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Merging projects - Fringe

The following discussion 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.

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There are a number of inactive or mostly inactive wikiprojects with overlapping areas, which are all related to fringe views. Since the projects are mostly inactive, messages only get responded to infrequently, and most of the projects are in disarray. My proposal is that they all be merged into one wikiproject with different task forces so that we can try and kick some life into a Wikiproject in this area.

Projects:

• Astrology (basically dead)
• Parapsychology (only 1 member)
• Paranormal (not very active)
• Alternative views (not very active)
• Skepticism (not very active)
• Alternative medicine (not very active, basically dead)
• Homeopathy (dead)
• Creationism (not very active)
• Cryptozoology (not very active)
• Pseudoscience (dead)
• Occult (redundant with respect to wikiproject paranormal, not very active)
• NLP (dead)

One way of doing this could be to create, say, Wikipedia:WikiProject_Fringe and have 5 or 6 task forces (based on merging in the wikiprojects), such as:

• Cryptozoology
• Skepticism
• Alt Med
• Astrology
• Creationism
• Paranormal (Occult and Parapsychology here as well)

Thoughts? IRWolfie- (talk) 19:37, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

This sounds like a fairly solid plan to me. Not 100% on naming it Fringe, though I have no better suggestion at the moment. Samwalton9 (talk) 19:56, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

I like the idea too, but can't come up with a better name than Fringe (I think it's fine that way). -Ugog Nizdast (talk) 20:31, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

Just saw this. Great idea to make a number of dead or dying projects productive again. "Fringe" is an unmistakably accurate description for these topics within the context of Wikipedia, although I can understand that some enthusiasts might feel the term is pejorative and would prefer something that hints at respectability such as "frontier", "controversial", "borderline" or "alternative". Maybe "unconventional" or "unorthodox" might work, but you can't beat "fringe" for simplicity and clarity. - LuckyLouie (talk) 20:35, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, I approve of a merge, but I'm wondering what name will be acceptable to all - I can see it bringing advocates out of the woodwork if they consider calling their topic "fringe" demeaning (and astrology is, of course, hugely popular in the world). OTOH, then they might actually work on stuff - David Gerard (talk) 21:16, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

I could support this, but Fringe doesn't cut it for me. It's not demeaning, it's not anything at all, and conveys no information as to the scope of the project. It's all right as an adjective, but I think we need a noun or two to go with it. Fringe Science and Religion? Fiddlersmouth (talk) 22:00, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

I expect that people who believe in/support these things would consider fringe to be a demeaning description. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:37, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

I'd suggest we ask a wikiproject on religion to take on creationism - it's a bit of an odd one out in that lot. The rest is sort of "skeptics' interest", which is a terrible name and arguably POV-assuming. Gah, naming is going to be the very hard bit of this excellent idea - David Gerard (talk) 22:41, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

Agree that Creation science might fit this idea specifically, but not Creationism in general. - LuckyLouie (talk) 22:59, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

As a pseudoscientific topic I'd argue that creationism is still within skeptics' interest. Samwalton9 (talk) 23:07, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

This is sort of cart-before-the-horse. A WikiProject is a group of people. It is not pages or subject matter. Do you have groups of people that actually want to merge? Merging WikiProjects is like merging groups of students who like to eat lunch together. You don't just shove a couple of pages (or lunch tables) together and have everyone suddenly working (or eating) together. The usual result is that most of them simply leave.

You should not create pages for a new group without having an actual group of people who want to use them. You may not merge any existing groups' pages into any other group without first consulting them and getting their agreement to participate in the new group. If you want to do this, then you need to go leave messages at all of the talk pages to propose a voluntary merge. No other type of merge is permitted (or feasible in practice, due to offended people simply leaving if you try to force them into a group that they don't want to join). WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:37, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

I recommend that inactive and semi-active WikiProjects be left as they are (unmerged), but that a new WikiProject (Wikipedia:WikiProject neglected WikiProjects) be formed for the benefit of editors who wish to give attention to the articles affected.

—Wavelength (talk) 01:02, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

I support an inactive and neglected wikiprojects wikiproject idea, but I don't think that should be a bar to mergers, properly advertised. -- 70.24.244.158 (talk) 04:16, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

" If you want to do this, then you need to go leave messages at all of the talk pages to propose a voluntary merge." That's what this page is, I'm using it as a location for a centralised discussion between any people left in any of the wikiprojects. I've already messaged each wikiproject. IRWolfie- (talk) 09:12, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

What ever way we group them, we still need an 'overall project' to cover at least most of these topics. They will probably remain inactive even in small groups. Moreover, as mentioned in the start, an overall project will solve the main problem of messages being replied and better collaboration. As a WP Skept member I support it; still lets see if other project members don't, just like in the group of students analogy. -Ugog Nizdast (talk) 13:14, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

I would say that "astrology" TF should be "astrology and geomancy" ; and that cryptozoology, UFOlogy and paranormal can be one TF; and "Creationism" should be "Creationism and intelligent design"; and a "conspiracy theories" TF should exist (possibly for the secret societies WPP) -- 70.24.244.158 (talk) 04:16, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

That's not a bad approach. I'd certainly say that cryptozoology, UFOlogy and paranormal would all be present as a Paranormal Conference, so people who get along tend to go to them. Skepticism is pretty broad and has conferences encompassing a wide range of these interests, so the people who get along and might want to work together would fit well under Skepticism, say. In many ways, it's good to have a Project to find other editors to review some of the larger pages and edits for structure or grammar or for things like Good Article status. (I actually joined WP:Skepticism after reviewing an article for GA, but it was one of the subjects I was already interested in and knew a bit about). I think it has to focus on the chances of working as a team, though clearly major edits will have to be individual work. It's helpful to ask others if they have sources that you don't have to add other content you've heard of but can't cite. Being part of the same Community in other realms will probably help.Dynamicimanyd (talk) 06:01, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

I recently responded to a comment on the astrology project talk page, so caught this notice because that page got added to my watchlist. Going to the project page, I almost didn't bother to read the notice because the header simply says "Merge proposal", which sounds like a suggestion to merge one project page into another. Would it be possible for the proposer to make his notice to the projects more explicit, because there might be more response from members of those groups if they realize the proposal concerns the future of their project, and not just the prospect of merging one of their pages into another. I am not a member of any of these projects, but would consider becoming a member of one or two of them if there was some evidence of collaborative efforts being planned or scheduled. Currently, they look like a projects that are being wound down or neglected, which doesn't stimulate enthusiasm to get involved Tento2 (talk) 14:47, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

I would maybe, broadly, support such a merge, with a few caveats. One, I tend to think WikiProject Occult is in some ways not directly related to paranormal, as the occult has a fairly strong history of being a form of alternative religiosity, which might not make it so easy to merge with others. That being the case, maybe merging that and Creationism into Religion might work better. I also note that there are at least a few fairly well regarded reference books on astrology and the occult, separately, which makes them at least a bit more historically significant than the others. I would also really, really, have reservations about the proposed name of the parent group, which I think would almost certainly be a very pronounced nail in the group's coffin from the word go. Most of those interested in these topics do not really think of themselves as "fringe". I could see a name like WikiProject Science and Religion (if all the topics involved relate, and I don't know that they do) or maybe WikiProject Alternative Science for some, merging some of the others into WikiProject Alternative Views and maybe making a third for WikiProject Popular beliefs, which might include astrology and a lot of the "New Age" type stuff. Actually, a parent WikiProject New Age for some of these might not be bad either. But I really, really, have reservations about using a name like WikiProject Fringe or anything similar. John Carter (talk) 15:26, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

I occasionally watch the AltMed group, although I don't consider myself a member. IMO it would be okay to merge the Homeopathy, Mind–Body, and the proposed Traditional Medicine group into that one. But I don't think that it is a good idea to put it in a group with Astrology, Occult, or other basically religious groups. I don't believe that there would be enough common interest to build functional conversations. If that happened, I would probably take it off my watchlist. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:23, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

I like that suggestion, the name Alternative views/Popular beliefs sounds good and non-controversial; a single overall project combining the projects like Occult, Paranormal etc mentioned above would work I think. Project Skepticism and Pseudoscience (there's already a redirect) can obviously be combined, Creation can be excluded and go to religion (Not that familiar with this topic so not sure) and each of these can have their respective task forces within this merged project. So then there is a need for a second project which covers all forms of alternative medicine, but the problem is Skepticism applies to this too and where to place this becomes another issue. -Ugog Nizdast (talk) 16:40, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

• @Tento2, This is the reason I've proposed this merge, people are being directed to wikiprojects which are in fact dead or just about limping on. As you say, this "doesn't stimulate enthusiasm to get involved". Another alternative is to simply mark some of these as dead projects and remove the templates from talk pages so people don't go to them by mistake and use wikiproject skepticism directly. It certainly would be a cleaner way of doing it.

Broadly my suggestion was meant to capture all those areas generally covered by WP:FRINGE guidelines and which are in the area of scientific scepticism generally, Fringe was my suggestion as a compromise between putting people off with the word "skepticism" and also not putting off mainstream editors with names like "alternative science" (as though one can pick their science!). My thought was to re-purpose skepticism into a task force specifically related to the concepts of skepticism and to notable skeptics and organisations. The people I come across time and time again are active across the entire area of WP:FRINGE topics so greater synergies (I use this term only partially ironically) can be achieved by unifying the wikiprojects of the area together. On the topic of Wikiproject astrology, I'm the only editor, that I am aware of, that is active with the Astrology wikiproject, so one can talk about that wikiproject as if it is dead. I think splitting up the merges into separate wikiprojects is a mistake considering there is a strong overlap of interests (there is a certain pool of editors I see in my editing). Much of Creationism falls into pseudoscientific claims, so I don't quite understand the rationale for the move to wikiproject religion. Of course a split would be possible if some articles are purely on doctrinal issues.

Just to re-iterate, some of the projects are already dead: Homeopathy, Pseudoscience, and NLP are dead, and Astrology and Alt med are basically dead. The issue is that there just isn't the editors to have three separate projects as proposed by Ugog. They won't be healthy projects and there is more chance with 1 project (and at the very least it makes the templates easier to work with!). IRWolfie- (talk) 19:54, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

FWIW, I was more or less thinking of maybe one group, possibly WikiProject Science and Religion (if that's appropriate) with maybe the others functioning as subprojects. I agree having only one banner to work with would probably be optimal. Part of the problem I see is that WikiProject Occult seems to also deal with stuff like Aleister Crowley and Hermetism and other similar subjects, which isn't really at all related to science. Having said that, I do find the idea of maybe having a project directly related to the guideline of FRINGE, and maybe to the noticeboard?, interesting. John Carter (talk) 20:17, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

Science and religion is it's own distinct topic area so I think that would cause a lot of confusion, and also fails to capture much of the fringe area (specifically much of it has little connection to religion). I'd also highlight that what the noticeboard WP:FTN does is specifically unrelated to what a wikiproject would do and there is a clear delineation. FTN is specifically focussed around dealing with undue weight given to fringe views identified by WP:FRINGE, wherever that may be across wikipedia. It is not concerned with any other aspect of fringe topics or with working on fringe articles in general. On Crowley, his article is part of projects astrology, Occult and alternative views; there is lots of overlap. Wikiprojects can be novel in terms of areas covered because they are merely an internal organisation tool, IRWolfie- (talk) 22:35, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

You know more about the s&r topic than I do, so I'll take your word there. But I do think that it might be useful if the editors who frequent the FTN would also have a organizational tool which more or less can serve as an indicator of a lot of the material that the editors there regularly have to deal with. John Carter (talk) 00:07, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

We don't normally remove WikiProject banners from talk pages, even if the project is totally dead. Any project can be WP:REVIVEd, and we don't want anyone to have to recreate all that work. Instead, the banner is left in place, although it may be modified to state that it's inactive. For example, I've assumed for a couple of years that WP:WikiProject National Health Service was dead, but someone's trying to revive it this year. It would be a shame if some of his first actions needed to be spending several hours re-doing work that had been done years ago. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:49, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

@IRWolfie. I think the failure to stimulate enthusiasm comes from the sense that there is a desire to limit or prohibit the coverage of these topics, because they don’t fit the scientific model – so the idea of lumping them all together under the umbrella of scientific scepticism strikes me as counter-productive; being part of the problem, rather than the solution. Before jumping to merge the projects or mark them as dead, I would rather see exploration of why some projects that were once very active have had such a drastic decline of members, or at least engage in some attempt to regenerate interest. As you say you are the only editor that is active with the Astrology wikiproject, I’ll join that project and will start a discussion there to see if anything can be done to get more input from the other members. Tento2 (talk) 08:17, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

Number one, he's not the only still active contributor left in Astrology. Two, I have no idea what Fringe is. MM (Report findings) ^{(Past espionage)} 09:37, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

Matticus, I'm not saying that the people aren't active, just not in the topic area (I watch the project watchlist) or on the wikiproject. I don't think I have ever seen you edit in this area or comment on the astrology talk page (which is fairly dead). Here are you edits for the last 5 months [1]. Fringe refers to the same definition as WP:FRINGE. @Tento2, I did not say to lump together under scepticism, in fact that is specifically what I did not say. The Astrology project was only really briefly active for a short period when there was a large conflict between a cadre of astrologers (who were mostly blocked for disruption and WP:MEAT puppetry) and other editors. IRWolfie- (talk) 09:56, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing, the issue is that we are directing people to dead pages, through these templates, where they won't get any feedback. IRWolfie- (talk) 09:47, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

Agreed. A dead project cannot provide help, and on that basis can reasonably be seen as being counterproductive if people look to get help from it which they don't receive. In fact, in some cases, such lack of response has been the primary cause of editors stopping editing. Also, it would certainly be possible to have the banner of whatever group comes into existence have specific criteria for the individual subgroups, with the potential of spin out under its own banner again later. But the primary purpose of a WikiProject is to help encourage cooperation and collaboration on the topic, and dead groups can't do that. I do think that maybe a wikiproject name with something like "alternative" might be the best way to go, and possibly preferable to Fringe, but am not sure exactly what sort of name would be best. John Carter (talk) 14:26, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

The articles within the scope of each of these WikiProjects can be managed by means of Wikipedia:WikiProject Abandoned Articles.

—Wavelength (talk) 16:25, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

Which is itself currently tagged as "semi-active," and also presumably has a lot of content to deal with, so while I am grateful for the information, I am far from sure that it is either the best possible solution, or that it even necessarily even directly relates to the matter of this proposed merger. John Carter (talk) 16:32, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

Alternative isn't a good term for stuff like astrology that used to be mainstream. Secondly, I don't see that some of the phenomena described can possible be an alternative to anything. What exactly is Rumpology an alternative to? Sanity? The only adjective I can think of that describes this disparate group in English is Fortean, which may be too niche to be applicable. Is there a de-branded word for Fortean? Fiddlersmouth (talk) 23:20, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

To me, it looks like most of the material is more of less of the kind one might expect to encounter on Coast to Coast AM, at least here in the United States, and that article describes the content of that show as often relating to the paranormal and conspiracy theories. I know one banner had had an "X" on it, for the X-Files, which kinda implied the scope of that group even if it didn't really define it. Maybe something like "paranormal and conspiracy theories," with, maybe, a highly doctored image indicative of Coast to Coast AM or similar? John Carter (talk) 23:29, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

Re Forteana, Coast to Coast AM and X Files; the successor and contemporary incarnation of all of those is Fringe (TV series). ; ) - LuckyLouie (talk) 13:12, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

• I would support a merger (or two mergers), as the best way to move forward from an collection of dead and dying projects which have such extensive overlap. bobrayner (talk) 12:19, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

The proposal seeks to merge a diverse range of groups with mutually exclusive interests. While the proponents have little or no interest in the other topics, most of the subjects share the same opponents. So it can make sense to lump them together but only from one point of view. I can see some possible mergers: Parapsychology with Paranormal, Alternative Medicine with Homeopathy, Skepticism with Pseudoscience though I cannot see any commonality between the other groups in particular astrology which is a large subject with many Wikipedia articles. The lack of interest in these projects and in editing these subjects by those knowledgeable or interested in these fields is because the majority of active editors who watch these pages vigorously oppose these subjects. So fringe articles tend to give undue weight in favour of these editors - well beyond WP:PSCI, published Encyclopedias and scientific consensus - and fail to describe both views fairly. So while some mergers may be due, merging all these projects will increase this polarisation and eliminate any viable forum to re-engage collaborative editing of these topics. Robert Currey talk 12:39, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

I concur that the commonality is mostly that scientific skeptics think they're all bogus, and each matter's fans and advocates would be unlikely to see commonality.

FWIW, I think the skeptical interest in all of these would be covered already by WikiProject Skepticism. I don't think merging will bring fans and advocates to the articles if they're not there already. That is, it's not clear this will jumpstart the projects or article work.

So ... what's an acceptable and neutral way to publicise a wikiproject to people who might be interested? - David Gerard (talk) 14:11, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

I don't want to speak for IRWolfie, but I assume the intention of the combined Wikiprojects is not to prevent or limit coverage of fringe topics, it's to help ensure that coverage is appropriate by virtue of notability in reliable, independent sources. Bringing the "skeptics" into collaboration with the "advocates" in a WikiProject environment isn't a bad thing. It could help prevent conflicts in article space by serving as a forum to discuss proposed new articles and article expansions. For example, the addition of a viewpoint (for which no reliable sources exist) that systems failures of the Phobos program are "unexplained" and presumably somehow connected to the paranormal was/is on the "to do" list at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Paranormal. - LuckyLouie (talk) 14:48, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

Advocates by their very nature tend to find wikipedia unsatisfying. I'm not looking for a project of advocates but a project of editors interested in writing neutral articles (whether they be fringe believers or not). Also generally many fringe believers also believe in other fringe areas as highlighted by Chris French in his work, so there is probably more common ground than may have been thought (why just the other day I saw a BLP article for an alt med, aids denialist, anti-vaxxer, megavitamin proponent, Anti-GMO, Anti-nuclear energy and anti-evidence based medicine). IRWolfie- (talk) 08:50, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

Personally, I think that all these concerns of advocates versus skeptics, neutral content &c would apply equally whether we had one big project or a dozen small ones; making it a distraction from the proposed merge. More relevant is that we have a large collection of overlapping, moribund, small wikiprojects; bringing editors together in a bigger project with a more natural scope gives us a much better chance of nurturing cooperation between different editors. bobrayner (talk) 12:28, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

More or less at IRWolfie: I do know of at least a few generally comparatively recent reference books relating to the occult, cryptozoology, pseudoscience, the new age, astrology, alternative medicine, conspiracy theories, and a few of the other topics, and, depending on how "neutral" those reference works are, I could see that we might be able to get some people together to develop our content more or less in line with the relevant weight of topics and content of those works, so it should be doable. Having said that, I acknowledge that a lot of people who edit regarding fringey thinking might be here only to promote such thinking, and they might be less inclined to take part if the promotion of the fringiness is not a priority. If anyone wants, I could try to get together lists of articles in those works. And, although I acknowledge the current "Fringe" show, I wonder if, maybe, using a form of the question mark as a banner icon/project symbol and maybe some sort of name roughly consonant with that icon/concept might not be the best way to go. John Carter (talk) 14:43, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

• I oppose this particular merger proposal. Some items should be merged together by their similarities. Astrology, parapsychology, paranormal, and occult can merge together. Alternative medicine, homeopathy, and NLP could merge together. Creationism doesn't belong here, it needs to be merged into a religious project. - Sidelight12 ^Talk 22:30, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

That doesn't seem to make any sense. The NLP and Homeopathy projects are dead, merging them into Alt Med won't make it more active. The creationism project also involves the same sort of pseudoscientific claims and it doesn't make sense to merge it into a wikiproject which isn't used to those sorts of issues. And you've ignored the skepticism project entirely! IRWolfie- (talk) 22:38, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

It makes a lot more sense than this. Items aren't merged with completely separate subjects based on wikiproject activity. Religion and alternative medicine are completely different. As for paranormal, what does acupuncture have to do with ghosts? Its almost as bad as proposing merging wikiproject science to wikiproject fiction books. - Sidelight12 ^Talk 22:51, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

Of course we merge " based on wikiproject activity". Wikiprojects are solely a method of organising editors, and I see the same faces editing these topics, who like me, edit or are interested in all of these topics areas! There is a lot of commonality within these topics. All of the topics are covered by skepticism but as I mentioned I wish to re-purpose wikiproject skepticism as well in the merge, IRWolfie- (talk) 23:41, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

That is such a vague title. It doesn't relate to any of those topics. Who thinks that skepticism is 'fringe'? We are pro-science, evidence and facts, not into fringe stuff. Some of those projects could be merged into WikiProject Skepticism, but Skepticism should not be renamed 'fringe'. Skepticism is a perfect and all encompassing title for what our project has been doing as we cover many skeptic topics, none of which are fringe. Joolzzt (talk) 00:14, 17 September 2013 (UTC) PS: From looking at the other project pages I think someone misunderstood the definition of 'skepticism'. We are against Astrology, against Homeopathy, against Parapsychology and against Cryptozoology. Merging us with those is like merging the christianity and islam pages. Please drop us out of the merge, we are the opposite of those pages. Joolzzt (talk) 00:22, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Wikiprojects aren't "against" anything. Wikiprojects are merely a means of organising editors together for collaborative purposes in a specified area. It is not for separating people into Pro and Anti groups. IRWolfie- (talk) 09:07, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

I totally agree with Joolzzt. Skepticism should not be rolled up under "Fringe." Skepticism is pretty much the exact opposite of fringe and covers a wide range of topics beyond paranormal phenomena.Dustinlull (talk) 01:00, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Instead of merging Skepticism (again) in hopes of attracting more editors and activity, perhaps we could instead look at what the more active WikiProjects are doing right. IMHO the front page of any WikiProject should be a short-to-moderate list of pages that need help, each with a short statement about what fix is needed (e.g. Cleanup citations; Photo needed; Improve NPOV, etc.). Some of the struggling projects appear to spend much time categorizing and assessing importance of the pages monitored by the project instead of actively promoting recommended changes to those pages.Frederick Green (talk) 01:18, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Some observations on the current Wikiprojects and their respective scopes.

• The Astrology project aimed to include astrology "in different cultures and traditions", also covering relevant historical subjects.
• Parapsychology aimed to cover a variety of paranormal subjects, including among others "telepathy, precognition, clairvoyance, psychokinesis, near-death experiences, reincarnation and apparitional experiences".
• Wikiproject Paranormal specifically included in its scope: Anomalistics (which covers Forteana), Cryptozoology, Paranormal phenomena, Paranormal hoaxes and frauds, Parapsychology, Fringe science, Protoscience, Pseudoscience, Ufology, Urban myths and legends, Unexplained disappearances, Conspiracy theories, and certain structures such as the megaliths which have paranormal associations.
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Alternative Views aimed to cover theories, hypotheses, conjectures, and speculation which lack widespread acceptance and/or challenge the "dominant view" in their field.
• Wikiproject Skepticism is actually the result of a recent merger. Back in June, Wikiprojects Rational Skepticism and Pseudoscience merged, and all their content ended under the same banner. The new scope aims to cover pseudoscience, pseudohistory, pseudophilosophy, and any article on fraud and fraudsters.
• WikiProject Alternative medicine aimed to cover both specific subjects within the field and historical figures associated with them.
• WikiProject Homeopathy was a single-issue Wikiproject with a narrow scope.
• WikiProject Creationism originally covered only intelligent design but expanded to cover all forms of creationism. It listed Wikiproject Pseudoscience as its closest relative.
• WikiProject Cryptozoology aimed to cover both regular cryptids and related creatures from zoology, paleontology, mythology, dinosaurs, and the paranormal.
• WikiProject Pseudoscience no longer exists.
• WikiProject Occult aimed to cover Magic/Magick, Secret organizations, Secret fraternal organizations, Esoteric orders, Mystery religions, Occult rituals, Theurgy, Occult texts and their writers. Specifically excluded were Satanism and paranormal activities.
• WikiProject NLP concepts and methods aimed to cover Neuro-linguistic programming and its methodology.

