Dear Hmich176/Archive 3! You are receiving as you are a member of
WikiProject Ice Hockey There's been more new thing going on at
WP:HOCKEY, and I think this will help you to stay informed. Since the last newsletter sent out in August, there's been great changes. Read on to find out! Maxim(talk)
Especially due to the
featured topic drive, there have been many new
featured lists promoted concerning NHL awards. Here's the full list of all the 13 FL's promoted since the last newsletter.[1][2]
^The last one, List of Calgary Flames players, is the only one not associated with the featured topic drive.
^At the time of publishing, there were 5 lists at
WP:FLC and 2 lists in the "Holding cell", as there's been an accepted guideline to not put more that 5 trophy lists at the same time to, "compensate for the sanity of the reviewers".
Did You Know?
By
Maxim
There have been 4 new articles featured in the Did You Know section? on the
Main Page since August.
Check the
project page if you are interested in helping out. Although it's closer to being done than not, there's still work to be done. The next topic that might be tackled is
Stanley Cup, but this remains purely speculative and in discussion.
Thanks for the heads-up. I so rarely worry about that kind of thing when dealing with blatantly unhelpful editors, and it'd be a shame to have to block myself. Incidentally, if you're only concern is "unwarned users need to be warned before a 3RR block", nobody there needs to be warned. We should all know better. Cheers,
WilyD20:19, 9 July 2007 (UTC)reply
Thank you for supporting me in my recent RFA nomination. Unfortunately, I have withdrawn the nom early at 17/13/3. I am presently going to undergo admin coaching in preparation for a second candidacy somewhere down the line. I hope to see your continued support in the future. Regards, —
Scott5114↗07:25, 29 November 2007 (UTC)reply
Sure,
please send me an email about Dec 18th. Just to be sure I don't forget. I don't remember much about the Atlas, only that it was published by the National Geographic Society and was leather bound and is sitting at my parents house _somewhere_. It's not as detailed as modern road atlases, but then there were a lot less roads then =-) It's a big atlas, but most of its size is indexes. Hopefully I can find it and can scan whatever pages you want. I have to ask, lots of roadgeeks in PA? most of the articles for PA are already in good shape. Sometimes I feel like I'm the only one still working on content for NV, UT, CO and AZ articles. Lots of people fixing and flagging my mess ups, but not many actually writing articles =-)
Davemeistermoab (
talk)
00:07, 5 December 2007 (UTC)reply
Well, the ad-hoc discussion on
Talk:Eazy az 1 2 3 ended up pointing in a lot of different ways, ranging from a TPIR WikiProject to a task force of
WP:TV, or a task force of the Game Shows WP, which needs to be dusted off and revitalized. Not sure - further discussion might be needed. —
Scott5114↗[EXACT CHANGE ONLY]23:03, 6 December 2007 (UTC)reply
I've been working on it and I believe it is not yet in the correct condition for GA. Please, at this moment, it will get failed outright. I hoped you would have consulted someone over this; as the main contributor over the past weeks, I wanted to work in it further. Thanks.
AshnardTalkContribs07:54, 12 December 2007 (UTC)reply
I've nominated for FAC as I feel that it's ready. Consequently, I had to archive the peer review that you started. Don't worry though—FAC will generate more comments than the peer review could. Thanks.
AshnardTalkContribs15:34, 22 December 2007 (UTC)reply
Hey there. I don't think I ever welcomed you, so welcome to the Tropical cyclone WikiProject! I'm just curious, where do you see yourself contributing to the project? We've seen a lot of users leave, so anywhere would be appreciated. I see you have experience in many other articles, which is great. Well, I hope to see you around. Cheers. --
Hurricanehink (
talk)
19:49, 16 December 2007 (UTC)reply
With all due respect (honestly - I know it was good faith), I would like to suggest to you that if you're not prepared to do a merge properly, you should just put merge tags on the articles and let someone else do it who is prepared to properly merge. In merely (quiz show) overtop of (game show), you did not copy information from the (game show) article that was missing in the (quiz show) article. Hence the term "merge" (the most obvious example of this is the infobox which you blanked several fields in copying the new infobox over the old one. Thanks
TheHYPO (
talk)
01:33, 19 December 2007 (UTC)reply
Greetings Hmich176! This user has just wished you Happy Holidays. This user sent this message to you. This template is made for Christians, Jews, and Afican Americans. Wishing you a Happy Holidays promotes
WikiLove and hopefully, this has made your holidays even better. So Happy Chanakuah to you!
I have finally created it. You are already a member. Please check out our
home page. Feel free to get out of the task force by deleting your name on the members page.--
Smashbrosboy (
talk)
01:29, 1 January 2008 (UTC)reply
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 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).
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:
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 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!
Hey, You had asked me if I could scan the Pennsylvania section of an "1930's era" atlas that my parents had. Well I did get the atlas when I went to visit them for Christmas. Unfortunately, That "1930's era atlas" is actually the National Geographic Road Atlas for 1960. So my memory failed and its not the atlas I though they had. However, I do have it, and if you are still interested, I can scan whatever section you would still like.
Davemeistermoab (
talk)
23:40, 6 January 2008 (UTC)reply
If you feel it should go through CFD, go ahead. I don't have a problem with it remaining empty (or full, if there's a reason to use it). --
NE214:43, 23 January 2008 (UTC)reply
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 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).
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:
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:
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 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.
Welcome to the WikiProject Roller Coasters Newsletter! January has seen a number of milestones being passed in the WikiProject. We've achieved our first
good article, brought a portal up to
featured portal status and successfully collaborated together on the first Article Improvement Drive, amongst other achievements. Let's carry on with the good work and continue bringing up the standard of all articles covered by the WikiProject!
Articles and Assessment
We hit a milestone in January with our first
GA-class article, Speed Monster! This shows just how easy it is improve articles by including references and increasing readability.
Collaboration has got off to a good start, with the first chosen article,
Arrow Dynamics, improving enough to reach B-class.
The
Amusement Parks Portal reached
featured portal status during January! You can still nominate articles for the selected content sections on the portal.
Membership News
During January the WikiProject was joined by 6 new members, bringing the total number up to 55. A very warm welcome to
Etf,
CPGACoast,
RickMarkestein,
Emackert,
Onewayroad2home and
Suttna08. The
to do list continues to serve as a place for flagging up articles in need of attention, review or comments.
A discussion is taking place regarding the best way to organise information about roller coaster records and the history of roller coasters. All members' opinions are welcomed; the discussion can be found
here.
Why not start at the top?! The main article is already at B class and, with a little help, isn't too far away from GA class. Please see the
collaboration page for further information.
Any suggestions for March's Article Improvement Drive can be brought up on the
talk page, so if there's a particular article you feel could benefit from more input then feel free to suggest it.
...and finally...
Once again, thanks for reading! As always suggestions and offers of help are much appreciated.
This is the monthly newsletter of
WikiProject Tropical Cyclones. The Hurricane Herald aims to give a summary, both of the activities of the WikiProject and global
tropical cyclone activity. If you wish to change how you receive this newsletter, or no longer wish to receive it, please add your username to the appropriate section on the
mailing list. This newsletter covers all of
January 2008.
Please visit
this page and bookmark any suggestions of interest to you. This will help improve monitoring of the WikiProject's articles.
