Wikipedia:WikiProject Greater Manchester/Newsletter/January 2008

Happy New Year to all our Greater Manchester Wikipedians! The project now has 34 members. 5 new participants enrolled last month, they can be viewed here. On behalf of the team I hope they have prosperous and enjoyable usership and wish them well with their forthcoming work! User:Archtransit and User:Rudget, both part of our team, are current candidates for adminship (see here for Archtransit and here for Rudget). We wish them luck with this persuit and hope they will become our latest project participants with admin status!

Since our last newsletter delivered by User:Rudget on 03 December 2007, our teamship has continued to bear fruit in the form of obtaining featured article status for Chat Moss (nom). User:Malleus Fatuarum has been heavily involved with this article and we thank him for his efforts! It's a great addition to our FA family! In addition to Chat Moss, Altrincham (nom) is a current featured article candidate, whilst Trafford is a recent good article candidate.

Simillarly, the Portal:North West England is now officially a featured portal. User:Rudget has been overwhelmingly involved with this portal and he too is hereby thanked on behalf of the project for his continued contributions to this page and many others.

Following a title change this month (from city-wide to county-wide per this discussion) Grade I listed buildings in Greater Manchester has been one of the project's successes, albeit unofficially, with good collaboration and rapid rates of development. It is hoped by several users that this become a featured list in the short term. If you think you can help with images, information or just filling in the dead links, please feel free to join in! Simillar articles to undergo large transformation are List of churches in Greater Manchester, Kersal Moor and List of railway stations in Manchester, all of which are now in good shape.

There have been a number of debates this month, some of which with a high level of potential impact for the project and its members.

Article assessment for the project became a point of contention when around 1400 articles were tagged by a bot. Most of these artcles were on "minor" association football players. The consensus was that in our state of around 30 participants and as a predominatly geography based project, most of these articles should be untagged, at very least for the time being. Of our 1403 articles now tagged however, only (?) 85% are assessed - a drop of 15%!

Other debates have included the notability and verifiability of Commonwealth Black Pudding Throwing Championships and its mention on the Ramsbottom article. Whilst on Shaw and Crompton, one of our featured articles, questions have been raised as to what constitutes a "town". If you have any veiws on these matters, please feel free to share them at the project talk page.

Perhaps one of the most notable debates this month was the possibility of... scrapping the project newsletter! User:Rudget has written the last three editions (that's all of them!) and has decided that he'd like to pass on the responsibility. It has been proposed that a noticeboard system be introduced to highlight new issues in a near(!)-realtime fashion. I User:Jza84 am writing what could now be the last GM newsletter for a while. If you're a member of the team, but aren't closely involved with the project, then we'd love to hear from you at WT:GM with your views on which system of communication is the right way forwards (if any/both!).

As was stated in last months newsletter, the Greater Manchester remains a key article for the project, and one which has been identified as urgent in our quest for Featured Article status. Sadly, for all our other successes, Greater Manchester has changed little since this time last year] (!) and is still an article requiring expansion and development. The new WP:UKCOUNTIES guide may provide new ways in which to channel our efforts. Although we endevour to have good article status even for our suburbs and hamlets, other articles specifically identified as needing development towards FA include Salford, Stretford and Altrincham.

Many of our most crucial articles about our largest towns are still in poor condition: Rochdale, Bury, Prestwich, Bolton, and Wigan are of "start class" standard - much lower than we should have. If you feel you can help, please be bold and try to improve these.

One final challenge for this month is for all those with new digial cameras for Christmas, or even digial images stored away on a disc!... many of our place articles are still without a single photograph, and www.geograph.org.uk is running low on quality images. Even those with photographs often have a low quality photograph of the local church. MORE ARE NEEDED! Especially townscapes! If you think you can help, a barnstar is up for grabs for best picture added in the next month or so!

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We're always looking for potential new project members and ways for greater communication, collaboration and participation. WP:GM has a strong core of users, but would like to have more input from a wider user-base. If you can think of ways to improve our ways of working, please feel free to mention them at WT:GM. Simillarly, if you notice a new or unapproached user who is producing sound work related to Greater Manchester and its consituent parts, please don't forget to ask them if they'd like to join us, either in your own hand, or by adding {{Welcome WPGM}} to their talk page.

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Would you like to write the next newsletter for WP:GM?? Please nominate yourself at WT:GM! New editors are always welcome!

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