Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Council

Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/WikiProject used

WP:WikiProject Water supply and sanitation by country

Hello, per WT:WikiProject Water supply and sanitation by country, it was decided to merge the project into WP: WikiProject Water as a workgroup/taskforce, could someone please carry this out? -- 65.92.180.137 (talk) 05:36, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

You are asking for what could be a lot of work and a non-project participant probably could not do it in the way that is best. This kind of task should be done by project participants so that it can be done the way that the community wants it to be done. If anyone needs help executing this, then please come here and state the problem so that this board can give advice.

It starts with moving pages and updating links. Is that a problem? Blue Rasberry (talk) 13:11, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

Workgroup vs Taskforce

What's the difference between a workgroup and a taskforce? Emmette Hernandez Coleman (talk) 12:11, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

There is no defined difference. These are not standardized terms. Blue Rasberry (talk) 13:08, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

Task force is kind of standardized per its use in the banner template. I'm not sure I've ever seen work(ing) group on Wikipedia used in this fashion. --Izno (talk) 17:44, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

People normally use "workgroup" to indicate a temporary taskforce that isn't bothering with setting up a page. For example, imagine that you needed to fix a few hundred WP:DEADREFs. You might get three or four volunteers out of your bigger group and ask them to work together to resolve it. That's a "workgroup". WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:18, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

WP: U2

I am attempting to re-activate u2 project, and i am trying to ping some of the older members. Can someone help me on that?  Miss Bono (zootalk) 18:58, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Requesting advice regarding proposed overhaul of an inactive WikiProject

OK, I'm not really sure of the protocols here. I am considering, basically, attempting to revise/revive the Wikipedia:WikiProject Wikipedians for encyclopedic merit to turn it into something like Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles, but with a slightly broader scope, specifically, to include at least basic article reference lists of all articles which are included in encyclopedias whose scope closely mirrors that of some of our WikiProjects, not just those that are to this point missing. I think having some clear ideas of what material is out there in generally highly reliable, generally more or less academic source, regardless of the stated subject of that encyclopedia, would probably make things a lot easier for all of us in determining what material we should have relating to those subjects. Maybe. But, honestly, I have no clear idea what sort of steps to take to make such fairly significant changes in this inactive project. Any ideas? John Carter (talk) 18:51, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

I would recommend starting anew, since the old Wikipedians for Decency has a quite contentious history that you simply do not need to carry around. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 21:07, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

I would also recommend either creating a new project or attempting to revise the missing encyclopedic articles project instead. The Wikipedians for encyclopedic merit project was a very different entity from the one you are envisioning. –Mabeenot (talk) 03:11, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Developing infrastructure for WikiProjects

Mr.Z-bot's "Task 3" provides monthly statistics of pageviews for articles within the scope of a WikiProject. This example from WikiProject Medicine demonstrates what it does. I think this would be useful for many projects, but for the past couple of years Mr. Z has been busy and the code needs updating. Currently the request queue to include new WikiProjects is down.

There are some problems which are unlikely to be resolved by volunteers, and programming problems in seem especially prone to staying unresolved. I think that this might be a problem which could be resolved by paying someone to solve it. I have no one in particular in mind who can do this, but there is a grant-requesting process at meta:Grants:Index. Perhaps any of you saw this week in The Signpost that the Wikimedia Foundation just finished their first round of issuing grants and they are looking for further grant applications.

I was thinking of making a grant request to fix Mr. Z's bot's problem, and perhaps this could be among a set of outstanding program requests of interest to the WikiProject Council. If the grant were awarded, then the funds could sit until someone steps up to complete the task and takes the funds. How do others feel about this? Does anyone have any other ideas of outstanding tasks for WikiProjects which need automation and for which the software needs updating? Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:11, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

Sweet! Here are some other tasks that would be great for a grant request. We discussed how nice this stuff would be but nobody acted upon any of them. –Mabeenot (talk) 17:07, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

It looks like you and I started talking about this a few months ago and never followed through. I just emailed you to request a voice or Skype chat; we can talk more here also. Blue Rasberry (talk) 19:38, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

Non-traditional uses for WikiProjects

Related to developing infrastructure for WikiProjects is developing infrastructure for metrics. The original purpose of WikiProjects was to create a community space for collaboration, but in the course of doing that, people developed tools based on the WikiProject talk page templates which generate interesting metrics which are useful outside the context of community collaboration. I can imagine that someone might want to know something about a class of articles and want metrics from them, and for that same set of articles there might not be an active community to support a WikiProject. In fact, some very popular sets of articles are contained in some very dead WikiProjects, because for whatever reasons, people who develop those articles are not interested in meeting each other in a WikiProject.

