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Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Visual arts/Archive 2

WikiProject Visual arts Tags
Does this project have a template to put at the top of articles that should be a part of this project? I have created a few articles that are related to this project. 2 are of particular interest and import here Haystacks (Monet) and Campbell's Soup Cans. How do I affiliate them with this project? TonyTheTiger 15:19, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Featured article review/Diego Velázquez
Relevant featured article being reviewed. Thanks. Chick Bowen 02:36, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Diego Velázquez has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. Sandy (Talk) 13:16, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia Day Awards
Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 16:34, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Campbell's Soup Can's FAC
Campbell's Soup Cans is a featured article candidate. Leave comments here. Note I have done much editing since some of the current comments. TonyTheTiger 17:30, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

The next level
Is it just me or is this project desperately in need of a swift kick in the buttocks? I know that visual arts is a woefully neglected sector of Wikipedia, but it never will be anything else if we don't become more proactive about providing better entry points for getting involved. I'd like to see a few things happen, largely in emulation of some of the more successful projects:

 * 1) Make a basic WikiProject Visual Arts template and get, at the very least, all of the current articles in the Category:visual arts tagged with that template. There are hundreds of other articles that could fall under this umbrella (e.g., all of the artist entries).
 * 2) Completely reconsider the organization of the project page. It leaves me with absolutely no clue as to what to do to help other than add my name to a participants list.
 * 3) Get some style/article formatting guidelines in place.
 * 4) Create some doable tasks for folks who might not have tons of time to devote (including the taks of adding the template from #1 to appropriate articles).

For example, I just developed a template that can be placed on the discussion page of any artist who does not yet have an Template:Infobox Artist for their entry. Adding this stub to the talk page adds the article to the Category:Articles that need an artist infobox. So there is the opportunity to go around adding this stub, but even better, the opportunity to generate infoboxes for artists. The same could be done for individual works of art. I've done some work for the Film project adding infoboxes to film entries. I found it rewarding as I could readily contribute to movie articles that were beyond my usual sphere of knowledge.

Anyway, my point is that a little focus and organization would go a long way toward drawing people into this project, which I think is so worthwhile and vital to the broader mission. It doesn't have to be too dramatic, since we are clearly limited in participation at present. But is anyone with me? Planetneutral 04:49, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

 * I agree the project seems rather inactive (and largely focused on modern art), but I think there are already too many templates as a substitute for any real improvement in articles. I dislike the current artist infobox template myself, as it inevitably reduces the size of the main picture, delays the appearance of a second picture, all to give information that is mostly in the first para anyway, and is much less relevant for artists than for other types of article.  Obviously in the case of art and artists, what people want to see is the art. I haven't yet removed any templates, but there are plenty of articles where I could see myself doing this if one appeared.  Many artist articles are just too short to have room for a template (set out as it currently is) and a second picture, and I know which I think is the most important. I don't think I'm the only one who feels this way.  What the project needs is more editors who are knowledgeable to update and improve the 1911 entries, and add new ones. I'm afraid I don't see what you are proposing as an improvement.  A horizontal template to add at the bottom of articles would be a step forward though.

 * Also a new articles page for the project (like this: WikiProject Middle Ages/New Articles), which would, if people started using it, give a much better idea of who is actually active in this area than you get from this page.

 * I think the category tree also needs sorting out into a smaller number of initial sub-categories: Art world/business, Applied & decorative arts - that sort of thing. Printmaking categories are especially confusing & I am thinking about a proposal to address that. Johnbod 17:55, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

 * Appreciate the comments. Well, I think what I was proposing was simply an effort to draw more people to this project and, once getting them here, have some concrete things that they can actually do. Hopefully, some of those people will be the knowledgeable people you seek, who will go on and start new articles and that sort of thing. On the other hand, some people are just not going to be authors of original content, but they want to participate and contribute. And I think there ARE tasks for these people.

 * And regardless of why someone comes here, what they get right now is a confusing mess that leaves you with no idea of how to meaningfully participate.

 * As for the infobox, I can see your points there. Just not sure I entirely agree. Isn't the real problem ultimately that the articles are too short? I'm also not sure that the biography project folks wouldn't eventually get an infobox on those pages anyway. That is where the template came from after all.

 * That said, I can let it go, but then what do you do about all the artists that do have infoboxes already? Planetneutral 20:00, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Don't get me wrong, I would like to see the project become rather more collaborative. Maybe my comments above seem more negative than I meant them. There are a number of very good editors in the area, but I think at the moment there is so much that clearly needs doing that people just choose what they can do best, which is of course fine, and what I do myself, collaborating a bit on a personal basis. I think many arts editors also prefer to do their own thing, compared with other areas - again, that goes for me as well. But a bit more overall sense of direction would be helpful in places. I haven't done big edits on a page with a really problematic infobox (the painting one seems generally slightly preferable to the artist one) but if I did a lot on say Rembrandt the current infobox would be something to tackle. Of course many articles are too short, and far too much of what is there (on older stuff) is 1911 - that was my point I thought! Tinkering with infoboxes won't make them usefully longer. Personally I think that there are loads of articles where even someone with limited knowledge can make improvements using a few basic books, but I understand that people are rightly reluctant to trim 1911 verbiage without putting content in its place, and this can require more knowledge. Johnbod 20:31, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

A few new things
I went ahead and created a project template:

It generates this:

I also created a project userbox:

It generates:

I'm open to suggestions for improvement. More to come! Planetneutral 04:38, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Printmaking Categorization
This is not at all good at the moment. The current scheme(s) are:

Under "artists" - "artists by medium":Engravers, Etchers, Printmakers - all by nationality.

"Printmakers" is a sub-category of "Printmaking", but the others are not.

Problems with this:
 * Some people are in "printmakers", some in "engravers" or "etchers"

 * Only two specific techniques have headings, and national sub-cats are very incomplete - no "German etchers" for example. Nothing at all for lithography, woodcut, mezzotint, any of the modern techniques etc etc.

 * The division is highly artificial - after about 1540 almost all engravers did etching as well, & most etchers did some engraving - in both cases very often on the same plate.

Solution: "Printmakers" has to be the way to go - even Dürer was already using 3 techniques, later artists like Picasso & Munch use a much wider range. So merge "engravers" and "etchers" into "printmakers" - leaving a category "engravers on metalwork" for the various non-printmaking engravers that are also in that category.

Personally I would like a sub-division by of "printmakers" by periods, say:

 * Gothic
 * Renaissance
 * Baroque
 * 18th and 19th century
 * Modernist
 * Contemporary (active from say 1970)

- then by nationality. Or maybe that should be a separate sub-categorization of "printmakers"? It would also be good to have lists, for more detail on which techniques artists mainly used - something for later perhaps.

Thoughts anyone? Johnbod 17:24, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

 * copied from my talk page; I'll respond tomorrow  Johnbod 04:23, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Hi Johnbod - Thanks for your comment! I am fairly new as a Wikipedia contributor so am particularly appreciative of any input. I understand your hesitation about adding Etchers as a category to those artists who are already categorized by "Nationality etcher." Ultimately, my rational for adding more individuals to the 'Etchers' category was an attempt to emulate the List of photographers. Also, I think that it is a good idea to be able to look up etchers generally as a group and not just by nationality. However, after having read your remarks at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Visual_arts, it does seem that Printmakers might be a superior catch-all category. I have several suggestions:

1. Perhaps we could create a "List of printmakers" page (emulating the "List of photographers") and, instead of following the "List of photographers" categorizations by 'type of photography' (e.g. doc, fash, etc.) we could put etch, eng, lith, mezz, etc. for type of printmaking?

2. We could simultaneously switch all nationality categorizations to "Nationality printmaker" instead of the current "Nationality etcher" or "Nationality engraver"

3. Once 1 and 2 were accomplished, we could then make the "Etchers" and "Engravers" category pages automatically redirect to "List of Printmakers" or "Printmakers" in case anybody decides to branch out under those sub-headings again.

4. I know that you are also keen to categorize by period and I think that is a good idea too. I definitely thinks that it makes sense to allow people to cross reference and categorize in many ways. My suggestion would be to do a period code on the "List of printmakers" page (like the eng, etch, lith, etc. but for period: goth, bar, ren, etc.) or perhaps we could just do a sub categories under the Printmakers category, in a separate section from, but in addition to, nationality sub headings? The only concern I have with the latter is how we then integrate with pages like Gothic art?

I hope that my description and ideas are comprehensibly put - if not, please bear with this newcomer! If it is, it would be fantastic to hear your thoughts!

Merteuil 02:43, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

 * Ok; 1) & 2) I absolutely agree about.
 * 3) Yes if this is technically possible - I'm not sure if it is. But it would not be a huge amount of work to check & clear them out every so often. I'm not sure I would want to delete the categories as "Printmakers" would not seem an obvious alternative to many people.
 * 4) I'm not sure what I think here. Above I think I say categorize by period, then by nationality, but maybe this is too complicated. Perhaps it's easier to do the list like that. If you do periods first, then nationality, you can be more flexible on Netherlands/Flanders/Belgium etc & have Venetian etc as sub-heads for the earlier Italian periods, which would all be useful.
 * On linking to Gothic art etc, printmakers is a sub-category of "Category:Printmaking", so you could just link to (ie categorize as) that. But if the first sub-categories were periods, articles of the same period could go straight to them.

