeah, lots of red herring arguments being thrown around with no concrete solutions other than the report-writing part.

I wrote a somewhat similar report for its edit-a-thon recently. And it takes me shorter time to summarize contributions with more refined metrics from 38 countries than Canada's 10 provinces + 3 territories because the countries have been categorized correctly by the person who submitted the entry. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 02:59, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

And you have lots of irrelevant apples-vs-oranges arguments: just because it's done elsewhere doesn't mean it should be done here. There is testimonial evidence from Anne Delong and from myself. But bottom line is that if you want to make a change to the established format of the page, it is up to you to justify why it is worthwhile. Instead of showing a benefit, you dismiss the concerns out of hand and that feels a little disrespectful toward the Challenge's most-prolific contributor. (BTW, I've written newsletters and annual reports for the Guild of Copy Editors, but it has more-quanitfiable metrics.) – Reidgreg (talk) 19:03, 28 May 2018 (UTC)

Proposal to move list

At 30,000 words and 265k of wikicode, the main Challenge page has become increasingly unwieldy, and is about triple the maximum size recommended for an article. Although most changes are now occurring on the Recent additions subpage, the main Challenge page serves as an introduction for new contributors and I feel it would better serve to streamline it, providing information and resources rather than listing every article in the Challenge's history. So I'd like to again suggest archiving the list.

Proposal: To move the main list onto sub-pages, as with Wikipedia:WikiProject Canada/The 10,000 Challenge/Recent additions. These would be linked from the main page to be viewed in lists of 1,000 entries and another subpage which transcludes those smaller lists so they can be viewed in a single window, if the reader's browser supports it. The Recent additions page could remain transcluded onto the main page (as it presently is, so recent progress is more readily seen) or removed as well. (Depending on discussion above, the list could be with or without flags, or there could be separate flag and non-flag lists.)

Please also suggest any resources you'd like to see on the main Challenge page. – Reidgreg (talk) 16:05, 22 May 2018 (UTC)

• This proposal makes sense. The previous changes which made it unnecessary for me to work on this page were very helpful, since I am often editing with a slow connection. New potential contributors with a similarly slow connection may just leave the page if it takes too long to load.—Anne Delong (talk) 03:28, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

We're close to 2,000 achievements. If there are no objections I'll try to reorganize the list when we pass that. – Reidgreg (talk) 16:17, 17 August 2018 (UTC)

Okay, I've archived the list in blocks of 1,000 achievements. These are transcluded onto a single large list. Only the "Recent additions" section displays (transcluded) on the main challenge page and I'd like to keep that around 200–300 entries, occasionally moving entries over to the appropriate 1,000-list. I also added a bit about Canada-related templates, and linked to the Awards section at the bottom. The main challenge page seems much tidier to me this way, but I'm open to changes/reversions. Oh, I also got rid of the columns and removed two articles from the list which had been deleted for non-notability. Please direct all complaints to: Reidgreg (talk) 13:36, 30 August 2018 (UTC)

Awards for second year

Awards have been distributed to 51 editors for the second year of the challenge. Participation was roughly the same as for the first year, though there were nearly twice as many new articles submitted (and lower numbers of expansions, cleanup, updates and reference repairs) submitted to the challenge. Full details on the awards page. If someone would like to give me an award for the challenge, I've left instructions on the awards talk page. Thanks again to all contributors! – Reidgreg (talk) 15:24, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

Canadian band stubs

When this project started I took on the task of de-stubbing the Canadian band stubs which were linked on the challenge page. I managed to get the list down from over 500 to about 50, not including a few new ones added since by Bearcat. These last few, though, I haven't been able to find enough information in online sources to promote to "start class". A lot of them predate the internet, so there are likely sources that aren't on line. I am leaving this category for now; I invite anyone who has access to old music magazines to work on these stubs.—Anne Delong (talk) 11:53, 9 December 2018 (UTC)

Adding pics from Commons

I've been adding pictures to Quebec municipality articles. Do such edits qualify for the challenge? If so, is each article counted as a separate improvement? -- P 1 9 9  ✉ 16:48, 11 October 2019 (UTC)

@P199: Good question! While the vast majority of submissions are prose-related, I do remember one image that was submitted to the challenge. (I believe it was an SVG of the logo for a crown corporation, used in the infobox under fair-use rules, and was assessed to have brought encyclopedic knowledge which improved its article.) So long as the image adds quality content to Canadian-related article(s), I think it would fit the goal of the challenge. (In particular, the image should illustrate the encyclopedic text, and not simply be part of a gallery at the end of the article.) I would suggest listing the image itself on the article submissions list (e.g.: [[:File:filename]]) and then for the explanation note what it illustrates in which articles. Make sure the file itself has a thorough file description. We want all submissions to "stick" so there shouldn't be anything about the image that might lead to its deletion (copyvio, etc.). – Reidgreg (talk) 22:41, 11 October 2019 (UTC)

