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, March 4, 2009. Starts on March 3rd, 1200 UTC, when it starts being Wednesday in New Zealand, and ends on March 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.

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 March 8th, 1200 UTC, when it starts being Sunday in New Zealand, and ends on March 10th, 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.

This month's Party Theme
   Spring Cleaning

Some spring cleaning tips (No, this won't help you with your house, you're on your own there!(


 * Here's one idea, Move lists to Catalogs.
 * Another list Uncategorized.
 * Turn some  red links to  blue  in Random pages
 * Find images for existing articles.
 * Complete subpages for existing articles.
 * Choose a random number from 1 to 500, then go to Special:WantedPages and start an article on the topic currently at that rank. (Or, just go to the wanted pages and cruise till you find something that strikes your fancy, if a random choice is too hard).



The Partiers

 * Aleta stumbles into the party room with a headache (don't ask). It's empty.  Loud groan, wonders where to start cleaning up this mess?  Early bird Dalton pops in with a suggestion, so Aleta heads over to orchid.  Back again, decided to get cracking with spring cleaning and then some columns toppled onto me when I attempted a grammatical cleanup.  Ah, well. Aleta Curry 04:36, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Supten thought of starting at the beginning viz., Spring to find at 04:51, 4 March 2009 (UTC) that the disambiguation page doesn't even have any definition or article for the designated domains!
 * Hurrah! I'm not alone! Aleta Curry 04:55, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Then Supten decided to redirect Bob's Vitamin k page to the Vitamin K page.

Porch sitters--article creators who didn't edit a new article
John only got the party invite in Chinese characters, and ended up in the Caribbean. John Stephenson 05:09, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

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

 * This seems to be O-'K' with Bob

The total party poops
Dare I point out that it is not yet spring? Russell D. Jones 18:44, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
 * And what about this technicality? It's not spring in the Southern Hemisphere!  Sounds like we need a policy on Naming Conventions.  Russell D. Jones 19:14, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
 * For meteorologists, spring has already started. Besides, wouldn't it be nice to enter spring (however defined) with a cleaned-up CZ? --Daniel Mietchen 19:20, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
 * You could always get a head start on events! :) Chris Day 21:02, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Russell, if you start us on naming conventions again, I'm coming over and striking you with a wet noodle! I think we actually said something about this at the first spring clean, if I can find which WaT that was.... Aleta Curry 22:24, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Write-a-Thon II

 * I plan to be there. --Daniel Mietchen 12:06, 3 March 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)
 * March -

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 - Spring Clean II!
 * April - Events
 * May -