Archive:Monthly Write-a-Thon

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. The next Write-a-Thon is Wednesday, February 4, 2009. Starts on February 3rd, 1200 UTC, when it starts being Wednesday in New Zealand, and ends on February 5th, 1200 UTC, when it finishes being Wednesday in Hawaii. Save The 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.

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.

This month's Party Theme
   Thoughts and Books

"Authors, famous books, revolutionary ideas and theories, and all the meta stuff that can be layered on top of it. Tom"

The Partiers

 * Aleta is here without a thought. She thinks she'd better wake up in a hurry, and go knocking on some doors.  Aleta Curry 22:51, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
 * John wrote about a tome known to linguistic insiders as SPE, then added a little to Derek's Foundation Series stub. John Stephenson 04:06, 4 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Supten thought of starting something, did start it and thought whether there could be any partier helping with making the article on Clinical decision support system approvable! Then he faintly remembered that a man called Leo Tolstoy had said "I need only three things in life - books, books and books!" and it may suit the theme of the W-a-t to populate that page.
 * Howard says thinks he wants to prevent Southern sheriffs saying "what we got, boy, is a failure to com-MUN-i-cate", so he's been bringing in all sorts of AN- military radios (and other electronic magic). He also touched on the Encyclopedia Galactica ...he means... Citizendium Foundation novels. Oh...he'd be extremely interested in clinical decision support system

Keen-as-mustard and jumped the gun

 * Joe jumped the gun by a couple of days with ecological Indian. This is a very sensitive idea for a lot of people, so it would be great if people could read it with an eye for neutrality and clarity.
 * Go, Joe! Engaging and thoughful.  I'll be back to do an objective criticism later, if you insist, right now I'm too busy being impressed.  Aleta Curry 00:58, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Derek is settling into his new digs at Encyclopedia Galactica headquarters and starting in on Isaac Asimov. As long as we're talking about people born in Russia, how about visiting Leo Tolstoy -Derek Hodges 02:55, 4 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Milt got a fast start as he concentrated his thoughts on the task at hand.
 * Starting with Avogadro guacamole, then a main dish of turkey Mole. Howard C. Berkowitz 03:55, 4 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Yet another false start, but it is Wednesday in Australia, Chris subpaginated On the Origin of Species.

Porch sitters--article creators who didn't edit a new article
Louise is popping in briefly, whilst in the middle of cracking a fascinating case at work, to discuss August Strindberg, whose Inferno / From an Occult Diary she has been completely absorbed in for the last two days. More later after the commute home. Louise Valmoria 06:06, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

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)

Bonus point winners

 * Just nine new articles to get to 9,400 CZ:Live articles. I guess that will be worth a few bonus points, especially if they are completed clusters too! Chris Day 05:43, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

New Suggestions and Discussion

 * How about another Spring cleaning in March 2009? Daniel Mietchen 08:20, 6 October 2008 (CDT)
 * Not a bad idea at all, unless I get swamped with new, untried requests in the mean time. Aleta Curry 18:47, 6 October 2008 (CDT)
 * Possibly the theme could be subpages. Some of them need a lot of housekeeping. Or getting some decent images for the articles we do have. Chris Day 19:17, 6 October 2008 (CDT)


 * What about red links in Random pages? --Daniel Mietchen 10:15, 4 December 2008 (UTC)


 * I suggest "Numbers". Richard Pinch 07:21, 15 December 2008 (UTC)


 * "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.
 * How about an alternate weekend date, say the Sunday after the official Write-a-Thon, for those of us who spend our Wednesdays working at places that frown on extensive personal use of company computers? --Petréa Mitchell 19:15, 1 January 2009 (UTC)
 * There's a current forum thread on this-the proposal was to move the WaT to the weekend. Your suggestion might pose a good compromise. Aleta Curry 21:33, 1 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I would be a lot more able to participate on weekends. My weekday workdays are 11+ hours.Pat Palmer 02:51, 29 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


 * Well, next Wednesday is rapidly approaching. Anyone got any firm opinions on what the theme ought to be? My suggestion is "Thoughts and Books", which is broad enough for us to cover a wide variety of different things: authors, famous books, revolutionary ideas and theories, and all the meta stuff that can be layered on top of it. I'm also going to suggest that whatever the theme is, if we could try and decide it before the weekend, then we could set up a page off of the Write-a-Thon page to list pages we'd like to see existing that are covered by the theme. --Tom Morris 15:26, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Thoughts and books is a great idea, would fit in nicely with what I'm working with at the moment. How about a biography day for the month after? They wouldn't have to be particularly long but we could fill a lot of red links with a few well written and brief bios of important folks... Denis Cavanagh 17:07, 29 January 2009 (UTC)


 * That actually fits really well with something I'm working on right now too. I'm all for it! --Joe Quick 19:42, 29 January 2009 (UTC)


 * While it's current work of mine, is there a good place to discuss some issues of writing biography articles in general? Choices in flow? And, as is fairly nightmarish with Ho Chi Minh, when the subject changed names or had simultaneous aliases? Howard C. Berkowitz 21:11, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Future Theme Schedule

 * February - Thoughts and Books
 * March -
 * April -
 * May -