Wikipedia talk:WikiProject: Difference between revisions

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Archive 1:All discussion previous to Jan 2005
Archive 2:All discussion previous to April 2005

Redundancy:RedundantProject

Is it just me or does the title WikiProject seem redundant and unnecessary? We already know that if it is in the Wikipedia: space then it is a MetaWiki page.

On another note, I think it is time to archive these discussions - except the active ones. Moogle 06:08, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

My feeling is that WikiProject is a useful moniker for referring to this particular set of organized activities. Courtland 12:54, 2005 May 24 (UTC)

Inappropriate WikiProjects ?

Some WikiProjects are said by some users to be inappropriate (possibly because of POV-pushing, or being a personal attack magnet). Is it possible for a WikiProject to be inappropriate? If so, what are the criteria, and how do we decide? What should we do with said projects?

Please join the discussion on Wikipedia:Wikiproject/Inappropriate projects.

Radiant _* 11:03, Apr 13, 2005 (UTC)

Links to WikiProjects in stub messages

I've just had someone revert my link to Wikipedia:WikiProject Formula One in the {{F1-stub}}, citing a prior, similar, revert by User:Rdsmith4 with the edit summary "WikiProject shouldn't be linked from the article namespace". Given that a ton of stubs have links to relevant WikiProjects (IMO, a good thing), and that I can't find any precedent here or at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Stub sorting, I'm reverting, but I would like some clarification if there is anything wrong. [Crossposted to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Stub sorting and Wikipedia talk:Stub sorting policy ] - SoM 15:46, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)

So far {{Chem-stub}} hasn't insulted anyone... Yet it was far more extensive a change. Circeus 16:08, Apr 24, 2005 (UTC)

In the interest of centralized discussion, I suggest any further comments go to Wikipedia talk:Stub sorting policy#Links to WikiProjects in stub messages. User:Rdsmith4/Sig 13:46, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I take it that there is likely a general guideline suggesting that links should not lead from the main article namespace into the Wikipedia namespace, but I wouldn't think that would be applied to WikiProject-related pages owing to the desire to attract souls to contribute to those activities. Am I thinking along lines of consensus here? Courtland 12:57, 2005 May 24 (UTC)

Project notices go on the talk pages, not main article pages. See Project Page - Suggestions for new projects - #7 Advertise! Create a project notice template, and insert it into the talk page of related articles Petersam 19:11, 24 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

That sounds rather final. No exceptions, ever, a matter of strict policy, is that it? Courtland July 4, 2005 17:06 (UTC)

WikiProject_WikiProject

Might there be a central wikiproject for starting/ helping new wikiprojects? -SV|t 23:45, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I just learned a great deal about ipc - interprocess communication, and fixed the template i broke eight months ago. funny how great discoveries are mads by accident. nobody hardly ever pays attention to me around here and that really sux. fact is i'm a communitarin and programmer from way back and try to responde instantly to people with problems and questions. i asked some lady named angela how to fix my broken wikiproject templatr. i asked the guys in mediawiki in irc how to fix my broken wikiproject template. i asked on the village pump how to fix my broken Template:WikiProject. What I learned today is that I Broke the template for all of these wikiprojects:

...and it stayed broken untill today.

What happened was this:

Instead of putting {{subst:WikiProject|projectname}}
I for some very stupid reason, I put {{WikiProject}}

Once I finally got an answer, it wasn't help but scorn, rejection and dismissal. That really hurt. I didn't go near the admins or devs for eight months! That's a very subtle and dangerous form of tyranny and I'm determined not to let it happen again...

At least m:Not on MY shift! 
I'm now a trainer at WP:BC :)

What I was getting is on display at Wikipedia:WikiProject Earth.

Back to [1] :

"Might there be a central wikiproject for starting/ helping new wikiprojects?"

I believe we are there right now!

I think a higher-priority question is Why are there so many Orphaned WikiProjects? The answer is here somewhere. See the studies:

where to put this project?

the WikiProject on Hallucinogens, Entheogens, and Related Topics has very recently been started up; i want to list it here, but don't know where to put it. It was originally conceived as a descendent project of WikiProject Drugs, dealing with one type of drug in an expanded scope- considering not only chemical factors, but also cultural/historical uses, organizing the associated plants, and so on and so forth. So it doesn't fit under that on this listing, as it isn't a project dealing with conventional medicine; it also isn't dealing with alternative medicine or anything else in the sciences. It doesn't really fit under humanities anywhere either . . . so, uh, any suggestions on where this should go? see the project page, categorization page and the categoriziation talk page for more info on the project, and maybe we can figure out where to put this. I'm rather surprised there isn't a general "other" section . . . thanks! --Heah (talk) 23:51, 6 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds like you need to join #wpbootcamp on irc WP:BC and post an original research paper on ...

Oh never mind. hmm.Your statement:

It doesn't really fit under humanities anywhere either ...

Is untrue. Wikipedia:WikiProject_Counterculture is your daddy! Quinobi 17:50, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

WikiProject Counterculture

Main article: counterculture

Is the name OK with everyone?

