Wikipedia:WikiProject community rehabilitation/Idea/Reactivate inactive Wikiprojects

Quite a number of official WikiProjects are either dead or only slightly active, which is a shame. What does everyone think about having a bot like SuggestBot (talk · contribs) go around to users who have edited topics related to a given inactive Wikiproject in an attempt to revive it? –Juliancolton | ^Talk 03:45, 9 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with this. Reyk _YO! 23:28, 9 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. No, I don't think spamming users based on their editing habits is a good idea. —gorgan_almighty (talk) 16:40, 10 November 2009 (UTC)Oppose[reply]
Try it and see. It's not "spamming" if the WikiProjects are related to the users' interests. SuggestBot is a good model for this. Fences&Windows 21:34, 10 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support. A lot of WikiProjects are dying off. This may help reinvorgate them and lead to more collaboration. Kaldari (talk) 16:58, 11 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. We don't know what the editing landscape is like in the community the WP served, a revival of the WP needs to come from within the community itself. We can't prop up dead or dying WPs, and let's face it - some WPs die for a reason. Plus I cringed at seeing the bot suggestion - if we really want to shape this project to be different from Esperanza, I would rely on bots as little as humanly possible. They do extremely little for the community, and are a PR disaster. —what a crazy random happenstance 04:51, 17 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I can definitely see if not necessarily reviving dead projects, maybe proposing a collaboration to bring the more important poor quality articles relevant to that project up to a decent quality standard. We can also with luck maybe make it a bit easier to merge some less active projects into a larger relevant project. But, if any of you are interested in giving something like this a go, Wikipedia:WikiProject Jainism I know just got tagged as semi-active, and we could maybe use it as a test case to see if such things might work. It has a rather small, rather abstruse subject area, so there might not be that many people who feel able to contribute usefully, but it's at least an option. John Carter (talk) 22:16, 27 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
How about a welcome template that ends with PS I see you edit x - you might like to checkout wikiproject x? I sometimes do this manually when I welcome newbies. Though I don't check how live the project is - but I figure that all newbies deserve to be told that projects exist, if they've only edited a footballer because they were going out with a fan they can go off and find a project that does interest them. Ϣere SpielChequers 16:46, 28 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

There are a few WikiProjects that already do that, and I find it very helpful (WP:WPTC and WP:HWY to name a couple). I think it would be an excellent idea to create similar templates for all major projects. –Juliancolton | ^Talk 16:54, 28 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]