- Project News
Sorry there's not been a newsletter for three months, it's not that there hasn't been anything to say but that there almost hasn't been time to say it...
On 20 March 2009 Manchester was "today's Featured Article" and received over 44,000 visitors. This was the culmination of about 2 years of effort from a lot of editors who found the article in this state before the founding of the project. Along with Greater Manchester, it's our flagship article and for it to reach the mainpage is a great achievement. It was an incredible collaborative effort and shows what the project is capable of, and since then we have gone from strength to strength. The Manchester Small-Scale Experimental Machine was Today's Featured Article on 30 May, with 33,000 visitors.
 Carrington Moss is an 1,100 acres (450 ha) peat bog in Trafford; in the 19th century, it was reclaimed to be used agriculturally and for the disposal Manchester's waste, and is still used for farming.
- Manchester Mummy is about Hannah Beswick, whose macabre fear of being buried alive lead to her demanding that her body was kept above ground and checked periodically for signs of life.
- The Manchester Small-Scale Experimental Machinewas the world's first stored-program computer. It ran its first program on 21 June 1948. The SSEM was a template for the Manchester Mark 1 and the first in a series of groundbreaking computers designed at Manchester.
- The town of Sale in Trafford was probably founded in the Anglo-Saxon period and is best known as the home of physicist J. P. Joule the founding place and former home of and Sale Sharks rugby club.
 Cheadle Hulme is a suburb of Stockport that formed from several small hamlets, rather than growing around a church which was usual for medieval villages. (also Stockport's first GA!)
- The East Lancashire Railway 1844–1859 (ELR) only operated for 16 years, but in its short history it was threatened by competitors such as the North Union Railway, and was involved in a dangerous stand-off with the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway (L&YR). Eventually the ELR and L&YR were amalgamated in 1859.
- Eccles, famous for the Eccles cake, is a town in the City of Salford that boomed with the Industrial Revolution. Along with Worsley, it is a proposed World Heritage Site.
- Mellor hill fort is the only Iron Age hill fort in Greater Manchester and was only discovered in the 1990s.
- Partington, in Trafford, is a town and civil parish that was until the Manchester Ship Canal opened in 1894, a mainly agrarian community. With the opening of the canal, Partington became a major coal port and following the Second World War was expanded as an overspill estate for deprived parts of Manchester.
- The town of Worsley was home to the Duke of Bridgewater's coal mines and is under consideration to be preserved as a World Heritage Site; the duke built the Bridgewater Canal to transport coal from the mines.
- With all the project's success, we must be careful not to become complacent. In March, David Beckham was delisted as a Good Article because it lacked enough references and was poorly written in parts. Improving an article and getting it reviewed for GA is a lot of effort and it's a real shame to see the article delisted, but a reminder that our role as an article writer is two-fold: once we improve them, we have an obligation to maintain them. Beckham is the kind of person who is regularly in the news, so the article will get a lot of attention and need regular updating, and it was written by members of WP:FOOTBALL, but let's take it as a reminder of what's needed from us.
- WT:GM: The project's talk page is a forum for discussion and to keep up to date with the latest project developments and initiatives put it on your watchlist! Recently there have been discussions on articles to be deleted, the congestion charge, how to get members involved and working together, and plenty of other stuff.
Written by Nev1, based on a template by Jza84 | Single-Page View
Would you like to write the next newsletter for WP:GM?? Please nominate yourself at WT:GM! New editors are always welcome!
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- Aims
Our extant short-term project aims:
Over the past three months, we've succeeded in our aims of bringing Eccles and Worsley to GA status, thanks largely to the seemingly inexhaustible Parrot of Doom. Recently another aim was added: bringing Stockport to GA standard. It's currently C-class and has some well developed sections. It will be a difficult task, but worthwhile considering it's Greater Manchester's third largest settlement. Also, the importance of bringing Salford to GA has been emphasised; it's currently B-class and should be the easiest of our aims to accomplish, although it's been there for a long time. Let's see if we can put this one to rest soon.
- The project compared
Over the past three months, WP:LOND and WP:YORK have had a massive upsurge in the number of articles under their auspices. And interestingly, WP:YORKS has had an upsurge in GAs (10), and WP:LOND has had an increase in both GAs and FAs (8 and 10 respectively), closing down the gap with WP:GM. Although WP:DERB appears to have lost a GA, one of their articles was incorrectly tagged; however Derwent Valley Mills is being prepared to become a Good Article candidate, and hopefully will be the project's first. With the recent retirement of Ddstretch and Espresso Addict, WP:CHES has lost two of its most active contributors, but is still managing to produce good articles such as list of castles in Cheshire (FL) and John Douglas (now a Good Article candidate). The majority of WP:MRSY's articles are now assessed and will hopefully go from strength to strength.
| |
GTRM |
LOND |
YORK |
MRSY |
CHES |
DERB
|
| FA
|
38 |
25 |
23 |
8 |
4 |
0
|
 A
|
0 |
1 |
0 |
0 |
1 |
0
|
| GA
|
44 |
35 |
42 |
12 |
23 |
0
|
| B
|
105 |
225 |
193 |
31 |
83 |
37
|
| C
|
113 |
55 |
238 |
104 |
66 |
71
|
| Start
|
731 |
1817 |
2142 |
528 |
530 |
482
|
| Stub
|
771 |
1229 |
3603 |
421 |
455 |
702
|
| List
|
48 |
75 |
103 |
20 |
28 |
24
|
| Unassessed
|
0 |
2821 |
0 |
463 |
0 |
0
|
| Total
|
1850 |
6344 |
6344 |
1587 |
1190 |
1316
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- Member News
There are now 48 active members of WikiProject Greater Manchester (with a further 17 members inactive since 1 September 2008) as 2 new members have joined the project since the start of March:
The project is always looking for new members, and if you spot an editor who makes good changes to Greater Manchester related articles why not invite them to join up by adding this template to their talk page: {{SUBST:Welcome WPGM}}.
- Reminders...
- Images!
There are some good images around, but more are still needed if we're going to get a "lead/static image in every infobox of every town in the county"! The requested photographs category lists some of the articles needing images.
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