Storm of the month
Cyclone Gene formed on
January 26 over the open south
Pacific Ocean. It drifted southward, and strengthened into Tropical Storm Gene on
January 28 as it moved across the
Fijian archipelago. There, it brought heavy rainfall, which caused the worst flooding in several years. Half of the country was left without power, and the cyclone killed seven people in Fiji. The storm turned southwestward, developing a cloud-filled
eye and quickly strengthening by the end of the month.
In addition to Cyclone Gene, Tropical Storm Elisa and Cyclone Fuma occurred in the
South Pacific ocean during the month, along with three tropical depressions.
Four tropical cyclones, three of which named, existed in the
Southwest Indian Ocean during the month. The most notable was Cyclone Fame, which caused twelve deaths after striking Madagascar.
Member of the month
Cyclone barnstar
The January member of the month is
Ajm81. A tropical cyclone editor since he first joined in October 2005, Ajm81 plays a vital role in the project. Unlike other editors, who mainly edit articles, Ajm81 maintains and updates the track maps across the project. We thank Ajm81 for his timely contributions, and may he have some well-deserved downtime after the last tropical cyclone report is released.
Wikiwork and 1000 articles
In January 2008, the WikiProject began using a system called Wikiwork, or
ω. It weighs the overall quality of the project's articles, and a lower number means a greater total quality. The weighed ω, as used above, is a relative number that can be used to compare groups of this article. As of this publication, the relative ω of the project is 3.404, corresponding to between Start and B class. However, when limiting it solely to storm articles, the number drops to 2.98, which is slightly better than B class. During the month, a new
statistics page was created.
A tag has been placed on
Template:Harrisburg Area Roads WikiProject requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under
section T3 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because it is a deprecated or orphaned template. After seven days, if it is still unused and the speedy deletion tag has not been removed, the template will be deleted.
If the template is intended to be substituted, please feel free to remove the speedy deletion tag and please consider putting a note on the template's page indicating that it is substituted so as to avoid any future mistakes.
A tag has been placed on
Template:List of DirecTV channels/300-399 requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under
section T3 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because it is a deprecated or orphaned template. After seven days, if it is still unused and the speedy deletion tag has not been removed, the template will be deleted.
If the template is intended to be substituted, please feel free to remove the speedy deletion tag and please consider putting a note on the template's page indicating that it is substituted so as to avoid any future mistakes (<noinclude>{{tranclusionless}}</noinclude>).
Yeah, I had been meaning to hit up on some of the roads, and get to work on some of them (especially the PA state routes that I had made). Had taken a break from it, then completly forgot about it. This weekend, if I have nothing going on, Ill try and start working on some of the pages.
WhammiesWereHere06:37, 13 February 2008 (UTC)reply
A tag has been placed on
Template:User WP UB Member requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under
section T3 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because it is a deprecated or orphaned template. After seven days, if it is still unused and the speedy deletion tag has not been removed, the template will be deleted.
If the template is intended to be substituted, please feel free to remove the speedy deletion tag and please consider putting a note on the template's page indicating that it is substituted so as to avoid any future mistakes (<noinclude>{{transclusionless}}</noinclude>).
This is the monthly newsletter of
WikiProject Tropical Cyclones. The Hurricane Herald aims to give a summary, both of the activities of the WikiProject and global
tropical cyclone activity. If you wish to change how you receive this newsletter, or no longer wish to receive it, please add your username to the appropriate section on the
mailing list. This newsletter covers all of
February 2008.
Please visit
this page and bookmark any suggestions of interest to you. This will help improve monitoring of the WikiProject's articles.
Storm of the month
Cyclone Ivan
Cyclone Ivan formed on
February 7 and subsequently executed a loop to the west-southwest. Encountering favorable conditions, it strengthened to attain peak winds on
February 17 before striking northeastern
Madagascar. It degenerated into a remnant low pressure area as it crossed the island, and briefly re-organized into a weak tropical depression before dissipating on
February 22. Ivan caused heavy damage in Madagascar, leaving 190,000 people homeless and causing over 83 deaths.
Other tropical cyclone activity
In the
South Pacific ocean, Cyclone Gene persisted from the previous month; a tropical depression also occurred in the month.
Tropical Cyclone Nicholas was the only named storm during the month in the
Australian region, which struck
Western Australia. Two tropical lows occurred during the month, the latter of which later formed into Tropical Cyclone Ophelia.
Four storms occurred in the
Southwest Indian Ocean, including two from the previous month and the aforementioned Cyclone Ivan. Cyclone Hondo became the strongest cyclone worldwide in the month, and after becoming extratropical it regenerated over ten days later about 1750 miles (2800 km) to its west-northwest.
Member of the month
Cyclone barnstar
The February member of the month is
RattleMan, for his lasting dedication and continual support of the project. During February, the user worked on improving the timeline articles for the previous season. RattleMan often updates the sections on storms in season articles, and helps to maintain the southern hemisphere articles.
Improvements
During the month, a total of 15 new articles were added, though the net increase in start or stub articles was only three. The highest quality set of articles for a basin is for the Eastern Pacific Ocean, of which half of its articles are either a
good article or better; all of its retired storm articles are good or better. However, the basin has a lower total number of articles, and the Atlantic basin has a higher overall total of good articles.
There is a drive to increase the number of featured topics, which is located on the project talk page.
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 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).
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:
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.
Another editor has added the {{prod}} template to the article
ESPN Now, suggesting that it be deleted according to the
proposed deletion process. All contributions are appreciated, but the editor doesn't believe it satisfies Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion, and has explained why in the article (see also
Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not and
Wikipedia:Notability). Please either work to improve the article if the topic is worthy of inclusion in Wikipedia or discuss the relevant issues at
its talk page. If you remove the {{prod}} template, the article will not be deleted, but note that it may still be sent to
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion, where it may be deleted if consensus to delete is reached.
BJBot (
talk)
22:16, 11 March 2008 (UTC)reply
Concurrency color coding and Termini in Junction Lists
This is the monthly newsletter of
WikiProject Tropical Cyclones. The Hurricane Herald aims to give a summary, both of the activities of the WikiProject and global
tropical cyclone activity. If you wish to change how you receive this newsletter, or no longer wish to receive it, please add your username to the appropriate section on the
mailing list. This newsletter covers all of
March 2008.
Please visit
this page and bookmark any suggestions of interest to you. This will help improve monitoring of the WikiProject's articles.
Storm of the month
Cyclone Jokwe
Cyclone Jokwe was the first
tropical cyclone to make
landfall in
Mozambique since
Cyclone Favio struck in the previous year. The tenth named storm of the
2007-08 South-West Indian Ocean cyclone season, Jokwe was first classified as a tropical depression on
March 2 over the open Southwest
Indian Ocean. It tracked west-southwest, crossing northern
Madagascar as a tropical storm on
March 5 before intensifying into a
tropical cyclone on
March 6. Jokwe rapidly intensified to reach peak winds of 195 km/h (120 mph), before weakening slightly and striking
Nampula Province in northeastern Mozambique. It quickly weakened while paralleling the coastline, though the storm restrengthened as it turned southward in the Mozambique Channel. Late in its duration, it remained nearly stationary for several days, and steadily weakened due to
wind shear before dissipating on
March 16.
