User:CaroleHenson/Outline tips
User page for Outline material. This page is not intended to be an article
Background[edit]
The back story...
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After the outline team had created a set of country outlines for the geography branch of knowledge, I discovered a whole set of outlines on U.S. State histories that had been built entirely independently from the outline project. I was ecstatic to learn that I wasn't the only one pushing outline development. And they were all made by Buaidh. State histories on all of the states. This was amazing, since these outlines pushed so far out into new subject territory that they skipped a level in the whole "Outline of Knowledge" hierarchy we were building. We had "Outline of the United States", but no outlines on the individual U.S. states. Between the U.S. and state histories, the state branches were missing. So I created 50 state outlines to bridge the gap, linking the state history outlines into the set, and invited Buaidh to join the Outline WikiProject. He dove into it on a worldly scale and in addition to working on the state outlines, he did a prolific amount of development to the organization membership section of the outline of every country of the world. In appreciation and recognition for his hard work, the WikiProject presented him with this award. Eventually, Buaidh copied much of the content of the history outlines into the history section of the state outlines, and then somebody else not connected with the project noticed the duplication and nominated all of the state history outlines for deletion at AfD. They called them "outlines of outlines". Buaidh didn't seem too happy with the outcome, as he disappeared into Wikipedian category maintenance. Though he's still a member of the outline wikiproject and pops in now and again to work on the Outline of Colorado. I worked on the merge personally, to ensure that no content was lost, and I expanded the histories with "by region" and "by subject" branches as I went. But there was still this feeling that all this work we were doing could go *poof* and disappear at any time. Maybe he felt that too. This time around, I think it would be wise not to copy the contents of Outline of Colorado prehistory into the Outline of Colorado. I placed a link in there, and have also placed a link on the master outline (in the history section). I wish there was something we could do to attract Buaidh back to the project, but it may be that he has moved on for good. By the way, I've been watching your outline development with much interest. Keep up the excellent work. I look forward to working with you for a long time to come. Sincerely, The Transhumanist 22:23, 2 December 2011 (UTC) |
History of outlines
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Let me bring you up to speed... Way back in 2001 just after Wikipedia got started, co-founder Larry Sanger started a set of "basic topics" lists in the Wikipedia namespace to assist in the creation of key articles for the encyclopedia. The idea was to consult the lists, find a redlink of a topic you were interested in and click on it to start a new article. There were about 50 lists. Each time an article was created for a topic listed, the lists turned more and more blue. Once blue, they weren't of any further use in the creation of new basic articles. So they fell into disuse, and were eventually forgotten. They gathered dust for years. Then late in 2005 shortly after I started editing Wikipedia, I stumbled across them. What I saw was a useful set of blue linked lists. So I moved them all into article space and renamed them all to "List of basic x topics" (where x was each subject's name). Nobody seemed to mind or take much notice. I created a WikiProject, added the set to Wikipedia's navigation system, and work proceeded apace. We got some flack here and there, mostly about verifying that the included topics were "basic", but nothing major. But then something unexpected happened. The lists kept growing and growing, even though the titles clearly indicated that they were intended to be "basic" lists. There were already generically named topics lists (without "basic" in the titles), but soon the "basic" lists started to become more comprehensive than their formerly bigger brothers. And the number of basic lists was growing fast. (In 2008 we created a basic list on every country of the world). Plus the "basic" lists all shared certain elements and were being developed toward a standardized format - it was a more cohesive set. It was clear we had to do something, but we couldn't simply merge them into the topics lists. Because there were two kinds competing for the same set of titles. About half of them were hierarchical topics lists (with subject headings), and the others were alphabetical (with letter headings). From a format perspective, "topics" in a title is ambiguous. So, I renamed the basic topics lists. It took a couple or so renames to finally settle on the "Outline of" title. I realized that that is what we had been building all along: hierarchically structured lists: outlines! The rename expanded the scope of the articles in the set to allow us to be as comprehensive as desired. As comprehensive as the "topics" lists. So now we were positioned to clean up the "topics" title ambiguity problem. I started renaming the lists. The alphabetical ones were renamed to "Index of x articles", and eventually a contents page was created for them. The hierarchical ones we started absorbing into the set of outlines, renaming them when there wasn't a corresponding outline, or merging them when there