If these projects are merged, IRWolfie and others should probably work out a new scope. Dimadick (talk) 00:51, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose the merger. It is not clear to me how merging a number of dead projects is going to revitalize any of them. In fact I think that might be a death knell to the "not very active" projects as the workload and scope would increase without adding any additional interested editors. If a project dies or does not have any active editors then let it go until the interest returns. Perhaps this is a sign that astrology and pseudoscience are losing their prominence in the real world as well and Wikipedia should reflect that. Allecher (talk) 01:53, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose the merger. Specifically the inclusion of Proj Skepticism in this particular merger proposal. Not sure about your definition of 'not very active'. At least a dozen members of Proj Sketicism have been active recently on Skeptic pages. I suggest the 12 constitute 'a group of people who want to work together'. So the Project should be left alone unless other projects choose to merge into it. Joolzzt (talk) 08:21, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Activity isn't based on people editing articles but also engaging/using the project. If members don't use the project pages then its no use, IRWolfie- (talk) 09:09, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

• Comment Can people indicate which of the projects they are a member of when they are leaving comments? IRWolfie- (talk) 09:10, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose the merger. I think there has been a lot of good discussion, and I've had time to reflect. I recently joined Skepticism after editing a lot of technical and scientific type pages of interest for the last few year, although I'm yet to really contribute, and I'm not fully sure how to go about collaboration or discussion or whatever in a Project setting, though I'm aware that editors in the project with interests or knowledge in a certain area of Scientific Skepticism can be approached by their User Talk page, though of course that won't make the project seem active to others. I joined after seeing an updated article on the Main Page mentioned on Twitter and found the talk page where it asked for someone to review it for Good Article Status. The article and the editor were both under Project Skepticism, so after the review I decided to watch to project page and join. I really don't think I'd have joined a project called Fringe. While I appreciate that encouraging dialogue between opposing viewpoints is healthy, that already happens on the Talk pages for controversial topics (OK I've only read fewer than 10 of those Talk pages, but it's pretty consistent), and people who are clearly on both sides seem to be assuming good faith and trying to encourage others to find reliable sources so that the other side can be included. I really can't see anybody self-identifying as being on the Fringe, so that sort of label - almost perjorative - would probably reduce participation, not increase it. I do think there's scope for some mergers, and I applaud IRWolfie for the intent to liven up inactive projects (and as I said above, I think the types of conferences where people interested in these topics coincide might help to identify good groupings for mergers), but I feel the proposal as it stands would be detrimental to involvement. Dynamicimanyd (talk) 09:58, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

" I really can't see anybody self-identifying as being on the Fringe, so that sort of label ... " The name of a wikiproject is just that; a name for organisational reasons and not a label. I'm a member of Wikiprojects astrology, alternative medicine, transcendental meditation and the paranormal even though I think these things are abject nonsense, because I am interested in topics in these areas and the related discussions. IRWolfie- (talk) 09:03, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

I oppose.. It seems like just shuffling around busy work. And just because I'm not on the Skepticism page making comments doesn't mean I'm not active. I do edits practically every day. Cap020570 (talk) 11:39, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

I Oppose the merger. I am a member of the Skepticism page. I'm not convinced that merging our project page with a handful of inactive projects under the heading of "fringe" will benefit anyone. Paranormal phenomena is just one part of the skeptic project. The project also covers philosophy, science, religion... Dustinlull (talk) 13:08, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

• Support: Good to see more feedback from project members. Looks like majority oppose this decision but I'll post this anyway. I can understand everyone's frustration in grouping Skepticism with these other topics, but please don't think it's being actually branded as being similar to them. First of all, almost no one agrees with the name 'Fringe' and that was just proposed till we think of something better.

• I feel an overall project watching over such topics (popular beliefs, fringe, urban legends or whatever better name someone else comes up with) would not only benefit but also decrease the confusion, which was mainly because of having this unnecessary amount of redundant, similar-interest projects. Each of them are so narrow, that no matter how popular they are (see WP Homeopathy), they will never be active.
• Within the proposed project, each of these specific interests can have their own task-force (if necessary) and of course, skepticism since it is needed to complete the WP:DUE and WP:BALANCE of all these articles.
• This is exactly what projects are for and I think having separate specific-interest projects only encourages the behaviour of being there for promotion, rivalry with other projects and a place for people with like-minded beliefs.
• An overall project would instead help people (with opposing view points) work together and have better communication between each of these specific range of topics, for the common goal— improving articles.

(WP:Skept member) Ugog Nizdast (talk) 14:16, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose: I'm a member of the Skepticism group. I really don't have much to add, most of the opposing people share my same views. I do support the compromise that is given in the next section. --Walkiria Nubes (talk) 20:11, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose per whatamidoing's spectacular "lunch table" metaphor above and because the proposal lumps many things together that have nothing in common. Mabeenot has it exactly right below, in the compromise section. There may be call for merging some Wikiprojects, especially if we can get some members of those wikiprojects on board with the idea. Community planning is good. But if there are to be any wikiproject mergers, "[n]othing should be called "fringe" as that term seems to include a certain stigma." Happily, there's no deadline and no hurry. David in DC (talk) 22:47, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Merging projects - Compromise

Rather than trying to cram all these into one project, perhaps the field just needs a little reorganization (let's call it community planning since WikiProjects are supposed to be groups of editors working together). From the discussion and the list of project scopes assembled above, it is clear that:

• WP Cryptozoology and WP Parapsychology are included within the scope of WP Paranormal, so a merger would be natural and the resources on the current Cryptozoology and Parapsychology project pages could be preserved by turning them into task forces of WP Paranormal. They would all share one banner and a consolidated membership list. Consolidating talk pages is also an option.
• WP Homeopathy and WP NLP appear to be too narrow in scope to support a project at this point in time, so a merger with WP Alternative medicine would make sense. Again, the existing project resources could be recycled as task forces.
• WP Skepticism is the result of a merger that was conducted relatively well and appears to be the most active of the projects involved in this discussion. Their page has a very clear scope and goals, which ought to be a model for other projects that are consolidated.
• I agree with David Gerard and others that WP Creationism is in an odd place halfway between WP Christianity and WP Alternative Views, so it may make sense to turn it into a joint task force shared by those two projects (assuming that WP Christianity will accept it).
• Astrology and the occult are at the intersection of a variety of other fields including projects covering religion, history, mythology, astronomical objects, and secret societies. However, they are very prominent topics that ought to remain as projects, albeit with a significant overhaul. Closer connections to other projects will be required to revive and sustain the astrology and occult projects.
• I'd suggest that either WP Alternative Views or WP Skepticism should serve as the "umbrella project" for all the remaining projects involved in this discussion. An umbrella project helps organize the other projects and serves as a place where people can turn when they don't get an answer from a more specific project. WP Alternative Views has the broadest scope, but WP Skepticism appears to be the most active.
• Nothing should be called "fringe" as that term seems to include a certain stigma.

The ultimate goal of all these rearrangements is to make the projects in this field easier to navigate for new contributors, build stronger connections between the projects, consolidate banners for easier assessment, and ensure that editors have somewhere else to turn if they don't get a reply when they post on one project's page. What do you think? –Mabeenot (talk) 16:03, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

That compromise seems well thought out, and strikes me as reasonable, mostly putting closely linked areas together and hopefully teams of editors with more linked interests and avoiding language that may seem stigmatizing or perjorative. As a Skepticism member, I wouldn't be greatly affected by the compromise proposed, so we'd need members of the more likely merged projects to share their views here. If they don't voluntarily, perhaps someone could sample a few of those who are active editors and ask for opinions via their User:Talk pages? I guess it's hard to know whether they have watchlisted their respective Project Talk pages? Ever since people have been including their project(s) it appears a lot of those who are commenting above seem to be from Wikiproject Skepticism (which I think was the most "Watchlisted" project page of all of them), and not so many from the others proposed for mergers. Perhaps we need to give a little more time for editors from the other projects to chime in. I would not be averse to joining some of the other task forces for specific subject areas that most interest me in particular as part of Skepticism. I dare say I will see multiple project banners on the Talk pages. Dynamicimanyd (talk) 17:56, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

As another member of the Skepticism project I too think this compromise is a good solution. This maintains the basic framework of Skepticism and should not greatly affect all the hard work that the editors recently made to revive that proejct. Members of both Skepticism and Altnernative Views can certainly be encouraged to coordinate efforts on controversial topics.Frederick Green (talk) 18:44, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

• This is a really good compromise, kudos to Mabeenot for coming up with this. I myself was trying to come up with a merge that would come up with a better combination of forces, but he definitely nailed it. I'm also with Dynamicimanyd we need to have more insight from the other groups' editors, right now I can only see fellow Skepticism members. How can we bring this people here? --Walkiria Nubes (talk) 20:11, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Maybe an RfC? David in DC (talk) 02:17, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

Have no idea how that is done, but if it can be done that would be the greatest solution wouldn't it? --Walkiria Nubes (talk) 18:58, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

• I support this except merging remaining wikiprojects into the umbrella project. Also provided that the regular users of the active wikiprojects accept the mergers. The previous proposal was stupid, he just wanted to have one project on his watchlist to make it easier for him to attack subjects. To him this is all one subject, fringe. Many on this list are completely different subjects. - Sidelight12 ^Talk 02:32, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

Retract that allegation or substantiate it. I strongly dislike unfounded aspersions being cast against me. My personal opinions about fringe theories and pseudoscience does not effect my ability to edit neutrally in any way. IRWolfie- (talk) 09:36, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

• I think this is a good compromise, and I would support it - thanks, Mabeenot. Sidelight12, please try to avoid picturing the motives of people you disagree with like that; it's rarely the best way forward. bobrayner (talk) 08:28, 18 September 2013 (UTC)
• Looks good to me. I hadn't realised I wasn't a member of Project Skepticism. I am now. Dougweller (talk) 09:33, 18 September 2013 (UTC)
• I guess its better than nothing, but note that the term fringe is a term of art on wikipedia to refer to fringe theories generally and matches the definition used in this topic area by the guidelines, IRWolfie- (talk) 09:42, 18 September 2013 (UTC)
• I think the guidelines are intended to ensure editorial common sense, not encourage the use of potentially offensive terms when there is no need to cause offence, so I agree with the compromise if the final point is maintained, that "Nothing should be called "fringe" as that term seems to include a certain stigma". I also agree with Sidelight's suggestion that the regular users of the active wikiprojects accept the mergers. I see no reason why they would not welcome this, but would like to see them being given the chance to air any concerns they might have before final decisions are made. Tento2 (talk) 10:18, 18 September 2013 (UTC)
• Concur with Tento2 in all particulars. David in DC (talk) 12:39, 18 September 2013 (UTC)
• I've been following the discussion and have thought that something along these lines was the right solution throughout, so I support this (as a member of WP Skepticism). Samwalton9 (talk) 12:54, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose on one point. Thank you for reconsidering. My remaining concern is that Alternative Views cannot be the umbrella project. If it was Skepticism I would probably agree, until then I oppose. Project Skepticism works to add scientific facts and data to pages, as you will see clearly from our edits. Scientifically proven facts are certainly not 'alternative' and cannot come under that heading. Joolzzt (talk) 17:08, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

Hey Joolzzt I think you misinterpreted what Mabeenot meant in this point: I'd suggest that either WP Alternative Views or WP Skepticism should serve as the "umbrella project" for all the remaining projects involved in this discussion. I read it as either WP Alternative Views or WP Skepticism would be the umbrella project for the other projects. So if WP Alternative is used as the umbrella WP Skepticism would be left to itself, and viceversa. It's a question of choosing if the scope or the activeness is most important here. --Walkiria Nubes (talk) 18:58, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

• Support on the assumption that WP Alternative Views becomes the umbrella for Alternative medicine, Astrology, Cryptozoology, Occult and the new WP Paranormal etc, although happy for Pseudoscience to be merged into Skepticism. Thank you for clarifying Walkiria. Joolzzt (talk) 19:13, 18 September 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose: I'm definitely against WP Occult be sheltered under the "Alternative Views" WP, or to that matter, under any other WP. I'm deeply involved in occult studies. That doesn't mean I have "alternate views". I don't believe in ghosts, demons, magic, etcetera. I do not go around making circles and pentagrams with chalk nor blood on the floor. I'm not interested in parapsycology. I'm not interested in the modern ramifications of astrology. I do not read horoscopes. So why am I supposed to colaborate in a WP that doesn't interest me at all? I'm interested in Occultism, as a subject. I know sources and can research about the topic. I'm good at keeping and objective and realistic point of view when discussing the topics of occultism. I also accept that abandoned, unreferenced, unreliable articles of the project may and will decay even to the point of deletion if the project is not active. That is something I can live with. Being in a WP doen't mean to defend the articles that it covers. It means to be of help in editing and discussing them. I have been an on and off member of the WP Occult project. I'm also an avid RC patroller. If the grounds of this merge is because the project is abandoned, then I can say it is not. I am manning it. And I check clean up list, review back logs, deletion warnings,etc. But if you go ahead and merge it with whatever, then I will not care for that new WP. And I think I'm not alone in this. If you go ahead with the mergers, you will loose a lot of on-and-off editors. You will be hurting the projects by merging them.Legion fi (talk) 08:05, 11 October 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose WP Occult is a clear label, and the project, as Legion fi, says, is still active. Moving towards vague and unhelpful project labels doesn't make things tidier, it creates confusion for new editors. An encyclopedia shouldn't do vague. Fiddlersmouth (talk) 09:12, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

Please note: Trying to attract additional input from uninvolved editors, I recast this conversation as an RfC, below. The comments there were inconclusive except to suggest little support for the initial proposal. The proposer graciously collapsed that part of the RfC. The remainder of the conversation was inconclusive, but can serve to inform further discussion. David in DC (talk) 15:16, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

• Support -- I'll tell you exactly what should be done: Create task forces within WP:Skepticism, just like the philosophy project has. After that is done, it will be a simple matter to redirect all the others. This is an excellent proposal just for the fact that there shouldn't be projects like "alternative medicine" for quacks to gather and organize the quackification of Wikipedia. All WikiProject should be eventually merged into whatever academic and scholarly Wikiprojects are responsible for that subject matter. Greg Bard (talk) 22:38, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

Merging projects - Another proposal

I have read and digested the issues discussed above. I think what can be supported, and what is objected to can be addressed by the following:

• We should keep WikiProject Skepticism as the main project to cover all of this subject matter.
• The WikiProjects discussed here and generally listed under WP:SKEPTICISM's "Projects to monitor" should be reformulated as task forces of WP:SKEPTICISM. By making task forces, it is possible to list one article under more than one area. This could include some of the merge proposals above (e.g. Homeopathy into Alternative medicine, etc) However, it would be possible to get by with only two task forces with very little overlap, i.e pseudoscience, and pseudophilosophy. Greg Bard (talk) 17:48, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

There is a problem with lumping WP:OCCULT into pseudo-anything. Some of the headings encompass sincerely-held religious beliefs, and suggesting that these beliefs are spurious not only violates neutrality, but is downright insensitive. Fiddlersmouth (talk) 00:41, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

I think we can draw the line between religion, and philosophical claims without any major problems. Greg Bard (talk) 17:56, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

Greg, I feel like I'm not getting this message through to you. A WikiProject is a group of people. It is not subject areas. WikiProject Skepticism is welcome to tag all of the articles currently tagged by these projects (or any articles they want, including articles found through Special:Random.

Nobody can take a group of people—not even an apparently quiet group of people—and say "All your people is now belong to me". I want you to imagine that we're not talking about "WikiProjects". I want you to imagine that we're talking about kids who hang out in different places around the school building. What you are proposing is that you should go over to several groups and say, "You are not going to hang out over here any longer. You are going to hang out over here with me now, and furthermore, I don't care whether you agree to this". Forcibly taking over a WikiProject is likely to be just as ineffective as forcibly taking over a group of friends at school.

This is not okay. This is rude to these people. You are not permitted to simply take over groups of people because you think that your interest relates to their interest. There are objections (including mine) at WT:ALTMED and other groups to this plan. You can support the articles, but you cannot takeover the people. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:42, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

Whoa, that's one way of looking at it?!?! Say listen, there is nothing rude or untoward about this AT ALL. Nothing in this proposal infringes on anyone's right to associate, and communicate in any way any more than the ways that Wikipedia already infringes on users ability to communicate and associate already. So if those of us who demand a scholarly, and academic approach to WikiProjects are hindered by our ability to communicate on talk pages (e.g. the canvassing policy) and organize outside (e.g. prohibition on organized communication outside talk pages), then maximizing the scholarly approach in the structure of WikiProjects and their taskforces is the reasonable way to move forward.

A WikiProject is a group of people primarily, and in that regard it is even more important that we influence what kinds of groups are going to be influencing the content. That is to say that we should not be encouraging quacks to organize the quackification of Wikipedia! Such people should be forced to bring their concerns about content to a group that includes responsible, and scholarly Wikipedians with an interest (and hopefully scholarly knowledge) of the appropriate subject areas from which those issues arise. I think your response is completely unhelpful to the overall success of Wikipedia. Greg Bard (talk) 19:52, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

Forcing people to associate with you is an infringement on their right to associate. That's a bi-directional right: you are allowed to be part of a group, and you are allowed to refuse to be part of a group.

And you aren't forcing them to "bring their concerns about content to a group that includes responsible, and scholarly Wikipedians". You would be forcing them to bring their concerns to a page that covers a far broader subject and is sometimes dominated by people who occasionally have trouble seeing past their own POV to what the reliable sources say. Whether St John's wort does anything useful for depression—even the Cochrane Collaboration says it does, despite it being considered "alternative" in most countries—has absolutely nothing at all to do with ghost-hunting or mystery religions or creationism or the other subjects you want to smush together. Why should anyone who wants to talk about good sourcing for medical material have to even look at a page that's talking about ghosts and secret societies? WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:08, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

You are so far in the wrong here my head is spinning. First of all, NO, forcing people into discussions based on academic areas isn't in any way, shape or form an infringement of their privileges AT ALL. They are free to discuss whatever they want. Freedom of speech doesn't extend to freedom from criticism of speech. Criticism is how we make a better Wikipedia. Secondly, the idea that somehow preserving these nonsense projects like cryptozoology instead of forcing people into a proper discussion under zoology (for instance) will result in a discussion dominated by people who can't see beyond their POV is to turn the whole role of scholarly debate on its head. It seems to me, that YOU are exactly the kind of problem editor that this proposal is aimed at addressing! You're view is so far in the wrong, that I feel I have no choice but to name you as a completely irresponsible Wikipedian! It's irresponsible and insane. These projects in question are the ones pushing a POV, and the projects which are recognized scholarly areas are stopping the pushing of POVs. So you are completely backward on this issue. Furthermore, the creation of taskforces will cause for people interested in (for instance your example) alternative medicine to not have to look at material on ghosts, etc. Greg Bard (talk) 23:01, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

Greg, please go find my name in the list of contributors to MEDRS, the sourcing guideline widely recognized as being responsible for enforcing high standards and promoting accurate scientific and biomedical information on the English Wikipedia. After you've taken a look at that page, then come back and tell me whether you really think that I'm "irresponsible" or a "problem editor" who is interested in promoting "nonsense". WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:20, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

For all I know you are a wonderful editor. However, if you believe that somehow these questionable projects are needed to encourage editors, and that merging them into Wikiprojects which represent academically accepted subject areas causes POV to be pushed, rather than appropriately addressed, then you are a completely irresponsible editor. I am not sure if you are aware of the problem with brain drain here in Wikipedia culture, and the fact that legitimate, scholarly and academic editors have been discouraged and are leaving in droves. The idea that we should be encouraging people interested in these questionable topics to organize without a scholarly discussion context is completely insane. Greg Bard (talk) 18:15, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

We do need to encourage editors in underrepresented areas (e.g., pretty much anything to do with women and children; pretty much not anything to do with professional athletes).

I believe you will find that "alternative medicine" is an "academically accepted subject area". You can get university degrees in the subject. The University of Hawaii offers a PhD in AltMed. There are whole schools that teach homeopathy, and in some places, it is viewed rather positively, e.g., as a completely safe alternative to the largely ineffective and occasionally dangerous over-the-counter "conventional" cough medicines.

We should certainly encourage editors interested in "questionable topics" to work together. We should especially encourage editors who are interested in providing accurate information about "questionable topics" to work together. That goal is not promoted by making someone who is solely interested in the history of herbal drugs, or in the finances of the multi-billion-dollar AltMed industry, or in documenting the remarkable variation in which homeopathic remedies get prescribed for what symptoms, join a "Skeptics" or "Fringe" group. That goal is best promoted by letting people interested in the same subject join a group about that subject, regardless of their POV, rather than a group whose very name expresses disbelief or contempt for the subject.

And, again, it simply will not work. You're proposing to move the existing pages, but you cannot prevent the same people from saying, "I personally don't want to be part of any group called 'Fringe' or 'Skeptics'", ignoring your newly moved pages, and creating new ones—or moving it all to user talk pages and e-mail, so that you won't be tempted to create WikiProject Skepticism/Alternative Medicine task forces numbered one through twelve. These are WP:VOLUNTEERs. You can't actually make them join your favorite WikiProject. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:34, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

Using loaded language like questionable topics and completely insane moves this discussion away from reasoned argument. Wikipedia demands that its articles be properly referenced, not that Greg Bard thinks it's a proper topic. What is a "scholarly discussion context"? A talk page is not a forum. The proposal has been made, nobody seems to like it, and no amount of bluster will change that. Fiddlersmouth (talk) 00:45, 4 January 2014 (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.

Template shortcuts for wikiproject banners

See Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2014 February 25 for the discussion about a particular shortcut to a template, and the formatting it should use in general and in particular. -- 70.50.151.11 (talk) 23:39, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for posting this headsup. This whole area seems very technical to me, all I can say is that some of my own shortcuts have been deleted recently with little discussion for reasons that I still do not fully understand. XOttawahitech (talk) 16:59, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

Countering Systemic Bias in the Signpost

The signpost wikiproject report published an unusually popular report on February 10 on the topic of Countering Systemic Bias. Editors are still commenting there. XOttawahitech (talk) 17:10, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

WikiProjects not proposed through WP:COUNCIL ends up in deletion at WP:MFD?

I saw this statement posted here. Is this true? XOttawahitech (talk) 16:01, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

No. The WikiProject Council is leadership or authority for anything on Wikipedia, just as there is no leadership anywhere. Wikipedia has no hierarchy. Guidelines about WikiProjects are suggestions, and if someone wants to fork a concept into a new WikiProject then that is their choice. However, in almost all circumstances, it is best to associate new efforts with an existing project rather than try to found a new community. For that reason I would support strong encouragement toward anyone joining existing projects. Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:08, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

Yes and No. Projects that get created without coming here and then are found to closely resemble an already existing wikiproject. Such as a taskforce of an already existing wikiproject do often get deleted at MFD. Some skip the MFD part and just get redirected to the already existing one. While not required to go through the council, it is more often than not a bad idea not to. -DJSasso (talk) 20:07, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

@Djsasso: Since you believe that a WikiProject is a group of people, I cannot see why a project should be deleted if it resembles something that a different group of people is involved in? Just curious. XOttawahitech (talk) 16:36, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

Because what ends up happening often in such circumstances is that each group starts to create their own standards, a style guide for example on articles. And then each group starts trying to implement their own and back and forth it goes. Another reason is that you split a likely already small group of people into smaller groups. It is considerably more efficient and better for the wiki if they all worked together in one group. It also cuts down on the over abundance of project tags that pop up on some articles. There are quite a few reasons to be honest I could go on and on. Generally it ends up being more harmful than helpful to have two groups that essentially do the same thing. -DJSasso (talk) 12:37, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

@Djsasso: I am going to try and address your points above one by one:

• each group creates their own standards : As it is many (most?) articles are tagged by more than one wikiproject each with their own set of standards
• more efficient if they all worked together in one group: You cannot dictate to volunteers whom they must work with. In my humble opinion, this is best left to the participants themselves.
• over abundance of project tags: In my view, the more the merrier? XOttawahitech (talk) 19:58, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

The problem with the over use of wikiproject tags is each project has it's own view on an article and there may end up a duplication of work on an article. The best and most appropriate Wikiproject tag should be included and unless there is an obvious overlap between projects then it should be left as one alone. Also tagging an article also requires resources for the wiki project even if no editing is done. Article assessments, tracking, assigning to subgroups etc all take up resources. In the case of Death Cap it is quite clear based on the scope of Wikiproject Medicine that it should not be included. Wikiproject Medicine is probably the best example of a project that could apply to anything. Medicine touches almost every aspect of the world, take my running example below, it really has no business being part of the wiki project despite have connections to it. Mrfrobinson (talk) 20:15, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

I never said that we can dictate who people have to work with. But we can dictate where they work with the people they work with. A WikiProject is just a central area for people to discuss work on a similar set of articles. Some people look at it more like a group of individuals and it is that to some extent, but more than anything it is just a place to discuss collaboration on a given set of articles. So having two different places to do this leads to duplication of work as Mrfrobinson mentions. You and I can be in the same WikiProject but we don't have to collaborate on anything at all. But we can both still use the same talk page to talk about our separate collaborations. Having such discussions in a single place instead of multiple means more eyes on things which almost always ends up in a better result in the end. -DJSasso (talk) 20:31, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

Who can place/remove project banners?