Complicated stuff! Johnbod 04:58, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

 * Hi Johnbod - another thing - I was looking at the "List of photographers" page again and it appears that most of the photographers on the list link to the artist's individual page but not vice versa. Considering that what we are proposing to do is essentially create a new category (as well as create an overall list), I think that links should go both ways.  In view of this, do you think that the page should be called "List of printmakers" or just alter the "Printmakers" page?  Vis a vis your #3, why don't we see what we can do once 1 and 2 are accomplished?  I am not fully up on the technical possibilities so am happy to defer to your experience on that one!  Would you be interested in trying to organize 1 & 2 with me?  I could do the etchers page and you could do the engravers page, or vice versa?  Vis a vis the period/nationality discussion, I think that it would be helpful to have categories for both (e.g. "Nationality printmaker" and "Period printmaker").  As you point out, there may be some difficulties with nationality classifications (Flanders/Netherlands/Belgium) but I think we will also have the odd problem with periods too - what if someone overlaps a defined time period (for example if there is a "Contemporary, 1970-present" period, an artist may well have worked from 1940-1980, in which case it might be difficult to classify them)?  If we went with the "List of printmakers" category name, we could use the "Printmakers" page to have two sub categorizations - by nationality and period (Nationality printmaker (as exists now) and Period printmaker (to be created)).  At the top we could put the link to the "List of printmakers" page for the comprehensive list of individuals and their type of printmaking.  What do you think? Merteuil 20:35, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

The List will be in the category & sub-heads could (?) be put in sub-categories (maybe not, technically). The List could also be put into every "See also" section, though that is a bit of work. I'd favour a single list - that reduces the problem of people being hard to categorize, as you just check the next section. Perhaps you're right re nationality and period for cats, though that is harder for maintenance. We could certainly start the list now & see how it looks. In the discussion referenced in the next section below there is a link to one for the Simpsons (!) which is more sophisticated than most I've seen. Johnbod 02:31, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

 * Uh oh! I think I am getting a bit confused - I took a look at the Simpsons structure - lists within categories and categories within lists!  Phew!  Let's go ahead and try to organize the printmakers though - as the more experienced Wiki contributor, would you like to set up the page a la the 'List of photographers' and then I will jump in to help reclassify everything!? The preceding unsigned comment was added by Merteuil (talk • contribs) 04:03, 3 February 2007 (UTC). Merteuil 04:04, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

 * Ok - I will start it in my sandpit, or one off here, but will post link here when it's started. Not sure when that will be (not very long) Johnbod

 * Hi all, a good start to the printmakers for sure. Loads of abscent artists (i.e. Jim Dine, Kiki Smith, Robert Indiana)  Also, there probably should be a Master Printer section.  This well require a bit of research but it shouldn't be too difficult.  90% of the artists listed as printmakers really collaborated with a master printer who executed the actual printing and execution of the work

 * By all means add the artists. In general the idea is to restrict the List to people with articles, or who soon should get them. I've no objection to master printers with articles (on individuals or print shops/studios etc) being added, maybe in a separate section as you say. Johnbod 16:37, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Articles for deletion/List of American artists
This needs input. Tyrenius 00:31, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Sandbox List of Printmakers
I have started a draft one at - (now out of Sandbox at:) List of Printmakers - comments please! I'm not sure about the layout myself, although I do think a chronological approach is right. There is a discussion of the idea two sections up. I also started this one: User:Johnbod/List of printmakers but decided the format was too complicated for a fluid list. At the moment I haven't put headings in for Japanese Ukiyo-e artists, but they should probably either have their own list of go here. There are 35 pages in the "Ukiyo-e artists" category, plus 24 in the "Japanese printmakers". Johnbod 22:38, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

 * I had a look at both the pages and would also lean towards the layout on the User:Johnbod/Simple P list page. My only concern with the layout as it stands is that having a nationality listing under each period heading could become unwieldy.  May I make a proposal that we try breaking the printmakers down by period and then alphabetically within each period?  Then, after each artist's name could be their nationality and type of printmaking.  Perhaps we could keep exact dates for the artist's own pages since it is already somewhat implied by their period classification?  An example of what I propose would be: Martin Schongauer, German (Eng)...  Schongauer would be found under the 15th Century categorization and alphabetically ordered.  My only final query would be about the time periods chosen - is there any standard within the art community on Wikipedia for these types of breakdowns or does it tend to depend on the medium under discussion?  Should there be some sort of cross linkage with a description of the periods themselves - the Baroque, Renaissance pages, etc.  I suppose the only problem with such period classifications is their specificity to a given geographic region, not necessarily encompassing or applicable to all the nationalities included in the overall list (e.g. the Baroque period being specific to Europe or the Edo period to Japan).  Perhaps we should stick to century classifications only - 14th century, 15th century, etc.?  This way we can easily include all nationalities?  What do you think?  Merteuil 05:19, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

 * Yes, I'd agree with just putting the nationality on each line for the later periods - after 1700 maybe, or 1800. Except maybe for the Japanese, who (if not in their own list) logically go in their own section - maybe divided by school. For the earlier periods it's not such a problem - I've put Northern rather than German for the C15 for example. I also think that contemporary printmakers, who will end up being much the largest group, should perhaps be divided by continents say, and then alphabetically. I'd prefer to stick to chronological sequence pre-1700 at least - there won't be so many people that finding them would be a problem. Or they could all be alphabetic, but in that case I think the dates are important. I don't think there's a problem using slightly different arrangements for different periods. I may do some sections in different styles for comparison - or anyone else please feel free to do so, but leave edit summaries explaining what you're doing Johnbod 16:48, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

 * One other thought (perhaps a crazy one)! Is there any way to create a button in Wikipedia to allow people to sort a page in different ways?  For example, if we entered three types of information for an artist - their nationality, period and type of printmaking - could we set it up so that the user could sort the page in their preferred way (kind of like the way you can sort search results on Amazon - by 'bestselling' 'cheapest' 'most popular,' etc.)?  It might make this whole page a lot easier in the end (although perhaps a bit more complicated in the short term)?  Any thoughts?  Merteuil 05:23, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

 * I think this lies some way ahead technically - I've not seen anything like it on WP. Johnbod 16:49, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

 * No this is possible, see Help:Sorting, or Ranked list of Dutch provinces for an example --Donar Reiskoffer 13:16, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

 * OK thanks - that would be the ideal then Johnbod 13:50, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
 * I've just seen "Liste de graveurs français" on the French Wiki - a similar solution (not with sorting). Johnbod 19:54, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

 * I have just taken a look at the "Liste de graveurs français" and also the Ranked list of Dutch provinces. I think that the layout of the first is quite similar to Johnbod's sandbox prototype and looks good.  The Ranked list of Dutch provinces page is great in that it has the sorting ability.  Do you feel comfortable going ahead with something like that for the printmakers page?  I think it would work really well for country and then century of principal work.  I have just realized though - the only problem might be on sorting by type of printmaking - we would probably have to have a separate column for each type which could get quite sizeable...  Alternately, if we only had one column for 'types of printmaking,' the sorting feature would only sort based on the first type of printmaking listed within that column.  And, if people don't enter that in a standardized order (something that would probably be impractical to upkeep), it is unlikely that sorting by type of printmaking would be effective.  Sorry to be a downer after making the initial suggestion - if anyone has an idea how to get around that problem, it would be very helpful as I still think having some type of sorting on the page would make it all a lot easier and cleaner!  Any thoughts? Merteuil 04:25, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

 * Yes, I've been looking at it, & whilst it is tempting, I have to agree. It is clearly harder for people to add to - many just wouldn't bother, or would make mistakes that would I suppose make the page look wierd. As you say the techniques are a problem - I suppose you could have Wo, Eng, Et, Other, but it's not ideal.  Some countries would also be tricky - Belgian/Flemish, Dutch/Netherlandish, British/English/Scots/Welsh etc - if you have headings that is limited to some extent.  Reluctantly I think it might be overambitious - especially I think many people would just avoid editing it.  If we had all the printmakers on I think it might make a big file-size for the page.  Certainly more maintenance would be needed.