Some of the useful tools include Mr.Z-bot's statistics tables and User:WP 1.0 bot's article quality and importance rankings. So far as I know, there is no way to access the benefits of those tools outside the context of applying WikiProject tags to articles, and it is improper to apply WikiProject tags without a WikiProject, and it is improper to set up a WikiProject without a community. I am stating this to follow up on the above proposal about infrastructure development for WikiProjects. Poor User:WP 1.0 bot even has an obsolete name now, because since 2007 when that bot was made for WP:WP 1.0, this bot has become useful and fundamental to the Wikipedia editing experience in ways not anticipated. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:24, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

I frequently use the lists of popular pages by WikiProject to correct errors in the most popular articles. At the present time, I am in the midst of proceeding through the articles listed at Wikipedia:WikiProject Biology/Popular pages. (Ideally, some editors in the respective WikiProjects will see my revisions and will be motivated to continue such revisions for other articles overseen by the respective WikiProjects but not included in the lists of popular pages.)

—Wavelength (talk) 15:26, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for sharing. That is exactly what I mean - those lists are tied to a WikiProject, but anyone can use them regardless of whether they are a member or supporter of the WikiProject. I agree with you that activity on Wikipedia articles encourages additional activity on other articles. These tables - like this Mr. Z-bot one you shared - are very encouraging and provocative. Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:46, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Rating articles without WikiProjects

How do you assess the rating of a page if it does not fall under the scope of any WikiProject? Numbermaniac - T- C 05:36, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

The issue with not having a WikiProject is that a "WikiProject" is currently defined as a community, not a subject area, and I am considering whether a WikiProject should be a place for organizing a subject area even if there is no community. WikiProjects have an advantage unrelated to the existence of a community, and that advantage is access to some bot tools. There are two direct answers to your question:

1. According to guidelines, one does not assess the rating of a page if it is not in a WikiProject, because any ratings template (Template:WPBannerMeta) is supposed to put an article under the watch of a WikiProject. So without a WikiProject, the rules say do not rate a page.
2. In practice the quality ratings system is universal, so pages in a subject area could be rated for a "WikiProject" which had no community. Although WikiProjects have the option of defining their quality and importance standards, and instructions say that they should, in practice ratings can be intuitively assigned or based on general rather than WikiProject-specific guidelines. It is not necessary to have a community (which is a requirement of founding a WikiProject) to have an interest in knowing what quality the articles are in a given subject area and which articles are most important, so I assert that it is possible and can be useful to create community-less WikiProjects if they want access to robot metric benefits.

Blue Rasberry (talk) 11:44, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

In the interest of ensuring that each article is overseen by at least one WikiProject, I propose a two-step strategy.

• By consulting the categories in which the article is categorized, and by consulting the WikiProjects categorized in Category:WikiProjects, someone can find at least one appropriate WikiProject and invite its members to oversee the article.
• If, after a reasonable length of time, the article still is not overseen by any WikiProject, then it can be overseen by a new one, Wikipedia:WikiProject Miscellaneous.

—Wavelength (talk) 14:36, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Can we pull together a database report of all the articles that have not been tagged with a WikiProject banner? That would give us a clue as to how many articles have been overlooked for all these years and whether there are any patterns that suggest specific topic areas have been neglected. –Mabeenot (talk) 15:23, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

A few quick comments:

1. Can somebody give an example of an article that doesn't fall within the scope of a WikiProject? Generally, when I see this claim, the discussion ends with "Huh, I didn't know that WikiProject existed".
2. Where is this guideline that says not to assess articles that don't fall under a WikiProject?
3. Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Assessment#Statistics says that 4,108,532 articles out of the current 4,208,773 articles have been tagged. That's more than 97% of articles.
4. WP:WikiProject Contents (elderly and inactive) could probably be used as a project of last resort, but I believe that the 1.0 team has their own banner for that purpose—and also that it hasn't been needed, because there's always been a WikiProject that covers articles when we've been asked. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:11, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

Wavelength, Mabeenot, WhatamIdoing, thanks for listening to me.

@Wavelength, my problem is not a complete lack of WikiProjects. I agree with WhatamIdoing that most articles have a tag. I do agree with you that all articles should be a included within some WikiProject, and that perhaps newly created articles should in the future come with some default tag or system to ensure that they are sorted. Right now they are not and this is a problem, but that is not my most serious present concern.

@Mabeenot, I think that most neglect happens not because of lack of WikiProject tagging, but that perhaps more specific WikiProject tagging would keep articles less neglected. This is sort of interesting to me, and part of my present concern, but not the biggest problem.

@WhatamIdoing, you understand the scope of WikiProject templates but your questions also miss my concern and it would not be useful for me to answer them. I still want your input if I may have it.

Here is my practical problem - I made WP:WikiProject Dietary Supplements to get data about articles which would go in that project. I now think that this is contrary to existing WikiProject rules, but I still want a legitimate way to get that data.

For now, please ignore that I created the WikiProject improperly; rules say that I should only make WikiProjects with community support, and that perhaps this project should have been a task force of WikiProject Pharmacolgy or WikiProject Medicine. I inappropriately made a WikiProject without seeking community support first and I may have misplaced it by making it independent rather than a task force, and I am sorry for that but think it is not such a big problem. I will fix it when I decide next steps.

The fundamental problem is that putting articles in a WikiProject seems to be the easiest way to get data about them presented centrally. I made the WikiProject because I wanted the benefits of having the quality and importance ratings table which User:WP 1.0 bot makes and I wanted the publicly-visible history of page views to each article which User:Mr.Z-bot makes. Both of these tools look at all the articles within a WikiProject and I do not know how to access their benefits otherwise.