One of the chores I have taken upon myself at Wikipedia is putting appropriate project banners on article/category talkpages. This is an activity that gets very little attention, but few who noticed thanked me for it.

There are several reasons for placing project banners on talkpages. For example:

• It gets more qualified eyes watching an article which is very important especially in less "busy" articles
• It helps get the word out if the page is nominated for deletion and the project has an alerts section.

I just ran into an unusual situation where the banners I placed on a talk page have been removed. Are there any policies/guidelines about who should place/remove project banners? XOttawahitech (talk) 16:30, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

Yes, see the last question in the FAQ at the top of this page and WP:PROJGUIDE#OWN. GregorB (talk) 18:10, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

@GregorB: Thanks for responding and providing the link. I am still wondering what happens when the editor removing the banner is not associated with the project? XOttawahitech (talk) 03:29, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

It's hard to tell if someone is associated with a project, because most "membership" lists are out of date. Also, it could be that the person happens to know the WikiProject's view, on the grounds that he (or she) did the same thing a little while ago and someone complained about it. But it could be a mistake. If you think that the other editor is probably wrong, then post a note to the WikiProject's talk page and let them decide what to do. If the problem persists (i.e., the WikiProject decides to re-banner the page, and the other editor removes it yet again), which is unlikely, then come back here for more direct help. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:44, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing: I would like to approach a wikiproject with this question, but how do I do this without seeming as if I was asking people to take a side in a dispute? XOttawahitech (talk) 17:40, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

Just leave a brief note outlining the facts: "I added your WikiProject banner to Article, but someone else removed it. If you decide that this article is within your scope, then you can add your banner to the talk page. If it's not within your scope, then you don't need do anything." WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:52, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing: I followed your advice and posted the text you suggested at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Malta#Request_regarding_FATCA on Januay 27, but nothing happened. No one responded and no one took action. XOttawahitech (talk) 14:57, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

If there's no response, then it just doesn't matter, because the people involved in that project (if any are still there) don't care. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:35, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

That may be true in some projects, but not necessarily all. I find there are many projects with busy editors who participate in work related to the project, but rarely visit the discussion area, WikiProject Canada for example. With all the great tools available to projects nowadays, such as wp:article alerts, wp:popular pages, wikiproject watchlists, etc., this is quite doable, I think? XOttawahitech (talk) 00:34, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

A WikiProject is a group of people that is working together as a team, not merely people who happen to separately work on the similar subjects. If they're not talking to each other, then they're probably not actually a team, and therefore not actually a WikiProject. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:53, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

Also, IMO it is not a good idea to remove banners of projects of which one is not a member (except in order to correct obvious errors), and even worse is to do it without a proper edit summary. Inquiring with the editor in question or the project is best. GregorB (talk) 09:52, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

@GregorB: I agree. I also believe that project banners should not be removed without a proper discussion, but am not sure where this discussion belongs:

• On the talkpage of the article
• On the talkpage of the wikiproject
• On the talkpage of the editor who removed the banner XOttawahitech (talk) 17:46, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

To most projects, (non-)inclusion of the project banner is a very minor issue, so normally I'd go straight to the editor's talk. However, project members do have a better understanding of both the topic and the scope, so in less clear-cut cases this is perhaps the better option. Article talk is generally unlikely to attract feedback. GregorB (talk) 18:10, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

@GregorB: Unfortunately, a posting on many wikiprojects is also unlikely to attract feedback, as my experience above indicates XOttawahitech (talk) 15:03, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

@Ottawahitech: That's true, although it depends on the project. Smaller projects are less likely to respond. Before I post on a project's talk page, I check the frequency of posts. If it's 3 posts in 6 months, sometimes I just don't bother. :) GregorB (talk) 15:30, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

A WikiProject is a group of people

(Since WhatamIdoing said above that A WikiProject is a group of people I wonder added by Ottawahitech (talk) 19:40, 3 March 2014 (UTC) ) what about large projects with sub-projects? As an exaple I recently tagged Death cap with Wikiproject Medicine banners, which were promptly removed with the edit summary not in scope of wp:MED despite having sections titled: Toxicity,Treatment and Symptoms . I then posted a question to the Toxicology taskforce but the only response I received was from someone who is not a project member. XOttawahitech (talk) 12:22, 15 February 2014 (UTC)

At that particular project, the usual thing to do is to post that kind of question to WT:MEDA. But how do you know that the person who replied is not a member? Not all participants bother to sign a membership list. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:17, 15 February 2014 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing: How do I know that the response at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Medicine/Toxicology_task_force#Scope was from a non-member of that taskforce? Answer: I usually don't know if someone is a member of a taskforce, but in this particular case user:Mrfrobinson who answered my question has been following me everywhere for the last few weeks and a check of their wiki-contributions will show that this is pretty much all they do on wikipedia. You can also verify that :Mrfrobinson did not participate in any other discussions at Toxicology_task_force. Hope this answers your question? XOttawahitech (talk) 16:19, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

actually am a member of Wikiproject Medicine and watch the toxicology task force page. Stop wiki lawyering everyone.Mrfrobinson (talk) 17:04, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

@Mrfrobinson: Good, I stand corrected. Can you re-install the wikiproject medicine banner to the talk page of Death cap? Thanks in advance, XOttawahitech (talk) 19:33, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

The user who removed it is a biochemist/microbiologist and appears to be an expert in fungi. Like I said on the talk page while the actual active toxin may be within the scope of toxicity the fungi probably isn't. Think of it this way, a wasp is not within the scope or Wikiproject Medicine or Toxicology but Venom_(poison) is. You can't expect that every Wikiproject that may have a passing interest in an article would welcome that article. Mrfrobinson (talk) 19:45, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

@Mrfrobinson: Thanks for engaging in this discussion. Here is what I think: The article about wasps is not comparable because it contains no medical-related information — nothing about bee strings or allergic reactions etc in that article. The death cap article, on the other hand, is about half medically-related ( Toxicity, Symptoms, Treatment, Notable victims). Don’t you believe that bringing it to the attention of editors with medical background may be a plus? XOttawahitech (talk) 23:02, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

Well no it doesn't matter about the content of the article, Toxicology focuses on specific toxins not the carrier. While yes it does contain treatment protocols, the actual toxics are more relevant to the project. Toxicologists don't focus on the organism, they focus on the toxin. In this case Amatoxin Phallotoxin are more appropriate for the Toxicology task force and the Death Cap article is more appropriate for the Fungi Wikiproject. You really don't want a toxicologist focusing on that article, you really want biologists. My bee/venom example is actually a better example of how this relationship should exist. If I want to identify the active toxins within a fungi I would find the fungi in question, locate the section that mentions it and then go to that specific article. Also what does it matter if a member of the Wikiproject Fungi removed your tag? They are the experts and felt it was not relevant. I would be considered a sports medicine expert, while yes running accounts for a large majority of the cases I treat clinically it does not mean that our article on running should be included in the Wikiproject Medicine. Mrfrobinson (talk) 00:17, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

Also if you haven't noticed you have managed to attract the attention of 2 admins and 3 long standing editors. Mrfrobinson (talk) 17:06, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

Yes, a WikiProject is a group of people; but generally the topics of interest to the folks of WPMED (aka scope of the project) are well-defined. Regarding the particular issue of Amanita phalloides, there is somewhat-related guidance at WP:MEDA#Is WPMED the correct WikiProject to support this article?. In the "Use judgment" section, you can somewhat compare it with:

Microbes, pathogens, and infectious diseases: Infectious diseases should be tagged with WPMED. Organisms should be tagged with {{WikiProject Micro}} and, if applicable, {{WikiProject Viruses}} or {{WikiProject Fungi}} instead of WPMED. Exceptions include pathogens that cause various illnesses that do not have their own disease names and infections that are treated medically to prevent progression to disease."

For the most part, if an illness or disease has its own article, then just that and not the pathogen should be tagged. Maybe this line in WP:MEDA should be expanded to include toxins. The occasional exception is if there is a lot of clinical content within the pathogen article. In this case, yes - there is a lot of clinical content in the article...but should the clinical content be in the article about the species when there are more appropriate places for it? Amanita phalloides is a more developed article than Mushroom poisoning and alpha-Amanitin (which both definitely belong in WPMED/Tox). But since all of the toxicological/clinical information applies to any organism containing alpha-Amanitin, wouldn't that be a better place for the content? The amanita phalloides article has been bulked up to achieve FA status. However, a tenet of Wikipedia is to not have duplicate content between similar articles. If alpha-Amanitin is a more appropriate place, then should the Biochemistry/Symptoms/Treatment sections be moved there? In its current state, alpha-Amanitin looks like it was written just by chemists. But that doesn't mean there should not be a clinical component to the article. I'm not saying any of this definitely should be done, just something to think about. --Scott Alter (talk) 06:06, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

Scott I agree with you here, we should move that information under the specific toxin rather than in Amanita phalloides since it is not specific to that fungi rather is specific to the toxin. I can volunteer to do this but it will be far down on my todo list. Mrfrobinson (talk) 20:09, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

I was the one who removed the WP:MED tag from the death cap talk page. That featured article is one of the older ones from WP:FUNGI, and were it to be written today, would probably be organized differently (pinging the main author Casliber, who may have a different opinion). I agree that much of the nonspecific clinical content from that article (possibly some of Amanita ocreata as well) should be summarized and transferred to the Mushroom poisoning and alpha-Amanitin articles. It's on my to-do list (probably not as far down as it would be on Mrfrobinsons!). Sasata (talk) 04:39, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

Yeah I have no problem with a future reorganisation - we need to avoid being overly bureaucratic in these cases. wikiproject templates I find are of greatest use in quantitatively mapping the progress of a whole cohort of related material and maybe point out priority areas to work on. The same way that a wikiproject is an informal way of bringing editors interested in editing and improving related material can meet and discuss. Anyone can flag themselves as a member or not....Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 05:15, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

Sasata I will be happy to give a bit of my time towards the reorganization but it really is far down on my list right now, I probably could start working on it sometime in the next few weeks but if you get there first that is also fine by me! Mrfrobinson (talk) 13:27, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

very good knowledge sharing platform

thanks to wikipedia for giving good platform for knowledge sharing pratap puranik ,independent social worker rk community research foundation,ramkrushna krupa walmiki nagar barshi rd latur mh india working in field of malnutrition,human health,child health etc — Preceding unsigned comment added by Puranik01 (talk • contribs) 09:31, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

Brooke bond Asian wild life

Hi hope some one can help I have lots of the Asian wild life cards series a mostly was thinking of selling them how would I do this any help thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jonnyjay69 (talk • contribs) 14:33, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

Merger of two projects

I have started a discussion on merger of two wikiprojects - Finance and Investing. Your input is welcome here.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 15:51, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

@Obiwankenobi: Will you update us here on your progress? I am sure many would like to learn how to merge projects on Wikipedia. Thanks in advance, XOttawahitech (talk) 16:43, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

I'll probably let the discussion sit a month, since one of the projects is inactive. Then I'm not sure I guess I'll have to ask here? --Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 17:33, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

Generally when I have seen it happen in the past, templates are just redirected or replaced depending on their compatibility and then the project with the more detailed pages gets renamed (if the name is changing) and the other project just gets redirected and any useful info is copied from their pages onto the pages at the new project. Its really nothing too complicated. Same as how you would merge an article really. Just mention that the info is being merged from X. Talk pages are usually left as is and linked to from the Archive box of the newly merged project. -DJSasso (talk) 16:51, 14 March 2014 (UTC)

Adding to WikiProject "types"

I've been working with Category:Inactive WikiProjects and I'd like to expand the range of "types" that are used for categorizing WikiProjects. For example, there is only 1 WikiProject in the "anime" type but there are lots of science, species, religion, literature and Wikipedia-related WikiProjects. It would be very useful to create separate categories for related inactive WikiProjects so they can be easily brought to the attention of other WikiProjects that are active in these areas.

There are topical subcategories in Category:WikiProjects but they don't have the functionality of actually adding to the number of types which then sort WikiProjects. I've asked several editors about this but haven't gotten a response so I hope I can hear back from someone who might know how to do this. Thanks! Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 22:01, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

Currently, the "type" parameter in {{WikiProject status}} is only used for inactive WikiProjects regarding categorization and text in the message box. Additional types can be added, but I would recommend having a clear goal/list first. Before making any changes, re-thinking inactive project categorization would be good.

The main pages of projects are categorized into Category:Active WikiProjects, Category:Semi-active WikiProjects‎, Category:Inactive WikiProjects‎, or Category:Defunct WikiProjects‎. Only inactive projects are sub-categorized based on the type parameter, and then they are no longer listed in the parent category. Is this the desired effect? Should all of the projects be listed in Category:Inactive WikiProjects‎ in addition to any sub-categorization? Is sub-categorization of only the inactive projects needed?

If changes are to be made, I would recommend aligning the inactive "types" with either the highest-level topical subcategories in Category:WikiProjects and/or the highest-level categorization at Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory. There are 474 inactive WikiProjects, and having types like "anime and manga" seems too specific (contains only 1 page).

If the type field is not entered, what should happen? Should it not be sub-categorized, or placed in a category stating it needs the additional parameter added to be properly categorized? As I mentioned above, should all pages, despite having a type, be placed in Category:Inactive WikiProjects‎?

After answering these questions, the first step would be to come up with the desired list of "types." Then, the template could be modified. Additionally, I think the "-related" should be removed from the category name. --Scott Alter (talk) 04:41, 14 March 2014 (UTC)

• Comment: Categories work best when they contains less than 200 entries (one page), but are not too small. XOttawahitech (talk) 15:29, 14 March 2014 (UTC)

As I said, I'm working with inactive WikiProjects and have been adding "types" to their WikiProject status tags, where appropriate. I think I made the goal clear by stating that I wanted to group related inactive WikiProjects together (as is done with the types "geo", "TV show", "sports", etc.) so that these categories can be easily viewed by people interested in reviving WikiProjects on particular topics. By looking at Category:Inactive WikiProjects and all of the "untyped" WikiProjects, you can see there are some topic areas which would be useful (and I listed some examples in my comment above). Why is there an "anime and manga" type when there is only 1 inactive WikiProject on that subject but there isn't a type for Wikipedia-related WikiProjects or science WikiProjects? There are over 200 inactive untyped WikiProjects so it makes logical sense to break down the unfiled WikiProjects into orderly subcategories.

I've been adding types to inactive WikiProjects which didn't have a type, where a type was applicable. If there is no type, then WikiProjects are placed in the general category. I don't foresee a large number of types, just ones that could be applied to, say, a dozen inactive WikiProjects. And, no "-related" would not be in the type name.

So, is this just a matter of editing the template? I've been working with WikiProjects (inactive, active, semi-active and defunct) this week so I'm familiar with the variety of subjects they cover. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 00:39, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

I think you missed my points. I'm not against this, but want you to think about these points before implementation. Yes, it is simple to edit the template (and associated categories) to add more types. However, when editing a template with 1457 transclusions that would recategorize 474 pages into a bunch of new categories, you need to look at the bigger picture. Have a firm plan - don't just add a few more types ad hoc. Specifically, what "types" do you propose to add? Not just some examples, but create a definitive list of all of the ones you would like to add so the template only needs to be modified once. We already have some generalized "types" as evident by project classification at Category:WikiProjects and Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory, I would recommend using these. Additionally, I would recommend removing types with few projects, such as "anime and manga." You also missed my point regarding "-related" in the categories. Currently, with the exception of geographical, the projects are placed in categories containing the term "-related", such as type=sports places the project in Category:Inactive sports-related WikiProjects (whereas the analogous parent category is Category:Sports and games WikiProjects). I propose that we change the template so that "-related" is no longer used in the categories. --Scott Alter (talk) 01:56, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

I think I do understand you. The main gist of your statements is that it's important to think things through and come up with a proposal rather than directly editing the template. I would never edit a template that is foundational for an important area of Wikipedia as the WikiProjects are. And, certainly, I would look at how Category:WikiProjects is already organized as well as looking at the untyped, inactive WikiProjects. So, I guess my question is when I do have a proposal, do I post it here? This is just a thought I've been mulling over and inquired here to find answers which you graciously provided. WP:DEADLINE Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 02:21, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

WikiProject Espionage

There has been a discussion concerning WikiProject Espionage to be renamed as WikiProject Espionage, Intelligence, Surveillance. In its current form (WP: Espionage), there is a number of articles. Unfortunately, countless articles that have been tagged "WikiProject Intelligence" becomes mixed up with the WikiProject Espionage. I have managed to correct quite a few of these mistakes and assess the WikiProject Espionage articles.

My concern if WP:Espionage does undergo a overhaul and incorporate other things (such as "Intelligence" and "Surveillance", that would be incroaching on WP:Mass Surveillance and WikiProject Intelligence, hence why "Espionage" is such a narrow part of society. I can only assume that why this WikiProject was setup was to fill a void of people who were either pending charges or have been charged for Espionage. They would be suited in this WikiProject.

I realise that WP:Espionage has only a handful of members. I do see a positive point of having this on Wikipedia. It would be ashame to have to close it. Adamdaley (talk) 05:56, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

Would anyone be willing enough to help me structure WP:Espionage so it can become a better WikiProject? Adamdaley (talk) 05:57, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

There is no "WikiProject Intelligence", that currently redirects to a subtopic "military intelligence" TF of MILHIST, which isn't all intell, it's just a redirect from a short name. So "Intelligence" would not be encroaching as no overarching intelligence project currently exists. I don't see why spycraft (espionage) isn't fit for a wikiproject. That's more than just people charged with treason. Tagging with WPIntelligence to mean WPEspionage was decided at WP:TFD, as it was recognized there that the espionage project has overlapping scope with any intelligence project, thus suitable target since no WikiProject Intelligence exists, but the banner did. The scope statement at WPMassSurveillance also seems to be wrong, judging from the response on the talk page, it's actually about freedom of speech and privacy, not mass surveillance in all its aspects. -- 70.50.151.11 (talk) 06:57, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

My mistake about WP:Intelligence. Would anyone be willing to help with WP:Espionage with structure, with slight improvements for the WikiProject template, and various other ideas? User talk:70.50.151.11 I would nicely ask you to create an account instead of having an IP address. Adamdaley (talk) 00:22, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

Shouldn't we be discussing this at WP:ESPIONAGE? And as for help, I can write a new WikiProjectBanner for you with taskforces, should an expansion of WPESPIONAGE and conversion of Espionage to a TF of a greater WPEIS be the route chosen. -- 70.50.151.11 (talk) 09:22, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals/Solaris

I noticed this thing floating about, it is not linked to from the proposal page, nor is it descriptive enough to discern what it is. Speedy delete or MfD? -- 70.50.151.11 (talk) 01:16, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

I've nominated it for speedy deletion DB-TEST -- 70.50.151.11 (talk) 09:30, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject United Kingdom is inactive?

I just visited Wikipedia:WikiProject United Kingdom and found to my surprise that it is marked inactive? XOttawahitech (talk) 15:20, 14 March 2014 (UTC)

I have fixed this back to active. Its still used as a central point of notification and debate. -- Moxy (talk) 15:32, 14 March 2014 (UTC)

I used the standards in the Template:WikiProject status to gauge whether or not a WikiProject was active, semi-active or inactive and there were only 6 edits to the main Wikipedia:UK Wikipedians' notice board page over the past twelve months and none since November. The rate is much higher with active WikiProjecs which are usually updated at least monthly if not more often. But it appears that while the main page isn't updated, the Talk Page is somewhat active.

Statuses can be easily changed if they are incorrect. In this case, my edit was reverted and that was the right decision. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 01:02, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

In the last 6 months, there's been a rather large discussion on the talk page, doesn't that come into the accounting of whether a project is active or not, or is it only edits to the face page, and all edits on the talk page have no contribution to the determination of activity? -- 70.50.151.11 (talk) 09:17, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

70.50.151.11, here is a list of criteria for evaluating WikiProject status from Template:WikiProject status. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 17:09, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

Extended content

A project is generally considered semi-active when: there have been some, but relatively few, significant changes to the main project page for several months or there have been some, but relatively few, discussions on its talk page for several months. Minor fiddling with formatting, automatic archiving, and unanswered messages to the WikiProject from outsiders ("Could someone with this project please help me with...") or from bots do not count as signs of project activity. Any editor may add this {{WikiProject status|Semi-active}} template to the top of any apparently semi-active WikiProject. Any member of the project may remove it if it is placed in error. Upon removal, please consider placing a message on the WikiProject's talk page to indicate that the group is still active. If almost no activity occurs in this WikiProject, consider replacing this tag with {{WikiProject status|Inactive}}. A project is generally considered inactive when: there are no editors listed as members or there have been no significant changes to the main project page for four months or there have been no discussions on its talk page for four months. Minor fiddling with formatting, automatic archiving, and unanswered messages to the WikiProject from outsiders ("Could someone with this project please help me with...") or from bots do not count as signs of project activity. Any editor may add this {{WikiProject status|Inactive}} template to the top of any apparently inactive WikiProject. Any member of the project may remove it if it is placed in error. Upon removal, please consider placing a message on the WikiProject's talk page to indicate that the group is still active.

Legal or Medical advice

There is a discussion at Wikipedia talk:Talk page guidelines#Legal or Medical advice that may be of interest.

It concerns requests for legal or medical advice posted to one of the reference desks.

I am posting this here because of a potential conflict between the talk page guidelines and reference desk guidelines --Guy Macon (talk) 06:01, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

medam assalamu alaikum apnar sate jojajoger kono line amar jana nei tai avabe apner kase liklam.amar mobil no 01722359280 email.ruhulkhan.dulu@gmail.com.ami 4 sonttaner pita amar stri akjon manosik varsammohin mohila se amar songser sere 4 bassake fele sylhet take nowgaon rajsahi te akti kharap loker barite giye utece ami onek kosto kore tar sonddan milaiya tahake anntte parcina tai amake sahajo korile ami amar pagol bow ke bassader nikot fire antte pari — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ruhulkhan.dulu (talk • contribs) 12:24, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:WikiProject Countering systemic gender bias

You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:WikiProject Countering systemic gender bias. Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 13:50, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Research Idea: Investigating the impact of offline meetups on participation and productivity in Wikipedia

I'm putting forward an IEG Project Proposal to investigate how the interaction of Wikipedia members at offline meetup events such as Hackatons or Wikimania may have an effect on the productivity of those members and their participation in Wikipedia. You can read the project proposal here and I'd appreciate the input of community members who have visited these events before. Do you think there is a specific area of these meetups that would better reveal how participation is impacted? How do you define participation in Wikipedia? Any comments would be welcome! OSUBrit (talk) 21:06, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

Using a BOT to place project banner on talk pages -- WikiProject African diaspora

Just to let those interested know that I have initiated a BOT request to have wp:WikiProject African diaspora categories and articles added to the wikiproject. If anyone is interested I will try to remember to post updates here. Please notify me when you respond. Thanks in advance, XOttawahitech (talk) 18:34, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

Invitation to Participate in a User Study - Final Reminder

Would you be interested in participating in a user study of a new tool to support editor involvement in WikiProjects? We are a team at the University of Washington studying methods for finding collaborators within WikiProjects, and we are looking for volunteers to evaluate a new visual exploration tool for Wikipedia. Given your interest in this Wikiproject, we would welcome your participation in our study. To participate, you will be given access to our new visualization tool and will interact with us via Google Hangout so that we can solicit your thoughts about the tool. To use Google Hangout, you will need a laptop/desktop, a web camera, and a speaker for video communication during the study. We will provide you with an Amazon gift card in appreciation of your time and participation. For more information about this study, please visit our wiki page (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Finding_a_Collaborator). If you would like to participate in our user study, please send me a message at Wkmaster (talk) 05:29, 10 April 2014 (UTC).

