Hello Pit-yacker! welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for contributing. Here are a some recommended guidelines to facilitate your involvement. Best of luck. Have fun! --ElectricEye
I am the Communications Officer at Contact Theatre. I recently updated our Wikipedia page so the information is now up-to-date and more informative. I've just noticed you reverted it to a stub full of incorrect information. If you have any worries about copy violation please don't as it has all come from an official source. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.3.234.15 (talk) 18:08, 18 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I've drawn up an Isle of Man map (found here) for use in the Template:Infobox UK place. Is there any chance you could attempt a calibration (it's really, really beyond my limited understanding!)? I've half set up the syntax in the infobox coding due to a test I'm running in my sandbox.
Thanks for the calibration. I think I've set it up wrong however - it needs to display working from the "crown_dependency=" field rather than "country=". I'm not sure how to do it. Also I've got everything working, except automating the "Ambulance field".
Thank for the additional work! Much appreciated. Hopefully someone with the technical knowhow will be able to automate the the map and ambulance field. Jza8420:17, 18 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I'm posting the following to you as a courtesy! I know you've been a driving force behind improving the Manchester and Greater Manchester articles thus far! I've posted this to all WP:MANC users!
Hello fellow WikiProject Greater Manchester participant! You may or may not be aware that our Manchester article has recently obtained official good article status! This is a truly great achievement for the project... but... we don't want to stop there! We're hoping to spend the next few weeks as a team to raise the standard of this article to featured standard! It will only be possible if we work together, and thus we hope you can take a moment to look both at the FA criteria, and the Manchester article and aid us in this feat! Any problems, feel free to raise them at Talk:Manchester! Good luck! Jza8423:20, 10 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
A {{prod}} template has been added to the article Jilly's Rockworld, suggesting that it be deleted according to the proposed deletion process. All contributions are appreciated, but this article may not satisfy Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion, and the deletion notice explains why (see also "What Wikipedia is not" and Wikipedia's deletion policy). You may contest the proposed deletion by removing the {{dated prod}} notice, but please explain why you disagree with the proposed deletion in your edit summary or on its talk page. Also, please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Even though removing the deletion notice will prevent deletion through the proposed deletion process, the article may still be deleted if it matches any of the speedy deletion criteria or it can be sent to Articles for Deletion, where it may be deleted if consensus to delete is reached. If you endorse deletion of the article, and you are the only person who has made substantial edits to the page, please tag it with {{db-author}}. B. Wolterding15:57, 11 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Hello again, (my apologies for the constant bombardment of messages)
Do you think you'd be able to calibrate this new Oldham map so that it was able to have a live pointer system like the county maps? It wouldn't need to be amalgamated into the UK place infobox, it's more for something like that found on List of places in Greater Manchester that I have planned.
Thanks ever so much for this!... However you've spotted a mistake of mine - I've confused Denshaw with Grains Bar, which is a tiny hamlet, and a different settlement. I'll fix the image to show the correction, though your excellent calibration will remain! Thanks ever so much for this. I'm trying to bring Oldham upto scratch... well, the article at least! Hope all is well! Jza8423:11, 13 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
May seem like old news now, but Manchester was recently listed as a good article, try and make as much effort as you can with trying to make it featured.
Manchester Airport has seen unprecedented vandalism from anonymous editors recently, on 24th September it was protected by MastCell for a period of 1 week. Make sure to visit the page (after that date) regularly so we can stamp out any "bad edits".
Try to invite more members to this project. As much as a streamlined team is good, the more editors we have the broader the range we can cover.
Hi per the request tag you put on the Pankhurst Centre article, I've added a gallery on the talk page for choice. I took the pics earlier today. I hope they suffice. The outside of the place is a mess, it's almost totally overgrown and looks like no money has been spent on it in a while. ---- WebHamster21:54, 26 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The project now has 28 members! 7 new participants enrolled this week, they can be viewed here. There was also change to the welcoming messages this month, by Jza84, which reinvigorated the style in response to the change of colours on the main and affiliated pages. See the welcome templates, here. Finally, a barnstar has been created for the project! See the final design on this page, and so far it has been awarded to one lucky participants, WebHamster. Well done.
Greater Manchester Article News
Well has this month been a hub of activity, or what? (See:Original diff) The new assessment scale has been welcomed by many here at WPGM and as of 4th November, 81.37% of all 650 articles have been assessed with both importance and class. Two articles have been passed good article criteria since last delivery, they are: Didsbury & Dunham Massey. Well done to all involved.
Current Debates
There was a lengthy debate over a certain number of related articles in Manchester City Centre this week, (See:the thread involved). Aytoun Street, Barton Square, Brazenoose Sqaure, Dover Street, Manchester and Police Street were all flagged by Pit-yacker as being deserved of deletion per lacking notablilty. The process took 5 days at articles for deletion and the result was, delete. Other sections that readied editors into scrambling over themselves this month were: should Greater Manchester boroughs get their own infobox? Such as with London boroughs. The debate continutes.
Monthly Challenges
Same as last month, we've have to get Manchester upto Featured Article Standard. However, with Manchester now rated as A-Class (above GA and below FA) it may be easier than first thought. Try to fill all the current "to do" requirements. There has also been some talk of increased activity of bringing Greater Manchester to Good Article Standard. It would be ideal if all 650 articles were at least GA standard, but that will never happen in the next month. But please if you can, assess your ability to understand an article and if you're acquauinted with the task in hand and potentially long wait for a writing and for a review, go ahead! Be bold.
Manchester Airport once again saw more vandal edits this month, and was protected for another consecutive month on 22nd October by Jmlk17. Some users have also realised the extreme coincidence in the first half of 65% of editing IPs, i.e. all begin with "79.72". Could it be the same editor? If you can keep visiting the page to revert vandalism in sight. The most freqeunt additions that are factually incorrect are the inclusions of: Chicago O'Hare and New York-JFK to Pakistan International Airlines (T2) and Newquay to Air Southwest (T3). MAN also has a peer review.
Although you may not have noticed that this WikiProject has a associated portal. The page named, Portal:North West England, is updated frequently, but it would be nice to get more editors. It too has recently undergone a peer review, and some criteria has been added to get the page to featured portal status. You could signify your involvement by adding {{User Portal NWE}} to your userpage.
Great additions to the article. The chart of population history is retrospectively aggregated by VoB to the current county boundaries, so a note needs to be added to the article to acknowledge that. I can't work out if the figures are for the current shire or ceremonial county (eyes/brain don't work so well when its late). MRSC • Talk22:29, 1 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The project now has 31 members. 3 new participants enrolled last month, they can be viewed here. Andrew has also created another template for your talk page (even though this links to your userpage) which displays for all to see that you are a member of the project. You can add it to your page by including {{WPGM Talk}} to the page. It may be difficult to see the true effects of these welcoming messages, but I'm estimating that since the introduction of these that 12 new users have joined, all 100% have accepted their invitations, and therefore they are 100% successful in their aim.
Greater Manchester Article News
Once again, the project has been subject to much praise from three newly promoted featured articles, and one more good article. Oldham (nom), Manchester (nom), M62 motorway (nom) and Chat Moss (review) have all passed with flying colours. Featured articles now make up 0.03% more of the overall articles that there are relating to the project, than last month. Of all 791 pages which are tagged with this template, 100% have been assessed with the new scale which was introduced last month. It may also be worth noting two others pages that are undergoing transformations are: List of companies based in Greater Manchester and Belle Vue Zoo.
Current Debates
There was a lengthy debate over Manchester Airport this month, which lead to three article for deletions, second nominations viewable here and deletion review viewable here. Basically, what happened was there was quite a great misunderstanding of what the purpose of the lists actually were. They were to compile a list of the destinations served by each terminal and linked along into a sub-page, where it would seem the overview page (i.e. Manchester Airport) would look less cluttered, as was the suggestion at the peer review. Some participants at the first AFD, stated that reviews shouldn't be carried out upon unless there is consensus, and as they are not authorative should only be used as a guide. It was soon sorted though and all three daughter-lists were deleted. There has also been a change to the projects aims, which took a dramatic overhaul this week following the FA pass of Manchester. The change was performed by Jza84. It is now recognised that we should bring not only top importance articles to FA standard but also ones that have been long-since reviewed, like Altrincham and Stretford. And if you're wondering why Salford is there it's due to the fact that there is a consensus among the project members that as Salford is in such close vicinity to the City of Manchester, that it's our "duty" to help promote it. The change came about about after this discussion.
Monthly Challenges
New this month, we have to get Greater Manchester upto Featured Article Standard. However, with Manchester now rated as FA-Class and the proposed "skipping" of the GA process, it may not be too long before we see this under the success section on the project mainpage. It would be ideal if all 791 articles were at least GA standard, but that will never happen in the next month! But please if you can, assess your ability to understand an article and if you're acquauinted with the task in hand and potentially long wait for a writing and for a review, go ahead! Be bold. The progress monitor can be seen here.
