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 might suit the theme of the W-a-t to populate that page. Finally, he added a few external links to Almagest for earning the partier status.
• 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
• Paul is serious (no jokes for this guy) and wrote seriously about history's most serious book on the serious science of astronomy, the Almagest (did I forget to mention that Ptolemy's work is to be taken seriously?).
• 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) After returning home, confesses that she spent several hours engrossed in a reread of Patrick Suskind's Perfume and really should be contributing more about ideas and intellectual history ... but has just wandered into the party chatting up Leo Tolstoy. Where to now? Erich Fromm's humanistic works Man For Himself and The Fear of Freedom were just on my reading list, but Edward O. Wilson's theory of Consilience might hold more interest ... and I haven't redlinked those yet because sleep calls and I'll come back to the party tomorrow. Louise Valmoria 12:01, 4 February 2009 (UTC)
• Joe finally put his typing fingers to work on the thoughts that he has about the article he's been complaining about. What could be more thoughtful than indigenous knowledge?
• User:Pat_Palmer has brought her article Beyond_Recall over from Wikipedia and hacked on it here, since it fits this months theme. It could use more work (which will have to wait until tonight as I am currently at work), and in particular, a mother article about Theodor Fontane needs to be started. Unfortunately, many of Fontane's novels have not been translated into English, or if they have, are out of print, although his works remain widely known and popular to German readers. And they were extremely risque at the time of their original publication (1890's), dealing with divorce, depression and marital infidelity as they do.Pat Palmer 18:48, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Keen-as-mustard and jumped the gun

(CC) Photo: Stephen Pougas
False starts welcome here :)

• 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

What Is This Thing Called Science is a book and it's about thoughts, so Yuval Langer really did fit today's theme. Yuval Langer 13:15, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

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

Bobby Driscoll and Connie Stevens in The Party Crashers - 1958

The total party poops

I admit it...I'm a total party poop yet again, so far...if it's not one thing, it's another. At least we've got the newsletter very close to being able to go out. I think we'll be able to do it tomorrow. I'll be asking ya'll to help draft it, if you're interested. --Larry Sanger 21:37, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Questions

• When drafting stuff to add to Leo Tolstoy, I really wanted to add something about The Kreutzer Sonata. Except, evidently, there are two: the Beethoven duet (which is stunning and I love playing it and I also want to write about it) and Tolstoy's short story. How would I disambiguate these? Tolstoy's Kreutzer Sonata is a short story, so I can't write 'The Kreutzer Sonata (novel)', but I need pointers into our naming system. Would I title it '... (short story)'? Or something else? And what about the musical composition? Louise Valmoria 12:06, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

It's a wrap!

empty form

• March 14, 2021 Power
• January 31, 2021 Stems and branches
• January 24, 2021 Round things
• January 17, 2021 Messaging and Missives
• January 10, 2021 Heavenly bodies!
• July 6, 2011 Standards!
• July 7, 2010 Celebrations!
• June 2, 2010 (no Write-a-Thon)
• May 5, 2010 Humour!
• April 7, 2010 Context or Spring Clean!
• March 3, 2010 Something you absolutely *love*!
• February 3, 2010 The Play's the Thing
• January 6, 2010 Stubs
• December 2, 2009 School
• November 4, 2009 Myths and Mythology
• October 7, 2009 Continents
• September 2, 2009 Design and Designers
• August 5, 2009 Heads of Government/Heads of State
• July 1, 2009 Sudden death
• June 3, 2009 unthemed?
• May 6, 2009 It's a Wide World or: It's a Small World After All!
• April 1, 2009 Events
• March 4, 2009 Spring Cleaning
• February 8, 2009 Thoughts and Books
• January 7, 2009 Controverises
• December 3, 2008 Retro, the 80's
• November 5, 2008 National parks
• October 1, 2008 Spring Cleaning
• September 3, 2008 My favourite bands
• August 6, 2008 Attractions
• July 2, 2008 Olympics
• June 4, 2008 Biographies
• May 7, 2008 Holidays, festivals and fetes
• April 2, 2008 Core articles
• March 5, 2008 Something you absolutely love.
• February 6, 2008
• January 9,2008
• December 5, 2007
• November 7, 2007
• October 3, 2007
• September 5, 2007
• August 1, 2007

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)

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)

Write-a-Thon Theme Suggestions

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 -

See also

• Larry Sanger, Why the Write-a-Thon worked, Citizendium Blog, August 9, 2007
• Weekly Wiki
• Article of the Week
• New Article of the Week

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