Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Soil

Articles for the WPCD project

WikiProject Soil needs to prepare an assessment of these articles. Furthermore, WikiProject Soil has the opportunity to identify additional articles of similar importance. -- Paleorthid 05:46, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

• Bog (picked up by Paleorthid 20:19, 10 June 2006 (UTC))
• Clay (picked up by Paleorthid 20:19, 10 June 2006 (UTC))
• Fertilizer
• Humus
• Nitrogen cycle
• Nitrogen fixation
• Nitrification
• Sand (picked up by Paleorthid 04:57, 22 June 2006 (UTC))
• Soil
• Soil moisture
• Soil salination
• Soil pH
• Soil profile
• Soils retrogression and degradation
• Soil science
• Soil structure

For article assessment, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Soil/Worklist. -- Paleorthid 21:05, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

Article cleanup

Most articles under WP Soil need some level of cleanup. It seems somewhat uselesswould be overwhelming to tag and list them to the project. This is a problem throughout WP. See Wikipedia:Cleanup process/Cleanup sorting proposal for perspective. We need to formulate a manageable approach for WP Soils, identifying key articles and article clusters that need cleanup. -- Paleorthid 03:41, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

I have hit upon using a Wikipedia:Worklist approach, which I am trying out here, using the WPCD candidate articles. -- Paleorthid 17:27, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Cross-classification issues

Soil types

Conflicting particle size criteria needs to be resolved and affects the following articles:

• clay
• grain size
• sand
• silt
• soil classification
• soil texture
• soil texture classification
• soil type
• Unified Soil Classification System

This comes out strikingly in the soil texture classification but it gets worse - there not shown are differences within the countries depicted between agricultural/pedological sytems and engineering/geological systems. Suggestions for in-article solutions are needed. These solutions should anticipate the addition of additional country/application specific criteria beyond the current content.

1. Is there a world dominant soil textural classification system?
2. Will WP need an article for each grain size classification system?
3. Does it sort out better if engineering and ag/soil science systems are kept separate?
4. Should disambiguation be considered as an alternative to in-article solutions?

-- Paleorthid 18:13, 14 June 2006 (UTC) revised -- Paleorthid 19:17, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Is this project specific to soils or soil science? The name would imply the former, but the content implys the latter.

In the US engineering world, there's two major classification systems: USCS is commonly used in geotech, AASHTO is common in highway engineering. The differences are:

• gravel/sand boundary: USCS puts it at the #4 (4.75 mm), while AASHTO puts it at the #10 (2 mm).
• silt/clay boundary:USCS puts it at PI = 0.73*(LL-20), while AASHTO puts it at PI = 10.

AASHTO defines anything larger than 3" as a boulder. USCS calls things between 3" and 12" cobbles and greater than 12" is a boulder. Both use the #200 (0.075 mm) as the sand/fines boundary. AASHTO groups soils according to their quality as a subgrade, USCS groups them according to their composition.

I don't know anything about non-US classification systems.

Anyway, I think that there's not a lot of overlap in the ways that soil scientists and engineers view soils. There's not even much overlap in the way that geotechnical engineers and highway engineers look at soils. The former are mostly interested in response to long duration loading (years), the latter are mostly interested in response to short duration loading (milliseconds).

As far as how boulders, cobbles, gravel, sand, silt etc. are defined I don't really care. These are fuzzy concepts, and while I've never come across the Wentworth Scale in professional practice it seems as good as anything for the purpose of wikipedia. If the definition is really important (e.g. to meet some construction specification), folks shouldn't be relying on wikipedia anyway. Toiyabe 21:29, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

I think Toiyabe's question needs to be answered before you get too excited about details of classification. Most articles will have a specific focus, either towards soil science, or towards geotechnical engineering, or towards geology, and the appropriate system to use will depend on that focus.

Even within articles, it won't generally be necessary to stick to one standard - I've only used a standards-based soil classification once in the Geotechnical engineering article. The article on clay says " typically less than 2 μm", then goes on to define clay in ways which don't depend on classification systems used by engineers. Argyriou 00:41, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Thank you both for the observations. -- Paleorthid 01:12, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Argyriou, what classification system used by geotechnical engineers defines clay particles based on size? Toiyabe 14:55, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

How can you write this article if you don't know what you're talking about? The difference between clay and silt is the structure of the material. It's easier to use sieve tests to define the particle size and use that as a reference for how much fine grained material there is in the soil. It appears that many of you have a shallow understanding. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.38.132.1 (talk) 22:40, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

Soil taxonomy

There is no soil taxonomy article, but it is directly addressed in the following five articles.

• 1938 USDA soil taxonomy
• FAO soil classification
• Soil classification
• USDA soil taxonomy
• World Reference Base for Soil Resources

Content coordination is haphazard. There are numerous articles on individual soil classes that add to or are affected by the resulting confusion. Examples:

• Spodosols redirects to Podsol
• Ferralsols redirects to Oxisols

Any objection to having separate articles for each class within each system? -- Paleorthid 18:13, 14 June 2006 (UTC) As far as soil orders go, they appear to have been taken care of quite nicely, however a few of them need to reference the fact that this is the US system of soil classification. Siltloam (talk) 20:39, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

Standard layout w/ infobox needed

U.S. State Soils

Do we need a standard content structure and/or infobox for US state soils articles? -- Paleorthid 18:13, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Soil Taxonomic Classes

Do we need a standard content structure and/or infobox for soil taxonomic classes? -- Paleorthid 18:13, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Soil-stub

Any objections to requesting a soil-stub? See Wikipedia:WikiProject_Soil/Needed and Wikipedia:WikiProject_Soil/Stubs for candidate articles. -- Paleorthid 18:13, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Related stub structure indicates that a discipline-oriented soil-science-stub is needed more than a resource-oriented soil-stub. Comment from Toiyabe pertaining to grain size classification amplifies this distinction. A list of candidate article stubs and article-specific rationale supporting a soil-science-stub is noted here. See here to discuss the active proposal for the soil-science-stub. -- Paleorthid 19:33, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

The request for a soil science stub has completed a 7-day review period. I will move forward to set up the stub and supporting category: {{soil-science-stub}} & Category:Soil science stubs. -- Paleorthid 14:50, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

SI units

SI units are used in describing soil characteristics relevant to USDA soil taxonomy, 1938 USDA soil taxonomy, FAO soil classification, and the World Reference Base for Soil Resources (WRB). This is per established covention for these systems, but if you have a different understanding, please give us a shout here. See brown earth for a recent example of the typical SI/non-SI revert dance that has been occurring. -- Paleorthid 04:34, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

See this in the Manual of Style for supporting guidelines. -- Paleorthid 20:56, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

redirect soils retrogression and degradation to land degradation

Without the response I was hoping for to previously stated concerns, and with the new article on biorhexistasy now stable, soils retrogression and degradation should now be redirected to land degradation. Any objections to this approach? -- Paleorthid 19:30, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Merger avoided, see article talk. -- Paleorthid 15:32, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Definition of soil

I reverted the project's working definition of soil.