was. Unfortunately, there are still about 180 of them left. Interestingly, nobody complained about the Index renames (there were about 600 of those). But... ...about a year after the adoption of the name "Outline", an editor who hadn't seen them before came across them and was shocked. What was this "new" type of page that wasn't approved by the community? He ignored all explanations that the type of page had existed since the founding of Wikipedia. The war was on. He was relentless. He attacked the project in every way he could think of. He recruited allies. He nominated pages for deletion. He renamed them. He redirected them. He changed some of the links on the master outline to lead to articles instead of outlines. He tried to tag the instructions as a failed proposal. He removed the set's links from the navigation system menus. He delinked it from navigation footers. He reformatted them to generic lists. And he engaged in edit wars on almost every outline that I edited. Supporters of the outlines came out of the woodwork, and we defeated him at every turn. It just so happened that thousands of people had been using the outlines, and there were some who relied upon them heavily for personal and Wikipedia-oriented purposes. From learning to consolidating coverage to tracking articles on Wikipedia. Also, several WikiProjects had gotten involved with developing them for their respective WikiProject's focus. To turn the tables, I stopped editing, except to repair the damage he was doing. Now the uphill battle was his. By this time, the outlines had grown to over 500 web pages, and if you printed them out, you'd have a stack of papers numbering between 3000 and 5000, depending on the size of print you chose. So for him, it was like an ant attacking an elephant. After about a year of this, there was still some minor damage on about 50 of the pages. He had managed to slightly reformat about 10% of the project. At that rate, it would take him 10 years to convert the whole thing. Then one day he announced he was a father, and disappeared. Development had slowed to a crawl that whole year, and so we hadn't kept up with the community's expectations for such a project. It remained pretty rough, and there were many who believed it should all be hidden away behind the scenes. The animosity our opposer had generated still lingers, and about every six months or so opposers to the project make another major attack. The last one took up most of October 2011. There was a lot of critiquing in there, and so I've been using it as the basis for a task list to further develop the set. One of the opposers pointed out a problem with circular redirects, so I've been tracking those down. Another thought there were too many redlinks in the state outlines. So I nuked the redlinks. While on that chore, I polished the state outlines. Then I turned to refining the rest of the set. Once the outlines are well-developed, I believe most opposition will simply fade away, while support will grow even stronger. And as the set continues to grow, it will attract even more new readers. Currently and collectively, the set of outlines get about 6 million page views per year. I did an experiment for one of the outlines, placing more links to it around the encyclopedia, and its daily traffic doubled immediately. As soon as the whole set is of showcase quality, I'll turn my attention to integrating it more fully into the encyclopedia by linking to it wherever relevant. That should easily double the traffic, and bring the benefits of outlines to twice as many people. Keep in mind that I can use all the help I can get. Sincerely, The Transhumanist 22:23, 2 December 2011 (UTC)
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Outline development[edit]
Merge like, estranged lists
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Sometimes I find estranged lists that are better served by being merged into the outline. I recently merged Subfields of sociology (a real mess) into Outline of sociology#Branches of sociology. When making such a merge, it is best to improve it as much as possible (if the merge was an obvious improvement, then nobody is likely to complain). In this case, the list was cleaned up and expanded. |
Annotations (and discussion)
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After gathering links for a subject, you may find that many of the terms you don't know, and that it is difficult to place them under the appropriate headings in the outline because you have to jump to each to read what it is about, then jump back, and so on. You may find that it saves time to grab the annotation for each one while you do so to kill two birds with one stone. Sometimes the headings aren't created yet, because you don't know what they will be until you've surveyed the topics. In such cases, annotating all the terms in a list first really helps to sort them into their respective classifications, which become evident from the annotations. I hope you find this tip useful. The Transhumanist 23:19, 5 December 2011 (UTC)
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Develop the External links section
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The external links section also provides an opportunity to present further links to the subject, without bloating the external links section of the main article. Introductory web pages are good, and high impact pages (pages that provide solutions). |
Timing: when to create on user space vs. directly in Wikipedia (and discussion, just for archival)