I do not think it is unreasonable to want to see some metrics for a coherent class of articles like dietary supplements, but it is against current WikiProject rules to set up a WikiProject or task force without having a community interested in developing those articles. If it were possible I would like the metrics benefits without setting up a WikiProject, but also I do not think that Wikipedia is so harmed by having a dead dietary supplements project which just gives metrics. Plenty of other dead Wikiprojects do the same thing.

Right now, I would like feedback on two points:

1. How do you feel about my having set up a WikiProject for the purpose of collecting metrics rather than for the purpose of developing a community? I feel that in the case of dietary supplements this should slide because that is a topic of sufficient breadth of interest, but I also think that it would be bad if everyone who wanted to collect metrics on 100 articles made a WikiProject to do so.
2. To what extent do you think that there should be broader discussion here about whether it is okay for people seeking metrics to do so through WikiProject infrastructure? Is it so bad to make a dead Wikiproject on a popular topic like dietary supplements as an advertisement to attract community or to host guidelines on editing such articles?

If any of you wants to chat by phone, Skype, or Google Hangout then I would do so to be more efficient, but I also want to be transparent here. Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:24, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

Is your ultimate question something like "What is the (1.0 team's) quality rating for every page listed in Category:Dietary supplements or its immediate subcats?"

You could make a task force if you wanted that data updated every week or so, but for a one-off (or a couple-of-off) data collection, I'd ask a technically minded person to just run the data for you. It's not a very complicated task. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:04, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

Yes, you understand. I want regularly updated data and it seems like User:Mr.Z-bot gives that to any task force or WikiProject. I am here on this board because some tools are for WikiProjects. If a technically-minded person could teach me how to collect the data outside of setting up a WikiProject/task force, then I might do that, because it seems inappropriate to setup an unpopulated forum or to create and apply categories and talk page templates primarily for the purpose of using data tools. Do you know someone in particular with whom I should talk? Otherwise, I think I will keep using the WikiProject I made, write a description of what I am doing and why, and then continue to get feedback about how this should be done. My needs are satisfied but I am not sure that everyone should do it like I am doing it. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:15, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

I am unaware of any policy or guideline discouraging the use of a WikiProject for the sole purpose that you have described, and am interested in seeing a link to such a policy or guideline, along with an excerpt of the particular passage discouraging such use. It seems to be a harmless use, even if it were adopted by other editors in other WikiProjects also.

I have edited these pages by adding a link to "Wikipedia:WikiProject Dietary Supplements".

• Wikipedia:WikiProject Health and fitness
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Pharmacology
• Template:Food projects (transcluded in Wikipedia:WikiProject Food and drink)

—Wavelength (talk) 15:18, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

The existing rules say that Wikipedias are for communities. I assume that also means that they are not for non-community projects, like metrics accounting. On the main page of Wikipedia:WikiProject, "A WikiProject is a group of editors that want to work together as a team to improve Wikipedia." and "Creating a WikiProject is the process of creating a group of people who want to work together." On the WP:TASKFORCE page, "The first question to ask is whether your project is of sufficient size to warrant having task forces".

I started thinking about this because of the dietary supplement project. Someone told me that since I did not have a community, it could not be a WikiProject. But then I looked at Task Force guidelines and those are only for communities also, so it seems that this cannot by current policy be a task force. I would like to just leave it where it is unless anyone has a reason to do otherwise, and also I would participate in talks about what policy there should be about people wanting to use the WikiProject metrics tools when there is no active WikiProject. There are lots of dead Wikiprojects, so I wonder if WP:SUPPLEMENTS can just be the same as those until policies are reconsidered.

Thanks for sharing this on other WikiProject pages. Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:07, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

I suggest explaining the situation at the main page and/or redirecting the talk page to a real WikiProject, but your pages are unlikely to hurt anyone. If you only want it for a specific period of time, then you could request deletion when you're done. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:10, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

Ordering of wikiprojects

Is there any recommendations or guidelines regarding the ordering of wikiprojects on the talk page? It seems natural that they should be organized by importance. Within an importance level, there are several possible choices: alphabetical, "common sense", first-tagged, etc. Jason Quinn (talk) 19:55, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

Nobody really bothers. It's not important. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:00, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

Update to Wikipedia:Database reports/WikiProject watchers

Svick has kindly updated Wikipedia:Database reports/WikiProject watchers to list the number of active users watching a WikiProject page, rather than just all accounts. This has a significant effect on a couple of the older projects' ranking. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:12, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

Dispute over adding WikiProject template to article talk page

List of Wikipedia controversies includes a section about a controversy involving the Church of Scientology and Wikipedia. The article is clearly within the scope of Wikipedia:WikiProject Scientology, of which I am a long-standing member. Earlier today I added the WP Scientology project banner to the article talk page. However, two editors have edit-warred to remove the banner, without offering any explanation and posting aggressive messages in the process (e.g. [1]). I therefore seem to be in the situation, which I admit I've never come across before, of non-members of a WikiProject blocking that WikiProject from including the article in its scope, despite the FAQ at the top of this page. What do WikiProject Council members suggest? Prioryman (talk) 20:14, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