Wikipedia:WikiProject Counterculture

Disambiguation pages

I think we should have a WikiProject that aims to correct links that lead to disambiguation pages etc. --Jawr256 09:03, Jun 4, 2005 (UTC)

Such a project exists:

[[2] W:WikiProject_Red_Link_Recovery
- By the way. Disambiguation pages make great context switches. Quinobi 18:06, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Actually, links to diambig pages are blue rather than red - and therefore outside the scope of Wikipedia:WikiProject Red Link Recovery. We're really more concerned with identifying and fixing links like Main_Pgae. Happy to generate a list of the most linked-to disambig pages if someone else sets up ana manges the project though - TB June 28, 2005 07:10 (UTC)
I think it would be useful, yes, to have an "Applying DABs WikiProject" or a less informally named project. Links that are blue but lead to the wrong article owing to the lack of a disambiguation page are actually more injurious to the reputation of Wikipedia than the presence of red links, in my opinion. I'm working on the Stub Sorting WikiProject, but I feel strongly enough about this that I'd set aside that hat to take up one in a Disambiguation WikiProject. Courtland July 4, 2005 17:13 (UTC)

Please see Wikipedia:WikiProject disambiguation. --Smack (talk) 02:49, 20 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Reorg time

A bit of reorg is clearly needed as the original page was getting very messy. The list of WPrjs and the "why"/"how-to" do not belong together - people usually aren't looking for both at the same time. I've taken initial steps to split out the list from the "how-to", but my approach isn't necessarily best. (It's easy enough to rearange though).

Suggestion one - as I've done it (with list on its own page).
Suggestion two - put list back on WikiProject page (keep a brief overview to explain what they are), and move the "Why" and "How To" section over to Wikipedia:WikiProject_best_practices

Thoughts anyone? Manning 10:41, July 18, 2005 (UTC)

We put Wikipedia:WikiProjectCentral over there for the WikiProject Why and How stuff and the top-matter that was above the main list, with the intention of leaving the main list where it was at Wikipedia:WikiProject. Wikipedia:WikiProject_best_practices would remain the primary advisory document, and WikiProjectCentral would be for discusions related to what goes where, What WikiProjects are extranious, malformed, active, inactive, misplaced, missing or whatever. Then we might work on the main listing, structuring the tree from parent/child data as we work it through, maybe doing some clipping and merging. The m:Wikiproject_group on meta would be a place to coordinate topic-focused Wikiprojects across the Various language wikipedias and sister projects, Wiktionary, Commons etc. Like say Wikipedia:WikiProject_Music_genres with the same general topic at the commons. (example naming conventions, whatever). I don't know. This forum had gone dead and I and a couple of others were just trying to help. Sorry if it makes no sense. Quinobi 19:23, 19 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

No need to apologise, things get chaotic all the time. Let's work to straighten it all out. Here are my thoughts:

Given the number of links to it, the List should go back at Wikipedia:WikiProject.
Wikipedia:WikiProject should just have a brief overview of "What it is" before the list starts, and then the "How to get started stuff should be cut out amd moved. The full description and the guide to getting started should be at Wikipedia:WikiProject_best_practices
I still don't see the value of Wikipedia:WikiProjectCentral at this point in time, as I think problem projects should go in a "problem projects" page (if one doesn't already exist). But maybe that's just me.

Cheers Manning 21:59, July 19, 2005 (UTC)

WikiProjectCentral

OK I'd like to clarify, then, the possible value of WikiProjectCentral:

It is an effort to improve the communication and organization of WikiProjects as a whole.
It will help to increase the dialog between and amongst Wikiprojects and a new group at meta - the m:Wikiproject_group
It will help Wikipedia:WikiProjects as a Community of practice within the larger Wikipedia Community to produce news and goings-on for the Wikipedia:Signpost publised through WikiPraxis a bi-weekly or monthly column subtitled News from WikiProject Central.
It will help to hash out the Wikipedia:List_of_WikiProjects on a separate page from the Wikipedia:WikiProject main list.

I propose:

Wikipedia:List_of_WikiProjects becomes a flat alphabetical listing of all projects in Category:WikiProjects
Wikipedia:WikiProject becomes a treed listing of the family of active Wikipedia:List of WikiProjects
Wikipedia:WikiProject_best_practices remains the definitive guide to starting and maintaining WikiProjects.
Wikipedia:WikiProjectCentral will be for all the functions outlined above.

I hope this makes sense and can be a help to increase the energy and self-organization level of Wikiprojects au generale and not a hinderance or point of contention. But hey! I'm easy to get along with. If ya'll think this is just a nuesance, let me know and I'll just drop it. A placeholder for the page is already there. Please let me know what you think of these proposals. TIA Quinobi 18:41, 20 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds good - give it a day or two to see if anyone else decides to give a voice and then lets do it. Cheers Manning 22:13, July 20, 2005 (UTC)

Update: 18:38, 5 August 2006 (UTC) • Since WikiProjectCentral failed to gain support here, it was basically redirected to Wikipedia:WikiProject. However there is a group at meta that may function as a central resource for WikiProject coordination. Please see Wikiproject group at meta below for more information. Thanks • CQ 18:38, 5 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Less than 5 : Your ideas are not worth considering

This discussion thread is related to the statement on the main page: "Generally you should have at least 5-10 people involved before a Wikiproject structure makes any sense and adds any value. If you don't think you'll get at least 5-10 people on board, then don't waste your effort - you'll be better off just writing your articles."

This was added to Before_you_begin section by Tobias Conradi on 06:07, 3 August 2005. JesseW 01:32, 4 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

(But if one coordinates lots of things where should he put the stuff? Value of project page is not related to number of editors but to number of edits or whatever. Number of people does not say much about usefullness of project. you can have 10 people do nothing and you can have 2 people do much.)

