Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Economics/Census

Firstly, a personal thank you to everyone who has signed on to help with WikiProject Economics. It's clear that there are enough willing and able people to be able to achieve something; for everyone who signed up here there are probably more who, for whatever reason, did not get or have not yet had the chance. I have prepared a few ideas below, which it would be nice to have some opinion on; in particular viewpoints contrary to my own. I do not wish to be overwhelming, merely, to make hay while the sun shines. - Jarry1250 ^{[Humorous? Discuss.]} 14:18, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

Reliable sources and weight (please comment)

Nils von Barth has clearly put in a lot of time in recent weeks on the talk page of this rather older proposal. I hope that he will be able to turn this into a new proposed guideline that can gain a local consensus. Any which way, I'm sure he would appreciate some comment, now or later. - Jarry1250 ^{[Humorous? Discuss.]} 14:18, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

Collaboration (please comment)

Almost two years ago now, the WikiProject had a concerted effort to get Adam Smith to FA status. This proved, in the words of FrankTobia, to be more difficult than first thought. FAs require a staggering amount of work; an argument can be made, I think, for trying to focus instead on the long tail of economics articles. I quite like the idea that the Project could reward the efforts of editors who get articles to meet the standards of WP:DYK (though not necessarily putting them through that) in some sort of contest format, with a nice barnstar for the monthly/quarterly winner. The idea would be to improve existing low quality articles and to fill in gaps (lists of such gaps do exist). Some editors, I know, will not need the motivation nor care for it, but for everyone else, it could drive extra enthusiasm for actually writing articles, and has the advantage of being relatively easy to achieve something. Might also draw in more casual editors and get them involved too. - Jarry1250 ^{[Humorous? Discuss.]} 14:18, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

I'm personally too busy to work on this right now but I could be working on this come summer. However, by summer I will volunteer to work on a few Austrian articles.Teeninvestor (talk) 20:01, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

It's a shame that Adam Smith is not even a good article. The thing is, we need at least a couple of scholars specialized in Adam Smith (e.g. a biographer, some that wrote her Ph.D. dissertartion on it, or a researcher of the economic thought of Smith), otherwise we could stay forever with that task.--Forich (talk) 15:31, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Peer review

The WikiProject currently has no go-to place for reviews or requesting peer review. IMHO, these can get lost in the mixture of items on the main talk page of the project; might it be worth having a separate page or does that just thin the thing out? - Jarry1250 ^{[Humorous? Discuss.]} 14:18, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

Notability (please comment)

Currently, there exists no specific guidelines on notability in the world of economics. There may well be no need for them (in the spirit of WP:CREEP); the general guideline may be sufficient. Roughly speaking, there exists at the moment, in the scope of WPECON:

• Articles about economists: these seem well covered by WP:ACADEMIC;
• Articles about institutions and groups: these seem well covered by WP:ORG;
• Articles about economic events, crises, and so forth: equally well covered;
• Articles about economics terminology: what guidelines cover these? WP:NEO? WP:NOTDICT?

So, if there is need of a guidelines on notability, I think it should cover the last category; it should, in my mind also answer the question of when we want separate, short articles, or just redirects to the greater concept. - Jarry1250 ^{[Humorous? Discuss.]} 14:18, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

With regards to notability, you can often find related material that may corroborate or be cited thru the google scholar article search and government article search tools, as well as the Directory of Open Access journals. AnimeJanai (talk) 23:41, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Those certainly look interesting (I hadn't met the last two before). It does leave the question open though, do we need a guideline or not... I'm thinking at this stage it would probably be WP:CREEP, right? - Jarry1250 ^{[Humorous? Discuss.]} 15:57, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

Newsletter (please comment)

I'm sure my mass bombarding of user talk pages wasn't to everyone's taste, but that form of communication is, undoubtedly the easiest way to make sure people read a message. Newsletters pick up on this, and allow the project to feel more like a community. They are also something I am prepared - and able - to do if people feel it useful. Opt-in or opt-out? I guess that may depend on usefulness. Some things that could be mentioned:

• New members, and retiring members;
• Articles for deletion that economists may be in;
• Requests for peer reviews and suggestions for articles that ought to be written;
• Newly promoted articles;
• Collaboration or competition results.

