Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Council/Archive 9

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WikiProject navigation boxes

I see quite a few projects have nice navigation templates at the top right (e.g. animals, birds). These all seem to be custom made though; I was hoping it was a standard template that could be used by any project. Perhaps we should have one available if projects don't wish to construct their own (unless we do already?). One for biology would be nice. Richard001 (talk) 08:03, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

You can use {{infobox}} as a base template. I suspect most project boxes were developed before {{infobox}} was released. --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 09:53, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

What about the navboxes at the bottom of articles? These seem to be unregulated. Is there any group dealing with them? Waltham, The Duke of 09:46, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Probably the wikiproject that deals with the subject. When a project develops a template, infobox or navbox, it would be nice if they had the project banner on the talk page so editors can make proper contact when there are issues. --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 09:53, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

I am worried about the conflicts between succession boxes and navboxes; do we really need to establish bilateral relations with half the thematic WikiProjects in existence, so to speak? Waltham, The Duke of 10:00, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

WP:VG Had a bunch of discussion for nav box standardization. Haven't looked lately, but they might even have developed some guidelines. -- Ned Scott 10:22, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

I don't really see a need to standardize them, necessarily, but a template might be nice for new projects, to make the process easier. -- Ned Scott 09:56, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

I can see the rationale behind standardizing the project banners, but I'm not really certain this needs to be the focus of such efforts, especially with the {{infobox}} to work with. It seems like a great deal of work for little reward. I still think we should try to hammer out a WikiProject Manual of Style document, though, where the standards for the important stuff (project name style, project banner specs, etc.) is spelled out. – ClockworkSoul 11:37, 29 April 2008 (UTC) (Edit:) I think that I'm going to be bold and start one. – ClockworkSoul 11:38, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

I'd certainly support that, although the only way we'd get the projects on board is if we prescribed what 95% of them are doing already. Fortunately, I expect that's what we'd want to do anyway :D. Fancy a crack at it? Happy‑melon 11:44, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

I agree. I think that such a document would serve mostly as way to help standardize project implementation by formalizing what de facto standards we already have, and defining those we don't but should. I'll put together a first draft over the course of the day and post it for community slashing mauling abuse opinion. – ClockworkSoul 13:25, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Think that this discussion opened well, but has drifted unhelpfully. I think it's a really good idea to develop a project navigation template to assist those projects which would like to use it, but like Ned Scott I don't see any need for a guideline to standardize them. I would like to ask ClockworkSoul to consider refocusing that proposed document, and to summarise current practice with a view to assisting the development of a template or templates, instead of trying to prescribe a standard.

Projects vary widely in their size, scope, and purpose, and are likely to have many very different needs and priorities, so it seems to me be unlikely that one size will fit all. For rexample, a tiny project like Irish Maritime has a much much simpler structure than a huge effort like WikiProject Military History.

WP:IE recently had an unfortunate encounter with a highly enthusisatic newbie editor keen to develop a project template. All sorts of template designs popped up on our pages, and were advertised in a huge proliferation of threads which rapidly became disruptive, largely because the newbie was very keen on templating but weak on collaboration, and seemed to have little idea of what the template was actually for, or how it might help the project. and by the time the new editor was indef-blocked for disruptive sockpuppetry most project members were fed up with the subject ... which is a pity, because WP:IE's layout is still a mess. However, I doubt there will much enthusiasm for revisiting the subject unless we can do it without drama, and the suggestion that we are going to "standardised" risks creating more drama.

However, in the midst of it all I did some research on the approach taken by other projects, and found a wide variety of approaches to nav templates, varying from the minimal to the huge and sophisticated. It would be really helpful to have some of those variants codified as the basis of standard templates which projects could choose from, and I think that this might lead to some useful development which could assist many projects. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:51, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Since no one here mentioned it, maybe you all are unaware that {{Infobox WikiProject}} exists. It is used by 53 WikiProjects and has been around since 2006. This template could definitely use an overhaul, but it is a starting point. --Scott Alter 05:54, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Non-standard banners

Wow, I'm surprised at the response and progress made since my suggestion above. Regarding names like 'Template:Physics', I say don't delete them until someone actually wants to use that name (but give priority to nav templates of course, not first come first served). But carry on above, this is a slightly different but related issue.

I've seen some banners (I think it might just be WP:ARTH and its subprojedts) using a template for assessment where you don't input e.g. |class=B, but just |B. (e.g. {{LepidopteraTalk|B|High}}. This is difficult for those not familiar with the template, and I've had problems with it myself in the past. Shouldn't we be using the same code for all such project assessment templates? Would it be possible to make the normal (e.g.) class=B function properly while still recognizing the previous code (since it is widely used). Richard001 (talk) 09:50, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Oh god please no! :D!! Why, why, why is there always one project that has to be different? In answer to your question, yes, absolutely, all project banners using the grading system should accept |class= and |importance=, and I would very strongly discourage them from using an alternative system at all (it will, for instance, break every tagging bot in existence, I'm sure, because no one is going to have written exceptions to handle something like this). I'm doing a quick search for other projects using the parameter-less system, and will include support for |class= and/or |importance= as necessary. Happy‑melon 10:21, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

From the point of view of somebody authoring such a tool, I have to agree. Though - eventually - Igor will be able to handle these odd projects, it won't be for a couple of months at least. I would very much like to see class=|importance= become the official standard. – ClockworkSoul 15:04, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Those templates can be edited to accept {{LepidopteraTalk|class=B|importance=High}} as well as {{LepidopteraTalk|B|High}}. It has to do with the way non-named parameters are handled. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 19:57, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Stub--->Start

Just another idea. What if an article became a start class if it had a minimum of say 4000-6000 characters, excluding categories, templates, references, infoboxes, images etc? Simply south (talk) 19:25, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

I am not sure that a specific text limit would do much good... Whether an article is a stub or not depends on its subject and the relative importance thereof. An article of the same size might be sufficient for a short-lived television series cancelled after five episodes but most inadequate for a successful show running for eight years. This goes for all levels in the assessment scale.

Personally, I am more concerned about the state of A-class. Waltham, The Duke of 12:46, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Character count alone isn't enough: it also depends on the nature of those characters, and that requires human assessment. An elegantly-written, copiously referenced, few paragraphs may be a very good start-class article, but if there is just an unreferenced intro and a similarly unsourced verbose list of a few achievements, that is better classed as a stub. One example I have encountered a few times recently is of articles on a poem or song, which consists of a one-para unreferenced intro, followed by the entire out-of-copyright text of the poem. That, to my mind is a stub, regardless of how long the poem is. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:46, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Forgotten Realms

I have made a proposal that would include (among other things) the closure of an inactive WikiProject. Please see Wikipedia:WikiProject Forgotten Realms/Closure for all the details, which are specific to the situation of that project, and please leave your comment there. This topic seems controversial in many respects, so wide input is requested. I'd particularly be interested whether you think that this is a reasonable procedural approach for such closure. --B. Wolterding (talk) 09:24, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

I think it's stepping a bit outside the box to suggest that a WikiProject closure should also include the deletion or transwiki of its entire articlebase. If, as seems the case, all the articles within scope are outside the confines of WP:FICT, then list them all for AfD and treat the project closure as a separate issue. You don't need to discuss with a non-existent community whether a project is still active, just tag it with {{inactive}} - if it's reverted, then there's someone else out there :D. And since the articles won't be deleted without AfDs anyway, trying to start a discussion in the middle of the wilderness is unnecessary, although kudos to you for trying. Nutshell: tag the project page with {{inactive}}, and AfD the articles, in a block-nom if you prefer. Happy‑melon 09:50, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Well, the "inactive" tag has been there for almost one year - I just want to see whether anybody is left who cares for those articles. --B. Wolterding (talk) 09:58, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

If that's the case, I think the answer is apparent :D. Happy‑melon 10:19, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

From experience with similar project closedowns, it may be preferable to raise an MfD for the project itself, stating that it is inactive and represents an large amount of maintenance-tagged articles. I wouldn't be surprised then if the project gets redirected to WP:D&D, WP:RPG or similar as a result, but it then means that the templates etc can be CSD'd under housekeeping. It'll also hopefully kick-start interest from other gaming projects that there are articles that need cleanup.

I'd also suggest a caution against a block AfD of some 40+ articles, as it can stretch editor resource quite thinly when trying to resolve sourcing/cleanup issues of specialist articles. I would probably put up a sample of a couple of the worst offenders one week, followed by a phased approach going forward. I know AfD shouldn't be used for cleanup, but it is, and keeping deletion debates at a reasonable pace can really help with this. Other than that, many thanks for tackling what is likely to be a tricky cleanup.Gazimoff ^Write_Read 11:04, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

MfD is a good idea, if in fact nobody is going to answer. I've updated the page accordingly. Thanks. --B. Wolterding (talk) 14:56, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Adding a new quality level to WP:1.0 assessment scale

Hi. Following some rather lengthy discussions, we're trying to propose/draft a revision to the WP:1.0 assessment scale. Comments would be greatly appreciated in the 1.0 assessment page. Thanks. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 00:06, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Quality guidelines?

I've been stewing over this for a while now, but I was thinking we really ought to review the quality guidelines in place for articles ranging from stubs, start class, b class, good articles, the highly ambiguous "a class" and most importantly the featured articles. I believe there's a high level of scrutiny involved in getting thins to the upper classes, but I believe there's much that is still not consistent between different wikiprojects as to their expectations of class for different types of articles. With that in mind, I'd like to propose the inception of a new WikiProject which would encompass the assignment of class to all kinds of articles from which a standard can be derived. Within this, I'd like to encourage a few changes to what we have right now:

Now, we have:

• Featured articles
• A class articles
• Good articles
• B class articles
• Start class articles
• Stubs

Now, I know this is potentially rather radical, but this is what I'd suggest:

• Spotlight articles
• Featured articles
• Good articles
• A class articles
• Intermediate articles
• Stubs

Now, the amount remains the same, and so it basically bumps things around a bit, but there are some different things within this I'd say:

• All current Featured articles remain so, and would have to go through scrutiny of Spotlight criteria (i.e. the currect FA criteria, since many don't meet the mark any more) and those that meet it and promoted.
• A class articles become Featured articles, but only once going through the new Featured article criteria. This will be a segue from GA to SA and will require one week without contest and at least one support to FA. This needs to be good prose, nothing unreferenced and good use of images with an appropriate length lead. This creiteria can be a little relaxed from the current FA, though a peer review would be mandatory, even if it's within the FAC.
• GA will remain exactly the same. Approval by one person.
• B class becomes A class, which is more appropriate, if you ask me. B class sounds like the floor quality, which is clearly not the implication, but it's certainly the inference.
• Start beomes "intemediate" simply because that's what they are. They're not a "start class" because people frankly don't know where to draw the line between stub and start, since start sounds like... the start?
• Stubs remain just as they are.