• The original:
  • Soil as in the earthy material on surface of the land that is subjected to weathering and other soil forming factors.
• The revision I reverted:
  • Soil as in the geological material on land surfaces that has become friable by weathering and subsequently modified by biological activity so as to contain discernable quantities of soil organic matter. The process is described as pedogenesis.

I appreciate the effort to help out, but still find the original to be a better definition, and one that has served the project well up to this point. Why do we need to change it? -- Paleorthid 04:11, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Consider links to the Seafriends soil section

I've spent much time researching soil and its various aspects in relation to its degradation and consequent ill effects on the sea. It has resulted in a large section on soil and all of its aspects, in a form suitable for teaching at school. It includes many diagrams and references too. It may be beneficial for the Wikipedia soil group to consider links to:

• Understanding soil dependence, geology, ecology, sustainability, erosion, conservation, glossary (155pp)

Suggested headings to place this link: soil, soils, soil_classification, soil_functions, soil_fauna, soil_degradation, soil_type, soil_biology, soil_ecology, soil_conservation and so on.

Seafriends is a non-profit charitable organization for saving the sea. Feedback appreciated. Floor Anthoni 01:21, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Project directory

Hello. The WikiProject Council has recently updated the Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory. This new directory includes a variety of categories and subcategories which will, with luck, potentially draw new members to the projects who are interested in those specific subjects. Please review the directory and make any changes to the entries for your project that you see fit. There is also a directory of portals, at User:B2T2/Portal, listing all the existing portals. Feel free to add any of them to the portals or comments section of your entries in the directory. The three columns regarding assessment, peer review, and collaboration are included in the directory for both the use of the projects themselves and for that of others. Having such departments will allow a project to more quickly and easily identify its most important articles and its articles in greatest need of improvement. If you have not already done so, please consider whether your project would benefit from having departments which deal in these matters. It is my hope that all the changes to the directory can be finished by the first of next month. Please feel free to make any changes you see fit to the entries for your project before then. If you should have any questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you. B2T2 00:09, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia Day Awards

Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 17:52, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Shingle

Somebody needs to create an article, or a section of an article, about "shingle" as it is used for a soil type or landform or whatever it is in geology. There are dozens of articles which use that term, but nothing to link it to. There is nothing at the disambiguation page at Shingle. Maybe a shingle (geology) or shingle (soil) article with the appropriate disambiguation, or a redirect from that to a section in some other article, something short enough so that people can remember it to add it as a link. Gene Nygaard 14:05, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Scope of project - does it include life?

Hello all, it's a rather long story why I'm asking this, but I was wondering if WikiProject Soil would encompass the Earthworm article? I'm incredibly hesitant to make the decision on my own, as if I'm wrong it would be a rather slippery slope (including all soil-dwelling lifeforms).

If this isn't the case, would anyone happen to know of a project in which Earthworm fits? Yours is the most applicable one I've been able to find.

Thanks in advance! --Nemilar 05:01, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Pedotope

There is a stub article for pedotope which was created as part of a project on ecological land classification and its related terminology. I was surprised to find a project on soils. Can someone here please expand this stub article and make it worthy? BeeTea 00:22, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

Soil article discussion

If anyone still watches this page, there is a discussion at Talk:Soil which is desiring additional participants. – Basar (talk · contribs) 22:53, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Notice of List articles

Page(s) related to this project have been created and/or added to one of the Wikipedia:Contents subpages (not by me).

• List of basic Earth science topics

This note is to let you know, so that experts in the field can expand them and check them for accuracy, and so that they can be added to any watchlists/tasklists, and have any appropriate project banners added, etc. Thanks. --Quiddity 19:39, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Soil Directory Structure

Previous content from this section has been archived.

Wikipedia has needed a Soil directory to distance the project from the soil science for better accuracy, a more balanced presentation, and in a few cases, to maintain neutrality.

Category:Soil, new as of November, 2007, is a sub-cat of Category:Natural resources. Category:Soil science is also a sub-cat of Category:Soil. Accordingly, Category:Soil could have been placed under the Category:Soil science ala Commons:Category:Soil but was not sufficiently responsive to concerns for balanced treatment.

• Sub categories of Category:Soil:
  • Category:Types of soil Note: Types of soil is also a sub-cat of Category:Categories by type
    • Category:Soil texture types for types addressed under the USDA system
    • Category:Soil material types for types addressed under engineering and geology systems like AASHTO Soil Classification System, and Unified Soil Classification System

      The distinction between the texture types and material types seems too forced. -- Paleorthid 18:01, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

    • Category:Soil resource types, like List of vineyard soil types
    • Category:Soil taxonomic classes with sub-cats for classes of 1938 USDA soil taxonomy, Australian Soil Classification, Canadian system of soil classification, FAO soil classification, USDA soil taxonomy, and the World Reference Base for Soil Resources.
    • Category:U. S. and Canadian soil series (example of cross border soil series: Berkshire (soil))
    • Category:U. S. state soils (ala Category:U.S._state_soil
  • Category:Soil management for erosion control, drainage, salinity control, watertable control
  • Category:Soil materials for dispersion (geology)
  • Category:Soil resources for erosion, soil conservation, soil salination

    The distinction between management/materials/resources seems unclear. -- Paleorthid 18:01, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

• We need a structure that will avoid looping: Category:Soil and Category:Soil science cannot be sub-cats of eachother

• A structure that uses multiple paths to get to an article is OK:
  • Nature>Natural Resources>Soil>Types of soil>(specific soil type article: material, resource, or pedology class)
  • Nature>Natural Sciences>Earth sciences>Soil Science>Pedology>(specific soil pedology class type article)
  • Nature>Natural Sciences>Earth sciences>Physical geography>Pedology>(specific soil pedology classtype article)

Tillage articles

SoilMan2007 is a new user who is doing work on Tillage and related articles. (Here are his Contributions.) He is enthusiastic and informed, but new to Wikipedia. I have given him some guidance on Wikipedia house style and related matters but as with all of us, there is a learning curve. Could members of this project assist him, by watchlisting his talk page, where he now is posting questions from time to time? I will continue as well. Thank you. Kablammo (talk) 04:44, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Dead link patrol

Project articles can develop a fair number of dead links over time. These are unwanted, and should be fixed on a regular basis. You can either try to find the current location of the document using a Google inurl search, or use the {{dlw}} or {{dlw-inline}} templates to point to the Internet Archive version of the document, like this: {{dlw|dead URL|caption}}, e.g.: {{dlw|http://free.oszoo.org/|OS Zoo webpage}}. For dead links inside paragraphs, use {{dlw-inline|url=dead URL|title=caption}}, which will not disturb the flow of text as much. Please do not simply remove every dead link; they often contain valuable information. -- Paleorthid (talk) 02:41, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Philip Greenspun illustration project (PGIP)

Dear Wikimedians,

This is a (belated) announcement that requests are now being taken for illustrations to be created for the Philip Greenspun illustration project (PGIP).