The storm caused minor damage in northern Madagascar. In Mozambique, the cyclone affected 165,000 people, and left at least sixteen fatalities. Cyclone Jokwe destroyed over 9,000 houses and damaged over 3,000 more, with the heaviest damage in
Angoche and the
Island of Mozambique in Nampula Province. The storm also caused widespread power outages and crop damages.
Other tropical cyclone activity
There were no named tropical cyclones in the
South Pacific ocean, though a tropical depression developed near
Vanuatu in the third week of the month.
The March member of the month is
CapeVerdeWave, whose first edit was to a tropical cyclone article, back in January 2006. CapeVerdeWave has been a steady and active member of the project, writing several articles on Category 5 hurricanes as well as working on the often forgotten older hurricanes. The user also has contributed to some older season articles, and recently helped update the project after the recent hurricane re-analysis. We thank him for his continued dedication.
Project News: Updates on the Best Track - Atlantic and North Indian Ocean, and more
In February, the
Hurricane Research Division released its reanalysis for the Atlantic Ocean from 1915 to 1920. Highlights include the addition of eight storms, as well as the removal of one storm. The winds in the
1919 Florida Keys Hurricane were increased to 130 knots, and the 1916 Texas hurricane was increased to a Category 4 hurricane.
According to an email sent to the
India Meteorological Department, there will be an online version of the North Indian Ocean best track from 1877 to 2006, scheduled to be released in two months; it is unknown if it will cost money to access.
In unrelated news, the project
was featured on
the Signpost;
Mitchazenia was interviewed, and talked about the past, present, and future of the project.
This arbitration case has been closed and the final decision is available at the link above. No formal enforcement measures are being proposed at this time, in light of the hope that editors will act of their own volition and take with them a more in-depth understanding of the issues, principles, and the disputes themselves, for future benefit and to avoid the need for more formal responses; in particular, all members of WikiProject U.S. Roads are advised that when asserting the existence of a prior consensus, it is necessary to refer to prior discussions or debates on Wikipedia where that consensus has been established.
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 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 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!
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.
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.
We should get this back up to Good Article status; it was at one point, but has since been removed. The article was recently protected from annonomous users, which should help us some.
Oakland Raiders is currently a good article, we can use it for reference. I have started a draft in
my sandbox. Everyone is welcome and encouraged to help in any way you can, there is a to do list at the bottom of the page. Any suggestions would be welcome, I have no doubt that if we work together we can accomplish this fairly quickly.
Blackngold29 (
talk)
18:58, 18 April 2008 (UTC)reply
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 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).
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:
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.
...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.
This is the monthly newsletter of
WikiProject Tropical Cyclones. The Hurricane Herald aims to give a summary, both of the activities of the WikiProject and global
tropical cyclone activity. If you wish to change how you receive this newsletter, or no longer wish to receive it, please add your username to the appropriate section on the
mailing list. This newsletter covers all of
April 2008.
Please visit
this page and bookmark any suggestions of interest to you. This will help improve monitoring of the WikiProject's articles.
Storm of the month
Typhoon Neoguri on April 17
Typhoon Neoguri was the earliest
tropical cyclone on record to strike
China. It formed on
April 13 to the east of the
Philippines, and once entering the South China Sea, environmental conditions allowed for quick strengthening. Neoguri attained its peak intensity of 150 km/h (90 mph) as it approached the island of
Hainan, though rapidly weakened due to unfavorable conditions. The system made
landfall in southern China on
April 19, causing three deaths and moderate damage totaling over ¥296 million (2008
RMB, $42 million 2008
USD). The typhoon left 40 fishermen missing in the South China Sea.
Other tropical cyclone activity
A weak tropical depression formed near
New Caledonia in the
South Pacific ocean early in the month, and another tropical depression developed in the basin later in the month.
Two named storms formed in the
Australian region during the month, including Tropical Cyclone Durga, which was the first ever cyclone named by the Tropical Cyclone Warning Centre in
Jakarta,
Indonesia. Tropical Cyclone Rosie co-existed with Durga for much of its duration.
Cyclone Nargis developed in the
North Indian Ocean late in the month, and reached its peak intensity early in May; further details will be covered in the next newsletter.
Member of the month
Cyclone barnstar
The April member of the month is
VOFFA. Though not officially a project member, VOFFA is an important user to the project, having maintained and updated the talk page archives on tropical cyclones worldwide; activity includes adding warnings and discussions for all storms. The user is particularly active during the off-season of the Atlantic basin, when article activity on tropical cyclones typically declines.
During the month,
Hurricane Camille was demoted from GA status, continuing the trend of good articles degrading in status on notable storms; other occurrences include the FA removal of
Cyclone Tracy and
1900 Galveston Hurricane. If anyone has any ideas how to fix the problem, feedback and ideas are appreciated.
As discussed at
WT:USRD, the participants list at
WP:USRD is being split by state. Due to any of the following factors- your extended participation in
WT:USRD discussions, your IRC participation, or your extended participation in Shields or Maps, I have guessed that you are a nationwide editor and have designated you as such in the USRD partiicpants table. This is part of the lengthy process. If this is in error, please let me know immediately. This is especially likely with this group as I have to guess whether you are a national or a state editor. Regards, Rschen7754 (
TC)
21:56, 18 May 2008 (UTC)reply
User page: List of U.S. Routes in Pennsylvania
Hi Son,
Your User page
List of U.S. Routes in Pennsylvania is listed in two categories used by articles, although the
User page guideline states, "Do not put your userpage or subpages, including work-in-progress articles, into categories used by Wikipedia articles." Therefore, do you mind removing the categories from that User page?
This is the monthly newsletter of
WikiProject Tropical Cyclones. The Hurricane Herald aims to give a summary, both of the activities of the WikiProject and global
tropical cyclone activity. If you wish to change how you receive this newsletter, or no longer wish to receive it, please add your username to the appropriate section on the
mailing list. This newsletter covers all of
May 2008.
Please visit
this page and bookmark any suggestions of interest to you. This will help improve monitoring of the WikiProject's articles.
Storm of the month
Cyclone Nargis
Cyclone Nargis was the costliest and deadliest natural disaster in the history of
Burma (Myanmar). It formed on
April 27 in the central
Bay of Bengal, and after initially tracking north-northwestward it turned to the east. Quickly strengthening to reach peak winds of at least 165 km/h (105 mph), Nargis made landfall in the
Ayeyarwady Division of Burma on
May 2 near peak intensity. The cyclone killed at least 80,000 people and potentially over 300,000. Passing near the metropolis of
Yangon, the cyclone destroyed thousands of buildings, and damage was estimated at over $10 billion (USD). In the wake of the storm, the ruling military junta of Burma initially refused foreign aid, and after they allowed foreign assistance, the government was criticized for its poor handling of the aftermath of the storm.
Other tropical cyclone activity
Northwestern Pacific Ocean – Typhoon Rammasun was the strongest tropical cyclone worldwide during the month, though it did not affect land. Tropical Storm Matmo formed east of
Luzon in the middle of the month and lasted for three days. Severe Tropical Storm Halong (Cosme) was the deadliest storm in the Pacific basin, causing 58 deaths and $94 million (USD) in damage after hitting Luzon on
May 17. At the end of the month, Typhoon Nakri formed and reached peak intensity over open waters before becoming extratropical in early June.
Eastern Pacific Ocean –
Tropical Storm Alma was was the easternmost forming Pacific tropical cyclone on record. Forming from a trough on
May 29, it became a strong tropical storm before making landfall near
León, Nicaragua, killing at least two people.