Dignification

What would be an awards of the intensified participants of wikiproject groups? ..... am Jesmion — Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.206.11.101 (talk) 21:29, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

I think this is from a blocked sockpuppeteer, and have reported it.Mercurywoodrose (talk) 04:47, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

Latino, and Mexican American, Wikiprojects merger proposal

I think that two somewhat inactive projects, Wikipedia:WikiProject Latinos, and Wikipedia:WikiProject Mexican-Americans should be merged, with mexam being a task force of latinos. (i took off inactive tags due to my editing). The project would continue to be supported by Wikipedia:WikiProject United States, as "latinos" should have been. The project should have its name changed to Wikipedia:Wikiproject Hispanic and Latino Americans, matching conventional use here of the terms. "Latinos" appeared to initially be for latino/hispanic americans, but was starting to cover all latin am peoples, but thats way too much overlap with Wikipedia:WikiProject Latin America, which presumably covers that adequately. I hope that the merge discussion might engender some more actual participation in the projects. I definitely dont want to be the only editor to try to merge the project pages, and i of course no idea how to program the change, but i would be willing to a make whole lot of manual changes if thats whats called for (i added the SF Bay Area task force to hundreds of articles). As a side note, i did revamp the Portal:Hispanic and Latino Americans, but i may not be able to continue to work on that. at least its not completely moribund and out of date now.Mercurywoodrose (talk) 04:17, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

No matter what the projects are and no matter how sensible the merge proposal is, you need to ask the people at the affected projects. You need to ask even if you think that nobody is there to reply to your proposal. If nobody objects (wait a month or so), then you may merge them. If anyone objects, then you shouldn't merge them.

Once you've got an agreement for the merge, then you can come back here for help with the technical side. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:32, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

How to get an article statistics list for a new wiki-project?

See for a nice explanation by User: Rich Farmbrough here: Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#Request_for_article_statistics_list_on_WP:Physiology XOttawahitech (talk) 19:32, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

Now archived at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)/Archive_125#Request_for_article_statistics_list_on_WP:Physiology

03:23, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

Project templates

See {{WikiProject status/Active}} and {{WikiProject status}} which have been nominated to be merged -- 65.94.171.206 (talk) 22:36, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for posting this. Is there anyone here who can shed some light on these templates/ what are they used for/ what is the background ? I see the second template was created in 2011, and I know there has been some controversy in using it. Can someone please explain some of the background for those of us who were not around this part of wp at the time. Thanks in advance, XOttawahitech (talk) 15:00, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

WikiProject merge

There's an important request for comment regarding the possible merger of Wikipedia:WikiProject Sailor Moon to Wikipedia:WikiProject Anime and manga. The discussion is at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Anime and manga#RfC. Your comments and input on the situation would be appreciated. Thanks, Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 06:42, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

WikiProject active members/top contributors

I see that some projects have access to activity levels of contributors to articles tagged by the respective w-proj. Just wondering how they do this so it can be accomplished by other wikiprojects? Thanks in advance, XOttawahitech (talk) 14:48, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

Ottawahitech, are you looking for something like the "awards" handed out by WikiProject Medicine recently? If so, I'd ask them directly. I think they had some sort of database query run. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:42, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

Proposals seems to be a ghost town

I say this because my proposal was made more than 2 months ago and hasn't gotten any feedback yet. Does anyone know how I could change that? Jinkinson talk to me 18:14, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

Did you link to the discussion at any relevant projects so that people would see it? If so and still no one commented then I am guessing it probably doesn't have enough interest to be a wikiproject. If you haven't linked to it from anywhere then you should do so. Being careful not to spam of course. -DJSasso (talk) 17:11, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

Most proposals get no responses. Proposals are typically successful (that is, result in a WikiProject that still has some activity after 6 or 12 months) if you already know of a couple of people who want to join the project.

In this case, I suggest that you broaden your focus a little and WP:REVIVE the rather quiet Wikipedia:WikiProject Rock music group. (Naturally, your first project will be to improve indie rock articles. ) If you ever get more than a hundred or so people involved in that larger group, then you could split off a task force just for indie rock. Until that point, you'll have better success with the larger subject. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:05, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

Definitely agree with this. -DJSasso (talk) 19:20, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

@Jinkinson: Thanks for posting your dilemma here. Please continue updating us on this topic with your experience -- I am sure we can all benefit from sharing ideas. By the way, have you tried to look in Category: Wikipedians to see if you can find interested editors? In general I wonder if anyone checked to see if other proposals are also faring so poorly? Does this project track statistics in this regard? XOttawahitech (talk) 13:42, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

I don't know that anyone keeps any statistics. The biggest issue is usually that people come here with a proposal that is far too specific and don't have a group of editors already working on or wanting to work on such a wikiproject. They often see a wikiproject is just something to tag articles with cause other subjects have a project and they want theirs to. And instead of seeing if there is a more generic project that would make more sense to work as a part of they try to create their own. The best way to create an active wikiproject is to start as part of a more generic wikiproject and organize some "drives" on some articles in the subject area you enjoy and once you have a decent number of editors taking part in those drives you suggest that you split the discussion/work off to its own wikiproject. This way you avoid the very common issue of people creating projects/task forces that immediately go inactive as soon as they create them because they never had an active group already working together. -DJSasso (talk) 13:52, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

@Djsasso: Are you saying that those who try to create a new WikiProject should already have a group of interested members? If so then in my opinion this project should change the blurb on the project page:

Accept proposals or requests for new projects, and assist in their creation; or, alternately, point those making the requests to the appropriate existing projects when applicable ones already exist.

to reflect this. How else would a reasonable editor such as User:Jinkinson, who is here for the first time, know otherwise? XOttawahitech (talk) 22:35, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

Yes, a wikiproject is intended to be a place where people working together on a given set of articles can work together. If there are no individuals working on that set of articles collaboratively then there is no need for a wikiproject which is why that blurb mentions pointing them to appropriate existing projects. Essentially unless the more generic project's talk page is too busy to handle the discussion for a subset of its articles there is no need for a new wikiproject or task force. All that being said part of the council proposals pages are to see if that group of editors exists. If you aren't attracting people to your proposal then its a good indication your wikiproject probably isn't a good idea. -DJSasso (talk) 23:55, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

I started collecting success rates on new WikiProjects a couple of years ago. I didn't get the full year's data assembled, but it was pretty obvious from the data I collected that:

• most proposals failed before page creation,
• successful new projects usually had multiple people interested in their creation, and
• successful new projects were usually started by relatively experienced editors.

I wouldn't actually object to a rule that said new projects could not be proposed by single editors: Before filing a proposal, you must find participant #2, and the two of you need to propose it together. (This is somewhat similar to WP:RFC/Us, which require two involved editors to certify the existence of a dispute). But so far, there are no real rules on creating WikiProjects. You're not required to propose them in the first place. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:32, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

The most certain way to guarantee that an idea will NOT be implemented is to propose it. Greg Bard (talk) 19:42, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

Leaflet For Wikiproject Council At Wikimania 2014

Are you looking to recruit more contributors to your project?
We are offering to design and print physical paper leaflets to be distributed at Wikimania 2014 for all projects that apply.
For more information, click the link below.
Project leaflets
Adikhajuria (talk) 14:05, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

These are free, by the way. If anyone is going to Wikimania and wants "advertisements" for your group, you should sign up. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:20, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

WikiProject banners and the new Draft space

Dear Wikiproject council members: Now that the new Draft and Draft talk spaces are up and running, there has been some talk of the advisability of adding Wikiproject banners to the talk pages of drafts. The hope would be that members of the Wikiproject would become aware of drafts in their area of interest and perhaps improve them or advise the editors who had created the drafts. It has been pointed out that there may be ramifications outside the space, for example in gathering statistics, or in the workflow of groups who spend time placing the banners, etc. A discussion about this is ongoing at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Articles for creation#Adding Wikiproject banners to drafts, and someone from your group may wish to comment. —Anne Delong (talk) 04:43, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

Might wikipedia WikiProjects expand a little into other WF entities?

Recent discussion regarding Wikinews indicated that there isn't really that much effort from that many people regarding the content of that WF entity. I can speak from some recent experience that at least a few other entities, like Wikisource, don't get that much attention or effort either. Yeah, the rules of each entity are different, but that difference would allow for inclusion of some material in those other entities which might be important, if not necessarily encyclopedic. Also, speaking from some review of the matters here myself, there are still a lot of articles of fairly obvious notability and significance which can be found even in some older reference sources but can't be found here yet.

Regarding specifically wikisource, over at wikisource:User:John Carter I have a rather longish list of several hundred well-regarded PD reference sources in all areas which are available as pdf files, and whose articles in many cases would be extremely useful for both providing at least some useful, readily-available content for some wikipedia articles, and providing sources to establish both the notability and an indicator of potential content for articles not yet created. Unfortunately, I can also say that it takes the better part of an hour to proofread a single page from Encyclopedia Britannica, at least for me, and the comparatively few editors such sister entities have clearly isn't enough for all the work available. Luckily, several other reference works, with the large print they used in ye olde dayes, take only about 15 minutes a page to proofread, because of the relatively small amount of text per page.

For those of you involved in trying to get WikiProjects to work, I was wondering what you might think of what ways, if any, we might be able to call attention to content of other entities, if we should even try to do so. All input is more than welcome. John Carter (talk) 21:16, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

This is an interesting idea, and it will be a lot easier to do when WP:Flow permits cross-wiki discussions.

I think that I'd have an easier time helping out at those projects if I had a clear, concrete idea of what I could do that would be helpful to them as well as would support our goals here. For example, if there were a list of terms that needed to be defined at Wiktionary, or a list of sources that needed to be proofread at Wikisource, or something like that. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:45, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

WikiNews'd probably be the easiest: WikiProject Pokemon could have stuff about the Hoenn reboots and maybe some residual coverage of X and Y, WikiProject Film could do some stuff about the new Godzilla movie, all kinds of stuff. WikiQuote could also be melded in fairly easily (notable quotes about the new Hoenn games and from the new Godzilla, to use my previous example). Past that? I'm not so sure... Supernerd11 _{Firemind ^_^ Pokedex} 02:23, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

If it were to work, it would probably be best if individual projects were to define, maybe on the project talk page, a specific "collaboration" regarding one or more of the other entities and specific goals to be accomplished. For instance, I notice that there are a lot of PD reference sources dealing with the Bible that could be proofread onto wikisource, with the information regarding the individual articles used by editors here to create and develop articles on the same topics here. There are probably a lot of old sources like that for all sorts of topics. It might, maybe, if someone has the time to do so, be possible to get projects here lists of articles relevant to their topics in the old Encyclopedia Britannica and other PD reference sources. And I think some of the older, maybe now more or less inactive projects, particularly those relating to cancelled TV shows and broken-up music acts, might be able to get a little nudge of activity if they were to try to assemble some of their content here into book form at either wikibooks or wikiversity. Following up with some of Supernerd's examples, a book about the Godzilla movies, books, etc., including information about the comics, merchandising, etc., might be achievable. I acknowledge that there wouldn't be a lot of reason to try to overextent into too many fields in even the first few years of such efforts. It would probably make more sense to initially publicize and attempt specific individual efforts regarding specific individual objectives, at least for the few years, and draw attention to them. For a lot of even the major topics, honestly, I'm no more optimistic than some of the rest of you, if we don't have interested editors here, but there are at least a few topics where something like this might have a reasonable chance of success. John Carter (talk) 21:55, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

I've never done any proofreading at Wikisource, although I'm pretty good at it in the real world. Can you point me to a short example so I can see how it works? The subject doesn't matter to me, so one of those Bible-related pages would be fine, if you've got one handy. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:51, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

The only thing to really note about proofreading at wikisource is that as far as possible, to a degree, the formatting of the original text, including images, and where possible the exact characters used in the original text, including italicization and all the umlauts and other diacritical marks that might be used there, should be reproduced as closely as possible. That's one of the reasons proofreading EB takes so long, because the older versions used a lot of italicization of foreign words and all the diacritical marks of the original language. So maybe starting there wouldn't be the easiest way to go. And I only mentioned the Biblical stuff because I found so many reference sources on it in the Sheehy guide to reference - most of them aren't even included there yet. The current collaboration of the month over there is an old African travel book about Lake Ngami here, and it is probably as good a place to start as any, although most of it is now to the point of what they call "verification". The pages in the green boxes have already been reviewed by two individuals, or verified - the yellow have been proofread by one person, waiting for a second to catch any mistakes the first might not, fix occasional double spacing, that sort of thing. It's probably as good a place as any to get a basic grasp of the process. Beyond that, the wikisource main page has a link to all the categories of not-yet-proofread and proofread pages by category, although those are frighteningly huge categories. John Carter (talk) 18:09, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the link, John Carter.

I think I did it correctly. If changes are necessary, do you make them and still mark the page as either proofread or verified? WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:09, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

RfC: remove the attention flag from WikiProject banners

See the discussion here. RockMagnetist (talk) 03:47, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

{{WPRedirect}}

Template:WPRedirect (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has been nominated for deletion; this is the project banner for WP:WikiProject Redirect -- 65.94.171.126 (talk) 08:06, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

Wikiproject Manual Medicine

Hi all! There is a growing interest in, and utilization of manual medicine in health care, primarily for neuromusculoskeletal disorders. Manual medicine is practiced by a wide variety of practitioners and has a long history as a therapeutic intervention. The sciences of manual medicine has exploded in the last 20 years, with tons of research and textbooks devoted to the subject [2], [3], [4], [5], and many others. Google Scholar list 2 650 000 hits [6] and over 4200 systematic reviews on PubMed [7]. There is tons of scientific research regarding manual medicine and I'd like to get the ball rolling for a new group to explore this aspect of health care. DVMt (talk) 02:07, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

Unless you know a handful of experienced editors who are interested in joining this, it's probably not worth setting up. Nearly all proposals for WikiProjects fail. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:29, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

How many, do you figure? DVMt (talk) 05:00, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

Anecdotally, because I never finished collecting the data, four dedicated editors is good and more is better. I think that Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals/Women's History is the most successful WikiProject created in the last few years, and they had 18 supporters. Drop by their talk page to see how many of those are still regularly active now. WhatamIdoing (talk) 14:52, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

Naming convention for WikiProject articles

Hi, there's a discussion regarding the articles in WikiProject Somalia here about whether the categories should be "A-class Somalia articles" or "A-class WikiProject Somalia articles," etc. I'm appreciate any views from here. Thanks! -- Ricky81682 (talk) 22:14, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

Tool server mantiance

See Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 135#Help making a template -- Moxy (talk) 22:31, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

Tagging multiple wikiprojects in the same "family"

I have a dispute with another user who is dual=tagging articles tagged by WikiProject equine with WikiProject Mammals as well. I have always understood that rarely is there a need to double-tag "parent" and "child" wikiprojects. The other user feels differently. See conversation here. If I'm wrong on this, I'll back off, but my understanding is that double-tagging is a colossal waste of time. Please advise. Montanabw^(talk) 23:47, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

It is something that some people feel strongly about on both sides of the issue. But yes generally only the more specific WikiProject really needs to be tagged assuming that the larger scoped ones is really large. WP:SPORTS for example only gets tagged on articles where there aren't more specific sports projects. However, I would never edit war over it. Some "Families" just create a single banner with parameters in them indicating they are also part of the more specific group. -DJSasso (talk) 00:23, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

Definitely not worth an edit war although it might be useful to see if the Mammals project banner could incorporate the others. John Carter (talk) 01:35, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

There are lots and lots of mammal projects, cats, dogs, horses... thousands and thousands of articles (3000 in WPEQ alone). Thanks for your answer. Helpful info Montanabw^(talk) 21:45, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

@Montanabw: I may regret saying this but I have some experience working on project banners. Give me a listing of projects specifically dealing exclusively with mammals and I'll see what I can do. John Carter (talk) 22:45, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

@John Carter:: Actually, I personally oppose the single banner concept (I don't care for it at WP United States) because I think it complicates project tagging, particularly for people (like me) who are on the short bus when it comes to template syntax (I can do it now, but I've been on wiki 8 years). But is there a way that the WPEQ template could automatically contain an internal link to wikiproject mammals so the cleanup tags for equine articles (or cats, or dogs, or whatever) could appear on their listings as well? I think that was what Plantdrew wants & why he is tagging everything. Montanabw^(talk) 18:59, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

It is 100% up to the members of the project. If WikiProject Mammals wants to have it tagged, then it gets tagged. If they don't, then it doesn't. Whether any other project chooses to tag the page, or even whether any other project exists, is irrelevant. See Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Guide#Article tagging for a fuller explanation. This is also addressed briefly in the /FAQ at the top of this page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:14, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Actually no; there is a place for overall guidelines as to how projects work in general; And, anyway, I have also posted at WP:Mammals, though it seems a rather inactive project at the moment. Montanabw^(talk) 20:25, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Actually, Montanabw, what I'm telling you is that there already is an official {{guideline}} that addresses this question, and that official guideline directly says that it's up to each WikiProject to decide what they're going to tag. If you want to double-check that the guideline really does say this, then do please click the link I gave you. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:18, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

Same guideline also says over tagging is disruptive, having every article in WP:Chicago also tagged with WP:Illinois and WP:USA is over tagging, since everything in Chicago would also belong in Illinois and in USA...so there is no need for 3 tags, just the most specific one. I have to say I like the idea of coding the lower templates to automatically include all their articles in the higher project thus achieving the same affect of having all 3 tags, without the over tagging on the talk page. -DJSasso (talk) 13:34, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

True, and it gives you a pretty clear idea of what over-tagging means: "WikiProject banners should not be used to duplicate the category system or portals. If an article is only tangentially related to the scope of another WikiProject, then please do not place that project's banner on the article." The warnings against over-tagging are focused on telling non-members not to tag their favorite articles with every possible banner. This does not override the right of any WikiProject to choose to tag and support an article. Leonardo da Vinci is currently tagged by 15 projects, and there's nothing wrong with that—or with adding a 16th project, if yet another group of editors chooses to support that article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:05, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

If the projects all have very different scopes (ie WP:Middle Ages and WP:Italy). However, in the cases where one projects entire scope is encased in another projects scope, then yes it is most definitely an issue and has caused all kinds of problems in the past. -DJSasso (talk) 14:50, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

It's not an issue once people in "Project A" quit believing that they "own" the articles that they've tagged and thus can force "Project B" to not support the article. There have been a few disputes over the years, but I've yet to see one that didn't involve inappropriate attitudes of ownership. It often works quite well: There is little or nothing in WPPHARM that doesn't also belong WPCHEM, and there are zero resulting disputes. There is little or nothing in WikiProject History of science that isn't within the scope of WPHIST, and there are zero resulting disputes. Everything tagged by WikiProject First aid falls within the scope of a single task force for WPMED, and there are zero resulting disputes. There are dozens of projects whose scope could be entirely subsumed under WikiProject Music, and yet there are zero resulting disputes. Some of these solve it by tagging everything twice, and some of these solve it by tagging everything once, but it is usually solved. The only ongoing problems are from people who think that their project somehow "trumps" the other, or who worry that their small project is being "overwhelmed" by the other.

Tagging is a method for groups of people to keep track of articles that they want to keep track of. It is not a content categorization system, and it should not be abused as a method for telling other people that "your" group of volunteers isn't allowed to track it because it's "mine". To speak bluntly, unless you (or I) are actually one of the volunteers in the project that's tagging the page, then what that group of volunteers tags to create their "collective watchlist" is exactly as much of your business as is the contents of those volunteers' individual watchlists (i.e., "none"). WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:59, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

Have asked at Template talk:WPBannerMeta#Question. John Carter (talk) 20:48, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Looks like they have an answer there? Is this what I think it is - a way to add a hidden parameter to the WPEQ template? Montanabw^(talk) 22:47, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

• When WP US came about, I questioned if automatically parenting to other projects would be a better solution. Basically what I wanted was the ability for a project, say WP Nevada to be automatically included in WP US without having to include the banner directly on the talk page. So in this discussion if this had been implemented, the template for WP equine could be modified and the projects articles would be included in WP mammal, or if appropriate in multiple parents. Another possible example if it made sense, Wikipedia:WikiProject Native languages of California could be coded to be part of Wikipedia:WikiProject California, Wikipedia:WikiProject Indigenous peoples of North America and Wikipedia:WikiProject Languages. That is not something we can do today without tagging for all 4 projects or creating messy sub projects. Vegaswikian (talk) 21:10, 27 June 2014 (UTC)
  • Sounds very logical, can you check the link above that John Carter posted to see if they actually CAN do this? I am a complete syntax/programming/markup not-geek, it's all gibberish to me. Montanabw^(talk) 22:47, 27 June 2014 (UTC)
    • On the surface, it sounds like what I was looking for. Like you, complex templates are not my forte so I can't say for sure. I suspect that the code in question would need to go in the lower level project, like Nevada or equine in the examples above. Vegaswikian (talk) 23:04, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

(outdent) - It would be easily possible to add optional "Mammals" parameters to the Cats banner or other banners with the Mammals project appearing in the "drop-down" section if that is what you are asking. Are there specific templates you would want to see it added to? John Carter (talk) 19:23, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

Could you "sandbox" what this would look like for {{WikiProject Equine}} somewhere and post the link here? I personally would like to just have Plantdrew not tag WP Mammals on half the horse articles because that is silly. That said, some of the WPEQ articles are biographies of people who are into equestrian sport, so it's not something they all need. If it looks good, I can post the sandbox link at WPEQ talk and see if anyone else objects. Montanabw^(talk) 22:26, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

Give me a few days tomorrow being a hoiday here and I'll get something up. I think it would probably work best as a variation on existing "task force" parameters, so that the assessor can specifically choose to activate it in specific cases, which here would probably predominantly be articles on species, species history, etc. John Carter (talk) 23:00, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

Just noticed this. There seems to be a parallel discussion at Template talk:WPBannerMeta#Question, and perhaps duplication of work - possibly people pulling in different directions (WP:MULTI). Of my two suggestions there, I favour my first (modify the more specific banner to have |mammals=yes) --Redrose64 (talk) 23:19, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

Right, it started here and John noted it over there, I think to get the techies looking at it. Either place is fine with me for discussion. Montanabw^(talk) 19:52, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

If WikiProject Mammals likes this solution (I would, if I were them), then that's great. If they don't (e.g., if their banner supplies some other feature, or if they disagree with WPEQ's rating system), then you're wasting your time. You cannot force them to use your banner (exactly like WPUS cannot force fifty-odd US-related WikiProjects to use its banner). WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:59, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

No one can keep people from doing silly things if they are hell-bent on ridiculous and redundant behavior; but I am trying to attempt a solution that meets the needs of both projects, or more the point, I am bending over backwards so that one individual who seems bent on inserting the mammals project template into what will be thousands upon thousands of mammal articles already tagged by "child" projects in the tree can do so without creating hopeless clutter. Montanabw^(talk) 05:15, 5 July 2014 (UTC)

User:John Carter/Equine and its talk page are set up using the existing model of the Equine banner. If variant importance assessments or additional material were wanted, I could set it up using the Template:WikiProject Christianity model. John Carter (talk) 16:43, 5 July 2014 (UTC)

{{WPB}} and {{WPBS}} were created to deal with the clutter, if that's your problem. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:23, 5 July 2014 (UTC)

held potx

need what? help NOW NOW OR CUT YOU means life in life I CAN"T TELL YOU SORRY

Um, is that supposed to be comprehensible? John Carter (talk) 21:18, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

Joining wikiprojects

How do you join wikiprojects? Do you just add the userbox to your user page, or is it more complicated than that? Also how do I fix the formatting of this text? UserJDalek 23:57, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

1. Just show up and start working. You may add a userbox if you want. You may add your name to the list of participants if you want (most WikiProjects have one somewhere; they're usually seriously out of date). The important thing is to read the WikiProject's talk page and work with the other people there to improve articles. Tell them what you're doing, and ask them what they're doing. If it's quiet, then try to WP:REVIVE it.
2. Don't put any spaces at the start of the line. I've fixed it for you. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:05, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

@UserJDalek: The location of the signup sheet varies between WikiProjects, sometimes it's not obvious. For example, the main page of WikiProject Doctor Who begins with a "Welcome!" box; in that you will find the text "If you would like to help, please inquire on the talk page, sign up on our list of participants, or just start editing." The second link there takes you to a page containing three lists and some instructions. One of those instructions reads "If you're interested in joining the project, please add your name to the list of participants." and the link in that takes you to the actual list. It may be edited: just put your login ID in alphabetical order, observing the existing pattern, like this. --Redrose64 (talk) 00:21, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

FAQ

What is a wiki pedia? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 182.64.76.174 (talk) 15:19, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

A Wikipedia is an encyclopedia written using wiki software. You might want to ask questions like this at the WP:Reference desk. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:30, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

Article assessment screening

Anyone who assesses articles very often knows how often the assessments get out of date, and how tedious it is to re-check them manually.