Once again, Portal:North West England has been subject to much exposure on behalf of it's editors. The current status of the portal is looking good and it has so far gained unanimous support at it's FPOC. Hopefully, it'll be promoted and we'll have yet another success on our hands. Also, most major articles that are relevant have been tagged with a shortcut to the Portal mainpage, by Jza.
And finally, have a Very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Happy New Year to all our Greater Manchester Wikipedians! The project now has 34 members. 5 new participants enrolled last month, they can be viewed here. On behalf of the team I hope they have prosperous and enjoyable usership and wish them well with their forthcoming work!
User:Archtransit and User:Rudget, both part of our team, are current candidates for adminship (see here for Archtransit and here for Rudget). We wish them luck with this persuit and hope they will become our latest project participants with admin status!
Simillarly, the Portal:North West England is now officially a featured portal. User:Rudget has been overwhelmingly involved with this portal and he too is hereby thanked on behalf of the project for his continued contributions to this page and many others.
There have been a number of debates this month, some of which with a high level of potential impact for the project and its members.
Article assessment for the project became a point of contention when around 1400 articles were tagged by a bot. Most of these artcles were on "minor" association football players. The consensus was that in our state of around 30 participants and as a predominatly geography based project, most of these articles should be untagged, at very least for the time being. Of our 1403 articles now tagged however, only (?) 85% are assessed - a drop of 15%!
Perhaps one of the most notable debates this month was the possibility of... scrapping the project newsletter! User:Rudget has written the last three editions (that's all of them!) and has decided that he'd like to pass on the responsibility. It has been proposed that a noticeboard system be introduced to highlight new issues in a near(!)-realtime fashion. I User:Jza84 am writing what could now be the last GM newsletter for a while. If you're a member of the team, but aren't closely involved with the project, then we'd love to hear from you at WT:GM with your views on which system of communication is the right way forwards (if any/both!).
Monthly Challenges
As was stated in last months newsletter, the Greater Manchester remains a key article for the project, and one which has been identified as urgent in our quest for Featured Article status. Sadly, for all our other successes, Greater Manchester has changed little since this time last year] (!) and is still an article requiring expansion and development. The new WP:UKCOUNTIES guide may provide new ways in which to channel our efforts. Although we endevour to have good article status even for our suburbs and hamlets, other articles specifically identified as needing development towards FA include Salford, Stretford and Altrincham.
Many of our most crucial articles about our largest towns are still in poor condition: Rochdale, Bury, Prestwich, Bolton, and Wigan are of "start class" standard - much lower than we should have. If you feel you can help, please be bold and try to improve these.
One final challenge for this month is for all those with new digial cameras for Christmas, or even digial images stored away on a disc!... many of our place articles are still without a single photograph, and www.geograph.org.uk is running low on quality images. Even those with photographs often have a low quality photograph of the local church. MORE ARE NEEDED! Especially townscapes! If you think you can help, a barnstar is up for grabs for best picture added in the next month or so!
We're always looking for potential new project members and ways for greater communication, collaboration and participation. WP:GM has a strong core of users, but would like to have more input from a wider user-base. If you can think of ways to improve our ways of working, please feel free to mention them at WT:GM. Simillarly, if you notice a new or unapproached user who is producing sound work related to Greater Manchester and its consituent parts, please don't forget to ask them if they'd like to join us, either in your own hand, or by adding {{Welcome WPGM}} to their talk page.
Would you like to write the next newsletter for WP:GM?? Please nominate yourself at WT:GM! New editors are always welcome!
A tag has been placed on Image:Manc St Peters Square.jpg requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section I1 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the image is redundant copy (all pixels the same or scaled down) of an image in the same file format, which is on Wikipedia (not on Commons), and all inward links have been updated.
If you think that this notice was placed here in error, you may contest the deletion by adding {{hangon}} to the top of the page (just below the existing speedy deletion or "db" tag), coupled with adding a note on [[Talk:Image:Manc St Peters Square.jpg|the article's talk page]] explaining your position, but be aware that once tagged for speedy deletion, if the article meets the criterion it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself, but don't hesitate to add information to the article that would would render it more in conformance with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Hennessey, Patrick (talk) 06:45, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
WarthogDemon has smiled at you! Smiles promote WikiLove and hopefully this one has made your day better. Spread the WikiLove by smiling at someone else, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past or a good friend. Cheers, and Happy editing! Smile at others by adding {{subst:Smile}} to their talk page with a friendly message.
Since the January newsletter there has been an increase of 5 featured articles/lists, taking our total number of featured entries upto 16 17 (Trafford passed today!).
Although WP:GM leads the way in terms of featured content by a local British project, the Kent and Yorkshire WikiProjects are close to this total, with 11 and 14 featured entries respectively.
Following a somewhat frenzied collaboration at the start of March, and a nomination by User:Joshii, Greater Manchester was promoted to GA status. It's the first metropolitan county to obtain this recognition.
There has otherwise been a reduction in WP:GM nominations for GA status, something which the project has begun to discuss on the talk page.
Having completed all but one of our short term aims set last December, the project would like to look at developing new short term aims. Suggestions have been made here, but there is scope for flexibility. Do you have a entry you would like to see developed?
Two members have left the project however, each for rather different reasons:
Archtransit (talk·contribs) was an administrator, and project member, who was found to have been abusing his editting and sysop privliges. Following investigation, Archtransit was banned indefinately. A report in The Signpost is found here.
Rudget (talk·contribs), also an administrator, decided to leave the project. Reasons mentioned included the demands of admin duties taking over too much time. Rudget helped towards Didsbury's GA promotion, and Portal:North West England's FP promotion.
Thanks
This WikiProject, would not be where it is today without each and every one of its members! Thank you to all!
WP:GM is a great project, and is leading the way for local WikiProjects of the UK. However, though the project talk page is a hub of activity, it is regularly used by only a core of 5-6 editors, which isn't making the most of its potential. Indeed, a study, by the University of Minnesota found that "One-tenth of 1 percent of editors account for nearly half of Wikipedia's content value". We at WP:GM do not want to follow suit!
There are several editors who have, sadly, not editted since the turn of 2008, and others, which concentrate in areas other than Greater Manchester material (which is quite fine!).
The WikiProject Greater Manchester would like to know if YOU are still around, and if so, if you've like to be more involved, and, if not, why not and what can we do to get you involved and be a bigger part of the team?
Feel free to come by the project talk page and leave us a message on what you're working on and/or what you'd like to see improved. The project is only as strong as its members and we'd like to know if you're still active or if we can help you with your editting.
Images
A picture's worth a thousand words
In our last issue, a plea was made for more images to be submitted to Wikipedia/WikiCommons to improve the quality and context of our articles. Many of our Top priority articles are still lacking in quality images, if any!
www.geograph.org.uk is an online resource of photographs of places in the UK, which we can use. Www.flickr.com also has some images we are permitted to use. Do you have a digital camera however? Can you take photographs of townscapes and landmarks in your local area that can be used here? Middleton, Hulme and Rochdale all have examples of images in their lead that help give a sense of place and improve the context to our readers.
Simillarly, many of our most crucial articles about our largest towns are still in poor condition: Stockport, Bury, Prestwich, Bolton, and Wigan are of "start class" standard with short lead sections and unreferenced sections - a much lower standard than we should allow! If you feel you can help, please be bold and try to improve these. There is a list of resources that can help.
On 29 March, 2008, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Murrays' Mills, which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.
Another editor has added the {{prod}} template to the article Withington cotton house, 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) 20:00, 3 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Peterloo Massacre was nominated for FAC on 6 April. So far it has received support for FAS but feel free join the discussion here.
The reduction of WP:GM GAs, mentioned in the last issue, has been tackled with Buckton Castle and Oasis (band) being passed on 9 March and Upper Brook Street Chapel, Manchester on 7 April. We now have 13 GAs due to hard work of our contributors. Well done!
WP:GM still is still the leading local British WikiProject. As far as featured content goes, we have a lead of 6 on London and Yorkshire who have 15 FAs each. Although taking the lead in FAs, WP:GM is still lacking GAs and falls behind London by 6. This topic was at the front of the new aims discussion (here) and is an important issue for WP:GM.
As mentioned above, new aims have been decided. See the right hand column for more details.
Member News
There are now 44 members of WikiProject Greater Manchester! A warm welcome to the 5 new members that have joined us since March:
Would you like to write the next newsletter for WP:GM?? Please nominate yourself at WT:GM! New editors are always welcome!
New Aims
The completion of all but one of the short term aims set last December resulted in a discussion on WT:GM to set new aims for the WikiProject. They are:
Obtain GA status for a third of Greater Manchester's Metropolitan Boroughs.
It took us four months to get our last aims completed, why not try and see if these can be done in less time than before! All input is welcome but if anyone has any books or photos etc specifically related to these topics, they would be extra-specially welcome.
But before rushing ahead with these new aims, let's not forget the one that got away last time: to obtain B -> GA status for Rochdale, Wigan, Bury, Bolton and Stockport. Most of these articles are in poor condition and in need of repair. Good quality images are urgently needed also. Let's make sure that this aim doesn't stay off our radar much longer.
