Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Greece

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This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Wikipedia:WikiProject Greece page.
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Hello! I just created the page of the Wiki-project and completed the first phase of the initial work needed. I used as basis for this page the Wikipedia:WikiProject History of India and the Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history. I regard this choice of mine as recommended benchmarking.

Many things are left to be done. And I'd continue to work, but I feel already very tired. I hope that the Greek Wikipedians and all the Wikipedians of the world, who are interested in Greek history are going to embrace this effort. These are some of the things that I've in mind, but not the courage to to initiate right now, after all these hours of work:

• Place the template of the Wikigroup (which you can change if you donot like it, the userboxes as well) in article within the scope of the Group. I've already done that with Pericles, metapolitefsi and Greek War of Independence.
• Assess these articles and create an assessment department. I assessed metapolitefsi, but I did not have the time to work on the assessment department.
• Create a peer-review department for all those who want to get their article to GA or FA status and want some suggestions.
• After creating these departments, make a template navigation.
• Fill the to-do list and propose further plans.
• Think about the creation of task forces. Examples:Ancient history task force, Byzantine History task force or Modern History task force.
• Recruit members.
• Possibly create a newsletter like Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Outreach/Newsletter August 2006.
• Initiate collective collaborations and, possibly, choose an article for monthly or weekly co-operations.
• Discuss about further plans.

Please, feel comfortable to participate and contribute.--Yannismarou 16:35, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Contents 1 Editing of articles 2 New Articles 3 Naming conventions 4 Greek police article created 5 Infobox for towns 6 Sartzetakhs2.jpg 7 More than 4000 articles, 50 participants, 25 FAs and ... and ... and 8 Barnstars 9 Review department 10 Templates/Infoboxes 11 Barnstars (again) - members 12 New wikiproject cat wanted? 13 Halkidiki 14 Ottoman MILHIST taskforce 15 Cleanup tags

[edit] Editing of articles

In the past few days, following a rather lengthy period of good edits, editing of a few key articles of WPHOG, such as the Greek military junta of 1967-1974, Metapolitefsi, Kostas Georgakis, Athens Polytechnic uprising, Diomedes Komnenos etc., has been reversing key sections of these articles and substantially rewriting them. I reverted many of them. I know this is Wikipedia and it is open etc. but could we just set up a task force to periodically check these article against erosion? I can volunteer for the committee. The task is big. Thanks. Dr.K. 16:07, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] New Articles

Hi all. You may be interested to know that Alex Bakharev has just made a new very interesting bot, User:AlexNewArtBot, which may immensely help lessening the amount of work in Wikipedia:WikiProject Greece/New articles.--Aldux 15:26, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the advice. The project is now supported by the bot.--Yannismarou 16:39, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Naming conventions

The article titles concerning the various factions of the Greek Civil War (EDES, ELAS, EAM etc) are in a transliterated form of the Greek name, which is not only difficult for a non-Greek speaker to remember or use, but also contrary to established practice (e.g. for political parties). I suggest moving them to their corresponding English titles, e.g. National People's Liberation Army for ELAS. Regards, Cplakidas 23:28, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

No objection from me. Do we know what if any similar issue has been discussed in the naming conventions of any other project?! Just one remark: Before initiating massive renamings, I think we should start a discussion in the talk page of each of these articles, and see if there are any objections from editors that may not watch our discussion here.--Yannismarou 20:18, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Greek police article created

I have created a mere stub for Greek police. I intend to work on it more, incorporating stuff from el:Ελληνική Αστυνομία, however I must go to sleep (strange ideas I have, creating stubs at wikipedia at 5.30 in the morning...) If anyone feels like it please feel free to add to the stub. Also, wikilinking to it from related articles would be great. --Michalis Famelis (talk) 03:28, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Infobox for towns

The current {{Infobox Town GR}} template for municipalities is being updated, see {{Infobox Greek Dimos}}. We think it's almost ready for launch (it's easy to convert the old infobox into the new one, which has nice new features). Please add your comments on the template talk page. Markussep 18:47, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Sartzetakhs2.jpg

This image is marked for future oblivion. Anyone interested please make your point(s) at its talk page voting to keep or delete. Many thanks. Dr.K. 19:52, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] More than 4000 articles, 50 participants, 25 FAs and ... and ... and

• The project is working for not more than six months, and the numbers say:

• We have already 50 participants. I know they are not all active, and that some of them are not around in Wikipedia for some time (and this is a reason I think about proposing to divide the members in active and non-active, in the way WP:MILHIST does it), but again the number is impressive, and the numbers below indicate that many of these members do their best for the project, and almost all of them take their participation here very seriously. Just compare with the membership rates of other WP national projects.
• More than 4000 articles already tagged with our project's template. Enormous work for just 6 months! I want to thank all these users who spend their time in this task, the placing of the banner in talk pages, that most users regard as boring, but it is essential.
• 25 FAs, and at least 16 recorded GAs. I know that most of these FAs and GAs are the result of individual work, but, again, these numbers indicate that there is the potential and the skills for collaborative work of really high standards in certain Greece-related areas.
• At least 10 Greece-related articles added each day, and tagged with the project's banner thanks to the assistance of the User:AlexNewArtBot. A really impressive production.
• A talkpage which is alive, where dialogue takes place and new issues are discussed.