Certainly 2 people can do a lot of good work, but the point that was being made on the page was that 2 people don't need a WikiProject structure to do it. Only when 5 or 10 people are working on something is a seperate WikiProject page useful. The page specifically says if you have less than 5 or 10 people involved, just be bold and do it. It's an attempt to curtail bureaucracy, not an attempt to enforce it. JesseW 19:52, 5 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Even if one person does something it can be handled via project. Where should he collect data? Where should he place general ideas? Research results etc. If one says he can do it in his user-space - well, everything can be done in user-space. But what if he leaves WP? Will other user that take over his project than edit in his user-space? Will they copy the content to their user-space? Will it probably end up in different stages in different user-spaces? Why not put it in a WikiProject to allow other people to easier take over the stuff. Why is it not sufficient to determine whether the content is suitable, why is people count needed? It is not described why 10 people need a Project page and why 1 or 2 people don't.

Furthermore it is super-rude to say: If you don't think you'll get at least 5-10 people on board, then don't waste your effort - you'll be better off just writing your articles. This implies if you are less than 5, your ideas are stupid. Don't involve in WikiProject-style content creation. Write articles. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 12:30, 6 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Er, what kind of "data", "research results", etc, were you thinking of? Generally, Wikipedia articles should not have original research, so there shouldn't be any "research results", unless I'm misunderstanding you... And as for user-space being hard to find - if lots of articles are written, people will find the project, more people will join, and it can be moved to a WikiProject. If the original author leaves before anyone else is interested, then it's not likely that many other people are interested, so there's not much loss if it's hard for them to find it.

what would you talk about on talk pages? About ideas. You can present your ideas also if you are less than 5. They can be as good or better, number of people is irrelevant.

Well, here's why 1 or 2 people don't need a WikiProject: 1 or 2 people can talk amongst themselves(by article Talk pages, user talk pages, and user-spaces very easily. With 5 or 10 people it becomes harder to discuss things that way; then a more formal structure becomes useful. That's why.

by article talk pages? why shall 5 people not be able to talk by article talk pages the same way as 2 people do? That's not a "why".

You seem to be confusing "having a WikiProject" with some kind of vote by the community that a project is a Good Thing, and that suggestions to not create such a project is a attack on the ideas of the person who wanted to do so. It's not. WikiProjects are simply, merely and only structures for communication - not endorsements or anything else. I don't see how your claim: "[Don't create a WikiProject unless you have too many people to coordinate things with article and user talk pages] implies if you are less than 5, your ideas are stupid" is justified. It's not any kind of rude, at least, as far as I can see. JesseW 16:24, 6 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

it is an attack if it is stated: "go and write articles." Tobias Conradi (Talk) 23:21, 6 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I would suggest perhaps if it is one user, he should place the data and organisation and so forth on relevant talk pages. That way it might garner interest and lead to a WikiProject. I don't think it should be a WikiProject, there's nothing consensual about a one person approach, and to me a WikiProject should be driven consensually. Steve block talk 19:05, 6 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

why should 1 person distribute content, while 5 persons can present the same stuff in a Project? Content != Number of people Tobias Conradi (Talk) 23:21, 6 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Because that is the way wikipedia works. We each edit as individuals as we see fit. When we come together in groups to edit a subject, we create WikiProjects to facilitate that and to help build consensus on structure and so on. One person doesn't really make a WikiProject, since it's not consensually driven, otherwise each user may as well have a WikiProject, which they do, in their user page. I'd add that WikiProjects have been userfied since falling inactive, and it's entirely possible that an inactive project may just as easily put people off starting one as encourage them to reactivate, as they may believe there is no interest in the subject. I'm not sure what your equation means, but if it means content does not equal the number of people, that's not true. Nor is it entirely relevant, when content does not equal a WikiProject. Steve block talk 20:31, 7 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

It is so, because it is so. Thx for your statement, but for me this statement is useless in this discussion, it is only usefull in so far to see your way of discussing. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 11:42, 8 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe we can back up just a bit and look into the wording of the statement rather than whether or not there should be a statement at all. I agree that the statement is callously worded. Courtland 12:43, August 8, 2005 (UTC)
- thx Courtland! maybe those that think you need 5 should try to integrate the reasons. I cannot because I currently don't support the 5 idea. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 23:46, 8 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I think the five people idea is silly. =) The whole idea of a Wiki is that you put something up and someone comes later and changes it later. This includes Wikiprojects. You put up a wikiproject and other people will read and edit eventually. There are Wikipedia articles where one person contributed to it years ago and still haven't been edited. That's what Wiki means. If we want to change that, then they won't be WIKIprojects. The projects aren't coordinating five people in a single moment, they're about coordinating an aspect of wikipedia for an indefinite period of time. That's why we took out the "inactive project" structure from wikiprojects months ago. [Edit, but that's the whole idea. Different people looked at the same thing and did things a different way months later.] I don't even know why we have listed contributors as the contributors can be seen in the edit history and talk page. =D --Sketchee 03:18, August 16, 2005 (UTC)