Don't Forget...
Images! The shortage of good images was mentioned in the last issue and still hasn't been resolved! A good place to start would be the requested photographs category but please remember that there are many articles not within this category that have the same need in common.
Assessment "Assess and review all relevant articles for quality, importance and progress" is one of our mid-term aims. At the present moment, there are only 43 unassessed articles. This task could be completed well before the next newsletter is out.
The Peterloo Massacre article was promoted to FA on 12 April. One of our top priority articles, it had previously been only start class. The process began on 25th March and since then underwent over 700 edits before the end of April, with Jza84, Malleus Fatuarum, and Richerman making significant contributions to the rapid development of the article. Ddstretch and Mr Stephen also contributed to discussions on the article talk page.
Perhaps the most unusual event of April 2008 for the project has surrounded the Denshaw article. Denshaw is a village of about 500 people in Saddleworth, Oldham, which attracted media attention due to vandalism of the stub class article. Once this was brought to the project's attention, efforts were made to improve the article which led to a successful DYK? nomination and might even advance it to GA status with a bit more effort. In April there were over 19,000 visitors who saw the project in action. Contributors included Jza84, Ddstretch, Malleus Fatuarum, Hassocks5489, Nev1 and Mike Peel.
Also this month 5 articles featured on the DYK? section of the front page: Hulme Arch Bridge, Peterloo Massacre, Bolton and Leigh Railway, Barnes Hospital, Denshaw, and Platt Fields Park. This certainly puts into perspective one of the project's previous mid-term aims "feature on the Did you know? section with at least three articles related to Greater Manchester". If you've expanded an article 5 fold or started one with at least 1.5kb of prose in the past 5 days and it has an interesting and referenced fact don't hesitate to read the conditions of DYK? and nominate it here. It gets the project noticed!
WikiProject Greater Manchester is still leading local British WikiProjects. As far as featured content goes, we have a lead of 7 on London and Yorkshire who have 15 Featured Articles each. Although taking the lead in FAs, WP:GM is still lacking GAs and falls behind London by 6 (we have 14, London 20). If you see an article that you think deserves to be a GA, don't hesitate to nominate it at WP:GAC!
Member News
There are 45 members of WikiProject Greater Manchester. One new member has joined the project this month:
Kieran5676 on 30th April and is interested in south Manchester.
The project is always looking for new members, and if you spot an editor who makes good changes to Greater Machester related articles why not invite them to join up by adding this template to their talk page {{SUBST:Welcome WPGM}}.
Thanks
A rather large "thank you" goes out to all the editors who edited article related to Greater Manchester, or who edit the project itself.
Obtain GA status for one third (1/3) of Greater Manchester's Metropolitan Boroughs.
It took us four months to get our last aims completed, why not try and see if these can be done in less time than before! All input is welcome but if anyone has any books or photos etc specifically related to these topics, they would be extra-specially welcome.
Most of the articles covered by our new aims haven't experienced much activity in the past month, if you thing you can help improve an article be bold and get editing. Articles such as List of people from Bolton and List of railway stations in Greater Manchester already appear very close to FL status and may just require an editor to guide them through the FLC process.
Our highest priority article is of course Greater Manchester, there is a peer review from March with issues still to be addressed before it can be put forward as a featured article candidate. Salford is another top priority article because it's the county's second city; it's under gone a lot of editing but still has a way to go before it reaches GA. Also active this month has been the City of Salford article – part of our aim to get 1/3 of Greater Manchester's Metropolitan Boroughs to GA &ndash.
Although these are the project's explicit short term aims, we endeavour to "improving all wikipedia articles that are concerned with Greater Manchester", so every edit is valuable.
Reminders...
Images! The rate of good images has gone up since it was mentioned in the last issue, but more images are needed! The requested photographs category lists some of the articles needing images.
Assessment When this section was written, there was only 1 unassessed article! This task has probably already been finished, but it might now have. To check click here.
I've asked Jza84 if he could have a go at drawing a new plan, he's asking if we have any source material he could work from. The only one I can think of is the plan currently in the article, do you have any others? Nev1 (talk) 23:07, 13 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
This looks like good stuff! It might be a week or so before I have anything to show, but I think I can put something together to help this article along (great work btw!) --Jza84 | Talk 22:09, 14 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks! I had noticed your Flickr account before actually!... I will hopefully have something for you by this time next week. Feel free to give me a nudge in a few days for an update (or a prompt!). Hope that's OK, --Jza84 | Talk 01:00, 18 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Hi! My apologies - I'm running behind with a few graphics that I promised various users owing to some real life commitments. I'm on the case of fulfilling my promises however, having fixed an erroneous county map this afternoon. I have a map to work on for Kingston upon Hull (hopefully done by the end of the week) then I will turn my attention to our Murrays' Mills. Again, sorry for the delay thusfar (!), --Jza84 | Talk 20:32, 24 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
OK, apologies once again... it's been quite some time since I promised this sorry. However, I'm ready to pick this up. Can you give me a nudge as to where the source material is and what it was exactly you were after? --Jza84 | Talk 22:13, 7 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Old Trafford, Murrays' Mills and 1990 Strangeways Prison riot all passed GAC last month! In previous newsletters, the issue of WP:GM's lack of GAs has been raised numerously, so a large 'well done' to all those who contributed, be it little or large!
Also, Milnrow and City of Salford have been nominated at WP:GAC. Feel free to join in with their discussions here and here respectively. To 'obtain GA status for a third of Greater Manchester's Metropolitan Boroughs' is one of WP:GM's short-term aims, let's hope the City of Salford won't be the last borough with this status.
WikiProject Greater Manchester is still the leading local British WikiProject! As far as featured content goes, we have a lead of 8 on London! Although taking the lead in FAs, WP:GM is still flagging a little in GAs and falls behind London by 3. This is the closest we have ever got to taking the lead in local British GAs, if you see an article that you think deserves to be a GA, don't hesitate to nominate it at WP:GAC!
And don't forget that the Manchester congestion charge article will need all input possible to keep it up to date with the government's new legislation (grumble grumble)...
Member News
There are 46 members of WikiProject Greater Manchester. Our newest member is:
Let's not forget that Jza84 became an administrator this month! Congratulations on your new role.
The project is always looking for new members, and if you spot an editor who makes good changes to Greater Machester related articles why not invite them to join up by adding this template to their talk page: {{SUBST:Welcome WPGM}}.
Thanks
A rather large "thank you" goes to all the editors who help make this WikiProject what it is; no edit goes unnoticed..
Obtain GA status for one third of Greater Manchester's Metropolitan Boroughs.
Most of the articles covered by our new aims haven't experienced much activity in the past month, except for City of Salford being nominated at WP:GAC. If you think you can help improve an article, be bold and get editing! Articles such as List of people from Bolton and List of railway stations in Greater Manchester already appear very close to FL status and may just require an editor to guide them through the FLC process.
Greater Manchester is, of course, our highest priority article. Mr Stephen posted some milestones to getting this article up to FA status a while back. Please check them out and see what you can do.
Although these are the project's explicit short term aims, we endeavour to "improving all Wikipedia articles that are concerned with Greater Manchester", so every edit is valuable.
Reminders...
Images! The rate of good images has gone up since it was mentioned in the last issue, but we'll need more if we're going to get a "lead/static image in every infobox of every town in the county"! The requested photographs category lists some of the articles needing images.
Assessment As of 12th April, we have had 100% of our articles assessed for quality! Even so, we still 151 of our 1551 article unassessed for importance. Please take a look and see what you can do.
Hi there. I was just browsing the contested candidates for speedy deletion category when I came across this article. I've not read much of the content - it was the DB tag that caught my attention:
"...Original research, unreferenced..."
These reasons (along with your reasoning about unsourced claims, factual inaccuracies etc) are not sufficient to nominate an article for speedy deletion. For a list of valid criteria, please see WP:CSD. Articles like this should be taken through the Articles for Deletion channel, where a consensus can be reached through discussion.
I noticed you've recently removed a link I placed on the above article. It was the actual website for that page, but you said it was 'link spam' I was just wondering why that is? --LookingYourBest (talk) 22:02, 17 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
As a regularly contributing UK Wikipedian, we were wondering if you wanted to contribute to the Oxford bid to host the 2010 Wikimania conference. Please see here for details of how to get involved, we need all the help we can get if we are to put in a compelling bid.
We are also in the process of forming a new UK Wikimedia chapter to replace the soon to be folded old one. If you are interested in helping shape our plans, showing your support or becoming a future member or board member, please head over to the Wikimedia UK v2.0 page and let us know. We plan on holding an election in the next month to find the initial board, who will oversee the process of founding the company and accepting membership applications. They will then call an AGM to formally elect a new board who after obtaining charitable status will start the fund raising, promotion and active support for the UK Wikimedian community for which the chapter is being founded.
You may also wish to attend the next London meet-up at which both of these issues will be discussed. If you can't attend this meetup, you may want to watch Wikipedia:Meetup, for updates on future meets.
We look forward to hearing from you soon, and we send our apologies for this automated intrusion onto your talk page!