So, the results may be impressive, but where are we going from now on? These are some of my thoughts:

• 4200 articles are today tagged with our banner, but only circa 1200 of them are assessed. Therefore, c. 70% of these articles remain unassessed. Since a main reason for adding the banner is the future improvement of these article, I think that from now on we should focus on proper taggging and not just tagging. a) Class assessment, b) B-Class criteria, c) comments through the banner are three means for instructions and improvement-motivation that we should not leave under-utilized.
• Content quality should be another priority. The peer-review section of this and of other projects are a helpful mean towards this direction that most users do not take advantage of. Of course, we all know that content quality demands devotion, and this is difficult during the limited time we devote to Wikipedia.
• Participation in the talk page could be even more vivid with project members getting more and more active. Sometimes, I feel that I don't know a subject very well, and I expect the expertise of another member who can give a better answer than me and respond to a request more effevtively. For instance, an issue about naming conventions which came into our attention a few days ago, and I was not sure about the correct answer.
• Watcing FAR and FARC procedures is also very important. We must keep what is already achieved (25 FAs). I'm determined not to allow any of these articles to lose their star, and I believe that many members agree with me on this issue.

These are just some of my thoughts. I hope that they may be helpful.--Yannismarou 13:24, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Some comments:

1. Splitting the project members into active and inactive would be a good idea. Perhaps a bot can be created to regularly check if the user has made any WPGreece edits in, say, the last 90 days and move them to the inactive list.
2. Perhaps we can have have an "article assessment drive" whose purpose will be to assess the unassessed articles and cover the B-Class criteria
3. Could an alert mechanism be created (another bot?) that will notify the active membership about FAR/FARC procedures and debates when it involves articles under this project?

Just some ideas off the top of my head. --Kimon^talk 17:08, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Ha! The only problem is that I'm not good in creating bots! But 3 can be easily done by me because I check almost every day FAC and FARC, and I know first hand what is going on there! Another change that could help to this direction may be the "recreation" of the current "peer-review" section in the way the respective review section is reorganized in WP:MILHIST (see here) so as to include FAC, FAR, and FARC reviews (we don't have A-Class review yet here). In this way, a user that visits the relevant section can have a global view of all our articles under various reviews. I think this would help!

Now, I can also work on 1 manually, but a bot would really help (anybody willing to create it!!!). About 2 I also see it positively, but I would like you to concretize your idea, in order to see how you think about this "article assessment drive", and how it could be materialized.--Yannismarou 20:36, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

I've never created a bot so, I don't know how it's done. But, I guess I can give it a try.

Specifically for #2, I meant something like the article assessment drive of WP:WPBIO. A message can be sent to all the active/current members of the project with a wikilink to the category of unassessed WPGreece articles. We can even create one or more barnstars as awards to the users that assess the most articles, etc. Maybe we could even set target completion dates with percentages expected to be completed and have some kind of tracking mechanism on the project's page. --Kimon^talk 21:10, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

We do have an assessment section here as well, but nobody takes advantage of it! As far as the barnstars are concerned, this is another thought of mine during the last months. I agree that the project should adopt at least one barnstar award.--Yannismarou 21:17, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm familiar with the assessment section here, and that's where I've been referring to when assessing articles. What I meant was that we should have a specific drive with clear and tangible objectives where we reach out to users soliciting their participation, instead of having a section that someone must consciously and purposely look for and visit. In other words, I believe that this effort would be much more successful if the project prodded the membership into action, instead of waiting for those same members to act on their own. I know that's how it was with me and the WP:WPBIO project.