Now, this project would have to take over the operation of WP:STUB, WP:GA and WP:FA, and would create WP:SPOTLIGHT, WP:INTERMEDIATE and WP:A CLASS (or something like these) and each of these sub-projects would maintain the promotion of the articles. Obviously, it's a user defined matter for the first three, but after that, it's a community matter, but all should still be moderated correctly.

All I want to achieve from this is a means by which articles can easily pass from stub to spotlight with clear and defined guidelines to follow, obviously with the guidelines for a stub to intermediate and even to A class would give pointers on how one person, or one with help could get it to A class. Once there, it gives pointers again, but now indicating a need in some ways to have to involve others to assist. For featured status, it's even more important to include others, and for Spotlight, you've basically really got to have the support of a wikiproject, unless you're a hardcore wikipedian and researcher (but it's near impossible; I don't know any featured articles that got there thanks to one editor).

What do you guys say? --rm 'w avu 09:31, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

• Featured article is the top of the tree. I think you won't get much traction if you attempt to create a tranche above that. What instead you should do is list articles which don't meet the current FA criteria for WP:FARC. Yes, the A-Class and GA-Class are a little in conflict, but the GA process is somewhat different. GA was an attempt to introduce stable versions, editors were encouraged to tag any article they thought of as good as being so. It's moved away from that to a certain extent, but it still hovers somewhere between B and A Class. I'm pretty happy with the status quo to be honest. It's all really just a guide. The articles which are used will be vetted yet again. Hiding T 12:15, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
• I admire and appreciate how much thought and effort you've put into this, but I have to oppose in part because the proposed system is completely incompatible with the current ranking system, and would therefore necessitate a regrade of all currently graded articles. The conversion would be painful and sloppy, and probably incomplete for some time. I have other reasons as well, but not quite enough time to write there just now. – ClockworkSoul 14:26, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
• I admire and appreciate how much thought and effort you've put into this, but I have to oppose in part because the proposed system is completely incompatible with the current ranking system, and would therefore necessitate a regrade of all currently graded articles. The conversion would be painful and sloppy, and probably incomplete for some time. I have other reasons as well, but not quite enough time to write there just now. – ClockworkSoul 14:26, 16 May 2008 (UTC)... Happy‑melon 14:34, 16 May 2008 (UTC) :D

  I'm flattered. :) That being said, I rather like this proposal. – ClockworkSoul 14:37, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

  In seriousness, I admire the idea, but this is just too much effort for far too little gain: the purpose of wikipedia is not to accuratley grade articles as they are now, but to get them to FA/Spotlight/Perfect/WhateverYouWantToCallIt - the grading system is just another tool in our armoury to do that as best we can. Happy‑melon 14:38, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

• I mostly agree with the arguments of the honourable gentlemen (and ladies?) above; the proposed system is too radical, and suggests changes to elements of the current system which work very well. Furthermore, I disagree with the nomenclature; Intermediate makes little sense, given that it is not in the middle of anything, and A class is meaningless on its own, without a B class. Waltham, The Duke of 19:22, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Participants' category

Although the Official Rolls of Counsellors currently lists 54 editors, the relevant category has not been affected by the Beeching Axe of last April and lists 125 users. Do you believe that we are in liberty to edit people's user pages in order to remove these editors from our category? Regards, Waltham, The Duke of 19:30, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

The majority of these users are no longer active, so I don't think we'll receive many complaints if we do. Either way, there are precedents for such an action. – ClockworkSoul 20:35, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

I would say it is time to clear the decks. --— Gadget850 (Ed)talk 20:52, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm not entirely sure why that category exists at all, given that the nominal roll is hardly unmanageable as a simple list; regardless, we can certainly clean out the inactive members as long as we don't press the issue: if someone reverts the removal, then that's their prerogative... but I doubt anyone will. Happy‑melon 21:08, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

I do not believe that the existence of the category is completely unwarranted, as long as it is connected to one or more of the userboxes declaring membership in the Council. Which brings up another question: is removing a userbox considered more unacceptable than simply removing a page from the category? I believe that it isn't, but not all might agree. Waltham, The Duke of 21:44, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Wikiproject's recognition of Featured content other then FAs

I've noticed that alot of projects don't have an assessment level for featured content other than featured articles. So, if a list, portal, or image gets promoted, in many cases it is identified as an FA for the purposes of some projects simply because the projects don't officially recognize those sorts of content. This seems particularly important with featured lists, since most Wikiprojects have some sort of lists in their range, but many of them are labeled incorrectly. This seems somewhat problematic to me, but I'm not sure if I have a rock-solid solution. My only suggestion would be to encourage (or require?) WikiProjects to have an FL assessment level. If a project doesn't actually have any FLs then it's a moot point, but for those that do it would help clarify alot of ratings. All it would take is updating the Project Banner templates and creating an extra category or two; probably not that much work for each project. Any thoughts? Drewcifer (talk) 11:15, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

I think the class should simple be renamed "Featured"; it would be much simpler to have a single grade instead of several. Similarly, I would support dropping the "list" class from the ranks, especially considering that it's spawning an entire zoo of similar non-grade classes such as "category", "template", "portal", and "image". I'll follow that last bit up at Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Assessment. – ClockworkSoul 16:27, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

New version of Igor is available

Igor 0.2.0 is available, and it includes a number of features that may be useful to the members of this Council, including a Wikiproject Browser and some task-force support. If you have the time, please download it and take it for a little test drive. I'm always open to suggestions, so by all means let me have it! The next release (0.3.0) will be a quick one, so if they're fairly simple ones, they may make it into that version. Many thanks! – ClockworkSoul 04:22, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

This is superb, thank you for an excellent tool! Walkerma (talk) 05:39, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Changing assessment levels - please give us your choice

We've had considerable discussion, and we're considering putting A below GA, and adding a C-Class between Start and B. Please choose your favourite option here. Walkerma (talk) 05:40, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

WikiProject "soft" redirects

I don't know what "soft" redirects are, but can someone explain this? Do we redirect Spain, Germany, Italy and France to Europe? Why is this done to Country Projects in South America? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:54, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Apparently we don't redirect European countries (see Talk:Spain); why are South American country Projects disappearing? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:56, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm told we're "rationalizing templates". This is so wrong on every level I can't believe what my eyes are seeing. When I go to Talk:Spain, I see a link to the Spain Project. When I go to Talk:Venezuela, I see the country Project disappears, and they're rolled into a continent. I simply cannot believe this apparent double standard; if we're rationalizing templates, I suppose we'll be redirecting all 50 U.S. states to the USA, and all European countries to Europe, African countries to Africa, etc. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:05, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

If it's being done with the agreement of the projects concerned, then I don't have a problem with it - indeed it's probably a good idea. If, however, it's being done across the board, then there are serious discussions that I'd better have missed... Happy‑melon 15:08, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

So far, it appears that it's being done to South America, but not to Europe for example; I hope there's a good explanation for relegating one continent to second-class citizenry on Wiki. Where is the discussion of this matter ?? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:13, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

I noticed it happening with WikiProject Christianity seeming to swallow up Wikiproject Catholocism. I too would like a link to the discussion, etc. Ealdgyth - Talk 16:00, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

I presume the discussion will have gone on individual talkpages of the projects concerned. If it hasn't, then we certainly have a problem, though only if project members disagree with the change. I can find no centralised discussion that says we are rationalising projects, if it is happening on an indiviual basis, then it needs the input of the projects involved. Woody (talk) 16:03, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Well, in regards to this edit, I checked on all four projects talk pages and nothing. I can sorta see the three denominations going under it, but the Saints project probably isn't such a good fit for a merger. And I agree, that some sort of discussion probably needs to have taken place. Ealdgyth - Talk 16:08, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Tmbox in WikiProjectBannerShell

The {{tmbox}} is the new ambox/mbox compatible meta-template for talk page message boxes. We are thinking of making the {{tmbox}} work with the {{WikiProjectBannerShell}}. Comments from anyone interested in the {{WikiProjectBannerShell}} would be appreciated. See discussion at Template talk:Tmbox#Sizes / modes / shapes.

--David Göthberg (talk) 14:03, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Wikiproject (and category) tagging - "You can take the kid out of the fight"

This is something I've been thinking about for some time, and it's rather rampant with WikiProject tagging: what are the guidelines for tagging articles with WikiProjects? What it really should be is a "you can take the X out of Y, but you can't take the Y out of X" when it comes to tagging (where Y is the scope of the project). Take for example these two articles which are part of WikiProject Scientology:

• Ænema
• Trapped in the Closet (South Park)

Now, with "Trapped in the Closet", that's a clear-cut case: the episode was a parody of Scientology's actions, was analysed as such, and it's an integral part of the episode. However, I'm not fond of "Ænema" coming under the scope - it's one line in a six minute song that's equally pessimistic. Now, I understand that MJK may not like Scientology, but would the song make any sense if the line "Fuck L. Ron Hubbard and fuck all his clones" was removed? I think so, and we really need have a guideline for proper tagging, if there isn't one already. Sceptre ^(talk) 23:51, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

That is a good definition— if you remove the related content, is the article still coherent; if so, then it is probably not relevant. That works for trivia and pop culture content as well. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 14:54, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

I rather like that as well. I would like to see this developed more fully into a guideline. – ClockworkSoul 16:03, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Although a council, we do not have the power to legislate. :-D

Perhaps we could lobby for change in Wikipedia:Talk page templates or some other, more suitable place (which I have yet to find). While at it, we should probably also try and solidify the practice on the order of the page-top templates, a problem still unresolved. In any case, I find Sceptre's definition of relevance quite reasonable. Waltham, The Duke of 23:48, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

We don't and we do. If we present an idea and the community as a whole agrees with and accepts it, then we aren't legislating, we're participating the the wiki process. The key is that we're not handing down a ruling, we're proposing a definition. A good one, too. – ClockworkSoul 00:04, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

I couldn't agree more. I suppose one can expect a clockwork soul to make such accurate descriptions. :-) Waltham, The Duke of 00:11, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

In general, so far as I can tell, banner plaacement tends to be based on categorization, or clear relevant content in the article. There is an additional caveat in articles relating to Scientology, given that all articles related to that subject are currently on probation by the ArbCom. In cases like that, I can see, possibly, allowing banner placement to be extended a wee bit, given the consequences of violating that ruling, although I won't speak to this particular case about which I know absolutely nothing. One advantage to the categorization basis is that, in general, the project which "claims" that category might be better able to place the article in a more relevant category later, as new ones are created. John Carter (talk) 00:40, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

(Undent) Could we have a section on this page about when it is appropriate for a WikiProject banner to be placed on an article? The major points that I'd like to see are these:

1. The article must be related to the scope of the WikiProject. Please consider adding a message on the talk page or using the |explanation= parameter if the connection is not obvious.
2. Project banners on the talk page should not be substitute for, or simply duplicate, Wikipedia's categorization system. To identify an article as being related to a topic, place the correct category in the article itself.
3. The presence of a project banner indicates that the article has been, or will be, developed by members of the project, and that questions about the article can be directed to members of the project. When the project does not expect to support an article's improvement, it should not add the project's banner to that page.
4. The project has the right to remove its banner from any article that it does not intend to support.