You know, that's something I have a real problem with, the "coordinating an aspect of wikipedia for an indefinite period of time" comment. I'm not stiff enough to say that all projects should have a beginning and an end otherwise they should not be called "projects", but at present there are no (0) WikiProjects (on cursory inspection) that have closed-ended goals. That I'm sure is something that a lot of professionals who deal with project-working in their daily lives (me among them) find disturbing. I'm not wanting to get hung up in terminology, but the type of thing that is defined as a "WikiProject" in the preceding comment is what we might call a "capability" or "community of practice" or "domain" but never a "project" in my real world (avoiding the use of "the real world" purposely). Therein lies the more than you, yourself, and thee guideline that "5 or more" is meant (I believe) to state formally; a "project" in the traditional sense can indeed have a single person being chief, cook, and bottle washer; it takes more than one person to "(coordinate) an aspect of wikipedia" for any length of time. I think this is a decent argument for at least keeping some guideline against sole creation and activity on a WikiProject. As an aside, in adding meta-data to the Wikipedia:List of WikiProjects I've sometimes seen waves of WikiProjects (3 or 4) created by one person all at the same time and I don't think that such a practice is either desirable or useful, but it is an inevitable outcome of the "one person create and act" approach to WikiProject creation. Courtland 03:44, August 16, 2005 (UTC)
- While each project has end goals, they all don't have a time period set for those goals to be complete. That is what I mean by indefinite, the time period in undefined. If you have a "problem" with the fact that projects aren't required to have an end date, that's fine. You can talk to editors about working toward certain goals. That has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not a project has an achievable goal. You're exactly right, Wikiprojects coordinate several people and I agreed with that in my statement. However, those people aren't going to be all here at once and don't need to be. This isn't a chat room. The people involved in the project should definitely be trying to get others involved, though. It only takes one person to start them however. Anyone can edit any wikiproject page, no one can stronghold the article and if such a dispute arose, admin intervention is possible.

I was the initial person who initially put the Composers project (and Visual Arts as well) into the Wikipedia database, but I knew then that I wasn't the only editor of those types of articles as there were already common editors throughout many of those articles. They're not "my" projects, they're wiki pages. I didn't need to go to four talk pages and make a party of five to know that they would be edited. Like any wiki article, they were edited and expanded. Someone had to come alone and disagree with the initial guidlines. Mostly it turned out we just wanted to coordinate the kinks and descrepencies between different composer pages (for example) and spend most of our time working on the articles. That was the project goal and it's ongoing. There arethousands noted composers in the history books (well, thousands even in one book of one time period) so that goal is certainly indefinite. We already defined hundreds of composers that are either stubs or don't exist yet, so even if the project seems relatively inactive, it's only because the people involved don't see the need yet to add, change or discuss right now or because they're busy editing the hundreds articles we've listed between requests, stubs, undeveloped composers, etc. Along with those, new people everyday are reaching noteriety. So the composers project goal will continue indefinitely. =) --Sketchee 04:43, August 16, 2005 (UTC)

on Time and the indefinite: There is a distinction between _having a date for completion_ (paraphrasing the "time period" reference above) and _having a completable goal_. I do not mean to imply that WikiProject goals should have a _due by_ date; rather there are many activities that are not indefinite, but very few cases where non-indefinite goals are established. A goal that is by definition "indefinite" is not an "end goal" but it is a "goal" nonetheless; indefinite goals are valid and valuable, something we both agree on.
get rid of the guideline and embrace the stand back and watch the dust approach: If we consider all of this discussion in the context of the Wiki spirit, then the "party of five" approach is not useful. However, if we consider it in the context of "building an encyclopedia", there are reasons for keeping it in place. However, I think that in general more harm has been done by invoking the we're building an encyclopedia — dammit mantra than good has come of it. Most everyone who is an active editor accepts the notion that we're building ... something like an encyclopedia. Therefore, if we draw on the assume good intentions motto, even in the more formalized approach encouraged by the building an encyclopedia context, invoking a "party of 5" guideline is counterproductive to the goal of using the tools developed/organized/provided to the fullest extent. Therefore, even though I do believe a guideline of some sort is useful, I don't think harm is going to come of removing the present "party of 5" guideline. In other words, I think we should embrace the provide tools, stand back, and watch the dust approach. So, let's get rid of the guideline.
inactivity of WikiProjects (responding to comments about inactivity above): It would be useful to define some broad stroke characteristics of inactive wikiprojects so that application of the {{Inactive}} has less potential to be a matter of routine maintenance or a haphazard I haven't seen anything change in 6 months reaction.
Courtland 02:00, August 17, 2005 (UTC)

Completed WikiProjects

Does anyone know of a WikiProject that has been completed, in the sense of having had a stated scope and goals and having met those goals in such a way that the project could be inactivated as a result of success rather than a lack of interested resource? Courtland 16:19, August 13, 2005 (UTC)

There are some, like Wikipedia:WikiProject Years, that are pretty much done; the goal was to create a template for year pages, and one was created, and is in use. I wouldn't mark them as inactive, but they do seem complete. JesseW 07:48, 17 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

List of inactive WikiProjects

I've created a new page, Wikipedia:List of inactive WikiProjects, to allow inactives to be moved off the main list page without loss of much information. I've also added to each major section on the main list page a section "Inactives" that has a link to this new page as well as a plain text title listing of the WikiProjects from that section which appear on the inactives listing. I've reworded a section of the introduction of the main listing page to indicate that the new page exists and stating clearly that a WikiProject need not stay inactive or active but can switch back and forth over time and that items on the Inactives page could be brought back to the Actives page. This reasoning supports the addition of meta-data to the entries on the inactives list, which I've preserved when moving an item from the actives to the inactives list; I've also preserved the hierarchical position so that the item can just be cut and pasted back into the actives if desired. This has allowed the retirement of the red-*I and red-*D codes which were meant to highlight items on the Actives page. Courtland 16:24, August 13, 2005 (UTC)