Project News
Several other languages are active in the realm of tropical cyclone articles, though as much as ours. The
French Wikipedia has 76 storm articles, the
Spanish Wikipedia has 99 storm articles, and the
Portuguese Wikipedia has 116 storm articles. Each of the projects have several storm articles we do not have, and the coverage on non-notable storms outside of the Atlantic is better, particularly in the Southern Hemisphere.
During the month,
User:Potapych finished working on
Template:Infobox Hurricane Small, which is used for the small Infoboxes in season articles; he has updated several season article already with the changes.
There are currently 4,266 Good Articles listed at
WP:GA.
The backlog at
Good Article Nominations is 157 unreviewed articles. Out of 215 total nominations, 44 are on hold, 13 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 categories with the largest backlogs are: Theatre, film and drama (31), Sports and recreation (31), Transport (24), Music (13), and Art and architecture (11)
The GA Sweeps process is progressing nicely! During the month of May, a total of 82 articles were reviewed. Of that total, 71 were found to continue to meet the
GA criteria, and 11 were delisted. There are currently 15 articles that are still on hold in this process, awaiting revisions.
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
Giggy (
talk·contribs) (a.k.a.
Dihydrogen Monoxide (
talk·contribs)) is the GAN Reviewer of the Month for May, based on the assessments made by
Dr. Cash on the number and thoroughness of the reviews made by individual reviewers each week. Giggy had a whopping 45 reviews during the month of May! Congratulations to
Giggy (
talk·contribs) on being May's GAN Reviewer of the Month!
Other outstanding reviewers during the month of May include:
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!
New GA Review Process - Review Subpages
In case you haven't noticed, we initiated a new process for GA Reviews at the end of last month. The {{GA nominee}} template was modified to direct new reviews initiated on an article to begin on a subpage of article talkspace (e.g. [[Talk:Article/GA#]], where '#' is the current number of GA reviews conducted for the article, incremented automatically, starting with 1). The primary reason for this change is to address some concerns made by several Wikipedians that previous GA reviews are not easily accessible in archives, the way that featured article reviews and peer reviews are, since the review is conducted on the article's talkspace, instead of in a subpage of the featured article space or peer review space. The reason we opted to move GA reviews to article talkspace (instead of GA space) is to better maintain the personal relationship between editor(s) and reviewer(s) by keeping reviews done in an area where editors can easily access it. Nonetheless, we still desired to have better archiving and maintenance of past reviews, so that GA ultimately becomes more accountable.
When an article is nominated, the nominator adds the template using a substitution, by adding {{subst:GAN|subtopic=<name of subtopic for article at GAN>}}, as well as lists the article (as usual) at
WP:GAN in the appropriate category.
When a reviewer initiates a review of an article, all that needs to be done is to read the template on the article's {{GA nominee}} template on its talk page, and click on the link to start the review. When the reviewer clicks on that link, they will also see some instructions on how to start a review of a GAN. For new reviewers, there's also a link to the
Good Article criteria, as well as to the
Wikipedia:Reviewing good articles page and the
mentors list. Once an article is reviewed, the GA review page should be
transcluded onto the main article talk page, by adding {{Talk:Article/GA#}} to the bottom of the talk page. This is to ensure maintain the transparency of the GA process, as well as to make editors of the article in question aware that the review is taking place. When an article is either passed or failed, there's really nothing different to do in the process, although reviewers are encouraged to utilize the {{ArticleHistory}} template, linking to the GA review subpage with the 'action#link' parameter.
Shavuot celebrates Moses receiving the Ten Commandments.
What's This? Shalom aleichem sports fans, and welcome to the first of what I hope will be a monthly newsletter with the need-to-know information about our fair WikiProject. If you have any questions or comments, or would like to recommend a story for the newsletter, click
here to leave a message on the Newsletter Coordinator's talk page. In the News
WikiProject Good Articles is doing sweeps over all our current good articles to ensure they still meet criteria. For more information and how you can help, check out
WikiProject Good Articles Sweeps.
GA status for the article
Jew has been put on hold pending a few minor revisions. A list of things that need to be done to return this top importance article to its proper status can be found
here.
Jerusalem is a Featured Article Candidate! Go forth, my people, and
!vote!
To Do
One new Judaism-related article was created this month, the long requested
Hebrew Punctuation. Thanks to
Epson291 for creating it. Remember, folks, there are over forty
standing requests for Judaism articles, so whenever you get the opportunity make sure to go create a few.
In the right column you will see a listing of our most popular articles. All of these articles got 170,000+ page hits in the past month, and they should be on everyone's watchlist so we can keep them vandalism-free.
Spread the word! No, not the Word... (well, you can do that too) I'm talking about inviting knowledgeable users to join the project. You can proclaim your undying love of WikiProject Judaism in methods mild to wild, check the
project template page and
member list for examples. We also now have a flashy advertisement, to use it add {{
Wikipedia ads|ad=148}} to your userpage.
This newsletter was automatically delivered by
ShepBot because you are a member of the WikiProject. If you would like to opt out of future mailings, please remove your name from
this list.
Delivered by
§hepBot (
Disable) on
04:32, 4 July 2008 (UTC)reply
This is the monthly newsletter of
WikiProject Tropical Cyclones. The Hurricane Herald aims to give a summary, both of the activities of the WikiProject and global
tropical cyclone activity. If you wish to change how you receive this newsletter, or no longer wish to receive it, please add your username to the appropriate section on the
mailing list. This newsletter covers all of
June 2008.
Please visit
this page and bookmark any suggestions of interest to you. This will help improve monitoring of the WikiProject's articles.
The typhoon killed over 1,300 people, including 800 when the
MV Princess of the Stars capsized during the storm. Damage totaled $247 million (USD), with over 300,000 houses damaged or destroyed. The damage total included $70 million (USD) in crop damage.
Other tropical cyclone activity
2008 North Indian Ocean cyclone season — Two tropical depressions form during the month, including one in each sub-basin. The second depression hit Bangladesh, which added to flooding and damage across the area.
Northwestern Pacific Ocean – In addition to Fengshen, Typhoon Nakri became extratropical early in the month.
Eastern Pacific Ocean – Hurricane Boris and Tropical Storm Cristina form and co-exist well to the southwest of Mexico in the last week of the month through early July.
Addition of C-class
During the month, C-class
was added to the assessment scheme. The project has begun the process of integrating C-class, though as of this publication only 8 articles in the project are at that level. A preliminary solution would be to very strictly define B-class with
six criteria, with
one proposal to automatically re-assess all B-class articles as C-class until they are confirmed to have passed the criteria. Discussion and participation are welcome on the issue.
As a result of the addition of C-class, the ω (
WikiWork) rating for C-class is now 3.5, to keep in line with the previous system we used.
During the month, the project published a page on its
style for articles. The purpose for the page, as quoted from the top of the page, is to document a few existing unwritten guidelines for
Wikipedia:WikiProject Tropical cyclones.
The June member of the month is
User:Potapych. Though not officially a member of the project, Potapych is active on hurricane pages, having developed the new small infobox template introduced last month. After developing the new template, Potapych updated season articles across the board to accommodate the new template.
Changing the names of the Maltese village articles
There is currently an ongoing debate about whether the articles on Maltese villages should be given their English names.