I have encountered all of these problems in the last two months, and it appears that there is nothing written anywhere about how and when to use these banners. WhatamIdoing (talk)

In the absence of objections, and after further reflection, I turned this into a section on "over-tagging" at Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Guide/WikiProject. I'm not sure that it's the perfect place, but it's at least not a horrible choice.

Ratification vote on {{C-Class}} started

Hi. The ratification vote to add {{C-Class}} to the assessment scale has started. The poll will run for two weeks, until 0300 UTC June 18, 2008, and you can find the poll here, where we ask for your comment.

On behalf of the Version 1.0 Editorial Team, Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 03:08, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Wikiproject Boards of Expertise

I have been pondering how make the encyclopedia appear more reliable and end POV wars. What I came up with is a Board of Expertise idea. Each project could elect to appoint boards of expertise. This board would be experts with verified degrees that are relative to the topic. Priority would be given to those with the highest level of degree and experience. Articles that overlap would have a special board comprised of an equal niumber of the highest priority experts from each project.

Thoughts? Geoff Plourde (talk) 01:33, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

An interesting idea. How would you propose that potential experts' degrees be verified? – ClockworkSoul 02:45, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Email or fax proof to the Foundation. Geoff Plourde (talk) 02:57, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Unfortunately, that can be easily faked. For a couple of years I worked at a company where part of my job was to perform background checks on job applicants. The only reasonably reliable method was to get the applicant's written permission to do the check (usually required to proceed), and then to simply phone up the registrar's office at the degree-granting institution. For this you would typically have to fax to the institution the applicant's name, graduation date, and written permission before such verification would be given. – ClockworkSoul 03:03, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

OK then, i would have them fax a signed form and have someone call the college registrar. Geoff Plourde (talk) 03:58, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

What of non-college experience? I can't think of any article I edit that relates to my traditional education, yet I consider myself an expert in several subjects. And even experts have POV. Not slamming the idea, just poking at it. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 10:07, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

The primary purpose would be to get a filter of experts who are trusted by the world to go in and serve as a house of sober second thought. If we went by life experience, we would have major issues in some areas. Where no other expert is available, i don't see a problem with life experience. Geoff Plourde (talk) 00:21, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Any other questions or ideas on how to bring this to projects? Geoff Plourde (talk) 19:58, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

List of useful bots?

Could someone compile a list of useful bots that can be employed for various WikiProject tasks? For example, User:SQLBot can be asked to update WikiProject watchlist and User:AlexNewArtBot to update a list of new articles within the scope of the project. There are several bots for delivering newsletters. I am sure there must be more... Renata (talk) 09:09, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

There seems to be no such list at this time. But how about starting one at Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Guide/Technical notes? --B. Wolterding (talk) 10:05, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

I have started a Wikipedia:WikiProject_Council/Guide/Technical_notes#Automation section. Please feel free to make changes. Thanks, Ganeshk (talk) 01:42, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

request for volunteers to reactivate WikiProject

I am a strong supporter of Wikipedia:Make technical articles accessible, and am hoping that some editors who have expertise in logic, math and science actually agree with me. If so, then I'd like to urge that Wikipedia:WikiProject General Audience be re-activated. 69.140.152.55 (talk) 07:38, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Wikiprojects Stats

Do we have a stats page for the Wikiprojects ? say Top10 for most no of articles, FA/GA, members, task forces etc ?? -- TinuCherian ^{(Wanna Talk?)} - 06:21, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Version_1.0_Editorial_Team/Index/Comparison has some of the information you are looking for. Regards, Ganeshk (talk) 15:21, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Portal:WikiProjects

For the truly self-referential among us. Oh, yeah, it's being nominated for deletion. In a sense, I can see this being somewhat useful, but only in a sense. John Carter (talk) 15:31, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

All of you who didn't know this portal even existed, raise your hands. (raises both hands) Waltham, The Duke of 22:45, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Mine's up: who ever thought that would be a popular destination for wikipedia readers? Happy‑melon 16:58, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Capitalization of WikiProject titles

Is there a convention for proper capitalization of WikiProject titles? Some projects capitalize the first letter of each word, while others don't. I haven't found any recommendations made within Wikipedia:WikiProject Council. The only reference I found to this was from a brief discussion in 2006, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Council/Archive 4#Titles and capitalization.21, which suggested that "WikiProject" is a pseudo-namespace and everything after it should be in sentence case. --Scott Alter 21:02, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

That seems to be the accepted practice now, with only a few exceptions. Given the availability of redirects, I don't think anyone is concerned enough to go through with a formal rule on the matter; moving WikiProjects is generally far more trouble than it's worth, in any case. Kirill ^(prof) 21:05, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

I agree that we shouldn't bother changing existing projects. However, it seems like on the project proposal page, some people are saying that all words should be capitalized all of the time. If using sentence case is the accepted practice, it would be nice to have this in writing outside of the talk namespace. That way, others would find it and new projects would use capitalization consistently. --Scott Alter 21:41, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Alternatively, you could interpret the project names as being proper nouns (like any other organization's name), in which case they ought to be capitalized. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:56, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

WikiProject RFC

Would it be beneficial if there was an RFC bot category for WikiProjects, so that WikiProjects could get updates about WikiProjectdom? MessedRocker (talk) 06:21, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

RFC as in Requests for comment? I don't get it. Waltham, The Duke of 19:04, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Say some discussion started up which would have an effect on all WikiProjects, like it had to do with article sorting or something. This would inform all the WikiProjects through a means much similar than the current technique of spamming the talk pages of all the WikiProjects, which takes nigh on seven thousand years. MessedRocker (talk) 16:52, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

The basic problem is that it is difficult to register WikiProjects; there are hundreds of them, and in many cases it is dubious whether they are active or not. One cannot simply search in the Yellow Pages for one. We do have a directory, and it is updated at the moment, but it will take some time until it is fully in place.

That having been said, this very page is a central discussion venue for WikiProjects, and there are many contacts who watch this page and inform their respective projects of anything of interest. The current system could do with some improvements, but using bots or any other means of cross-posting messages on a massive scale is not a necessity. Waltham, The Duke of 22:26, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Cool. MessedRocker (talk) 02:40, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

How many WikiProjects?

How many WikiProjects are there? I am writing a paper about collaborative writing for Wikimania and would like the total figure. Thanks! Awadewit (talk) 19:49, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

You might be able to find the answer in the sub-categories of Category:WikiProjects. Other than that, I can tell you that the WP1.0 team says that 1300+ WikiProjects are assessing articles for them, and presumably not all WikiProjects are participating in the assessment scheme. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:53, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Igor finds a total of 2167 items (1799 wikiprojects and 368 task forces). A full XML document with that data can be found here – ClockworkSoul 15:56, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Pseudo-complete wikiproject list updated

Hello all! I just wanted to announce the completion of the most complete project list to date, drawn, processed and merged from the following sources:

• All Wikipedia namespace pages starting with "WikiProject"
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory
• Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Index
• Category:WikiProject banners

The result is an XML document containing what appears to be a nearly complete list of all projects and many task forces. This past run found a total of 2167 items, including 1799 projects and 368 task forces. Hope you find it useful, and as usual I'm more than happy to hear criticism and ideas for how it can be improved. – ClockworkSoul 13:31, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

<toff accent>I say sir jolly good show! </toff accent> That looks awesome! So now we (finally) know where we stand in regards WikiProject organisation. Makes me wish I hadn't already given you a barnstar for the first version...!! Can I be really rude and ask for a json version? Happy‑melon 18:23, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

I'll put it on my list :) Right now I'm focused on having a release ready by the Friday C-class rollout and generating a wikified list of categorized wikiprojects (that is, projects that can't be assigned a place in the directory tree). – ClockworkSoul 20:01, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Good to hear we're keeping you busy! I agree that C-Class needs to be top priority - I'm still plugging away at Category:C-Class articles - only about 200 more to go! Happy‑melon 20:44, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Assessment

Hey I was unsure where to post about this but this seems like a suitable place. I was wonderign how I would go about organizing an assessment scheme for the Slipknot Project. I only want it so the articles are organised by class and so we can include it in our template on talk pages, I don't believe we need an importance rating. So can anybody tell me just how I go about including this in the project? REZTER ^TALK ø 10:40, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

I've converted your project banner ({{Slipknot Project}}) to use {{WPBannerMeta}}, which will make it very much easier to expand and add functionality to the banner, such as this quality assessment. Enabling quality assessments for the banner is now as simple as setting the parameter |QUALITY_SCALE= to equal "yes": |QUALITY_SCALE=yes. However, before you do that, there is some infrastructure you need to create first: I suggest you have a quick read of Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Using the bot: basically you need to create a category Category:Slipknot articles by quality, with subcategories Category:FA-Class Slipknot articles, Category:A-Class Slipknot articles, etc, with appropriate categorisation. Once you've done that, enable assessments on the banner and get grading! Happy‑melon 15:12, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Project banner tagging

There is a discussion going on at Requests for approval regarding the use of bots for talk page banner tagging. I request the councillors to add their comments to the dicussion. Thanks, Ganeshk (talk) 12:32, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Issues with WikiProject Banner Tagging

Should WikiProjects get prior approval of other WikiProjects (Descendant or Related or any ) to tag articles that overlaps their scope ?

Discussion

The context of this discussion are the recent WP:COMP Tagging Issue , WP:FOOD Tagging Issue , TinucherianBot issues etc.

A WikiProject is a collection of pages devoted to the management of a specific topic or family of topics within Wikipedia; and, simultaneously, a group of editors that use said pages to collaborate on encyclopedic work. It is not a place to write encyclopedia articles directly, but a resource to help coordinate and organize article writing and editing. Project banner Tagging and Assessing articles are an important part of the workload of most, if not all WikiProjects. However it is tedious to keep track of newer articles that come under the scope of the the project regularly and add the project banner manually. Hence bots are also often employed to tag articles based on categories. This means that multiple WikiProjects may tag an single article if it falls under its own scope .