It's been three months since the last newsletter, but there's been a lot going on...
Promoted articles:
Greater Manchester is one of our project's top priority articles, the Greater Manchester article comprehensively covers everything to do with the county, from culture and history, to transport and demography.
Manchester United F.C. records and statistics is about the records of one of Greater Manchester's best know clubs, which feats like "the club currently holds the record for the most FA Cup triumphs with 11".
City of Salford is about the local government area and Greater Manchester's second city. Getting Salford to GA is one our the aim's of our project, so hopefully this may help.
Manchester, Bolton and Bury Canal is about the history and modern restoration of the disused canal running through the county. (It's now at FAC, so please improve the article if you can!)
Manchester Mummy is about Hannah Beswick, whose macabre fear of being buried alive lead to her demanding that her body was kept above ground and checked periodically for signs of life.
Milnrow is a small town in Rochdale with a long history. The wool trade was important to the town and was the basis of much of its industry. (It's also the first GA for Rochdale!)
Ordsall Hall is an important Tudor hall in Salford with a reputation for being haunted!
Bert Trautmann is the German goalkeeper who broke his neck playing for Manchester City... and carried on playing!
The Peterloo Massacre appeared on the front page on 16 August! Well done to everyone who contributed to the article about a key moment of Greater Manchester's history and managed to get it showcased.
A new portal has been set up! The Greater Manchester portal showcases some of the best articles to do with the county. Thanks to Polishname for single-handedly getting it up and running.
There is a proposal to move members who haven't edited for a while to an inactive members list, so if you've not been edited recently but still want to be a member let us know!
WikiProject Greater Manchester is still the leading local British WikiProject! As far as featured content goes, we have a lead of 5 on Yorkshire and 11 on London! WP:GM now is the leading project in terms of GAs too with 5 more than London and 7 more than Yorkshire! If you see an article that you think deserves to be a GA, don't hesitate to nominate it at WP:GAC!
WT:GM: The project's talk page is a forum for discussion and to keep up to date with the latest project developments and initiatives put it on your watchlist! Recently there have been discussions on articles to be deleted, the congestion charge, how to get members involved and working together, and plenty of other stuff.
Although the project has had a lot of GAs and FAs recently, most of the articles covered by our short term aims haven't experienced much activity recently. Baby has undergone some change, but has a long way to go, and List of railway stations in Greater Manchester is very close to FL quality. If you think you can help improve an article, be bold and get editing! Articles such as List of railway stations in Greater Manchester already appear very close to FL status and may just require an editor to guide them through the FLC process.
Although these are the project's explicit short term aims, we endeavour to "improving all Wikipedia articles that are concerned with Greater Manchester", so every edit is valuable.
Member News
There are 53 members of WikiProject Greater Manchester. Since 12 June, the project has gained 7 new members:
Welcome to everyone, and let's remember to make these new members feel included in the project! If you need help, you can go to the project talk page, or perhaps look at the list of members to see if anyone can help.
The project is always looking for new members, and if you spot an editor who makes good changes to Greater Machester related articles why not invite them to join up by adding this template to their talk page: {{SUBST:Welcome WPGM}}.
Thanks
A big "thank you" goes to all the editors who help make this WikiProject what it is; no edit goes unnoticed.
Reminders...
Images! There are some good images around, but more are still needed if we're going to get a "lead/static image in every infobox of every town in the county"! The requested photographs category lists some of the articles needing images.
Assessment As of 1st September, we have had 99.5% of our articles assessed for quality! Even so, we still 157 of our 1662 article unassessed for importance. Please take a look and see what you can do.
Usually this is where this month's promoted articles are listed, however there is something more important this month. In September, the project was notified which of its articles were selected for a DVD version of wikipedia. The 49 are listed here, although the quality ratings are a bit out of date. Twenty-two of the articles were GA-class or higher, and only five were below B-class. These are articles that have been selected by wikipedia, not simply as the best but the most important, so they require our attention, most importantly those that fall below GA standards. We still have until the 20th October to make changes to the articles, so please if you think you can improve any of them in any way please do so!
In other news, it's been a busy month with plenty going on...
Promoted articles:
The Manchester, Bolton and Bury Canal is a disused canal undergoing restoration. The canal, which travels between Bolton and Manchester with a branch heading north east to Bury, was abandoned in 1961.
Having previously been described as "bare, wet, and almost worthless", Ashton-under-Lyne rose to prominence in the Industrial Revolution as one of the most famous mill towns in the north west.
Henry Taylor is Oldham's forgotten Olympic hero. He won 3 swimming golds at the 1908 Olympics, a record for most golds in a single games by a Briton until Chris Hoy equalled it this year.
WikiProject Greater Manchester is still the leading local British WikiProject! As far as featured content goes, we have a lead of 8 on Yorkshire and 15 on London! WP:GM now is the leading project in terms of GAs too with 5 more than London and 7 more than Yorkshire! If you see an article that you think deserves to be a GA, don't hesitate to nominate it at WP:GAC!
WT:GM: The project's talk page is a forum for discussion and to keep up to date with the latest project developments and initiatives put it on your watchlist! Recently there have been discussions on articles to be deleted, the congestion charge, how to get members involved and working together, and plenty of other stuff.
There wasn't space in the last newsletter, but as of 24 July 2008 the project has a list of articles that have tags on them. As of 14 July 2008, 351 (21.8%) of our articles need a clean-up, although this should have gone down as some have already received attention (the bot does not seem to update the listing often).
In other news, the Merseyside Wikiproject has been set up. If you have an interest in the area or want to help out in any way, head over to the project page and pitch in.
In the past month we've achieved two of our short-term aims! The List of railway stations in Greater Manchester was expertly guided through the featured list process with hardly a problem, and now that Tameside is a GA a third of the county's boroughs are GA status or better. There's still plenty to do, some our our top-priority articles need referencing or tidying up, so don't hesitate to dive in! If you think you can help improve an article, be bold and get editing! And please keep an eye on the 49 articles selected for the wikipedia DVD.
Although these are the project's explicit short term aims, we endeavour to "improving all Wikipedia articles that are concerned with Greater Manchester", so every edit is valuable.
Member News
No new members joined the project in September and there are 49 active members of WikiProject Greater Manchester. A new list of inactive members has been started. Anyone who hasn't made an edit to wikipedia since 1 March 2008 automatically goes onto the list.
If you need help, you can go to the project talk page, or perhaps look at the list of members to see if anyone can help. The project is always looking for new members, and if you spot an editor who makes good changes to Greater Machester related articles why not invite them to join up by adding this template to their talk page: {{SUBST:Welcome WPGM}}.
Thanks
A big "thank you" goes to all the editors who help make this WikiProject what it is; no edit goes unnoticed.
Reminders...
Images! There are some good images around, but more are still needed if we're going to get a "lead/static image in every infobox of every town in the county"! The requested photographs category lists some of the articles needing images.
Assessment As of 4th October, we have had 100% of our articles assessed for quality! Even so, 151 of our 1684 articles remain unassessed for importance. Please take a look and see what you can do.
It's been a quieter month than September, but plenty has been going on...
Promoted articles:
Born in Stalybridge and raised in Ashton-under-Lyne, Hugh Mason was a mill owner and politician. He was popular among his workers for shortening the working week at his factories without cutting their pay.
No articles were DYKs this month. For details of the DYKs by the project that have appeared on the main page, see Did you know?
WikiProject Greater Manchester is still the leading local British WikiProject! As far as featured content goes, we have a lead of 8 on Yorkshire and 14 on London! WP:GM now is the leading project in terms of GAs too with 7 more than both Yorkshire and London! If you see an article that you think deserves to be a GA, don't hesitate to nominate it at WP:GAC!
Trafford was featured on the main page on the 12th October and was viewed 13,800 on the day (27,100 times over 4 days).
The project's cleanup listing has been updated with stats from 8 October. As of 14 July, 351 (21.8%) of our articles need a clean-up, this has risen to 447 out of 1689 (26.5%). Although this is disappointing, it reflects a more widespread use of tags on articles to indicate what needs attention rather than a decline in the standard of this project's articles.
WT:GM: The project's talk page is a forum for discussion and to keep up to date with the latest project developments and initiatives put it on your watchlist! Recently there have been discussions on articles to be deleted, the congestion charge, how to get members involved and working together, and plenty of other stuff.
Member News
There are now 53 active members of WikiProject Greater Manchester as 4 new members joined the project in October:
Welcome to everyone, and let's remember to make these new members feel included in the project! If you need help, you can go to the project talk page, or perhaps look at the list of members to see if anyone can help. The project is always looking for new members, and if you spot an editor who makes good changes to Greater Machester related articles why not invite them to join up by adding this template to their talk page: {{SUBST:Welcome WPGM}}.
On top of these aims, some our our top-priority articles need referencing or tidying up, so don't hesitate to dive in! If you think you can help improve an article, be bold and get editing! Although these are the project's explicit short term aims, we endeavour to "improving all Wikipedia articles that are concerned with Greater Manchester", so every edit is valuable.