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I often create an outline directly in article space. That keeps me motivated to complete it in a single session if possible. If the situation is sensitive, or I expect the outline will take a long time to reach a good general treatment of the subject, or I just want to set a placeholder to remind me of a needed outline in the future, I start the draft in the WikiProject's draft space. Bare bones outline drafts (that start out with just headings) make good repositories for relevant links as you find them. An example of a potentially sensitive outline I started today is Wikipedia:WikiProject Outlines/Drafts/Outline of Wikipedia. I intend to complete it there and move it once it exemplifies how useful outlines can be. I've already discovered some ways to use Wikipedia more effectively that I didn't know or hadn't thought of. I believe the outline will help inexperienced users get up to speed faster than the bare links alternatives currently available. The Transhumanist 23:19, 5 December 2011 (UTC)
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Post updates to articles on noticeboard
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Links / Traffic[edit]
Gathering information and links
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Good places to look for links include:
Grep is a tool available on Wikipedia's toolserver. It has three major abilities/features:
You don't have to worry about Regex to be able to use it. Just type in whatever string you want it to search for. To specify more than one search string in the same search, use (|), like this: (of Colorado|in Colorado) That returns a list with titles like Geography of Colorado, Education in Colorado, etc. Grep also takes spaces into account... " Colorado" (without the quotes) would look for Colorado with a space character in front of it. To find places in Colorado, search for ", Colorado" (though that won't find all of the places). To look for a search string that includes parentheses, you have to escape the special meaning of the parentheses characters by placing a backslash in front of each. Grep is a nice simple place to start experimenting with Regex. Once you get familiar with it, you'll be ready to apply Regex in WP:WikEd and AWB. (Once you get up to speed with outlines, you'll probably be using AWB a lot, as it is very powerful even without using Regex).
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Where to provide links to the outline
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Basic places to provide links to an outline include:
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Link placement strategy
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http://stats.grok.se/en/201112/Outline_of_domestic_violence I adjusted the location of the link on the footer template to the top, and hopefully the traffic increase is more than merely a temporary surge. A link placement strategy I forgot to mention is that once the outline link is well-placed on the navigation footer, it is usually advantageous to add the footer to every relevant article you can find. I hope you find this useful. Sincerely, The Transhumanist 02:07, 5 December 2011 (UTC)
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Check traffic
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After placing links... ...see: http://stats.grok.se/en/201112/Domestic_violence Keep in mind that most of the outline's traffic is coming from within Wikipedia, so links to it around the encyclopedia are vital. |
General tips[edit]
Browse faster
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Another way to look for links is to browse faster. WP:LINKY speeds up browsing of multiple pages a lot. |
Blank template
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Help out[edit]
Watchlist outline pages
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The outlines and their support pages need more eyes watching them. A quick and dirty watch page is here, but it only includes outlines in article space, and it keys in on a template placed on their talk pages (making it vulnerable). If anyone removes the template, the pages it was removed from won't show up on the watchlist. A better method is to add all the outlines and outline support pages to your (raw) watchlist. I've just updated the list at Wikipedia:WikiProject Outlines/Watchlist for easy cutting and pasting into raw watchlists. Still another method is to go to Wikipedia:WikiProject Outlines/Watchlist using Related changes and click "Related changes" in the Toolbox menu. It's essentially a linkified copy of the raw watchlist above.
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Add annotations to existing outlines
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The existing outlines need annotations. I'm not worried about the geographical region outlines, since most of their links are self explanatory (e.g., "Culture of France"). It is more important to concentrate on annotating non-geographic region outlines. But, since there are so many (200+) such outlines and because they could take a single editor a year or more to annotate, I've been concentrating on the outlines in just the "culture and the arts" section. That way, we can provide a feel for what a whole class of complete outlines feels like. Then we can move on to another area. |
Add external links to existing articles
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A much easier project is adding external links to outlines that lack them in their external links sections. Even the empty ones have a sisterlinks box, so they aren't completely empty, so there is no rush. The ideal links are to outlines on the subject. Links to introductions and overviews also work. |