You are free to tag any article that you as a project member believe falls under the scope of your project. If you find others simply dont care to follow a basic guideline I would ask for a Wikipedia:Requests for comment listing it at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Wikipedia policies and guidelines and Wikipedia:Requests for comment/WikiProjects and collaborations......... That said must look at the situation to see if a tag is really worth all the effort and conflict - will the argument to have the tag reflect baldly on the project thus its members? Do what is best for the project overall. Also does the page cover many many topics thus tagging for all related projects will lead to over-tagging? Moxy (talk) 20:51, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

It isn't quite as simple as that, though. What Prioryman neglected to mention is that the Scientology Wikiproject's template is also coupled with a link to a Scientology Arbitration case from several years back. Tagging an article with the project template seems to automatically place the article under the auspices of special Arbitration sanctions. I and other editors object to that sort of classification, especially from Prioryman, who was involved in that very Arbitration case, and once topic-banned from all related articles. If the wikiproject banner was standalone and not connected to automatic sanctions, I don't think there would be any objections to its addition. Tarc (talk) 21:45, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Tarc, are you saying that the parts of this page that deal with Scientology somehow don't come under those sanctions? WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:15, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

It's not that the WikiProject banner is "connected to automatic sanctions". The banner includes a description of the sanctions, but their implementation isn't dependent on the banner; they are applied to "any Scientology-related articles or discussions on any page". It doesn't actually require the banner to be present for the sanctions to apply. Tarc seems to be under the impression that if he rejects the banner he avoids the sanctions applying. It doesn't work that way - they apply whether or not the banner is present. The banner just indicates that the article is within the scope of WP Scientology, no more, no less. Prioryman (talk) 22:18, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

I already know that the sanctions do not apply to that article, as does anyone with common sense. You cannot take every article that contains the slightest and sparest mention of "Scientology" and declare it to be under the auspices of Arb enforcement. That is way above and beyond what they mean by "broadly construed". But hey, Prioryman is certainly free to try filing an Arb enforcement request against an editor of that article if a situation arises, I gues the matter would be clarified then one way or the other. That will be an interesting discussion to have. Tarc (talk) 22:24, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

"Any Scientology-related articles or discussions on any page" is pretty clear, I think. You can't say "we don't want to be covered by arbitration sanctions" when the ArbCom has explicitly made it clear that the scope of those sanctions is any article or any discussion on any page that concerns this topic area. It's like saying "we don't want to be covered by the speed limit" when there are speed limit signs all the way down the road. But the central point is that the article (1) contains content that is important to WikiProject Scientology, (2) that being so, it's within scope for the WikiProject, and (3) as the FAQ at the top says, "Editors at an article may neither force the group to tag an article nor refuse to permit them to tag an article." If you don't like the fact that articles within this topic area are covered by sanctions, why not petition the ArbCom to lift them? The sanctions are certainly not there because any member of the WikiProject wants them to be there. But you can't refuse to let an article be tagged just because it contains a notice about sanctions in a particular topic area, particularly when those sanctions apply whether or not the article is tagged. Prioryman (talk) 22:34, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Actually, I believe that "the slightest and sparest mention of <whatever the dispute is over>" is exactly what they mean by "broadly construed". Why don't you ask them? It's my bet that if you said, "Imagine that some IP from a the Scientologist headquarters is editing this article to make their organization sound better. Would this covered under discretionary sanctions or not?" that the answer would be "Yes, definitely."

If not, then the banner could be re-coded with an option to suppress it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:35, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Here's a little thought experiment to highlight how spurious it is to focus on the banner in relation to the sanctions. Suppose I wrote an article that was, in some way, about Scientology. Maybe the whole thing is about Scientology, or half of it, or just a single paragraph. Now suppose that I "forgot" to add the WP Scientology banner to the talk page. Does that mean the sanctions don't apply to it? Of course not; Arbcom's decision was that any content about Scientology anywhere on Wikipedia is covered automatically by the sanctions. That means that List of Wikipedia controversies is covered right now! The only thing the banner does is inform people that an article is covered. If the banner isn't added, it doesn't mean the article isn't covered; it just means people aren't informed that it's covered. Leaving the banner off doesn't make any difference to whether the sanctions apply or not - the only thing the banner does is signify WikiProject Scientology's interest in the article. Prioryman (talk) 23:00, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Agree with WhatamIdoing on this. A good example of content spill over that has caused conflict can be found on the Self-determination page ....that is related to Falkland Islands sovereignty dispute. If there was sanction(s) about the Falkland Islands - both the previous pages would be covered even though Self-determination covers other topics.Moxy (talk) 23:08, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

The Falkland Islands is a good case in point. It's covered by both WP Falkland Islands and WP Argentina. Would anyone think it acceptable for members of WP Falkland Islands to ban members of WP Argentina from adding their project banner to Falkland Islands articles? Prioryman (talk) 23:11, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Agree - no bullies allowed - editors are free to define the scope of the projects they are members of.!!!!Moxy (talk) 23:14, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

See Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement#Tarc. Please read everyone's statement as there appears to be more going on here than what's been stated in this thread. Thanks. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 23:33, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Very disappointing to see its come to that :-( .... not sure its a good avenue to resolve a simple tag dispute - but to late. Is this problem being posted about all in any other tlak pages or noticed boards?Moxy (talk) 23:51, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Ah but Prioryman is also a member of wikiproject Gibraltar, in fact not so long ago he was claiming being a founding member of that project. Gibraltar is not only mentioned in the lede of the article but also has a much larger mention in the 2012 section. Yet Prioryman didn't bother to tag the article with wikiproject Gibraltar nor wikiproject Gibraltarpedia, of which he is also a member. Instead after having failed at AFD and DRV he just tags the article with Scientology. I'm all for AGF, but to do that in this instance one would have to had their brain fall out and for it to have been trampled into the savannah by a herd of Wildebeast. This tagging and rush to AE immediately after having failed in other venues was and is a disruption, to which you are all being invited to engage in. John lilburne (talk) 13:45, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Think I understand the concern here that the tag is being placed because it has a sanction attached to it. All need to be aware of two things - sanctions would not apply to a simple tag dispute as all projects can watch over what they like - its a non argument. Secondly regardless if there is a sanction notice or not editors still must be informed (notified) about any sanctions on there talk page long before any action can take place. If someone is doing this in an attempt to game the system that's a different problem the community may want to address.Moxy (talk) 14:21, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Ah but Prioryman is also a member of wikiproject Gibraltar...Yet Prioryman didn't bother to tag the article with wikiproject Gibraltar nor wikiproject Gibraltarpedia, of which he is also a member.

So? Maybe it didn't occur to him at that particular moment. Maybe those groups don't want to support that page. They have the right to support whatever they want, and to not support whatever they don't want. Tagging pages for a WikiProject is the equivalent of you putting something on your watchlist. We don't force individual editors to change the list of articles they're watching to suit us, and we don't force groups of editors to change the list of articles they're tracking, either. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:22, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

I didn't add it for the simple reason that by the time I thought of doing so, Tarc and John lilburne had twice aggressively and without any explanation deleted the WP Scientology banner that I added. I wasn't going to waste my time or get into edit-warring with these people without getting to the bottom of what their problem was. It turns out to be a pretty dumb objection, frankly - they don't like the notification in the banner that "any content about Scientology anywhere on Wikipedia" is covered by arbitration sanctions. They actually seem to think that if the banner doesn't include that message then the sanctions don't apply. Tarc has been pushing for the message to be removed from the banner, but the only effect of that would be that the sanctions would still apply but editors wouldn't be informed of them. What's the point? Prioryman (talk) 07:32, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

I don't think anyone thinks that you're 'a bit slow'. You have over 4 hours to add the Gib projects before you were reverted. 12 hrs before the second revert. You had ample time to add the Gib projects in, projects that you are currently active in, if what you were doing was simply adding projects that might be interested in the article. John lilburne (talk) 18:24, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

So to be clear the tag was reverted because others were not added? This does not sound like any-kind of reason to revert a valid tag placement. Would be best to brush upon our guide on this topic pls see WP:WikiProject coordination.Moxy (talk) 18:49, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

So to be clear you have accepted Prioryman's invitation to participate in disruption. John lilburne (talk) 20:01, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps your not making your point clear - thus far here your arguing that the tag was reverted because you dont like it there and the fact others were not added. Does this sound like a logical argument to you?Moxy (talk) 20:08, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

"Over 4 hours" and "12 hrs", eh? Have you never heard of people having to go to work or sleep? Prioryman (talk) 20:30, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Not listed in the WikiProject Directory

I have just noticed that WikiProject Disability, an active project established back in June 2010, is not listed in the Directory. I'm not confident of my ability to add it correctly so I would appreciate some help. It should be listed under "General topics" in the "History and society" section. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 19:35, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

I added it at 19:47, 26 April 2013 (UTC), by copying the code for "Wikipedia:WikiProject Animal rights" and pasting it immediately above the code for "Wikipedia:WikiProject Disaster management" and revising the code for the new entry. I assumed that the information in the columns "Active" and "Assessment" and "Peer review" and "Collaboration" and "Portal" and "Notes" were the same. (I hope to add all missing WikiProjects someday, although even after that the list will likely soon be out of date.)

—Wavelength (talk) 19:55, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

New WikiProjects are reported in Wikipedia:Database reports/New WikiProjects.

—Wavelength (talk) 03:33, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

WikiProject Westerns

I just came across Wikipedia:WikiProject Westerns. This project was created in August 2012, after a discussion at Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals/Westerns.

However, as far as I can see the project was stillborn. There is no current discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Westerns, and the only discussion that ever took place there was a brief chat about applying the project's banner.

I assume that the project was created in good faith, tho a reverted post on the talk page disagreed, calling it a "non-productive vanity (wiki)project".

Whatever the reasons, this project has never flown. Shouldn't it be deleted? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 09:45, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

Category:Inactive WikiProjects contains many inactive WikiProjects. Maybe there will be renewed activity in the future.