Nettrom and Aaron Halfaker have analyzed all 9,000+ plus of the WP:MED stubs and found about 750 that they figured had at least a 50% chance of not being a stub. The list has been posted at m:Research:Ideas/Screening WikiProject Medicine articles for quality/Prediction table. The next step is to manually re-screen the pages on the list, to see how accurate their algorithm is. If anyone's interested, please feel free to have a look. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:02, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

{{COTWs}}

Template:COTWs (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has been nominated for deletion; this template interlinks wikiproject collaboration areas -- 65.94.169.222 (talk) 07:12, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

help out

I'm new but am interested in getting in on one of these projects. Does anyone know of a good place to read? Want to understand what I'm doing before diving in. Thanks!Jordanrolsen (talk) 23:20, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Hello. A WikiProject is a group of editors who work together and edit a peticular theme. For example I am a member of Wikiproject videogames and we edit and discuss articles related to videogames. You don't need to apply to join a WikiProject you can just join. If you want to read more about Wikiprojects Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Guide will probably be worth reading. --BarsofGold (talk) 03:55, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Inclusion proposal for indie dance charts (Goa, Progressive, Psy etc)

There is currently a proposal for the inclusion of the major digital music distributors, in regards to very specific music charts, which are not yet covered by Wikipedia. Input and the discussion can be found here. prokaryotes (talk) 23:42, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

Project-level admins and dispute assistance

I'm just a bit curious. Is it heard of to have admins listing their names in wikiprojects officially as a way of saying that they're "on call" for issues affecting articles in the project? Beyond this, is it heard of for projects to have lists of members who pledge to help with disputes that come up with articles in the project? Thanks for any thoughts. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 17:25, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Wikiprojects are simply collaborations, what authority they can leverage comes from being a sort of "voting bloc" rather than any sanctioned role in the administration of Wikipedia. There aren't project administrators in a sense other than there being subject-interested editors who also have general admin rights, and there aren't project-specific mediators. That said, if you are trying to find a court of first resort for a content dispute, an affiliated project is often the best choice if the talk page isn't working. --erachima talk 22:28, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

At larger projects, it's not unusual to see people post requests for minor admin assistance (moves over redirects, semi-protection for vandalism) rather than taking it to the general boards. It's not significantly different from posting a request on an individual admin's talk page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:17, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

(replying to both) Thanks for your responses. I'm not suggesting that a wikiproject is anything more than a collaboration. Having started one in 2006, and pretty much administering it most of the time (essentially due to lack of anyone else indicating interest in such), I understand its limits. I was thinking of something rather basic, like admins who are also editors interested in the project's subject area would simply note somehow that they are admins, so people can more easily contact admins who are more interested or familiar with the articles included in the project. These would not be official admins for the project -- they wouldn't be asked to do the project's bidding, but just be "on call" for admin requests related to the project. In the case of the project I work on, I would ask above the list for members to indicate if they are admins or not (e.g., "Please note if you are an admin by bolding your username -- in doing so, you may be contacted for assistance with project-included pages.").

As for project-specific mediators, is there any policy/guideline against having people list themselves as those interested in helping with disputes in project-included pages? I realize that in some cases, editors will go to the project talk page to ask for various kinds of help, and that's fine. But also, in some cases, there's a dispute on the article's talk page, and what they want/need is someone to play neutral and advise the disputants as they work through their dispute. I was just thinking of possibly having members who list themselves as those interested in helping with these matters. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 11:00, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

...wow. Has the rules creep really gotten THAT bad, that people feel the need to ask if there's a rule against volunteering to be helpful? --erachima talk 11:34, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

Yes, it's okay for people to volunteer to help. It would be best if the volunteers remembered that they had zero extra authority and zero official status. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:18, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. Lack of official status is totally understood. And erachima, yes, there are so many rules now that it's overwhelming and I didn't want to take any steps that would be seen as crossing a line. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 17:13, 23 August 2014 (UTC)

Merge proposal for WikiProject Latinos and WikiProject Mexican-American

Last month, Mercurywoodrose and I discussed on the possibility of merging WikiProjects Latinos and Mexican-Americans with WikiProject United States and turning the Mexican-American project into a task force for the Latinos project. This been brought on all three WikiProjects last month and there has been no discussion since then. Erick (talk) 11:07, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

If it helps the process, i am also open to having WP:LATINOS become a task force of WPUSA, either along with, or as a "parent" task force of the [[Mexican-Americans|Mexican-American task force]]. there seems to be some precedent for having a task force within a task force. I will note that we have an active and useful portal now, Portal:Hispanic and Latino Americans, which can be supported by both of these projects.Mercurywoodrose (talk) 13:04, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

If you have given people a good chance to object (weeks and weeks, maybe multiple announcements), and you've gotten no response or no objections, then you may proceed to merge with a clear conscience. Merges can always be reverted if necessary (it's happened at least once, and it was very unpleasant), but it's usually okay if there's been a clear effort to get feedback over time.

I see that this idea was first floated at the small projects back in April, so that's good. I see one current note at WPUS from two weeks ago. If there were no other announcements at WPUS, then you might make one more effort to make sure that the parent project won't object, just to be on the safe side. For practical help, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Task forces's checklist. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:24, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

Draft-class

I have started a discussion on possibly making Draft-class one of the default assessment classes used by WikiProjects. Any comments welcome at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Widen usage of Draft-class. Thank you — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:31, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

How to deal with disruption of a project?

Even before working up infrustructure and deciding on priorities, Wikiproject Countering systemic bias/Gender gap task force already is having problem with disruption via some individuals. They have wikihounded women to the task force (causing two to quit already, leaving long disgruntled posts), imposing unwanted agendas through constant argumentation, and made repeated accusatory and nasty comments on anything they disagree with. One past and probably future poster already admitted elsewhere he wanted the task force gone.

At this point those actually interested in an effective project have been a bit reluctant to quickly remove/hat/close/archive disruptive comments/threads, though I think that will change. There already has been a warning that Men's Right's community sanctions could be invoked should individuals have a definitive history on men's rights-related articles. Some problems, should they continue, also may be dealt with via the sexology arbitration. But other issues are not yet covered by any general sanctions and aren't always dealt with well at ANI, though that may have to be the next step. (I assume WP:Dispute resolution noticeboard would not deal with them.)

Are there any other steps well-meaning members of the project can take to deal with chronic disruption? Thanks for your help. Carolmooredc (Talkie-Talkie) 14:49, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

I'm sorry. There really aren't any specific procedures to deal with this. Serious disruption of WikiProjects has historically been rare, although it can be extremely harmful when it happens. You can pursue IBANs and TBANs for individuals, but getting bans approved can be politically challenging. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:26, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

TBANs or page bans probably the best request at ANI; always helps to have a specific request!

(Also, for the record, to avoid nitpicking from my "followers", the phrase "(causing two to quit already, etc...)" should have been at the end of the list, not after first example.)

Now, one editor did seem to think we could "appoint" one or two individuals as moderators to do the archiving and now that I think of it this was done for a couple years at a less controversial Wikiproject. So I guess that is a possibility if one has sufficient support from the members who have not been disruptive. But I guess that's something that can be done after current disruptions dealt with. Carolmooredc (Talkie-Talkie) 19:39, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

WP:ANI on “disruption of Wikiproject”

Per discussion above, Here is an ANI posting regarding problems at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Countering systemic bias/Gender gap task force. Carolmooredc (Talkie-Talkie) 19:06, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

How to help new editors

I know that some of you deal with new users, and I thought that you might like to look at the ideas posted here: Sixty ways to help new editors. It has a lot of ideas, and it would be easy for anyone to find one or two things to try out for a while. If your WikiProject wants to increase the number of good-faith editors working in your area, then trying to support and collaborate with new, good-faith editors is one of the most effective things that you can do. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:14, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

National and other archives

Can I suggest that there is drive to improve 'articles on national and other archives' - too many are not present, or are one sentence (with no links to the relevant websites/other sources).

I am looking after/developing the Wikia archives wiki [8] - which can be made use of if appropriate. Jackiespeel (talk) 15:24, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

Jackiespeel It is a major problem that Wikipedia is unable to cover archives and libraries very well. One reason for this is that libraries and archives often are not themselves covered well in any publications that Wikipedia can cite as a reference. If you have big ideas to share information about lots of archives then that could be a community project here and something very aligned with what we all want to do. I might suggest that if you have a good idea, post it to meta:Grants:IdeaLab so that others can try to match your needs with work that has already been done. Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:55, 16 September 2014 (UTC)

Focused Random Feature

Hello, I just wanted to suggest a feature. I have no idea of this is the right place, but it's the closest I could find. The Random Article funciton on wiki is very alluring, but it's always leading to people and places. It would be neat if there were a feature that allowed you include/exclude categories when loading a random wiki article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.97.89.57 (talk) 15:50, 16 September 2014 (UTC)

That is a good idea. Lots of people ask for better tours of Wikipedia's content.

The biggest problem we have is lack of people to make ideas like this happen. If you know how to do this or know any software developers, consider going to meta:Grants:IdeaLab, proposing the idea, and asking for funds to make it happen. This seems like the kind of project that could be funded. I would like to see a feature in which WikiProjects could queue what they are doing and ask for people to check it. Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:55, 16 September 2014 (UTC)

revive a project

I try to revive the inactive project WP:ECONOMICS, but I can't because some administrators that have never participated in the project take all sorts of offenses. Don't remove your project banner from my site, don't clean up the project page etc. What can I do so they just leave me alone? Recreate the project under a new name? NotYetAnotherEconomist (talk) 20:05, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

The key thing is you need to realize that you do not own the project, or the articles, and people all accross the encyclopedia expect certain things of Wikiprojects. The question of project scope, what page belongs there, etc... is typically understood as "articles related to, or with some tangible connection to, the scope" as well as "pages that would be of interest to typical readers of that subject". Scopes tend to be broad, rather than narrow. The question never is "Is this topic economics?" but rather "Is this related to economics in some tangible way?".

For instance, Ernest Rutherford was not a chemist, yet he is tagged with WikiProject Chemistry's banner because a lot of his research dealt with elements, and chemists will have valuable input on this.

Likewise, Warren Buffet may not be an economist proper, but his sphere of influence overlaps with several topics in macroeconomy, market analysis, etc. If Warren Buffet is to become a Featured Article in the future, having the input of someone who knows something about economy will be most beneficial, if not required. That alone warrants the {{WP Economics}} tag. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 00:18, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

I think the key thing is for the handful of admins who also don't own that project, or even pretend to participate in it, to leave it up to the (so far) two people are long-standing participants. The recent discussions have involved >50% people who aren't participants, and deciding things like whether the WikiProject's main page really needs to have a banner at the top that announces what the article for collaboration was in 2008(!) is a pretty much a members-only issue. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:33, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

Concerning that issue, for sure that's definitely no one else's business. But here NYAE's was also talking about the removal of banners from the talk pages of articles (which affects articles like The Economist, and I'm very much interested in the proper maintenance of articles related to periodicals and other publications, i.e. if a discussion pops up on that article, I want WP Economics to be notified of it via WP:AALERTS or similar). The ownership issue I raised because language like "What can I do so they just leave me alone?" is extremely worrisome, as is the associated attitude. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 01:06, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

Do you aspire to become the deputy sheriff? NotYetAnotherEconomist (talk) 01:10, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

Headbomb, I'm sympathetic to your concern, but the fact is that if WikiProject Economics (a group of editors that does not include either you or me, right?) does not want that article to appear in their AALERTS page, then it is their right (NB: not NYAE's right) to remove the banner. It's up to them. What we need is a discussion between the two old participants and the one new one about what the three of them want. I suspect that the two old hands (and any others who might turn up) are fully capable of handling that discussion without half a dozen outsiders like us telling them which articles we think that group should care about. WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:14, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

As I said elsewhere, I don't care about some banners on some talk pages. The main issue are completely unrelated administrators that don't have anything to do with the project and only obstruct my efforts to make the project more active. For example the long-standing participants replied only because I asked them to support the project on their talk page. If the administrators would at least be constructive, give arguments or help in any freakin way I really wouldn't mind. The only thing they do is revert my edits and threaten me. NotYetAnotherEconomist (talk) 00:54, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

With all respect, NYAE, the way you get people involved with a WikiProject is generally not by getting in fights with people over organizational minutia. --erachima talk 01:13, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

I agree that is why I want them to leave me alone. NotYetAnotherEconomist (talk) 01:14, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

You're not listening. Take a break, make yourself a cup of tea, play cards with friends, and come back when you're calmer. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 01:21, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

If you want to be left alone, you have no business trying to take a management role in a WikiProject. It is literally the defining trait of WikiProjects that you are trying to solicit the help and opinions of other editors. Not just the ones you agree with either. --erachima talk 01:22, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

I'm one of those administrators. I didn't threaten to block. I started new sections on the project's talk page discussing the scope of the project and the need for consensus. NotYetAnotherEconomist is calling editors who disagree with him "wikilawyers", saying "Oh wow. Now the third musketeer arrives, being sarcasatic (" I am surprised how much psychological pain a removal of a project banner in the talk page has on some people. I sincerely hope your pain will vanish with time". It's great he wants to help, it's not great that he attacks other editors. Projects are collaborative enterprises and acting this way can obviously damage that collaboration. Dougweller (talk) 06:26, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

Joining a project one day then proceeding to make changes to its structure without any consensus the next is, on a common sense level, disruptive and demonstrating poor etiquette. Also, joining a project for the sake of trying to win an argument about project inclusion is indeed wikilawyering, or what I'd rather called game-playing. Last, the disrespect shown to people with far greater experience is disconcerting. If I were new (and especially new to a project), I would try to figure out the ropes before swinging on them like Tarzan. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 10:08, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

There were no changes to the structure and I didn't show disrespect to anyone. Also the constant arguments of seniority don't have any value, with your far greater experience you should know better. NotYetAnotherEconomist (talk) 13:11, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

I did not make any "argument of seniority". I made an argument about how someone with no or low experience should behave in any context imaginable, not just the Wikipedia. And yes, if people have been around more and know a lot more, they should be looked up to as a mentor for those who are just getting started, not treated poorly. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 10:38, 21 September 2014 (UTC)

npp for category tool

Please comment. Gryllida (talk) 23:30, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

Moving a WikiProject

In this discussion, I basically have the idea of moving WP:WikiProject Emo, which is inactive, to WP:WikiProject Post-hardcore (possibly as a child project of WP:WikiProject Punk music). This is for a couple of reasons:

• this would expand the scope of the WikiProject, encouraging more users to contribute
• there is a significant amount of music that falls under the label of post-hardcore or related genres (like emo) that is understandably ignored by WP:WikiProject Punk music, but there is still some overlap
• this will make it clear that WikiProject Post-hardcore is an umbrella covering several related, underserved genres of punk- and alternative rock-derived music; notable acts that would fall under this category (to demonstrate the range of this WikiProject):
  • Rites of Spring
  • Paramore
  • Sunny Day Real Estate
  • Jimmy Eat World
  • At the Drive-In
  • Fugazi
  • Fall Out Boy
  • Senses Fail
  • Thursday (band)
  • From First to Last
  • Envy (band)
• I have to re-emphasize this point: WikiProject Punk music (and WP:WikiProject Alternative music and WP:WikiProject Metal) doesn't (and shouldn't) prioritize many of the above acts

Hopefully this justifies the creation of a broader WikiProject that is also distinct from WikiProjects for punk and alternative rock music. It seems like I'm getting some ok consensus both on Wikipedia discussion and meat space discussion.

My questions and concerns: What are the steps I need to take to do this? Is this similar to merging two WikiProjects? What is the easiest way to move all subpages of WikiProject Emo to the new WikiProject's namespace?

$|$ ozhu (talk·contribs) 01:54, 18 September 2014 (UTC)

To change a project's scope (and/or its name), you just need to have a discussion with the participants of the WikiProject. Post a note, see if anyone objects, and then change your scope (and/or WP:MOVE the page) to whatever people prefer. The scope (and, if related, the name) of a WikiProject is entirely up to the participants in the project. You don't need any sort of support or permission from anyone outside it to support whatever articles the group wants.

You might find some ideas for how to help re-energize the group at WP:REVIVE. If you can get an enthusiastic partner to help, (maybe User:Natt the Hatt would be interested?), then so much the better. People like to join and post at projects if they see other people already talking there. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:45, 18 September 2014 (UTC)

@Ozhu: It would make more sense to hold an WP:RFC on the project's talk page. The idea that wikiprojects are entirely autonomous is false; the community has an interest if their scope and ensuring it makes sense (otherwise we wouldn't have WP:WikiProject Council/Proposals in the first place).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  11:37, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

AFAIK, RFCs have never used for this purpose. The "Proposals" page is purely optional and was intended for advertising possible new groups rather than restricting them, so its existence is not proof that the community controls or cares about what small groups of editors choose to work on. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:24, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

What's the point of /Proposals?

What's the point of the Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals process if people just ignore it and go start projects that failed to gain support anyway? If this process doesn't become, through a WP:RFC or WP:PROPOSAL, tied directly to WP:MFD to remove projects that garnered little or no support, then shouldn't /Proposals itself just go away? I'd rather see the former, of course. We have way, way too many moribund, poorly-thought-out microprojects.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  11:11, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

SMcCandlish There is not now and I do not think anytime soon there will be a community to monitor the proposals page. I also worry about the creation of weak WikiProjects because it makes clutter, distracts volunteers, and frustrates the people who try to set them up. I would support cutting that and other council recommendations which are not backed by community participants. Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:38, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

"Proposals" was (as nearly as I can tell) envisioned back in the day as a centralized place to advertise the creation of new groups and to get a little feedback from any experienced editors who wanted to volunteer their time to provide advice. The last time I did this regularly, the common forms of advice were:

1. This project already exists under a very slightly different name, and here's the link. Go join them.
2. Creating a group with only two editors interested in it is a bad idea. Instead, please join this existing group with a much bigger scope.

I haven't watched it for over a year, so I don't know if anyone is even doing this much. Most proposals fail. The idea presented at m:Grants:IEG/Evaluating WikiProjects might help us figure out how to predict success and/or identify failures that should/could be closed. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:08, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

Comment on the WikiProject X proposal

Hello there! As you may already know, most WikiProjects here on Wikipedia struggle to stay active after they've been founded. I believe there is a lot of potential for WikiProjects to facilitate collaboration across subject areas, so I have submitted a grant proposal with the Wikimedia Foundation for the "WikiProject X" project. WikiProject X will study what makes WikiProjects succeed in retaining editors and then design a prototype WikiProject system that will recruit contributors to WikiProjects and help them run effectively. Please review the proposal here and leave feedback. If you have any questions, you can ask on the proposal page or leave a message on my talk page. Thank you for your time! (Also, sorry about the posting mistake earlier. If someone already moved my message to the talk page, feel free to remove this posting.) Harej (talk) 22:47, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

WP:DISCOGSTYLE dormant

Hi there, I am member of the Discography WikiProject and while I edit discography projects I always turn to this, however it has became dormant. I believe this should not by any means be dormant and should be an active guideline, discographies should be similar so as they are easily recognised from article to article. Can someone help me make this active again and also help me make it more of a guideline or standard for other discography pages? I have no idea how to make it active again and since hardly anyone patrols/watches this page I got no response there. SilentDan (talk) 20:36, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Anyone willing to help me here? SilentDan (talk) 21:02, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

If you want to make it a proper style guideline, then you'll need to make a WP:PROPOSAL to the entire community.

If you want it to remain a WP:WikiProject advice page, then just update it however you and the rest of the WikiProject (if any) want. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:18, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing: How do I make a proposal? The instructions don't appear all that clear to me. SilentDan (talk) 18:31, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

The instructions are meant to provide a general idea of things you could do, rather than a list of required steps. But an easy and common method is to start an WP:RFC (the code for the talk page discussion will be {{rfc|policy|style}}, maybe with the addition of the subject area) and list it at WP:CENT. Also, tag the page with {{proposal}}. Then wait about a month or so, and see what people say.

Generally speaking, you'll have better success if you first update the page to make it look as good as possible first, and (to prevent some confusion by people unfamiliar with the process), explain in your RFC "question" (which is basically "Shall we adopt this as a community-wide guideline?") that if the advice page is approved by the wider community, that it would be moved to the appropriate page title, i.e., Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Something or another. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:12, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

Need help with moving/creation of article

hi everybody! The article on Sihanoukville has been created in 2005 or so - i presume without clear geographical definition - there used to be any sort of content in it, relating to both, the city and the province too....i went through the entire content around a month ago and did a general clean-up. The article is now explicitly subjected to the province, although content needs further sorting. I have by now relevant content to create the "city" article. Anyhow - I tried to move the existing article to: "Sihanoukville province" - didn't work. Creating an article "Sihanoukville province" or "Sihanoukville city" doesn't work either - because creator redirects to existing article.

Any suggestions? ...and thanks a lot for your attention!!! I am grateful for any reply! All the best!!!Wikirictor (talk) 21:28, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

Hi Wikirictor, it sounds like you need the WP:Requested moves process. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:15, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

WikiProject X

I have submitted a proposal for a Wikimedia Foundation Individual Engagement Grant to study WikiProjects. The proposal is called WikiProject X and seeks to study editing communities within the English Wikipedia. View the proposal here and feel free to leave comments there! Harej (talk) 23:49, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

You may wish to inform the members of Wikipedia:WikiProject Wikipedia.

