Archive:Monthly Write-a-Thon

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What's a Write-a-Thon?

It's a bunch of people getting together on a wiki at a particular time to do a bunch of writing. It's like an online party! Heck no, it is an online party! It's also an excuse for infrequent wikiers to show up and party hardy; to exchange ideas with people we might not "meet" otherwise.

But hey, why not show up in between the write-ins, too!

When?

Write-a-Thons happen the first Wednesday of every month. It starts on Tuesday 1200 UTC, when it starts being Wednesday in New Zealand, and ends on Thursday 1200 UTC, when it finishes being Wednesday in Hawaii. Save the next month's date! Put it on your calendar! Set yourself a reminder!

Any new article you create, and any edit you make to somebody else's Write-a-Thon article during that time period will count, though to be a bona fide partier, you have to write your new articles when it's that day in your part of the world.

Our first Write-a-Thon took place Wednesday, August 1, 2007 and was considered a roaring good time--we had about 30 partiers creating something like 50 articles, and editing lots.

Read all about it!! Let's try this again

By popular request, we'll be trialling Write-a-Thon II, a Sunday session of the Write-a-Thon to accommodate those who work all week and have trouble making it in to the party room on Wednesdays.

Soooo--if you worked Wednesday, if you had a bad day Wednesday and didn't get to come to the party or didn't get to do as much as you would have liked, or if you would just like another opportunity to join in the fun, come on along. Starts on Saturday, 1200 UTC, when it starts being Sunday in New Zealand, and ends on Monday, 1200 UTC, when it finishes being Sunday in Hawaii.

What are the rules?

Rules? This is a party! There are no rules!

Well, OK, maybe there are a couple rules:

  • We'll have a Write-a-Thon the first Wednesday of every month.
  • To participate, you only have to do two things: (1) start a new article (even just a stub will qualify, if not too short - and please remember to include the subpages template!), and (2) make a substantive edit (not just a copyedit) to somebody else's new article. Then you can list your name here as a partier. Until then, sign in as a porch-sitter, party-crasher, or total party poop.

Next month's party

March 3, 2010

Something you absolutely *love*!

Write-a-Thon starts on March 2th, 1200 UTC, when it starts being Wednesday in New Zealand, and ends on March 4th, 1200 UTC, when it finishes being Wednesday in Hawaii.
Write-a-Thon II starts on March 6th, 1200 UTC, when it starts being Sunday in New Zealand, and ends on March 8th, 1200 UTC, when it finishes being Sunday in Hawaii.

The partiers

  • Tom started a page on Usenet. I guess that counts as 'love' although I might be able to do better once I've taken the dog for a walk...
  • A surprisingly difficult topic. Did some minor work in the context of brandy -- I don't love Cognac, but I like it and Armagnac, as well. --Peter Schmitt 00:39, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
And the Cognac (brandy) stub is not satisfactory at all -- but that will have to wait. --Peter Schmitt 00:45, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
Butterscotch and caramel as true loves, with, perhaps, digressions into the food chemistry of the Maillard reaction and caramelization, and even diacetyl, although, with my cold, I am not up to learning molecular drawing software. As Dan Quayle probably didn't say, a waist is a terrible thing to mind. --Howard C. Berkowitz 01:08, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
  • Hayford reluctantly concluded that everything he truly loved in life was either illegal, immoral, or fattening (and sometimes all three) and definitely not suited for depiction thereof in a family-friendly environment, so flipped a mental coin and wrote a much longer than expected article about an old-time tennis player named Wilmer Allison -- a pretty good player of the 1930s who is totally, and I mean totally, forgotten today. Then he made a teeny edit to Usenet and a somewhat more substantial one to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Hayford Peirce 01:59, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
  • Nick absolutely loves Tetris (so much that he spent nearly three hours creating an animated GIF from scratch!). I'll definitely add more to the article later, but it's late where I am now... Nick Bagnall 19:04, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

Keen-as-mustard and jumped the gun

Daniel loves context. --Daniel Mietchen 20:47, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

  • Way to go, Daniel! I've put this as the April topic. Now I'll go read your article! Aleta Curry 20:55, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Porch sitters--article creators who didn't edit a new article

Party crashers--article contributors who didn't create a new article

Rather late and missed the boat!

The shy ones, absent-minded profs, and other modest creatures

It seemed a good day for a bunch of little tweaks, so i tweaked! (Shyly, absent-mindedly and modestly)Roger Lohmann 01:45, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

The total party poops

So far, so little. Possibly I'll get something in before the deadline tonight. Chris Day

Never got to articles but did fill out the related articles page for oxidation along with a bunch of definitions. I guess I love respiration, it makes me feel alive. :) Chris Day
Me, too, but only country air. Anthony.Sebastian 16:00, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
Is there a Country and Western song about redox reactions? Howard C. Berkowitz 16:33, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
Didn't Dolly Parton sing a song called "Baby I'm Burnin'", also "Burning to Burned"? Chris Day

Special requests

Not sure it's exactly write-a-thon, but Meg pointed out that an article, then called Russian Liberation Movement, appeared in 2007 and had significant problems. I have renamed it to the more accurate Russian Liberation Army (i.e., there were multiple movements; there was one army under Andrei Vlasov), and really can't salvage anything from the earlier article. By the WaT end, there will be a total replacement, although I will need to get some additional references through interlibrary loan (well, not in the most formal way -- I could spend a couple of weeks in channels, or I could ask my housemate's daughter simply to check it out of her college library).