I've changed parts of the sandbox list from sections to just headers, which I think is better - it certainly cuts the size of the contents box down. Johnbod 09:55, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

 * I think that the 'just headers' is the way to go - as you did with the 17th century. Cutting down the size of the contents box would be great.  My last suggestion is that perhaps we could make the 'type of printmaking' codes into its own little key at the top too - just to make it more obvious to people accessing the page?  Then, do you want to launch the page and I can start helping to put printmakers on!  (Or should I do this while it is in in the Sandbox?)  Let me know how I can help!  Merteuil 17:15, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

 * Agreed re key - I meant to do that. I think it should be a bit more populated before it hits the mainspace, but please anybody add names to it (link again: List of Printmakers). I will tidy up the headings, on the C17 model, & do the key etc, unless anyone beats me to it. We should be able to take it public this week.   Thanks, Johnbod 17:28, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Now on mainspace - all help welcome. Johnbod 03:24, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

 * Cool. Just be careful with the ukiyo-e -- not every ukiyo-e painter did prints. LordAmeth 09:41, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

 * At the moment there is just a reference to the partial lists at the ukiyo-e article. I wasn't planning to change that, as schools rather than dates seems to be the primary classification (?) & they are obviously all the same technique & country. I don't have any "modern" Japanese printmakers on the list as yet though. Johnbod 21:16, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Articles_for_deletion/Jørgen_Mahler_Elbang
Would appreciate your input. Planetneutral 18:00, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Articles_for_deletion/Simon_Mitchell
Again, your input is appreciated. Planetneutral 03:40, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
 * This article has been speedy-deleted. Tyrenius 00:33, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Articles_for_deletion/Karl_Kenda
I seem to be on a roll with these, as I explore some of the top level categories. Your input is appreciated. Planetneutral 20:39, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

AfDs
Three Polish artists were nominated yesterday: Magdalena Trzebiatowska, Jacek Yerka, and Katarzyna Kozyra. Tyrenius 23:46, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject Deletion sorting/Visual arts
Please post to and watchlist the above as a central notice board. Tyrenius 01:25, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Project template
I've made a few tweaks to the Visual arts project template, most notably introducing a class attribute. Class can be set to one of these parameters: FA, A, GA, B, Start or Stub, based on Version_1.0_Editorial_Team/Assessment. Since we have no formal assessment process, I encourage editors to make an educated go at it. Discussion can always take place here or on the article's talk page. Some WikiProjects incorporate a separate comments page strictly for assessment. We're certainly nowhere near needing that apparatus. Perhaps someday we'll have a critical mass and can start incorporating more formal assessment processes.

The template is also set up with a priority (often called importance) attribute, but I've commented it out for now for a few reasons. Priority assignments can be controversial and I didn't want to introduce that complexity without discussion here. Also, given how few people are actively involved with this project, I'm not sure we really need to devote attention to assigning priorities at this point.

I also introduced a cat attribute. If applying the project template to a cat (i.e., cat=yes), different verbiage will appear and there is no need to set a class attribute.

If you are working on an article within the scope of this project, I heartily encourage you to add the Visual arts template. We really need more people involved in the good work we're doing here and this is a key recruiting tool.

If there is a talk page with multiple WikiProject banners and it seems to be out of control, note that there's a WikiProjectBanners template you can use to consolidate them. See it in use on Talk:Benvenuto_Cellini. Planetneutral 17:03, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Discussion about establishing notability guidelines for artists/painters
Discussion is going on about establishing notability guidelines for artists and/or painters. Notability (people)/Wikipedia:Notabilty (artists).

>>sparkit|TALK<< 17:08, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Default sort for Italian artists
I've been working with Category:Tuscan painters and am wondering how some of these artists should be sorted. Artists like Leonardo da Vinci and Giotto di Bondone are sorted by their commonly used first name, which makes sense.

Then there's Andrea del Sarto. I have enough background in this area to know that he's commonly referred to as del Sarto and that's confirmed by Grove Art, but he's currently sorted in Wikipedia under Sarto. (Update: Actually, I was wrong about this - sorted as Sarto in Grove Art. Strange, since he's referred to as del Sarto throughout the article).

Defying consistency, we have Andrea del Castagno, who is sorted as 'Castagno, Andrea del' by Grove Art. Or Giovanni da Milano, who is sorted as 'Giovanni da Milano' by the same source. Same with Piero della Francesca and Rosso Fiorentino. Impossible to anticipate without the requisite background.

Thus, my instinct is to employ reliable outside sources to make these determinations. But I want to make sure that I'm not overlooking some Wikipedia guideline or a previous discussion on this topic, before I go broadly applying this logic.

One concern I have is that, to the average person, sorting Spinello Aretino under Spinello will look wrong and, given the 'to-do' task of sorting artists by last name, he/she will be inclined to 'fix' it. Not sure how one prevents and/or polices that. How would you proceed? Planetneutral 05:20, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

 * There is I think a sort of convention that after ??? 1400, certainly by 1500, in A de B names, B is treated as a surname, so sorted on, whilst before 1400 odd B is treated as a place of origin, so A is the name. They should never be indexed as D for "de".  Obviously John from Verona hardened into John Verona over this period, and became used by John's son Fred Verona, who was actually born in Milan....  They will be confusing whatever you do, but I think you have to do some of it manually  - there is also the Getty Index, which is extremely reliable and authoritative: . Hope this helps  Johnbod 05:50, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

 * It does. Immensely. I'd forgotten all about the Getty Index, which has exactly the kind of authority behind it that I'm looking for. Cheers.Planetneutral 06:03, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

 * To help ensure that someone doesn't change the category sort when you've set it up in an unconventional way, add a comment to the code, right above the categories. See Hishikawa Moronobu for an example.

[[Category:

 * Also, I recently stumbled across a new wiki magic word for category sorting - DEFAULTSORT. It's formatted like a template. For example in the Maurice Braun article, using DEFAULTSORT, you only have to set the sorting parameter once, not with each category.

 * >>sparkit|TALK<< 06:49, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

 * Thanks. I only just discovered DEFAULTSORT myself. Very handy. I think that in cases where we want to do an unusual sort by "first name," the DEFAULTSORT may be enough to demonstrate intent. Planetneutral 06:57, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

The Reformation and Art
Hi, can someone knowledgable please have a look over this new article by a newcomer: The Reformation and Art. May need some streamlining. Thanks! Fut.Perf. ☼ 16:01, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

 * After a (very) quick read, the basic info and formatting seems fine. The actual content of The Reformation and Art is clearly written and seems factual (again, I only read it quickly). I'm not that informed on Counter-Reformation Art, so I can't speak of that. I will try and go over it in a few hours and give it a close read. Freshacconci 17:38, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

 * I've done a bit on it - I did'nt think it was very high quality Johnbod 17:40, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

 * Thanks guys. That's a fast wikiproject for once. :-) Fut.Perf. ☼ 19:29, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

wikicommons picture of the year voting
Voting for Picture of the Year (the final) takes place from 17 Feb to 28 Feb (inclusive). The winners will be announced on 3 March after complete verification of history logs.

Commons:Picture of the Year/2006

[>> sparkit | TALK<<] 14:45, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Missing topics
Greetings. I have couple of lists of missing topics in arts and a contributor recommended that I could mention it here. I have tried to find any similar articles (with a help of couple of other editors) but I'd appreciate if others could have a look at the lists. - Skysmith 09:45, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
 * That's quite a list! I added some links and comments. Is this the start of a comprehensive list of missing visual arts articles? -- [>> sparkit | TALK<<] 23:06, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, it is as comprehensive as I can make it. Unfortunately I don't think I'm qualified to write about all of these - Skysmith 13:34, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Artist naming conventions
Question in a nutshell: How does one determine the most commonly used appellation for an artist, in order to determine the best article title? This really piggybacks off my recent question about sort order for Italian artists. In working on determining proper defaultsort for Italian artists, I'm noticing that the Getty Index will have an altogether different preferred name (or a variation in spelling) for that artist from the one being used as the title of the Wikipedia article.

Should I move the article in those cases? Is the Getty Index the right source to dictate that? Should I be cross-referencing with other sources such as Grove Art? What if there's a conflict there? Is there a place for something as simplistic as number of Google hits?

Or is it largely better to avoid moving pages (assuming I take care of double redirects and the like), even if a reliable source like the Getty Index indicates a different name is preferred? What would be your strategy? Planetneutral 22:33, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

 * I have argued in various cases for going with Getty - I've not yet seen one where I would prefer any other title to their preferred name, though of course it might be possible. See Andrea Meldolla, Giorgio Orsini, and Giulio Clovio - all subjects of Italian/Croatian/Dalmatian national passions, as you will see if you can face the talk pages (not recommended). Getty has a very appropriate methodology & is continually updated, so I think it is normally a very appropriate guide for us - much better than ghits etc.  Johnbod 23:23, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

 * PS: Quite often the name in the "home" language of the artist is different from the "most commonly used term in English" if that is still the WP guideline quote. See Palazzo del Te for a rather unexpected example (building not artist obviously) that is currently under discussion for a name move. Johnbod 01:26, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

 * Getty seems like a solid resource to me, though I'm not up on what all the options are. Off the top of my head I'm thinking Getty with other online encyclopedias as back up. I don't trust the "google hits test" because it turns up too many wikipedia mirrors and folks are turning to wikipedia as "the" reference - despite all the craziness on wikipedia :). [>> sparkit | TALK<<] 02:00, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

Proposed artist notability guidelines
A new proposal for assessing artist notability: Notability (artists) [>> sparkit | TALK<<] 05:44, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Portal/template image and portal in general
Sparkit and I had a brief discussion today about the images used for the Template:Visual arts and Portal:Visual arts/Intro.

