User talk:Rusty Cashman

Welcome!

Hello, Rusty Cashman, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

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I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Again, welcome!  --TeaDrinker 09:29, 16 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Rusty, welcome again to Wikipedia. You might be interested in Wikipedia:WikiProject History of Science.--ragesoss 13:44, 16 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Rusty, my student has finished the draft of a history of geology article: User:Ragesoss/History of geology. If you're interested, you can take a look and give constructive criticism on the talk page; I'm sure it would be appreciated. We'll probably move it into Main space in about a week.--ragesoss 06:54, 4 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Rusty, thanks for your perceptive comments. It's in main space, so feel free to make changes now.--ragesoss 02:56, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Rusty. Thanks for your comments - it's always good to know that ones effort has not gone unnoticed. I couldn't help but notice from your profile that our backgrounds are very similar. I am also a software engineer and embedded programmer - I work on wireless handsets. I am also, of course, interested in the history of science and particularly evolutionary biology. Albie34423 03:59, 25 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yehey!!! Thank you very much, in behalf of the editors, contributors, critiques, etc., as well as the Filipino community in Wikipedia/Tambayan Philippines. Your words are very very kind! Here's looking forward to more and more collaboration with you esp. on the WP:FA nomination. --Ate Pinay (talk•email) 20:01, 11 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe you can also check on the Philippine Tarsier Foundation WP:GA nomination, too? --Ate Pinay (talk•email) 21:18, 11 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Rusty, thanks for evaluating this article and for your comments on the talkpage. I added some more inline citations; I'd appreciate if you could let me know if you find it better now. — Kpalion^(talk) 19:06, 26 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hello there! Please click here for the latest edition of the Wikiproject Indonesia Newsletter.

We hope it gets you interested in the some aspect of the project. Please contact Indon or Merbabu if you have any comments or suggestions (or do not want to receive this newsletter). regards Merbabu 10:07, 27 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Rusty - Thanks for the help re: Oscar (fish) and it's good article nomination. Hopefully it'll pass through the process. Cheers, David. MidgleyDJ 20:34, 21 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The inaugural March 2007 issue of the WikiProject History of Science newsletter has been published. You're receiving this because you are a participant in the History of Science WikiProject. You may read the newsletter or unsubscribe from this notification by following the link. Yours in discourse--ragesoss 04:10, 24 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Wallace's article has been proposed for FA, and an objection has been made regarding the reliance of the article on Stotten's book. Thought you'd like to know. -Malkinann 11:12, 1 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You flatterer, you. Some sentences tend to run on a bit - I've gone through and tagged the ones I had issues with. The references need alphabetising by author - I had a little go at it, but I don't think I got them all. There's also the British/American spelling problems, but you could always ask for a 'translation' from a native British English speaker. (of which I am not one.) -Malkinann 09:49, 27 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've only one thing to say about that stuff on spelling... biZZare.... ;) I've gone through the article again and found another couple of odd phrases and American spellings that aren't -izes, tagging them with {clarifyme}s. The article still appears to "rely" on Slotten, so you may need to defend Slotten in the FAC. It may be good to take it to peer review and to examine the structure and coverage of the Charles Darwin article (which the Wallace article will inevitably be compared to. *sigh*). -Malkinann 21:24, 27 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The Barnstar of National Merit For excellent, dedicated and ongoing efforts to Alfred Russel Wallace -- --Merbabu 17:37, 7 April 2007 (UTC) [reply]

He gets quite a mention in the Indonesia article - see Ecology section. Also, i trust you've read Tim Sevrins book and the Malay Archipelago. I've read Sevrins book a few times, bits of the Malay archipelago and have spent a few weeks in Maluku including Banda Islands and Seram. Haven't been to Sulawesi yet. happy editing --Merbabu 17:37, 7 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, it is always nice to have your efforts recognized.Rusty Cashman 04:57, 8 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Rusty, I'd love to have your thoughts on history of biology overall. I've done all I think I can without some serious critiques and suggestions from other knowledgeable people, and I know you've put a lot into it as well. It's on peer review and WP:GAC.--ragesoss 06:25, 21 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

		The Bio-star
		En avance de bringing Alfred Russel Wallace to FA status, and for some earlier contributions. Samsara (talk • contribs) 09:37, 30 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The May 2007 issue of the WikiProject History of Science newsletter has been published. You're receiving this because you are a participant in the History of Science WikiProject. You may read the newsletter or unsubscribe from this notification by following the link. Yours in discourse--ragesoss 06:21, 5 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, I've nominated an article you worked on, The Malay Archipelago, for consideration to appear on the Main Page as part of Wikipedia:Did you know. You can see the "hook" for the article at Template talk:Did you know#Articles created on May 4 where you can improve it if you see fit. Thanks, Malkinann 08:13, 5 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

On 9 May, 2007, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article The Malay Archipelago, which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the "Did you know?" talk page.

--howcheng {chat} 07:04, 9 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Rusty,

Thanks for your support on Taiwanese Aborigines. I appreciate the time you spent appraising such a challenging(long) article:-). It has been a really positive project all along. Thx!Maowang 01:37, 10 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I came over to check out your userpage during the FAC on Wallace and I just wanted to say that I like your picture of the Encyclopedie. You are correct that it is far from accidental that a group of philosophes (what a terrible article that is!) decided to write an encyclopedia during the eighteenth century. It was a century of organizing knowledge (Buffon, Linnaeus, Antoine Lavoisier, Samuel Johnson. They seemed to think all things were possible, such as a universal language (Thomas Sprat). It is a wonderful time period to study. :) We need more wikipedians contributing pages on it, that's for sure! I had to create my own userbox since there was one for every section of European history except the eighteenth century. *sigh* It's always left out. Awadewit ^Talk 09:52, 20 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This form message is being sent to you either due to your membership with WikiProject Good Articles and/or your inclusion on the Wikipedia:Good article candidates/List of reviewers. A new drive has been started requesting that all members review at least one article (or more, if you wish!) within the next two weeks at GAC to help in removing the large backlog. This message is being sent to all members, and even members who have been recently reviewing articles. There are almost 130 members in this project and about 180 articles that currently need to be reviewed. If each member helps to review just one or two articles, the majority of the backlog will be cleared. Since the potential amount of reviewers may significantly increase, please make sure to add :{{GAReview}} underneath the article you are reviewing to ensure that only one person is reviewing each article. Additionally, the GA criteria may have been modified since your last review, so look over the criteria again to help you to determine if a candidate is GA-worthy. If you have any questions about this drive or the review process, leave a message on the GAC talk page. --Nehrams2020 00:34, 25 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Congratulations! It looks like the Wallace article has been promoted. History of evolutionary thought has four votes now for history of science collaboration of the month, so I'm going to restart the collaboration soon (probably June 1). Hopefully we can find a handful of knowledgeable people who can find some time to put into that.--ragesoss 22:41, 25 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The shiny new Darwin-Wallace medal For your dedicated work on Alfred Russel Wallace - Shyamal 02:30, 27 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, I renovated the medal image and replaced your image. Hope that is ok with you. Shyamal 02:30, 27 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well done, sorry I wasn't around to be much help. Samsara (talk • contribs) 12:05, 29 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hi there, thanks for your comments. I decided to cut this paragraph, since human evolution is peripheral to the subject of the article, which is the concept of evolution and its general outcomes. This also helped bring the page below 100kb. I hope this deal with your objection. TimVickers 03:06, 4 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Rusty, for your supportive note at my RfA. Shyamal 03:51, 17 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Ta for the nice comment on my tiny edit. I just pushed it 'out of the nest' and was linking it here and there. Sorry there is not more to it. I currently sensitive to the issue of editing FAs, due to an editor reducing one by 20%, I only noticed the star after saving. After everything I said elsewhere today, I thought I had better speak up. I will finish reading Wallace later. Regards, ☻ Fred|☝ discussion|✍ contributions 19:41, 8 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

A new elimination drive of the backlog at Wikipedia:Good article candidates will take place from the month of July through August 12, 2007. There are currently about 130 articles that need to be reviewed right now. If you are interested in helping with the drive, then please visit Wikipedia:Good article candidates backlog elimination drive and record the articles that you have reviewed. Awards will be given based on the number of reviews completed. Since the potential amount of reviewers may significantly increase, please make sure to add :{{GAReview}} underneath the article you are reviewing to ensure that only one person is reviewing each article. Additionally, the GA criteria may have been modified since your last review, so look over the criteria again to help you to determine if a candidate is GA-worthy. If you have any questions about this drive or the review process, leave a message on the drive's talk page. Please help to eradicate the backlog to cut down on the waiting time for articles to be reviewed.