The aim of the project is to create and improve illustrations on Wikimedia projects. You can help by identifying which important articles or concepts are missing illustrations (diagrams) that could make them a lot easier to understand. Requests should be made on this page: Philip_Greenspun_illustration_project/Requests

If there's a topic area you know a lot about or are involved with as a Wikiproject, why not conduct a review to see which illustrations are missing and needed for that topic? Existing content can be checked by using Mayflower to search Wikimedia Commons, or use the Free Image Search Tool to quickly check for images of a given topic in other-language projects.

The community suggestions will be used to shape the final list, which will be finalised to 50 specific requests for Round 1, due to start in January. People will be able to make suggestions for the duration of the project, not just in the lead-up to Round 1.

• General information about the project: m:Philip_Greenspun_illustration_project
• Potential illustrators and others interested in the project should join the mailing list: mail:greenspun-illustrations

thanks, pfctdayelise (talk) 12:55, 13 December 2007 (UTC) (Project coordinator)

Posted to WikiProject Science and WikiProject Biology, Relayed to WikiProject Soil by Paleorthid (talk) 16:19, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Changes to the WP:1.0 assessment scheme

As you may have heard, we at the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial Team recently made some changes to the assessment scale, including the addition of a new level. The new description is available at WP:ASSESS.

• The new C-Class represents articles that are beyond the basic Start-Class, but which need additional references or cleanup to meet the standards for B-Class.
• The criteria for B-Class have been tightened up with the addition of a rubric, and are now more in line with the stricter standards already used at some projects.
• A-Class article reviews will now need more than one person, as described here.

Each WikiProject should already have a new C-Class category at Category:C-Class_articles. If your project elects not to use the new level, you can simply delete your WikiProject's C-Class category and clarify any amendments on your project's assessment/discussion pages. The bot is already finding and listing C-Class articles.

Please leave a message with us if you have any queries regarding the introduction of the revised scheme. This scheme should allow the team to start producing offline selections for your project and the wider community within the next year. Thanks for using the Wikipedia 1.0 scheme! For the 1.0 Editorial Team, §hepBot (Disable) 20:51, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Plant litter

First off, I just want to say how awesome it is that there is a Wikiproject Soil. Secondly, I found the above article, and tagged it for your project. I was wondering if it was named correctly though, as a ornithologist I would always call birds that feed in it foraging in leaf litter. Thoughts? Sabine's Sunbird talk 01:03, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

An article on leaf litter predated the article on plant litter, which user:Daniel Collins created, possibly in order to apply the term to other-than-forested settings. user:Daniel Collins has left Wikipedia, so we will have to figure this out without his insight. We should have to go through the links to see how the distinction plays out in the individual articles, however, leaf litter would seem the more familiar term to hang an encyclopedia article on. Persuasive: (1) more articles link to leaf litter than are directly linked through plant litter. (2) Google scholar retrieves 4X the results on "leaf litter" vs "plant litter". -- Paleorthid (talk) 13:32, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

WP 0.7

Nine project articles are selected for inclusion in WP Version 0.7 DVD. Given the opportunity of a two month reprieve, now is the time for project participants to review and improve these articles. --Paleorthid (talk) 17:38, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia 0.7 articles have been selected for Soil

Wikipedia 0.7 is a collection of English Wikipedia articles due to be released on DVD, and available for free download, later this year. The Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team has made an automated selection of articles for Version 0.7.

We would like to ask you to review the articles selected from this project. These were chosen from the articles with this project's talk page tag, based on the rated importance and quality. If there are any specific articles that should be removed, please let us know at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.7. You can also nominate additional articles for release, following the procedure at Wikipedia:Release Version Nominations.

A list of selected articles with cleanup tags, sorted by project, is available. The list is automatically updated each hour when it is loaded. Please try to fix any urgent problems in the selected articles. A team of copyeditors has agreed to help with copyediting requests, although you should try to fix simple issues on your own if possible.

We would also appreciate your help in identifying the version of each article that you think we should use, to help avoid vandalism or POV issues. These versions can be recorded at this project's subpage of User:SelectionBot/0.7. We are planning to release the selection for the holiday season, so we ask you to select the revisions before October 20. At that time, we will use an automatic process to identify which version of each article to release, if no version has been manually selected. Thanks! For the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial team, SelectionBot 23:23, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Like I said...:) -- Paleorthid (talk) 23:28, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Effective microorganisms

There is a oddly phrased article at Effective microorganism that seems a bit unclear on whether it is NPOV or sourced correctly. Thought this project might like to be made aware of it.--ZayZayEM (talk) 06:39, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Request for help

• folks I had my students work on some soil science related wikipedia topics this year for my course. Would some of you be willing to take a look and make some constructive reviews. I'd ask you to tell these students what kinds of problems with notes rather than just changing things. I want them to learn from their mistakes.
• Soil Erosion and Crop Rotations - http://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Crop_rotation
• Ammonia Volatilization from Urea - http://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/User:GoBigBlue/sandbox
• Nitrogen Management on golf course turf - http://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Golf_Course_Turf —Preceding unsigned comment added by SoilMan2007 (talk • contribs) 01:50, 8 December 2008 (UTC)
• Tillage and Soil Biology: http://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/User:Mstreyn/sandbox

Best Regards, SoilMan2007 (talk)

Milestone Announcements

All WikiProjects are invited to have their "milestone-reached" announcements automatically placed onto Wikipedia's announcements page. Milestones could include the number of FAs, GAs or articles covered by the project. No work need be done by the project themselves; they just need to provide some details when they sign up. A bot will do all of the hard work. Click here for more information or to sign your project up.

I thought this WikiProject might be interested. Ping me with any specific queries or leave them on the page linked to above. Thanks! - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 22:20, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Prof. Peter Bullock

Hi, hope this is the right place to come :-) I came across the article Peter Bullock (scientist) by chance, and found it to be largely copyvio of his Guardian obituary. I've reworded it to remove the worst of the copyvio but, as this is totally not my field, would appreciate someone knowledgeable having a look over it to clean up anything I've misunderstood or misrepresented or shouldn't have left out. Thanks, Struway2 (talk) 21:04, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Coordinators' working group

Hi! I'd like to draw your attention to the new WikiProject coordinators' working group, an effort to bring both official and unofficial WikiProject coordinators together so that the projects can more easily develop consensus and collaborate. This group has been created after discussion regarding possible changes to the A-Class review system, and that may be one of the first things discussed by interested coordinators.