We both agree (and Sparkit, let me know if I'm mischaracterizing your thoughts) that the Van Gogh image doesn't really work well at the small size and neither of us cares for the palette graphic. I'd like to find an image that will work well in both contexts and has an iconic quality to it. If you have any thoughts on a better image, please share.

Also, I've been doing some work on the portal page. I don't really care for the color scheme, but am not sure I have any ideas for improvement. Any one else feel the same way about the color scheme? If you're feeling bold, go to Portal:Visual_arts/box-header and try something different. I'll be playing in my sandbox. Cheers, Planetneutral 03:23, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

 * A few options for the portal/template image are on display here. Planetneutral 04:40, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

 * I came across that same eye with the purple background the other day when I first started thinking about using an eye for a visual arts icon. :) And as much as I like that image, I like the hand-with-eye better for a portal and project icon because the work of the visual artist so intensely involved their hands and eyes, as well as the eyes of the viewer. The story that goes with the symbol is cool, too – Hamsa – telling us, among other things, that it's an ancient symbol. The image file is kinda fuzzy, but if we like this symbol, I can make a sharper one. [>> sparkit | TALK<<] 05:21, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

 * I made almost exactly the same comments on the Portal talk:Visual arts page. Yes, a sharper version of that image would be excellent. Planetneutral 11:42, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

 * I like the new banner pic! Johnbod 21:17, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

 * I concur! I'm going to test it in other contexts. Sparkit, that looks like the original pic. Do you anticipate finding a sharper, yet similarly suitable image? Planetneutral 21:23, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

 * That is the original pic. I've since created and uploaded one that's a little sharper. I'll probably fiddle with it some more, but here it is. --sparkit TALK 22:45, 3 March 2007 (UTC) [[Image:WPVA-khamsa.png]]

 * Loves it! Wish it would scale a little better for the portal page though. Anything that can be done toward that end? Planetneutral 23:15, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

 * Doh! I originally uploaded my smaller test file. It's replaced with a bigger one now. You might have to refresh your cache to see the new one. --sparkit TALK 23:25, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Article tagged by BOT
The bot User:Alphachimpbot tagged this article to be a visual artist Ahmed Akkari. I fail to see how this man is considered a visual artist. His primary creation was a dossier based on newspaper clipings Akkari-Laban dossier. This he made together with another imam I would like that some on from this project review the article in question and estimate wether is is within the scope of the project.

Happy editing -Angelbo 20:26, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

 * No question, it's mistagged. I'm not clear how the bot got there. I'll fix it. Thanks for pointing it out. Looks like I'll have some follow-up work to do. Planetneutral 20:40, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

 * Thanks for the quick response, then Can I asume that theese are also mistagged: Islamisk Trossamfund, Jyllands-Posten, Economic and human costs of the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy, Opinions on the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy, List of newspapers that reprinted Jyllands-Posten's Muhammad cartoons, Descriptions of the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons, Timeline of the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy, International reactions to the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy, Islamist demonstration outside Danish Embassy in London in 2006 and Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy  Regards and happy editing -Angelbo 20:45, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

 * Absolutely. Folks, what we have here is a bot gone wild. I have to chat with the bot's operator and see what happened. If you look at the bot's contributions, you'll see a lot of false hits, none of which I can identify as falling into any of the requested cats or subcats: (Category:Artistic techniques, Category:Italian artists, Category:French artists and Category:American artists). Something is amiss. Any help identifying what categories were hit in error would be appreciated. Planetneutral 21:01, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

 * OK, the above articles were tagged, because Category:Jyllands-Posten cartoons controversy is listed as a subcat of Category:Caricature, which is a subcat of Category:Artistic techniques. I didn't actually request the subcats of Artistic techniques, but the bot operator tried to carefully select some of the subcats to include. This was one of the missteps in that process. I believe there are some others, so I will be reviewing the bot's work. Again, assistance in that regard is appreciated. Planetneutral 21:04, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

 * That's one busy bot. :) We've got quite a pile of articles flagged now. Thanks Planetneutral! --sparkit TALK 22:46, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

 * User:Alphachimpbot tagged this article too: Cut-up technique. I'm not sure if this is a case of a bot gone wild or a human gone wild. A human may have considered "cut-up technique" to be art-like. But I don't think it really is. Bus stop 22:55, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

 * It's categorised as a "surrealist technique" or something, which is a sub-cat of "artistic techniques", which is a Visual arts category. Johnbod 14:30, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

 * I've since come to understand the reason that a non-visual art article was tagged as being a visual arts article. The problem results from there being "surrealist techniques" in visual arts, as well as "surrealist techniques" in the literary arts. I think a solution could be to break down "surrealist techniques" into two categories: "surrealist techniques in the visual arts," and "surrealist techniques in literature." Bus stop 15:25, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

 * That would work, except that on a quick look many seem to be both - there are perhaps only 2 exclusively literary, & no doubt a true Surrealist would object to that categorisation. I'm not sure what the solution is - I'm tempted to say just untag the article & let matters rest. Johnbod 15:49, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

New template for art images
I've never found a template specific to images of art, so I've made one. If there's one somewhere else, please let me know, so's we don't have multiples. Template:Image information art. To see how it looks on an image page, go to Image:Masson automatic drawing.jpg --sparkit TALK 15:47, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Article at the mercy of this project
I'm putting this article at the mercy of this project and project members. There is a rare term used to describe visual art with a more universal meaning that another user is trolling over-scrutinizing as if there is some harm in it being an article. The troll disputor nominated it for AfD, and the result was to "keep". The user then used WP:POINT disruptive editing to make a point.

It's not likely that visual artists will use the term to describe what they do, but it is likely that clients or business administrators will use it to describe visual art. The term is "Image development". I would be OK with just letting the image development (disambiguation) page define the term, but the term is used as an umbrella term as well as a synonym for the individual forms of image development. Readers often assume that disambiguated articles are mutually exclusive uses of a term, which is not the case with umbrella terms.

I considered including it in the main visual arts article, but the umbrella term has a somewhat broader meaning than just the artistic usage. If you read the archived talk page you will see the struggle against the troll disputor. The troll disputor is taking advantage of the fact that art is not natural science and is scrutinizing the article as if it is describing natural science. Since art, by nature, relies on POV and interpretation, it only makes sense that art-related wikipedia articles are mostly WP:POV. The troll disputor strategy is to accuse POV of being synthesis and original research. If this is allowed, other important art-related articles on the wikipedia may be reduced to just a bibliography or deleted.

The term can easily be called neologism, but so can the pairing of any other two words. It's unlikely that a secondary source has defined the term because its definition in context is obvious. The WP:NEO policy says to avoid neologism, but this is a case of no better alternative, if you can even call a phrase with two dictionary defined terms neologism. The term isn't used often, but when used in context, it makes more sense than any alternative. Terms like this are needed to bridge the gap between rigid computer science language and artistic language. Otherwise, people just assume that visual art and graphic visualization are incompatible.

If enough other members of this project feel that the article should be merged or left as a disambiguation page, I will comply. If anyone on this project understands the need for it the way I do, please help defend it against the trolling by editing the article or disputing the troll overly-scrutinizing arguments. Oicumayberight 23:22, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

 * Please avoid personal attacks, such as referring to other users as trolls. Grouse 02:57, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

 * Sorry. Just got carried away. I was trying to avoid mentioning names while explaining the nature of the disputes. Oicumayberight 04:43, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

The disputer has framed the argument against the sources in such a way that one would expect word-for-word quotes from the article. The sources were only meant to cite usage of the term in context. In my opinion the sources in the article can stand up to peer review from those familiar with visual art if the statements are worded properly. What the disputer has proven is that the sources in the article don't stand up to trolling. The disputer seems to be a little more cooperative, but still appears to be a little too critical for an art-related topic. I'm going to re-write some of the statements in the article to match the context of the sources a little closer. I still could use a little help if anyone on this project would like to support the article. Help rewording or at least help trying to get the disputer to use constructive criticism should suffice. Oicumayberight 21:34, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Portal peer review
Just thought I'd let you know that I requested a portal peer review for the Visual arts portal. If you haven't checked out the portal lately, I invite you to do so and, if you're so inclined, add your comments to the peer review. Cheers, Planetneutral 04:20, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Campbell's Soup Cans FAC2 notice
Add comments in support or opposition at Featured article candidates/Campbell's Soup Cans —The preceding unsigned comment was added by TonyTheTiger (talk • contribs) 22:55, 8 March 2007 (UTC).

Featured portal candidate
Having responded to the comments of the peer review, the Portal:Visual arts is now a featured portal candidate. Your input on the nomination would be appreciated. Cheers. Planetneutral 05:06, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Improve the Visual arts article?
The main Visual arts article could use some improvement, and it seems an important high-level article especially in the light that the portal (Portal:Visual arts) will soon reach featured status and the first link on the portal page is visual arts.