Good - pretty much any attempts to solve the Inactive projects problem I'm in favor of. Go to it! JesseW 16:56, 13 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

such a list and taking Projects off from the main list ignoe to some extend what Sketchee said above in this page. You even make them more inactive by erasing them from main list. Do we have inactive articles? No. They have the same value as those that are edited all day. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 01:59, 17 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

It doesn't erase them .. it enhances recognition that they exist as a group to be adopted individually by new participants or re-picked up by their creators. Courtland 02:03, August 17, 2005 (UTC)

I've added meta-data and moved inactives for the rest of the history ones, and I'll do some more later. I like this new system of meta-data, and the inactive list. And I agree with your point about enhanced recognition - inactive projects can have lots of useful info, but you can't go to them for help; the two lists make this distinction well and clear. JesseW 07:44, 17 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

where they erased from Wikipedia:List of WikiProjects ? Than this list should be renamed to List of active ... and not announced anymore as complete list of WP-Project. But anyway, I think distinction of active/inactive is hard. Complete/uncomplete is maybe better? Tobias Conradi (Talk) 19:00, 17 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

As for page names; I think the list of active wikiprojects should be called WikiProject and the content now at that page should be moved to WikiProject best practices.

Regarding "erased from" - they are not erased. Their names are listed in the inactive section, along with a link to their listing on the inactive page, so if any-one-wikipedian actually wants to sign up to participate in them, they can move the listing back to active. My understand of the {{inactive}} tag is the following: nobody has this page on their watchlist or is otherwise paying attention to it, because if they were they would remove the tag. It can be applied when there have been no visible edits to the project page or discussion pages for a month, or six. This seems plenty specific and easy to me. Thanks for the discussion! (And feel free to help out with adding meta-data - we can really use the help.) JesseW 19:21, 17 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

This page has been cited as a source by a notable professional or academic publication:
Stvilia, B. et al. Information Quality Discussions in Wikipedia. University of Illinois U-C.

Project tags on category pages

Request for comment: I adapted the project notices for talk pages for two categories: Category:Webcomics and Category:Cycling. Might this help attract attention to the projects, if they're linked prominently in the main category? Or perhaps in all the decendant categories too? --Christopherlin 03:07, 20 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Portal work

I've taken more than a passing interest in Portal:Biology, Portal:Technology, and Portal:Science. I'm more interested in working on content than presentation/style, though, so I could really use some people to go look at these portals and fix up all of the content issues. Biology, especially, is still using the old portal format (not the box-header stuff). Thanks in advance for your help! --Cyde Weys _vote^talk 00:33, 29 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The offending "5-10 users" comment and history

As the original creator of the Wikiproject concept, perhaps some history might be useful, particularly as the comment about "5-10 users" derives from my original proposal.

I coined the term Wikiproject back in the days (Sept or Oct 2001) when Wikipedia was still completely chaotic. What's more, we had a user (Cunctator) who would launch into a massive flame war if anyone ever attempted to put any form of structure into the 'pedia (Cunctator ultimately drove Larry Sanger over the edge). Hence when I drafted the original proposal I was very cautious to point out that this idea was to simply assist the coordination of the efforts of a group of people. The motivation for the proposal was the tremendous difficulty we were having getting consistency for the "Countries of the World" articles.

However, understand this was back in the days when there were no more than 25-30 regular editors (and you could still find topics like "Princess Diana" and "trombone" for which there was no article), so finding 5-10 people who might contribute was far from a certain thing. Also, in those days the body of editors was far more tight-knit: it was reasonable to know every other editor.

Nowadays the editorial community is much larger and far more impersonal (not a bad thing, just the natural consequence of growth). Consequently, it is more reasonable to embark on a Wikiproject as there is a good chance that someone will turn up at some stage. Certainly some projects will appear inactive at some stages, but the odds of editors turning up at some point in time is much better.

My point is, I don't feel that the "5-10 users" comment has the same significance and relevance that it had back in 2001. A simple emphasis that creating a Wikiproject involves a degree of overhead should be sufficient.

Regards Manning 23:16, 30 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Best practices around article classification

Hi! As a member of the recently initiated Wikipedia:WikiProject The Beatles I've been putting some effort into creating tables to classify all the articles (taking a page from Wikipedia:WikiProject Indigenous peoples of North America) because there are a LOT of articles and it seems like knowing where we stand would help. Is this a common practice in projects that relate to topics with large numbers of articles? I've been creating the tables mostly by hand or with some light search/replace in UltraEdit using WP:AWB output. Are there better ways? ( could write some perl to trawl the category sql dump looking for Beatles relevant categories and getting the articles from them, and build the tables that way, and had considered that, actually ) If people DO do this, how to handle articles in multiple categories? I would have asked on .../Best practices but there wasn't any talk there. Thoughts? Comments? Brickbats? Large stacks of small bills? ++Lar: t/c 04:19, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

A few comments:

It's a fairly recent practice, actually, prompted largely by the WP:1.0 team asking around WikiProjects for high-quality articles.
Automated creation might work for a project with a reasonably small scope, like the Beatles (it would fail spectacularly for a very large project, such as military history, for fairly obvious reasons), but I don't think anyone has tried it before; Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics does do some fairly sophisticated script-based tracking of their articles, though, so you might try asking there.
Even if you automatically create the tables, the rating must still be done by hand; if you don't have the manpower to do that, all the scripting in the world won't help ;-) —Kirill Lok s hin 04:25, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Not as small as one might think. Well over 200 articles! --kingboyk 04:32, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Not as large as one might think. WP:MILHIST has ~5,000–10,000 articles ;-) —Kirill Lok s hin 04:33, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

lol. Mine's bigger than yours etc etc :P --kingboyk 04:36, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hehe. In any case, feel free to poke around, particularly in the talk page archives; there are probably some ideas that you could adapt to your own needs. —Kirill Lok s hin 04:38, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think we have the manpower to do rating, and some rating is already happening. (and of course actually FIXING articles is harder than rating them, even, and some of that is happening too). We created charts for 4 key categories and it was looking at the latter two and the discrepancies due to multicategories that prompted me to ask here... better to see what others do and do it well organisedly than have a jumble once a lot of ratings are in the tables and it is harder to fix. Thanks for the pointers! (milhist may have MORE articles, but how many of them can you dance to?) ++Lar: t/c 04:45, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, thanks indeed and if you ever feel the urge to pop by and give us some pointers please do. --kingboyk 05:20, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion here: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Military_history/Worklist#Generating_classification_tables gave me just what I was looking for. Cheers for that! ++Lar: t/c 05:30, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

OK more on this. Although I am not QUITE ready to go public with a generic solution (and may never be) if your project wants to do classification but is daunted by the work in generating tables like these Wikipedia:WikiProject_The_Beatles/Article_Classification, or Wikipedia:WikiProject_Indigenous_peoples_of_North_America#Partial_list_of_pages_covered_by_the_project I have a tool that I can run for you to generate these tables. It is driven by categories. I am interested in doing this for a few projects (you can see an example of what it generates at User:Lar/Sandbox2). To use it you need to know what categories the articles your project is interested in classifying are. Either make up a table like this one: Wikipedia:WikiProject The Beatles/Categories on a page somewhere and let me know where, or give me a text list of categories. If you're interested, drop me a message on my talk page with the name of the project and the name of the subpage where you would like the classification info placed. What I find out doing this for the first few projects to respond will be used to improve the tool. Suggestions where else to publicise this accepted as well. ++Lar: t/c 18:13, 14 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Helping a new user

Hi all. Zhigangsuo is a pretty new user, and he seems to still be learning about Wikipedia. I migrated a project he created in the mainspace to Wikipedia:WikiProject Genealogy of Mechanicians. If anyone wanted to help keep an eye on his contributions and offer assistance when needed, I would appreciate it (he probably would as well). ~MDD 46 96 21:43, 2 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

68' France?

Hello! I hoped ppl working on this project might help me in digging out a peice of information Ive been searching in wiki and the net in general for a while with not much success, which could even be of some relevance to this project, regarding alternative education. I remember hearing it often mentioned that university reforms and lack of 'progressive' educational methods in them being a significant part of the complaints of the students in 68' France, but cannot find much detail - about specific alternatives that were advocated then. I also mention this cuz I percieve an americacentric bias of much of wikipedia, present in many articles , and certanly in many articles of this project too, so I hoped to bring some attention to this fact as well... --Aryah 21:00, 1 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion page wikiproject boilerplates

If there is only a boilerplate/template saying "WikiProject etc" in a discussion page, wouldn't it be helpful if the programming made it so that anything written between " {{ }} " would not flag a page for content? So that it would keep a page discussion tab "red" and users would know that there is no discussion to click the tab for? Nagelfar 16:56, 2 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

How would people see the WikiProject tags, then? ;-) Kirill Lok s h in 17:05, 2 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Dutchess County Routes- anyone interested

Don't know if this is the right place to post this, but would anyone, particularly those in Dutchess County, New York be interested on helping me with the county routes in that county? There are about 100 of them, and I have neither the time nor the information to write a nice, big, article on all of them. Would anyone be interested in helping me? http://www.empirestateroads.com/cr/crdutchess.html was very helpful. Smartyshoe 22:32, 7 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Revised WikiProject Central goals

Did "WikiProject Central" (see discussions #WikiProject WikiProject and #WikiProjectCentral above) ever happen? There was a flurry of activity on this topic in July (Template:WikiProject overhaul and m:Wikiproject_group creation), but there hasn't been any unified effort to standardize WikiProjects since then. Wikipedia:WikiProjectCentral reverts to this project page now.

I've contributed to several projects in the past, although not extensively (see my user page for examples). I get frustrated easily as I begin working on a project because documentation and a common process always seems to be lacking; yes, this is the nature of Wikipedia, but this is also why I'm writing this call for help!

Is Wikipedia:WikiProject a WikiProject in itself? If so, I think we need to follow our own Suggestions for new projects (identifying scope, to-do list, goals, etc.). It would be helpful to have a group of people that not only answers people's questions about WikiProjects, but also standardizes the style of WikiProject pages and clarifies its purpose. For example, while the Template:WikiProject is quite extensive, a lot of the sections on it seem redundant; its talk page would do well to describe what each area means. It would also be helpful to review and update the various WikiProject pages across sister projects.

Participants

Please add your name to the Participants list and a one-phrase introduction of why you'd like to help out with something like this. If we don't have more than two or three people dedicated to this, I don't think it would be worth doing an overhaul. Use Discussion for more details.