Nothing happens more than attention and contributions of more subject experts by additional tagging by a project, which is primarily needed for the growth of Wikipedia. If you are more concerned of cluttering of talk page , we have options of {{WikiProjectBannerShell}} which takes up very less space.If the concern is about too many banners, we can have intergated Project banners like {{WP India}} which supports over 50 descendant WikiProjects! It is also sad to see Some Wikiprojects members trying to 'own' articles by preventing tagging by another project , which is against one of our fundamental rules of WP:OWN. It is basically against our fundamental Principle of a free encyclopedia that anyone can edit. If that is the case, soon the day will come when a WikiProject will not even allow anyone other than the project members to edit the article itself.

This discussion is NOT regarding "WikiProject country" tagging to use on an article about a city, especially if the city has changed hands several times over the course of history. The community consensus(already agreed upon) on this is that if there is disagreement, then the only country's WikiProject template that should be used, is the one for where the city is currently located.

This discussion is specific to issues like WP:Food and Drink tagging articles related to WP:BEER and other descendant projects or issues like WP:COMP Tagging articles in Category:Cryptographic protocols which falls under the scope of their project and also WP:CryptographyProject !. The fundamental question is: Why should any project have to get "permission" from other projects to tag articles? It may be courteous to inform them but not a mandatory thing to do...The thumb rule that No one owns the article in Wikipedia, neither does WikiProjects!.

WikiProject Council Guide explains as follows : "Many articles will be tagged by more than one WikiProject. This is particularly true of articles which deal with prominent people, as those articles may be tagged by WikiProjects for biography, their places of residence, their professional field, and any other activities they may engage in. This can and occasionally does create problems, as some projects will, quite reasonably, think that another project might be only minimally capable of assisting in the improvement of an article. However, it is important for all parties to remember that beyond simply being WikiProjects, they are also collections of people with specific abilities and competencies which might not be available within other groups. A member of a football project might be better able to copyedit an article about a player from a non-English speaking country, who might even go on to achieve prominence elsewhere and draw the attention of other projects, than a native speaker of that country who might be less skilled at English composition. On that basis, it is a good idea to welcome any banner placements on an article provided that the banner is actually at all relevant to the subject. The fact that these other projects may also regularly "check up" on the article for improvements, vandalism, etc. can also be beneficial."

Since we don't have a definite consensus or discussion on this, as a member of WikiProject Council, I present this discussion to you for your valuable opinions and concerns...This is not a policy making initiative or a ballot but an attempt to understand and discuss concerns and views of everyone.. -- TinuCherian ^{(Wanna Talk?)} - 11:53, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

Support

1. Weak support: I think as a common curtsey, appropriate WikiProjects should be notified prior to mass tagging. This is distinct from "permission", but certainly strong oppositions should be taken in to account. Actions must be taken when mistakes are made - for example, some articles loosely related to a particular WikiProject might be completely unrelated, and should not be tagged. --Jiuguang (talk) 18:21, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Oppose

1. Strong Oppose : Per Nom. -- TinuCherian ^{(Wanna Talk?)} - 11:53, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

   Respectfully, what are you nominating? I suspect that you're taking these mostly civil disputes personally, Tinucherian. Just relax, take a breath, and things will be sorted out soon enough. – ClockworkSoul 13:04, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

   Nope, You have got it wrong. The guideline is already there in Wikiproject Guide (as I ahd mentioned above) but is vague. This is an attempt to discuss the various concerns about the issue and to arrive at consensus -- TinuCherian ^{(Wanna Talk?)} - 13:45, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

   Perhaps then we would be better served by having a discussion about tagging suggestions in the context of parent/child projects instead of just multi-tagging in general? – ClockworkSoul 14:13, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

2. Strong Oppose Once it passes the Council its Fine.Electrical Experiment (talk) 12:59, 8 July 2008 (UTC)
3. Strong Oppose: as per nomination. I rarely use "Strong Oppose" on Wikipedia due to its harsh implications in tone. However, I do agree that articles should not require members of other WikiProjects to approve to be tagged by other WikiProjects. Let us take a broad article for example, Mechanical Engineering. This subject has been tagged by four WikiProjects, although I would consider WikiProject Engineering, WikiProject Technology, and WikiProject Robotics related/descendant WikiProjects. However, this article is also tagged by the Version 1 Editorial Team. Although I consider the WP:1 guys to be part of the encyclopedia itself rather than a mere WikiProject, the principle remains. Article subjects will eventually result in tagging by several WikiProjects due to the subject's location, affiliations, subject topic, and others. Ownership of articles should not be confused with articles tagged with Template:Maintained and future incidents should be dealt with using standard Wikipedia mediation methods if needed. And abuse of this decision, like tagging WP:Robotics in the Homer Simpson article just because Homer appeared in a robot costume once in one of the episodes would be an exception, in which if this occurs, an editor shall report the newly tagged WikiProject notifying them that such an article was tagged and it should be the individual WikiProject's decision on whether to remove their own article tag. I think this will be the fairest and quickest way to resolve such an issue. - Jameson L. Tai ^{talk ♦ contribs} 13:50, 8 July 2008 (UTC)
4. I strongly oppose requiring permission to tag articles within any project's scope. Nearly all articles within the scope of WP:WikiProject Trains will also be within the scope of one or more other wikiprojects whether they be, for example, WP:BIOGRAPHY (i.e. Collis Potter Huntington or George Stephenson), WP:MILHIST (i.e. Great Locomotive Chase, troop sleeper), WP:UNION (i.e. Pullman Strike) or even WP:FILMS (i.e. Union Pacific (film)), and that's besides all of the train stations that are also within the scope of WP:NRHP or any of the numerous geographical projects. Requiring permission from other projects to incorporate articles within their scopes places an undue burden on editors and smells of WP:OWN. Slambo (Speak) 14:09, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

   I note that this discussion arose out of the topic immediately above this regarding a bot request. My opinion on requiring permission remains unchanged after skimming that rather long discussion on the bot request page. Slambo (Speak) 15:29, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

5. Oppose, what qualifies the older project to pass judgement on the new one? This would only encourage turf wars, bad bad idea. +Hexagon1 ^(t) 14:11, 8 July 2008 (UTC)
6. Oppose Projects are informal. If we don't have a set wikiwide structure for projects to integrate we can not have such tagging regulations. Wandalstouring (talk) 14:48, 8 July 2008 (UTC)
7. Oppose Bad idea.↔NMajdan•talk 15:46, 8 July 2008 (UTC)
8. Oppose: If the newer article or project passed its own judgment, there would be no need for an old project; thus, the tagging would not help at all. Like previously mentioned, if an article is tagged on a certain WikiProject, the change must be reported in order to take further action by the owners of the project itself. If more than one WikiProject ties in a certain article, more burden will be caused because some projects don't have enough information to edit an article without the assistance of the other project that is tied in it. Eventually, the new project that does no cover much information would be deleted and passed to its descendant project. However, the idea that the old and new projects should be collaborated should be considered. Hiddenvillage (talk) 16:48, 8 July 2008 (UTC)
9. Oppose per nom, Slambo and Hexagon 1. Cliff smith (talk) 16:45, 8 July 2008 (UTC)
10. Oppose - If a project is found by the community to have insufficient support, or cover a subject too narrow that is already covered by another project, it can be named inactive or deleted. There is no real-life problem here. If a bot is asked to tag the talk pages of opera articles with WPCLASSICAL when they already have WPOPERA (a descendant project), the bot operator should notice this beforehand and refuse the tagging, as it's not our practice to use both. Common sense must be exercised in all cases. Badagnani (talk) 16:49, 8 July 2008 (UTC)
11. Oppose on the grounds that this policy can not be implimented while remaining true to the spirit of Wikipedia. How so? Well, an editor is free to edit whatever page they wish to (assuming they haven't been blocked from doing so due to very special circumstances), and a project is just a means to organize editors with similar interests. As such, which project tags a talk page is simply a way to say "Hey, if you're interested in Foo, this article is probably one you want to help with". Also, no one (neither editors nor projects) owns articles, so saying "YOU CAN'T TAG THIS ONE, IT'S MINE!!!111oneone" is not only childish, it's going against the policy. --Falcorian ^(talk) 17:35, 8 July 2008 (UTC)
12. I strongly oppose the idea of article ownership by WikiProjects. If BEER wants to pitch a little fit about feeling disrespected by its parent project, then it can do it without affecting anyone else. One WikiProject should never have to ask permission from another WIkiProject to tag articles that are legitimately within the scope of both projects. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:05, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

    Okay, now I'm getting annoyed. Has anybody here actually read any of the discussions, or are you basing your "pitch as fit" nonsense exclusively on the above rant? Nobody in BEER ever so much as suggested this be moved into a larger arena, and it was contained within BEER and FOOD until TinuCherian brought it here. – ClockworkSoul 18:08, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