—Wavelength (talk) 00:05, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

See also m:Grants:IEG/Evaluating WikiProjects. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:16, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

WP:PROJGUIDE#OWN

When using this redirect (or section) as a guideline for explaining why a project banner can't be removed if the project insists on including it, it has the effect of seemingly accusing the remover of WP:OWN. I wish there could be a softer redirect and softer title for this section. I would recommend a section title like "WikiProjects hold sway over articles included in their projects". The section should include a discussion of WP:OWN but I think that sometimes people who don't necessarily demonstrate an article ownership problem will remove a project banner they don't think belongs. Thoughts? Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 10:52, 21 September 2014 (UTC)

But wikiprojects emphatically do not "hold sway" over articles they decide are within their scope, as a matter of clear policy, three times over (per WP:OWN, WP:NPOV and WP:LOCALCONSENSUS). I've clarified this section some, but the entire tone of it is still a bit troubling. Some of what it said until just now blatantly violated these policies, while now it just seems standoffish. What this page really needs is a clearer explanation and exploration of how wikiprojects cannot dictate content. Precisely the opposite of what you propose.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  11:34, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

It would be nice if that were true, but in some corners of Wikipedia, projects do - despite policy - hold sway over "their" articles - and arbcom have shown a pronounced lack of willingness to address this. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:41, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

Yes, I consider this a serious threat to Wikipedia's future, as it will prove to be the main mechanism by which interest-conflicted POV pushers take over areas of content and bend them to suit a particular messaging agenda.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  15:33, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

SMcCandlish, I'm saying that projects hold sway over (in other words, they decide) articles they include in their projects, not over the content of those articles. That was the existing policy. You have just made changes without seeking any consensus here. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 12:00, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

This page is not a WP:POLICY, "existing" or otherwise, though it conflicted with several of them. WP:BOLD is policy, too. :-)  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  15:33, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

IANAWL. Put "policy" with lower caps then. It's an existing policy of sorts worked out by the Wikipedia community. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 16:17, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

My suggestion has been unfortunately misinterpreted. Let me rephrase the title suggestion: "WikiProjects hold sway over which articles are included in their projects" -- this has nothing to do with control over content. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 12:03, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

Even though a consensus wasn't sought for the changes to the section, I have read the changes to the section, and I can't say I disagree with any of them. They still underscore the point that projects pretty much have the say over which articles they include; that is, what their scope is. However, the reason I started this discussion is that linking to the section seems to accuse a project banner remover of WP:OWN, while that is not necessarily the problem in any particular case. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 12:32, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

No new consensus is needed to fix material that violates policy; our policies already represent consensus. WP:BRD exists if anyone has an issue with policy interpretation being somehow questionable. That said, I agree that WP:PROJGUIDE#OWN is a crappy shortcut. Maybe WP:BANNERWAR or WP:SCOPEWAR.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  13:17, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

I'm not sure how the previous version of the material violated policy, and that's because it wasn't discussed first. I know what your assertions are, but I don't know how they correlate specifically to your updates since that wasn't spelled out. I agree that you have at least improved the format and wording of the section. Anyway, your shortcut suggestions are definitely an improvement over the current one. But I would go with something more specific, like WP:PROJSCOPEWAR or WP:PROJSCOPEDEFER. Also, the title of the section, like I said, overstresses WP:OWN and could use a softer title like "Defer to projects about their scope". I'm open to suggestions for better wording. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 13:48, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

Then let's stop arguing about the content of the edits if there's not an actual argument to be had.  :-). Shortcuts: The point of shortcuts is that they're short, memorable and easily understood. Those ones aren't any of the above. Is there some other context in which "banner warring" and "scope warring" arise? As far as I know, I just invented them, by reference to WP:EDITWAR + banner & scope. If there's no other context to which to apply them, won't one of these already be specific enough? If we insist on "PROJ" being in there, just WP:PROJWAR should work, though it's vague enough, I'd want the section to also cover scope-warring between projects. Hmmm, the more I think about this, the more I think it's good idea. Inter-project scope-warring is actually the #1 source of project-related strife, I think (if not, it's second only to project resistance against WP:AT and WP:MOS). The already cited ArbCom case, but editors not being allowed to forcibly remove a project's banner because they didn't want the article to be within the project's scope, was one of these. I know I've seen others, e.g. between the biography project and the classical music project, with the latter claiming their scope over the genre allowed them to remove infoboxes from classical composer articles, and the former claiming its scope over all bios allowed them to impose the templates. There are also ongoing disputes about how to apply WP:AT to animal breed articles that amounts to a project scope-war (with several of them not only conflicting with each other, but also contradicting WP:AT policy).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  15:33, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

The argument as such was about how the changes were executed. Major changes to guidelines without discussion may be bold, but it's not courteous to other interested editors. But I can set that aside to deal with the issue at hand.

• Interproject disputes maybe should be addressed separately, as I think that's a similar, but not exactly the same issue.
• The more I think about it, the more I don't like "war" being in this shortcut, simply because it's not always about a banner placement edit war. I want to simply explain to the other user that the project (actually, myself as their participant/agent) considers an article to be in their scope. I want to come off as explanatory, not accusatory.
• At this point, I don't care what the shortcut is, as long as it doesn't contain 'war' or 'own' or anything accusatory.
• I still think the title of the section sucks, and would like to see some discussion about that.

I'll check back into this tomorrow -- I've already put too much time into this today. Have a good one. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 16:17, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

What about WP:PROJSCOPE, then? I favored the -WAR ones because behavioral guidelines (which is what that section is) are generally about stopping disruptive behaviors not dictative good ones (there can be multiple acceptable approaches to anything, but disruptive ones are usually uniformly disruptive). Trying to prevent a project from claiming an article is in-scope, and trying to force a project to accept an article as in-scope, are both forms of WP:EDITWARring, about which we have such a nice policy already. I do see your point about the section not necessarily always addressing editwarring over the matter, though. There's no reason it can't have multiple shortcuts, and leading with a more general one like PROJSCOPE.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  09:42, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

You make great points, and I agree thoroughly. Yes, two or more shortcuts make perfect sense, and I don't know why that didn't cross my mind before. :) Leading with WP:PROJSCOPE followed by WP:SCOPEWAR (and/or other war variants) will be fine. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 16:22, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

Wikiproject scope autonomy

There are major problems with the changes in this diff. Here is the important background:

• A WikiProject (see the definition) is social group of editors who want to work together as a team to improve Wikipedia. A WikiProject is the people; it is not the pages on which the people talk to each other.
• Relevantly, a WikiProject is a collection of WP:VOLUNTEERs who voluntarily choose to work with other VOLUNTEERS that are interested in the same type of VOLUNTEER work.
• To include a page in the group's scope is to publicly state that the group has VOLUNTEERed to track and support that page.
• You cannot force a VOLUNTEER to support an article if he doesn't want to. You cannot force a VOLUNTEER to stop supporting an article if he does want to support it (with any method short of a WP:TBAN).

So S McCandlish writes (without realizing it, I'm sure), in effect, "If I join a group of people because we all want to work on articles about widgets, then let's let "RFCs" and "other community processes" dominated by total outsiders, people who have no interest at all in widgets, decide which articles I and my teammates have to edit and support. Let's not let us mere WP:VOLUNTEERs decide which articles we'll edit and which ones we want to check at AFDs and which ones should have a note on the talk page saying, 'If you need help with this article, then our group's talk page is over here, and we're willing to support improvements to this article'. No, deciding for ourselves which articles we'll edit would be impermissible OWNership! Independent, voluntary choice of which articles to support is only for individuals, not for people who like collaborating with others. Once you form a little group that wants to support articles only about widgets, then other people should certainly be able to force you to deal with complaints about BLP violations in widget inventors biographies or AFDs about songs that mention widgets, too, because they're The Community™ and They Know Best what articles your little group of VOLUNTEERS should be working on."

See how that doesn't work? If you and three wikifriends get together and make a list of 200 articles that your little group wants to improve, then you should be permitted to do that. You should not have some outsider—not even a bunch of outsiders—show up and demand that your list of articles (your "scope") be changed to suit their POV about which articles ought to be editing.

This is the important point: WikiProjects have absolute, exclusive control over just this one thing: the list of pages they choose to support (including their choice not to support some pages). That's it: they control the list itself, which we call "their scope". They do not have any control over what goes into those articles. They do not have any control over the format of those articles. They do not have any control over any guidelines or policies related to those articles. They do not have any control over any other group's list. The only thing that they control is their own list.

I cannot imagine why anyone thinks it would be good, or useful, or wise, or effective, for people outside a group to force the people inside a group change the list of articles that the group has WP:VOLUNTEERed to work on. Other editors are never permitted to demand that the list of articles at User:SMcCandlish#What I'm working on now... be changed to include articles that The Community™ thinks SMcCandlish should work on, but that SMcCandlish does not want to work on. We all know that would be a perfectly unreasonable demand: he's a volunteer, and works on whatever he wants. Also, we all know that it wouldn't work, because he'd quit in protest, and then we'd lose a useful editor. So why on Earth would anyone believe that other editors should be permitted to demand exactly the same thing for a WikiProject composed of SMcCandlish and a couple of other editors?

Having said all of that, the usual reason for someone worrying about this section is because some representative of a WikiProject has forgotten that their group's control ends with their right to make the list of articles they want to support, and starts claiming that their group gets to control content, too, for anything on their list. This is nonsense; small groups of editors calling themselves a WikiProject get absolutely no extra rights compared to any other group of editors. See Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Guide#Advice pages for the guideline on that, and feel free to make it clearer and stronger whenever you find ways to improve it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:00, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing: Thanks for the detailed response (while some of it seemed to belabor the point, I read all of it, and I don't throw "tl;dr" at people). Although I strongly agree with the gist of your point about "the usual reason for someone worrying about this section is because some representative of a WikiProject has forgotten" about WP:OWN, I'm not 100% certain the analogy you're using works well, because (I added some rationale after initial post):

1. All wikiprojects are each something any editor may participate in, and they have processes and resources we all have equal access to. That fact is enough to make wikiproject-participant control being absolute a questionable idea. While per WP:LOCALCONSENSUS policy they have no more authority than any two or more editors agreeing to collaborate on something, in other less "wikipolitical" wikiprojects are distinguishable as a form of WP process from "just some people volunteering to work on similar articles", such as article quality peer review. If you, me and Stevietheman directly collaborate on improving the Roman Britain article, our three-way userspace conversations are not necessarily something others can effectively participate in on equal footing (though they'd be welcome to interject, I suppose). The three of us wouldn't make a talk page, Talk:Sekrit_Three-member_Club, about our joint scope. If we did, a strong case could be made for MFDing it into a wikiproject with a clearly defined scope for everyone, especially if part of our goal was to, by ourselves, promote the article as A-class, propose a topical style guideline that would affect it and related articles, or do other "processy" thing.
2. As a practical matter, the scope of a small project could be totally WP:GAMEd by a WP:TAGTEAM listing themselves as participants in it and then out-arguing the existing project members (most of whom probably won't be active). A gate that keeps nothing out or in is effectively imaginary, and best forgotten about.
3. We do in fact have a semi-formal process (even if it's insufficiently active) by which the community determines wikiproject scope (WP:WikiProject Council/Proposals), and an even more formal and active one by which it can do so (WP:Miscellany for discussion, which shut the WP:Esperanza project down, and has probably been used to delete and alter other projects; I haven't researched that in any depth).
4. Wikiprojects are generally pretty hierarchical; part of the scope of one general project can be assumed by another, more specific one; there's often little if any bickering about it. For example, WP:WikiProject Cue sports covers lawn games like croquet, because no other project under WP:WikiProject Games and WP:WikiProject Sports does, and they're historically related (billiards, golf, croquet, field hockey, etc., all originated as essentially the same lawn game played with curved sticks, knocking balls around on the ground, aiming for goals and avoiding hazards and sometimes interfering players). But it's not a very good fit. If WP:WikiProject Lawn games were created, and actually had enough participants to be viable, it would be entirely reasonable for someone from that project to remove such games from the scope of WP:CUE (subject to WP:CUE's WP:BRD objection if they wanted to make one, and I doubt they'd make one). In the event of a dispute, it would come down to a consensus discussion, perhaps an RFC, not one project telling the other to go #@$* off. Heh. The consensus discussion would actually be useful to have, since it matters for other editors which project's scope is what. As I hinted at earlier, if I want to propose Croquet for a Class A article review, which project would I do this at if both claimed scope? And so on. It's not practical for every project that could in some sense be relevant to claim overlapping scope; the very next section in the guideline explains in detail why this can be disruptive. It's not telling editors what article they can care about, it's simply management labels and resources of where and how these collaborations are grouped, for everyone's benefit.
5. The "volunteer" rationale seems to be a bit of a red herring; everything all of us do here is volunteer work. It's like preceding a statement of political opinion with "I'm a taxpayer, and...". We're all volunteers, and we're all taxpayers, so being one doesn't affect the argument in any way (absent the odd case of "I've never paid income tax and am a big fan of welfare" or "I am a paid editor and only care about processes that get my POV-pushing clients to cut a bigger check to me" >;-)
6. Perhaps most importantly, the idea that RfCs and such are "dominated by total outsiders, people who have no interest at all" in the articles claimed within a project's scope isn't viable. All Wikipedians may have an equal interest in the quality and development of all articles, even if they choose to express that interest in a limited subset of them. This has come up so frequently that I'm considering writing an essay about it. I can't count the number of times I've seen an argument at WP:AFD, WP:CFD, WP:TFD, WP:RM (especially) and various WP:RFCs that so-and-so's view should be ignored on the basis that the commenter isn't a "member" of "the" (should be "a") scope-claiming project, isn't a regular editor of the article or articles in question, isn't an expert in the topic, and other related arguments, and these are always ignored as invalid exclusionary, elitist approaches, by anyone who knows how to properly close a XfD. There's simply no such thing as a "total outsider" on Wikipedia, except perhaps for WP:MEATPUPPETs canvassed off-wiki to come here and "vote" on something.

I do see the underlying logic point you're making, and don't entirely disagree with it. I just think it's more nuanced than wikiprojects always totally determining their own scope. There's probably better wording, that ends up in the middle somewhere. My main goal was removing all the WP:OWNish stuff in that section.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  22:19, 24 September 2014 (UTC) Expanded 09:42, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

PS: I slightly tweaked your version, of your changes after my WP:BOLD rewrite, to remove the "legacy histrionics" like huge swaths of boldfacing, and the odd "exclusive rights" legalistic stuff, also present in the old version. Maybe that's enough to arrive at a compromise text?  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  09:42, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

I agree nearly 100%. The only quibble I have is that, generally, there is no significant issue with project overlapping with regards to A-class determination (or grade determination in general really), as each project can decide that differently and display different grades if they wish (there's no requirement for grade uniformity that I know of). But this only works as long as the projects have separate banners. If they share a banner, like in the WP:USA case, it could be a different story. And as the founder/participant of WP:LOU, I kind of dread one day having a conflict with WP:KY or WP:USA or another state/local project inside WP:USA over a grade. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 17:05, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

To correct myself, there probably is an expectation of grade uniformity for WP:FA and WP:GA. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 18:04, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

FA and GA require non-WikiProject-based assessments. They are uniform because they are community-wide processes. A WikiProject may choose to decline to have the FA or GA rating listed in their banner (and therefore on their WikiProject-specific assessment tables).

For all others, the rule is that you may set any scale you want. Most groups go with the standard scale. Ratings do not need to match. I have personally assessed articles as being Stub for one project and Start for another, in the very same edit. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:45, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

1. People can and do create pages for tiny little groups; they're called userprojects, and usually kept in userspace. Promoting an article to A-class is meaningless outside the WP:1.0 team, and thus unimportant. WikiProjects have exactly the same (lack of) right to promite a topical style guideline that would affect it and related articles as any other editors; see WP:Advice pages.
2. It might possible to take over a small project, but it's never even been tried. (Why bother? Make your own if you want one.) In the last five years, I've seen exactly one case of a (legitimate) new member trying to change a group's scope and zero cases of gaming.
3. WP:WikiProject Council/Proposals does not determine scope, nor does MFD. It is rare for a WikiProject's pages to be deleted (too rare, IMO). Esperanza did not have a "scope"; it supported people, not articles.
4. Wikiprojects are generally completely non-hierarchical. Getting tiny little projects merged up into larger, more sustainable ones is usually desirable, and bickering is limited only if people are approached the right way and the targets carefully selected. For a counter example, check the archives from a few months back, when someone proposed that various religions and alternative medicine should be merged into Rational Skepticism so that these (barely active) hotbeds of sedition could be properly monitored. For your WP:WikiProject Cue sports example, I'd encourage that group to up-merge themselves by renaming themselves to WP:WikiProject Lawn games or WP:WikiProject Lawn and cue games. When two groups have overlapping scopes, there is never any need to remove games from the scope of the other one. In the event of a dispute, it would exactly come down to one project telling the other that they'll support whatever articles they want. It does not matter for other editors which project's scope is what.
   Every single WikiProject must assess articles for A-class separately. Very few bother with A-class. The fact that it's impractical to have WikiProject Pharmacology and WikiProject Chemicals give contradictory advice about what to put in the articles is exactly why WikiProjects are not allowed to do that (see, as you righty point out, the next section). Scope is "telling editors what article they can care about".
5. The "volunteer" rationale is critical: everything all of us do here is volunteer work. If you tell a volunteer that you've noticed that he's gone to a little bit of trouble to make sure that he will receive WP:Article alerts notices if the article he cares about is ever prodded, but that you don't care, because he's not allowed to tag the article for his WikiProject, then you are (pointlessly) offending people and they will quit as a result. Really: Who cares?! If the editors working at WikiProject All Us Joes actually want to put {{WP All us Joes}} on some article about Sally, then who cares? Who is hurt by this? The other editors, who do not have to do anything at all about this? The other editors, who are not the least bit affected by this? The editors at WikiProject Sally, who might decide that there is so little pointless drama around here that they need to pitch a fit because some other group of editors also cares about the article?
6. All Wikipedians may have an equal interest in the quality and development of all articles, but none of them have a legitimate interest in preventing some other Wikipedian from being notified by bot about changes to the tagged article's status. If you encounter people claiming that so-and-so's view on an article's existence or content should be ignored on the basis that the commenter isn't a "member" of "the" (should be "a") scope-claiming project, then please point those ignorant and uncollegial editors to WP:PROJGUIDE—and help me more strongly word the section about WikiProjects not owning articles to make it crystal-clear to even the most willfully blind reader. (The stuff about experts or frequent editors of the article in question is outside of the project guide's scope.) As I said, the only thing that WikiProjects have exclusive control over is the list of the articles they are watching. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:45, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

Guideline location & "promotion"

Part of why the page in question, WP:WikiProject Council/Guide, is so poorly understood, infrequently referenced by others, and POV-pushed in weird directions, is probably its location/name, and the fact that its talk page redirects here. WP:WikiProject Council is a wikiproject itself, an internal one like WP:WikiProject Inline templates. It might be better to have this at WP:WikiProjects guideline or something, and give it its own talk page. Regardless, we may need to check and make sure it's listed in all the categories, lists and templates of guidelines. I hazard a guess that 9 out of 10 experienced Wikipedians have no idea the page exists at all.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  09:42, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

As for promotion, I would suggest putting {{WikiProject Footer}} at the bottom of every WikiProject main page, as it includes a prominent link to the guide. Also, the guide already appears in {{Wikipedia policies and guidelines}} (another good addition to a WikiProject main page somewhere above the footer), although hard to spot in it. I find myself indecisive about moving the page, but it should have its own talk at any rate. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 18:01, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

Good ideas. Any objection to giving the guideline it's own talk page? I think it'd be very WP-normal to do so.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  03:43, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

If there's no response within a week, I imagine you can be WP:BOLD with this. :) Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 18:27, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

I think it's primarily a question of practicalities: do enough people watch the Guide page so that discussion threads on it will garner sufficient participation? Does the set of interested editors have significant overlap with those interested in following threads on this talk page? I don't think the existence of a separate talk page influences most readers' views on the Guide page (I imagine they don't check to see if there is a separate discussion page, and then consider the Guide page in a different light as a result). But if there are enough interested editors in the Guide page that are distinct from those interested in this page, then it may be worthwhile to split conversations off to a separate discussion page. isaacl (talk) 12:24, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

I've given more thought to moving the page, and I think how it's done depends on whether it's going to be made into an essay or a full-fledged guideline. If it's just going to be an essay, you probably only need consensus here, followed by just moving it and ensuring it's labeled as an essay.. But for a guideline, you would need a lot wider discussion, and likely many updates and much more consensus-building work to go through. I don't object to moving it either way, but for the latter approach, there would have to be significant commitment to doing all the related work (and then the question is: Is it worth it? :) ). Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 18:27, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

It's already an official guideline, and has been for years. S McCandlish is correct that the page title is an odd choice for a community-wide guideline. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:13, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

I thought guidelines have to be within the guidelines section. If this is a guideline, it appears to be part of a project and not an official guideline. Note again, I'm talking appearances and position, not whether it's official. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 12:14, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

Teahouse and Wikiprojects

• Recently I posed m:Grants:IEG/From_large_world_to_small_communities, suggesting to actively "catch" new editors based on their topic of interest and suggest them to join Wikiprojects, and to let editors who have similar interests (e.g from the Wikiproject) to help the new editors in their first steps in Wikipedia. The idea is based on observations (mainly in hewiki but also in enwiki), that editors who edit in specific topic can have much more helpful dialog with new editors (not solely technical suggestions). I would like to have your positive/negative comments or general feedback about the idea in Wikipedia talk:Teahouse#Teahouse and Wikiprojects or in m:Grants talk:IEG/From large world to small communities.
• And in general, what do you think on "matrix management" of Teahouse across (large enough) Wikiprojects, e.g. having defined place in each Wikiproject for hosting new editors?

(please comment in Wikipedia talk:Teahouse#Teahouse and Wikiprojects). Thanks, Eran (talk) 08:14, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

Recent changes in WikiProject

Hello, where I can find recent changes in WikiProject Germany? There used to be tool for that but don't know what happened. --Xoncha (talk) 22:50, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

Most vandalised wikiproject

Are there any statistics on which wikiproject is the most vandalised one? I need it for my research (I am a Ph.D. student).Srijankedia (talk) 17:24, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

Welcome, Srijankedia. Are you talking about the WikiProject's own page (e.g., WP:WikiProject Military history) or the articles that the WikiProject supports (e.g., World War II)? WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:45, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

Hi WhatamIdoing. I was looking for the pages that the WikiProject supports, but both would be useful. Any pointers in both the directions are appreciated. Thanks Srijankedia (talk) 00:43, 10 October 2014 (UTC)

It is WP:WikiProject Biographies because biographies is by far the WikiProject covering the most pages, and there is no reason to think that these pages would be vandalized less than average. Blue Rasberry (talk) 12:33, 10 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the quick reply, Srijankedia. If you want raw numbers, then it's going to be WPBIO, as Bluerasberry said. If you're looking for a ratio (e.g., the percentage of articles vandalized within 24 hours), then there aren't any good statistics. However, the entire database dump is available (free) and you could probably calculate it using a few markers (e.g., number of edit summaries that use rollback or scripts like Huggle or Twinkle, or mention vandalism).

You can probably find some resources in the Category:Wikipedia resources for researchers, and there's a mailing list at https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l User:EpochFail has done some work on differentiating good-faith from bad-faith (vandalism) edits, so you might look at some of his research and how WP:Snuggle identifies promising new editors. If he sees this, he might be able to post a link to a report about this work on Meta.