—Wavelength (talk) 15:42, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

Projects are rarely deleted, but inactive ones can be merged/redirected to a relevant 'parent'. After a few minor dramas, we recommend providing plenty of notice to even the most obviously inactive group, plus informing the target. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:45, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

Sure, many projects have periods of activity followed by long periods of inactivity. I think that when a project has been used as a vehicle for collaboration, that record should be kept, even if the project is merged.

But in this case I can find no evidence at all that the project has ever been used for any collaborative work. It is just an empty and unused shell, with a large set of project banners.

I don't know whether the best solution is for the project to be deleted, or merged or redirected. My concern is solely that having the project's banner on 11,700 pages is like having a massive advertising campaign for a business which never opened to customers. It wastes the time of editors who go to the advertised venue. Editors interested in this sort of collaboration would be much better served by being directed to a project which is active, or at least to one which has at some point been active.

Signposts to nowhere don't help. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 07:07, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

On the other hand, "Westerns" are a singly-notable area of coverage - a genre that would be difficult to merge into another project. Where would you suggest it be merged? As far as I'm concerned, the project is young, and its creators just haven't done a great job of marketing it. With such wide banner coverage, the project may attract some enthusiastic Westerns editors. The project is not even a year old, as you noted, so I'm not inclined to give up on it. If it was stale for 5 years, then I'd agree with your assessment. I'm as deletionist as they come (I say that with tongue-in-cheek), but this project doesn't warrant deletion at this point. Cheers, AstroCog (talk) 13:38, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

The overwhelming bulk of the project's scope is films, so it could be merged to WP:FILMS, or made a taskforce of that project.

If a project has been active and gone stale, then that's usually evidence that it's a potentially viable project which may be revived ... but there's no such evidence in this case. MarcusBritish points out below that he did quite a bit of promotion of the project, but that hasn't worked. I have no prob with the idea of leaving the banners in place for longer to see if things change, but surely at some point it's time to say that this idea has never worked? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 10:23, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

I have left a note at WikiProject Westerns, and also at WikiProject Film. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 07:43, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

Would have been polite of you to also notify the creator of the project, i.e. me, about this discussion directly on my talk page, seems somewhat presumptuous of you not think I wasn't worth inviting to the discussion seeing as I've personally tagged, updated, fixed and worked on hundreds of Western articles myself. Anyway, there is no inactivity if inactivity means absolutely nothing is being done in relation to the project, as the Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Westerns articles by quality log stands as proof that articles are being tagged regularly, and even updated from lower to higher classes. Please note that I will personally stop working on these articles should it be merged into WP:FILM, call that WP:DIVA if you like, I couldn't careless. That project (Film) is big enough, without merging all the articles tagged as Westerns into it and making them harder to trace. Projects don't need to have dozens of members, or active discussion boards to function. As Astrocog noted, not even a year has passed yet, so I think you're raising this concern far too early also. There are plenty of other lesser projects to pick on, if you wish to shut down some dead projects, Westerns, however, is not dead. Your concern over 11,700 tagged pages is contrived, I feel. Wiki is not about marketing or advertising, but about collaborating and working towards a common goal. A Wikiproject isn't something to be sold, communication isn't vital with other editors interested in Westerns. The project page stands as a point of contact, if required, and a list of "duties" with regards how tagged articles should be treated. Most editors simply pick up on those requirements and perform them without discussion. There may be another 50 "ghost" members of the project for all we know. You claim to find no evidence of collaboration.. the quality log is evidence. Collaboration by association with the subject itself, not with other members, is just as viable in promoting project growth as any other means. WikiProjects aren't deleted, they are tagged as "inactive" but can still function in that state. But as I said, even a one-man band can play a merry tune.

Note to Astrocog: You say the project wasn't well marketed. On the contrary, I left notifications on the WikiProject Council news page, and with the following Wikiprojects: Film, Television, Actors and Filmmakers, Military History, United States History, Italy, United States, Texas, California, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arkansas, American Old West, and Indigenous peoples of North America. See my contribs for 21 August 2012 to confirm this. Given that few people bothered to show interest from this many projects, and that Film, Military History and United States are massive projects, I can only note that there was a pathetic initial response to my promotion of the project, and that I am not to blame whatsoever for the dumbfounded lack of enthusiasm for this notable film genre. Ma®©usBritish^{chat} 00:23, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

Marcus, you found the note on the project page, so that notification seems to have been sufficient.

You say that "the project page stands as a point of contact, if required". However, despite the prodigious efforts you made to notify others of the project, the evidence so far is that it is not required. Making it a task force of WP:FILMS would still allow all the WP1.0 assessment to be preserved and to continue, and a peek at Category:Category-Class Westerns articles suggests that the vast majority of topics within the scope of the Westerns project are also within the scope of WP:FILMS.

