"Yes," I reply, "hence the title." I have created the box below to show how the articles in the topic are currently rated. When the quality of the articles is adjusted, this box should be updated. The idea is clearly a big task, but given time, patience, stamina and someone else helping, I believe it is possible.
Now I realise that, technically speaking, this belongs as part of the
F1 WikiProject
, but I figured that by basing my own operations here, I could get a better idea of where the articles are at and what needs to be done.
Sign your name below (I was fully expecting that the only name there will always be me, how wrong I was) using four tildes (~~~~) and we'll see what we can do. Basically all you need to do is get an article to GA standard. That's it. I'll give you a barnstar.
If you have any questions, be sure to leave them on the talk page.
What you can do
We have decided to make the 1995 Japanese Grand Prix and the 1995 Pacific Grand Prix articles the template for the articles in the 2008 season. I realise that there are other F1 FAs, but a good FT should have consistency. Have a look at the two 1995 articles, and try apply the same features to these articles. Or even better (not to blow my own trumpet), take a look at 2008 Brazilian Grand Prix, which is our first FA from this season.
While content writing is the key aspect, others such as copyediting, helping with
peers reviews
or just pointing out where the articles are just plain wrong are quite important. Asking on the talk page where you can help us is sure to get an enthusiastic response, as with such a big project there is sure to be something that you can help with.
Explanation: Since I'm not allowed to ruthlessly take over the F1 project's newsletter (the urge is a local thing, I live in the same city Rupert Murdoch started off), I figured I could whet my appetite for doing something a little different by producing what should be a one-off newsletter. It's packed full of information about the project's *ahem* 19 articles, where they're going and who is taking them there.
The path of the 2008 Japanese Grand Prix article was not so smooth. Lasting an incredible 26 days, and making rare use of the talk page, the FAC was somewhat of a marathon, but with the help of several members of the project, and many concessions, passage was made.
One of my favourite pictures, from the 2008 Chinese Grand Prix
2008 Belgian Grand Prix was the first 2008 race report to attain Good article status, way back in November, after a truly horrific GAN (my first article assessment on Wikipedia, incidentally). In the end, it doesn't really matter, as I intend to carry out a major re-write on the article later this year, and have a shot at FA.
In stark contrast,
FAC
, but as this was around the time the Japanese article was there, I had no intention on following him up on it, and still don't.
Remember that
AlexJ
.
Current nominations:
2008 Bahrain Grand Prix. Great shot!
After another
GAN
. Not a lot to report back here, so we'll move on.
peer review as part of this project to be listed by someone other than me, when Darth Newdarasked
the community for suggestions. So far, reviews have come from me and AlexJ, and I believe I can speak on behalf of the Sith when I say "more, please!"
Another of my favourite pictures, this time from the 2008 Belgian Grand Prix
If you are reading this because you are scavenging through someone else's talk page, allow me to explain the point of this project. We are here, in our electronic capacity, to make the
. This means at least seven articles to FA status, and the rest to GA status. Currently, as you should have been able to work out, we have two FAs and three GAs. While content writing is the key aspect, others such as copyediting, helping with peers reviews or just pointing out where the articles are just plain wrong are quite important.
Reminders
Rather than spam everyone when an article reaches PR or FAC, it would be better simply to leave a message on the project's talk page. For this reason, it may be a good idea to put the page on your watchlists if you want to be alerted to such things.
Everybody loves this picture, from the 2008 Australian Grand Prix
If you are writing an article, don't be afraid to take your lead from the existing GAs and FAs, particularly the later ones. This includes not just the format (with one section for Practice and qualifying) but paragraphs as well; the explanation of qualifying (which most recently appeared in the Bahrain article), originally written by D.M.N., has been hammered out across several PRs and FACs, to the point that I believe it is quite watertight. It is an important explanation, because modern qualifying practices in F1 are actually fairly hard to understand if you have never come across them before.
There is a project userbox, if you're interested. I don't even use it, but you can if you want.
The status box should be updated whenever an article changes class, which I believe people have been doing to this point anyway. I also use it to indicate (with links) whether an article is at PR, GAN or FAC, so it can be quite a useful page to keep an eye on.
Members
When I created the project page, I wrote that I was "fully expecting that the only name there will always be me". Four months later, we have seven users listed in the members section. I want to thank all of them for the effort they have put in so far, and to remind them that there is still a long way to go.
Delivered on March 6, 2009 by Apterygial. If you do not wish to receive future newsletters (assuming, of course, that there will be future newsletters), please let me know on the project talk page.
As an added incentive to help out, I have created a userbox which you can proudly display on your userpage or wherever. Just add {{User:Apterygial/MII userbox}} and you'll get the userbox shown on the left.