Thanks
A big "thank you" goes to all the editors who help make this WikiProject what it is; no edit goes unnoticed.
Reminders...
Images! There are some good images around, but more are still needed if we're going to get a "lead/static image in every infobox of every town in the county"! The requested photographs category lists some of the articles needing images.
Assessment As of 1st November, we have had 100% of our articles assessed for quality! Even so, 75 of our 1708 articles remain unassessed for importance. Please take a look and see what you can do.
A tag has been placed on VM Radio requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done because the article, which appears to be about a real person, organization (band, club, company, etc.), or web content, does not indicate how or why the subject is notable: that is, why an article about that subject should be included in an encyclopedia. Under the criteria for speedy deletion, articles that do not indicate the subject's importance or significance may be deleted at any time. Please see the guidelines for what is generally accepted as notable. If this is the first page that you have created, then you should read the guide to writing your first article.
If you think that you can assert the notability of the subject, you may contest the deletion by adding {{hangon}} to the top of the article (just below the existing speedy deletion or "db" tag), coupled with adding a note on the article's talk page explaining your position, but be aware that once tagged for speedy deletion, if the article meets the criterion it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself, but don't hesitate to add information to the article that would confirm the subject's notability under Wikipedia guidelines.
November has been a successful month, with lots of progress made on articles, and more work in the pipe-line:
Promoted articles:
Scout Moor Wind Farm is England's largest onshore wind farm. Although it was opposed by environmentalists, the wind farm was opened on 26 September 2008 and provides enough power for 40,000 homes.
The River Irwell runs 39 miles from its source in Lancashire until it joins with the River Mersey. The river was important in the Industrial Revolution, and was left poluted with industrial waste and lifeless.
The Bridgewater Canal is currently a GA nominee and the Scout Moor Wind Farm is under scrutiny at WP:FAC. Please keep an eye on these articles and if any issues are raised in their reviews help to address them. Hopefully, next month we can report on two more promoted articles!
Scout Moor Wind Farm featured in the DYK section of the front page last month. For details of the DYKs by the project that have appeared on the main page, see Did you know?
WikiProject Greater Manchester is still the leading local British WikiProject! As far as featured content goes, we have a lead of 8 on Yorkshire and 14 on London! WP:GM now is the leading project in terms of GAs too with 10 more Yorkshire and 11 more than London! If you see an article that you think deserves to be a GA, don't hesitate to nominate it at WP:GAC!
WT:GM: The project's talk page is a forum for discussion and to keep up to date with the latest project developments and initiatives put it on your watchlist! Recently there have been discussions on articles to be deleted, the congestion charge, how to get members involved and working together, and plenty of other stuff.
Member News
There are now 50 active members of WikiProject Greater Manchester as 2 new members joined the project in November:
Welcome to everyone, and let's remember to make these new members feel included in the project! If you need help, you can go to the project talk page, or perhaps look at the list of members to see if anyone can help. The project is always looking for new members, and if you spot an editor who makes good changes to Greater Machester related articles why not invite them to join up by adding this template to their talk page: {{SUBST:Welcome WPGM}}.
Get a lead/static image in every infobox of every town in the county.
Already we're making great progress, and Manchester Small-Scale Experimental Machine and the River Irwell are already GAs, while Scout Moor Wind Farm is on the way to becoming an FA! The Congestion charging in Greater Manchester and Greater Manchester Transport Innovation Fund (TiF) are hot topics at the moment with the referendum currently open. As an aside, some of our top-priority articles need referencing or tidying up, so don't hesitate to dive in. If you think you can help improve an article, be bold and get editing! Although these are the project's explicit short term aims, we endeavour to "improving all Wikipedia articles that are concerned with Greater Manchester", so every edit is valuable.
Thanks
A big "thank you" goes to all the editors who help make this WikiProject what it is; no edit goes unnoticed.
Reminders...
Images! There are some good images around, but more are still needed if we're going to get a "lead/static image in every infobox of every town in the county"! The requested photographs category lists some of the articles needing images.
Articles needing attention Please remember that the list of stubs needing expansion and the Wikipedia:WikiProject Greater Manchester/Cleanup listing|list of articles needing cleanup]] are in permanent need of attention.
I know it's early but since there won't be a newsletter for a month... merry Christmas everyone, enjoy the holiday and mince pies.
Delivered on 5 December 2008 by Nev1. If you do not wish to receive future newsletters, please add two *s by your username on the Project Mainpage.
Hello, I'm on the scrounge again. I'm slowly adding to Manchester Arndale. You don't happen to have anything like the top picture here in your portfolio do you? Anything showing the old Corporation Street or the pre-modernisation Market Street would come in. I tried to look at your flickr account, but it seems to only show a few of the pictures. Regards, Mr Stephen (talk) 00:36, 11 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
December has been a very successful month, with lots of article promoted, and hopefully more to come in January:
Promoted articles:
Scout Moor Wind Farm
Scout Moor Wind Farm is England's largest onshore wind farm. Although it was opposed by environmentalists, the wind farm was opened on 26 September 2008 and provides enough power for 40,000 homes.
The B of the Bang is the sculpture that was erected to commemorate the 2002 Commonwealth Games and for a while was the largest sculpture in the UK. And because of safety concerns, it may be dismantled.
Current nominations: January looks set to be very busy, with Chadderton, Cine City, Withington, and Nico Ditch at WP:GAN, the Greater Manchester portal up for Featured Portal status, and Sale a Featured Article Candidate. Please keep an eye on these articles and if any issues are raised in their reviews help to address them.
Abram featured in the DYK section of the front page last month. For details of the DYKs by the project that have appeared on the main page, see Did you know?
The project has a new tool, a watchlist of all our project's articles. This should help us keep an eye on them and spot new editors who might want to join our project. Also, Jza84 has developed a map of WP:GM's GAs and FAs. It shows a gap in coverage in the north west of the county, something we should try to change.
WikiProject Greater Manchester is still the leading local British WikiProject! As far as Featured and Good content goes, our lead is extending, with 10 and 16 more FAs than Yorkshire and London respectively, and 13 and 14 more GAs than Yorkshire and London! If you see an article that you think deserves to be a GA, don't hesitate to nominate it at WP:GAC!
WT:GM: The project's talk page is a forum for discussion and to keep up to date with the latest project developments and initiatives put it on your watchlist! Recently there have been discussions on articles to be deleted, the congestion charge, how to get members involved and working together, and plenty of other stuff.
Get a lead/static image in every infobox of every town in the county.
Two of our aims were crossed off as Scout Moor Wind Farm became an FA, and Radcliffe, Greater Manchester a GA. If you think you can help improve an article, be bold and get editing! Although these are the project's explicit short term aims, we endeavour to "improving all Wikipedia articles that are concerned with Greater Manchester", so every edit is valuable.
Member News
There are now 46 active members of WikiProject Greater Manchester (with a further 14 members inactive since 1 July 2008) as 1 new member joined the project in December:
Welcome from everyone, and let's remember to make new members feel included in the project! If you need help, you can go to the project talk page, or perhaps look at the list of members to see if anyone can help. The project is always looking for new members, and if you spot an editor who makes good changes to Greater Machester related articles why not invite them to join up by adding this template to their talk page: {{SUBST:Welcome WPGM}}.
Thanks
A big "thank you" goes to all the editors who help make this WikiProject what it is; no edit goes unnoticed.
Reminders...
Images! There are some good images around, but more are still needed if we're going to get a "lead/static image in every infobox of every town in the county"! The requested photographs category lists some of the articles needing images.
Hi, I noticed you had "removed redundant map sources link" from various villages in Somerset. I'm not sure how you are doing this manually or via some software tool but the process changed the OS grid ref for Midford to place the village miles away from where it really is. I've changed it back but wanted to let you know in case this occurred elsewhere.— Rodtalk09:01, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Apologies. Ones where the External links and Infobox were the same or within a small margin of error were done semi-Automatically with AWB. In this case, there was a larger difference and i did it manually, checking the locations. I'm guessing I must have typed the wrong number here. Pit-yacker (talk) 18:40, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Please can you point me to some discussion indicating that there is a consensus in favour of all of the changes that you are making with the description replace gbm4ibx with gbmappingsmall -> effectively same template using AWB? So far as I can tell, you are replacing one template with an identical one that has a longer name and no documentation. To me this doesn't sound good. If there is no consensus for this change (and if there were, I would have hoped to have seen discussion on Template_talk:gbm4ibx), please can you wait to until you do have consensus before continuing. — ras52 (talk) 19:56, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I have detagged some images where you added the nowcommons tag because I was unable to locate them on Commons, can you please have a look? Thanks -- lucasbfrtalk10:22, 11 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
With the new(ish) year, I think it's right to look back over the year just gone. Last year was massive for our project, with lots of successes building on a successful 2007. In terms of featured content, we became the leading wikiproject in 2007, but 2008 saw us cement our status as one of the UK's leading wikiprojects: having started the year with most FAs (two more than London and Yorkshire), but falling behind in terms of GAs, we now have more FAs and GAs than any project under WP:UKGEO. While our aim is to improve all articles related to Greater Manchester, not collect trophies, we now lead the field by a long way and everyone deserves to feel proud for their part.