Kyarichy has already gone and renamed a bunch of articles such as as
Kalkara citing these changes from
an old obsolete paper and
http://www.geody.com, even though these names are no longer in use.
The naming conventions clearly state that foreign location names commonly used in English should be used as the article names.
Now with 200% more Jewishness!
Yes, folks, we're moving on up. This newsletter is now the newsletter for both WikiProject Judaism, WikiProject Jewish History, and WikiProject Kabbalah. In the future, I may split them, but for now I think we'll be just fine with one. As always, any questions or comments should be directed to me,
L'Aquatique.
A Special Dispatch
Just a note, not aimed at anyone in particular. By order of the administrative cabal, it is officially not cool (and possibly
dickish) to call someone an anti-semite when they aren't being anti-semitic. Anti-semitic is a very charged word, and it's important only to use it when you're absolutely sure it applies, lest it become the subject of a
Godwin-esque law. Remember Hanlon's Razor: never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity. In the News
A new class on the importance scale has been added- C Class- which covers articles better than start but not quite to B Class yet. It is up to the WikiProjects to decide whether to adopt them or not. Currently, there has been little discussion within our Projects, so if you feel strongly either way be sure to note so at your Project[s].
Thanks largely to the efforts of
Xyz7890, a new navbox has come into being featuring Halakha topics. See:
Template talk:Halakha to join in the conversation about how it can best be improved.
To Do
The
Simple English Wikipedia is beginning a project of creating and improving articles related to religion, including Judaism. At the present time, volunteers are needed to propose our most important subjects for articles to be created. The official working list is
here and a more extended list is
here. If you are unsure of proper topics, you might try checking our lists of top importance level articles:
Judaism and
Jewish History. (WikiProject Kabbalah currently doesn't have such a list)
[Simple English] WikiProject Christianity is considering running a monthly drive wherein two or three top importance articles from English Wikipedia are simplified and moved over to S.E. They have extended an offer to work with us in creating a similar project for Judaism related articles. For questions or volunteer opportunities, please contact
User:John Carter.
WikiProject Kabbalah is in dire need of an article rating system for quality and importance. If you are familiar with that system and have some time on your hands, please create one. It could also use some infoboxes...
This newsletter was automatically delivered because you are a member of one or more Judaism related WikiProjects. If you would like to opt out of future mailings, please remove your name from
this list.
This is the monthly newsletter of
WikiProject Tropical Cyclones. The Hurricane Herald aims to give a summary, both of the activities of the WikiProject and global
tropical cyclone activity. If you wish to change how you receive this newsletter, or no longer wish to receive it, please add your username to the appropriate section on the
mailing list. This newsletter covers all of
July 2008.
Please visit
this page and bookmark any suggestions of interest to you. This will help improve monitoring of the WikiProject's articles.
Storm of the month
Hurricane Bertha near peak intensity
Hurricane Bertha was a rare early season
Cape Verde-type hurricane and the easternmost forming July
tropical storm on record. Bertha became the longest-lived pre-August Atlantic
tropical cyclone on record and the longest-lived tropical cyclone in the Atlantic Basin since
Ivan in
2004. The second named storm of the
2008 Atlantic hurricane season, Bertha developed from a
tropical wave that emerged off the coast of Africa on
July 1. After initially remaining weak while tracking westward, Bertha began to strengthen on
July 6, and the next day it quickly intensified to reach peak winds of 120 mph (195 km/h). The hurricane weakened during the day on
July 8, and after turning to a northwest drift, it passed within 40 miles (64 km) of
Bermuda on
July 14 before moving northeast away from the island. Bertha became extratropical on
July 20 to the east of
Newfoundland, after causing minimal damage and three indirect drowning deaths.
Other tropical cyclone activity
Northwestern Pacific Ocean – After several weeks of no activity,
Typhoon Kalmaegi developed in the middle of the month, passing near northern
Luzon before turning to the north and making landfalls on
Taiwan and
China; the typhoon caused heavy crop damage and 18 deaths. Later in the month,
Typhoon Fung-Wong caused further flooding in Taiwan and China. In addition to the two named typhoons,
PAGASA issued advisories on Tropical Depression Gener early in the month.
Eastern Pacific Ocean – Four named storms developed in the basin during the month, of which three became hurricanes; Hurricanes Elida, Fausto, and Genevieve, as well as Tropical Storm Douglas, all remained offshore, though in the middle of the month a tropical depression brought rainfall to
Mexico after hitting near
Lázaro Cárdenas, Michoacán. Hurricane Boris and Tropical Storm Cristina continued from the previous month.
Atlantic Ocean– In addition to
Hurricane Bertha, two other tropical cyclones developed in the month.
Tropical Storm Cristobal formed off the coast of
Florida, bringing rainfall and gusty winds to coastal
North Carolina and later
Nova Scotia. The most damaging Atlantic tropical cyclone during the month was
Hurricane Dolly, which formed on
July 20 in the western
Caribbean Sea. After tracking northwestward through the
Gulf of Mexico, it reached peak winds of 100 mph (155 km/h) before moving ashore on
South Padre Island, Texas. The hurricane caused flash flooding from heavy rainfall, with damage in the United States estimated at $1.2 billion; across its path Dolly caused 21 deaths, including 17 from landslides in Guademala, as well as two indirect fatalities.
Member of the month
Cyclone barnstar
The July member of the month is
User:Plasticup. Joining the project in August of 2007, Plasticup first became an asset in working on the active article series on
Hurricane Dean. After a period of inactivity, the user returned to produce two featured articles this month, both interesting meteorological histories. Additionally, Plasticup has focused some attention to articles in the 2005 season. Keep up the good work!
Project News
During July, there were two large changes to the operations of the WikiProject. First, WPTC adopted and helped develop the
WP 1.0 B-Class criteria, and was among the first projects to use a "forced" B-Class rubric as part of their assessment schemes. This means that all the articles tagged with {{hurricane|class=B|...}} are automatically reassessed as {{C-Class}}, unless all the values in the
checklist are marked as passed. In other words, to mark an article as B-Class, the banner needs to be changed to
B1, B2, B3, B4, B5 and B6 stand for each of the six points in the
WikiProject's rubric. The banner also has the capability to mark why an article doesn't meet the new B-Class standards: Typing the following in an article's talk page
will assess an article as C-Class, and mark that the article is not a B because of bad references.
Articles assessed as B's before the introduction of the forced checklist were automatically reassessed as C's, but they're awaiting new reviews to check if they still meet the new B criteria. These articles are listed on
Category:Tropical cyclone articles with incomplete B-Class checklists. Currently, there's 117 articles in the category—let's try to shrink that number to zero before the next edition of the Herald!
I've noticed that you are active in the area of Europe. I just wanted to let you know that a European Space Agency
task force has been set up to improve the presently very poor condition of articles about ESA and related topics. If you are interested, please join the task force
here. We sure could use your help. Thanks.
U5K0 (
talk)
19:31, 17 August 2008 (UTC)reply
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 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!
Other outstanding reviewers during the month of July include:
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 Sweeps Process
The GA Sweeps process has recently reached its first year anniversary. If you are unaware of what GA Sweeps is, it is a process put in place to help ensure the integrity of the ever-growing number of GAs, by determining if the articles still meet the
GA criteria. Experienced reviewers check each article, improving articles as they review them, and delisting those that no longer meet the criteria. Reviewers work on a specific
category of GAs, and there are still many categories that need to be swept. In order to properly keep track of reviews, a
set date was used to determine what articles needed to be reviewed (since any future GAs would be passed according to the most recent GA criteria).
