As one of many editors suffering from missing encyclopedic articles list (MEAL) withdrawal, let me just say thank you to those who put together the new version and brought the project back to life. Job well done! - Bantman 17:01, September 7, 2005 (UTC)
/Z is in large part computing terms stuff. Is that the same for the others, or is /Z unusual? I know for example we had finished /Z for 2004, so it might be the latter. Pcb21|Pete21:23, 11 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I've tried to be conservative and create redirects to supratopics if at all possible. But, agreed, there are some we should just dump. Pcb21|Pete09:00, 12 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, it's unintuitive, but there are topics that exist in some specialized encyclopedias yet are, nonetheless, unencyclopedic. There may be some in Easton's Bible Dictionary like that as well. – Quadell(talk) 14:14, September 12, 2005 (UTC)
The more specialized encyclopedias are, the less likely their contents are appropriately encyclopedic for WP. I think we'd all agree that the encyclopedia of D&D magic (does that exist?) has little to offer in this matter. Perhaps the computing encyclopedia straddles the line on this one. - Bantman 23:49, September 12, 2005 (UTC)
What do the numbers next to the letters mean Quaddell? I thought that they were the remaining amount for the particular letter, which I did for 'Q', but it looks as though you had a different intent. Could you please explain?
Oh, I meant that that was the number which had been done. I guess it's ambiguous. – Quadell(talk) 22:39, September 12, 2005 (UTC)
I think the missing articles should be sorted country-wise and topic wise. There are a number of regional notice boards which would be better equipped to handle the creation of these articles, rather than a long lists in which few would be interested in checking out. =Nichalp«Talk»=11:44, 13 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Remember we already have the topic-based Wikipedia:Requested articles. People have liked these lists because they had a definite goal. That goal has been muddied a little by having to merge the lists, but we should leave these lists as is for a whilte to what interest they generate. Pcb21|Pete12:40, 13 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
The list can stand as it is, I have no probs with that, but the drawback of WP:RA is that it is heavily fragmented. Country-wise sorting has the advantage that the articles can be written by native writers looking for new tasks to handle. Its a dirty job sorting by country, but has a better chance of getting a more fruitful response. Just my thoughts though... =Nichalp«Talk»=13:07, 13 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Fair point I can see an advantage of a country-oriented list. The only problem is that it is a very human-intensive task.. people prepared to make such an investment of time are likely to just create articles. Of course, adding notes about topics as we do for the other/old lists is a good idea. Pcb21|Pete16:38, 13 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I have noticed that (some?) letters outside of a-z have been dropped in (some?) of the scraping process. This means if the topic is supposed to have accents on it then the spelling can be very strange. For example, I was trying to track down what Zamo was and couldn't, refering back to the original sources I ascertained that it really refered to Zamość but that the last two letters had been dropped (they are quite unusual so maybe there is some unicode issue. I have since found some other examples where the accents have been dropped... it may be unique to Colombia entries... not sure... anyway if you end up racking your brains trying to fathom a topic... think accents! Pcb21|Pete18:08, 27 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
You are right Pcb21. I tried to fix as many Unicode errors (Firefox was acting funny that day) as possible when I compiled the Columbia entries but there were some that slipped through. So follow Pete's advice and search Columbia if you having a problems. Reflex Reaction20:08, 27 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I was planning to count the number of entries on each page, and update the % complete. The trouble is, someone organized them into sections by letter, and it's now nearly impossible to count. (If this improves things for those creating articles, then I guess it's worth it. Creating articles is more important than counting them, I concede.)
Quadell, what do you mean by manually? Do mean going section to section adding item up, or do you mean using excel to count the items? If the former there is a relatively easy way to count sectioned lists using excel, just select the entire list, then sort alphabetically. All the topics will sort together because they have a number in front. You can then select the rows with a leading number (topics) to tell how many topics remain. I can explain further if I'm not clear. --Reflex Reaction16:35, 17 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
It doesn't matter, you could do either. If you do keep it, though, it'd be good to cross it out (use < s >< /s > tags without the spaces) so people know it's already done. Zafiroblue0520:02, 9 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
While it doesn't matter whether it is left or removed, I would not recommend putting in the strikethroughs. If it is complete it can simply be removed without the need to "say" that it done with the strikethroughs as it will only mean that someone else will have to remove it later. --Reflex Reaction (talk)• 20:28, 9 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Is it possible to fix capitalization? I still note that many articles in this list, if they were capitalized WP-style, would in fact be existing articles. Anybody care to fix this? linas01:17, 17 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Each person working the list has to decide whether a redirect from the other capitalisation is appropriate. If it is, create the redirect and delete the entry. If not just remove from the list with a edit summary. We've tried automated re-capitialisation on some of these lists in the past and to be honest it was a disaster - thousands of people with their names in lower case etc. Pcb21Pete09:06, 25 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Just finished doing a recount of the table. It appears the old 52% completed figure was off by around 4%, so in reality we're only 48% of the way there. Also, the totals in the last row were recalculated. I'll start removing blue links from all letter categories, and I'll do a recount again later. Marcos Juárez14:10, 3 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
What do these sections mean? I've created some of the missing articles, made them redirects to the appropriate already existing wikipedia articles. Are they going to be moved to the "unverified bluelinks" section to be verified by someone? --Xyzzyplugh15:43, 14 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yes! Until it has been removed by another editor, it is still considered part of the items that have not been addressed. Thanks for all your recent edits. --Reflex Reaction (talk)• 13:37, 24 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
"When working on this list, please NEVER simply remove a red link because "we have the article elsewhere"."
Yes, but it also pollutes the wiki namespace with redirs that are unused elsewhere. If this project "goes away", all of those will be left dangling. Surely someone can come up with a better solution? Maury20:14, 19 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
People working on this project should be aware the convention on Wikepedia for mathematical theorems is for proper names to be capitalized in the normal way and for all other words, including the word "theorem," not to be capitalized. See Category:Mathematical theorems for many examples.--agr14:31, 16 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I often include the string "WP:HOTlist redirect" in an edit summary when creating a redirect that could be seen as "usual". This string indicates that the unusual redirectee is indexed like that in some other reference work somewhere. Thus, it is a clue to future editors that the redirect has more usefulness than might first be obvious. In short redirects are cheap, please don't delete them! Many thanks.