You have received this message either due to your membership with WikiProject: Good Articles and/or your inclusion on the Wikipedia:Good article candidates/List of reviewers. --Nehrams2020 23:36, 10 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'll have a look in the morning. Sorry, I've had a bad chest cold. Adam Cuerden ^talk 02:04, 18 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. [1]. Regards, Fred ☻ 07:03, 14 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Rusty, I've sort of been following the discussion page, but I haven't been keeping up with the actual changes to the article that M-r has been introducing. My own feeling is that the article should be written mainly from the books The Evolutionary Synthesis (edited by Mayr and Provine) and Smocovitis's Unifying Biology, along with bits from a few other secondary sources, with almost nothing based on primary sources. I'm not going to stick my head into this right now, because I haven't actually analyzed the expanded version (and I really shouldn't be on Wikipedia at all right now, until I finish my prospectus). Sorry I can't be more helpful.--ragesoss 18:27, 16 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

thank you, Rusty, for your recent thoughts. I'd feel worse, of course, if I felt the reversions were actually merited! However, it's worth the WP community remembering that one destructive reaction tends to outweigh, in the minds of contributors, many helpful and encouraging reactions. I could say more if I had an e-mail channel...

I enjoyed the plastic-eating bacteria no end; WP should have originality badges! As I mentioned somewhere... bacteriology was practically a medicine-only discipline until well after WW2; there's still so much more to discover. Regards, Macdonald-ross 13:45, 18 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The September 2007 issue of the WikiProject History of Science newsletter has been published. You're receiving this because you are a participant in the History of Science WikiProject. You may read the newsletter or unsubscribe from this notification by following the link. Yours in discourse--ragesoss 00:57, 14 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The November 2007 issue of the WikiProject Good Articles newsletter has been published. Comments are welcome on this, as well as suggestions or offers of assistance for the December 2007 issue. Dr. Cash 01:21, 1 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Just to let you know, Computer program was renominated for GA. Timhowardriley 22:45, 8 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry this is taking so long, but I thought that since this is something I know reasonably well, it might be more efficient if I dealt with most of the points in my review myself. The article is certainly GA quality but I'd like to polish it a bit further before passing it. Tim Vickers (talk) 20:58, 18 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

All done, congratulations! Tim Vickers (talk) 04:40, 19 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The December 2007 issue of the WikiProject Good Articles newsletter has been published. Comments are welcome on this, as well as suggestions or offers of assistance for the January 2008 issue. Dr. Cash 01:10, 4 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You may have removed computer program from your watch list. I rewrote the introduction as the topic sentence of many of the subsequent paragraphs. What do you think? Timhowardriley (talk) 23:44, 14 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Happy New Year! Here is the latest edition of the WikiProject GA Newsletter! Dr. Cash (talk) 04:06, 3 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles Newsletter

The WikiProject Good Articles Newsletter Volume I, No. 3 - January 2008 December issue | February issue Project News There are now 3,301 Good Articles listed at WP:GA. With 1,789 current featured articles, that brings the total of good and featured articles to 5,090! The most recently promoted articles are: Hurricane Daniel (2006), Tarbosaurus, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, Wicca, Seth MacFarlane, Stanley Internment Camp, Hurricane Karen (2007), Interstate 155 (Illinois), Tropical Storm Ingrid (2007), Brian Sings and Swings, Winston Churchill, Mzoli's, John Kefalas, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. The backlog at Good Article Nominations has recently exploded to 236 unreviewed articles! Out of 264 total nominations, 17 are on hold, 10 are under review, and one is seeking a second opinion. Please go to WP:GAN and review an article or three as soon as you have a chance! The oldest unreviewed articles are: Attachment disorder, Byzantium under the Palaiologoi, Byzantium under the Angeloi, Wowowee, Tyrone Wheatley, Mina (singer), Jon Burge, Mercury Hayes, William Lowndes Yancey, and Toni Preckwinkle. The top five categories with the largest backlogs are: Sports and recreation (47 articles), Film and cinema (25 articles), Television and journalism (16 articles), Art and architecture (15 articles), and Politics and government (14 articles). The backlog at Good Article Reassessment currently stands at 17 articles up for re-review. If every participant of WikiProject Good Articles could review just one article in the next week, the backlog would be almost eliminated! Reviewer of the Month Dihydrogen Monoxide is the GAN Reviewer of the Month of December, based on the assessments made by Epbr123 of the number and thoroughness of the reviews made by individual reviewers each week. Dihydrogen Monoxide hails from Brisbane (which, incidentally, is almost a GA, kids ;)) and has been editing Wikipedia since August 2006. He mostly likes to review articles relating to music, Australia, or anything else that takes his fancy! He also has two articles waiting, and notes that there's still a huge backlog,... so get cracking! Other outstanding reviewers recognized during the month of December include: Awadewit (talk · contribs) Canadian Paul (talk · contribs) Derek.cashman (talk · contribs) Drewcifer3000 (talk · contribs) Elcobbola (talk · contribs) Jackyd101 (talk · contribs) Kane5187 (talk · contribs) M3tal H3ad (talk · contribs) Nehrams2020 (talk · contribs) The Rambling Man (talk · contribs) VanTucky (talk · contribs) Wassupwestcoast (talk · contribs) Member News There are now 166 members of WikiProject Good Articles! Welcome to the 7 new members that joined during the month of December: Majoreditor (talk · contribs) Bernstein2291 (talk · contribs) The4325 (talk · contribs) Pepsi2786 (talk · contribs) Monowi (talk · contribs) Rankun (talk · contribs) This WikiProject, and the Good Article program as a whole, would not be where it is today without each and every one of its members! Thank you to all! GAReview Template Lots of you that frequent WP:GAN have undoubtedly seen the articles under review, marked with "Review - I am reviewing this article. ...". The articles have been marked as being under review by an editor using the {{GAReview}} template. The purpose of this template is essentially to prevent two editors from reviewing the same article at the same time, so it's essentially a common courtesy notice to other editors so that they don't pass or fail an article while you're in the midst of collecting and writing comments. However, just because an article is marked, shouldn't preclude another editor from contributing to the review. If you'd like to review it, go ahead; simply collect your comments and write them down on the article's talk page – but don't pass or fail the article – leave that to the other reviewer. To use this template yourself, simply write "#:{{GAReview}} ~~~~" on the line immediately following the article's nomination at WP:GAN. You can even leave additional comments as well (e.g. "#:{{GAReview}} I will finish my review in the next 24 hours. ~~~~"). Reviewers marking articles with this template should also observe some common etiquette; please don't mark more than 1-3 articles as being under review at a time, and please try and finish your review within 3-5 days of marking the article. GA Sweeps After openly requesting the community for more participants into the Sweeps, we have 3 more members on the board. They are (in no particular order) Canadian Paul, VanTucky, and Masem. Canadian Paul will be sweeping "Middle East and the World" articles. VanTucky will be sweeping "Religion, mysticism, and mythology" and "Literature" articles. Masem will be sweeping "Television episodes". We're still looking for more reviewers. Interested individuals should contact OhanaUnited for details. At this moment, participation in the sweeps project is by invitation only, as we desire experienced reviewers who have a thorough and extensive knowledge of the criteria. This is to ensure that articles that have "fallen through the cracks" would be found and removed, and that additional articles don't fall through the cracks during the sweep. Currently, there are 16 members working on the project, and we have reviewed 74 articles in December 2007. Of those that are swept, 275 articles are kept as GA, 126 articles are delisted, and 5 promoted to FA. Did You Know,... ... that the total number of good and featured articles is now over 5000? ... that GA was formed on October 11, 2005 and was formerly called "Half-decent articles"? ... that there is a bot (StatisticianBot) that gives a daily report on GAN? ... that many discussions were made over the years on whether GA should have a symbol placed on the main article space, yet at the end always removed? ... that there was a proposal to change the GA symbol to a green featured star? From the Editors Happy New Year, everyone! I'm just filling in for Dr. Cash as he's busy (or away) in real life. This explains why I wasn't prepared for a full-length article on GA process, and instead I resort to a tiny DYK for GA. OhanaUnited Happy New Year as well! I'm still here, and haven't totally disappeared. I had to cut back on editing and reviewing during the month of December as I made the transition from Flagstaff, Arizona to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. But I should be about settled in the Keystone State, so I'll be contributing more to Wikipedia again in the new year. Thanks to OhanaUnited for putting together much of the content for this newsletter! He's been working hard with the Sweeps, and the 'Did You Know' section is also a great idea, so I think that will become a regular feature now! I also figured out how to have a collapsible newsletter, so that will change our delivery options a bit. Cheers! Dr. Cash Contributors to this Issue Dr. Cash (Lead Editor, Distributor) OhanaUnited (GA Sweeps correspondent) Improving Wikipedia one article at a time since 2005! WikiProject Good Articles: Open Tasks This project identifies, organizes and improves good articles on Wikipedia. Nominations: Exile (American band) (talk | history | start review) • John Rudge (talk | history | start review) • Pure Japanese (talk | history | start review) • Relations (philosophy) (talk | history | start review) • One in a Million (Aaliyah album) (talk | history | start review) Reassessment: Tranmere Rovers F.C. • Galatian War • Mario Kart: Double Dash • Fallout 3 • Task forces: Project quality • Sweeps • GAN Backlog Drives • GA Cup WikiProject Good articles newsletter (last updated January 2013) Good article criteria | Statistics | GAN Report | Changes log Nominations list | edit

From a first look at the History of evolutionary thought and the archived FA discussion, it's a really useful good article with a lot of detailed information, but pushing towards being overlarge for a FA – This page is 87 kilobytes long. Expression error: Unrecognised punctuation character "$". Don't know what the $ is about, just something to fix.