13. Speedy close because this is a WP:POINTy proposal designed to fail. So the issue is that some folks from Wikiproject Beer took exception to the mass tagging of all articles under their scope to also be under the scope of Wikiproject Food and Drink. However, this straw man proposal has nothing to do with that. If Wikiproject F&D went ahead and tagged all the articles anyway, nobody is saying they violated policy or anything -- the folks from Wikiproject Beer were just telling the folks from Wikiproject F&D that they thought the mass-tagging was a bad idea. We are allowed to debate whether individual actions are a good idea, right?!?! I mean seriously, this is akin to if I copy-edited an article, and then the original author made a straw man proposal that said, "User:Jaysweet should be notified of all new articles so that he can copyedit them". Come on. --Jaysweet (talk) 18:55, 8 July 2008 (UTC)
14. Strong Oppose - I read through the various discussions on talk page of tinucherian and WP:FOOD. I feel asking and granting permissions is not only foolish but also impossible to track. A permission asking group may have 100 members of which 1 might want to include an article in project scope but might be denied by 1 member of permission granting group (again of 100 members). This starts edit warring. I also recommend unblock of tinucherianbot as the bot is valuable as seen on WP:INDIA. Admin User:Davidgothberg seems to be biased on this matter. --gppande «talk» 19:53, 8 July 2008 (UTC)
15. Strong Oppose It does not detract from one wikiproject that an article is listed under another wikiproject. Rather it helps the encyclopaedia be informative. Nerguy (talk) 19:58, 8 July 2008 (UTC)
16. Oppose I often tag templates on talk pages - I see them as guides where to send people who may be interested in collaborating or asking someone on a wikiproject. I did notice some problems with tagging any mushroom that is vaguely edible with this Food label - seemed to be stretching the definition a little. Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 21:00, 8 July 2008 (UTC)
17. Oppose Sometimes I think it gets forgotten that wikiprojects are simply unofficial groups of people. Orderinchaos 21:01, 8 July 2008 (UTC)
18. Strong oppose it adds unnecessary bureaucracy to the projects, and tagging could be seriously impeded if this proposal is implemented. A better proposal would be to deal with disputes on a case-by-case basis, by means of dialogue between the projects, after a tag has been placed and disputed. Tags are irrelevant to encyclopaedic content anyway. In addition, this proposal seems to violate WP:CREEP, and could encourage projects to violate WP:OWN. --GW_Simulations_{User Page | Talk} 21:14, 8 July 2008 (UTC)
19. Strong oppose, it smacks of ownership and would increase wikidrama a hundredfold while doing nothing measurable to improve the project. Daniel Case (talk) 22:38, 8 July 2008 (UTC)
20. Strong oppose, almost every topic on Wikipedia would fall under several WikiProjects. Who's to say the first WikiProject to tag the article would be more specific or relevant than any subsequent WikiProject hoping to tag the article. Quite simply a bad idea . Mkdw^talk 22:54, 8 July 2008 (UTC)
21. Oppose I think it would take up too much time that could be well spent doing something else. Lighthead ^þ 00:03, 9 July 2008 (UTC)
22. Strong Oppose This would just encourage huge amounts of debate, needless debate among project members and who is to say that one project is more important than another? This also has clear elements of ownership, something that we can all do without, especially when talking about a project that involves large quantities of editors and may encourage some degree of mob-mentality, just something to think on. Taifarious1 00:50, 9 July 2008 (UTC)
23. Oppose for most of the reasons given above. Recently I noticed mass tagging by the Computing Project of talk pages of articles that I assumed were looked after by the Chemistry Project as they were articles on computational chemistry programs. I wondered about it and came to the conclusion that it was fine. More eyes the better. It also made me realise that a few of these articles were not tagged by the Chemistry Project so I did that. --Bduke (talk) 01:05, 9 July 2008 (UTC)
24. Strong Oppose - The moment something like this is instituted, is the moment I nominate every Wikiproject for deletion due to WP:OWN and WP:BURO, among other things. Wikiprojects are a semi-organised way for editors to directly or indirectly collaborate on bulding the encyclopedia. And more than one WikiProject can choose to help collaborate on an article. Indeed, one need not even be afilliated with a WikiProject in order to collaborate on an article. Every talk page is a mini-collaboration space. If toes are being "stepped on" here, then let's resolve that. Let's not start drawing lines in the sand, or be attempting to turn this into "IWANTMINE". - jc37 05:02, 9 July 2008 (UTC)
25. Oppose - I am with Daniel Case and Jc37 on this one. - LA @ 08:16, 9 July 2008 (UTC)
26. Oppose - What nonsense, we should be removing barriers to encourage constructive editing not creating unneeded steps. As always, if someone disagrees with a tag or edit they can talk it out and the wikibanner template, IMHO, should be required on talk pages with three or more banners. I'm with the LGBT project and we regularly have to go in and explain that someone doesn't have to be LGBT to be tagged of interest to LGBT and queer studies, Jerry Falwell, for instance. Having someone decree they are in charge of the article and must approve of a banner, yikes, don't we have enough wikidrama? Banjeboi 17:23, 9 July 2008 (UTC)
27. Oppose. As a member of the PlayStation and Blu-ray projects, there are many sharing articles. It seems though as long the article is within scope it should be allowed with the project's tag.--Playstationdude (talk) 20:48, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Neutral

1. Neutral rather than Support  : Idea is good but enforceing is difficult.• Autographed by RRaunak•Wanna meet him ? •
2. Neutral : Concur that this would be too difficult to enforce. Absolon S. Kent (talk) 14:13, 8 July 2008 (UTC)
3. Neutral: Who can add a WikiProject banner? Who can remove one? The answer to both questions is the same: "Anyone." I have just now removed {{WikiProject Food and drink|class=|importance=}} from Talk:Keg. You can re-add it if you like. Or you can removed banners from a few other pages. Be WP:BOLD, but don't hurt one another! (sdsds - talk) 20:03, 8 July 2008 (UTC)
4. As ClockworkSoul says below, this proposal seems to misrepresent the issues. I don't think "approval" should be mandatory, but is notifying the project, perhaps asking for help sorting categories before tagging thousands of articles, too much to ask? Mr.Z-man 20:36, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

   Z-Man, Can you please eloborate on this? How does a bot-op find out all the related projects, sub-projects, child-projects etc for the articles he is going to tag. I think it is very un-reasonable to expect the bot-op to do that. Regards, Ganeshk (talk) 03:08, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

   I'm not Z-Man, but I think I can answer this. Are you implying it's reasonable to expect the WPJ members in question to have to spend hours cleaning up after the bot? I think not. The onus is always on the bot-operator to not make unnecessary work for others. - Merzbow (talk) 04:07, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

   You have not answered the first part of my question (the how part). Regards, Ganeshk (talk) 10:30, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

5. Mass tagging should always be discussed before being done. This is less about turf than it is about work-load distribution. -- Ned Scott 03:46, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

I have boldly archived the straw poll, per WP:SNOW, and because it is not productive. Nobody is seriously suggesting this proposal -- not the nominator, and not Wikiproject Beer, whom the nominator is trying to make a point about. The community almost unanimously agrees that you don't need to notify another Wikiproject before tagging an article with a different Wikiproject.

There is a specific debate regarding whether it was a good idea for Wikiproject Food and Drink to mass-tag all of the articles under Wikiproject Beer, and I am not prejudiced to a continuation of that debate (that is why I have only archived the straw poll). That is a worthy discussion. Clearly there is no policy prohibiting Wikiproject F&D from taking that action, nor would there ever be community consensus for such a policy (as this straw poll makes abundantly clear). The debate as to whether that action was a good idea is entirely separate from any policy debate. --Jaysweet (talk) 17:30, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Comment

• Comment - Is this a proposal of some kind, or an essay? First, the text at the head of this misrepresents the issues over at BEER somewhat. Overlapping tagging is not so much the problem as the fact that BEER'S parent project, Food and Drink, with whom we had only token interaction in the past, tagged ALL articles of ALL their child projects (Food Service, Wine, Beer, and several more) as Food and Drink, inflating their article count from about 700 or so to about 20,000. This act is a bit tacky, and goes against both common sense and convention, but isn't a terrible thing for BEER. It is, however, very bad for F&D who will soon find that it's very difficult to manage that many articles. That is, after all, why child projects exist. The main issue was that in addition to tagging all of our articles, they took it upon themselves to create a omni-banner with the flag "beer=true", "wine=true", etc. Taken together, these two acts show not only a disrespect for our (BEER's) independence as a project, but a something close to arrogance regarding F&D's feelings towards its child projects. – ClockworkSoul 12:58, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

This is more of proposal of discussion and an attempt to arrive at a consensus This proposal doesn't recommend any "hostile takeover" of any descendant wikiprojects by a parent WikiProject. The independent descendant wikiprojects are always free to work or don't work in collaboration with the parent or related project. The child or descendant project is always free to use or dont use the parent project banner (with supported parameters for descendant wikiprojects)... This proposal suggests the autonomy of any WikiProject to tag articles that comes in its scope whether or not it overlaps with any other project. The beer project is free to use or reject the parent project banner if they choose to. This talks about only the right of F&D project to tag Beer articles if they have it in their scope. Any wrong tagging by a project may be always replaced if neccessary -- TinuCherian ^{(Wanna Talk?)} - 13:22, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

• Comment On reading some of the background to the WP:FOOD tagging issue that I have only been on the periphery of, I am made acutely aware that the problems were caused largely by poor communication, and by individual editors working at odds with the rest of the WikiProject. Although I have assisted User:Jerem43 in constructing the new F&D banner, I was not aware that its implementation had not been discussed with all involved projects, and do not condone his method of operation. The numerous issues with your bot, Tinucherian, have largley been caused by excessive haste and poor communication. In all things try to remember that there is no deadline - far better to take a little more time to get the initial configuration and input right, than risk spending hours or days repairing the damage you might have caused. Proper discussion and communication can solve the majority of on-wiki problems. So I would say that, while naturally no WikiProject requires the "permission" of another to tag articles, that is no reason to say that they should not be informed; if only because it creates a forum for better discussion. If someone had asked me about (and demonstrated a consensus for the idea of) multi-tagging all BEER articles with the F&D banner, I would have pointed out that, with a simple set of soft redirects, it would be possible to change the banners on every page without editing a single talkpage, saving substantial time, effort and system resources. This is not to say that I am critical of the method of editing talk pages to change banners, or of the need for bot runs to tag categories; merely that improved communication brings the ideas and proposals to the attention of people who might have useful contributions or suggestions to add; as such, it can never be a bad thing. Happy‑melon 14:13, 8 July 2008 (UTC)
• Motion - This entire discussion is a manifestation of a very complex issue, and is presented in a hopelessly biased and pointy manner. I think we should consider closing it under WP:SNOW and WP:POINT. – ClockworkSoul 14:37, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

  Agree. The issues raised here are not rooted in the placement of banners (with or without the use of bots), but rather in constructive communication between the Wikiprojects, or lack thereof. No one supports this proposal, not even the nominator (and yes it seems a bit WP:POINTy). It is unfortunate that bot owners have, in a way, unwillingly been made the instrument of a conflict at WP:FOOD that they did not cause, or where not even aware of. But I don't see how this proposal could in any way improve the situation. --B. Wolterding (talk) 14:50, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

  Agreed The projects talk pages cited are classic examples of how discussion on the internet go awry, and usually could have been resolved by slightly cooler heads not reacting to some wording, and reading into other statements aggression that isn't there. As for ownership of articles by projects, this is not the way to resolve the issues by pointing fingers and saying look what they've done. I also entirely agree with the pointy comment above. ^Khukri 14:58, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

  Please don't close discussion that you dont seem to agree to. Kindly Allow the discussion to continue. I am being WP:BOLD and reverted the closure -- TinuCherian ^{(Wanna Talk?)} - 15:20, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

  Per WP:SNOW , If an issue is "snowballed", and somebody later raises a reasonable objection, then it probably was not a good candidate for the snowball clause. Nevertheless, if the objection raised is unreasonable or contrary to policy, then the debate needs to be refocused, and editors may be advised to avoid disrupting Wikipedia to make a point. -- TinuCherian ^{(Wanna Talk?)} - 15:28, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