Discussion about the article is ongoing at Talk:Visual_arts. Thanks! --sparkit TALK 16:09, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Legal Concerns
In the Vintage Nude Photographs section on wikicommons http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Vintage_nude_photographs I am concerned about several photos that I believe consitute Child Pornography. I believe that these photos should be removed to avoid potential legal trouble for wikipedia. -Vcelloho 02:06, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

 * It seems like you might have a valid concern there, but I'm not sure this is the avenue to do something about it. I'm not sure what is though, not being as familiar with the Commons. Planetneutral talk  02:15, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

 * Maybe start with the deletion guidelines there. Planetneutral talk  02:17, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
 * no one would respond to it on the proximent talk page and since the wikipedia article on the history of nude depictions falls under this project I decided to bring this issue over to this discussion board. -Vcelloho 02:18, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm not aquainted with common's either I was hoping that someone over here might be able to handle this for me. -Vcelloho 02:22, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

 * Well, maybe someone will be willing to devote that time and energy, but my experience is that if you feel something should happen on Wikipedia, you need to make it happen yourself. Since the pics that you are worried about are on the Commons and do not appear in the History of erotic depictions entry, it doesn't seem to fall within the scope of this project, although I certainly understand why you came here. My only advice is to be bold. Buona fortuna! Planetneutral talk  02:36, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I've decided to contact an administrator for further help but thank you for your advice. -Vcelloho 02:44, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
 * A great idea. (Wish I'd thought of it!) Planetneutral talk  02:47, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
 * The 3 Marconi's on the main page (& in his sub-cat) should certainly go, & maybe some Galdis. Johnbod 03:48, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

"Italian" or "Florentine" etc artist ?
Some editors, notably Attilios, have been gradually changing, as at Bronzino,Rosso Fiorentino, Paolo Uccello and many others, all lead sentences on artists described as "Venetian", Florentine" etc to "Italian", generally without adding any further reference to the city. Apart from the historical/political point of these cities being the correctly applicable states at the time (which bothers me less), it is standard art historical practice to use Venetian, Florentine, Sienese etc to describe those cities with major schools or distinct traditions of painting. This is important information, which is not being replaced - often when this is done it is not obvious from the rest of the lead. In other words, at least it should be changed to "Italian painter from Florence" or "of the Florentine school".  I don't really mind if the city is say Turin, with no strong local school of painting.

Can we agree a Project policy on this? Johnbod 12:34, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

 * It is significant historical information and needs to stay in the articles - category notation is not sufficient. Especially with Florence, but also if we have the info about Turin, it needs to stay, too. I bet there's a policy about this already if one could find it. --sparkit TALK 13:38, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

 * As there was no united state called "Italy" until the 19th century, I think it of the utmost importance that people are referred to by their actual nationality, i.e. as Venetian, Genoan, Florentine. Geez, I know people today who insist upon being called Welsh or Scottish or English rather than British, or Catalonian instead of Spanish. Renaissance artists would have far more likely associated themselves with their city-state/kingdom than with some abstract notion of "Italy". LordAmeth 14:46, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

 * In fairness, we don't apply the same logic to Germans of the period, and "Italian" would have been a normal usage at the time in (say) England, especially for those not from a well-known city like Florence or Venice. To me it's an art-historical, not a national point.  I've no objection to Italian being used as well; I think with say Venetian or Florentine it's not essential to add it for understanding, but I suppose I could be wrong on that!   Johnbod 14:54, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

 * We need articles that are missing like Florentine School, etc. --sparkit TALK 15:23, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

 * I made a stub for Florentine School. Sienese and Bolganese already exist. Others? --sparkit TALK 15:47, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

 * Venetian, Neapolitan, Roman certainly. Shouldn't they really be Venetian painting etc, on usual Wiki-basis, with redirects? School of Ferrara exists, maybe others. I can't get the wildcard to work on a search, for some reason.  Johnbod 16:06, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

 * Maybe they would work better if integrated into Art of Italy? Just a thought. Or "Schools of Italian art"?

 * Seems to me sculpture is also included, so "Venetian painting" would be too narrow.

 * Also, "School of Florence" or "Florentine School"? --sparkit TALK 16:16, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

 * Well I know I introduced "School" into the discussion, but it is a little old-fashioned, especially as a title (it would clear up some of those EB missing articles though). You don't often see it on recent museum labels etc, though it used to be standard. How about "Florentine art" etc.  I think they should have their own articles, with links strategically placed at the ones you mention, Italian Renaissance etc.  The School of Ferrara is hardly the largest, but some tlc from Caravaggisti is making it quite a good length.  Johnbod 17:01, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

From an organization standpoint, I sometimes wonder if one couldn't organize some groups under the category heading, for example Category:Tuscan painters etc. While I made an entry for School of Ferrara, and added to Siena, and considered others, it is a tricky business. Was Caravaggio a Lombard or a Roman artists? Does matters most where you were born, trained, or painted or whether you painted in a specific style? I started School of Ferrara, because if you look specifically at the time 1400-1500s you do have, three or four generations of artists, born in or near the city, training each subsequent generation, and imbibing a similar style. On the other hand, in Bologna, you had artists traveling up and down the peninsula, acquiring different styles, and producing their major works at places other than Bologna. I would prefer to refer to someone like Caravaggio as an "Italian" painter, yet Annibale Carracci could be called "Bolognese", I would not call Paolo Veronese, a strictly "veronese artist", nor artist of the veneto, and I think it is most apt to call him a "Venetian" artists, since I agree, that at the time, most venetians would not have considered themselves Italian. I think there is room for artists to be catalogued under different towns, eras, etc.

Bottom line, I prefer Venetian, Florentine, etc to Italian, when most apt - that is, born in the region or province, trained and active there. I was trying to start my entries with Name-(dates)-was a (best fit) painter of the (best fit) period, active mainly or in (places).

As an example, Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci were Italian artists. Pontormo, Andrea del Sarto, and Bronzino were Florentine artists. CARAVAGGISTI 21:25, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

 * I'd agree with that - we don't have to use it where we don't need to. But, for example, although Leonardo was an Italian artist, it's fair to say his followers formed a Milanese school.  Johnbod 04:18, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
 * True Italy did not exist as such before the late 19th century. I always refer to artists by their city state name, especially if that same city is where most of their work can be found. Giano 16:57, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

 * I agree to label an artist "Italian" is not as helpful as a narrower regional label that might help identify a more specific school or style, such as “Florentine.” Also, the land has been called Italy for thousands of years, but historically artists lived and worked in city-states or kingdoms within the land of Italy, such as Florence or Venice, often in more than one. It helps indicate all the towns in which an artist worked to help identify his backround/influence(s)/etc. Paradiso 21:57, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Template talk:Young British Artists
Comment invited on the colour choice for this template. Tyrenius 05:26, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Chinese painting
Chinese painting needs your help! While a number of individual artists have pretty solid articles, Chinese painting is sorely lacking. (firstly, Chinese Painting Arts needs to be merged in.) Most of the related overview articles, such as History of Chinese art, Chinese porcelain, Chinese architecture, and Chinese music... Please help in whatever way you can. We don't need massive opuses on each period or style or school, but a good solid summary with a link to the main article for each of these things would be wonderful.

The same really ought to be done for Japanese painting, Korean painting, and likely other national overview articles. For these countries as well, the "History of ... art" articles are fairly solid, but the length and quality of the separate articles by medium (i.e. painting) really need work. These are major subjects, major foundational articles which I think should be of a high priority for the Project, no? Thank you! LordAmeth 11:25, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

 * I've merged them, though it could use more scrutiny. BTW: Is there a lacquerware article somewhere? Everything seems to link to Lacquer which barely touches on the artistic aspect. --sparkit TALK 14:06, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

 * Thanks for your help. I have not come across any lacquerware articles... wow. Well, I'll leave myself a note to start articles on Japanese laquerware and Okinawan laquerware, though I'm not sure how much I'll manage to do... I've also been meaning to create one for urushi-e (painting with lacquer). Thanks for reminding me about that. LordAmeth 14:22, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Lacquerware
Much thanks to Sparkit for pointing out our dreadful lack of coverage of lacquers. I've begun something at Ryukyuan lacquerware.
 * 1) Lacquerware is currently just a redirect to Lacquer, and that's gotta change
 * 2) Chinese lacquerware, Japanese lacquerware, Korean lacquerware should be created
 * 3) I avoided any sort of links to "Southeast Asian art" or "Southeast Asian lacquerware" as being too broad - if anyone is interested in starting articles on lacquer or other arts specific to any particular countries I am sure it would be most welcomed.