The lead section seems rather large and a bit unfocussed, my inclination is to try drafting a tighter alternative, aiming to cut it to about half the size. The nineteenth century gets a bit out of date sequence, and that could be clarified.

Overall it seems to me to be a bit lacking in narrative, and a drastic approach would be to concentrate more on the general shape of developments, moving the excellent detail into sub-articles or into any appropriate articles that already exist. For example, the Erasmus Darwin detail could go in his biography, or perhaps could form the basis of a new article about his evolutionary ideas. It might work best to treat the whole section as the basis of a new article overing the various Enlightenment natural philosophers.

Then, as SandyGeorgia commented on closing the FAC, summary style sections could amalgamate the existing stubby sections. By the way, it would in my opinion be better to retitle "Early modern thought" as "Renaissance and Enlightenment", and "19th century before The Origin of Species" could become "Early 19th century", with the next section being "On the Origin of Species and its aftermath". Just some ideas. Would you like me to make a start on trying out this drastic approach? .. dave souza, talk 13:51, 24 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ideas above on reorganisation seem constructive and appropriate to me.

As a fan of this article, I'm still somewhat concerned about over-interpretation and over-selling of the ancient world, which is here most clearly seen in the Islamic section. Elsewhere (Hist biol Talk) I've emphasised 1) overdefinite statements with weak references from probably unrefereed sources, and 2) overall emphasis which is quite out of line with other broad historical overviews such as Mayr and Encyc Brit (more recent editions). I would be happy to see a more conservative line taken, believing that it's the job of an encyclopedia to be cautious, and not to run ahead of consensus. Of course, large-scale histories of science are something of a rarity nowadays, and consensus is difficult to judge. I would advise both cuts and more restrained neutral language in the areas where scholarship is equivocal, and emphasis given to statements backed by references from quality sources.

In intro and elsewhere, I still think the statement "natural selection was not widely accepted until the 1930s" is not completely accurate. The literature shows that general acceptance did not come until the 1940s or even 50s [usual refs]. Neutral theory predominated in the 30s, and Huxley, Fisher, Haldane, Ford were in a clear minority. Even Dob. did not come on board with a clear recognition of the primacy of selection in wild populations until his 3rd edition, 1951. In general though, I'm more than happy with the Darwin and post-Darwin material, which deserves congratulation. Macdonald-ross (talk) 07:04, 25 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Oops, feel sorry to have been the bearer of sad tidings. Glad you're taking this on board, have a think about how you think this should go and give me a heads-up. Agree with Macdonald-ross that care has to be taken to give a proportionate mention of claims such as Islamic ideas – it seems right to note that claims have been made, but finding a good mainstream view of the significance of such claims may be tricky, and that's needed to avoid undue weight. As you say, Transmutation of species could be expanded as a historical article covering Buffon to the Origin. Modern evolutionary synthesis puzzles me a bit, as I'm never sure if the name applies to today's theory, or if it's a historical era that ended by 1950 as the article currently implies. As always other alarms and diversions have arisen, but when you're ready I'll take on some work in getting this sorted. Thanks, .. dave souza, talk 18:45, 25 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I am definately going to get started on the reorganization tonight. I am going to start by announcing the plan on the talk page so that big edits don't take anyone by surprise. I honestly don't think the current Islamic thoughts section is that much of a problem. After all many of the current claims are consistent with what Draper was saying in the 1870s. I admint I was made very unconfortable about the specific claims previously being made about natural selection and Al-Jahiz because I couldn't find a translation to directly support them, but with those gone I don't see a big problem with what remains. If anyone has a concern about a particular statement I would be happy to try and dig into it. Rusty Cashman (talk) 19:47, 27 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Intro section now much better! Macdonald-ross (talk) 17:39, 9 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

"Wikipedia and the History of Science" might amuse you :) .. dave souza, talk 22:52, 23 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The February 2008 issue of the WikiProject Good Articles Newsletter is ready! Dr. Cash (talk) 05:19, 1 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles Newsletter

The WikiProject Good Articles Newsletter Volume I, No. 4 - February 2008 January issue | March issue Project News There are now 3,485 Good Articles listed at WP:GA. The backlog at Good Article Nominations is 206 unreviewed articles. Out of 251 total nominations, 37 are on hold, 7 are under review, and 1 is seeking a second opinion. Please go to WP:GAN and review an article or three as soon as you have a chance! The oldest unreviewed articles are: Johan Derksen, Trafford, J. Michael Bailey, Greg Skrepenak, Paleolithic-style diet, Alan Dershowitz, Natalee Holloway, Slovenian presidential election, 2007, San Francisco Municipal Railway, and Marcela Agoncillo. The top five categories with the largest backlogs are: Sports and recreation (57 articles), Theatre film and drama (34 articles), Music (19 articles), Transport (17 articles), Politics and government (16 articles), World history (13 articles), and Meteorology and atmospheric sciences (13 articles). The backlog at Good Article Reassessment currently stands at 8 articles up for re-review. If every participant of WikiProject Good Articles could review just one article in the next week, the backlog would be almost eliminated! GA Sweeps Update During January, 57 Good Articles were reviewed. Including those articles that were under GAR or on hold, 35 were kept as GA, 20 delisted, 9 currently on hold or at GAR, and 3 were exempted as they are now Featured Articles. Reviewer of the Month Ealdgyth is the GAN Reviewer of the Month for January, based on the assessments made by Epbr123 on the number and thoroughness of the reviews made by individual reviewers each week. Ealdgyth, known in real life as Victoria Short, hails from Central Illinois, and has been editing Wikipedia since May 26, 2007. In this short time, she has made significant contributions to 9 Good Articles, including Baldwin of Exeter and Hubert Walter. Her interests in editing are in the areas of the Middle Ages, History, and horses. Outside of Wikipedia, she is starting her own photography business, and owns three horses. She likes to read science fiction, history, and geneology books. Congratulations to our GAN Reviewer of the Month for January! Other outstanding reviewers recognized during the month of January include: AnonEMouse (talk · contribs) Canadian Paul (talk · contribs) Casliber (talk · contribs) Derek.cashman (talk · contribs) Dihydrogen Monoxide (talk · contribs) Drewcifer3000 (talk · contribs) Jackyd101 (talk · contribs) Johnfos (talk · contribs) M3tal H3ad (talk · contribs) Miranda (talk · contribs) Nehrams2020 (talk · contribs) VanTucky (talk · contribs) Member News There are now 176 members of WikiProject Good Articles! Welcome to the 15 new members that joined during the month of January: Atlantik (talk · contribs) Auawise (talk · contribs) Cyclonenim (talk · contribs) Dihydrogen Monoxide (talk · contribs) Ddstretch (talk · contribs) Ealdgyth (talk · contribs) FamicomJL (talk · contribs) Hamiltonstone (talk · contribs) jackturner3 (talk · contribs) Kbthompson (talk · contribs) Keilana (talk · contribs) Miranda (talk · contribs) pcbene (talk · contribs) Skeeker (talk · contribs) Snowolf (talk · contribs) This WikiProject, and the Good Article program as a whole, would not be where it is today without each and every one of its members! Thank you to all! On Hold versus Failing an Article This month, I thought I'd focus on a less technical and more of a procedural issue at WP:GAN – determining what the appropriate course of action to take when reviewing an article. Currently, there are four options to decide what to do with an article: Passing – it meets all six of the good article criteria; add it to WP:GA and add {{ArticleHistory}} or {{GA}} to the article's talk page. Failing it – it does not meet the criteria; remove the article's listing from WP:GAN and add {{ArticleHistory}} or {{failedGA}} to the article's talk page. On Hold – The article meets most of the criteria, but might fall short in a few areas; keep it listed at WP:GAN, add #: {{GAOnHold|ArticleName}} ~~~~ below the listing and add {{GAonhold}} to the article's talk page. Second Opinion – Similar to the on hold option, except an editor is either inexperienced or not knowledgeable enough about a given topic and asks another reviewer to offer another opinion before passing or failing; add #: {{GA2ndopinion|ArticleName}} ~~~~ to WP:GAN below the article's listing and add {{GA2ndoptalk}} to the article's talk page. So how to you know when an article fails outright, or fails initially, but meets "enough" of the criteria to be placed on hold? The answer to this question probably varies by about the same amount as there are reviewers of Good Articles! Everybody treats this slightly differently. The most important thing to consider is that articles should not be on hold for longer than about one week. Although there is no hard and fast time limit for this, most editors would probably agree that five to seven days is enough time to address any GA-related issues with the article to get it to pass. Some editors have extended this a few days in the past, due to other extenuating circumstances, such as an article's primary editor being very busy with school or work, so they have asked for extra time. But as a general rule, a GA nominee that is placed on hold should meet enough of the criteria to be able to be passed within five to seven days. Some examples of articles that might be placed on hold would be: the article is mostly complete, but might be missing one topic (subcategory). minor copyediting is required (needs a few minor manual of style, spelling, or grammatical fixes. mostly well sourced, but missing maybe a handful of references. a couple of images need to be tagged with appropriate copyright tags. On the other hand, an article should be failed if it: is missing several topic categories, or there are several sections which are very short (1-3 sentences per section). contains numerous sections which are just lists of information, as opposed to written out as prose. there's entire sections of text that have no references, or there are a lot of {{cn}} or {{unreferenced}} tags. has evidence of an active edit war in the article history. has major neutrality issues. has any {{cleanup}} or other warning tags in various places. Did You Know... ... that on July 19, 2007, 1,548 good articles that have not been categorized at all were categorized in 15 days? ... that in Chinese Wikipedia, articles need to have at least six net support votes before they are promoted to GA? ... that the English Wikipedia has the most Good Articles, the German Wikipedia has the second most (at over 2000), followed by the Spanish Wikipedia (at over 800), the Chinese Wikipedia (at over 400), and the French Wikipedia (at over 200)? ... that Simple English Wikipedia has zero Good Articles? ... that "Sport and games people" category has the most Good Articles? ... that Virginia Tech massacre (which is now a featured article) was promoted to GA just only about one month after the shooting incident, but took more than seven months to reach FA status? From the Editors Originally, I wasn't planning to do "Did you know" other than as a fill-in for Dr. Cash. However, I decided to continue writing this section until I ran out of ideas. OhanaUnited Please leave any comments or feedback regarding this issue here. Dr. Cash Contributors to this Issue Dr. Cash (Lead Editor, Distributor) OhanaUnited (GA Sweeps and Did You Know correspondent) Improving Wikipedia one article at a time since 2005! WikiProject Good Articles: Open Tasks This project identifies, organizes and improves good articles on Wikipedia. Nominations: Exile (American band) (talk | history | start review) • John Rudge (talk | history | start review) • Pure Japanese (talk | history | start review) • Relations (philosophy) (talk | history | start review) • One in a Million (Aaliyah album) (talk | history | start review) Reassessment: Tranmere Rovers F.C. • Galatian War • Mario Kart: Double Dash • Fallout 3 • Task forces: Project quality • Sweeps • GAN Backlog Drives • GA Cup WikiProject Good articles newsletter (last updated January 2013) Good article criteria | Statistics | GAN Report | Changes log Nominations list | edit