  It is not really appropriate, in my opinion, for the person who opened the discussion to be the counter to a SNOW closure; such counter should come from an independent party. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 15:32, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

  edit conflict with Tinucherian — Support Closure - I agree this is a very complex issue and comes to the point of how we define the parent/child relationship among wikiprojects. This relationship runs the gamut from 'coexist and ignore' to 'should be converted to a task force'. A single broad stroke decision here won't address the diverse application of this relationship. Rather, I would like to see the evolution of some "agreement" between a parent and child wikiprojects that helps to defuse issues like this by really spelling out the individual relationship, which may change over time and with membership changes. I don't think I am proposing more bureaucracy; rather proposing that some organization be given to the discussion of the relationship so that it can be referenced when interactions between parent and child meet with some friction and raising of hackles. In the worst case scenario one should be able to support a "divorce", frankly, with the option for re-establishing the relationship on new terms at a future date. In summary, this is an issue about inter-community dynamics as a whole, not an issue about talk page tagging with wikiproject banners. Tackle the core problem; don't nibble at the edge. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 15:29, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

  Endorse close a poll is a ridiculous forum for resolving such an issue. m:Voting is Evil. Happy‑melon 15:36, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes Ceyockey. You are right, It should be closed by a neutral party only. From the comments above by Clockwork, the discussion is not the way he wants to move and obviously closed the discussion. This is not primarly a ballot or vote but a discussion -- TinuCherian ^{(Wanna Talk?)} - 15:39, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

You characterize me incorrectly, sir. I don't really care who tags what, I just think it's a bad idea. Did I ever try to prevent anybody from tagging? ndash; ClockworkSoul 17:59, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

• Comment about WP:OWN and this thread — Several people have referred to the 'nobody owns a wikipedia page' argument in opposing the proposal. That is true, but it is practically applied to different levels of stringency to different page types. It holds true in iron-clad justice for articles, but much less so (in the sense of 'freedom to edit as one pleases' for pages in the Wikipedia and User spaces, for instance. Applicability to talk pages associated with articles has been less explored, and the guide of judging contributions to a talk page as 'contributing to the betterment of the article' has usually been the standard applied. Maybe one way forward -- assuming at this point that this thread will not be closed as I wish it would be -- is to applie the 'contributing to the betterment of the article' guide in judging the suitability of "uncontrolled" wikiproject branding of talk pages versus "controlled by parent" wikiproject branding. I am not suggesting this is the best way forward, but it is one way based on precedent, policy and guideline. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 17:58, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

• Comment I don't think that there's any chance of this discussion resolving as anything other than opposition to article OWNership by WikiProjects. WP:BEER does not have the right to declare that Beer is not within the scope of Food and Drink: No project gets to control the scope of any project other than its own. I support closing this discussion under WP:SNOW on the grounds that nobody is going to disagree with this principle. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:10, 8 July 2008 (UTC) (who points out that she "wrote the book" on the evils of overtagging).

  Comment - My problem with this discussion is illustrated here: nobody in BEER wants to change policy, and nobody in BEER is claiming ownership of anything. I want to make it very clear that this whole blood thing is just a very childish over-simplification. Will somebody PLEASE put this thing out of its misery? – ClockworkSoul 18:14, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

I disagree with your characterization, and I have read the relevant (and lengthy) discussions. See ClockworkSoul asking to have newly added F&D banners removed from BEER articles, for example. WP:BEER does not get to decide whether Food &Drink tags articles that are clearly within the scope of both F&D and BEER. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:42, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I did ask that, because I assumed it was an error for every single beer article to also have been tagged by food as part of the massive category tagging, because generally parents don't also tag all the articles that their children have tagged. It's redundant. I never said they can't. If they want to bloat themselves, that's their right. – ClockworkSoul 18:45, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

This discussion looks like it may have aggravated a situation that was approaching resolution. I'll admit to being very frustrated to what I feel is a misrepresentation/misinterpretation of my words and actions, and that I'm a little hurt that people seem to believe that I would be so petty as to claim ownership of articles for myself or for projects. We just don't want to be absorbed by FOOD is all. That's it. Really. – ClockworkSoul 18:50, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Then I think you will ultimately be pleased with the outcome of this discussion, since the principle cuts both ways: You can't demand the removal of {{WikiProject Food and drink}}, but they also can't force you to give up {{WikiProject Beer}}. Editors here have consistently and strongly supported the principle that (active) projects are independent from all other projects. Cheers, WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:09, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

"Independent" may be too strong a word to use as a principle. I do most of my editing through WP SCUBA which naturally falls within the scope of WP Swimming and I can see the value of contributors who have expertise in water-sports adding to content in collaboration with divers. That's an example of a relationship where one project may be contained within another. It also turns out that articles on Hyperbaric Medicine (that WP SCUBA is concerned with) also fall under WP Medicine - a simple overlap of interest which frequently leads to expertise from both fields being available to improve an article. So, I believe that it is generally helpful to have relationships between projects, even informally. IMVHO, I'd rather see multiple Project-tags applied to an article than just one. I'm all for getting contributions from as many fields of expertise as possible, YMMV --RexxS (talk) 19:40, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

• Comment - the thing that annoyed me when this was done to all WikiProject Wine articles was not that the tags were being placed, but that they were placed above all existing tags. It's common sense that the most relevant Project tag should be first. For an extreme example of inappropriate tag placement, see Talk:Thresher_shark - there is no way the WPJ Food tag should be first, above the shark project, even! Any mass bot-tagging should default to placing tags last, then they can be manually bumped up as needed. Now we face the task of going through hundreds of WPJ Wine articles and fixing this. - Merzbow (talk) 21:59, 8 July 2008 (UTC)
• Comment - Personally, I believe the best way to go might be as follows.

  It does, at least to me, make sense that a parent project would at least have knowledge of articles relating to its descendant projects. The articles relevant to the descendant projects will often to a degree me relevant not only directly to the "descendant" project, but might also contain information which is not directly related to that descendant, but might be relevant to the parent.

  Also, as we all know, it can be and is the case that descendant projects are occasionally "merged" one way or another into a parent project. By tagging the article in advance, it makes it less work when the time comes, if it does, to replace that descendant project's banner with the parent's.

  The best alternatives I can think of are to either adjust the parent project's banner to include a drop-down tab, like that on the Australia WikiProject banner at Talk:Sydney, indicating that the article falls not only within the scope of the parent project, but also any scion projects, with separate assessments for each. Alternately, it might be possible to adjust the banner of the "descendant" project to include automatic assessments for the parent as well. On this basis, I can't myself personally object to the placement of the banner per se, although I acknowledge the location of the banner relative to others might raise some eyebrows in some cases. However, given the overlap of these related projects, I do think that it might make sense to try to arrange one or the other option above in advance, before tagging, so as to make such complaints less likely in the future. John Carter (talk) 22:32, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

  With descendant WikiProjects, the approach used by WP:Australia that John Carter cites is probably the best. Where projects are not direct descendants but simply have a lot of articles in common, as with the Beer/Food and Drink, then it may be polite to inform the other project that a mass tagging is about to happen - but I would strongly oppose making such things mandatory. However, if you're about to combine the main talk page template of another WikiProject with yours, you must inform them, surely? Walkerma (talk) 04:40, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

  I just want to interject here for a second - does the Project Council have any jurisdiction in these matters anyway, can it actually change the way articles are tagged? And if it does, isnt that exactly what we're trying to avoid, one project being mroe important the the others? Taifarious1 04:05, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

The real question: How far does a project's scope extend?

The prior approval tagging question above was worded to get the response it did. A more pertinent question would be - "How far does a project's scope extend?" Is there a point at which a project's useful control over an article diminishes - and if so, where is that point reached? Could WikiProject Medicine decide that as Food & Drink is nutritional and the basis for medicines, they could tag Food & Drink and carry on down to Beer?

It is positive when projects overlap. But what is of concern here is not overlapping as over-reaching. I feel it would be helpful to all projects if there was an awareness of the potential limits of their scope so that over-reaching doesn't occur. Even though beer is made from water I don't think it would be appropriate for the Beer Project to tag everything in Category:Water. Even though beer is made from grain, it would be inappropriate for the Beer project to tag all articles in Category:Grains, etc. While it would usually be down to the project members themselves to decide the limits of their scope, it would come down to the council to advise on scope when clashes occur, such as the current issue of Food & Drink tagging brewery articles. SilkTork *^YES! 22:28, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

In general, whether it's what you want to hear or not, a project's scope is whatever the project says it is. In general, I think it is generally stated that the scope of the project is a given category and its subcategories, in this case the Category:Food and drink and its subcategories, sub-subcategories, etc. Sometimes doing so gets categories which frankly don't really belong as subcats of another category removed, which is fine. At other times, it creates problems. For what it's worth, breweries are relevant to food and drink as they are food and drink makers, the food and drink in question being beer. Some of the other articles and categories, like [{Wrigley Field]], are a bit harder to explain, although they do clearly sell food and drink there. If Category:Water were a subcat of Category:Beer, it probably would in the eyes of some make sense to contain the articles contained therein. And, really, the WikiProject Council isn't a formal body which really can make decisions for others, although it can be a place to discuss such matters. As I said above, though, it might be easier to adjust the Beer banner to include assessments for the Food and drink banner in it, and maybe (note I said maybe) adjusting the phrasing of the project banner as well. I've recently adjusted the Template:Project Catholicism and the banners for the other Christianity projects to provide assessments for WikiProject Christianity as well, as an example. That might be one alternative here. John Carter (talk) 22:38, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

John Carter is right. Only the WikiProject itself can define its scope. We are not in the business of forcing any project to work on articles that they reject, or to ignore articles that they want to work on. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:15, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Comment - the Scramble for Articles

The issue of tagging has come up on a number of articles that The Bird Wikiproject has worked on. Bots and the like working for Country wikiprojects will frequently tag bird articles (and those of other animals) solely on the basis of the distribution of that bird falling in that country. Or, in some cases, having occured there once or twice (vagrancy)! Or the tag is flat out wrong (I once saw Landlocked Laos claiming a marine turtle!). Personally I don't see how this is a valid use of tags; it seems fair enough if the species is endemic to a country (like the Silktail is to Fiji) or if the animal in question is iconic or a national symbol (see Bald Eagle or Kiwi). It becomes faintly ridiculous with species like Cattle Egrets or House Sparrows which occur across most of the globe (before I removed them there was about 10 country projects claiming Cattle Egret). The purposes of tags is to advertise to likely interested editors about collaboration groups, how are the projects that actually work on the articles actually going to get noticed if there are dozens of tags or worse their tag is hidden in one of theose godawful shells? It seems that a species simply occurring in a country hardly makes it under the scope of that Wikiproject - are countries going to claim the articles sand, road, car and mountain because those also occur in the countries? Sabine's Sunbird talk 22:44, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

In cases like the one you mentioned, I think there was previous discussion indicating that it might be reasonable to place the tags of the marginally relevant projects in a banner shell, while leaving those which have a stronger interest in the article outside the shell. Having myself done some such bird tagging for nations, the reasoning in so doing is to, basically, find content for extant and possible portals. A lot of countries have had portals made for them by enthusiastic editors, only to find that much of the directly relevant content wasn't, well, very good. In such cases, a good bird article might be one of the few good articles relevant, and it might easily be included in the portal. I do think that in most of those cases using either the {{WikiProjectBanners}} or {{WikiProjectBannerShell}} to house those templates would encounter few if any objections. John Carter (talk) 23:01, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