All designated project coordinators are invited to join this working group. If your project hasn't formally designated any editors as coordinators, but you are someone who regularly deals with coordination tasks in the project, please feel free to join as well. — Delievered by §hepBot (Disable) on behalf of the WikiProject coordinators' working group at 06:35, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Article alerts

This is a notice to let you know about Article alerts, a fully-automated subscription-based news delivery system designed to notify WikiProjects and Taskforces when articles are entering Articles for deletion, Requests for comment, Peer review and other workflows (full list). The reports are updated on a daily basis, and provide brief summaries of what happened, with relevant links to discussion or results when possible. A certain degree of customization is available; WikiProjects and Taskforces can choose which workflows to include, have individual reports generated for each workflow, have deletion discussion transcluded on the reports, and so on. An example of a customized report can be found here.

If you are already subscribed to Article Alerts, it is now easier to report bugs and request new features. We are also in the process of implementing a "news system", which would let projects know about ongoing discussions on a wikipedia-wide level, and other things of interest. The developers also note that some subscribing WikiProjects and Taskforces use the display=none parameter, but forget to give a link to their alert page. Your alert page should be located at "Wikipedia:PROJECT-OR-TASKFORCE-HOMEPAGE/Article alerts". Questions and feedback should be left at Wikipedia talk:Article alerts.

Message sent by User:Addbot to all active wiki projects per request, Comments on the message and bot are welcome here.

Thanks. — Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 09:41, 15 March, 2009 (UTC)

Citing verbatim use of public domain sources

The following was added to Natchez silt loam:

==Sources==

• This article utilizes text taken verbatim from Natchez Silt Loam- Mississippi State Soil, a public domain publication of the United States Department of Agriculture.

Many articles in the project would benefit from this approach to citation. --Paleorthid (talk) 18:14, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Index of soil-related articles

I have created Index of soil-related articles. Please check for any omissions. The list is made from the contents of the relevant categories. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 21:30, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Mire terminology

I started a discussion here about mire/bog/fen terminology.--Carnby (talk) 09:33, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Drainage

I saw that Drainage fell within the scope of this project. Has anyone seen anything related to the "crown" of a sports field? It is the slight slope created to allow fo drainage and I was hoping to wikilink to it if it is available as a subsection of an article somewhere.Cptnono (talk) 01:39, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

WP 1.0 bot announcement

This message is being sent to each WikiProject that participates in the WP 1.0 assessment system. On Saturday, January 23, 2010, the WP 1.0 bot will be upgraded. Your project does not need to take any action, but the appearance of your project's summary table will change. The upgrade will make many new, optional features available to all WikiProjects. Additional information is available at the WP 1.0 project homepage. — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:56, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Articles for deletion nomination of List of universities with soil science curriculum

An editor has nominated List of universities with soil science curriculum, a Soil WikliProject article, for deletion. This editor does not think that this article satisfies Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion, and has explained why at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of universities with soil science curriculum. Your opinions on the matter are welcome at that same discussion page; also, you are welcome to edit the article to address these concerns. --Paleorthid (talk) 17:25, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

Soil articles have been selected for the Wikipedia 0.8 release

Version 0.8 is a collection of Wikipedia articles selected by the Wikipedia 1.0 team for offline release on USB key, DVD and mobile phone. Articles were selected based on their assessed importance and quality, then article versions (revisionIDs) were chosen for trustworthiness (freedom from vandalism) using an adaptation of the WikiTrust algorithm.

We would like to ask you to review the Soil articles and revisionIDs we have chosen. Selected articles are marked with a diamond symbol (♦) to the right of each article, and this symbol links to the selected version of each article. If you believe we have included or excluded articles inappropriately, please contact us at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8 with the details. You may wish to look at your WikiProject's articles with cleanup tags and try to improve any that need work; if you do, please give us the new revisionID at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8. We would like to complete this consultation period by midnight UTC on Monday, October 11th.

We have greatly streamlined the process since the Version 0.7 release, so we aim to have the collection ready for distribution by the end of October, 2010. As a result, we are planning to distribute the collection much more widely, while continuing to work with groups such as One Laptop per Child and Wikipedia for Schools to extend the reach of Wikipedia worldwide. Please help us, with your WikiProject's feedback!

For the Wikipedia 1.0 editorial team, SelectionBot 23:37, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Citation templates now support more identifiers

Recent changes were made to citations templates (such as {{citation}}, {{cite journal}}, {{cite web}}...). In addition to what was previously supported (bibcode, doi, jstor, isbn, ...), templates now support arXiv, ASIN, JFM, LCCN, MR, OL, OSTI, RFC, SSRN and Zbl. Before, you needed to place |id={{arxiv|0123.4567}} (or worse |url=http://arxiv.org/abs/0123.4567), now you can simply use |arxiv=0123.4567, likewise for |id={{JSTOR|0123456789}} and |url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/0123456789 → |jstor=0123456789.

The full list of supported identifiers is given here (with dummy values):

• {{cite journal |author=John Smith |year=2000 |title=How to Put Things into Other Things |journal=Journal of Foobar |volume=1 |issue=2 |pages=3–4 |arxiv=0123456789 |asin=0123456789 |bibcode=0123456789 |doi=0123456789 |jfm=0123456789 |jstor=0123456789 |lccn=0123456789 |isbn=0123456789 |issn=0123456789 |mr=0123456789 |oclc=0123456789 |ol=0123456789 |osti=0123456789 |rfc=0123456789 |pmc=0123456789 |pmid=0123456789 |ssrn=0123456789 |zbl=0123456789 |id={{para|id|____}} }}

Obviously not all citations needs all parameters, but this streamlines the most popular ones and gives both better metadata and better appearances when printed. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 03:21, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Rename this wikiproject?

I notice that User:Greenman-23 has removed "the earth material used in construction" from the definition of "soil" in the project's scope. If it is the case that WikiProject Soil is not interested in including articles related to geotechnical engineering, or to soil considered as anything other than a medium for plant growth, I suggest that the WikiProject rename itself to "WikiProject Soil Science". That way, people interested primarily in geotechnical engineering aspects of soil will know that this WikiProject doesn't have much for them, while people interested in soil for its biological properties will know that this WikiProject is what they're looking for. Argyriou (talk) 05:26, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:HighBeam

Wikipedia:HighBeam describes a limited opportunity for Wikipedia editors to have access to HighBeam Research.
—Wavelength (talk) 18:59, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

USDA soil types - singular or plural?