It may take you a while to get a handle on this subject, but I think it's achievable. Good luck, WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:29, 10 October 2014 (UTC)

Hi Srijankedia. I have some datasets that you might find useful. You can find a dataset of reverted and reverting revisions in english wikipedia here: [9] Not all reverts are for vandalism, but most all vandalism gets reverted. This dataset should provide you with some signal. Here's a quick description of the fields in the datasets:

reverts.all.p_0-43609236.r_0-622033840.tsv -- Each row represents a *reverting* revision

• rev_* -- Matches fields from revision table for reverting edit
• reverted_to_rev_id -- The ID of the revision that was reverted back to
• revisions_reverted -- The number of revisions that this revert discards (max is 15 by definition)

reverteds.all.p_0-43609236.r_0-622033840.tsv -- Each row represents a *reverted* revision

• rev_* -- Matches fields from the revision tabled for the *reverted* edit (note that a revision can be reverted multiple times)
• reverting_* -- Matches fields from revision table for reverting edit
• rev_revert_offset -- The distance of the reverted revision from the reverting revision (1 == the most recent reverted revision)
• revisions_reverted -- The number of revisions reverted in this revert event (max(rev_revert_offset) == revisions_reverted)
• reverted_to_rev_id -- The ID of the revision that was reverted back to

These files are complete for page_ids 0-43609236 and revision ids 0-622033840. Practically, that means these datasets represent complete data up to August 8th, 2014. --EpochFail (talk • contribs) 21:20, 10 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks EpochFail, WhatamIdoing and Blue Rasberry for replying! EpochFail, the link that you mentioned [10] is not working. Could you point me to the correct link? On a similar note, is there a data source for all contributions by a user? I know about [11], but I would have to crawl it if I want to use it. Is there already a data source that has it? Srijankedia (talk) 22:28, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

That link works fine if you change "https" to "http". It looks like mediawiki is trying to be smart by having you connect via SSL (which is totally not necessary and won't work) Try copy-pasting this into your URL bar. http://datasets.wikimedia.org/public-datasets/enwiki/reverts/ --EpochFail (talk • contribs) 00:03, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

Great! This works well! Thanks EpochFail. Again, do you know if there is any data source for all contributions by a user? Thanks!Srijankedia (talk) 00:19, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

Sure! You could do it with the API like this [12] or with Quarry like this [13]. --EpochFail (talk • contribs) 00:23, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

Great that works perfectly! Thanks!Srijankedia (talk) 02:06, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

EpochFail, the reverted and reverting revisions dataset is very useful to me, but is there a way to get it on the go? Can I also get the information through any API? Srijankedia (talk) 22:27, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

Also, there seems to be some issues in the dataset that you gave the link to. For example: revision id 619251395 by Jacklikedick187 made at 06:08, 31 July 2014 was reverted by Bongwarrior at 07:26, 31 July 2014 [14]. However, the dataset does not mention that this edit was reverted. Any pointers in the direction or am I looking at things wrong? Thanks Srijankedia (talk) 03:18, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

FYI: You don't need to keep using {{unindent}}. Once someone uses that template, we start over again with tabbing in messages from zero. I prefixed my paragraphs with ":" in this message. You should prefix yours with "::" for your reply.

So, revert detection methods aren't perfect. In this case, the revert went too far back into the history of the page to be detected. We generally set bounds on this in revert detection methods. See m:R:Reverts for details. This dataset uses a strategy that matches the psuedocode here: m:Research:Revert#Identity_revert_via_checksum_with_history. In the case of that psuedocode and in my scripts, I set the maximum revert radius to 15 revisions. --EpochFail (talk • contribs) 17:24, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks again. I guess it is ok to use the 15 revision cutoff, given that Kittur et al say that it captures 94% of the reverts. I am curious, are you one of the authors of that paper? WhatamIdoing mentioned that you have published some papers in this area, and I would like to read them. Thanks Srijankedia (talk) 20:09, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

I'm Aaron Halfaker. I'm not an author of that paper, but I have worked with those guys a lot. See my staff page (Halfak (WMF)) for a list of my publications. --EpochFail (talk • contribs) 18:56, 21 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for all the help Aaron, and nice to have interacted with you. I would definitely read some of your papers :) Srijankedia (talk) 23:19, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

Hi EpochFail, Is there a paper that I should cite when using the dataset at [15]? Thanks Srijankedia (talk) 00:25, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

Regretfully not, but you can cite datasets all the same. I'd prefer if you cited this URL (http://datahub.io/dataset/english-wikipedia-reverts) and myself (Aaron Halfaker). --EpochFail (talk • contribs) 22:50, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

Sport or sports tag

Hello. I tag alot of biographies for inclusion within their countries sports sub-projects. For example, people from Australia, Canada, Russia and Hungary. Some of them use the parameter "|sports=yes" and others use "|sport=yes". Is there a way to standarize these? Thanks. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 18:36, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

Why? Are there any practical problems that result from the difference, or is it an essentially aesthetic issue? WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:09, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

It breaks the template if the wrong variation is used, right? This means that a person needs to know "sport" versus "sports" for every WikiProject, and it is an unwarranted variation with consequences for choosing incorrectly. Blue Rasberry (talk) 19:36, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

Whats wrong with the template supporting both? Vegaswikian (talk) 20:11, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

I was thinking about WikiProject Biography's template, but I think he's talking about {{WPCANADA|sport=yes|class=C}}, which doesn't currently support both, and which differs from {{WPHungary|class=C|sports=yes}}.

It's possible to make them all support both, but I believe that parameter aliases are somewhat costly in performance terms. (I'm not sure that should matter for a talk page, though.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:06, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

Not costly enough to worry about at all, or we'd have to gut most of the citation templates. It would be helpful if they all (and the meta-template they're based on) supported both spellings. This same problem has bugged me for years, too. There are so many geographical projects, it was too much work to try to change them.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  22:29, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

The citation templates were re-written in Lua precisely because they were so costly. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:02, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

I.e., we have a tool that makes the costliness argument irrelevant.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  17:28, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

I doubt the cost is significant, but if it was, it would only apply to saving any changes to the talk page or purging it. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 17:14, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

Supporting both would be helpful. I know it's a minor thing in the grand scheme of things! Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 07:25, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

carbon sequestration

it is going on the co2 concetration in the extratosphere reducing low rate average to achive minor earth warming in short term with a hi- tech platform, decreasing the abnormal climate temperature and avoiding the effect of adverse phenomene world wide. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.158.105.217 (talk) 19:27, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Requesting help in structuring Bibliography of encyclopedias and related

The page above, and its related pages, are ones I am working on developing with material from the ALA Guide to Reference databank. On completion of adding all the relevant encyclopedias where it seems appropriate, I hope to add the other entries in that databank, along with other material from other sources, to a yet-to-be started similar Bibliography of reference works. FWIW, the Guide to Reference databank has over 3000 sources listed, and it looks like maybe 20% or so might be encyclopedic. So these lists are gonna get long. If anyone were to want to offer any help or suggestions in how to structure the pages for the optimum utility of their potential users, I would be more than grateful. John Carter (talk) 16:22, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

RFC: Should WikiProject article categories be renamed to WikiProject X articles by quality, A-Class WikiProject X articles, etc

The following discussion 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.

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In this CFD, we renamed the WikiProject Somalia articles as: Category:WikiProject Somalia articles by quality, Category:A-Class WikiProject Somalia articles, Category:B-Class WikiProject Somalia articles, etc. (because WikiProject Somalia does not necessarily only pertain to the country of Somalia). In contrast, something like Category:WikiProject Athletics articles goes by Category:Athletics articles by quality, Category:A-Class Athletics articles is inaccurate and somewhat confusing because these are identified by the WikiProject not because they necessarily are articles on Athletics (which are under Category:Athletics (sport)). I'd like to see if there's a broader consensus to support this naming convention in full. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 09:07, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

• Comment If you look at Category:Wikipedia 1.0 assessments, you will see the inconsistency. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 09:18, 31 October 2014 (UTC)
• Support I had difficulty understanding what you are saying, but I think you are saying that the category names for WikiProject assessments ought to include the name of the WikiProject which assigned the category. Yes, it should, and yes, these names should be standardized and not subject to choice of the WikiProject. Even though I support this, I am not sure how to clean up all the categories which are already made or how to standardize everything, but I did start a proposal that eventually all of these things be supported by automated processes. See meta:Grants:IdeaLab/WikiProject management suite. I am putting this idea there also. Blue Rasberry (talk) 13:45, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

• Oppose It makes the already overly detailed category-tree even more difficult and less usable for the non-so-experienced visitors. This is more private hobby-ism than a service to our reader. The Banner talk 09:55, 20 November 2014 (UTC)
• Yes it probably would be better to use this structure, but I'm not sure it's worth all the effort in renaming. In any case, the titles are not really ambiguous because Category:Athletics articles by quality could not refer to anything else apart from the WikiProject classification category. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:28, 20 November 2014 (UTC)
  • But how do we serve our customers, the readers, with this system? Would they have any benefit from it? The Banner talk 12:24, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

It may be just incorporated as a new policy going forward. Otherwise, aren't the entire system of WikiProjects more administrative than reader-focused? -- Ricky81682 (talk) 07:49, 22 November 2014 (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.

What's missing in the Cosmology Wikiproject?

This is a new project and I wonder if there is something missing. Tetra quark (talk) 18:54, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

WikiProject X is live!

Hello everyone!

You may have received a message from me earlier asking you to comment on my WikiProject X proposal. The good news is that WikiProject X is now live! In our first phase, we are focusing on research. At this time, we are looking for people to share their experiences with WikiProjects: good, bad, or neutral. We are also looking for WikiProjects that may be interested in trying out new tools and layouts that will make participating easier and projects easier to maintain. If you or your WikiProject are interested, check us out! Note that this is an opt-in program; no WikiProject will be required to change anything against its wishes. Please let me know if you have any questions. Thank you!

Note: To receive additional notifications about WikiProject X on this talk page, please add this page to Wikipedia:WikiProject X/Newsletter. Otherwise, this will be the last notification sent about WikiProject X.

Harej (talk) 16:57, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

And now a message specific for the WikiProject Council: I would be very interested in actively working with the Council during this project. To the extent that the Council has a de facto responsibility for setting standards for WikiProjects, and has a great deal of experience working with WikiProjects, I think the best outcome would come from working together. We are all Wikipedians working toward the same goal, after all. If you have specific concerns or questions, please let me know. Thanks, Harej (talk) 20:31, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Add Assists to Football Association footballer career statistic tables.

Hi Wikiroject should start to add assist stats in Footballer career statistics tables on footballer pages it would make their stat tables look a whole lot better because users who go on footballer wiki pages like to look at statistics. There is a very reliable website on http://www.espnfc.com/barclays-premier-league/23/statistics/assists that record assists. Some footballers stat tables look a bit bland on wiki because they don't score a huge amount such as players like Xavi Hernandez and Andres Iniesta but but they make a lot of assists another side to their game. (http://www.espnfc.com/player/12907/xavi?season=2009 same website but has Spanish La Liga player recorded assists). Assists are just as important as goals. This is what an assist is an Assist was awarded to the player who had given the last pass to the goalscorer.. please will someone edit Frank Lampard's career statistics table and put in the stats table Lampard's premier league assists also his assists in all competitions for Chelsea because that is another important side to his game. The same for players like Paul Scholes, Ryan Giggs, Steven Gerrard. This will improve their statistics table. If you go on http://www.espnfc.com/player/8941/frank-lampard?season=2014 All of Lampard's assists for Chelsea and Manchester City have been recorded on that website. On that site the letter A in the table is for Assists and G is for Goals. It's a reliable site. On the site at top of the table on right side next to career click on 2014-15then all the years Lampard has played for Chelsea and his stats will open. Hope this helps you out.--CescFabregas4CFC (talk) 20:35, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

@CescFabregas4CFC: This talk page is for discussing the WikiProject Council, not Frank Lampard. Take this issue to Talk:Frank Lampard. Chris Troutman (talk) 22:54, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

Importance assessments of biographies

I was looking for WP:Assessment and (as you can tell) ended up here.

Having asked around a bit over time, I still don't quite understand what we're doing, and how we're doing it, regarding article assessments for importance. Please note that it is not my intention to start a discussion about article assessments as concerns article quality, only about the importance aspect!

Couldn't Since the word "importance" be is considered problematic, especially for biographical articles assessed to be of "Importance: low", whereas "Priority: low" [etc.] could be seems better, with the couldn't stricter policy be the addition - right there! - of the name of the user giving h personal opinion ("assessment") in each case?

• If there's some other criteria than personal opinions that we Wikipedians are supposed to use in evaluating the importance to our readers of a vast number of life stories, as is commonly done, I would like to know about that.

I may very well be underenlightened now in having an opinion which rather stongly objects to our regularly evaluating life stories, expecially those under WP:BLP, as of "high", "medium" or "low importance" - that (to boot!) being one of the the first things a reader sees very prominently displayed when visiting such an article's talk page, and that based solely on our own personal opinions, as far as I know, rather than on any other more substantial and neutrally reliable foundation. I don't see what gives us that right, nor why any such privilege or responsibility should exist for Wikipedia editors to exercise that kind of personal authority over other named individuals, living or dead, and their reputations.

• Is there any additional WP policy I could read up on which might make me better understand such privileges/responsibilities of ours?

Certainly other editors may also have questioned things like this (though Wikipower also may tend to corrupt us)?

Find a Grave is actually (for once) much more careful with something - the word "important" - than we are here, and they only deal with dead people. That's rather odd, I think. I'm absolutely not suggesting that we should use levels of fame for biography assessment, as they do, just that we look at something better than what we're doing now.

As with all my opinions, even the strongest ones, I am always open to clear, constructive, non-personalized, well-founded arguments aimed at changing them. Looking forward to such input, I remain sincerely --SergeWoodzing (talk) 22:42, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

So sorry, I searched sloppily and missed this before. Now adjusting my questions here accordingly. --SergeWoodzing (talk) 00:11, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

(edit conflict) You should know that WikiProject Biography refers to it as "priority" not "importance." Other WikiProjects haven't made the change, yet. I don't find it problematic so I recommend against asserting that it is. Of course, if you don't feel comfortable making assessments of importance you're welcome to leave that task to others who will. I don't find it odd that a website called Find-a-Grave only deals with dead people and I'm not concerned how they deal with the word "important." Importance ratings are designed to prioritize articles of greater interest to the general readership over articles with less common appeal.

Yes, importance is a somewhat subjective quality. Like our vital articles, importance speaks to how central the subject is. The vast majority of articles on Wikipedia have a low importance although there are certainly articles like history, life, and money that are of top importance. Encyclopedias must have articles on concepts like these so prioritizing them should ideally push editors to improve them ahead of more esoteric and niche-interest topics.

To the extent you're asking about biographies, you should ask at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Biography/Assessment. Each WikiProject owns the importance rating for articles in their purview as the article relates to their subject. You could make the case that the Adrianne Wadewitz article would have a higher importance to WikiProject Wikipedia than it would to WikiProject Biography. There's no need to attach a user name to that rating as the editor is acting as a member of the applicable WikiProject. That information is available in the history tab, anyway.

I'm concerned when you question "what gives us that right". Importance ratings are about the article's importance and they say nothing about the subject. It's not a value judgement. If there's a specific case that's bothering you please take it up with WikiProject Biography. Don Quixote called and he wants his horse back. Chris Troutman (talk) 00:28, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

I'm sad to say that I find you less than empathetic and understanding as to how a very large amount of regular readers and editors are bound to perceive an "Importance: Low" assessment on a BLP. They aren't able to grasp the complicated inner workings of a WP elite that might make "Importance: Low" not actually mean "Importance: Low", as it seems you would like them to.

And your sarcastic Don Quixote ending makes me appreciate your comments even less. I'm trying to get information about matters of principle that are important to this project, in my opinion. Sorry if you find that inappropriate. Anyone else? --SergeWoodzing (talk) 00:55, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Speaking as someone who has done a lot of assessments of all kinds, and has honestly come to regret some of his previous assessments, particularly regarding priority/importance, I have come to the conclusion that, basically, the topics or articles which are covered in reasonable length in the leading reference books related to that topic are probably roughtly the "top" importance or priority. So, as an example, looking at Wikipedia:WikiProject Christianity/Encyclopedic articles, and particularly the content related to the Brill/Eerdmans Encyclopedia of Christianity, I would think that in that case any topic which either has a separate article in that work, or has a subtopic of comparatively great length, 2 pages in that case, would probably qualify as "Top" importance to that project. Any shorter subarticles, or articles found in relevant reference works for specific fields of Chrsitianity of similar nature, might be "High." Shorter articles in more focused reference sources, or topics included in only a few of the more focused reference sources, might be "Mid." Something found in none of the leading reference sources, preferably because of lack of comparative historical importance, might be "Low." Granted, that doesn't indicate how to deal with material too new for any of the leading reference sources, but I think that sort of basic structure is one of the things which was being thought of when the importance/priority assessments were instituted. John Carter (talk) 01:00, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Thankyou! My question, however, is not about how to assess those articles properly, but about the term "Importance" still being being used, and how that looks to most readers, in evaluating life stories. I've now also asked a question at WikiProject Biography as helpfully suggested by Chris troutman. --SergeWoodzing (talk) 01:09, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Serge, it looks to me like you are getting answers but does not acknowledge them as such. So what do you want to hear really?--BabbaQ (talk) 11:05, 3 January 2015 (UTC)

I'm not 100% sure what you mean by "you are getting answers but does [?] not acknowledge them", but an acknowledgement that as per guideline we are supposed to use "Priority" not "Importance" in assessing biographies would be nice, and following that guideline, not disregarding it. Having the discussion in one place, not several, would also be nice. --SergeWoodzing (talk) 22:50, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

The priority level is not a matter of personal opinion. It is a matter of group opinion.

The main question to be answered is, "If you were making a fixed copy of Wikipedia (e.g., on paper or DVD), to put in a school or a library in a place without internet access, and you could not include everything, then what articles would you include in the first (smallest) copy, which ones in an expanded version, and which ones only if there were plenty of room to spare?"

Additionally, this forms the "priority" for a group that cares about each subject, so that the group will improve the articles that are more "important" to readers who want to learn about that subject.

This per-subject approach results in significant differences. For example, Leonardo da Vinci is on the WP:VITAL list, which means that if you are copying only ~1,000 articles—just 0.02% of our articles—then you should always include that one. But from the perspective of medicine-related articles—meaning, if you were making a list of the 1,000 most important medical articles to copy—he wouldn't be anywhere near the top of the list. You'd want articles like Common cold and Influenza and Sanitation and Antibiotics instead.

This isn't because da Vinci wasn't "important"; it's because there are more urgent "priorities" for a specifically medicine-related collection. This difference in focus creates differences in the ratings by project.

Frankly, there are hundreds of thousands of people whose bios will never rate inclusion in an offline copy with a general focus, just like there are billions of people whose bios will never rate inclusion in the English Wikipedia. That doesn't mean that they are less worthy as humans.

The question of the parameter label has come up multiple times before. The problem with fixing it is practical: To change just the label for WP:MED (where that change would be supported) requires editing 33,000 talk pages (and one template). That's a lot of work to do on the off-chance that someone might be unhappy with a parameter name that isn't even visible unless you edit the page.

(It's possible to change the text of the WikiProject banner without changing the actual parameter itself. If we did this at the main template, it would flood the job queue for a while, but that's not necessarily a blocker.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:51, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

New sub-working group?

Hi. I'm part of the popular culture working group of Wikiproject Korea. As far as I can tell, the main WP has no admins, as there are none listed. The popular culture working group covers TV, movies, celebrities of all type, music, and such things. Right now, the few active members are trying to work intensively on a subset of these articles, the ones pertaining to Korean pop music. This includes biographical articles of people and groups, albums, EPs, songs, discographies, concert tours, etc. - they're spread out across a variety of different categories. One thing I'm struggling with is keeping track of all these articles, which are numerous. Wikipedia categories aren't too helpful because, again, the articles are split between many, many categories. And tracking them with the WP/working group's banner tag brings up all articles in the working group, which number in the thousands. I thought while we work on this little project, there might be some way to add another element to the WP tag, to allow tracking of just the articles we designate as fitting within the project. However, I'm not sure how to proceed either procedurally or from a technical point of view (I know zilch about templates or the like). Can you give me some advice? Thanks so much! Shinyang-i (talk) 05:55, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

Hi Shinyang-i,

It sounds like you want a task force, which is described in the Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Guide. You can look at WP:MEDTF for some ideas about how to go about it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:54, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

A belated thank you, @WhatamIdoing: Shinyang-i (talk) 09:40, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

Article alerts -FYI

If you are curious to learn more about Article alerts here is a 2009 Signpost article about it. Ottawahitech (talk) 16:10, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

Automating the WikiProject Directory

Hello, Council! I would like to recommend that the Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory be automated. There is no reason this needs to be maintained by human hands when it can be done automatically, plus the pages in the directory do not get edited enough for me to believe that any of it is up to date. The bot maintaining the directory would have two tasks: (1) scouring the categories of WikiProjects and generating lists on that basis; (2) updating WikiProject's classification as active/inactive. The former task would run more frequently, mostly to pick up on new WikiProjects, and the latter task would run less frequently. The bot lists would be tested in a sandbox before they replace the directory.

For this to work, especially the second part, we need to come up with objective definitions of active, semi-active, inactive, and defunct WikiProjects. If we are going to be labeling WikiProjects as such, we should at least standardize the terminology so we can get some proper metrics. First, I recommend collapsing the current four status categories into just "active" and "inactive." I don't see any practical difference between "inactive" and "defunct," and "semi-active" is ambiguous; does a semi-active project meet a basic minimum level of activity or not? In any case, I would recommend defining it according to the number of people editing (since WikiProjects are supposed to be collaborative after all). The number has to be the smallest that would suggest there is still a project going; I recommend at least three editors making at least two edits to all project pages (including WT pages and subpages) in a six month period. Three people indicates a group; the two edit requirement filters out most people dropping by to make random announcements (like yours truly). An inactive project is anything that falls below that.

Any thoughts? Harej (talk) 04:37, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

I like the idea of automating the directory, and coming up with definitions re: active, inactive, etc. However, surely many projects have tucked away subpages that are not edited every six months, but are still active elsewhere. What about a certain number of edits to the project's primary talk page within a designated time frame? Just a thought. I'm trying to think of the projects which may have may subpages or dead "branches". ---Another Believer _(Talk) 04:59, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

The edits wouldn't have to be on every page. It would be measured by the combined total of these pages. So some obscure essay written in 2008 wouldn't count against the project, but by that same token, a project could still be considered active if the main talk page is not necessarily that active but there's a highly active sub-process. Harej (talk) 05:15, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

Strong objection to the notion that a project be tagged as active or inactive or all the variations in between - there is a set of very old projects that runn from designations of what projects were almost 10 years ago, some newer projects, and projects in between. I do not think it helps projects to be labelled as such, and I believe that ways of assesing as to whether projects are relevant/redundant or mergable or even re-newable rely on factors that are not machine readable - and as to whether a project was ever originally constituted correctly. I believe that the whole notion of active/inactive is something that needs reviewing. And not simply done in an 'easy fix it' machine process. satusuro 09:51, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

Projects are already tagged as active or inactive through the WikiProject status categories and through {{WikiProject status}}. I personally am not a fan of marking projects as active or inactive; I would prefer that projects always have some sort of activity, even if it has to be all automated, so that they are useful no matter what. Until that kind of technology is implemented, and until we as a community agree to eliminate the classification of projects by activity level, I argue it should be done with some level of consistency. I'm also asking nothing about automatically determining whether projects be considered relevant, redundant, or mergeable; I agree those are best judged by humans. A project's renewability cannot be determined automatically alone—reinvigorating a project does require actual people to get involved—but the process can be informed by data to see where it is more likely to happen than not. Harej (talk) 13:34, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

A decent compromise might be that the directory would track activity/inactivity, but the projects themselves would not be labeled—insofar as status labels would be proactively removed. Harej (talk) 13:38, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

The one primary good reason I can imagine for tagging inactive WikiProjects is something that I have faced in the past. I remember when one of our more productive, if occasionally less than personable, editors for Christianity related content left a message on the talk page of an inactive Christianity related WikiProject that no one responded to. He retired permanently sometime shortly thereafter. It is very much in all of our intersts to let people know which WikiProjects are ones where they might be able to receive real assistance, and which are ones where there might not be enough individuals involved to actively help them if they request it. John Carter (talk) 20:22, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

The second task does not actually need to have a set series of definitions attached to it (at least not yet). The bot could just pick up the changes to Category:Inactive WikiProject banners that are made by users, and then the discussion about what "active" and "inactive" mean can be done independently of the programming. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 18:02, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

Sure. Since the active/inactive distinction is a point of contention, we can focus on just the list automation for now. What might be the prerequisites, in terms of how WikiProjects are currently sorted, for there to be an automated directory list? Harej (talk) 18:37, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

I would start with the current directory as a starting basis for the project's "main category" (for lack of a better term). For example, WP:WPTC is currently listed under "Science, technology and engineering"; we can safely assume that somebody at some point thought that was an accurate assessment of the WikiProject's category, and we can add a hidden category to the WikiProject's page if necessary.