User:RockOfVictory - Standardization of WikiProjects.
CQ - co-founder of m:Wikiproject group

Discussion

Why in the world would we want to standardize WikiProjects? Each one (at least of the highly active ones) has been working in whatever fashion is most appropriate, given its topic area and editor force; trying to force them all into a single form is likely to be more harmful than not. Kirill Lok s h in 00:04, 12 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Good to see you again, Kirill! Yeah, seeing your WikiProject Military history is inspiring. I guess I'm used to working on some other projects that aren't as well organized. I'd still like to see the Template:WikiProject explained better, though. --J. J. 03:30, 12 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! The template could use a better explanation. More generally, though, I think it needs to be trimmed considerably; right now, there's a pile of cruft in there that most projects will never use, and using it to generate a page produces an initial project that looks utterly lost in its own red tape. Kirill Lok s h in 03:37, 12 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I definately agree that the template needs an overhaul but I also agree that WikiProjects are by nature best left as freeform as possible. Metadata, however such as creation dates, scope and number of participants could be implemented from a centralized facility of some sort. This "facility" should be consensus-driven IMO (not a cabal). See and think about Wikiproject group at meta below. CQ 18:51, 5 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Alternate WikiProject template

Hi, I've just created my first two WikiProjects WP:AZTEC and WP:Pre-Columbian. I have to say that I *HATE* the template [[Template:WikiProject]]. It has all sorts of stuff that I can't foresee using anytime in the near future.

So, before I created my second WikiProject (WP:Pre-Columbian), I took the first WikiProject (WP:AZTEC) and made it into a WikiProject template called Template:WikiProject (short).

Please check it out and tell me what you think. I would like to put a link to this template on Wikipedia:WikiProject as an alternative to (or even possibly replacing) [[Template:WikiProject]].

Please tell me what you think of [[Template:WikiProject (short)]]. I hate the name of the template. If you can think of a better one, please let me know.

--Richard 08:27, 14 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Just replace Template:WikiProject with it?

More generally, though, it still has inordinate amounts of cruft on it. Among the things I would remove:

The top-level "Projects", "Tasks", and "Requests" sections are redundant with the "Project activities" section.
The related collaborations and notice boards should be moved under the "Related projects" section.
The top-level "Articles" section is redundant with the "Project catalogue" section.
The "Meetups" section is utterly irrelevant for the vast majority of projects.
The "Hierarchy definition" section is pretty useless; I've never seen anything meaningful put there (besides category guidelines, which should probably be under "Categories").
The "General strategy and discussion forums" section is a bad idea; a project that's just starting up can't afford to spread discussions out over a half-dozen different pages.

I think that we really need to take a look at what's in these templates from a best-practices standpoint, rather than one of including anything that's ever occurred to someone. Kirill Lok s h in 14:28, 14 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

As I mentioned in my earlier comments this month, I think I'd prefer to clarify each of the included sections of the template, as well as trim unneeded ones. I'd rather not change the hierarchy, though (e.g. you've moved Tasks under a new Project Activities section). While WikiProjects tend to reorganize themselves to their own needs, I think this would confuse people who are already familiar with the existing sectioning structure of project pages. --J. J. 19:40, 24 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Trophy box

How about making it a standard that all the main Wikiprojects display a trophy box on their project page? That is, a table displaying all the featued article a project has spawned, like on WP:Chem. It seems to me as an interesting an informative peice of information, that could spur on a healthy competion, further increasing the output of the projects. mastodon 12:55, 5 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That could get rather... long... in some cases; it's also redundant with the category-based listing for any projects that use the 1.0 assessment scheme (e.g. Category:FA-Class military history articles). Kirill Lokshin 13:01, 5 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Moving Projects

Here's a question that you probably don't get everyday. :)

If a person were considering reviving an inactive Wikiproject, would be it considered acceptable to move the project, if it had a problematic name?

I realize that might sound silly, but a person might want to do this with a wikiproject that never got off the ground, either to minorly tweak the group's focus, or to make the name, say, shorter, for purposes of better promoting it the second time around. Also, if this is allowable, would be considered an uncontroversial move?

Or would it just be better to go ahead and start a similar project and not worry about the dead one?

Provided that there are no significant objections from the members (which there shouldn't be, considering it's inactive), you can do just about anything you want. If you could tell us what you're thinking about moving, I could take a look more specifically; but I suspect it'll be profoundly uncontroversial. Kirill Lokshin 00:26, 7 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Actually I wasn't thinking of doing anything just yet, but seeing if WikiProject:Removing POV from pop culture articles could be revitalized and perhaps retooled a bit has been in the back of my mind for some time now. The project isn't officially inactive, but appears to have been created by a user who is now inactive, and only had a handful of edits since its creation in July of 2005. It doesn't seem to have a discussion page either.