The March 2008 issue of the WikiProject Good Articles Newsletter is ready! Dr. Cash (talk) 06:10, 3 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles Newsletter

The WikiProject Good Articles Newsletter Volume I, No. 5 - March 2008 February issue | April issue Project News There are currently 3,647 Good Articles listed at WP:GA. The backlog at Good Article Nominations is 185 unreviewed articles. Out of 237 total nominations, 42 are on hold, and 10 are under review. Please go to WP:GAN and review an article or three as soon as you have a chance! The oldest unreviewed articles are: Ian Browne (cyclist), Tony Marchant, Reginald fitz Jocelin, Annie Russell, Brodie Croyle, and Jimmy Moore. The top five categories with the largest backlogs are: Sports and recreation (39 articles), Theatre, film, and drama (34 articles), Transport (23 articles), Music (21 articles), Politics and government (18 articles), Culture and society (13 articles), Places (13 articles), and World history (12 articles). The backlog at Good Article Reassessment currently stands at 13 articles up for re-review. If every participant of WikiProject Good Articles could review just one article in the next week, the backlog would be almost eliminated! GA Sweeps Update Two members joined the sweeps team this month. They are Jwanders and jackyd101. Jwanders swept Physics sub-category quickly and is now sweeping "Astronomy and astrophysics". Meanwhile, jackyd101 is sweeping "Armies, military units and legal issues". During February, 66 Good Articles were reviewed. Including those articles that were under GAR or on hold, 33 were kept as GA, 21 delisted, 17 currently on hold or at GAR, and 1 was exempted as they are now Featured Articles. Reviewer of the Month Blnguyen is the GAN Reviewer of the Month for February, based on the assessments made by Epbr123 on the number and thoroughness of the reviews made by individual reviewers each week. Blnguyen is from South Australia and has been editing Wikipedia since 2005. He was also the reviewer for the month of December 2007, so this marks the second time that he has been GAN's Top Reviewer for the Month. Congratulations to our GAN Reviewer of the Month for February! Other outstanding reviewers recognized during the month of January include: Blnguyen (talk · contribs) David Fuchs (talk · contribs) Derek.cashman (talk · contribs) Dihydrogen Monoxide (talk · contribs) Calbear22 (talk · contribs) Ealdgyth (talk · contribs) Jackturner3 (talk · contribs) TimVickers (talk · contribs) VanTucky (talk · contribs) Wrad (talk · contribs) Member News There are now 185 members of WikiProject Good Articles! Welcome to the 9 new members that joined during the month of February: Bibliomaniac15 (talk · contribs) Canyouhearmenow (talk · contribs) Chrisisinchrist (talk · contribs) Ed! (talk · contribs) Juliancolton (talk · contribs) Kakofonous (talk · contribs) LOTRrules (talk · contribs) Matthewedwards (talk · contribs) Nousernamesleft (talk · contribs) Did You Know... ...that the shortest timespan for a GA to be listed and subsequently delisted is 8 minutes? (The article is Project Chanology and currently listed on WP:GAR) ...that the current nominations system started on March 10, 2006? ...that in May 2006, number of GA surpassed number of FA? This WikiProject, and the Good Article program as a whole, would not be where it is today without each and every one of its members! Thank you to all! One GA Requirement - The Lead Section By Geometry guy In this issue, we will focus on one of the requirements for good articles: a good article article should follow Wikipedia's guideline on lead sections. So what does this guideline say, why does it say what it does, and how can good article reviewers help? The lead section is particularly important, because for many readers, it is the only part of the article which they will read. For instance, they may have come to the article by following a wikilink in another article simply to obtain a quick overview before they continue reading the original article. They may only read the first paragraph, or even the first sentence. On the other hand, one of the joys of Wikipedia is the way that it embodies the endlessly branching tree of knowledge; if a lead is well written, it may encourage even such a reader to read on and learn something new. This is reflected in the terminology: "lead" is a word taken from journalism, where it recognized that many readers will only read the beginning of a newspaper article, and so it is important to convey the key points first, before going into detail. Note that "lead", in this sense, is pronounced as in "leading question" and is sometimes spelled as "lede" by journalists to distinguish it from lead, the metal, which was once very important in typesetting. Wikipedia supports both spellings. Wikipedia:Lead section is written with all this in mind, and describes two different roles for the lead: first, it should introduce the topic; second it should summarize the article. This is not always as easy as it seems; indeed, it is almost impossible to write a good lead if the article itself does not cover the topic well. It has a side benefit that an article which satisfies this guideline is probably also broad: if the lead is both a good introduction and a summary, then the article probably covers the main points. The good article process is often the first place in which an article is judged against this criterion, yet many current good articles may not meet it. A common fault is that the lead is purely an introduction, while the rest of the article contains other information, which should be summarized in the lead, but isn't. So, how can reviewers help to improve this? One approach is to read the rest of the article, and not the lead, first. Make a note of the significant points discussed in the article. There is usually at least one important issue in each section. Then, go back to the lead and ask the following questions: Does the first sentence of the lead define the topic, as described in the article? Is the most important information mentioned in the first paragraph? Is the lead a suitable length for the article? The lead guideline recommends 2–4 paragraphs depending on the article length, but judgment is more important than counting. Are each of the significant topics that you noted mentioned in the lead? If the answer to each of these questions is "yes", then the article probably meets the guideline. If not, you may be able to fix it yourself by summarizing the article. If you can't, then it suggests that there are not only problems with the lead, but also the rest of the article. That is the beauty of Wikipedia:Lead section. Finally, there isn't universal agreement on whether the lead should contain inline citations. As long as the material in the lead is developed and cited elsewhere in the article, then inline citation is not required. There are exceptions, the most significant being quotations and controversial material about living persons. Good luck helping more articles meet this important criterion! From the Editors Well, this is somewhat GA-related but at the same time not totally GA-related. However, I think this is important. Thanks to everyone who supported me at my 2nd RfA. It passed unanimously at 79 support, 0 oppose, 0 neutral. As many are impressed by my work in Good Articles processes, I want to take this opportunity to thank everyone giving me a very enjoyable time at GA. There are 2 people that I want to explicitly say thank you to. They are Nehrams2020 and Epbr123. They patiently taught me how to do GA reviews properly in summer 2007. I couldn't achieve better without them. Now that I have the mop and the bucket, some of my time will be working on reducing Commons image backlog. Nevertheless, you will still see me once in a while in matters related to GA. OhanaUnited Please leave any comments or feedback regarding this issue here. Dr. Cash Contributors to this Issue Dr. Cash (Lead Editor, Distributor) OhanaUnited (GA Sweeps and Did You Know correspondent) Geometry guy (News Correspondent) Improving Wikipedia one article at a time since 2005! WikiProject Good Articles: Open Tasks This project identifies, organizes and improves good articles on Wikipedia. Nominations: Exile (American band) (talk | history | start review) • John Rudge (talk | history | start review) • Pure Japanese (talk | history | start review) • Relations (philosophy) (talk | history | start review) • One in a Million (Aaliyah album) (talk | history | start review) Reassessment: Tranmere Rovers F.C. • Galatian War • Mario Kart: Double Dash • Fallout 3 • Task forces: Project quality • Sweeps • GAN Backlog Drives • GA Cup WikiProject Good articles newsletter (last updated January 2013) Good article criteria | Statistics | GAN Report | Changes log Nominations list | edit