Most articles (e.g. Ultisols) have a plural title, but some are singular (e.g. Entisol). Any reason for this difference? Can it be made consistent? Should they all be singular, or all be plural? Colonies Chris (talk) 10:00, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

I guess WP:SINGULAR applies. Dentren | ^Talk 01:38, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Most articles are written in the plural form, with the exception of Vertisol. Histosol starts off singular but continues plural (a histosol is a soil consisting primarily of organic materials. They are defined as having ...) Depends whether the name is thought of as the umbrella term for a group sharing certain characteristics, or as a common classification of a lot of individual soil types. Rather like the debate over "the police is ..." or "the police are ...", I suppose. Colonies Chris (talk) 13:19, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

List of U.S. state soils

We need some images over there. If you have a camera and a shovel, or one of those new camera-shovels, please help.

• Talk:List of U.S. state soils#Images

Many thanks, Anna Frodesiak (talk) 17:52, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

Wrong category name?

Please express your opinion here. --Daniele Pugliesi (talk) 02:24, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

Can anyone help with a question about "crust microorganisms which are active only when wet" at Talk:Biological_soil_crust? FloraWilde (talk) 01:45, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

Can anyone help with a question about "crust microorganisms which are active only when wet" at Talk:Biological_soil_crust? FloraWilde (talk) 01:45, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

Comment on the WikiProject X proposal

Hello there! As you may already know, most WikiProjects here on Wikipedia struggle to stay active after they've been founded. I believe there is a lot of potential for WikiProjects to facilitate collaboration across subject areas, so I have submitted a grant proposal with the Wikimedia Foundation for the "WikiProject X" project. WikiProject X will study what makes WikiProjects succeed in retaining editors and then design a prototype WikiProject system that will recruit contributors to WikiProjects and help them run effectively. Please review the proposal here and leave feedback. If you have any questions, you can ask on the proposal page or leave a message on my talk page. Thank you for your time! (Also, sorry about the posting mistake earlier. If someone already moved my message to the talk page, feel free to remove this posting.) Harej (talk) 22:48, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

WikiProject X is live!

Hello everyone!

You may have received a message from me earlier asking you to comment on my WikiProject X proposal. The good news is that WikiProject X is now live! In our first phase, we are focusing on research. At this time, we are looking for people to share their experiences with WikiProjects: good, bad, or neutral. We are also looking for WikiProjects that may be interested in trying out new tools and layouts that will make participating easier and projects easier to maintain. If you or your WikiProject are interested, check us out! Note that this is an opt-in program; no WikiProject will be required to change anything against its wishes. Please let me know if you have any questions. Thank you!

Note: To receive additional notifications about WikiProject X on this talk page, please add this page to Wikipedia:WikiProject X/Newsletter. Otherwise, this will be the last notification sent about WikiProject X.

Harej (talk) 16:57, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Impenetrable Science

Wikipedia's scientists, including those involved with WikiProject Soil, should read the Impenetrable Science article in the latest Signpost.

John Timmer, senior science editor at Ars Technica, editorializes about the state of science articles on Wikipedia, writing "Wikipedia fails as an encyclopedia, to science’s detriment": "Disturbingly, all of the worst entries I have ever read have been in the sciences. Wander off the big ideas in the sciences, and you're likely to run into entries that are excessively technical and provide almost no context, making them effectively incomprehensible."

We resemble that remark! -- Paleorthid (talk) 02:31, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 6

Newsletter • January 2016

Hello there! Happy to be writing this newsletter once more. This month:

What comes next

Some good news: the Wikimedia Foundation has renewed WikiProject X. This means we can continue focusing on making WikiProjects better.

During our first round of work, we created a prototype WikiProject based on two ideas: (1) WikiProjects should clearly present things for people to do, and (2) The content of WikiProjects should be automated as much as possible. We launched pilots, and for the most part it works. But this approach will not work for the long term. While it makes certain aspects of running a WikiProject easier, it makes the maintenance aspects harder.

We are working on a major overhaul that will address these issues. New features will include:

• Creating WikiProjects by simply filling out a form, choosing which reports you want to generate for your project. This will work with existing bots in addition to the Reports Bot reports. (Of course, you can also have sections curated by humans.)
• One-click button to join a WikiProject, with optional notifications.
• Be able to define your WikiProject's scope within the WikiProject itself by listing relevant pages and categories, eliminating the need to tag every talk page with a banner. (You will still be allowed to do that, of course. It just won't be required.)

The end goal is a collaboration tool that can be used by WikiProjects but also by any edit-a-thon or group of people that want to coordinate on improving articles. Though implemented as an extension, the underlying content will be wikitext, meaning that you can continue to use categories, templates, and other features as you normally would.

This will take a lot of work, and we are just getting started. What would you like to see? I invite you to discuss on our talk page.

Until next time,

Harej (talk) 02:53, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

RfC at Talk:Climate change denial

There is a RfC at Talk:Climate change denial. Please contribute if you are interested. Biscuittin (talk) 00:19, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 7

Newsletter • February 2016

This month:

One database for Wikipedia requests

Development of the extension for setting up WikiProjects, as described in the last issue of this newsletter, is currently underway. No terribly exciting news on this front.

In the meantime, we are working on a prototype for a new service we hope to announce soon. The problem: there are requests scattered all across Wikipedia, including requests for new articles and requests for improvements to existing articles. We Wikipedians are very good at coming up with lists of things to do. But once we write these lists, where do they end up? How can we make them useful for all editors—even those who do not browse the missing articles lists, or the particular WikiProjects that have lists?

Introducing Wikipedia Requests, a new tool to centralize the various lists of requests around Wikipedia. Requests will be tagged by category and WikiProject, making it easier to find requests based on what your interests are. Accompanying this service will be a bot that will let you generate reports from this database on any wiki page, including WikiProjects. This means that once a request is filed centrally, it can syndicated all throughout Wikipedia, and once it is fulfilled, it will be marked as "complete" throughout Wikipedia. The idea for this service came about when I saw that it was easy to put together to-do lists based on database queries, but it was harder to do this for human-generated requests when those requests are scattered throughout the wiki, siloed throughout several pages. This should especially be useful for WikiProjects that have overlapping interests.

The newsletter this month is fairly brief; not a lot of news, just checking in to say that we are hard at work and hope to have more for you soon.

Until next time,

Harej (talk) 01:44, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 8

Newsletter • March / April 2016

This month:

Transclude article requests anywhere on Wikipedia

In the last issue of the WikiProject X Newsletter, I discussed the upcoming Wikipedia Requests system: a central database for outstanding work on Wikipedia. I am pleased to announce Wikipedia Requests is live! Its purpose is to supplement automatically generated lists, such as those from SuggestBot, Reports bot, or Wikidata. It is currently being demonstrated on WikiProject Occupational Safety and Health (which I work on as part of my NIOSH duties) and WikiProject Women scientists.