Oh, in case I misunderstood, I was thinking about images you created yourself or public domain images you found and uploaded. If you're searching Commons and adding existing images to articles, I feel like that's a lesser effort and might not count for as much... though it's never come up before so we'd have to see. – Reidgreg (talk) 22:42, 11 October 2019 (UTC)

Third anniversary

Participation seems to have dropped for the third year of the challenge, so I've been concentrating on advertising and promoting the challenge this month. I'll be staggering invitations to content creators over the next few days, hopefully spread out enough so there won't be edit conflicts. After that, I intend to gradually work on compiling a list and doing checks for the year's awards. – Reidgreg (talk) 20:41, 12 October 2019 (UTC)

The advertising may have helped bring in a dozen contributors and 150+ submissions for October (so far), bringing the total for the third year to around 600 improved articles – about half of what we've had in the previous years. I've set up a table at Wikipedia:WikiProject Canada/The 10,000 Challenge/Awards § Awards for third year of challenge with random articles to check, if anyone would like to pitch in. – Reidgreg (talk) 18:31, 23 October 2019 (UTC)

Awards are sent out (except my own). I may tidy the list a bit after I hear back from another editor, but otherwise I think we're all good. – Reidgreg (talk) 20:50, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

Question

Do articles created before I joined (and knew of this project's existense) but within the timeframe (because I've been here since 2018 so everything would be) count? Or do only articles with this challenge specifically in mind count? Clovermoss (talk) 20:53, 27 December 2019 (UTC)

Duplicate entries

@Reidgreg: after adding List of municipalities in Prince Edward Island today due to its FL promotion, I noticed I previously added the same article in October 2018 (see entry #2240). If duplicated entries are not permitted, then let's strike #2240 in favour of #3682 since that is the one where FL status was achieved. Cheers, Hwy43 (talk) 00:42, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

@Hwy43: In past years, I've put the duplicate entries on a single line in November (preserving simple signatures and timestamps) when determining the awards. That way it's a little simpler for everyone else and I won't miss any contributions for that year. – Reidgreg (talk) 14:23, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

@Reidgreg: sounds good. As you likely saw, I boldly removed 5 articles that have been deleted since added. If that was wrong, feel free to revert and slap me with a trout. Hwy43 (talk) 23:01, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

@Reidgreg: I added Hoodoo Mountain on 4 October 2021 but was promoted to FA on 15 November 2021. Should this article be readded to the list? Volcanoguy 04:52, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

@Volcanoguy: Thanks for letting me know. Feel free to add that to the recent list again or perhaps this note will remind me. I'll try to check the list for duplicate entries when there are enough entries on the 'recent additions' list that I can archive all of the fifth-year articles to the other lists. – Reidgreg (talk) 14:05, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

Draft Article pending review

I submitted Draft:Jamieson Wellness for review a few days ago. Jamieson Wellness is obviously a very important Canadian vitamin company (the Jamieson with the anthropomorphic leaf ads). Are drafts allowed to go on the main project page or do I need to wait for it to get approved? --Aknell4 (talk)

Challenge template

FYI, the {{WPCan10k}} talk page template has been depreciated per this TfD discussion. It may be merged as a parameter for Template:WikiProject Canada. Details to be forthcoming. – Reidgreg (talk) 11:20, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

@Reidgreg: Update: The new parameter is "WPCan10k=yes" - ie, use {{WikiProject Canada|WPCan10k=yes|class= |importance= }} to indicate that an article is part of this Challenge. I updated the Challenge page, you might want to edit my edits. Cheers, PKT(alk) 18:51, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

Articles

I have just become aware of this project. I've spent much of this year creating relevant articles. Would it interest members to see a list of relevant articles? Or should I just add tag on the talk page? CT55555(talk) 12:24, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

@CT55555: Although awards are given annually, there is no time limit for making submissions to the challenge. You can submit to the "recent articles" list any Canada-related article you have improved since the challenge began (November 2016) until it ends (when a total of 10,000 unique articles have been listed). We want the improvements to stick, so all material added should be cited to reliable sources. – Reidgreg (talk) 13:10, 5 December 2022 (UTC)