Thanks all. LordAmeth 21:07, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

 * Thanks! I found another one, too - Japanning. And some online resources:
 * http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/elac/hd_elac.htm - Metropolitin Museum
 * http://www.kyohaku.go.jp/eng/dictio/shikki.html - Kyoto National Museum
 * http://www.art-antiques.ch/resource/Lacquerware.html - a dealer

 * We can at least cobble together a stub to get things rolling. --sparkit TALK 21:23, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Portal
Thought you might be interested to see that the Portal:Visual arts is now featured. Cheers. Planetneutral talk  08:37, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

 * Thanks for all your work driving the portal to featuredom! --sparkit TALK 16:33, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

 * Yes indeed Johnbod 19:18, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

 * Hip, Hip, Hooray! Hip, Hip, Hooray! Hip, Hip, Hooray! Bus stop 19:29, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Assessments
User:Ilse@ has been doing a lot of 30 second assessments of VA articles, but is not listed as a participant. Some (most?) projects only let participants assess articles for their banner. We don't have many assessments, I know, but do we have a policy on this? In at least one case, Augustus John, she removed the VA banner, to replace it with a Wikiproject Biography one (now replaced). She has hardly edited any VA articles, according to interiot. Most of the classes I have looked at seem ok, except that like most assessors, she expects articles on individual paintings to be as long as ones on artists, so undergrades these, imho.Johnbod 11:42, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I understand your concerns. In the end, I hope your concerns are about my edits, not about membership. - Ilse@ 12:21, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
 * There are many editors listed amongst the participants who are doing a lot less actual participating than Ilse@. While I certainly encourage anyone who is doing project-related work to add their name to the list, I generally don't see why we'd want to stop someone from doing "good faith" work whether they were listed or not. Listing yourself doesn't require any experience in the domain or any minimum number of edits, so it provides little in the way of authority for the editor, right?

 * The major question that arises here though is whether we are assessing articles based on the global 1.0 criteria for assessment or some as-of-yet-undefined project-specific criteria (which would thus require some sort of domain expertise and/or experience editing articles in that subject). I lean toward the former, but can see arguments for both. Either way, the answer would certainly inform any "policy" on who should be assessing articles. I'm just glad someone is taking the time and energy to do initial assessments. They are just a starting point, after all. Planetneutral talk  15:59, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Currently, Category-class articles stay in Category:Unassessed visual arts articles, can maybe someone fix this? I was thinking of a similar solution to the one of Wikiproject Films (see Category:Film articles by quality). - Ilse@ 14:19, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

 * I'll take a look and see if I can tweak the banner template accordingly. Planetneutral talk  15:59, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

List of American Artists
I would like to create a simple "List of American Artists" page. In the past, administrators have deleted attempts to maintain such a page, due to lack of structure. (see the discussion at: Articles for deletion/List of American artists). There are in fact dozens of lists on Wikipedia that list artists by nationality, and the absesce of a list for American artists seems to me to be an oversight. There is a "category" of American Artists, but there is no structure at all to this page, outside of listing artists alphabetically -- irresepective of dates and media. After a couple of attempts to create a better structured "list" page, I've had some exchanges with administrator Tyrenius, who suggested that a better structured list could be approved, and that I should seek input from WikiProject Visual arts. I've written out a page, and am outlining my ideas here, and requesting input.

Among the concerns are that the quantity of artists could get out of hand, not only because of "non-notable entries," but also because the term "artist" can be seen as very broad. I would like to create a page simply dedicated to "fine artists" in the "visual arts," as described below.

The header would be as follows:

LIST of AMERICAN ARTISTS This is a list of historically recognized American " fine artists" known for the creation of artworks that are primarily visual in nature, such as painting, sculpture, photography, printmaking, installation art, avant-garde performance art, and experimental film.

Add names in alphabetical order, and please include biographical dates and the media most notably associated with each artist.

-

All the artists I intend to list initially are already represented in individual pages. Also, the list would be divided up into specific periods, as follows:

American Artists born before 1800 American Artists born 1800–1899 American Artists born 1900–1929 American Artists born 1930–1959 American Artists born 1960–1989  An example of how the list would appear would be as follows:  American Artists born 1900–1929

Ansel Easton Adams (1902-1984), photographer Walter Inglis Anderson (1903-1965), painter Ida Applebroog (1929-), painter
 * A

... and so forth

Tyrenius suggested the possibility of dividing the 20th century into 4 periods; after some experimenting, I came to feel that dividing the century into 3 periods reflects the "generations" of artists in a much more traditionally "historical" way, in that it tends to keep artists together who are generally considered to be contemporaries of one another.

I'm looking for input from those interested. I can put up the page as described above at any time. I've created a talk page for this issue at:

Talk:List_of_American_artists

Thanks!

(Trackway 00:27, 3 April 2007 (UTC))

Discussion
Please continue the discussion at Talk:List_of_American_artists to keep it in one place. Tyrenius 01:49, 3 April 2007 (UTC)


text:
Medicine ball

A medicine ball (also known as an exercise ball, a med ball, or a fitness ball) is a weighted ball whose diameter is about a shoulder-width (approx. 13.7 in), often used for rehabilitation and strength training. The medicine ball also serves an important role in the field of sports medicine to improve strength and neuromuscular coordination. It is distinct from the inflated exercise ball, which is much lighter and larger (up to 36 in diameter).

Medicine balls are usually sold as 2 - 25 lb balls and are used effectively in ballistic training to increase explosive power in athletes in all sports, e.g. throwing the medicine ball or jumping whilst holding it. Some medicine balls are up to 14 in in diameter and up to 14 lbs weight, or in the form of weighted basketballs.

History
Hippocrates is said to have stuffed animal skins for patients to toss for medicinal purposes. Similar large balls were said to have been used in Persia, specifically by Persian wrestlers, as well as by Gladiators. The term "medicine ball" dates back to at least 1876, in American Gymnasia and Academic Record, by Robert Jenkins Roberts Jr. The first known photograph of a medicine ball in the United States was taken in 1866 and shows Harvard athletic instructor Aaron Molyneaux Hewlett surrounded by his equipment.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Medicine ball


text:
User:ShaunMacPherson/testfn/

Wikipedia is a Web-based free content encyclopedia that is openly edited and freely readable. It has 187 independent language editions sponsored by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Entries on traditional encyclopedic topics exist alongside those on almanac, gazetteer and current events topics. Wikipedia is one of the most popular reference sites on the Web, receiving around 80 million hits per day.

Wikipedia contains approximately 1.3 million articles, 470,000 of which are in its English language edition. It began as a complement to the expert-written Nupedia on 15 January 2001. It runs on wiki software, and has numerous sister projects such as Wiktionary and Wikibooks.

Wikipedia has been praised for being free, being openly accessible, covering a wide range of topics, and being detailed. It has been criticized for lack of authority versus a traditional encyclopedia, systemic bias, and for deficiencies in traditional encyclopedic topics. It is also a large-scale experiment of a discourse as defined in social sciences: "an institutionalized way of thinking, a social boundary defining what can be said about a specific topic", in a global internet context of the early third millennium.

The idea of a free, open community, united by technology, where increasingly vast amounts of content are actively authored, reviewed, and debated for public consumption, makes the Wikipedia distinctive not only amongst encyclopedias but amongst informational resources in general. However, by its very nature of being open for anyone to edit, it is the responsibility of the individual editor and of the Wikipedia community to be on constant guard against blatant acts of vandalism and lack of objective viewpoint. The credibility of Wikipedia has often come into question, because the fact that the content can be freely edited by anyone who so chooses opens the door for a certain degree of inaccuracy and poorly researched content. Vandalism is a persistent problem, though to the community's credit it is typically caught and reverted within minutes.

Openly edited
Wikipedia's content is created by its users. Any visitor to Wikipedia can edit its articles, and many do, although in practice about half of all edits are done by just 2.5% of the users. Pages are always subject to editing, so no article is ever 'finished'. Edits made by people without a Wikipedia username make up around 18% of all edits. For editors not logged in, their IP address is used instead of a username. Wikipedia generally blocks open proxies.

Ciffolilli (2003) argues that the low transaction costs of participating in wiki software create a catalyst for collaborative development, and that a "creative construction" approach encourages participation. Former Wikipedia editor-in-chief Larry Sanger has said that having the GFDL license as a "guarantee of freedom is a strong motivation to work on a free encyclopedia." Tech author Jon Udell created a movie documenting the revisions which Wikipedia's heavy metal umlaut article went through, available here.

Authors
Multiple levels of users exist within Wikipedia. Fundamentally, every user may edit a page in any way and is on equal footing with all others. However, there are administrative positions as well. Sysops, or administrators, the lowest level, are elected by the community and expected to lock or delete pages and block users in accordance with policies or consensus. Less prevalent are bureaucrats, who set sysop privileges; stewards, who are multi-project bureaucrats; and developers, who have direct access to the software. Edits may also be done by automated or semiautomated bots.

