User blog:George Dance/August 2012

The Poetry Foundation maintains one of the Web's largest collection of poet biographies and linked poems. In August we began the task of linking its biographies to PPP. We had begun tackling the PF previously, but had turned to other pursuits after completing A. At the start of August we began by working on B. By the end of the month we had made it only as far as the end of C!

There were two reasons for that slow rate of progress. One was the sheer size of the PF database: almost 1,200 records in those two letters alone. The second was our methodology: not only did every record have to be examined, but each had to be upgraded in line with our new standards. Even records we copied in a year ago had to be re-examined and upgraded. In the main we followed the procedure developed over the summer, concentrating on the following areas: Recognition: adding this section if there was none, and transferring applicable information (awards, legacy, etc.) to it. Publications: replacing Wikipedia's bibliographies with the PF information, where possible, and formatting all bibliographies as much as possible to reflect PPP's emerged style. See also: adding a link from each article to the relevant country list (usually List of U.S. poets), and adding the poet's name (and a reciprocal link) both to that list, and to the master List of English-language poets. References: Adding occasional references, particularly to the new bibliographies but in other spots as well; for many articles, adding a reference section for the first time. External links: Adding not just PF, but others such as NNDB, PoemHunter, and YouTube. Pictures: checking Wikimedia Commons for pictures for each article subject, and adding them in most cases. (The only exceptions made were for pictures over 2MB in size, which were ruled out just to keep from filling my hard drive!)

If all that sounds like a lot of work, it was; and it is nowhere near finished. So I needed to take a break now and then; but then I still wanted to improve the wiki then, too. So, for relaxation, i have been adding pictures to the article on Shakespeare's plays and poems. That has been fun, picking out good pictures for each article; and it has also resulted in improving the "About Shakespeare" module, one in which the least has been done to date.

The rest of PF beckons; it looks as though we'll be working on it for the rest of 2012, at least.George Dance (talk) 01:16, September 17, 2012 (UTC)