The number of GAs that were to be reviewed totals 2,808. Since the beginning of Sweeps, the progress has reviewed 981 by the end of July 2008 (or exempted them). For a table and chart breakdown of the current progress, see
here.
With more than twenty editors reviewing the articles, progress is currently a third of the way done. At this rate, it will take another two years to complete the Sweeps, and active involvement is imperative to completing on time. We are always looking for new reviewers, and if you are interested in helping in speeding up the Sweeps process and improving your reviewing skills, please contact
OhanaUnited.
Did You Know...
... that the goal of GA Sweeps is to reviewed all articles listed before
26 August2007?
... that the entire category of, "Meteorology and atmospheric sciences" has been swept?
... that of all subcategories, "Recordings, compositions and performances" in the Music category has the most articles (240 articles in total)?
Sir Moses Montefore, a Jewish activist who died 123 years ago this month
"Censorship" of names of G-d
There is an interesting discussion currently taking place regarding whether or not it is acceptable to censor (i.e. G-d, HaShem->YodHey) names of G-d in articles to protect Jews who may be reading or editing the article. You can weigh in here:
Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Judaism#Yahweh.
Article Cleanup Lists User:B. Wolterding has generously offered us use of his bot to generate lists that show which articles of ours are tagged for cleanup. You can read more about this service here:
User:B._Wolterding/Cleanup_listings and if you would like to take him up on his offer, contact him on
his talk page.
WikiProject Kabbalah's only Featured and Good articles have been removed from the WikiProject, on the grounds that neither article (
Diane Keaton and
David Beckham, respectively) actually mention the subject's affiliation with
Kabbalah. If you have sourced information linking either of these people to Kabbalah, please add it so the articles can be returned to the WikiProject.
After a rather heated discussion, there are now two barnstars for use by the Jewish WikiProjects, {{The Jewish Barnstar}} and {{The New Jewish Barnstar}}, and you can choose which one you would like to use.. Remember: barnstars are for rewarding users who are doing good work on the project or on Judaism, Jewish History, or Kabbalah articles, and anyone can give anyone else a barnstar. If you see a user who you thinks deserves a thank you, give them a barnstar!
To Do/Help Requests
If you have some spare time on your hands, we could use an article about a Kabbalah scholar named
Moshe Idel. According to
HG there are quite a few sources easily available, you can contact him if you have questions. Be sure to nominate it for
DYK if the finished article is eligible.
The folks at
Shimon Peres need some assistance from someone familiar with both the Hebrew calendar and language to help them figure out the subject's birthday. If you can help, please see
Talk:Shimon_Peres#Birthday.
We get a lot of articles that are being created and not announced! By announcing new articles, you attract attention to them, and the more people looking and editing the better they will get. If you would like your new article to appear in the newsletter, add it
here for Judaism and Kabbalah and
here for Jewish History.
There are some 40 odd standing requests for Judaism related articles. Please make them! I would, but I'm too busy writing this. .
This newsletter was automatically delivered because you are a member of one or more Judaism related WikiProjects. If you would like to opt out of future mailings, please remove your name from
this list. As always, please direct all questions, comments, requests, barnstars, offers of help, and angry all-caps anti-semitic rants to my talk page. Thanks, and have a great month.
L'Aquatiqueapproves|
this|
message20:31, 31 August 2008 (UTC)reply
This is the monthly newsletter of
WikiProject Tropical Cyclones. The Hurricane Herald aims to give a summary, both of the activities of the WikiProject and global
tropical cyclone activity. If you wish to change how you receive this newsletter, or no longer wish to receive it, please add your username to the appropriate section on the
mailing list. This newsletter covers all of
August 2008.
Please visit
this page and bookmark any suggestions of interest to you. This will help improve monitoring of the WikiProject's articles.
Storm of the month
Hurricane Gustav at landfall in western Cuba at peak strength
Hurricane Gustav was a deadly and damaging hurricane which formed late in the month in the
Caribbean Sea. It first struck
Haiti on
August 26 as a minimal hurricane, where it killed 76 people and damaged or destroyed over 10,000 houses. Gustav turned to the southwest, moving over
Jamaica where it killed 11 people. The hurricane rapidly intensified to reach peak winds of 150 mph (240 km/h) before making landfall on western
Cuba; in the country, Gustav damaged or destroyed over 100,000 houses, though no deaths were reported due to well-executed evacuations. In the
Gulf of Mexico, Gustav weakened due to its previous land interaction, and on
September 1 it made landfall in south-central
Louisiana as a Category 2 hurricane, where it caused heavy damage. Across its path, the hurricane caused 101 deaths, with an initial damage total of $20 billion.
Other tropical cyclone activity
Atlantic Ocean– In addition to Gustav, three other tropical cyclones formed. Early in the month,
Tropical Storm Edouard caused light damage when it moved ashore along Texas. In the middle of the month,
Tropical Storm Fay formed over Hispaniola and later crossed over Cuba into the Gulf of Mexico; throughout the Caribbean it caused 25 deaths. Fay struck southwestern Florida, moved across the state, turned to the west, and moved across the Florida panhandle, making a record four landfalls on the state. The storm dropped 27.65 inches (702.1 mm) of rain in
Melbourne, making Fay the fourth
wettest Florida tropical cyclone. In the end of the month,
Hurricane Hanna formed northeast of the
Lesser Antilles; its impact will be covered in the next month's summary.
Eastern Pacific Ocean – Four named storms developed in the basin during the month, including Tropical Storm Kika, which was the first Central Pacific tropical cyclone since
Ioke in 2006. Hurricane Hernan was the strongest hurricane of the month in the basin, reaching Category 3 status while remaining away from land. Tropical Storm Iselle lasted for a few days, but did not affect land.
Tropical Storm Julio made landfall on
Baja California Sur, producing heavy rainfall and causing two deaths.
Northwestern Pacific Ocean – The month began with
Tropical Storm Kammuri forming and hitting southern
China; the storm killed 140 people, mostly in neighboring
Vietnam, and damage totaled $120 million (USD). Tropical Storms Phanfone and Vongfone lasted for a few days out at sea, before
Typhoon Nuri formed and struck northern
Luzon, causing 12 deaths.
The August member of the month is
Cyclonebiskit, who has been on Wikipedia since April. The user helped maintain the current season articles as well as storm articles. Cyclonebiskit has written one GA, and wrote much of one of the recent tropical cyclone articles.
Version 0.7
This month, several of the WikiProject's articles were selected for the
Version 1.0 Editorial Team's
Version 0.7 static release. The article selection occurs using an
automated process using WikiProjects' quality and importance assessments. For WPTC, this means that 29 articles will be part of this release, an increase from 13 in the
previous release. It should be noted that these numbers are based on preliminary data that can change based on updates to the database and corrections to the selection algorithm and WP:1.0's cut-off score.
The list of articles chosen for the release can be seen
here. Of the selection, almost half of the articles are already
featured, and eleven are
good articles. There one B-Class article (
1970 Bhola cyclone, two C-Class articles (
Hurricane Andrew,
Cyclone Nargis), and two Start-Class articles (
Pacific typhoon,
Hurricane Rita). As these articles will be published in a CD, it is imperative that the project improve them quickly.