Policies
Wikipedia's participants (Wikipedians) commonly follow, and enforce, a few basic policies.
 * Neutral point of view (NPOV): Because there are potentially a huge variety of participants of all ideologies and nationalities, Wikipedia is committed to making its articles as unbiased as possible. There has been criticism that the shared systemic bias of participants can color the neutrality of an article. According to advocates of the NPOV policy, the aim is not to write articles from a single objective point of view, but rather, to fairly present all views on an issue, attributed to their adherents in a neutral way. However, establishing a consensus on what views should be thus attributed can require much heated discussion and debate, and at any rate the attribution never extends to every single statement within an article. Thus, some people have claimed that NPOV is more of an ideology than an actual policy.
 * No original research: Because there is no explicit peer review for content submitted to Wikipedia, submissions must be verifiable by readers and other contributors; unverifiable information, or facts newly discovered that have not been published elsewhere (and therefore cannot be qualified by "according to source, ..."), are not welcome.
 * Limit discussion to "talk" pages: Wikipedians use "talk" pages or other "out of band" methods to discuss changes to articles, rather than discussing the changes within the articles themselves. This marked a break from other wikis of the time, such as Ward Cunningham's Portland Pattern Repository.
 * Focus on encyclopedic content: There are a number of kinds of entries which are generally discouraged, because they do not, strictly speaking, constitute encyclopedia articles. For example, Wikipedia entries are not dictionary definitions, and the wholesale addition of source material such as the text of laws and speeches is generally frowned upon. However, some of Wikipedia's sister projects, such as Wiktionary and Wikisource, are designed to be repositories for many alternative forms of reference material that do not fit well into Wikipedia.

There are a variety of rules, guidelines, policies, and common practices that have been proposed and which have varying amounts of support within the Wikipedia community. When these proposed rules are violated, the community decides on a case-by-case basis whether they should be more strictly enforced or not.

There are also a number of important style conventions, particularly with respect to article naming; for example, when several names exist, the most common one in the respective Wikipedia language is preferred.

Neutral point of view
Wikipedia is grounded in the idea that all of its articles need to be written from a neutral point of view. The neutral point of view attempts to present ideas and facts in such a fashion that both supporters and opponents can agree. Of course, total agreement is not possible; there are ideologues in the world who will not concede to any presentation other than a forceful statement of their own point of view. But Wikipedia seeks a type of writing that is agreeable to essentially rational people who may differ on particular points. According to Jimbo Wales:

 * "Perhaps the easiest way to make your writing more encyclopedic, is to write about what people believe, rather than what is so. If this strikes you as somehow subjectivist or collectivist or imperialist, then ask me about it, because I think that you are just mistaken. What people believe is a matter of their perception of fact, and we can present that quite easily from the neutral point of view."

The neutral point of view policy states that one should write articles without bias, representing all views fairly. However, like all collaborative projects, Wikipedia has a built-in bias derived from the demographic make-up of its participants. In Wikipedia's case, this manifests itself in a tendency for contributors to create articles that relate to the interests of computer-literate American and British editors. An example of this effect can be seen by comparing the article on Coronation Street, a British soap opera — which at the start of 2005 totalled 6,933 words, not including the other 14 articles (4,746 words) devoted to its actors and characters — to the article on the Rwandan Genocide — 2,840 words on how 800,000 people died in 100 days. There are similarly long articles on U.S. television programs, actors, characters, pop groups, albums, and video games.

This bias has few defenders on Wikipedia. The presence of articles written from an exclusively U.S. or British point of view is largely a reflection of the fact that there are many Americans and British editors working on Wikipedia. Greater diversity can be achieved by active collaboration from people outside these areas, of whom there are many.

Disputes
Articles on Wikipedia are subject to "edit wars" as authors dispute or remove the contributions of others. Red Herring, in an October 2004 article, identified the most contentious articles on the English Wikipedia by number of edits as: George W. Bush, John Kerry, Sexual slang, Jesus, Jew, Adolf Hitler, Recent deaths and Saddam Hussein. Wikipedians have attempted to avoid disputes through semipolicies such as "assume good faith" and "work toward agreement." Reagle argues that disputes consume significant time, cause editors to leave, cause distraction, and disrupt other topics.

Vandalism
Wikipedia's open editing approach leaves it vulnerable to vandalism, defined as patently nonsensical or intentionally harmful edits. Popular and contentious articles appear to be vandalised most often, though any page can be affected. Vandalism generally consists of deleting all content on a page or inserting nonsensical remarks, often "obscene." It may be repaired by accessing the history of an article, clicking on the last unvandalised revision, and then clicking save. Ensuring that no edits are lost and that vandalism is easy to repair are principles of wiki software.

Vandalism's persistency has been shown to vary, though half of obvious vandalism is corrected within minutes. In a study of Wikipedia page histories, Viegas, Wattenberg, and Dave (2004) found the mean time to correct "mass delete" and "mass delete obscene" vandalism to be 7.7 days and 1.8 days, and the median times 2.8 minutes and 1.7 minutes respectively. In contrast, the average persistency of a revision marked "all content" was found to be 22.3 days, the median time 90.4 minutes. Researcher Martin Wattenberg was quoted by the Wall Street Journal as saying, "We were surprised at how often we found vandalism, and then surprised again at how fast it was fixed."

Quality efforts
Wikipedians have created a number of voluntary committees and processes in an effort to improve article quality. Custodial tasks such as copyediting, formatting articles for use on a wiki, and merging or updating articles have various pages or categories to collaborate. Within the larger language editions, more significant work to improve an article may be proposed as community-wide collaborations through approval-voting processes. Peer review processes exist on a voluntary basis in many editions. An article felt to be of high quality, which has often entailed formal peer review, may be nominated as a "featured article" and has to undergo another review process. Successful candidates must meet specifications on neutrality, comprehensiveness, references, and version stability.

Free content
Original text, images, and sounds contributed to Wikipedia is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. This makes it free content, allowing it to be freely used, edited, copied and redistributed subject to the terms of that license. Nearly-current copies of the database can be downloaded at any time for this purpose. Wikipedia's GFDL content has been mirrored by websites such as Wikinfo and thefreedictionary.com. Material from Wikipedia has been forked by Enciclopedia Libre, after most participants of the Spanish Wikipedia were dissatisfied with Wikipedia.

Wikipedia as a whole has not been published on physical media. WikiReader projects, begun by the German Wikipedia, have been published as a limited collection of articles on a specific subject. Mandrakesoft has proposed a DVD distribution of Wikipedia.

Although all text is available under the GFDL, a significant percentage of Wikipedia's images and sounds are non-free. Items such as corporate logos, song samples, or copyrighted news photos are used with a claim of fair use. Material has also been given to Wikipedia under no-derivative or for-Wikipedia-only conditions.

Wikipedia has incorporated material from public domain and GFDL resources. Public domain resources of the United States federal government or encyclopedias whose copyright has expired are often mined for images and text. As the Wikimedia Foundation and its servers are located in the United States, all language editions are bound, at the least, by United States copyright law.

Web browsers that directly search Wikipedia include Internet Explorer with the Kimba Kano plugin and default Mozilla Firefox. Wikipedia's content has been used by some programs directly, for instance the instant messaging client Trillian, which underlines chat phrases that match the title of Wikipedia articles and displays this entry on request.

Language editions
Wikipedia currently encompasses 187 language editions, not all of which are active. Its five largest editions are, in descending order, English, Deutsch (German), Nihongo (Japanese), Français (French), and Svenska (Swedish). In total, Wikipedia editions have 1.3 million articles.

The creation of a new language edition generally requires only a number of willing contributors and developer efforts to translate interfaces and setup software. However, Wikimedians have debated the creation of language editions on grounds of number of speakers.

See also Complete list of language Wikipedias available, Official article count of all Wikipedias.

Criticism
Main article: Criticism of Wikipedia

Wikipedia has been criticized for a perceived lack of reliability, comprehensiveness, and authority. It is considered to have no or limited utility as a reference work among many librarians and editors of encyclopedias.

Critics argue that allowing anyone to edit makes Wikipedia an unreliable work. In an interview with The Guardian, librarian Philip Bradley said that he would not use Wikipedia and is "not aware of a single librarian who would. The main problem is the lack of authority. With printed publications, the publishers have to ensure that their data is reliable, as their livelihood depends on it. But with something like this, all that goes out the window." Similarly, Encyclopædia Britannica's executive editor Ted Pappas said to the Guardian: "The premise of Wikipedia is that continuous improvement will lead to perfection. That premise is completely unproven." Discussing Wikipedia as an academic source, Boyd argues that "[i]t will never be an encyclopedia, but it will contain extensive knowledge that is quite valuable for different purposes."

Wikipedia has been accused of deficiencies in comprehensiveness because of its voluntary nature, and of reflecting the systematic biases of its contributors. Encyclopædia Britannica editor-in-chief Dale Hoiberg has argued that "people write of things they're interested in, and so many subjects don't get covered; and news events get covered in great detail. The entry on Hurricane Frances is five times the length of that on Chinese art, and the entry on Coronation Street is twice as long as the article on Tony Blair."

Criticism of a technical nature includes the argument that Wikipedia is effectively a "Google bomb" which disrupts search engine results by having an extremely large number of internal links. Wikipedia articles, or those hosted on its mirrors, will often be highly placed on search returns as a result.

History
Main article: History of Wikipedia

Wikipedia was created as an openly-editable supplement to Nupedia, a free online encyclopedia project written by experts through a formal peer review process. Nupedia was founded in March 2000 by Jimmy Wales with Larry Sanger hired as editor-in-chief and the project underwritten by Wales' Bomis Internet company. Wikipedia was begun as a single English edition on 15 January, 2001, under the same management arrangement. It gained a French and German version in the same year. Wikipedia and Nupedia existed side-by-side until 2003, in which time the latter's output fell dramatically and its text was incorporated into Wikipedia.