Adding a request is as simple as filling out a form. Just go to the Add form to add your request. Adding sources will help ensure that your request is fulfilled more quickly. And when a request is fulfilled, simply click "mark as complete" and it will be removed from all the lists it's on. All at the click of a button! (If anyone is concerned, all actions are logged.)

With this new service is a template to transclude these requests: {{Wikipedia Requests}}. It's simple to use: add the template to a page, specifying article=, category=, or wikiproject=, and the list will be transcluded. For example, for requests having to do with all living people, just do {{Wikipedia Requests|category=Living people}}. Use these lists on WikiProjects but also for edit-a-thons where you want a convenient list of things to do on hand. Give it a shot!

Help us build our list!

The value of Wikipedia Requests comes from being a centralized database. The long work to migrating individual lists into this combined list is slowly underway. As of writing, we have 883 open tasks logged in Wikipedia Requests. We need your help building this list.

If you know of a list of missing articles, or of outstanding tasks for existing articles, that you would like to migrate to this new system, head on over to Wikipedia:Wikipedia Requests#Transition project and help out. Doing this will help put your list in front of more eyes—more than just your own WikiProject.

An open database means new tools

WikiProject X maintains a database that associates article talk pages (and draft talk pages) with WikiProjects. This database powers many of the reports that Reports bot generates. However, until very recently, this database was not made available to others who might find its data useful. It's only common sense to open up the database and let others build tools with it.

And indeed: Citation Hunt, the game to add citations to Wikipedia, now lets you filter by WikiProject, using the data from our database.

Are you a tool developer interested in using this? Here are some details: the database resides on Tool Labs with the name s52475__wpx_p. The table that associates WikiProjects with articles and drafts is called projectindex. Pages are stored by talk page title but in the future this should change. Have fun!

On the horizon

• The work on the CollaborationKit extension continues. The extension will initially focus on reducing template and Lua bloat on WikiProjects (especially our WPX UI demonstration projects), and will from there create custom interfaces for creating and maintaining WikiProjects.
• The WikiCite meeting will be in Berlin in May. The goal of the meeting is to figure out how to build a bibliographic database for use on the Wikimedia projects. This fits in quite nicely with WikiProject X's work: we want to make it easier for people to find things to work on, and with a powerful, open bibliographic database, we can build recommendations for sources. This feature was requested by the Wikipedia Library back in September, and this meeting is a major next step. We look forward to seeing what comes out of this meeting.

Until next time,

Harej (talk) 01:29, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 9

Newsletter • May / June 2016

Check out this month's issue of the WikiProject X newsletter, featuring the first screenshot of our new CollaborationKit software!

Harej (talk) 00:23, 25 June 2016 (UTC)

Peat bog

Hi,

It seems to me that en:wiki does not really have a good article covering raised bogs and/or peat bogs in general. Rather it has

• The article Muskeg which isn't a bad article but essentially "muskeg" is just a Cree-based word for a peat bog
• The article Blanket bog which again isn't a bad article, but about a specific type of peat bog
• The archetype peat bog, the raised bog, is only covered briefly in Bog#Raised_bog
• And then some is covered in Peat

This means that a number of common things are spread and repeated (or sometimes missing) in several articles. I suggest there should be the following 3 artciles

• Sphagnum as it is. About the sphagnum moss which is a primary key element in any peat bog
• Bog about how these bogs form due to rainwater being accumulated, the speial plant and animal life, distribution and the different types
• Peat about the material, how it was and is harvested, and was once used to burn for heat (maybe still is in some areas)

But I doubt I can do it alone... --Honymand (talk) 10:45, 24 September 2016 (UTC)

Soil and fertilizer

I am taking on revising / clarifying SOME of the at times muddled and inconsistent fertilizer article. Fertilizing and soils ought to some common links and a certain consistency, but seem to not. There is mixed opinion regarding the terms "organic amendments" and "organic agriculture", mixed opinion regarding the importance and effects of liming (soil) and whether or not lime is a fertilizer, and inconclusive reports on the effects of certain elements of the growth of plants. I do not expect to amend most of this, only working (at present) to expand the section on minor and trace elements -- calcium, magnesium, sulphur, boron, etc.

I'm posting this because others may want to add Fertilizing to WikiSoil.

GeeBee60 (talk) 05:03, 14 October 2016 (UTC)

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 10

Issue 10 of the WikiProject X newsletter is here!

This month, we discuss the new CollaborationKit extension. Here's an image as a teaser:

23:59, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

Soil pH

I have worked through this article and revised it extensively - please review. --Alandmanson (talk) 18:54, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

Invitation to comment on revised article: Cation Exchange Capacity

I've substantially rewritten the article on cation exchange capacity, and would welcome some comment on the draft before publishing in mainspace: User:Kyle MoJo/CEC draft. Feel free to leave comments or suggestions on my talk page or the talk page of the current article. Kyle MoJo (talk) 15:51, 25 June 2017 (UTC)

Pedology (soil study) listed at Requested moves

A requested move discussion has been initiated for Pedology (soil study) to be moved to Pedology. This page is of interest to this WikiProject and interested members may want to participate in the discussion here. —RMCD bot 09:45, 3 August 2017 (UTC)

To opt out of RM notifications on this page, transclude {{bots|deny=RMCD bot}}, or set up Article alerts for this WikiProject.

Invitation for 2017 World Soil Day Edit-a-thon

Hi - To celebrate World Soil Day on December 5, 2017, faculty and staff at the University of British Columbia are organizing a 2017 World Soil Day Edit-a-thon. The goal is to work simultaneously to edit and update soil science information on Wikipedia, particularly where information gaps currently exist. The edit-a-thon will physically take place on the UBC campus on December 5th, from 1 to 4pm (PST) but we are also hoping for simultaneous online editing as well. We expect many of the participants will be new to editing Wikipedia so having any experienced editors with an interest in soil particpate would be amazing. Thanks! ---- Will (talk) 20:24, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

Scientific images from WSC2017

Please take a look in here about newly uploaded scientific images on commons during Wiki Science Competitions 2017.--Alexmar983 (talk) 12:15, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 11

Newsletter • February 2018

Check out this month's issue of the WikiProject X newsletter, with plans to renew work with a followup grant proposal to support finalising the deployment of CollaborationKit!

-— Isarra ༆ 21:26, 14 February 2018 (UTC)

WikiProject collaboration notice from the Portals WikiProject

The reason I am contacting you is because there are one or more portals that fall under this subject, and the Portals WikiProject is currently undertaking a major drive to automate portals that may affect them.