The list goes on. But it seems really harmless, and thus a must, to me at least. - Jarry1250 ^{[Humorous? Discuss.]} 14:18, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

I like the idea of a newsletter for the project. How often would it circulate?--Forich (talk) 20:46, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps it should circulate like the WP:MILHIST newsletter.Teeninvestor (talk) 20:05, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

Very much like MILHIST (and other similar projects). I think every two weeks would be the sort of frequency we're talking about... I would say every month, but I for one would just forget about its existence completely mid-month! Ha. - Jarry1250 ^{[Humorous? Discuss.]} 21:28, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

Hey. The newsletter has a very nice format, congratz Jarry1250. Let's keep it going.--Forich (talk) 22:40, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Style guide (please comment)

The page is, at the moment, rather unfilled. Ideally (in my mind, at least) some of the more experienced editors should get together and build a proper proposal when they get the chance, not only covering what is listed there but other aspects of writing about economics and its pitfalls. - Jarry1250 ^{[Humorous? Discuss.]} 14:18, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

• Personally, I believe we should have a style guide, at least a basic one.
  • If we do decide to proceed with compiling a guide, one matter we should consider is standardizing how we number and label tables, graphs/diagrams, etc. when an article contains more than one, to make referring to them later in the article or on the talk page more accurate and convenient. (E.g., "See Fig. 3 in the article," vs. "See the middle diagram in the series of 3 side-by-side diagrams in the 'Shape' section of the article.") I've put a more detailed discussion on the Econ Project style guide talk page, rather than cluttering up this section with it (and having it get lost in what's becoming an unwieldy section!) --Jackftwist (talk) 22:25, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

Other things you probably won't need to comment on

Naming conventions

Probably not much to say in terms of naming conventions for this particular WikiProject other than the question of which articles should exist mentioned above at #Notability.

Scope

The project's current scope is listed, rather succinctly, as "the field of economics". Is this being properly applied? Does anyone have any comments to make?

Governance

I have no concerns, myself. Doesn't seem much to discuss, really.

Recruitment

Once some of the above has been sorted out, then we can think about bringing in new people to the project and how this might be achieved. My favoured opinion is to a) advertise when we think guidelines have consensus; and b) say hello to existing editors in the field. But that can come later, once we have a streamlined project to work on.

- Jarry1250 ^{[Humorous? Discuss.]} 14:18, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

unsourced BLPs

One thing that should be done as part of the project is a concerted effort at sourcing unsourced biographies of living persons. I think there might be quite a number of economists in this category. Recently I've come noticed Avner Greif and James A. Brander and I'm pretty sure there's plenty of others. I know that other projects have set up bots to identify such articles in need of sources and it would be very useful if somebody did the same for this project; basically taking the intersection of the categories BLP, unsourced and economist.radek (talk) 07:53, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

The list is thankfully short, looking like this:

• Charles A. Holt

• Frank Hahn

• Gligor Mircea

• Hirofumi Uzawa

• James A. Brander

• Patrick Litzinger

• Ron Insana

Note that Greif isn't caught because (at time of writing, will change shortly) her talk page is not tagged with WPECON. - Jarry1250 ^{[Humorous? Discuss.]} 16:54, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

I removed the tags from several who are adequately sourced, and deleted them from the list. Of the rest, Gligor Mircea and Patrick Litzinger should be deleted as NN (any admins handy for this?). Ron Insana isn't an economist, so not our problem. The others are notable and should get some attention - not a big job.JQ (talk) 19:35, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

There is probably quite a number of others that are not being picked up. Barbara Spencer is for all intents and purposes unsourced. I know, I know, I should do some of these myself, but I'm extremely busy right now.radek (talk) 00:52, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Another unsourced but untagged economist BLP is Oded Galor.radek (talk) 22:54, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

I've created Wikipedia:WikiProject Economics/BLPs to be sourced which for now should start as a list of economist BLPs in need of sourcing. As I mentioned above, currently I do not have the time to do this myself but I will try to add to the list.radek (talk) 20:54, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

Articles that need tagging

I have started a preliminary list at WP:WikiProject Economics/To be tagged. All the articles listed were categorised by other as about "economists", and my spot check is yet to reveal any non-economists. Hence, all those talk pages should be tagged be WPECON, I think you'll agree. The only thing we need to decide is whether the bot, when adding WPECON, should "inherit" classes from other projects. What you think? - Jarry1250 ^{[Humorous? Discuss.]} 17:03, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

On a somewhat related issue .... I'm not sure how best to handle it, but perhaps a new category needs to be created to note "professional economists," as other lists currently include all manner of pundits on the economy. (See [1]) BigK HeX (talk) 17:10, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

There's something to this though I'm not sure if professional is the right adjective here. "Pundits" are in a sense professional economists too. Maybe break it down into subcategories of "academic economists", "economic journalists", "financial sector economists" or something like that. Otherwise, yeah, every one's an economist.radek (talk) 20:39, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

Cool. I'll go ahead and order their tagging then, shall I? Inherit and auto-stub seems reasonable... then we can scan them for unreferenced BLPs and whatnot. - Jarry1250 ^{[Humorous? Discuss.]} 21:09, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

While I agree some sort of classification system would be useful, it might prove to be an exercise where the marginal social cost quickly exceeds the marginal social benefit. Beyond certain broad categories, like "academics in economics, finance, and business"; "economics, finance, and business consultants" (maybe); "economics, finance, and business journalists," and a few others, we may start creating distinctions among vaguely defined categories where, in fact, there's no significant practical difference at all. E.g., how do we categorize a real economist who works for the IMF, World Bank, U.S. Treasury Department, or one of its international counterparts, but who specializes in financial markets (although he does not work for a private financial firm)? If we weren't cautious, we could easily trying to separate the fly excrement from the pepper, so to speak.