That has been the solution we've used. I have to admit that it is also kind of galling to see others claim credit for the work you or your project has done (and I must confess that I get irked when my project tries the same), but is seems so much more blatant when Wikiproject Indonesia claims Northern Pintail - the wretched duck doesn't even occur there according to the article! Sabine's Sunbird talk 23:46, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

"Claim credit for"? That's not what a project banner represents. Banners mean two things: (1) This article is within our scope [and if it's really not, it should be declared to be a mistake and removed] and (2) We're willing to support the future work on this article (so come ask for help if you need with it). We have also tied WP:1.0 assessment to banners, but that's mostly for the convenience of the 1.0 team, so they don't have to do all the work themselves. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:18, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

What things are meant for and how they are used are two different things. Anecdotally it has been observed that there is an uptick in projects tagging articles once they've been promoted. But I'm not suggesting that all Wikiprojects do this, just...some. At any rate, my main beef was more to do with the swamping effect on ubiquitous species (like the Cattle Egret). And how you define scope - what does a duck really have to do with a country (particularly a country it doesn't even occur in)? Should Wikipedia:WikiProject London be able to tag it too, since they winter in the Thames? How about Wikiproject Belfast? Sabine's Sunbird talk 05:29, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

If the project says that it's within their scope, then it is. If it was tagged by a bot or as part of a massive tagging run, and seems unlikely to you, then just remove the tag. It probably won't reappear. If it does get replaced, then you have a conversation to establish consensus. It's not really very difficult. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:16, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Generally, articles get tagged either on the basis of being included in a subcat of the project's main cat and/or being included on a relevant list, like maybe List of birds of New Zealand. That being the case, if there are objections to too many banners, maybe questioning the inclusion of the article in the category or list might be relevant. John Carter (talk) 21:22, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Proposal 1.x & Some Comments

• I was asked to come here, so I came. I think that as Wikiproject council members, we are concerned on how to help the Wikiprojects reach their goals; for the most part, they seem to be working or flowing rather well. As it is natural there are some issues pending. Wikipedia is a system, and itself is a project and so it is the "mother of all Wikiprojects". So my proposal should be stated primarily as a suggestion no more than that. Here find it below in the following lines:

1. Project statement: To create a graphical, navigational, and taxonomic hierarchical representation of all Wikiprojects, highly extensible, easy to inspect, understand and interact with. Thus, the members of the Wikiproject council, and other users as well, could determine which Wikiprojects should be tagged or not and more importantly could facilitate the work flow of the Wikiprojects.
2. "Terms" or entries or articles are already partially belong to this system, e.g., Colombia has its Wikiproject but it is part of the Latin-American Wikiproject, and son on other countries or continents. There is a jurisdictional hierarchy in all this, and by classifying the complexity; many rework, waste and redundancy can be dramatically reduced by simply mapping those "pipes" or connections within all Wikiprojects for determining what belongs to what Wikiproject. For subjects such a Hard Sciences, I do not see too much of a problem, but Social or Soft-Sciences, can be a little bit more complicated or tricky, including political, religious and other controversial subjects. Anyways, we are doing it already with the categories and navigational boxes. Perhaps it is time to consider using something like it for the Wikiprojects to see the inter-dependencies, overlapping and co-dependencies of the subjects in question and in the context of their contents.
3. Perhaps evenly the scope of what a Wikiproject should be and how they are built or organized should be redefined a little bit too. SMEs [Subject Matter Experts] are sometimes too close into one or other side of the topic. Precisely they sometimes represent an impingement that could increase significantly the encyclopedic workload. A Wikiproject Work flow gets better when they are users genuinely interested in learning from all POVs. Incidentally, an encyclopedic knowledge has more to do with integration than with specialization. Project Managers, for instance, in NASA or other technology-based organizations, are mostly generalists as they are in charge of the project portfolio management, as the engineers or Business analysts or 'c' level executives are not. We should consider this a little more, I noticed certain individuals that become very or extraordinary attached, possessive and territorial about an article and this has naturally discouraged a number of academic and important users. It seems that for some human condition mostly gangs-alike groups are formed, sometimes sponsored by organizations as it was already discovered by the Wikiscanner more than a year ago. So they are exo-patrolling the Wikiprojects and content, precisely because their are getting paid for doing so, i.e., representing the special interests of their institutions or patrons. So they end up monopolizing and making all the decisions of projects sometimes, according to their views and needs thereof. I do not see anything wrong in it only that is not encyclopedic or evenly Wikipedic, let alone fair.
4. Lastly, Wikiprojects, could be understood as the set of pages, interested organizations and individuals, time and other resources that are consumed to managed one or more related topics about a specific area of knowledge. In case of the subordination or sub-categorization, Wikiprojects could use a taxonomic object orientation to determine classes and subclasses as stated above.
5. In closing, I think that this conversation is very important. I understand as well that Wikipedia has reached high levels of knowledge organization already; this is difficult to improve. Perhaps, we all could recognize that what we, all, are looking at, in here, I should state in IMHO, is how to increase or improve the maturity level of our Wikiprojects capabilities. Now, no question, we will do it, but before we need to refocus on how we will do some tuning and re-sharpening in/for every Wikilife-cycle, meaning it is a continuum, this is the WikiWay, I guess. Well, perhaps somebody will follow up with this, just let me know, if you can. However, Wikipedia is great! Good spirits, I would like to write for you, what Victor Hugo told Grant, "The stars are yours", I really think so. John M. Kennedy T. 00:53, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

WP 1.0 Assessment Categories creation with bot

Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/TinucherianBot 4 and Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#Wikipedia:Bots.2FRequests_for_approval.2FTinucherianBot_4 . FYI.. I guess this will make our work easier in WP 1.0 Assessment Categories creation with the bot. -- Tinu Cherian - 05:12, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

WikiProject notification bot

There is currently a proposal for a bot that would notify WikiProjects when their articles have entered certain workflows, e.g. when they are nominated for deletion or for Good article reassessment.

The request comes from WP:PHYSICS. I would be willing to try an implementation; but for only one WikiProject, it probably wouldn't be worth the while. Are any other WikiProjects interested in such a notification bot? You can find details of the functionality, and leave your comments, at at the bot request page. Thanks, --B. Wolterding (talk) 18:32, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Userpage Wikiprojects

I just created an article for SoldierCity, an online military merchandise company for which I am the marketing manager. Here is the article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Princessgwen_77/New_article

The company provides a great deal of valuable goods, including official military awards and memorabilia for veterans going back to WWII. In addition, we donate to reunions and other military events.

I am hoping that someone will help me submit this so it appears in the article space.```` —Preceding unsigned comment added by Princessgwen 77 (talk • contribs) 21:16, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

I saw on the simple english wikipedia that you are allowed to make User:Example/Wikiproject Example on there. Can you do that on the regular english WikiPedia? --Robbie (talk) 22:54, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Not sure what you mean. If you're asking whether we can place project pages in userspace, like for instance User:John Carter/WikiProject Foo, certainly. But in general projects are placed in the "wikipedia" space here, like Wikipedia:WikiProject Cape Verde. Here, we generally place new projects on the Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals page, to see if there is enough interest in them to make starting it worthwhile. We do often place proposals which haven't yet gotten enough members to formally start at addresses like you mentioned until they've "officially" started, like some of those on the Proposals page linked to above. John Carter (talk) 23:22, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

You answered part of my question. The other part is do I have to do a proposal to make a WikiProject subpage on my userpage such as User:Robbie0513/WikiProject? —Preceding comment was added at 01:37, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

WikiProject banner templates

I remember some time ago I complained about the inconsistent naming of WikiProject banner templates and asked that all of them at least have a redirect from the name "Template:WikiProject <insert name>". For some reason this doesn't seem to be showing up in the archives for me, but I have just had another case with Template:WikiProject Fish, which I had to create because it was red. I thought something would have been done about this by now - I recall there was a long discussion about exactly how we should fix the problem, but I don't remember what became of it. Anyone know what I'm talking about? Richard001 (talk) 03:56, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

I do remember this discussion, and if I remember correctly a number of redirects were created, but we were help back for some technical reason. I could be wrong, of course. Well, at least we do now have a complete list of wikiprojects and their respective banner templates with redirects. – ClockworkSoul 05:02, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

By the way, the template you were looking for might be {{WikiProject Fishes}}. – ClockworkSoul 05:05, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

While we're at it: Some time ago, Happy-Melon made a proposal for standardizing the template names, what has become of that? --B. Wolterding (talk) 13:59, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

The template you were looking for might be {{WikiProject Fishes}}

That would be the one. I created it myself too. Oh well, another redirect won't hurt. Richard001 (talk) 01:41, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Uncategorized wikiprojects: a list

(Cross-posted from Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Council/Directory)

Hello all. During the last update of the source data I use for Igor, I found about 189 projects that have not yet been assigned a position on the directory. I was hoping that if anybody had any time, they could help me determine whether they belong in the directory, and if so to place them? Many thanks! – ClockworkSoul 04:41, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

I've started a rough draft at User:John Carter/Directory, but haven't yet finished it. My hope is to eventually substitute the pages there into the main directory. I hope at least some of them are included there. If they aren't, I'll try to work on it either tomorrow or Monday. I generally try to be a lazy, worthless slug on Sunday for some reason. John Carter (talk) 21:24, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Are we going to have a synchronization problem here? If you're adding listings in your userspace, and everyone else is adding listings in the Wikispace, then how do we get things properly merged? Should we just have you do it all? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:43, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

No, anyone is welcome to add to the pages in userspace, and I would welcome that actually, as I've tended to have other things come up. Those pages are set up according to the existing main categories of wikipedia, which the current directory isn't. I have been ensuring that before moving any of the pages from that directory into main space that all the content on those existing pages is included, and will doubtless continue to do so, but previous discussion indicated we should where possible try to keep the directory compatible with the rest of wikipedia's organizational structure. To date, I basically finished the geography pages, which I figured would be hardest. The ones that remain in userspace are the ones I haven't finished yet. John Carter (talk) 17:57, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Updated

I just rebuilt the list, which has actually grown in size a bit. I then listed 44 projects, mostly music- and India-related projects. – ClockworkSoul 02:29, 21 July 2008 (UTC) 44

Updated again based on the newest version of the project list: 129 projects total are not categorized, out of a total of 2183 projects (including task forces), for a uncategorization percentage of 5.9%. – ClockworkSoul 19:38, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