Known applications of the idea of collecting all of the world's knowledge under a single roof go back to the ancient Library of Alexandria and Pergamon. The modern notion of the general purpose, widely distributed, printed encyclopedia dates from shortly before Denis Diderot and the 18th century encyclopedists. The idea of using automated machinery beyond the printing press to build a more useful encyclopedia can be traced to H. G. Wells' short story World Brain (1937) and Vannevar Bush's future vision of the microfilm based Memex in As We May Think (1945). An important milestone along this path is also Ted Nelson's Project Xanadu (1960).

With the development of the Internet, many people attempted to develop Internet encyclopedia projects. Free software exponent Richard Stallman articulated the usefulness of a "Free Universal Encyclopedia and Learning Resource" in 1999. He described Wikipedia's formation as "exciting news", and his Free Software Foundation encourages people "to visit and contribute to the site". One never-realized predecessor was the Interpedia, which Robert McHenry has linked conceptually to Wikipedia.

Within Nupedia and Wikipedia, Sanger had considerable influence on the direction of the project during his tenure, until his position was abolished in February 2002. Wales remains actively involved to this day, contributing both time and resources to the project, and is a board member of the Wikimedia Foundation which now legally oversees Wikipedia. The Wikimedia Board of Trustees consists of Wales, for life; two Bomis employees; and two elected community members. There is no editor-in-chief or content arbitrator, and no paid employees.

Wikipedia reached its one millionth article among 105 language editions on 20 September, 2004. The one millionth article was published in the Hebrew language Wikipedia, and discusses the flag of Kazakhstan.

Software and hardware

Wikipedia is run by MediaWiki open source software on a cluster of dedicated servers located in Florida. Increasing demand has been a recurring problem for Wikipedia's servers, with slow-downs or outages resulting. Server resources and software have been regularly increased or optimized in an attempt to improve capacity.

MediaWiki is Phase III of the program's software. Originally, Wikipedia ran on UseModWiki by Clifford Adams (Phase I). At first it required CamelCase for links; later it was also possible to use double brackets. Wikipedia began running on a PHP wiki engine with a MySQL database in January 2002. This software, Phase II, was written specifically for the Wikipedia project by Magnus Manske. Several rounds of modifications were made to improve performance in response to increased demand. Ultimately, the software was rewritten again, this time by Lee Daniel Crocker. Instituted in July 2002, this Phase III software is now called MediaWiki. It is licensed under the GNU General Public License and used not only by all Wikimedia projects, but unaffiliated wikis as well. Brion Vibber has since taken the lead in fixing bugs and tuning the database for performance. Major work on the MediaWiki software, including a new database schema, is currently in progress. Its developers expect significant improvement in the scalability of the Wikipedia server cluster.

Server outages began to seriously diminish the productivity of Wikipedia contributors in 2003. Wikipedia was then served from a single server. During 2004, the server setup was expanded substantially into an n-tier distributed architecture. In January 2005, the project ran on 39 dedicated servers located in Florida. This configuration included a single master database server running MySQL, multiple slave database servers, 21 web servers running the Apache software, and 7 Squid cache servers.

Page requests are processed by first passing to a front-end layer of Squid caching servers. Requests that cannot be served from the Squid cache are sent to two load-balancing servers running the perlbal software, which then pass the request to one of the Apache web servers for page-rendering from the database. The web servers serve pages as requested, performing page rendering for all the Wikipedias. To increase speed further, rendered pages for anonymous users are cached in a filesystem until invalidated, allowing page rendering to be skipped entirely for most common page accesses. The Apache servers are connected to two NFS file servers. Wikimedia has begun building a global network of caching servers with the addition of three such servers in France.

Wikipedia's increasing popularity has caused traffic which has often outstripped the capacity of Wikimedia's server cluster. In January 2005, the Wikipedia server cluster was serving 80 million hits and 190 million database queries per day. Extensive work, such as the further expansion of the server cluster, was underway to expand capacity. Wikipedia's status may be found on an off-site status page on OpenFacts.

In February 2005, rumours emerged that Google had offered free hosting and bandwidth for Wikipedia. The deal would have "no strings attached," not requiring Google Adwords or any other form of advertising. The Wikimedia Foundation confirmed that an offer had been made, was under consideration, and was to be further discussed in March, but did not confirm any details of the proposal.

Citations of
Wikipedia has been increasingly cited by the media, academics, and others.

An error in a Washington Post article was recently attributed to Wikipedia's article on the Lisbon earthquake.

Noncomprehensive lists are maintained by Wikipedians of Wikipedia as a source, as a press source, as a book source, as an academic source, as a court source, and as a conference paper source. Coverage of Wikipedia in the press is listed at Wikipedia's press coverage page.

Sister projects
Wikipedia has the following sister projects as part of the Wikimedia family:
 * Wiktionary, a free dictionary project
 * Wikibooks, a free textbook project
 * Wikiquote, a free encyclopedia of quotations
 * Wikisource, a multilingual repository of free source texts
 * Wikimedia Commons, a shared media respository
 * Wikinews, a free news source

There are many other conceptually related projects, including Wikitravel.

Awards
Wikipedia won two major awards in May of 2004. The first was a Golden Nica for Digital Communities, awarded by Prix Ars Electronica; this came with a 10,000 Euro grant and an invitation to present at the PAE Cyberarts Festival in Austria later that year. The second was a Judges' Webby award for "Community". Wikipedia was also nominated for a "Best Practices" Webby. In September 2004, the Japanese Wikipedia was awarded a Web Creation Award from the Japan Advertisers Association. This award, normally given to individuals for great contributions to the Web in Japanese, was accepted by a long-standing contributor on behalf of the project.

Wikipedia has received plaudits from sources including BBC News, USA Today, The Economist, Newsweek, BusinessWeek, the Chicago Sun-Times, and Wired Magazine. All awards to the Wikipedia project and selected press clippings are listed on Meta.

General

 * SourceWatch: Wikipedia
 * Open Directory Project: Wikipedia
 * OpenFacts: Copies of Wikipedia content
 * The Wikipedia Cafeshop

Wikipedia

 * Wikipedia multi-lingual portal
 * Meta-Wikipedia - Policy-related and technical discussions about Wikipedia and its sister projects; includes a guide on how users can set up their own MediaWiki sites.
 * MediaWiki Phase III Software at SourceForge

Essays

 * The Free Universal Encyclopedia and Learning Resource by Richard Stallman (RMS)
 * Operation of a Large Scale, General Purpose Wiki Website, November 2002, by Lars Aronsson, founder of susning.nu.
 * Coase's Penguin by Yochai Benkler.

Reviews, endorsements, criticisms and discussion

 * 1999 FSF endorsement of Nupedia (later updated to include Wikipedia)
 * October 2004 Simon Waldman on Wikipedia's success

title: User:ShaunMacPherson/testfn/


text:
Talk:List of Arabic-language poets

Untitled
should ancient poets be listed here too?--Mayz 23:22, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Dead Links have been removed, if you wrote this article please add full articles for each new link, don't just list names where no information exists and please but dates with the names. Thanks WayneRay 17:48, 15 April 2006 (UTC)WayneRay

need articles written

 * Motran Khaleel Motran
 * I'm working on this one and translating it from Arabic. Wrad (talk) 22:33, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

title: Talk:List of Arabic-language poets


text:
Frank Miclash

Frank Ranover Miclash (born May 16, 1953) is a former politician in Ontario, Canada. He served as a Liberal member of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario from 1987 to 1999.

Background
Miclash was educated at the University of Manitoba, receiving a certificate in education, and later worked as a teacher. He was elected to the Lake of the Woods District Hospital board in 1985, and served as a commanding officer of the Navy League Cadet Corps. He owns a fishing camp and a bed-and-breakfast inn.

Politics
He was elected to the Ontario legislature in the 1987 provincial election, defeating New Democrat Doug Miranda by just over 1,000 votes in the riding of Kenora. The Liberal Party won a landslide majority in this election. Miclash was appointed as a parliamentary assistant in 1988–89.

In the 1990 election the Liberals were defeated by New Democratic Party, although Miclash defeated Miranda a second time by 331. Miclash served as chief opposition whip in 1991–92, and was easily re-elected in the 1995 election. He supported Dwight Duncan for the Liberal Party leadership in 1996.

The province's boundaries were radically altered in 1996, such that Miclash's Kenora riding was merged with the Rainy River of NDP leader Howard Hampton as Kenora—Rainy River. As such, the two MPPs were forced to face each other in the 1999 provincial election. Despite retaining strong support in the Kenora area, Miclash was unable to match Hampton's name recognition; Hampton won the election by just over 3,000 votes.

Later life
Miclash worked for three months as a manual labourer on the Grace Anne luxury yacht following his defeat. He was subsequently appointed to the province's social benefits tribunal by the Progressive Conservative government of Mike Harris and he continues to serve on that body.

title: Frank Miclash