I'm not engaged in any sort of general shut-down-projects exercise, so I didn't "pick on" this one. I just stumbled across it's banner, looked at the discussion page, and saw that it had never had any activity at all. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 10:16, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

I found it 2 days after this discussion started, by chance, and even then you didn't leave the notification without being prompted to a day later, it was cloak and dagger for a while, which concerns me, because without that notification it is unlikely anyone in the project would have been here to comment, and you may have pushed for deletion. Needless to say, it wasn't sufficient enough for my liking, and lacked professional courtesy. Given that it's common practice to advise article creators of AfD or FfD discussions, the same should extend to editors directly who have take the time to create anything, whether it be a page, a portal or a project. Good manners cost nothing. Simple as that, I won't be rebuked for your mistake so take it as constructive criticism for future use.

As I've already noted above, a lack of discussion on the project page does not mean a lack of activity altogether. The primary focus of Wiki is to create, develop and monitor article. There is no hardline rule that there must be a socio-cognitive community in order for this to be achieved. The Westerns project has made ground without discussion or debate, which suggests the opposite of inactivity, perfect activity, as no one has any room for concern or conflict, it's a relatively easy topic to work on solo without needing a ton of discussions needed on the board daily. Whereas topics such as history, lgbt issues, religion, etc require frequent discussions in order to determine the state of mind of fellow editors, thus forming a collaborative goal. Again, I reiterate, there is no need to create a task force under WP:FILMS. They have enough to do, and task forces are usually ineffective.. go check out the activity on Military History's array of task forces, they are all dead, and we're the biggest WikiProject on Wiki. There is no evidence that a task force is a better alternative than a dedicated project. Also, as you point out, the "majority" of tagged articles are films. So if we merged to WP:FILM, what do we do with all the non-films? Especially all the Western TV shows, all the actors/directors and novels/writers. I sure as hell ain't jumping about between projects and task forces looking for items which have been allocated to different media projects to satisfy these minor concerns. It's an inefficient waste of my time and not very good way of handling a genre of this scale.. 12,000 is hardly a small number of articles. In order to move all the films to WP:FILMS you'd have to distribute the articles into smaller projects. That isn't a step forward, it's a step backwards, to where we were before the project was even established. And just to note, WP:FILMS already tagged 99% of the films that I tagged, and WP:TV tagged the TV shows, WP:BIO the actors/directors, etc.. so there's nothing beneficial to be gained by reverting all the work I and others put into identifying these 12,000 articles since last August.

There is simply no logic behind your proposal, in my mind, because there would be more loss than gain.. if no one is interest in a banner-visible Westerns project then why would anyone be more interested in a tucked away Westerns task force? And just who do you suppose is going to volunteer to convert all the project's efforts from a supposedly dead project format to an even deader task force? Your view that the project is not required appears speculative and I dispute your case with resentment at some of the insinuations being made. The project was established via the correct channels, created via the correct methods, was publicised, and has made efforts to make good ground in 8 months. Now, if you have a problem with me following the book, do tell, before throwing a deletionist book at me.. because I get the feeling I'm treading on someone's toes here and it doesn't hold well with me. Ma®©usBritish^{chat} 11:52, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

Calm down, Marcus. This isn't an XFD discussion, where notifications are critical; it was a first step raising of an issue.

You raise a good point about the idea of a film task force being little better than a standalone project, but I think you miss the advantages of merger to a task force:

1. It means one less banner on each talk page, which is less clutter
2. If an editor goes to a task force talk page, and finds it to be dormant, they can easily go up a level to the parent project. OTOH, a dormant standlone project is a dead-end.

In the end, it seems that the only purpose being served by WP:Westerns is as a WP1.0 assessment tool. I'm not entirely sure that this is such a great thing of itself (it's a great idea in theory, and lots of projects use this facility, but I see decreasing sign of the assessments being maintained or used). However I'm happy to accept that the assessment process is at least potentially a Good Thing™ ... but sincde that's all there is here, why do we need a whole WikiProject? Why can't we just an assessment system for a particular set of topics without having to pretend that there is a huge collaborative exercise around it? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:30, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

Firstly, I dispute the "banner clutter" argument. Your average Western article will have just 2 banners, some 3, more important ones such as major celebs such as John Wayne and Audie Murphy, will have possibly 4 or 5. There are many articles on Wiki with far more than that even. I consider it a moot point based on a false premise, as "banner clutter" isn't really that much of an issue on a Wiki-wide scope, and is your think it is, you're aiming to nullify the wrong project.. 12,000 from millions of articles won't solve a thing.. a drop in the ocean isn't worth the effort. Your average Western article isn't going to be controversial enough to receive such a massive debate that one extra banner will ever get in the way. A drip in a drop in the ocean. Negligible issues like that don't affect the "big picture" as far as Wiki-entire is concerned. But if you really think removing all those {{Westerns}} = 10bytes (as bare tag) x 12,000 = 117Kb is worth the trouble, please do find someone who agrees creating 12,000 new talk page histories through the removal process is better value than a WikiProject.

Your second point is also largely wrong. As I stated before, the majority of Western banners are accompanied by other banners.. such as Film, TV, Books, Bio, U.S. and/or U.S. States. If an editor feels the need to start a discussion with a project and considers Westerns "dead" there will be other project banners to fall back on. And even if there isn't, the Westerns project page links to three other wikiprojects in the related projects section. But you are also acting as though anyone wanting to start a discussion on the Westerns discussion page isn't going to get a response. There is no evidence to support that either, because clearly Astrocog and I have the page watched to have responded to this malarkey. Anyone needing to use the talk page who is competent can do so, and can expect a response, because there no ongoing daily discussions is not an automatic sign of inactivity.