A new WikiProject Metabanner template in the works

As this template is not working as it should and is not getting fixed in the foreseeable future, I am working on a new one which will be far simpler to set up and use. It needs extensive testing of the current features. This template will use only the standard categories and links to subpages to start standardizing WikiProjects as well. The only thing missing from the template I am writing is task forces. (I am still trying to think of a way to keep that as simple as possible.) So if there are any projects out there that want to keep it simple, please see the test banner template to run the tests. Thank you. - LA (T) 21:26, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

As I've said indirectly on Template talk:WPBannerMeta, it seems Lady Aleena is not blessed with precognition :D! While I applaud all efforts to make the use and development of WikiProject banners easier, you do need to be careful not to reinvent the wheel, LA. Happy‑melon 21:33, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

As an aside, to help Richard001 with the discussion above, I might be able to add something that will check the name where the template is transcluded and come back with an error if the template is misnamed. I will have to think on it. - LA (T) 21:29, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

If you can manage that (that is, check whether the template is named "Template: WikiProject XXX") I'd be interested to hear how, and delighted to learn that it is in fact possible. Happy‑melon 21:33, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

It'll be fairly trivial if/when mw:Extension:StringFunctions is enabled, but it is indeed impossible at the moment, since there's no function which can perform a comparison against a substring of the page name. Kirill ^(prof) 00:47, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

The best that's possible is an #ifexist: check on Template:WikiProject PROJECT, which is what LA has done, but this is not really very helpful: it will be placated by redirects, thrown by unusual project names, and currently displays a warning message on every article talk page. I can imagine the fireworks that would ensue if every BLP talk page on en.wiki suddenly asked editors to move {{WPBiography}} to Template:WikiProject Biography. Happy‑melon 13:28, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

WPBannerMeta is working quite well on the projects with simple templates. I've converted quite a few over to use it. -- WOSlinker (talk) 09:28, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Wow, it's been a while since I checked that category - fantastic job, WOS!! Happy‑melon 10:45, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Okay, take the new banner out for a spin and tell me what you think. I added something that may give notice the template is in the wrong place. And another goodie. - LA (T) 07:44, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

The "This article is within the scope..." part should be changed so that it it doesn't just say article all the time. Something like {{#switch:{{NAMESPACE}}|Wikipedia talk=project page|Image talk=image|Template talk=template|Help talk=help page|Portal talk=portal page|Category talk=category|#default=article}} would do it. -- WOSlinker (talk) 12:33, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

 Done I fixed it. - LA (T) 23:35, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

I really don't want to come across as attacking this template, since as the primary maintainer of {{WPBannerMeta}} I have a very visible CoI, but I really must ask: what is the purpose of this template? What problem is it trying to solve, what advantages does it have over existing solutions? It strikes me as being very limited in the range of functionality on offer, and (more seriously) the range of functionality that can be disabled. Code bulk and efficiency are also issues. While I don't want to disparage the enormous amount of work that LA has clearly put into this template, I am failing to locate the niche it is intended to fill. Happy‑melon 13:39, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

I'd have to agree that WPBannerMeta is the better way to go. Just look at {{WPFOOD}} for a good example of it's implementation. WPBannerMeta has a lot of options (which makes it look complicated) but that's actually a good thing as when converting over exisiting project banners to use the template, those options can come in useful. Rather than developing up yet another version of a project banner template (see {{WkP X}} for one of those), wouldn't it be better to try and improve WPBannerMeta which is already doing it's job? There are a couple of things that could be added to WPBannerMeta to make it even better. Firstly, (just a minor one) would be the option for an IMAGE_RIGHT. While converting a few banners over, I noticed a few with two images in them and had to put the second one in as part of the MAIN_TEXT parameter rather than specifying it separately. Secondly, an option to auto-classify based on {{NAMESPACE}}, would be good so when adding the banner on a template, image or cateogry talk page, there wouldn't be any need to include class=template|importance=NA for example. -- WOSlinker (talk) 15:32, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

As you can guess from the name of |IMAGE_LEFT=, an imageright parameter was always intended. I've just set up a todo list on Template talk:WPBannerMeta, so if you have any other feature requests, throw them in there. Happy‑melon 16:15, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

To show you the difference between the templates, please compare the usages.

{{WPBannerMeta}}

{{the new banner}}

|PROJECT = |BANNER_NAME = {{subst:FULLPAGENAME}} |small={{{small|}}} |nested={{{nested|}}} |IMAGE_LEFT = |IMAGE_LEFT_SMALL = |IMAGE_LEFT_LARGE = |QUALITY_SCALE = |class={{{class|}}} |FULL_QUALITY_SCALE = |IMPORTANCE_SCALE = |importance={{{importance|}}} |ASSESSMENT_CAT = |ASSESSMENT_LINK = |MAIN_TEXT = |MAIN_ARTICLE = |PORTAL = |PORTAL_IMG = |MAIN_CAT = |ATTENTION = |attention={{{attention|}}} |ATTENTION_CAT = |INFOBOX = |infobox={{{needs-infobox|}}} |INFOBOX_CAT = |COMMENTS = |COMMENT_CAT = |COMMENT_FORCE = |PEER_REVIEW = |peer review={{{**PARAMETER**|}}} |old peer review={{{**PARAMETER**|}}} |PR_LINK = |PR_CAT = |PR_OLD_CAT = All usage that this banner has for items the one I am writing does not cover are not included.

|project= |image= |image size= |italic=

Now, the one I am writing does everything automatically.

1. When it is placed on a non-article page, it will automatically assess the page by the subject space. So, if the template is placed on a category's talk page, the banner will automatically assess the page and put it in the proper category (Category:Category-Class <Project> articles). It will even detect if it is on a user page and let everyone visiting know that the person is a participant of the project.
2. The template has in place the following 4 common article problems and will categorize them accordingly:
   1. attention which might be expanded for problems such as COI, OR, or POV issues.
   2. needs image
   3. needs infobox
   4. needs navbox
3. If the page has comments and/or peer reviews, the new template will find them and bring up a notice and categorize them appropriately.
4. The template does not use upper case or punctuation in its parameter names for simplicity.
5. Red links will appear if a page or category is misnamed. (The name of the project is always capitalized.)
6. If the template detects that Template:WikiProject <Project> does not exist, it will bring up a notice saying that the template should be placed there.

There are still some areas which the one I am writing does not cover, yet.

1. Task forces
2. Project specific needs (ie. for WikiProject Films there are cast and crew lists)

The one I am writing will be simple in set up and use as long as the WikiProject has everything named correctly and the values are input correctly for the parameters. I just need the current features tested so that they can be tweaked before going onto the things that are still missing. - LA (T) 23:29, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

I think you will need to pass over a few more parameters to get your template to work, otherwise how do things like class get passed through from the project template to the base template? -- WOSlinker (talk) 07:06, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

{{Lady Aleena banner}}

|project= |image= |image size= |italic= |small={{{small|}}} |nested={{{nested|}}} |class={{{class|}}} |importance={{{importance|}}} |attention={{{attention|}}} |needs image={{{needs image|}}} |needs infobox={{{needs infobox|}}} |needs navbox={{{needs navbox|}}}

 Done with my deepest appreciation. All user input fields have been included on the doc page. - LA (T) 08:44, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

My issue is not that ideas like this are not good ones - I have just added class-sorting-by-namespace to {{WPBannerMeta}}, because it is a very good idea - but rather that, because a template that serves as a banner metatemplate has already been developed, 95% of what you've spent the past few days slaving over is just reinventing the wheel. In just a few edits time you're going to realise, as I did, that the banner you've created uses different categories for the "needs attention/infobox/image/navbox" notes to those used by the majority of WikiProjects (most use Category:PROJECT articles needing attention etc). You can't change the syntax after the banner has been deployed, so you'll need to add a parameter to override the default category - it doesn't matter what you call it, you've just reinvented |ATTENTION_CAT= and |INFOBOX_CAT=. There are a huge number of little things like this that you think are unnecessary, but everything in WPBannerMeta is there for a reason, and I suspect any fully-functional banner metatemplate is going to be similar enough to the existing one to make developing an alternative fairly pointless.

You're also making a huge mistake (again, one that I made - see this discussion at WP:IRELAND) if you think that the way forward is just to require projects to rename categories, banners, assessment pages, etc, to make them comply with the syntax of your banner. WikiProject are square, and very definitely do not like being hammered into round holes. A large number of WPBannerMeta parameters are there to accomodate the quirks and idiosyncracies of individual projects, and you cannot afford to ignore these. At best, this banner with its inviolate syntax will be usable by the minority of WikiProjects which use exactly the functionality provided (no more, no less) and have entirely consistent syntax. If you try to force any projects to change their infrastructure to accomodate an inflexible template, however, you are likely to be shot down in flames. Happy‑melon 10:51, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Happy-melon, I just thought of something we both could use in our templates.

If there are comments and multiple banners are on the talk page and nested in either Template:WikiProjectBannerShell or Template:WikiProjectBanners, what do you think of having those two templates showing the comments instead of our templates showing the same comments repetitively? We could have a bit of code like the following.

{{#ifeq:{{{nested|}}}|yes|<just the WikiProject's category and maybe a little note to see above/below>|<the normal code for showing the comments>}}

What do you think? - LA (T) 17:22, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

You mean the comments that are found at a /Comments subpage? Interesting idea (possible now that I've copied the code from {{WPBS}} to {{WPB}} so they both display comments). I'll have to have a think - WPBS and WPB don't actually display the comments like most project banners do, they just display a link to the comment subpage. Happy‑melon 19:30, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, yes, the comments at the /Comments pages. One of us You could change the links on Template:WikiProjectBannerShell and Template:WikiProjectBanners to a drop down table and here is the starter code.

{{#ifexist:{{FULLPAGENAME}}/Comments|
{{!}}-
{{!}}
{{{!}}class="collapsible collapse" style="width:100%;background:transparent;"
!style="text-align:left;font-size:95%;background:#f5deb3;"{{!}}Assessment comments
{{!}}-
{{!}}style="border:1px solid #c0c090;background:#fff;"{{!}}{{{{FULLPAGENAME}}/Comments}}
{{!}}}
}}

Or something like that. :) - LA (T) 21:06, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

A late comment, for the record. I have to concur strongly that this new template is wheel-reinvention. It would be far better for the two template authors to collaborate (for my part, I too was working on one, just before WPBannerMeta launched, and abandoned it, and am now taking my ideas to that one instead). The simplest solution to the current redundancy (which is going to be worse the longer it goes on due to the category name mismatches!) is, I think, to simply replace the new one with a call to WPBannerMeta that only uses the "basic" features desired in the new one. No TfD or anthing. Just pass the values through. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 06:54, 10 September 2008 (UTC)