You voted for Wikipedia:WikiProject History of Science/Collaboration of the Month/current and this article is now the current History of Science Collaboration of the Month! Please help to improve it to match the quality of an ideal Wikipedia History of Science article.

The April issue of the WikiProject Good Articles Newsletter is now available. Dr. Cash (talk) 04:02, 7 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles Newsletter

The WikiProject Good Articles Newsletter Volume I, No. 6 - April 2008 March issue | May issue Project News There are currently 3,868 Good Articles listed at WP:GA. The backlog at Good Article Nominations is 195 unreviewed articles. Out of 267 total nominations, 57 are on hold, 13 are under review, and 2 are seeking a second opinion. Please go to WP:GAN and review an article or three as soon as you have a chance! The oldest unreviewed articles are: A4232 road, New York State Route 63, Great American Boycott, First Great Western, Duck Soup, Sanja Matsuri, Code of Conduct (affiliate marketing), Prospect Mountain Veterans Memorial Highway, Aliens (film), and Roanoke Regional Airport. The categories with the largest backlogs are: Theatre, film and drama (27 articles), Sports and recreation (25 articles), Transport (24 articles), Music (19 articles), War and military (19 articles), Politics and government (18 articles), Religion, mysticism and mythology (16 articles), Literature (14 articles), World history (14 articles), and Video and computer games (14 articles). The backlog at Good Article Reassessment currently stands at 12 articles up for re-review. GA Sweeps Update The GA Sweeps process is progressing nicely! During the month of March, a total of 92 articles were reviewed. Of that total, 74 were found to continue to meet the GA criteria, and 18 were delisted. There are currently 14 articles that are still on hold in this process, awaiting revisions. Congratulations to Nehrams2020 (talk · contribs), who sweeped a whopping 51 articles during the month! Jackyd101 (talk · contribs) also deserves congrats for sweeping a total of 26 articles! Reviewer of the Month Dihydrogen monoxide is the GAN Reviewer of the Month for March, based on the assessments made by Dr. Cash on the number and thoroughness of the reviews made by individual reviewers each week. Dihydrogen monoxide hails from Brisbane in Queensland, Australia, and has been editing Wikipedia since April 6, 2007. He has contributed to 8 Featured articles and is an avid reviewer and contributor to the Good articles program. Other reviewers should check out his Noob's Guide to GA Reviewing. Congratulations to Dihydrogen monoxide! Other outstanding reviewers during the month of March include: GaryColemanFan (talk · contribs) Limetolime (talk · contribs) Malachirality (talk · contribs) Nikki311 (talk · contribs) Wrad (talk · contribs) Member News There are now 195 members of WikiProject Good Articles! Welcome to the 13 new members that joined during the month of March: AndreNatas (talk · contribs) Dank55 (talk · contribs) English836 (talk · contribs) ExplorerCY (talk · contribs) JayJ47 (talk · contribs) Mastrchf91 (talk · contribs) MBK004 (talk · contribs) Million Moments (talk · contribs) Neparis (talk · contribs) Nicholas Perkins (talk · contribs) NimiTize (talk · contribs) PGPirate (talk · contribs) Zenlax (talk · contribs) This WikiProject, and the Good Article program as a whole, would not be where it is today without each and every one of its members! Thank you to all! To delist or not to delist, that is the question So you’ve found an article that, on the face of it, does not merit its good article status. What next? Especially where there are many glaring issues that need addressing, it’s tempting to just revoke its GA status and remove it from the list, but although we are encouraged as editors to be bold, this approach (known to some as "bold delisting") is not recommended good practice. There are many reasons why a listed article might not meet the assessment criteria—it’s always possible that it never did, and was passed in error, but more likely the criteria have changed or the article quality has degraded since its original assessment. Either way, we should treat its reassessment with no less tact and patience than we would a fresh nomination. This, in fact, provides a good starting point for the delisting process. Approach the article as though it has been nominated for GA review. Read it and the GA criteria carefully, and provide a full reassessment on the article talk page. Explain where and why the article no longer meets the criteria, and suggest remedies. Having explained why the article no longer meets current GA criteria, allow its editors time to fix it! In keeping with the above approach, it may help to treat the article as on hold. There is no need to tag it as such, but give editors a reasonable deadline, and consider helping out with the repair work. Bear in mind that more flexibility may be required than for a normal hold—the editors did not request or expect your reassessment and will probably have other projects taking up their time. They may not have worked on the article for months or even years, and at worst the article may have been abandoned and its authors no longer active. As always, communication is the key. It sometimes helps to post messages to relevant WikiProjects (found at the top of the article talk page), or to contact editors directly (this tool is useful for identifying active editors for any given article). Only once the above process has run its course, and sufficient improvement has not been forthcoming, is it time to think about delisting the article. Communicate your final decision on the article talk page, even if there was no response to your reassessment and hold, and take the time to fill in the various edit summaries on the article talk and GA list pages to ensure the delisting is transparent and trackable. If you have any doubts about your final decision, you can list the article at Good article reassessment or contact one of the GA mentors, who will be happy to advise. Article reassessment is perhaps the single most controversial function of our WikiProject, and the one with the most potential to upset and alienate editors. Yet it is one of the most necessary too, since without the ability to revoke an article’s status we would be unable to maintain quality within the project. However, if we approach reassessment sensitively and with the goal of improving articles to the point where sanctions are unnecessary, we will ensure that delisting is the last resort, not the first. Delisting instructions From the Editors As we near the 4,000 Good Articles milestone, the project continues to grow and to gain respect in the Wikipedia community. Nevertheless, we continue to have a large backlog. If every member of WikiProject Good Articles would review just one article each day during the month of April, the backlog would be eliminated! Please leave any comments or feedback regarding this issue here. Contributors to this Issue Dr. Cash (Lead Editor, Distributor) OhanaUnited (GA Sweeps and Did You Know correspondent) EyeSerene (Article) Improving Wikipedia one article at a time since 2005! WikiProject Good Articles: Open Tasks This project identifies, organizes and improves good articles on Wikipedia. Nominations: Exile (American band) (talk | history | start review) • John Rudge (talk | history | start review) • Pure Japanese (talk | history | start review) • Relations (philosophy) (talk | history | start review) • One in a Million (Aaliyah album) (talk | history | start review) Reassessment: Tranmere Rovers F.C. • Galatian War • Mario Kart: Double Dash • Fallout 3 • Task forces: Project quality • Sweeps • GAN Backlog Drives • GA Cup WikiProject Good articles newsletter (last updated January 2013) Good article criteria | Statistics | GAN Report | Changes log Nominations list | edit

One thing jumps out at me the second I lay eyes on this article. It should jump out at every editor, but unfortunately it doesn't even seem to jump out at those who make GA assessments (including yourself, obviously): the lead is too short. Ridiculously too short, in this case. It's part of the good article criteria and I suggest you review both that and the lead section guideline page. Please raise your consciousness about lead sections and help others to raise theirs. Richard001 (talk) 07:08, 25 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The May Newsletter for WikiProject Good Articles has now been published. Dr. Cash (talk) 22:16, 2 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles Newsletter