• By all means, though, I agree that we should definitely distinguish between true professionals (whether they work in academics, government, business, think tanks, consulting firms, NGOs, etc.) on the one hand and "economic journalists/pundits" on the other (see the following comment). Beyond that, we should pay close attention to the opportunity cost of the time and effort involved.
• Perhaps I'm an elitist snob and it's not WP PC to say this, but with the utmost and most genuine respect for my distinguished colleague radek's comment above, I adamantly, utterly, and irrevocably reject any assertion that most of the self-proclaimed "economic pundits" and talking heads are in any meaningful sense whatsoever "professional economists too." IMHO, at least in the U.S., the state of economic/financial/business journalism has long been lamentable, with rare exceptions, and is only getting worse as major print media reduce their staffs to cut costs. (The Wall Street Journal and Barron's are notable exceptions, of course, as well as The Economist, but that's not primarily a U.S. product. The Public Broadcasting System also does some good work, but other times it can be shaky. National Public Radio also presents some solid stuff -- e.g., the "Planet Money" project -- but there's sometimes also an unpredictable mixture of complete piffle.) Again IMHO, the vast majority of the talking heads on TV, especially on cable, do far greater harm than good by spreading much more misinformation and outright rumor than they do real news, solid reporting, or even more rarely, genuine insight. During the darkest days of the market meltdown in October-November 2007, I literally watched CNBC for comic relief! Many of their "reports" were so hilariously ill-informed or outright wrong that they could've passed for "Daily Show" segments or "Sat. Night Live" skits if I hadn't known what I was watching. Good grief, I have become that which I loathe. Here endeth the screed. Not that I feel strongly about the issue or anything.  :-) --Jackftwist (talk) 23:27, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

Since this is not about the census...

...any reason this discussion is not taking place at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Economics? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 17:33, 21 April 2010 (UTC

I only put it here in order that those explicitly watchlisting the census would see it; I put a note about it on the main talk page. I only worry that if it gets moved there, it might get swamped. But sure, go ahead and leave a note here, it doesn't really bother me. - Jarry1250 ^{[Humorous? Discuss.]} 18:01, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

Having read all the comments at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Economics, I wholeheartedly agree that a discussion of the specialized focus proposed here should not be comingled with the polyglot of commentary on the project page, where it would likely indeed get swamped. Rather, this discussion should take place in reasoned, civil discourse "far from the madding crowd." Although I'm loath to add yet another page to my watchlist (that name has a rather Orwellian sound, doesn't it?), the particular band of brother- and (I hope) sister-economists ensnared by the Jarryan Census (2010 C.E.) is presumably interested in serious, calm, intelligent discussion focused on the nitty-gritty administrative and procedural/process details necessary to raise the quality of the articles in this project by several orders of magnitude. By stark contrast, Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Economics discussion topics range across the spectrum from

• asserting that stationery and pencils qualify as "factors of production" for a typical firm (I kid you not! Check it out -- currently the 3rd section from the bottom), to, on the other extreme ...
• a heated argument (I deliberately don't dignify it as a "debate") over esoteric topics in marginal utility theory (near the top of the discussion pages -- several screens long; you can't miss it, but you'll wish you had) that belong only in a highly specialized graduate seminar (minus the ad hominem attacks), and possibly in the New Palgrave, if written there by someone who's either already won a Nobel in that specialty or was on the short list of finalists. But such a tediously technical, PhD-level discussion has absolutely no place in a general-purpose encyclopedia! How many WP policies and guidelines does that article and discussion breach? Let me count the ways.... (Such minor luminaries in utility theory as Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, who wrote the "Utility" article in the Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, and Paul Samuelson, both of happy memory, would probably alternately ROFL and then choke on their sherry over both the quality and tone of this argument.)

No, please, let's try to reserve a quiet space where the aforementioned administrative and procedural discussion can take place with minimal interruptions from casual users who have no abiding, vested interest in the project. (I almost said "the great unwashed," but I've already violated enough taboos for this month.) --Jackftwist (talk) 02:29, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

I personally have no use for quiet spaces - I have no use for the "great unwashed" bureocrats that keep making wikipedia their great unwashed home (because bureocrats never clean anything themselves - they're too busy bureocratizing).--Kiyarrlls-talk 14:15, 20 June 2010 (UTC)