The full list of all the WikiProject's articles is also available
here. According to that list, WPTC's highest-scoring article—
Tropical cyclone—has a score of 1969, which is very good as
Canada, the selection's highest-scoring article, has a score of 2,409. That said,
Extreme wind warning is the least important article we have, with a score of 227, so we may have to improve it a little bit so it isn't that low...
Thanks! I figured it's a good way to keep people updated on my status. Also, as you can see, I try to be creative/clever with the icons. Unfortunately it looks like the NYSR thing is already out of date though, as the discussion is apparently over. Just like in past discussions on this, the call was made for USRD to reform but it fell on deaf ears. The pro-centralized members would rather just stop replying and keep the status quo. It's unfortunate that they want to keep things this way, I'm seeing a striking parallel between USRD and
Esperanza, another large group that grew into a bureaucracy. You know what happened to Esperanza? They split it up.
-Jeff(talk)23:54, 14 September 2008 (UTC)reply
I did a bunch of PA articles for you ;) - All are being GAN'd as soon as they're ready (see PA 666, 663, 434, 652, 646, and 402). They're for the county challenge contest of mine. :) - Mitch32(
UP)16:47, 1 October 2008 (UTC)reply
This is the monthly newsletter of
WikiProject Tropical Cyclones. The Hurricane Herald aims to give a summary, both of the activities of the WikiProject and global
tropical cyclone activity. If you wish to change how you receive this newsletter, or no longer wish to receive it, please add your username to the appropriate section on the
mailing list. This newsletter covers all of
September 2008.
Please visit
this page and bookmark any suggestions of interest to you. This will help improve monitoring of the WikiProject's articles.
As a result of an extended Wikibreak, I will not be able to work on the next month's newsletter. Other users are welcome to get it together. ♬♩
Hurricanehink (
talk)
03:53, 5 October 2008 (UTC)reply
Storm of the month
Hurricane Ike over the Gulf of Mexico
Hurricane Ike was among the costliest Atlantic hurricanes on record, based on a preliminary damage estimate of $31.5 billion (
USD). The ninth named storm, fifth hurricane, and third major hurricane of the
2008 season, Ike developed on
September 1 in the tropical Atlantic Ocean. Maintaining a generally westward track throughout its duration, Ike reached Category 4 status on the
Saffir-Simpson scale, moving across the
Turks and Caicos Islands at that intensity before weakening and crossing
Cuba; heavy damage was reported in Cuba, which was still recovering from
Hurricane Gustav just weeks prior. Gustav later moved across the Gulf of Mexico and struck near
Galveston, Texas, where its effects were estimated as the costliest hurricane in Texas history. Further inland, the storm brought high winds and widespread damage, and its impact reached as far as Canada. Throughout its path, Gustav caused over 100 deaths, mostly in Texas and
Haiti, and several hundred remain missing.
Other tropical cyclone activity
Atlantic Ocean– In addition to Ike, two hurricanes from the previous month,
Gustav and
Hanna, lasted into September, both striking the United States.
Tropical Storm Josephine formed while Ike and Hanna were active; it remained away from land and dissipated four days after forming. The tropics were quiet in the Atlantic for about 10 days after Ike dissipated, until
Hurricane Kyle formed north of
Hispaniola; its precursor brought heavy rains to the
Greater Antilles, and Kyle ultimately became extratropical as it moved into
Atlantic Canada. At the end of the month,
Tropical Storm Laura formed from a
subtropical cyclone far away from land; it persisted until early October, when it lost tropical characteristics to the southeast of
Newfoundland.
Eastern Pacific Ocean– The month in the eastern Pacific Ocean was the quietest on record, in terms of
ACE index. Early in the month, Tropical Storm Karina lasted for two days without affecting land. A few days later,
Tropical Storm Lowell formed and later affected the
Baja California peninsula and mainland Mexico as a tropical depression; its remnants merged with the remnants of Ike.
Western Pacific Ocean– Five named storms developed in the western Pacific, beginning with
Typhoon Sinlaku which became a powerful cyclone before weakening and bringing heavy rainfall to
Taiwan; there, it caused 11 deaths and heavy damage, and it later affected
Japan. The second storm of the month was
Typhoon Hagupit, which caused $1 billion (USD) in damage and 68 deaths when it struck China.
Typhoon Jangmi was next, which brought further damage and deaths to Taiwan. Two more tropical storms developed during the month; Mekkhala formed in the
South China Sea and caused heavy damage in
Vietnam, while Higos moved across the
Philippines and later struck
China.
North Indian Ocean– One deep depression formed during the month, which moved ashore in the
Indian province of
Odisha; it caused 25 deaths from heavy rainfall.
Member of the month
Cyclone barnstar
The September member of the month is
CrazyC83, who has been a steady editor within the project for the past few years. Lately, the user's contributions include maintaining the current season articles, which is the biggest workload for the project. In the past, however, CrazyC83 was very active in writing articles, and was a proponent for all storms in the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season getting articles. Of note was his contributions to
Hurricane Juan, which brought it to featured status and later to the main page.
Project News
Overall, the project has had a relatively uneventful month. One of the most noteworthy events was the selection of 32 tropical cyclone-related articles, that were
chosen as part of
Wikipedia 0.7. Wikipedia 0.7 is a collection of English Wikipedia articles due to be released on DVD, and available for free download, later this year. While many of the selected articles are of featured or good quality, several require substantial cleanup and expansion.
In other news, a handful of changes to project standards have taken place. Per a consensus on
the project's talk page, the section of each tropical cyclone article previously entitled "Storm history" has been changed to "Meteorological history", thanks in part to
Plasticup's bot which preformed the hundreds of edits to execute the change. In addition, a discussion is ongoing regarding the necessity of
List of storms in the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season, and similar articles for other seasons.
This is the monthly newsletter of
WikiProject Tropical Cyclones. The Hurricane Herald aims to give a summary, both of the activities of the WikiProject and global
tropical cyclone activity. If you wish to change how you receive this newsletter, or no longer wish to receive it, please add your username to the appropriate section on the
mailing list. This newsletter covers all of
October 2008.
Please visit
this page and bookmark any suggestions of interest to you. This will help improve monitoring of the WikiProject's articles.
Storm of the month
Cyclone X
Deep Depression ARB 02 caused the 2008 Yemen floods. On October 19 the IMD noted that an area of low pressure which located to the south east of
Salalah,
Oman had intensifed in to a tropical depression and was assigned the number ARB 02. On October 21 IMD updated the system to a Deep Depression while it lay 700 km south of
Salalah,
Oman near the east coast of
Somalia. It lost its strength while crossing the Gulf of Aden due to entry of dry air and land interaction as it passed close to the northeastern coast of Somalia. It later was downgraded to a Depression, named TC 03B by the JTWC. On October 24 it made landfall on the south-eastern coast of
Yemen, leaving at least 26 civilians and six soldiers dead while trapping hundreds of people due to flooding and torrential rainfalls. The latest figure of casualties is of 184 persons dead and 100 others missing, mostly from the region of
Hadhramawt, where the storm made landfall. A total of 733 houses were destroyed in the governorates of
Hadhramaut and
Al Mahrah, while 22,000 people were displaced. The Yemeni Government declared the two aforementioned governorates as
disaster zones.