Portals are being redesigned.

The new design features are being applied to existing portals.

At present, we are gearing up for a maintenance pass of portals in which the introduction section will be upgraded to no longer need a subpage. In place of static copied and pasted excerpts will be self-updating excerpts displayed through selective transclusion, using the template {{Transclude lead excerpt}}.

The discussion about this can be found here.

Maintainers of specific portals are encouraged to sign up as project members here, noting the portals they maintain, so that those portals are skipped by the maintenance pass. Currently, we are interested in upgrading neglected and abandoned portals. There will be opportunity for maintained portals to opt-in later, or the portal maintainers can handle upgrading (the portals they maintain) personally at any time.

Background

On April 8th, 2018, an RfC ("Request for comment") proposal was made to eliminate all portals and the portal namespace. On April 17th, the Portals WikiProject was rebooted to handle the revitalization of the portal system. On May 12th, the RfC was closed with the result to keep portals, by a margin of about 2 to 1 in favor of keeping portals.

There's an article in the current edition of the Signpost interviewing project members about the RfC and the Portals WikiProject.

Since the reboot, the Portals WikiProject has been busy building tools and components to upgrade portals.

So far, 84 editors have joined.

If you would like to keep abreast of what is happening with portals, see the newsletter archive.

If you have any questions about what is happening with portals or the Portals WikiProject, please post them on the WikiProject's talk page.

Thank you.    — The Transhumanist   11:01, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 12

Newsletter • August 2018

This month: WikiProject X: The resumption

Work has resumed on WikiProject X and CollaborationKit, backed by a successfully funded Project Grant. For more information on the current status and planned work, please see this month's issue of the newsletter!

-— Isarra ༆ 22:24, 30 August 2018 (UTC)

Humic substance listed at Requested moves

A requested move discussion has been initiated for Humic substance to be moved to Humic acid. This page is of interest to this WikiProject and interested members may want to participate in the discussion here. —RMCD bot 02:31, 12 October 2018 (UTC)

To opt out of RM notifications on this page, transclude {{bots|deny=RMCD bot}}, or set up Article alerts for this WikiProject.

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 13

Newsletter • December 2018

This month: A general update.

The current status of the project is as follows:

• Progress of the project has been generally delayed since September due to development issues (more bitrot than expected, some of the code just being genuinely confusing, etc) and personal injury (I suffered a concussion in October and was out of commission for almost two months as a result).
• I currently expect to be putting out a proper call for CollaborationKit pilots in January/February, with estimated deployment in February/March if things don't go horribly wrong (they will, though, don't worry). As a part of that, I will properly update the page and send out announcement and reach out to all projects already signed up as pilots for WikiProject X in general, at which point those (still) interested can volunteer specifically to test the CollaborationKit extension.
  • Wikipedia:WikiProject X/Pilots was originally created for the first WikiProject X prototype, and given this is where the project has since gone, it's only logical to continue to use it. While I haven't yet updated the page to properly reflect this:
  • If you want to add your project to this page now, feel free. Just bear in mind that more information what to actually expect will be added later/included in the announcement, because by then I will have a much better idea myself.
• Until then, you can find me in my corner working on making the CollaborationKit code do what we want and not just what we told it, per the workboard.

Until next time,

-— Isarra ༆ 22:44, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

Notification - Bot tagging request for WikiProject Soil

The request is for a bot to add {{WikiProject Soil}} to all the article talk pages in the select categories. The request generally avoids categories without "soil" in the name.

1. Category:Soil
2. Category:Soil by country
3. Category:Soil in Chile
4. Category:Soil in the United States
5. Category:Types of soil
6. Category:Alkaline soils
7. Category:Serpentine soils
8. Category:Volcanic soils
9. Category:Soil improvers
10. Category:Soil mechanics
11. Category:Soil tests
12. Category:Soil science
13. Category:Soil scientists
14. Category:American soil scientists
15. Category:Australian soil scientists
16. Category:Azerbaijani soil scientists
17. Category:Bangladeshi soil scientists
18. Category:Belgian soil scientists
19. Category:British soil scientists
20. Category:Canadian soil scientists
21. Category:Dutch soil scientists
22. Category:German soil scientists
23. Category:New Zealand soil scientists
24. Category:Norwegian soil scientists
25. Category:Polish soil scientists
26. Category:Russian soil scientists
27. Category:Agricultural soil science
28. Category:Soil biology
29. Category:Soil chemistry
30. Category:Edaphology
31. Category:Environmental soil science
32. Category:Environmental issues with soil
33. Category:Pedology
34. Category:Regolith
35. Category:Soil physics
36. Category:Soil erosion
37. Category:Soil science in India
38. Category:Soil science-related lists
39. Category:Soil science stubs

posted: -- Paleorthid (talk) 22:58, 6 January 2019 (UTC)

Link: Wikipedia:Bot_requests#WikiProject_Soil_Tagging -- Paleorthid (talk) 16:55, 25 January 2019 (UTC)

Link: Wikipedia:Bots/Requests_for_approval/DannyS712_bot_2 -- Paleorthid (talk) 20:32, 25 January 2019 (UTC)

Link: User:DannyS712_bot, has further links. -- Paleorthid (talk) 20:37, 25 January 2019 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of National Society of Consulting Soil Scientists

If this is the first article that you have created, you may want to read the guide to writing your first article.

You may want to consider using the Article Wizard to help you create articles.

A tag has been placed on National Society of Consulting Soil Scientists requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section A7 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the article appears to be about a person, a group of people, an individual animal, an organization (band, club, company, etc.), web content, or an organized event that does not credibly indicate how or why the subject is important or significant: that is, why an article about that subject should be included in an encyclopedia. Under the criteria for speedy deletion, such articles may be deleted at any time. Please read more about what is generally accepted as notable.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. If the page is deleted, and you wish to retrieve the deleted material for future reference or improvement, then please contact the deleting administrator. This is a WikiProject soil article. Speedy deletion is being proposed by me as the article creator. Paleorthid (talk) 19:50, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

Update: Speedy deletion pulled - "clearly indicates importance. ... maybe this should be merged with the article on the successor organisation" Soil Science Society of America. -- Paleorthid (talk) 20:59, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of List of state soil science associations

The article List of state soil science associations has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

No real references, pretty trivial. WP:Listcruft.

