The project is home to 34 pieces of Featured content and 47 Good and A-class articles. Have you contributed to any of these? What are the biggest challenges to improving geology-related articles to FA or GA status?
Chris.urs-o: No, I didn't. I did a clean up on plate tectonics, though (FA from July 2004 until February 2008). And the lists of eruptions (see list of volcanoes) delivered one of the backbones for list of largest volcanic eruptions (FA since September 2010). WikiHumour: I added an infobox mountain to Ulawun (GA from October 2005 until April 2007). Encyclopædia Britannica (11 ed, 1911) was written before the plate tectonics model got accepted, and nowadays the computer models got much better (plate reconstruction). So, the content of some geology articles has/had to be updated. You need a solid background to understand the scientific papers dealing with geology.
A lengthy category tree is maintained by the project. Has this been helpful in building and organizing Wikipedia's collection of geology articles? Does Wikipedia have any glaring holes in its coverage of geology?
Chris.urs-o: Voluntary work is a rare thing, university level voluntary work is very rare, indeed.
The project has an active peer review department. How useful has this been in generating feedback for improving articles? With so many abandoned peer review departments at other WikiProject, what has been the secret to WikiProject Geology's peer review process?
WikiProject Geology has several daughter projects and task forces. Are you involved in any of them? Do they regularly communicate and collaborate with WikiProject Geology?
What are the project's most pressing needs? How can a new member contribute today?
Chris.urs-o: WikiProject Rocks and minerals has one liner stubs (Category:Rocks and minerals articles needing attention). Someone would expect that encyclopaedia editors edit the category tree downwards, but voluntary editors do that they like to do: dinosaurs and their cretaceous, ruby and saphire. I illustrate a lil' bit. Some Wikipedians create a start article on a notable person and a mineral stub if there's a mineral name to honour this person. Aptian (size: 23 kB, hits: 5k/9 days) to cretaceous (size: 29 kB, hits: 14k/9 days) to mesozoic (size: 18 kB, hits: 7k/9 days) to phanerozoic (size: 7 kB, hits: 3k/9 days) and to geologic time scale (size: 23 kB, hits: 21k/9 days). Ruby (mineral variety, size: 27 kB, hits: 19k/9 days) to corundum (mineral, size: 9 kB, hits: 6k/9 days) to hematite mineral group to oxide minerals (mineral class, size: 18 kB, hits: 0.2k/9 days) to minerals (size: 37 kB, hits: 19k/9 days) to rocks (size: 11 kB, hits: 12k/9 days) to geology (size: 69 kB, hits: 16k/9 days) and to science (size: 91 kB, hits: 57k/9 days). Fair enough, this isn't the whole truth, only the truth and nothing but the truth. But there's some smoke, some fire and some truth ;) The truth is more like a vicious circle: dinosaur has a good quality, because it has many editors, and it has many editors because it has a fan club. Note: as quality times size generates hits, I'm using size and hits as quality indicators. If some young editors could update the broad and basic stuff, it'd help, hopefully.
Anything else you'd like to add?
Chris.urs-o: Articles on science & technology need editors with an academic degree. These people studied around 15 years, and one hour of their time is costly. Seniors with lil' free time don't accept well kid's free time vandalism wasting their voluntary effort. An anonymous IP number changing numbers, does a lot of damage. I think that the voluntary work of these people needs more protection. Professors (Zyzzy2, Rasteraster, MaxWyss, for instance) got their images (some fair use images) deleted. It isn't Wikipedia's brightest hour, I'm not amused ;) Amazon got a verified identity option, something to think about ...
Addendum: The Wikipedia problem. Wikipedia success is direct proportional to its quality. The Wikipedia's vandalism in the broad sense is direct proportional to its success/ popularity. On the other side, the editing capacity is direct proportional to its popularity. And it's inverse proportional to the world economic crisis, to Wikipedia's vandalism and Wikipedia's quality.
Addition: each edit requires more effort as Wikipedia's quality gets better.
Signpost
2013-02-18 Sue Gardner interviewed by the Australian press
Secrecy of correspondence is a "human right" and a foundation of a democracy. If it get holes, then there is a free path to tyranny, martial law, coup d'etat and absolute power. Of course, it would kill Wikipedia too. BTW, U.S. Postal Service and its snail mail is worth to be defended too.