We've had articles featured on the main page, both in DYK? and as today's Featured Article, but success is more than a matter of numbers; the project has grown into a community where editors join together to provide information and improve Wikipedia. A great example of this is the work our project did on Denshaw. Back in April, it was targeted by vandals and as a result was featured in national news. We stepped in and improved and protected the article, showing what WP:GM is capable of. This is undoubtedly the noisiest project in the UK and it's strength comes from the wide range of interests of its many members. We've even been so successful that we were accused of forming a claque.
During 2008, our numbers have increased and, while some have left, we've welcomed many strong editors who will help bring the project more success. With so much emphasis on Good and Featured articles, it's sometimes easy to forget that a lot of effort goes into articles that don't get recognition. The table below shows that the number of B-class articles has increased since the start of 2008, and that the proportion of stub-class articles under our project has gone down.
My own experience of Wikipedia has been positive and enjoyable, especially due to WP:GM. I've worked on interesting subjects with nice people, and hopefully the experience is similar for others. We've covered subjects as varied and interesting as castles, mummies, computers, Olympic swimmers, and wind farms, stuff I probably wouldn’t know about if it wasn’t for Wikipedia. I enjoy being a part of this project, and as we approach the WP:GM's second birthday (24 February) I'm sure it will continue to go from strength to strength in 2009.
Would you like to write the next newsletter for WP:GM?? Please nominate yourself at WT:GM! New editors are always welcome!
Project News
January has been a very successful month, with lots of article promoted, and hopefully more to come in January:
Promoted articles:
View of Broadway in Chadderton
Chadderton is a town in the Metropolitan Borough of Oldham. It has a long and interesting history beyond that of its mill town façade; a Celtic hill fort, a medieval lordship and still an important industrial and metropolitan town.
Nico Ditch stretches from Ashton-under-Lyne to Stretford and according to legend was dug in a single night to defend against the Danes.
Article news: Cine City, Withington is at WP:GAN, please keep an eye on these articles and if any issues are raised in their reviews help to address them. Unfortunately, despite User:Joshii's effort the Greater Manchester portal did not become featured.
Get a lead/static image in every infobox of every town in the county.
Member News
There are now 48 active members of WikiProject Greater Manchester (with a further 14 members inactive since 1 July 2008) as 2 new members joined the project in January:
Welcome from everyone, and let's remember to make new members feel included in the project! If you need help, you can go to the project talk page, or perhaps look at the list of members to see if anyone can help. The project is always looking for new members, and if you spot an editor who makes good changes to Greater Machester related articles why not invite them to join up by adding this template to their talk page: {{SUBST:Welcome WPGM}}.
Thanks
A big "thank you" goes to all the editors who help make this WikiProject what it is; no edit goes unnoticed.
Reminders...
Images! There are some good images around, but more are still needed if we're going to get a "lead/static image in every infobox of every town in the county"! The requested photographs category lists some of the articles needing images.
This is an automated message from CorenSearchBot. I have performed a web search with the contents of Crossley Hospital East, and it appears to be very similar to another wikipedia page: Crossley Hospital. It is possible that you have accidentally duplicated contents, or made an error while creating the page— you might want to look at the pages and see if that is the case. If you are intentionally moving or duplicating content, please be sure you have followed the procedure at Wikipedia:Splitting by acknowledging the duplication of material in edit summary to preserve attribution history.
This message was placed automatically, and it is possible that the bot is confused and found similarity where none actually exists. If that is the case, you can remove the tag from the article and it would be appreciated if you could drop a note on the maintainer's talk page. CorenSearchBot (talk) 18:12, 3 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
WikiProject Greater Manchester March Newsletter, Issue XV
Happy birthday! It was the project's second birthday on 24 February, so thank you to everyone who's helped improve and Greater Manchester related article, not just our members, your work is very much appreciated. The last month has been very successful, with lots activity:
Nico Ditch stretches from Ashton-under-Lyne to Stretford and according to legend was dug in a single night to defend against the Danes.
Cine City in 2004
The Cine City, Withington, was the third cinema to open in Britain and when it closed in 2001 it was the third longest running cinema in England. It was opened in 1912, and demolished in 2008.
Current nominations: As of the completion of this newsletter, there are no GA nominations, but Manchester Small-Scale Experimental Machine and Buckton Castle are at FAC. The articles detail the world's first stored-program computer, and the best preserved castle in Greater Manchester. There's a good chance that one or more of these interesting articles could be promoted, so please keep an eye on them in case there's any way you can help!
Charles White (physician) and Worsley featured in the DYK section of the front page last month (actually, Worsley featured in January but was missed out of the last newsletter!). For details of the DYKs by the project that have appeared on the main page, see Did you know?
The project's cleanup listing has been updated with stats from 24 February 2009. As of 8 October 2008, 447 (26.5%) of 1689 our articles needed a clean-up, this has risen slightly to 455 out of 1809 (25.2%). This is encouraging as the proportion has gone down, and indicates the standard of the project's articles are steadily improving. While the high-profile successes of GAs and FAs are important, the project's aim is to improve all GM-related articles.
WT:GM: The project's talk page is a forum for discussion and to keep up to date with the latest project developments and initiatives put it on your watchlist! Recently there have been discussions on articles to be deleted, the congestion charge, how to get members involved and working together, and plenty of other stuff.
Sister projects
In an attempt to encourage communication between related wikiprojects, or to at least raise awareness, this section is dedicated to the important goings on of WP:Merseyside and WP:Cheshire, our sister projects and the only other user groups dedicated to improving articles in North West England.
WP:CHES – After a period of low activity, the project has picked up recently, with initiatives (such as beginning a newsletter and sending a questionnaire to its member) to encourage greater participation from its members. This has paid dividends with two GAs being promoted in February and greater activity in general.
WP:MERSEY – After being set-up in September 2008, the project is experiencing a period of lowish activity. While the project has a handful of FAs and GAs, most of its articles are unassessed; assessing requires no familiarity with a subject, so any help WP:GM members can lend would be greatly appreciated.
Other news
There is a meet-up scheduled for 14 March in Manchester for anyone interested. It is not organised by WP:GM and is open to all wikipedians. More details can be found here.
Get a lead/static image in every infobox of every town in the county.
After a flurry of activity in January, progress on the Salford article has slowed, but it is steadily progressing towards a good standard. If you think you can help improve an article, be bold and get editing! Although these are the project's explicit short term aims, we endeavour to "improving all Wikipedia articles that are concerned with Greater Manchester", so every edit is valuable.
The project compared
The Greater Manchester WikiProject is one of the leading UK-based groups. Some other projects are no as lucky as we are in the numbers of active enthusiastic users. Below are some statistics of the other leading UK projects and some geographically close to Greater Manchester.
There are now 46 active members of WikiProject Greater Manchester (with a further 17 members inactive since 1 September 2008) as 1 new member joined the project in February:
Majorly is an experienced editor who has recently decided to join WP:GM, and has been working hard on Cheadle Hulme. The project is always looking for new members, and if you spot an editor who makes good changes to Greater Machester related articles why not invite them to join up by adding this template to their talk page: {{SUBST:Welcome WPGM}}.
Reminders...
Images! There are some good images around, but more are still needed if we're going to get a "lead/static image in every infobox of every town in the county"! The requested photographs category lists some of the articles needing images.
Hi Pit-Yacker
Many thanks for your photo of Market Street, which now also appears underwater in an aquarium in my surreal video for my song The Capital 1980 (sung in Cross Street Chapel Manchester, so - coming home as it were)
Hope you like it :-) The Capital 1980 Kind regards
David Dwsolo (talk) 15:38, 9 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I added a section to the discission page for Television licensing in the United Kingdom. It does seem rather schizophrenic; I don't really mind either way but the article I think should be consistent throughout.
Just to let you know in case you want to add your two penn'orth.
Hello, do you know if it is possible to block this guy? 77.98.198.149. He seems to periodically go on Wikipedia to vandalise stuff. Though I quite like the idea of Ross Kemp marrying men, I'm not sure how you get someone blocked. Thanks. 131.111.186.95 (talk) 15:02, 2 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
WikiProject Greater Manchester June Newsletter, Issue XVI
Sorry there's not been a newsletter for three months, it's not that there hasn't been anything to say but that there almost hasn't been time to say it...
On 20 March 2009 Manchester was "today's Featured Article" and received over 44,000 visitors. This was the culmination of about 2 years of effort from a lot of editors who found the article in this state before the founding of the project. Along with Greater Manchester, it's our flagship article and for it to reach the mainpage is a great achievement. It was an incredible collaborative effort and shows what the project is capable of, and since then we have gone from strength to strength. The Manchester Small-Scale Experimental Machine was Today's Featured Article on 30 May, with 33,000 visitors.
Promoted articles:
Carrington Moss is an 1,100 acres (450 ha) peat bog in Trafford; in the 19th century, it was reclaimed to be used agriculturally and for the disposal Manchester's waste, and is still used for farming.