As for the barnstar, I'm sure we can use one of the existing generic ones and slap the Greek flag on it for use with this project. --Kimon^talk 21:30, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

I see your point. But believe me! Even the WP:BIO at this moment works with the "consciously and purposely look for and visit" of a limited number of users. For instance, the peer-review and the assessment section of the WP:BIO would be dead without the dedication of 3-4 users. And for months there was no newsletter issued (since Plange left - By the way, where are you lady?! The project there still needs you!!)! Personally, the only time WP:BIO "prodded me to action" was when it welcomed me, something that is also done with this project as well. Anyway, it would be nice to give "motives" to users, but, believe me, this is not an easy task. Even the WP:MILHIST, the best project around, works as it works and has become a benchmark through the tidiness, dedication and genious of mainly one person, Kirill Lokshin. I will be very happy, of course, if we manage to emulate these projects, and go even further here through fresh ideas and plans like yours and others'. As far as the barnstar is concerned, yes this is no big deal; and maybe we can be even more original!--Yannismarou 21:59, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Barnstars

I took a stab at creating a base barnstar Image:BoNM-Greece.PNG. Tell me what you think --Kimon^talk 22:26, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Waiting for more opinions, I'd say that maybe we could think a way of better depicting our flag (if we want something like the flag to be there - if not the barnstar it is fine as it is!); something that the Turkish barnstar achieves. But let's see what other members say.--Yannismarou 22:40, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

There doesn't have to be only one. Aside, I think that this project should be about something noble such as Hellenism and its values, rather than strictly "Greece", which has many national connotations. Flags typically enhance those connotations, and the Greeks have certainly much more to brag about than an occasionally lame government. I'll work on something. PS, Yanni, you may want to re-edit the figures above (around 80% etc); the math doesn't add up. NikoSilver 00:00, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree completely that we could and should have more than one barnstar. But, our primary should be, as NikoSilver says, representative of Hellenism and not just Greece. Anyway, I'm sure someone with Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro can create something a lot better than what I managed to do with Paint in 5 minutes :)

PS. shouldn't we create a new talk section to discuss barnstars specifically? --Kimon^talk 00:45, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Nicos. We could try to be a bit more ogirinal, but for a start Kimon's effort is fine. I'll try to do something myself also. PS: It was 80%, when I first edited the section above. Now, it is less that 75%! You know, figures are volatile! --Unsigned by Yannis (who will probably remove this)--

PS (can we start with a PS?): "4124 articles are today tagged with our banner, but only 3368 of them are assessed. Therefore, 80% of these articles remain unassessed." 3368/4124=~80% assessed (you say 80% un-acessed - so which is it?) NikoSilver 11:25, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Ah! I got it! I wrote it wrong above! It is only 1000 (and something) assessed. 3000 (and something!) unassessed. Mistakes we are, human beings we make! Don't kill me!--Yannismarou 11:30, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Just to keep this going, I created a sample template that can be used with the temporary barnstar here: {{User:Kimon/BarnstarWPGreece}}. --Kimon^talk 13:17, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

OK! I'll also add the barnstar in the main page, and, if we think of something better, we'll re-design it.--Yannismarou 13:50, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Review department

Without intending to end the above discussion, I just wanted to inform that I reorganized and restructured the review section, in order to offer to the users a complete image of all our articles under review.--Yannismarou 12:31, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Templates/Infoboxes

On the project page, under "Infoboxes" we've got {{Greek}} as the infobox for Greek prime ministers. Firstly, I disagree with naming an infobox "Greek" when it is specifically for prime ministers. But, perhaps more importantly, the template already exists and it is used for a "person, place, or concept whose name is originally rendered in the Greek alphabet" and it's a banner. I would've edited the page already but, I'm hesitant to edit the main project page, without discussion, when it's not a blatant issue. --Kimon^talk 14:09, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

I also noted that a few minutes ago. It is an edit left from the previous WP:Greece before the merge. Probably the editor confused something there. I don't think anybody would object to the correction of such an obvious mistake.--Yannismarou 14:12, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

If there isn't any objection, I'll edit the page and rename the Greek PM infobox placeholder to "GreecePM". --Kimon^talk 14:14, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Done --Kimon^talk 18:54, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Barnstars (again) - members

I took the initiative to create a sub-page for the members; and per our discussion above I seperated us in active and inactive members (I saw no objection in doing that); I'll periodically check the list, and everybody else of course can do the same thing.

About the barnstar: Kimon, I think we should make the test page of yours with the template of the barnstar official. Improvements in the design are welcome, but for the time being I don't see any "radical" ideas (personally, I realised that I am incompetent with Photoshop!). Hence I think it is acceptable and nice. What do you say? Are we going to include it in the main page?--Yannismarou 10:07, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

As the creator of the barnstar, I really have no say but, I guess it's a start :) --Kimon^talk 16:12, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Made it official.--Yannismarou 12:50, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] New wikiproject cat wanted?