Reply: Kill Wikipedia? Do we operate secretly?
Our nicknames protect us a lil bit against harassment
Nowadays, pharisaism (destructive harassment by lawyers) is a problem
Wikipedia is truth, neutral point-of-view and voluntary work
Tyranny (slavery) is media control (censorship) and paid propaganda (paid editing)
2013-02-11 Op-ed: An article is a construct – hoaxes and Wikipedia
Nice article Resident Mario. It is a big problem. As Wikipedia is successful, we get more and more vandalism, lies, spam and business promotion. As maintenance instead of building up is unattractive, we lose more and more editors and donated editing time. Wikipedia's future is endangered.
The difference between liar and a friend, is that a friend stays with you forever. So a registered user with more than 10,000 edits is more likely a Wikipedia friend than an anonymous IP. We need seniors, people should stay in the club and not quit with 25 years.
Hoax is just a form of vandalism, vandalism in the broad sense is the problem. You lose motivation and enthusiasm. It wears you down. Schoolboy vandalism, hoaxes, spam, business promotion, "political correctness" (lies), harasment, edit warring and "paid" editing (in the broad sense; you do me a favour, than I do you a favour) are all a problem.
Mind you that we are in a "mission impossible". All friends of Wikipedia want its quality improving. If we are losing editors, if the vandalism in the broad sense is getting worse, if there is no pending changes for main space edits from school IPs (at least), if there is an absolute prohibition for advertising, if you are able to access the toolserver between 24:00 and 12:00 Eastern Time Zone, only; when we are heading for disaster, probably.
The project isn't saturated. Fighting vandalism get's you ruder (Wikipedia:Civility) against all editors. And vandalism in the broad sense wears down all Wikipedians.
I made the "saturation limit" argument in another column here a while ago, it's linked in one of the citations.
@Chris.urs-o, I *think* it is not saturated as in "it can't grow anymore", because it may expand, it may reach new 'markets' (geographically and in type-of-editor). But is silly (though strangely common) to assume that it may grow exponentially, or even linearly, for ever. @Resident_Mario, thanks, I missed that (not so active then) I'll read it soon.
Science & Technology versus Sports & Entertainment
Ying: the boy fell from the horse and broke his leg. Such a bad luck.
Yang: it is war and the boy wasn't enlisted. Such a great luck.
Trend: I think that the world economic crisis might be heading to martial law, absolute loyality and absolute information control. Wikipedia might hibernate sometime for a while. Voluntary work isn't able to oppose 'paid editing'. Maybe the toolservers, the tools and the boots should be better supported.
Maintenance load: before an article gets semi-protected, there must be a grey zone where it gets pending changes. The first (1k, 5k or 10k) articles with most traffic should get pending changes if they aren't semi-protected. Getting rid of the school anonymous IP vandalism gets the maintenance load lighter.
WikiWomen: Males' mind is boss and tool centered, females' mind is society and comunication centered. Wikipedia isn't a forum, a newspaper and hasn't a deadline. But Signpost has it all :) Women like to chat, they prefer to do things in a non-masculine way. There is the IRC channel.
Nota bene II: A master has pupils and notes from past masters, this is a school with a teacher and his students, including a library. A library needs lists for maintenance. So list of minerals (complete) isn't WP:MOS, but its a valuable tool, helping to assess priorities, notabilities and contributions. An encyclopedia is a collection of books too, and so a library. There are many shades of gray between encyclopedia, know how, how to, handbook, guide, dictionary and so on.
Somehow, you have the rare ability to somehow be at the throat of every volcano article and at the hub of every active article discussion. You've worked pretty hard across the project spectrum, so I think you deserve this. Just don't let the shininess get to your head. Or the toxic lava plume ^^.
For your efforts at formatting and completing the entries at the many pages of List of minerals (complete), I award you this barnstar. I hope it's not too much of a bottomless pit. Chris857 (talk) 03:06, 14 August 2012 (UTC)
Media related to Images by Chris.urs-o at Wikimedia Commons
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