The WikiProject Good Articles Newsletter Volume I, No. 7 - May 2008 April issue | June issue Project News There are currently 4,050 Good Articles listed at WP:GA. The backlog at Good Article Nominations is 195 unreviewed articles. Out of 227 total nominations, 16 are on hold, 14 are under review, and two are seeking a second opinion. Please go to WP:GAN and review an article or three as soon as you have a chance! The oldest unreviewed articles are: Fighting Tommy Riley, Brock Lesnar, Cluj-Napoca, Wolf's Rain, Brian Kendrick, and North and South (TV serial). The categories with the largest backlogs are: Theatre, film and drama (45), Sports and recreation (34), Music (18), Transport (15), World history (14), Politics and government (13), and Places (12). The backlog at Good Article Reassessment currently stands at 17 articles up for re-review. GAN Reviewer of the Month Noble Story (talk · contribs) is the GAN Reviewer of the Month for April, based on the assessments made by Dr. Cash on the number and thoroughness of the reviews made by individual reviewers each week. Noble Story joined Wikipedia on May 16, 2007. He is a big fan of the Houston Rockets, and edits many related articles, as well as articles on basketball in general. Congratulations to Noble Story (talk · contribs) on being April's GAN Reviewer of the Month! Other outstanding reviewers during the month of April include: Dihydrogen Monoxide (talk · contribs) Drewcifer3000 (talk · contribs) Ealdgyth (talk · contribs) GaryColemanFan (talk · contribs) Gary King (talk · contribs) Jbmurray (talk · contribs) Kaypoh (talk · contribs) Lpangelrob (talk · contribs) Mitchazenia (talk · contribs) Nikki311 (talk · contribs) Realist2 (talk · contribs) Redtigerxyz (talk · contribs) ThinkBlue (talk · contribs) Member News There are now 212 members of WikiProject Good Articles! Welcome to the 17 new members that joined during the month of April: Affinity likely (talk · contribs) Climie.ca (talk · contribs) Edmund Patrick (talk · contribs) Eustress (talk · contribs) IMatthew (talk · contribs) Kironide (talk · contribs) Makeshift Thackery (talk · contribs) Mm40 (talk · contribs) Nikki311 (talk · contribs) Noble Story (talk · contribs) Peanut4 (talk · contribs) Realist2 (talk · contribs) SorryGuy (talk · contribs) Sushant gupta (talk · contribs) ThinkBlue (talk · contribs) WBOSITG (talk · contribs) Will381796 (talk · contribs) This WikiProject, and the Good Article program as a whole, would not be where it is today without each and every one of its members! Thank you to all! GA Topic Do you know what a GA topic is? If you are not nodding your head, or don't know what I'm talking about, then you should pay attention to this article. There are ten GA top-level topics (but you will spot the eleventh as this article goes along). These topics are: Arts, Language and literature, Philosophy and religion, Everyday life, Social sciences and society, Geography and places, History, Engineering and technology, Mathematics, and Natural sciences. Each of these topics are further narrowed down to more specific topics. For example, Arts can be narrowed down to Art and architecture, Music, and Theatre, film and drama. But let's not get into sub-topics in this article because of its depth. Now you will probably ask, "I already knew this, so what is your point?" What I want to illustrate is that some people often forget a step when they promote an article to GA. After they have posted their review in the article talk page, added the article name to the corresponding topic in the good article page, increased the GA count by 1, and added the {{GA}} to article talk page, many reviewers tend to forget to add the topic parameter in {{GA}} or {{ArticleHistory}}. You can browse the topic parameter abbreviations at on this page as well as what each top-level GA topic means, because sometimes it can be chaotic and confusing to pick a topic. For example, should On the Origin of Species be placed under the Natural Science topic (because it's related to evolution), or under the Language and Literature topic (because it is a book)? The correct answer is to place it under Language and literature topic, because its categorization as a proper title supercedes other categories. Let's go back to the page that shows GA topics; does anyone spot the eleventh topic? Yes, Category:Good articles without topic parameter is the 11th topic, only it shouldn't be there. Articles that do not have a topic parameter in either {{GA}} or {{ArticleHistory}} will be placed in this category. The topic "Uncategorized" is not very informative, is it? So if you have time, you can consider cleaning up the articles that are left in this category and move them to the appropriate category by adding a topic parameter. That's it for this month, I hope you learned a little from it. GA Sweeps Update The GA Sweeps process is progressing nicely! During the month of April, a total of 26 articles were reviewed. Of that total, 15 were found to continue to meet the GA criteria, and two were delisted. There are currently six articles that are still on hold in this process, awaiting revisions. One article was exempted from review because it was promoted to FA. Two articles were exempted from review because they were already delisted by another member in the community. We are once again recruiting new sweeps participants. Candidates should be very strong and comfortable in reviewing GA and familiar with the GA processes and criteria. If you are interested, please contact OhanaUnited for details. Did You Know... ...that there are slightly less than twice as many Good Articles as Featured Articles? ...that the total number of Good Articles and Featured Articles combined is 6,085? ...that different languages have different symbols representing GA? (Alemannic uses , Bavarian uses , Czech and French use , Estonian, Icelandic, and Swedish use , Esperanto and German use , Polish, Spanish, and Turkish use , Portuguese uses , Russian uses , Ukrainian uses ) Note: Lithuanian and Serbian have their own symbol but only uploaded locally. Other languages not listed above either have the same symbol as english or they don't have GA process. From the Editors There is currently a debate on adding a small green dot to the top right corner of all Good Articles that pass the criteria, similar to the small bronze star that is added to the top right corner of Featured Articles. Members of WikiProject Good Articles are encouraged to participate in the debate on this page. Please leave any comments or feedback regarding this issue here. Contributors to this Issue Dr. Cash (Lead Editor, Distributor) OhanaUnited (Article, GA Sweeps and Did You Know correspondent) Improving Wikipedia one article at a time since 2005! WikiProject Good Articles: Open Tasks This project identifies, organizes and improves good articles on Wikipedia. Nominations: Exile (American band) (talk | history | start review) • John Rudge (talk | history | start review) • Pure Japanese (talk | history | start review) • Relations (philosophy) (talk | history | start review) • One in a Million (Aaliyah album) (talk | history | start review) Reassessment: Tranmere Rovers F.C. • Galatian War • Mario Kart: Double Dash • Fallout 3 • Task forces: Project quality • Sweeps • GAN Backlog Drives • GA Cup WikiProject Good articles newsletter (last updated January 2013) Good article criteria | Statistics | GAN Report | Changes log Nominations list | edit

A new May 2008 issue of the WikiProject History of Science newsletter is hot off the virtual presses. Please feel free to make corrections or add news about any project-related content you've been working on. You're receiving this because you are a participant in the History of Science WikiProject. You may read the newsletter or unsubscribe from this notification by following the link. Yours in discourse--ragesoss (talk) 23:28, 2 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the note. I've done some subsequent mini-edits to smooth over the joins (do look & see what you think). I imagine we both jumped on this because it's so important that Lyell's article is accurate about evolution. There appear to be many Earth Science students and professionals who don't know about his mental torment! It comes about, perhaps, because biography is under-rated by mainstream science teaching. Best wishes, Macdonald-ross (talk) 16:54, 14 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If you can spare time, please give your opinion on the THH talk page!

A user has deleted the 'Quotes' section near the end of Thomas Henry Huxley, and I would like some opinions on this. The content is listed on the Talk:Thomas Henry Huxley page (section 18).

Obviously, such a section is unusual, but there are good reasons for having it in the case of THH. First, it improves the biography by making it easier to understand the man: this would not be true of most scientists, but it is true of Huxley. Second, he was, and still is, quoted extensively. Some individual quotations of Darwin may be seen more often, but the range of topics in Huxley is not easily matched. Thirdly, unlike my critic, I don't think it contravenes the 'Wikipedia is not a directory' policy, and if it did I would argue that policy should be a guide, not an absolute. Options, it seems to me, are:

1. section deleted, as now is

2. section reinstated, as was

3. section shortened and reinstated

4. create a linked page 'Huxleyana' to put it in, flagged on the main page

5. put it in Wikiquote (I am against this, both on grounds of remoteness (being on a different system, and little used, and on grounds that Wikiquote has developed into s place for longer excerpts taken from web sources)

Same user changed character of the Biographies section. This is a less significant change, but your thoughts are welcome. Macdonald-ross (talk) 06:10, 1 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry I haven't participated already. It's currently at the very top of my Wikipedia to-do list; I just know that once I jump in it won't be easy to stop, and my own research is getting to the point where a lot of my criticisms would tend toward original research. I'll take a close look at it and give my overall impressions tomorrow (I promise!).--ragesoss (talk) 01:44, 23 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Congratulations mate, a long haul but well worth it! Tim Vickers (talk) 03:29, 28 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, congratulations! You handled the whole experience exceptionally well, with patience and good humor. Special congratulations to you are certainly in order. —Mattisse (Talk) 22:27, 28 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Second and third the above! . . dave souza, talk 23:16, 28 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry about the delay. AWB has been having a few issues lately. Here is the august issue of the WikiProject Good Articles Newsletter! Dr. Cash (talk) 20:49, 19 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The The WikiProject Good articles Newsletter