Manchester Mummy is about Hannah Beswick, whose macabre fear of being buried alive lead to her demanding that her body was kept above ground and checked periodically for signs of life.
The town of Sale in Trafford was probably founded in the Anglo-Saxon period and is best known as the home of physicist J. P. Joule the founding place and former home of and Sale Sharks rugby club.
Cheadle Hulme is a suburb of Stockport that formed from several small hamlets, rather than growing around a church which was usual for medieval villages. (also Stockport's first GA!)
Mellor hill fort is the only Iron Age hill fort in Greater Manchester and was only discovered in the 1990s.
Partington, in Trafford, is a town and civil parish that was until the Manchester Ship Canal opened in 1894, a mainly agrarian community. With the opening of the canal, Partington became a major coal port and following the Second World War was expanded as an overspill estate for deprived parts of Manchester.
With all the project's success, we must be careful not to become complacent. In March, David Beckham was delisted as a Good Article because it lacked enough references and was poorly written in parts. Improving an article and getting it reviewed for GA is a lot of effort and it's a real shame to see the article delisted, but a reminder that our role as an article writer is two-fold: once we improve them, we have an obligation to maintain them. Beckham is the kind of person who is regularly in the news, so the article will get a lot of attention and need regular updating, and it was written by members of WP:FOOTBALL, but let's take it as a reminder of what's needed from us.
WT:GM: The project's talk page is a forum for discussion and to keep up to date with the latest project developments and initiatives put it on your watchlist! Recently there have been discussions on articles to be deleted, the congestion charge, how to get members involved and working together, and plenty of other stuff.
Get a lead/static image in every infobox of every town in the county.
Over the past three months, we've succeeded in our aims of bringing Eccles and Worsley to GA status, thanks largely to the seemingly inexhaustible Parrot of Doom. Recently another aim was added: bringing Stockport to GA standard. It's currently C-class and has some well developed sections. It will be a difficult task, but worthwhile considering it's Greater Manchester's third largest settlement. Also, the importance of bringing Salford to GA has been emphasised; it's currently B-class and should be the easiest of our aims to accomplish, although it's been there for a long time. Let's see if we can put this one to rest soon.
The project compared
Over the past three months, WP:LOND and WP:YORK have had a massive upsurge in the number of articles under their auspices. And interestingly, WP:YORKS has had an upsurge in GAs (10), and WP:LOND has had an increase in both GAs and FAs (8 and 10 respectively), closing down the gap with WP:GM. Although WP:DERB appears to have lost a GA, one of their articles was incorrectly tagged; however Derwent Valley Mills is being prepared to become a Good Article candidate, and hopefully will be the project's first. With the recent retirement of Ddstretch and Espresso Addict, WP:CHES has lost two of its most active contributors, but is still managing to produce good articles such as list of castles in Cheshire (FL) and John Douglas (now a Good Article candidate). The majority of WP:MRSY's articles are now assessed and will hopefully go from strength to strength.
There are now 48 active members of WikiProject Greater Manchester (with a further 17 members inactive since 1 September 2008) as 2 new members have joined the project since the start of March:
The project is always looking for new members, and if you spot an editor who makes good changes to Greater Manchester related articles why not invite them to join up by adding this template to their talk page: {{SUBST:Welcome WPGM}}.
Reminders...
Images! There are some good images around, but more are still needed if we're going to get a "lead/static image in every infobox of every town in the county"! The requested photographs category lists some of the articles needing images.
Hi there. I'm surprised that all the Christianophobia articles have been monimated for deletion. I accept that 3 of them should be stubs at present until I get time to write them, but the article about England is a perfectly valid article is it not? Cheers Fishiehelper2 (talk) 18:36, 14 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
WikiProject Greater Manchester July Newsletter, Issue XVII
Part of the seven arches railway viaduct in Cheadle Hulme
Cheadle Hulme is a suburb of Stockport that formed from several small hamlets, rather than growing around a church which was usual for medieval villages, although there is evidence of activity dating back to the Bronze Age.
Did you know that after the collapse of the Broughton Suspension Bridge in 1831, the British military introduced the order to "break step" when soldiers were crossing a bridge? Featured on the Did you know? section on 6 June 2009.
Other news:
Recently Salford was turned into a disambiguation page with the article on the settlement moved to Salford, Greater Manchester. This will hopefully make it clearer to the reader that Salford, Greater Manchester, and the City of Salford are not the same thing. Just remember to specify which Salford next time you're adding a wikilink to an article!
Although it wasn't technically this month, list of people from Wigan was created on 2 July, and any help populating the list with sourced names would be great. It's one of nine such list for the boroughs in Greater Manchester (Bury doesn't have a list yet) and they all need populating.
Remember to be careful about editors claiming places are still in Lancashire, today I had to revert someone insisting that Leigh isn't in Greater Manchester and recently the Friends of Real Lancashirevoiced their dislike of the Lancashire article so this issue isn't going to go away.
Just remember that the project watchlist can help us catch vandalism and is worth checking from time to time.
WT:GM: The project's talk page is a forum for discussion and to keep up to date with the latest project developments and initiatives put it on your watchlist! Recently there have been discussions on articles to be deleted, the congestion charge, how to get members involved and working together, and plenty of other stuff.
Get a lead/static image in every infobox of every town in the county.
Recently another aim was added: bringing Stockport to GA standard. It's currently C-class and has some well developed sections. It will be a difficult task, but worthwhile considering it's Greater Manchester's third largest settlement. Also, the importance of bringing Salford to GA has been emphasised; it's currently B-class and should be the easiest of our aims to accomplish, although it's been there for a long time. Let's see if we can put this one to rest soon.
Member News
No new members joined the project in June and there are 45 active members of WikiProject Greater Manchester (with a further 20 members inactive since 1 January 2009). The project is always looking for new members, and if you spot an editor who makes good changes to Greater Manchester related articles why not invite them to join up by adding this template to their talk page: {{SUBST:Welcome WPGM}}.
The project compared
In June, WP:LON has a massive upsurge in the number of FAs, with some great work by Iridescent in promoting a swathe of bridge articles to FA. WP:YORKS has over taken WP:GM in terms of GAs, and for the first time since June 2008 (when WP:LON had the lead), WP:GM is not the project with most GAs. In June, the Derwent Valley Mills became a GA and is WP:DERBY's first GA although there are more likely candidates in the pipeline. WP:CHES continues to perform strongly considering it has few active editors, and in June John Douglas (architect) was promoted to FA and there is currently a FLC. In June, there was discussion at WT:MERSEY about how to generate more audited content (ie: GAs and FAs) and since then one article has been promoted to GA, there is one GAC and other articles being prepared for GAC.
Images! There are some good images around, but more are still needed if we're going to get a "lead/static image in every infobox of every town in the county"! The requested photographs category lists some of the articles needing images.
Salford is Greater Manchester's second city (although it is the wider district which has city status), but for most of its history it was larger and more important than Manchester. The Salford Quays area will become the home of CBBC and BBC Sport in 2011.
The Peak District was the first national park in Britain and spans Cheshire, Derbyshire, Greater Manchester, South Yorkshire, Staffordshire, and West Yorkshire. It was used by the Dam Busters and used as a location for the film based on the story.
Other news:
There's been a lot of article activity in the last month, especially in Wigan-related pages. Wigan is the only borough in Greater Manchester without a GA or FA to its name, and it would be great if this could change. A lot of work has been put into Tyldesley, any and help to get it to GA would be great. There's also been a high-profile new article created: media in Manchester. Pitch in on the talk page if you're interested!
Just remember that the project watchlist can help us catch vandalism and is worth checking from time to time.
WT:GM: The project's talk page is a forum for discussion and to keep up to date with the latest project developments and initiatives put it on your watchlist! Recently there have been discussions on articles to be deleted, the congestion charge, how to get members involved and working together, and plenty of other stuff.
Get a lead/static image in every infobox of every town in the county.
Last month, we achieved our long-standing aim of bringing Salford up to GA status. It's been a fine effort and perhaps we can concentrate on our other objectives, especially getting Stockport, the largest settlement article not to be at least B-class, to GA.
Member News
There are now 47 active members of WikiProject Greater Manchester (with a further 20 members inactive since 1 January 2009) as two new members have joined the project since the start of March:
J3Mrs has done some fine work on Wigan-related articles, especially Tyldesley so hopefully we can help him with his efforts. The project is always looking for new members, and if you spot an editor who makes good changes to Greater Manchester related articles why not invite them to join up by adding this template to their talk page: {{SUBST:Welcome WPGM}}.
The project compared
In July, WP:LON almost doubled in scope and now has over 12,000 articles – far more than any other UK county WikiProject. Last month, the Peak District was promoted to GA; the area is mainly in Derbyshire but covers several other counties and is a massive achievement for all involved. WP:CHES continues to perform strongly considering it has few active editors, with one FL promoted in July and another in the pipeline. WP:GM is still the leading UK county project in terms of FAs and by proportion of audited content (ie: GAs and FAs). A lot of effort has gone into producing this project's articles, so let's make sure we keep tags on them and that they don't degrade.