I wonder how many other either questionably written, or Wikipedia-imported-and-never-improved, articles lurk? Howard C. Berkowitz 20:08, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

Questions

It's a wrap!

Bonus point winners

Standing orders

Related pages

We had a special request for people to start stubs from the Related Pages of existing articles. A good idea which will help us to complete clusters.

Definitions

Please take a look at Category:Need def and help to bring the number of items on that list down. You will also find links for this by Workgroups!

empty form

Official libations

2007

  • Inaugural - beer!
  • September - champagne
  • October - we were refurbishing the bar and only had coffee!
  • November - made up for last month with more vodka than was good for us and plenty of rum.
  • December - eggnog and wine

2008

  • January - Whisky and the Cocktail of the Month, a pharisee
  • February - schnapps and the Cocktail of the Month, the caipirinha (considered the national drink of Brazil)
  • March - port wine (which should probably live at port (wine), no? (Someone put that on their list, please....Oh, *someone* did--thanks, Ro) and the Cocktail of the Month, a Dead Aunt
  • April - Akpeteshie hot and fresh from Ghana. And cool shandies and spritzers if that took your fancy. Lotsa staggering around the bar after this party!
  • May - Was it champagne? No, we were dry, I think.
  • June - Were we abstaining yet again?
  • July - Sherry
  • August - pineapple juice Well, that's all right, I guess!
  • September - Given the music theme, i assume it was pop?
  • October - Cranberry juice. Some nut who shall remain nameless but whose initials are HP suggested Drano, (i.e. what cleans better than Drano?) but....
  • November - Spring water (Now Bruce just has to write it! Aleta Curry 04:00, 3 December 2008 (UTC))
  • December - Piña colada - get some light rum, mix it with pineapple and coconut cream. Instantly warp back to the eighties.

2009

  • January - Bloody Mary - because, as Nietzsche said, we should only love that which is written with blood. Controversial enough?
  • February - Absinthe - updates last month, but doesn't it make one forget? (No. Urban legend, except that 50-percent-plus alcohol does do its mite)
  • March - Energy Drink - pump that caffeine into your system so you can burn through all those pesky definition subpages!

2010

  • January - Hot toddy - for our friends in the Northern Hemisphere.
  • April -- has to be a contextualizing mixer, or perhaps a nibble with the drink.

Write-a-Thon Theme Suggestions

New Suggestions and Discussion

  • "Hometown Heroes" - write about someone famous from your part of the world (either where you're from, or where you are now).
  • "Poles Apart" - find the spot directly on the other side of Earth from you, and write about someone or something in the vicinity. (Contributors on other planets, follow a similar procedure for whatever planet you're on. Contributors not on planetary bodies permitted to write about whatever they feel like.)
  • Fill in an item from this interesting list of natural objects. Or this interesting list of people.
  • All articles must start with the same letter of the alphabet, allowing for diacritics and transliteration (so Å, Á, and あ would all count if A were the letter, for instance).
  • Photo stubs - no minimum word length, no theme requirement, but must contain an image.
  • Choose a random number from 1 to 500, then go to Special:WantedPages and start an article on the topic currently at that rank.

Petréa Mitchell 19:15, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

  • What will people most enjoy writing that could lead many different contributors to a short, but complete and interesting article that links to larger articles? Maybe "Events" could be a theme - pen-portraits of memorable sporting moments (see try, or notable historical events - including tsunamis, eruption of Krakatoa, comet collision with Jupiter, the birth of Dolly the sheep, freeing of Nelson Mandela, the sinking of the Titanic, assassination of Martin Luther King, the Mutiny on the Bounty, the discovery of the Americas? Can I suggest asking that every new article should have at least one external link and links to other articles here?Gareth Leng 12:31, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
  • I like this idea. Further, definitions and other subpages are preferable, even for stubs. Chris Day 17:01, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
Dare I suggest that even stubs can and should be non-orphans? Basic criteria: Howard C. Berkowitz 18:00, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
  • Reachable from the front page or a core article/workgroup page
  • Link to at least three other articles, even if they are redlinks in a Related Articles subpages
  • Have at least three other articles link to them
  • I propose "childish things" as a topic. --Larry Sanger 15:51, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
Er...you talkin' 'bout me again??? You can always tell who's got a toddler at home, huh, Larry? Aleta Curry 02:57, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
This may involve blogging about an entry here at CZ, or about any aspect of the wiki. If you have never blogged before, please let me know, and I can help you set things up. --Daniel Mietchen 17:56, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

See also


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