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, pages may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the page to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. -- Paleorthid (talk) 19:16, 5 March 2019 (UTC)

Mull

Shouldn't Mull be a DAB page and that article moved back to Isle of Mull (per the OS) given that mull is also a humus form[1]. Crouch, Swale (talk) 16:55, 20 May 2019 (UTC)

A possible Science/STEM User Group

There's a discussion about a possible User Group for STEM over at Meta:Talk:STEM_Wiki_User_Group. The idea would be to help coordinate, collaborate and network cross-subject, cross-wiki and cross-language to share experience and resources that may be valuable to the relevant wikiprojects. Current discussion includes preferred scope and structure. T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)^talk 02:56, 26 May 2019 (UTC)

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 14

Newsletter • June 2019

Updates: I've been focusing largely on the development side of things, so we are a lot closer now to being ready to actually start discussing deploying it and testing it out here.

There's just a few things left that need to be resolved:

• A bunch of language support issues in particular, plus some other release blockers, such as the fact that currently there's no good way to find any hubs people do create.
• We also probably need some proper documentation and examples up to even reference if we want a meaningful discussion. We have the extension documentation and some test projects, but we probably need a bit more. Also I need to be able to even find the test projects! How can I possibly write reports about this stuff if I can't find any of it?!

Some other stuff that's happened in the meantime:

• Midpoint report is out for this round of the project, if you want to read in too much detail about all the problems I've been running into.
• WikiProject Molecular Biology have successfully set up using the old module system that CollaborationKit is intended to replace (eventually), and it even seems to work, so go them. Based on the issues they ran into, it looks like the members signup thing on that system has some of the same problems as we've been unable to resolve in CK, though, which is... interesting. (Need to change the content model to the right thing for the formwizard config to take. Ugh, content models.)

Until next time,

-— Isarra ༆ 21:43, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 15

Newsletter • September 2019

A final update, for now:

The third grant-funded round of WikiProject X has been completed. Unfortunately, while this round has not resulted in a deployed product, I am not planning to resume working on the project for the foreseeable future. Please see the final report for more information.

Regards,

-— Isarra ༆ 19:24, 29 September 2019 (UTC)

Draft:Soil moisture regime

Hello soil experts. There's a draft waiting for review at WP:AFC which falls under the scope of this project. Please take a look!—Anne Delong (talk) 12:32, 16 October 2019 (UTC)

Request for information on WP1.0 web tool

Hello and greetings from the maintainers of the WP 1.0 Bot! As you may or may not know, we are currently involved in an overhaul of the bot, in order to make it more modern and maintainable. As part of this process, we will be rewriting the web tool that is part of the project. You might have noticed this tool if you click through the links on the project assessment summary tables.

We'd like to collect information on how the current tool is used by....you! How do you yourself and the other maintainers of your project use the web tool? Which of its features do you need? How frequently do you use these features? And what features is the tool missing that would be useful to you? We have collected all of these questions at this Google form where you can leave your response. Walkerma (talk) 04:24, 27 October 2019 (UTC)

User script to detect unreliable sources

Main page: User:Headbomb/unreliable

I have (with the help of others) made a small user script to detect and highlight various links to unreliable sources and predatory journals. Some of you may already be familiar with it, given it is currently the 39th most imported script on Wikipedia. The idea is that it takes something like

• John Smith "Article of things" Deprecated.com. Accessed 2020-02-14. (John Smith "[https://www.deprecated.com/article Article of things]" ''Deprecated.com''. Accessed 2020-02-14.)

and turns it into something like

• John Smith "Article of things" Deprecated.com. Accessed 2020-02-14.

It will work on a variety of links, including those from {{cite web}}, {{cite journal}} and {{doi}}.

The script is mostly based on WP:RSPSOURCES, WP:NPPSG and WP:CITEWATCH and a good dose of common sense. I'm always expanding coverage and tweaking the script's logic, so general feedback and suggestions to expand coverage to other unreliable sources are always welcomed.

Do note that this is not a script to be mindlessly used, and several caveats apply. Details and instructions are available at User:Headbomb/unreliable. Questions, comments and requests can be made at User talk:Headbomb/unreliable.

- Headbomb {t · c · p · b}

This is a one time notice and can't be unsubscribed from. Delivered by: MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:02, 29 April 2022 (UTC)

Draft:Moder

This draft is in review, and I would appreciate comments and assistance. Does it need to be reworked or revised so as to state what reliable sources say? Also, it refers to Mull humus and Mor humus, but those are either missing articles or misnamed; so my second question is whether those types of soil either need revision or need articles. The draft on Moder has been declined once as reading like a textbook, but that isn't really helpful to the author, who may need advice on how to make it read more like an encyclopedia article. Thank you. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:55, 30 April 2022 (UTC)

One of your project's articles has been selected for improvement!

Hello, Please note that Soil, which is within this project's scope, has been selected as one of the Articles for improvement. The article is scheduled to appear on Wikipedia's Community portal in the "Articles for improvement" section for one week, beginning today. Everyone is encouraged to collaborate to improve the article. Thanks, and happy editing! Delivered by — MusikBot talk 00:06, 9 May 2022 (UTC) on behalf of the AFI team

World Soil Day - deserving of independent article?

Hello WikiProject Soil! I believe World Soil Day is deserving of its own article. It has significant coverage and the year deemed International Year of Soil is getting further and further away from us.

• https://www.vaticannews.va/en/world/news/2022-12/world-soil-day-united-nations-environmental-awareness-earth.html
• https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/new-updates/world-soil-day-2022-history-significance-and-theme-of-the-day/articleshow/95995492.cms

Any thoughts on this? Either way, happy World Soil Day. - Wil540 art (talk) 00:37, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

Project-independent quality assessments

Quality assessments by Wikipedia editors rate articles in terms of completeness, organization, prose quality, sourcing, etc. Most wikiprojects follow the general guidelines at Wikipedia:Content assessment, but some have specialized assessment guidelines. A recent Village pump proposal was approved and has been implemented to add a |class= parameter to {{WikiProject banner shell}}, which can display a general quality assessment for an article, and to let project banner templates "inherit" this assessment.

No action is required if your wikiproject follows the standard assessment approach. Over time, quality assessments will be migrated up to {{WikiProject banner shell}}, and your project banner will automatically "inherit" any changes to the general assessments for the purpose of assigning categories.

However, if your project has decided to "opt out" and follow a non-standard quality assessment approach, all you have to do is modify your wikiproject banner template to pass {{WPBannerMeta}} a new |QUALITY_CRITERIA=custom parameter. If this is done, changes to the general quality assessment will be ignored, and your project-level assessment will be displayed and used to create categories, as at present. Aymatth2 (talk) 14:23, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:Lunar soil#Requested move 27 June 2024

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Lunar soil#Requested move 27 June 2024 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. Safari Scribe^{Edits! Talk!} 23:14, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

Rating of Base-richness

Can we rate this Start-class? Bearian (talk) 03:33, 10 December 2024 (UTC)