Other tropical cyclone activity
Atlantic Ocean– In the Atlantic, four tropical cyclones formed this October.
Tropical Storm Marco formed in the Bay of Campeche on October 6. It made landfall on October 8 and is one of the smallest Atlantic tropical cyclones since 1988.
Tropical Storm Nana formed October 12 in the middle of the open Atlantic. It had no impact anywhere and dissipated October 14.
Hurricane Omar formed October 13 and dissipated October 18. Eventually peaking as a Category 4 hurricane, Omar passed through the
Lesser Antilles twice, including once near peak intensity. Fortunately, it caused only one indirect death.
Tropical Depression Sixteen formed on October 16 and dissipated two days later after making landfall. It killed 16 to 20 people in
Central America.
Eastern Pacific Ocean– In the eastern north Pacific, three tropical cyclones formed this October.
Hurricane Norbert formed October 3 and dissipated October 12. The strongest storm thus far this season, Norbert is the first hurricane to strike the west coast of the
Baja California Peninsula since 1968. Eight deaths have been blamed on the hurricane..
Tropical Storm Odile formed October 8 and paralleled the coast of Mexico before dissipating on October 12.
Tropical Depression Seventeen-E formed on October 23 and dissipated the next day without impacting land.
Western Pacific Ocean– In the western north Pacific, two tropical cyclones formed.
Tropical Storm Bavi formed October 18 in the open Pacific. It never came near land and dissipated three days later.
Tropical Depression Twenty Two-W formed on October 13 in the Gulf of Tonkin and made landfall on October 15. It dissipated inland the next day.
South-West Indian – The 2008-09 South West Indian Ocean Season got off to an early start with two pre season zones of disturbed weather. The first
zone of disturbed weather formed on October 6 and did not develop any further. Whilst the second zone of disturbed weather formed on October 16 and developed in to
Moderate Tropical Storm Asma.
Member of the month
Cyclone barnstar
The October member of the month is
Hurricanehink. Since joining the project near its inception, Hurricanehink has been involved in bringing forty two
articles, eighteen
lists and six
topics to
featured status. Just this month, Hurricanehink was mentioned in
the Signpost Dispatch. Hurricanehink has also been the regular distributor for this newsletter.
Project News
A
discussion concerning sandboxes for next year's articles has begun. Please consider working on sandboxes so they will be ready to publish. As tropical cyclones can form at any time in the western Pacific and northern Indian Oceans, these two season's should be made ready for cyclones by December. Ideally, due to the possibility of pre-season storms, the eastern Pacific and Atlantic seasons should also be ready by then, but they should at least be ready by the northern-Hemisphere antipeak in late February and early March. Seasons for the years 2010 to 2015 should be given the name "Post-2009 {ocean name} {cyclone term} seasons", as in "Post 2009 Atlantic hurricane seasons".
A
category for tropical cyclone articles of very-low importance has been introduced. Although
discussion is still ongoing, a rating of very-low-importance will generally be given to weak cyclones that do not have impact or set any sort of record.
Editorial
This month, our usual editor,
Hurricanehink, has been on a semi-wikibreak until further notice. I am filling in as editor and distributor on an interim basis. The newsletter will continue as normal during that time. Thank you.
Miss Madeline |
Talk to Madeline00:49, 2 November 2008 (UTC)reply
This is the monthly newsletter of
WikiProject Tropical Cyclones. The Hurricane Herald aims to give a summary, both of the activities of the WikiProject and global
tropical cyclone activity. If you wish to change how you receive this newsletter, or no longer wish to receive it, please add your username to the appropriate section on the
mailing list. This newsletter covers all of
November &
December 2008.
Please visit
this page and bookmark any suggestions of interest to you. This will help improve monitoring of the WikiProject's articles.
Storm of the month
Hurricane Paloma
Hurricane Paloma
Hurricane Paloma was the second most powerful November hurricane on record in the Atlantic Basin, behind
Hurricane Lenny in 1999. It was the third and final major hurricane to hit Cuba in 2008, being the first time that three major hurricanes have struck Cuba in one season. It also marked the first time that at least one major hurricane formed in every month of the hurricane season from July to November, with only June not having a major hurricane this season.
Hurricane Paloma was also the last Tropical Depression of the 2008 season, and caused at least $1.4 billion in damage and was responsible for at least one direct death.
North Indian– There were three Tropical Depressions during the last two months of the
2008 North Indian Ocean cyclone season, however there were only two that officially became Tropical Storms being named Khai-Muk and Nisha.
South Indian– Cyclone Bernard was the first cyclone of the year to move into the Australian Region from the Southwest Indian Ocean. Forming on early on November 19 it quickly intensified into a Moderate Tropical Storm the next day, however as it moved westward it weakened into a Tropical Depression and moved into Australia's Bureau of Meteorology's area of responsibility and dissipated later on November 21.
Australian - There were four tropical lows during November and December with Tropical Low ex Bernard moving into the Australian Region from the South-West Indian Ocean. Two of the Lows developed into Tropical Cyclones being named Anika and Billy respectively. Anika intensified into a category two cyclone whilst Cyclone Billy became a Severe Tropical Cyclone after it had affected Northern Australia.
The
2008–09 South Pacific cyclone season got off to an slow start during November and December, with three Tropical Disturbances forming during December. Only one of the tropical disturbances developed into a tropical depression.
Member of the month
Cyclone barnstar
The November/December member of the month is
Thegreatdr, who has been a steady editor within the project for the past few years. Lately, the user's contributions include improving some of the Pacific Typhoon season articles from the 1980s. Thegreatdr has also tipped us off about going on's at the
National Hurricane Center and the
Hydrometeorological Prediction Center.
Project News
During the last two months there have been several important discussions of which some are still seeking contributions from members. These include discussions about:
Project Importance - Is it better to rate Storm Importance by basin or by overall importance? - There seems to be a consensus to rate storm importance on a case by case basis, though there still needs to be a bit more discussion on this matter.
Prominent units within TC articles: Imperial or SI? - Which should be the prominent unit outside the Atlantic and Eastern Pacific Basins, Knots or MPH? Generally people think that Knots should not be used except in the general science articles and infoboxes.
ACE - Where and how, should it be used? - We have decided that it should not be used outside the Atlantic or the Eastern Pacific hurricane Seasons. A debate is still ongoing with a view too get rid of it all together.
JMA Tropical DepressionsShould we include them with the season articles or not? - The general consensus so far seems to be that we should include them in the season articles though this debate is still ongoing.
We discovered during December that the
Australian Bureau of Meteorology have started to designate the Tropical Lows that form within their region with letter U. It is unclear whether either TCWC Jakarta or TCWC Port Moresby assign any designations to lows that form within their Area of Responsibility.
In regards to the SD / HD simulcasted channels, I just like the old way better but I'll stop reverting to avoid an edit war. There's been a lot of vandalism on this page recently. People have been changing names of channels into ones that don't exist, deleting channels that are still there, putting false names on channels, moving channels to where they aren't really, etc. I got it semi-protected for a week and I asked an admin to semi-protect it indefinitely because it still happening, especially by anonymous editors. I personally think anonymous editors shouldn't even be allowed because a lot of them only vandalize and don't make constructive, helpful edits.
TomCat4680 (
talk)
12:22, 28 January 2009 (UTC)reply
TomCat4680 (
talk) has given you a
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