The The WikiProject Good articles Newsletter Volume I, No. 10 – August 2008 July issue Project News There are currently 4,675 Good Articles listed at WP:GA. The backlog at Good Article Nominations is 141 unreviewed articles. Out of 186 total nominations, 28 are on hold, 14 are under review, and 3 are seeking a second opinion. Please go to WP:GAN and review an article or three as soon as you have a chance! The oldest unreviewed articles are: Juggernaut (wrestler), Dark Angel (wrestler), Irrigation in Peru, Tropical cyclone rainfall forecasting, Coltrane for Lovers, Bayshore Freeway, Jon Cryer, Heather Mills, New York State Route 273, and Tsugaru clan. The categories with the largest backlogs are: Theatre, film, and drama (28 articles), Sports and recreation (27 articles), Music (22 articles), Transport (18 articles), and War and military (13 articles). There are currently 4 articles up for re-review at Good Article Reassessment. Congratulations! There really is no "backlog" here! :-) GA Sweeps is Recruiting Reviewers We are once again recruiting new sweeps participants. Candidates should be very strong and comfortable in reviewing GA and familiar with the GA processes and criteria. If you are interested, please contact OhanaUnited for details. GAN Reviewer of the Month ThinkBlue (talk · contribs) is the GAN Reviewer of the Month for July, based on the assessments made by Dr. Cash on the number and thoroughness of the reviews made by individual reviewers each week. ThinkBlue had a whopping 49 reviews during the month of July! ThinkBlue was also one of our two reviewers of the month from June, and has been editing Wikipedia since December 1, 2006, and is interested in articles dealing with Friends, Will and Grace, CSI:Miami, Monday Night Raw, Coldplay. Congratulations to Giggy (talk · contribs) on being May's GAN Reviewer of the Month! 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History of evolutionary thought#Modern evolutionary synthesis

I'll say this here, so I don't get in the way of 'Main page request' (which is a good idea!).

I have recently re-read this section carefully. IMHO, the section is just a tad skewed as it stands, giving almost sole attention to those who worked in the U.S. Perhaps you can find some way to better acknowledge the British contribution, Huxley and Ford particularly; I enclose a couple of extracts for your perusal:

"Ford had a long working relationship with R.A. Fisher. By the time Ford had developed his formal definition of genetic polymorphism,^[1] Fisher had got accustomed to high selection values in nature. He was most impressed by the fact that polymorphism concealed powerful selective forces (Ford gave human blood groups as an example). Like Fisher, Ford continued the natural selection versus genetic drift debate with Sewall Wright, whom Ford believed put too much emphasis on genetic drift. It was as a result of Ford's work, as well as his own, that Dobzhansky changed the emphasis in the third edition of his famous text from drift to selection.^[2]" [Quote from Edmund Brisco Ford article]

"Huxley was one of the main architects of the new evolutionary synthesis which took place around the time of World War II... Huxley's first 'trial run' was the treatment of evolution in the Science of Life (1929-30), and in 1936 he published a long and significant paper for the British Association.^[3].... Now it was time for Huxley to tackle the subject of evolution at full length, in what became the defining work of his life. His role was that of a synthesiser, and it helped that he had met many of the other participants. His book Evolution: the modern synthesis.... Reviews of the book in learned journals were little short of ecstatic; the American Naturalist called it "The outstanding evolutionary treatise of the decade, perhaps of the century. The approach is thoroughly scientific; the command of basic information amazing."^[4][5]" [Abbreviated quotes from Julian Huxley article]

So, perhaps some modest extra recognition is called for?

Macdonald-ross (talk) 12:29, 31 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It's here at long last! The January 2009 issue of the WikiProject History of Science newsletter is ready, with exciting news about Darwin Day 2009. Please feel free to make corrections or add news about any project-related content you've been working on. You're receiving this because you are a participant in the History of Science WikiProject. You may read the newsletter or unsubscribe from this notification by following the link. Yours in discourse --ragesoss (talk) 02:57, 11 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Rusty. You've probably noticed some anon IP activity over at Alfred Russel Wallace - ie, changing the nationality. I'm treating it as vandalism for now but then I don't really know too much about the details if it comes to debating a point, so I thought I'd just check you were watching. cheers --Merbabu (talk) 02:09, 27 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hello and thank you for taking the time to explain Plato's Theory of Forms. I used the beagles and poodles as an example off the top of my head. I still think an example or a clearer explanation would be helpful for the history of evolutionary thought article, but it's not that important if left out. Thanks again. LovesMacs (talk) 16:47, 12 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your message. I'm happy to put my GA nomination on hold until you feel the article is ready. SP-KP (talk) 11:01, 13 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

In plain speech the two are rarely distinguished, but in more serious discourse they must be. A conception is something conceived; conceptions are thoughts. Evolutionary thought is a conception about nature. A concept is the object of conception. Evolution, in this case, is the concept. At least, this is how I've always understood the two and a look at the dictinary backs me up (as much as a dictionary can). Srnec (talk) 20:34, 14 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. Srnec (talk) 03:07, 15 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You last supported this article's featured candidacy in January. Would you mind lending your support to the current nomination? (Ibaranoff24 (talk) 09:45, 24 February 2009 (UTC))[reply]

Hi. How far away from meeting the GA criteria is the article now? Should I take it off hold and let it be reviewed yet? SP-KP (talk) 19:35, 2 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. What's the latest on this ... are we close to being able to get it reviewed as a GA? SP-KP (talk) 19:45, 14 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. I'm sure you'll notice yourself, but there's a very detailed GA review on the talk page. Let me know if I can help with any of the issues raised/work needed. SP-KP (talk) 09:45, 28 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

BTW I asked Malleus and G-Guy to comment in case I was asking for too much, especially as I'm pretty interested in evolution. --Philcha (talk) 20:53, 3 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

A couple of thoughts. Concerns about length seem to be raised about the Contents section, but to me that's the meat of this article. Perhaps copyediting can help there. The background's looking more useful and focussed now, and gives a summary of the context, but even then it's pretty large. No good answer, as it's worthwhile reading for newcomers to the subject. I've toyed with the idea of moving it elsewhere and trying to condense it further, but a lot would be lost by doing that. As for the Reception section, my aim is to try a draft focussing primarily on the scientific reception, with paragraphs on field naturalists, anatomists/morphologists including Owen and Mivart pushing non-Darwinian idealist evolution, the tree of life, reconstruction of history of life on earth, etc. The Religion section would be correspondingly shortened. The Reception outside Great Britain could helpfully be split, with the information about publication moved to a new section under Publication and subsequent editions, probably titled Publication outside Great Britain. The "reception outside GB" content would be merged into the scientific reception, as it's hard to separate the international discussions into UK/nonUK. The religion section would only cover non-scientific responses, as aspects like natural theology and Owen's idealism would already appear in the scientific section. I've made a start on the Reception intro at User:Dave souza/Reception of the Origin, but have only moved the existing subsections around and haven't tried editing them yet. Hopefully tomorrow. Goodnight all, . dave souza, talk 21:33, 3 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

<ri> Regarding the Literary style section, David Quammen describes himself on p. 16 as not a biologist, not a historian, and having virtually no training in science. The book cover describes him as an author, which is perhaps a bit obvious, so just suggest leaving out the "historian" tag. Jim Secord's Victorian Sensation pp. 507–514 gives useful context, as Origin was much less readable than Vestiges and that helped to reassure readers that it was a serious scientific work. Will try to add that soon. I'm struggling along with pulling my draft Reception section into order, hope to get there soon. . dave souza, talk 22:41, 7 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your response, I've added a bit to the literary style section based on Secord plus a comment from Browne which seemed relevant: haven't searched for any other statements she makes about style. . dave souza, talk 12:59, 9 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, Rusty. I've posted a message at User_talk:Dave_souza#Origin_of_Species:_GA_review: (a) it's in danger of failing GA due to lack of mention of contribution to / place in modern evolutionary thought; (b) you and Dave need to decide on your strategy for getting it to FA by 24 Nov, as this will determine my approach to the rest of the review. Please contribute at User_talk:Dave_souza#Origin_of_Species:_GA_review. --Philcha (talk) 11:52, 21 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for joining in the proposals that have broken out on my talk page, Rusty. The idea of bringing in the modern situation gave me a cunning plan for a new section giving a happy ending to the article. I think we can keep the overall article size reasonable, have a look and see what you think. . dave souza, talk 19:58, 21 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Any thoughts on "So which is it: get it to GA as fast as possible to allow for 2 x FAC, or make the GA review as thorough as possible? --Philcha (talk) 22:02, 22 April 2009 (UTC)"[2]? Don't have any recent experience of FAC myself, and while I'm inclined to try to get the article perfect first, suspect that the wider input of an early FAC could be fed into resolving a lot of the needed improvements. Will bow to your judgment on this. . dave souza, talk 07:57, 23 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Once it is solidly GA quality. I think it should pass GA. What I have done on previous articles is that after I catch my breath for a week or so I open a new section on the talk page called "ready for FA?" or some such thing and ask if anyone knows of anything that ought to be addressed before FAC. I also go out and solicit opinions from a few editors I know with interest in the subject matter and ask them specifically to take a look at the article with FAC in mind. Then after a couple of weeks of that I go ahead and nominate it for FA. The first FA nomination always seems to fail but it produces a lot of copyediting and usually some good suggestions for improving the article that take a month or 2 to work through. The 2nd FAC usually goes much more easily and produces less dramatic change. I think that this approach will work very well with this article because the subject matter will draw a lot of interest and comments once it gets nominated. At least that was my experience with history of evolutionary thought and Alfred Russel Wallace. My goal would be to nominate it for FA sometime in May as that would leave plenty of time to respond to comments before making a 2nd attempt in the late summer/fall. I do want to coordinate it with Dave so that he and I are both available to support the nomination. I would hate to nominate it a week when he is on vacation or have him nominate it a week when I don't have much availability. Rusty Cashman (talk) 09:00, 23 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Suits me, my main changes are completed now. . dave souza, talk 09:29, 23 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Copyediting sandbox[edit]