I like the idea of the project and was thinking tentatively of trying to re-phrase the title and mission statement to perhaps suggest a more article-friendly attitude; something along the lines of "Pop Culture Quality" with goals that goals that are more pro-pop-culture than purely anti-fancruft. I'd be interested in knowing if anyone thought there might be a place for that kind of thing. Again, I'm not about to spring suddenly into action on this, it's just something I've been thinking about. -- Lee Bailey^(talk) 05:15, 7 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I suppose it might work, but your real problem would be that you'd intersect heavily with the actual pop-culture-related WikiProjects. My experience suggests that having multiple WikiProjects with very different ideas of what a single article should contain generally leads to various unpleasant things. Kirill Lokshin 13:29, 7 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, I can imagine that. :) It's still sort of a nascent idea in my mind, and I wasn't really intending to ask about it until I had a less fuzzy concept, but I was imagining this as more of a meta-undertaking than a strictly content building one, if that makes any sense. After some time spent around Wikipedia, it's become obvious to me that pop culture articles are often troublesome here. Like every other article, they're expected to provide reliable sources, but while there's been some broad acceptance of the idea that less academic sources are acceptable for less academic articles, there really aren't guidelines in existance as to what sources are useable for less formal subjects, or how to cite them in some cases. A group that worked outside the context of the normal wikiprojects, and preferrably with other wikiprojects, with the a goal of encouraging more uniform standards in popular culture, seemed like an interesting concept to me. Also, I admit, when I saw this defunct wiki-group, I simultaniously annoyed and intrigued by the obviously adversarial position in carved out for itself in relation to other pop-culture articles. On one hand, it would be easy for such a groups action's to become contentious, and detrimental to wiki-love; on the other hand, there are cases where taking an adversarial role is healthy, but it can be difficult to handle this in an organized fashion. It can be incredibly difficult, for example, for a well meaning editor to come into a "crufty" article with multiple editors who are dedicated to maintaining fannish information in it; getting a discussion of NPOV going can sometimes be difficult on that article's specific talk page, so having someplace else to ask for opinions before stirring up trouble would be extremely handy, at least until the editor's decided it's worth pursuing. I realize starting a project like this would be a huge undertaking, and I still think I'd rather wait and gain more experience in Wikipedia before spearheading any such thing. These are just thoughts. Also, I'm open to the thought that this might be a very bad idea. :) -- Lee Bailey^(talk) 14:29, 7 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:WikiProject Animation

This is a shamless request for membership. We hope to improve the articles related to American animation, including the use of an infobox for short Looney Tunes and Mickey Mouse types of cartoon films. If you're interested, pelase join us! --FuriousFreddy 04:03, 24 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Moving projects revisited

WikiProject Broadway has been recently renamed Wikiproject Musicals, but it is still parented by WikiProject New York Theatre. The thrust behind the name change is that the focus of the project tended to be toward musicals: as they tend to have productions all over the world, the previous name was misleading. Having the parent of Wikiproject New York Theater is also limiting, and I was thinking of moving it up a level under WikiProject Theatre. I think it would probably help our membership slightly, but does it really matter? Should I decide to do so, what would the process be? Would I have to talk to Wikiproject Theatre or just go ahead and switch some links around? — Music Maker 04:37, 28 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

As far as I know, the entire concept of "parent" and "descendant" WikiProjects is just a holdover from the original idea for structuring them, and has never had any formal control associated with it (beyond what the two projects agree to, anyways). Kirill Lokshin 04:51, 28 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the response! I left a message on the talk for WikiProject Theatre to make sure it was okay with them before I made the move. — Music Maker 06:00, 28 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hey! Why cant you start a Wikiproject Bosnia and Herzegovina? I can write a lot there. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hahahihihoho (talk • contribs)

Biography projects

Just wanted to give you a heads up if you see WikiProject proposals that are about biographies, i.e. Kings and Queens of X or Shopkeepers of Y that WikiProject Biography has been reorganized and are creating task forces a la Military history project and can fold them into our Meta project. Saves resources, etc... plange 16:57, 30 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wikiproject United States

Hi, as far as I know there is no Wikiproject for the United States. There are however tons of articles with US only issues, several cetegories and a almost completely unmaintained portal. A Wiki project would be ideal for US articles. I don't know if this is the right place to vioce the idea but I welcome any input or suggestions. Signature^brendel 23:07, 4 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Here Here, Signature! I think Wikiproject United States is long overdue and might be a good place to develope the new template (see next post). CQ 18:29, 5 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wikiproject group at meta

The Wikiproject group at meta has some ideas for improving the WikiProject way of doing things via a new Template:Wikiproject (currently redirects to Template:WikiProject).

The new template will hopefully foster better coordination between languages, topics and sister projects, as well as the integration of WP:1 assessments and the like. There may even be a way to incorpoate some more useful metadata into the template.

Please have a look and participate in the discussion there if you have the time and inclination. Thanks! CQ (talk · contribs) • 18:21, 5 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Remote loading or hard linking

i am thinking of starting a wikiproject, once i have started the wikiproject can i put it on my own website(remote loading) or should i link it to the wikiproject article that is on wikipedia.com, of coruse proper citation of credits to wikipedia will be given in both isntance.

i am jsut asking so that i don't break any rules and get listed on: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Mirrors_and_forks

CQ +800gmt 22:02 WST Saturday, August 12, 2006

Why would you wanna do that???--Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 11:53, 28 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the reply. my group member thought of using remote loading to fetch all the data from wikipedia and show it at our website. i guess his basis for it is to make everythign central and to have people knowledgable in the project to help edit the article too. any reply is appreciated

Revision as of 11:53, 28 August 2006 edit Stevenfruitsmaak (talk \| contribs) Extended confirmed users 11,785 edits →Remote loading or hard linking ← Previous edit		Revision as of 11:03, 30 August 2006 edit undo Dubkatz (talk \| contribs) 20 edits →Remote loading or hard linking Next edit →
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	:Why would you wanna do that???--[[User:Stevenfruitsmaak\|Steven Fruitsmaak]] <small>([[User_talk:Stevenfruitsmaak\|Reply]])</small> 11:53, 28 August 2006 (UTC)		:Why would you wanna do that???--[[User:Stevenfruitsmaak\|Steven Fruitsmaak]] <small>([[User_talk:Stevenfruitsmaak\|Reply]])</small> 11:53, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

			Thanks for the reply. my group member thought of using remote loading to fetch all the data from wikipedia and show it at our website. i guess his basis for it is to make everythign central and to have people knowledgable in the project to help edit the article too. any reply is appreciated