User:Deucalionite has tried to create a Category:Dab-Class Greek articles, apparently as a complement to the project assessment scheme, intended to list disambiguation pages within the scope of the project. - Do we want such a category? I'm not really convinced of its use; Deucalionite seems unclear about how to realise it technically (but he seems not to want to be on speaking terms with me, so I can't discuss it with him). If project members see a use for it, fine, otherwise I'll propose it for deletion. Fut.Perf. ☼ 21:21, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

I think that the NA category is already covering this category (not only this but it is created for disamb pages as well). Personally, I don't see its necessity, but I would like to listen to Deucalionite and other members' opinions as well.--Yannismarou 22:37, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

OK! Some better imput now! The disamb pages are not supposed to be rated. The disamb cat Dieucalionite created is presented as part of the rating categories, which is not correct. These are rating categories for "articles". Disamb pages are what their name says: "pages" not articles. Personally, my opinion is that dis pages are covered by the NA parameter of our banner, and there is not a reason for this cat., which as I said is not accurately presented as a rating the quality category. So, my belief is that these three articles categorized as "dis" should be recategorized as "NA". I'll inform Deucalionite about the discussion here.--Yannismarou 22:50, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Though I see Yiannismarou's point about dab pages being covered by the NA flag, we may need a category or section for just these pages. How many of these do we have actually? If there is a relatively high number of them, I would say let's keep it. If only a few, then we don't need it. --Kimon^talk 00:08, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Take a look at Category:Disambig-Class Turkey articles.. When it was created it was pretty short but it is getting bigger all the time, and is helping the creation and maintenance of other disambig pages related to WPTR. The parameters in the WPTR template makes it list under that cat which is a sub-cat of Category:Non-article Turkey pages.. The Dab rating is for the class, and the NA importance rating coupled with Dab, Cat or Template class rating makes it so that it is not listed under "unknown importance WPTR articles", nor other importance cats but just the Dab, Cat or Temp cats.. It might be useful to have one in the long run.. However the project template must be updated with the correct syntax to make sure that it doesn't mess up the categorization scheme.. Baristarim 02:15, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

I think that's an excellent idea! Keep the category and update the project banner to handle dab pages properly. I like it. --Kimon^talk 02:29, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

It seems interesting. I'll try to update the banner some time today.--Yannismarou 09:18, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

OK! It seems that our banner was already ready! Now, if you edit "rate=dab" or "rate=Dab" in the banner, the banner will automatically generate the Category:Disambig-Class Greek articles. I created it and put it under the category Category:Non-article Greece pages, which is under the Category:WikiProject Greece! Clear enough?!!! The template can also generate automatically categories for templates etc., which will also be put under Category:Non-article Greece pages. After that all the articles Deucalionite put under his category are now under the new automatically updated category. That simple! So, Deucalionite's category has no more any reason of existence, since it has been replaced by a same more accurate category. Do we now have to go through a procedure in order to delete Category:Dab-Class Greek articles? Since it no longer serves to anything, is there any objection if I delete it straight away?--Yannismarou 11:54, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

I think we're good now. If there aren't any objections, I think you should go forward. --Kimon^talk 16:27, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the input guys. As you've now replaced the category with another, would people mind if I deleted the old one without going through a formal CfD? Fut.Perf. ☼ 20:56, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

I don't think so! Nobody seems to object. So, I deleted it.--Yannismarou 16:46, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Halkidiki

I moved, after three weeks with no objections, the article on Halkidiki to that spelling, from the long-obsolete Chalcidice. I give some more argument for why this makes sense on Talk:Halkidiki. Someone, presumably a classicist who prefers the old spelling, has now objected on the talk page, so additional people weighing in would be helpful. Thanks. --Delirium 20:12, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Ottoman MILHIST taskforce

Hi everyone, a discuss is going on at WPMILHIST about wether or not an Ottoman task force should be created. Since this subject seems to go hand in hand with some Greek articles, I thought this would be a good place to past a message. If you are intrested please ggo to WPMILHIST and show your support. Geia. Kyriakos 09:22, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Cleanup tags

There's been a fair amount of discussion on the mailing list and in other places lately of our system for dealing with low-quality articles (i.e. cleanup tagging), and a lot of people seem to agree that it isn't working. It's been suggested, though, that making topic editing communities aware of problem articles might work a little better. To that end, I asked someone to make a list of all the WP:GREECE articles that are currently tagged for wikification, cleanup, or referencing. As it happens, there are only 22 of them, although a couple will probably be doozies; the list is at User:Robth/sandbox for the moment. If we could get these cleaned up, that would be pretty cool, and would demonstrate that we could do something about our backlogs if we just got wikiprojects more involved. If anyone wants to help out, take a look at the list and pick an article that suits you, then cross it out on the list and remove the tag from the article when you're done. (Dibs on Peace of Callias). --Robth^Talk 16:56, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

One other thing--I was just reminded that this list is as of mid-January (the last date for which the toolserver has a copy of the enwiki database) so there's a chance that some of these will have been cleaned up already). --Robth^Talk 17:05, 1 April 2007 (UTC)