I've turned my attention to the Content section, and am trying out ideas at User:Dave souza/Reception of the Origin#Variation under domestication and under nature. See what you think of that subsection, and if you like the way it's going. I'm uneasy about the use of the past tense, as in "Darwin described variation" rather than "Darwin describes variation" as used by Quammen, which is a pretty good precedent. I think we can keep it consistent with a little care, fancy going for the present tense? . . dave souza, talk 20:15, 23 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

STOP! we just spent a lot of time getting the tense stuff fixed based on Geometry guy's comments and I believe the tense stuff is now3 correct in the lead and the content section and I am VERY unhappy about the idea of it being changed. Rusty Cashman (talk) 23:37, 23 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I am also very nervous about introducing non period images into the content section. I know it was my suggestion that lead to the additio of the illustration of the Rhea to the introduction, but at least that was a contemporary illustration. Rusty Cashman (talk) 01:39, 24 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

OK! The sandbox remained in the past tense, just seemed a bit awkward. Bowler also uses the present tense, "In a second chapter on this theme, Darwin argues...." but I think the past tense can work. Have removed the image from my sandbox draft, may use it in one of the biography articles or if not it can be deleted. . dave souza, talk 08:03, 24 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

<ri> Returning to the main issue of copyediting, I've tightened the sandbox draft a bit more and removed mistaken reference to "introduced the term" – Darwin doesn't use the term "artificial selection" until later chapters. Similarly, he doesn't mention Neolithic, but does describe the earliest records of ancient Egypt and referes to the lack of knowledge of earlier times, in refuting arguments that domestic breeds had been introduced and fixed there. I've also placed more emphasis on how Darwin began with contemporary opinions on the origins of the many distinct breeds under cultivation. Mostly it's tightening the prose, try comparing them and feel free to edit in the sandbox if you feel it's worthwhile but some points are less well covered. If nothing else, this can act as a check for any issues I can find in this section. . dave souza, talk 08:03, 24 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I made a couple of tweaks to the section in your sandbox and went ahead and copied it over to the main article. I am thinking the whole article looks pretty good right now, and I am confident it should pas GA now. Rusty Cashman (talk) 21:19, 24 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. I thought I'd ask how things are progressing with getting this article to GA standard. Cheers. SP-KP (talk) 23:43, 4 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for tweaking the lead, Rusty. Looks ready for GA review to resume, in my opinion. . . dave souza, talk 08:56, 6 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

By the way, on a related topic I've now got Bowler and Morus, Making Modern Science, which has interesting comments on idealism, amongst other aspects. The issue is covered in a bit more detail in Desmond's Politics of Evolution, there was a wide and diverse influence on both sides of the transmutation debate. . . dave souza, talk 15:54, 6 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Bowler and Morus is indeed a useful source. I have used it for both History of evolutionary thought and History of paleontology. Rusty Cashman (talk) 18:08, 6 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, I hope you are doing well. I am sending you this message since you are a member of the GA WikiProject. I would like to invite you to consider helping with the GA sweeps process. Sweeps helps to ensure that the oldest GAs still meet the criteria, and improve the quality of GAs overall. Unfortunately, last month only two articles were reviewed. This is definitely a low point after our peak at the beginning of the process when 163 articles were reviewed in September 2007. After nearly two years, the running total has just passed the 50% mark. In order to expediate the reviewing, several changes have been made to the process. A new worklist has been created, detailing which articles are left to review. All exempt and previously reviewed articles have already been removed from the list. Instead of reviewing by topic, you can consider picking and choosing whichever articles interest you.

We are always looking for new members to assist with the remaining articles, so if you are interested or know of anybody that can assist, please visit the GA sweeps page. In addition, for every member that reviews 100 articles or has a significant impact on the process, s/he will get an award when they reach that threshold. If only 14 editors achieve this feat starting now, we would be done with Sweeps! Of course, having more people reviewing less articles would be better for all involved, so please consider asking others to help out. Feel free to stop by and only review a few articles, something's better than nothing! Take a look at the list, and see what articles interest you. Let's work to complete Sweeps so that efforts can be fully focused on the backlog at GAN. If you have any questions about the process, reviewing, or need help with a particular article, please contact me or OhanaUnited and we'll be happy to help. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 08:41, 8 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, Rusty, thanks for the heads-up. For now, I think I'll wait and see what others think. --Philcha (talk) 07:08, 5 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Rusty, have supported as a significant contributor. While I was adding that, SandyGeorgia added what seems to me to be a good suggestion, changing {{main}} to an alternative which doesn't imply that the section is a summary of the other article. I've suggested changing to {{seealso}}, as we've already got one case of that. Any objection? . . dave souza, talk 14:54, 5 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Also, how do you feel about adding a mention of the extended coverage of sexual selection in The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex to our mention of the subject in the section on Chapter IV.? . . dave souza, talk 18:09, 5 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

On second thoughts we could add it to the Religious attitudes section paragraph on human descent, changing "Darwin put forward an evolutionary explanation of such attributes in the Descent of Man in 1871." to "In 1871 Darwin put forward his evolutionary explanation of such attributes in the The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex which also expanded his concept of sexual selection to explain apparently non-adaptive features." Bit longer, but avoids a redirect from Descent of Man, and includes it in the Reception section. Alternately, and perhaps best, we could add a sentence about it at the end of the last paragraph of the Impact on the scientific community subsection, on the lines of "Darwin published his own views in The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex of 1871 which also expanded his concept of sexual selection explaining apparently non-adaptive features such as beauty in plumage." That would relate both to human evolution and the Duke of Argyll's objection. We could then omit the effectively duplicated sentence out of the Religious attitudes section, and leave that paragraph just covering religious responses by others. . . dave souza, talk 19:21, 5 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I liked your first suggestion best and have implemented it. I think it works there during the summary to mention that Darwin returned to the topic at greater length in a later work. Rusty Cashman (talk) 20:28, 5 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

HU . . . dave souza, talk 22:52, 10 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Rusty. I've been going through it bit by bit for the last few days. My only complaint so far is that it's sooo long. ; ) I'll weigh in at the FAC once I get all the way through; I anticipate supporting, as I don't notice any major issues so far. I think relying on Mayr for the "key facts and inferences" might be a bit sketchy, just because Mayr had such a big stake in promoting a particular interpretation of Darwin's legacy, but it also has the virtue of being concise and lining up well with how Origin is usually read today.--ragesoss (talk) 14:25, 14 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I don't think it's something that needs to be changed (although I also don't think OR is a significant concern even the article didn't rely on Mayr there).--ragesoss (talk) 20:13, 14 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Congratulations! Many thanks, dave souza, talk 09:15, 21 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, File:Cuvier elephant jaw.jpg is kind of blurry, agree? I found that Eric Buffetaut had made a derivative of Cuvier's work. Please take a look at File:Georges Cuvier - Elephant jaw.png. There was not a conclusive agreement at Commons Village Pump about this (see the image's talk page), but the opinions would point to the lack of originality in Buffetaut's image to deserve a copyright. I think this image is superior (in terms of clear picture quality) to File:Cuvier elephant jaw.jpg, but I refrained from replacing the image as I am uncertain if you chose it for historical significance (the exact page itself). If there is no such consideration, I think the clearer File:Georges Cuvier - Elephant jaw.png can replace it. Jappalang (talk) 03:43, 20 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Congratulations on the FA. A truly superior article! It would be great to get the Lucy (Australopithecus) article up to snuff, as suggested on the talk page. Regards, —Mattisse (Talk) 13:40, 21 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Wow, you really did make it first time! Congratulations to you and Dave, it was a pleasure working with you both. --Philcha (talk) 18:48, 21 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

		The Origins Award
		Thanks for all the fish, Rusty, and for doing so much to improve On the Origin of Species. . . dave souza, talk 11:02, 22 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]