All your comments regarding the project, it's assessment, it's banner tagging, seem to be directed solely at this one project, without following the WikiProject Council's terms:

• Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Inactive projects states "To qualify as 'inactive', a project page should have had no directly project-related activity for at least three months." All the banner tagging in the last few months is likely to qualify for something.
• Category:Semi-active WikiProjects states "these projects are believed to see only a minimal level of activity". However, even if Westerns can only be considered semi-active that does not grant any editor the right to remove the project banners, because the Council grants the right to reactivate inactive projects but not the right to erase their work. Especially as all your claims are based in a very short-term time-frame. As someone previously stated, is a project has been defunctional for several years then there's a strong case to clear out the clutter. But 8 months, that makes you pretty impatient, and I'm sure there's more important things an admin can be doing to optimise Wikipedia than worrying about a project that does have a small number of dedicated contributors.

Finally, no one is "pretending" anything.. they never were, they never have been. A WikiProject doesn't have to be packed with conversation and activity to indicate that behind the scenes people are working on the one and only thing that matters, the entire purpose of Wikipedia - the articles themselves. I don't know why you feel Wiki has to host its projects as some sort of social function for lively members and regular chit-chat. You're putting far too much personal emphasis on what you think a WikiProject is, and what is should be doing. I think that's wrong, and you need to look as what a WikiProject achieves not what it is per se. A WikiProject isn't a meeting hall, it's a notice board full of jobs and backlogs.. just because other projects are highly conversation doesn't make them the model for every project to follow. I think you need to step back and decide what it is you're trying to achieve or prove, and whether it is worth your time, my time, or anyone else's time discussing further. Well, I'm done ranting... WP:Filibuster ahoy! Ma®©usBritish^{chat} 17:29, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

Marcus, a WikiProject is—by definition—a group of people. Can you name some of the other people in this group? WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:22, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

That is a very short-sighted and out-of-context definition, followed by a leading question. Go read the link you gave again, it defines more what a WikiProject DOES to improve Wikipedia, not what it is or can be interpreted as. I won't be baited with word manipulation. If you want a list of names, go check the project member list instead of posing daft questions which don't help matters. Ma®©usBritish^{chat} 19:06, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

"The discussion pages attached to a project page are a convenient forum for those involved in that project to talk about what they are doing, to ask questions, and to receive advice from other people interested in the group's work." Note the word "convenient", not obligatory nor a project requirement. Nor an absolute indication of activity. If no questions are being asked, no advice being requested, chances are no one is stuck. How do you get stuck writing about a Western? Seriously, there's a certain level of bad faith in this discussion, imo, because prickly POVs are being presented here and the lack of optimism is disgusting. Ma®©usBritish^{chat} 19:16, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

I don't know why you think I'm opposed to this WikiProject. From the definition: "A WikiProject is a group of editors that want to work together as a team to improve Wikipedia." What is a WikiProject? A group of people. What does that group do? Work together. If you've got an actual group of people that are actually working together, then that's a valid WikiProject, and we're done here.

(I can, of course, easily see why someone would suspect from the page histories that this isn't a group, but having multiple people editing the main page or the main talk page isn't a requirement.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:16, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

I signed up as a member of the group earlier this year, and I have done some assessments and tagging. An article that I wrote is the project's example FA article. While the number of members of the project is small, that doesn't mean the project is doomed to fizzle. Projects will often do editing drives or work towards meeting the goals of a to-do list. I don't see why that can't happen here, especially since the project is young. I agree with Marcus that "banner clutter" is a non-issue, especially for the articles attached to this project. If you want to see banner clutter, go look at a celebrity, who has a project banner from every city they may have lived in. Picking on this project, when I'm willing to bet there are many, if not dozens, of projects out there with higher levels of inactivity. Cheers, AstroCog (talk) 19:58, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

marketing

the impact of billboard advertising on the marketing of gsm product — Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.220.68.34 (talk) 16:14, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

Guidelines that aren't guidelines

Someone at WP:VG has just advertised a WP:PROPOSAL RFC for a "guideline" that is actually a mis-tagged WikiProject WP:Advice page, located in the project's namespace. Someone else has written a proposal at Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Philosophy that he believes only WP:PHILO members are allowed to have any input into.

I believe that most of the pages these days are correctly categorized or tagged with one of the (fairly ugly) templates:

• {{WikiProject style advice}}
• {{Wikiproject notability essay}}
• {{WikiProject content advice}}

I just fixed a couple. Do you think it would be worth using a bot to send an educational note to any project that has a page named "WikiProject ___/Guideline" or the like, to let them know about this fairly obscure set of templates? Would it be better to add more information at WP:POLICY? Should we just not worry about it, since most of them are right and individual incidents can be handled as they come up? What do you think? WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:54, 30 April 2013 (UTC)