Images! There are some good images around, but more are still needed if we're going to get a "lead/static image in every infobox of every town in the county"! The requested photographs category lists some of the articles needing images.
Thanks for your feedback. I am sorry if things were unclear. I am not familiar with how the deletion process is supposed to work. You can find a detailed rationale in my comments here: http://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Articles_for_deletion/Robin_Hood_tax. Please respond to the points outlined there. To summarize:
1. This article was created by Oxfam as a means of promotion.
2. Check the earliest version of the article when the editors were Oxfam personnel (such as http://en.wiki.x.io/w/index.php?title=Robin_Hood_tax&oldid=351390397). You can see here that the material is unambiguously promotional. The material was directly copied from the Robin Hood tax website. Even the "Arguments against the tax" material comes directly from their FAQ.
3. All the material covered here that is not promotional is covered in other articles: Tobin tax, Financial transaction tax, or Currency transaction tax. In particular, the material on unintended consequences is in Tobin tax. Moreover, the Robin Hood tax is just a marketing name for a Financial transaction tax. Therefore, the substantive material is covered elsewhere, leaving only promotional material remaining.
4. You state that these issues can be cleaned up by editing. However, I feel it is inappropriate for Oxfam to put up a promotional article on Wikipedia and then expect the editors here to serve as unpaid labor for their marketing campaign by "cleaning it up".
Hi. As it stands the article is a bit of an attack, it clearly needs a NPOV write, there is only one real content addition between my NPOV write and that can easily be added. Apart from that there is only minor alterations to cites and a few bot edits that will come back and make the edit again, it would have been better if you had left my neutral write and simply added any alterations you could see. tomorrow I will look at replacing the neutral write, thanks. Off2riorob (talk) 23:36, 11 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I have re-checked your edits. They removed a number of changes that were not automated changes including page disambiguations and tidying up of referneces. Pit-yacker (talk) 00:07, 12 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, like I said there were a couple of additions that could easily have been added to the neutral rewrite. Reverting to the poor version is detrimental to the article. Do you think the article as it is is a well written neutral biography? I can't imagine you do but I suppose that is for the talkpage, imo what you have just added is pretty awful. Off2riorob (talk) 00:15, 12 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I have opened a thread on the Hulme talkpage, perhaps you would be prepared to accept a revert to the NPOV write and that you can help to replace the intermittent alterations of value since that write? Off2riorob (talk) 14:02, 12 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Hello, I noticed the article on the watchlist and got interested. I hope you don't mind the copyedit, I hope I didn't change the meaning or anything.--J3Mrs (talk) 16:14, 28 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I uploaded it as is so far as not received answers yet :¬) The border is because was created on A4 and haven't limited to only the details - once final that border will go Chaosdruid (talk) 03:14, 7 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Apologies for delay but finally remembered to upload it and then had a problem with refresh that led me to revert it a couple of times lol - anyway hope that is close to what you wanted :¬) Chaosdruid (talk) 04:36, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
An article that you have been involved in editing, Winterbourne, Gloucestershire , has been proposed for a merge with another article. If you are interested in the merge discussion, please participate by going here, and adding your comments on the discussion page. Thank you. Skinsmoke (talk) 10:34, 1 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for all the tidying up you are doing at W & J Galloway. I am hoping to be back into the article next week sometime, as I need to fill in the 1900-1930s information.
It is a bit of a monster, but then articles that I research tend to end up like that. There are a couple more in the pipeline ... - Sitush (talk) 01:06, 4 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
If I may make a suggestion: why not simply blank and redirect obviously non notable primary schools as most editors and admins do anyway according to the rationale I keep putting on all the 100s of sudden AfDs that are turning up this week? It's an uncontroversial operation and a totally accepted procedure even if it's not written in policy. If the creator complains, it can easily be reverted and then sent to AfD. Boldly redirecting would save all the unnecessary bureaucracy, and me and other editors the time having to paste 'Redirect' votes, and another admins having to close all the AfDs. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 11:36, 30 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Hi. When you recently edited Ostrich Media, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Freeview (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver). Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.
It doesn't make much sense to me it in current form, it needs work. You can't possibly say this is a good introduction:
Since the passing of the Broadcasting Act 1990, its legal name has been Channel 3, the number 3 having no real meaning other than to distinguish it from BBC One, BBC Two and Channel 4. In part, the number 3 was assigned as televisions would usually be tuned so that the regional ITV station would be on the third button, the other stations being allocated to that of the number their name contained.
ITV is to be distinguished from ITV plc, the company that resulted from the merger of Granada plc and Carlton Communications in 2004 and which holds the Channel 3 broadcasting licences in England, Wales, southern Scotland, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands through its subsidiaries ITV Broadcasting Limited and Channel Television Limited. Similarly ITV1 is the brand used by ITV plc for the Channel 3 service in these areas. Of the companies external to ITV plc, STV and UTV use their own brands in their own respective areas (northern and central Scotland and Northern Ireland).
The first paragraph is superfluous and needless, any Briton with a brain cell doesn't need telling that it is Channel 3 because it is on channel 3. The second paragraph is dreary and needlessly laborious. It's ridiculous. Stevo1000 (talk) 22:58, 12 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not saying the article doesnt need work. However:
ITV and ITV plc are separate entities. The former is an association of regional television broadcasters (the article in question), the latter is a company that these days holds all but 3 of the channel 3 franchises (article ITV plc). The latter just happens to have adopted the name, much to annoyance of the other franchise holders, of the association. Equally ITV 1 is a brand name that ITV plc chooses to apply to the Channel 3 franchises that it owns. Although to the casual reader this seems un-necessarily complicated for an article, changes to this are controversial and I recommend you discuss them on the Talk page prior to making changes.
We aren't just dealing with British readers here. In some countires (the US in particular), the channel number a television station broadcasts on generally refers to the frequency it broadcasts on. For example, a channel branded "Channel 3" is so called because it broadcasts on VHF Channel 3 (60-66 MHz) or a channel labelled "Channel 35" is called because it broadcasts on UHF Channel 35 (596-602MHz). Its also worth pointing out that there is now a significant proportion of the younger generation of th e UK population where ITV broadcasts on channel 103 (i.e. those who have DSat and Cable). Pit-yacker (talk) 20:28, 13 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Angel Knight - former CEO British Bankers Association
In noting your recent comments, I have to agree that this site does not reflect Wikipedia's values of editorial independence, and impartiality.
It transpires that when Ms Knight was with the British Bankers Association, the BBA were themselves updating and deleting content, to create a sanitised and self-congratulatory biographical text.
You are correct, Ms Knight received much criticism in her BBA role as chief apologist for the banks. Following the PPI mis-selling debacle, even BBA members themselves called for Ms Knight to stand down. The deletion and/or manipulation of such factual information, creates a biased and partisan article.
Hi there. I've dealt with the table accessibility issue, the MoS/dash concerns, and made a start on bringing the contents up to date. If we dig in a bit here I don't see any reason why the article should be delisted. MalleusFatuorum00:24, 7 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
My understanding is that plans are still afoot - finance is not available at the moment and Ballymore are more interested in developing in London where risk is lower and margins are higher. During the recent Gateway House, Ballymore (the developers of the tower) objected blocking off the route from the station entrance to the Piccadilly Tower site. Their request was accepted. Of course it suggests to me that this tower is still alive and not dead - as many purport it to be without any logical rationale. If Ballymore did not believe in the future potential of the project they would have sold the site off by now. Also, I added it to under constuction and 'on hold' as there was a couple of London skyscrapers which were on hold as well. Stevo1000 (talk) 21:10, 25 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
You may have some direct insight that I don't. However, I'm inclined to believe there are actually at least 3 possibilities rather than two. The first two as you suggest are either building the tower as planned or not building anything at all. A third option, IMHO more likely scenario, is that Ballymore build something else (probably a more modest development) at some unspecified point in the future.
That said, I'm not convinced that Ballymore's recent activity creates any firm suggestion that they have intention of starting anything in the near to medium term. If planning consent has expired, any sale of the site would likely be at a huge loss (see the recent sale of the Employment Exchange site). Unless the developer is short of cash (read "short of" as "desperate for") a sale in the present climate makes little sense. Let's face it, a site sitting empty held by a single company for decades would be far from unusual in the immediate surrounds (see London Road Fire Station (Britannia Hotels) and Manchester Mayfield (BRB) as examples).
As far as the London developments also on the template are concerned. I'm not entirely comfortable with them being there either. However there are differences to Piccadilly Tower:
In both cases real building at least appears to have actually started as opposed to mere site clearance. I know there are tens of stalled [dead] projects around in Manchester alone in a similar state. However at least in those cases you can honestly say that construction had started.
In the case of Riverside South (Canary Wharf), it appears there is actually some work on site; even if it is uncertain whether the tower will ever be completed.
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Hello. Please don't forget to provide an edit summary. Thank you. Otolemur crassicaudatus (talk) 22:01, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
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