The other point where things may get complex is in recognizing task forces / collaborations; again, we already have a good starting point of data in the existing directory, so we may have to add something along the lines of {{ReleaseVersionParameters}} somewhere in the WikiProject's page structure. (Actually, maybe modifying the ReleaseVersionParameters template to accommodate categorization data like this would be a useful shortcut...) Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 19:00, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

I am going to look through the directory pages and the category tree and see how they are similar or different in structure. Ideally, they are as similar as possible; why have multiple ontology schemes if we don't have to? Depending on how much the two differ from another, I may suggest changes to the directory or to the category tree, or I may just make some changes myself if they're small. Harej (talk) 19:38, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

The one biggest reservation I can imagine would lie in addition and classification of new projects, or, specifically, figuring out exactly where to add them. I don't know that a bot would be able to do that, particularly if a given WikiProject would not unreasonably be included in more than one section of the directory. But I suppose it might be possible for a computer generated list to create a list of projects to be added which involved individuals could then use to update the directory. John Carter (talk) 18:44, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

It would presumably be based on the various WikiProject subcategories. A project would have multiple directory entries if it was included in multiple categories. New WikiProjects would either be sorted into the main category (for further subcategorization) or in a category/list for "unsorted WikiProjects." My question is, how do we know when a WikiProject has been created if someone forgets to put it in an appropriate category? Harej (talk) 19:27, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

This page might be somehow able to be subjected to automation to maybe make a list of pages (without the subpage /) starting with WikiProject and maybe removal of any new pages which are already linked to in the directory, although, honestly, I don't know enough about the tech involved to come up with an idea how. John Carter (talk) 20:01, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

Reconciling the directory and the category tree

I started doing some work with organizing Category:WikiProjects. I created a new parent category, Category:WikiProjects by area, where pretty much all projects will be sorted under. The main subcategories of the "WikiProjects" category are things like "WikiProjects by status," etc. In comparing the directory to the category tree, I find that they more or less resemble one another, but the category system is much sloppier. I would like to invest some effort in maintaining the category system, one because a well-maintained category system is typically a good thing, and because it will be necessary if we want to effectively automate the WikiProject directory.

I have a question regarding categorization best practices. WikiProjects often times have their own categories named after themselves. WikiProject Biography, for example, has a category Category:WikiProject Biography. In theory, the project could just belong to its self-named category, and then all applicable meta-categories (Culture WikiProjects, etc.) could apply to the project's category rather than the project's page. However, some projects are sorted in both their own self-named categories and the applicable meta-categories. There does not seem to be a consistent practice for these things. So should WikiProjects with their own categories also have their project pages sorted into additional categories, or should the additional categories apply to only the project category? Harej (talk) 23:03, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

It is certainly reasonable to have some standardization one way or another. Either the category can be categorized as a subcat of the meta category, or maybe have the individual project page be categorized in both a meta category and the direct project category. FWIW, most of the time the project-specific cats get created to do assessment, because the process relies on those assessment categories existing. Personally, I'd favor having the project page be categorized in the various extant meta categories, and leave the additional pages and cats in the project-specific categories, for ease of maintenance. Unfortunately, getting people to consistently adhere to any system regarding any future project creation is going to be all but impossible. Categories are always notoriously difficult to maintain. John Carter (talk) 23:12, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

Even if we don't manage standardized definitions for "inactive" and the like, it would be very handy just to have entries in the directory for every single WikiProject. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:20, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 1

Hi! Thank you for subscribing to the WikiProject X Newsletter. For our first issue...

Has WikiProject X changed the world yet? No.

We opened up shop last month and announced our existence to the world. Our first phase is the "research" phase, consisting mostly of reading and listening. We set up our landing page and started collecting stories. So far, 28 stories have been shared about WikiProjects, describing a variety of experiences across numerous WikiProjects. A recurring story involves a WikiProject that starts off strong but has trouble continuing to stay active. Most people describe using WikiProjects as a way to get feedback from other editors. Some quotes:

• "Working on requested articles, utilising the reliable sources section, and having an active WikiProject to ask questions in really helped me learn how to edit Wikipedia and looking back I don't know how long I would have stayed editing without that project." – Sam Walton on WikiProject Video Games
• "I believe that the main problem of the Wikiprojects is that they are complicated to use. There should be a a much simpler way to check what do do, what needs to be improved etc." – Tetra quark
• "In the late 2000s, WikiProject Film tried to emulate WP:MILHIST in having coordinators and elections. Unfortunately, this was not sustainable and ultimately fell apart." – Erik

Of course, these are just anecdotes. While they demonstrate what is possible, they do not necessarily explain what is typical. We will be using this information in conjunction with a quantitative analysis of WikiProjects, as documented on Meta. Particularly, we are interested in the measurement of WikiProject activity as it relates to overall editing in that WikiProject's subject area.

We also have 50 people and projects signed up for pilot testing, which is an excellent start! (An important caveat: one person volunteering a WikiProject does not mean the WikiProject as a whole is interested; just that there is at least one person, which is a start.)

While carrying out our research, we are documenting the problems with WikiProjects and our ideas for making WikiProjects better. Some ideas include better integration of existing tools into WikiProjects, recommendations of WikiProjects for people to join, and improved coordination with Articles for Creation. These are just ideas that may or may not make it to the design phase; we will see. We are also working with WikiProject Council to improve the directory of WikiProjects, with the goal of a reliable, self-updating WikiProject directory. Stay tuned! If you have any ideas, you are welcome to leave a note on our talk page.

That's all for now. Thank you for subscribing!

– Harej 17:21, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

Discussion elsewhere that concerns one of the pages for which this is a talk page

There's a discussion at Template talk:WPBannerMeta#Very commendable guideline being virtually ignored which directly concerns one of the pages for which this is a talk page. It also potentially affects every single WikiProject that recognises the |importance= parameter (about 1000, I think), so deserves an audience that is wider than the 107 watchers of a template's talk page. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:44, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for posting User:Redrose64. I believe this a discussion about the Importance tag which is part of most (all?) wikiproject banners? Ottawahitech (talk) 15:33, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

@Ottawahitech: It's not about a tag (there is, AFAIK, no importance tag). As I noted above, it concerns the |importance= parameter, which is found on most WikiProject banners, but by no means all (for example, it's not recognised by {{WikiProject Academic Journals}}, {{WikiProject Accessibility}}, {{WikiProject Disambiguation}}, {{WikiProject Elections and Referendums}}, etc.). The discussion that I linked to concerns altering this from "importance" to "priority" in certain circumstances. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:53, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

@Redrose64: Thanks for setting me straight, I am always having trouble with wiki-jargon. OK, so importance is a parameter, not a tag, but does anyone here know what is the difference between importance and priority? Ottawahitech (talk) 21:31, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

Per WP:MULTI, please can discussion take place at Template talk:WPBannerMeta#Very commendable guideline being virtually ignored, not here? --Redrose64 (talk) 21:34, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

Sorry user:Redrose64, with all due respect, and I do sincerely mean the word respect: you can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make it drink. Just my $.02. Ottawahitech (talk) 11:27, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

The subject in question is what you should type when you add a WikiProject banner. Most projects currently type something like this:

{{WikiProject Foo |class=Stub |importance=Mid}}

The question is whether "importance" should be changed to "priority". Then you would type this:

{{WikiProject Foo |class=Stub |priority=Mid}}

WikiProject Biographies has used "priority" because a lot of editors thought it would be really offensive to declare that some humans are unimportant. Most groups use "importance". WikiProject have been free to use whichever they want, but using "priority" usually requires extra work on their part, and most of them don't know how to do it. If you have an opinion on this, then please share your views at the other page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:13, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Got TEA?

Sorry there was no template for this introduction. I have been to the teahouse and will park myself there. Would just like to get to know people that are interested in music and entertainment.Lbhiggin (talk) 16:41, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

@Lbhiggin: You must be more specific. What sort of music/entertainment? There are dozens of projects on Wikipedia dealing with music. Ottawahitech (talk) 15:23, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

Music I am interested in

I am interested in music groups that are touring and come to Lubbock Texas, an music in the High Schools, Colleges and Universities in the major towns and cities of Texas. I use Wikipedia for information on these topics, and would volunteer to help edit them. I will be going to the 10 Years concert and reporting on them for The Record, my ezine column. I have learned a lot here at Wikipedia. I would like to try to maintain a NPOV, as I edit and to put my proposed edits in the talk pages of active and notable articles. I am sorry for my previous posts, especially the BLP about myself. I hope that they were entertaining though. In other words I came in as green as a frog. I have since completed the Wikipedia Adventure Game, and introduced myself in the Wikipedia Teahouse. I still have a lot to learn.Lbhiggin (talk) 17:28, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

Lbhiggin, you might want to look at some of the dozens of groups in the link Ottawa provided, and then see if you can find a group that is active and interesting to you. Or several. Just reading WikiProject talk pages every now and again is a good way to get started on Wikipedia. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:21, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Really?

Taylor Swift has her own WikiProject? Drmies (talk) 20:55, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

As of last week, apparently. There are no firm rules prohibiting the creation of WikiProject pages 'out of process'. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:23, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Article alerts are broken?

Just wondering if anyone else noticed? Ottawahitech (talk) 15:16, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

It appears to be running again. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:24, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Trivia: Most popular wikiproject

Which wp:wikiproject is the most popular on wikipedia? Ottawahitech (talk) 16:20, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

Define "popular" - the most viewed; the most members; the most pages tagged - or something else? --Redrose64 (talk) 18:45, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

A few reports exist that show different measures of popularity for WikiProjects - see Wikipedia:Database reports/WikiProjects by changes and Wikipedia:Database reports/WikiProject watchers. Both are a bit outdated and I cannot vouch for their methodologies, but it's a start. TB (talk) 08:12, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks Topbanana those are good tools: the first for nursery-wikiprojects that are built around improving articles in a subject area, the second would also apply to other types of wikiprojects (we need a term for those). Ottawahitech (talk) 14:41, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

Good question Redrose64. How can we measure the popularity of wikiprojects. Is it by viewers (of what?), the number of members (are they active (how do you measure activity?)), the project-related pages tagged/assessed/actively assessed? Ottawahitech (talk) 14:47, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

If it's the number of pages tagged, I would say that {{WikiProject Biography}}, with over one-and-a-quarter million transclusions is way out in front. One of the most active is {{WikiProject Military history}}, with "only" 173085 pages tagged. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:57, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 11 March 2015

Please delete the "A" from the beginning of the following sentence: "A WikiProject's pages are not used for writing encyclopedia articles directly," because it is not grammatically correct, as the rest of the sentence is written in plural. Carly321 (talk) 18:42, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

 Not done - seems correct to me - let us rephrase the possessive, to remove the pseudo-plural:-
"The pages of a WikiProject are not used for writing encyclopedia articles directly"
"pages" and "are" - both plural, "a" and "WikiProject" - both singular. - Arjayay (talk) 19:02, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

I was initially confused as the phrase does not appear on the associated project page, Wikipedia:WikiProject Council but actually appears on Wikipedia:WikiProject, however Wikipedia talk:WikiProject is a redirect to this page. - Arjayay (talk) 19:08, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 2

For this month's issue...

Making sense of a lot of data.

Work on our prototype will begin imminently. In the meantime, we have to understand what exactly we're working with. To this end, we generated a list of 71 WikiProjects, based on those brought up on our Stories page and those who had signed up for pilot testing. For those projects where people told stories, we coded statements within those stories to figure out what trends there were in these stories. This approach allowed us to figure out what Wikipedians thought of WikiProjects in a very organic way, with very little by way of a structure. (Compare this to a structured interview, where specific questions are asked and answered.) This analysis was done on 29 stories. Codes were generally classified as "benefits" (positive contributions made by a WikiProject to the editing experience) and "obstacles" (issues posed by WikiProjects, broadly speaking). Codes were generated as I went along, ensuring that codes were as close to the original data as possible. Duplicate appearances of a code for a given WikiProject were removed.

We found 52 "benefit" statements encoded and 34 "obstacle" statements. The most common benefit statement referring to the project's active discussion and participation, followed by statements referring to a project's capacity to guide editor activity, while the most common obstacles made reference to low participation and significant burdens on the part of the project maintainers and leaders. This gives us a sense of WikiProjects' big strength: they bring people together, and can be frustrating to editors when they fail to do so. Meanwhile, it is indeed very difficult to bring editors together on a common interest; in the absence of a highly motivated core of organizers, the technical infrastructure simply isn't there.

We wanted to pair this qualitative study with quantitative analysis of a WikiProject and its "universe" of pages, discussions, templates, and categories. To this end I wrote a script called ProjAnalysis which will, for a given WikiProject page (e.g. Wikipedia:WikiProject Star Trek) and WikiProject talk-page tag (e.g. Template:WikiProject Star Trek), will give you a list of usernames of people who edited within the WikiProject's space (the project page itself, its talk page, and subpages), and within the WikiProject's scope (the pages tagged by that WikiProject, excluding the WikiProject space pages). The output is an exhaustive list of usernames. We ran the script to analyze our test batch of WikiProjects for edits between March 1, 2014 and February 28, 2015, and we subjected them to further analysis to only include those who made 10+ edits to pages in the projects' scope, those who made 4+ edits to the projects' space, and those who made 10+ edits to pages in scope but not 4+ edits to pages in the projects' space. This latter metric gives us an idea of who is active in a certain subject area of Wikipedia, yet who isn't actively engaging on the WikiProject's pages. This information will help us prioritize WikiProjects for pilot testing, and the ProjAnalysis script in general may have future life as an application that can be used by Wikipedians to learn about who is in their community.

Complementing the above two studies are a design analysis, which summarizes the structure of the different WikiProject spaces in our test batch, and the comprehensive census of bots and tools used to maintain WikiProjects, which will be finished soon. With all of this information, we will have a game plan in place! We hope to begin working with specific WikiProjects soon.

As a couple of asides...

• Database Reports has existed for several years on Wikipedia to the satisfaction of many, but many of the reports stopped running when the Toolserver was shut off in 2014. However, there is good news: the weekly New WikiProjects and WikiProjects by Changes reports are back, with potential future reports in the future.
• WikiProject X has an outpost on Wikidata! Check it out. It's not widely publicized, but we are interested in using Wikidata as a potential repository for metadata about WikiProjects, especially for WikiProjects that exist on multiple Wikimedia projects and language editions.

That's all for now. Thank you for subscribing! If you have any questions or comments, please share them with us.

Harej (talk) 01:43, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

Dead Links

Hey guys, the toolserver.org links are dead/not working at the moment. Three of the last in a list of a bunch of links aren't working:

 "List of WikiProjects
 List of uncategorized WikiProjects
 WikiProjects by number of articles (dynamically)"

I didn't want to delete them because maybe the links have just been moved. Skiingxmoose (talk) 01:49, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

The Toolserver is gone, replaced by Tool Labs. I am not sure where the tools have been migrated; not all of them were. Harej (talk) 05:15, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

@Skiingxmoose: There are plenty of threads on this matter in the archives of WP:VPT, going back nearly three years. Toolserver went down permanently in June 2014, and the tool owners had plenty of warning that it was going to happen. --Redrose64 (talk) 23:44, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

So can I get rid of the links to toolserver.org that are listed on this page? Skiingxmoose (talk) 21:11, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

You should first ask the tool operator. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:51, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

Offtopic comment Wikipedia has/had a lot of useful tools. The ones that still exist are poorly maintained imo. On good days they work, on bad days they don't. Ottawahitech (talk) 16:26, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

If there are any specific requests for tools, please let me know. Harej (talk) 19:20, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

@Harej: Is there a page at wp:WikiProject X to discuss project tools? Ottawahitech (talk) 14:35, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

@Harej: Is there still a wikiproject watchlist tool (a public watchlist for a wikiproject)? The old one appears to be dead. Second Quantization (talk) 12:52, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

@Ottawahitech:, a public watchlist tool is definitely a priority. Any specific requests regarding it could be made on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject X, in the absence of a more specific page. Harej (talk) 19:14, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

You might look up Jon Katz, the newest WMF product manager for Mobile, who is doing something with lists (for Mobile Web specifically). The "Gather" experimental work might someday expand into a public watchlist. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:07, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

Possible bot generation of missing articles lists?

Just wondering whether any projects around here might find it useful to have a bot generated list of articles related to the project which don't yet exist. It might be possible to create such lists based on a few pages like Wikipedia:WikiProject Islam/Encyclopedic articles and just having the blue links as they are created removed from the list. I do think having such lists available for some of the projects might be one of the easier ways to get some editors involved in the projects. John Carter (talk) 20:24, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

If specific projects figure out how to auto-generate missing articles, more power to them. But how would we make this functionality available to WikiProjects in general? Harej (talk) 22:04, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

For the projects which have the encyclopedic articles lists, use that list as a basis. For others, it might be more difficult, although I am more than willing to work on developing such lists for any project at request, with the understanding that sometimes they take a freaking long time to get together. Alternately, individuals involved in those projects could create what similar lists based on what they believe or think need to be covered. So, for instance, a project on The Beatles might generate a list of the songs and albums and other works related to the topic. A lot of media-related projects won't have separate reference guides, like that one, but with any luck someone involved in the creation of the project has some idea as to what the most essential and primary topics relating to it are, and could at least generate an early list on that basis. Maybe. John Carter (talk) 22:33, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

Where to add WikiProject Motorcycling?

I'd like to add WikiProject Motorcycling to the directory, without breaking hierarchy conventions. I see rail transport listed out on its own, but it has subprojects to list (Motorcycling does not). Advice? — Brianhe (talk) 18:52, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

Project	Active	Assessment	Peer review	Collaboration	Portal	Notes
Motorcycling	yes	yes	yes	yes		Project founded 2006; 134 enrolled members; featured in Cycle World [16]
Motorcycle racing	yes			yes	Motorcycle racing	Project founded late 2008; 45 enrolled members

I notice that they are already in Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory/History and society#Transportation and Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory/Culture/Sports#Motorsport. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:54, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, I missed that. I guess I am confused to find rail transport in two places. — Brianhe (talk) 20:02, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

Sometimes it's just a mistake, but there's no rule against it. I would expect a cross-disciplinary project (like History of Science) to be listed in both areas ("History" and "Science"). WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:24, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

Proposal: Disallow transcluded to-do lists

Discussion

I propose WikiProject tags are disallowed to transclude to-do lists unrelated to the article. For example, Wikipedia:WikiProject Georgia (U.S. state)/to do is currently transcluded on around 14000 article talk pages with {{WikiProject Georgia (U.S. state)}}. Some disadvantages of this: Waste of server resources and bandwidth. Users of the mobile version or without Javascript see the full to-do lists on the talk pages and not just a "[show]" link. WhatLinksHere for a page linked in the to-do list gets thousands of irrelevant talk pages. Special:WantedPages (which is updated contrary to MediaWiki:Wantedpages-summary) becomes pretty useless when it mainly shows arbitrary pages on to-do lists. Other stats are probably also polluted. The only advantage of the system seems to be that readers of a tagged talk page can see the to-do list by clicking "show" instead of a link to the list itself. This search finds many WikiProject tags using transclusion. If we disallow it then a single central template change should be able to replace most or all transcluded to-do lists with a link to the list. Each WikiProject can then decide whether to remove/reword the link, redesign their to-do list for better direct viewing, or just leave things as they are. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:46, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

It's a very good proposal. The WikiProject banners should be just that - banners - and do not need to transclude information such as to-do lists onto the talk pages of thousands of articles. This is the type of information that should be linked to, not transcluded. — This, that and the other (talk) 00:18, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

I found one a few days ago - {{WikiProject Dance}} - which shows either of two to-do lists (the WikiProject Ballet To-do list or the WikiProject Dance To-do list), depending on whether |Ballet-todolist=yes is set or not. It's not even tied to the parameter |Ballet=yes - they are independent, and can be set yes/no or no/yes. That's probably one to rationalise. --Redrose64 (talk) 00:23, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

I've done this as a start. But I support the general notion of this proposal, with the caveat that if a WikiProject really wants to do this then we shouldn't stand in their way. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:30, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

And I've documented that change. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:56, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

This sounds like a no-brainer, but the ease of getting it done seems to be somewhere between herding cats and nailing jello to a tree. Does anyone have a proposed plan for making this happen? --Guy Macon (talk) 01:03, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

I have only previewed it with 2 of the 128 cases but the quick solution would be replacing the contents of Template:WPBannerMeta/hooks/todolist with something like <tr><td></td><td colspan="2">'''[[{{{TODO_LINK}}}|{{{TODO_TITLE|To-do list}}}]]'''</td></tr><noinclude>{{documentation}}</noinclude>. But when it's no longer a collapsible table, maybe the link should be placed elsewhere. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:01, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

Waste of server resources and bandwidth: Don't worry about performance.

Users of the mobile version: Users who are browsing talk pages on mobile (heck, any pages) probably understand the implications that may have on their data plans or speed of loading.

Javascript: Similarly.

WhatLinksHere for a page linked in the to-do list gets thousands of irrelevant talk pages.: I'm not convinced that this is an issue. Users using WhatLinksHere understand the implications.

Special:WantedPages (which is updated contrary to MediaWiki:Wantedpages-summary) becomes pretty useless when it mainly shows arbitrary pages on to-do lists: Special:WantedPages is and has largely always been useless....

I don't see a convincing case here to remove functionality for a group of users who seem to desire it. Mind you, I don't see the point in to do lists in WikiProject templates because I do feel like it's attempting to reach the wrong audience, but that's not my call (nor do I feel perturbed enough with the issue and am unlikely to perturb one way or the other in the future). Regardless, I would expect removal of this functionality would be found to have consensus by a large group of at the minimum the affected projects before implementation. --Izno (talk) 03:44, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

I posted notifications to several pages including Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals) and Wikipedia talk:Talk page guidelines. Are you suggesting to notify each of the 128 affected WikiProjects about the discussion? Or we could make Template:WPBannerMeta/hooks/todolist produce a link to the discussion in its one million transclusions. PrimeHunter (talk) 04:23, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

That is precisely my suggestion. I would suggest WP:CENT and adding a WP:RFC tag as well. --Izno (talk) 21:55, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

• Support – To-do list entries in WikiProject banners should link to the project's to-do list, not transclude it, for all the reasons nominated. They are a drag, even on non-mobile devices. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 05:56, 25 February 2015 (UTC)
• Support. Not only are hundreds of extra links in the WhatLinksHere a major pain to deal with when moving a page, but they make it impossible for automated analysis tools to measure the true link popularity of a page. --Guy Macon (talk) 07:38, 25 February 2015 (UTC)
• Support To me the entire idea of Wikiproject banners has probably outlived its usefulness. The only somewhat useful thing they do that a simple category tag couldn't do is the article rating system, which is itself poorly maintained, and inconsistently applied (except for FA/GA which have real standards). At some point in the future it might be good to have a conversation regarding breaking assessment out into its own template (with global, more objective, possibly even bot-assigned standards, not WikiProject dictated standards) and changing Wikiproject banners into category tags. Gigs (talk) 17:07, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

  WikiProject banners don't just indicate class and importance. They give other information too, and are good for finding a discussion page where you can post a notice with a wider audience. It's not just FA and GA that have real standards - see WP:ACLASS and WP:BCLASS. But most of the criteria for any given class are subjective, so I don't see how a bot can judge that, for example, "the article reasonably covers the topic, and does not contain obvious omissions or inaccuracies", which is B class criterion 2. WikiProjects dictate importance ratings, but they do not dictate standards for classification. Most WikiProject banners have a link to a classification guidance page: consider my three examples that I gave at WT:GAN#Suggested minor final step in review process - Trains has quality scale; Yorkshire has quality scale; Architecture has quality scale - if you follow these, you'll see that the "WikiProject article quality grading scheme" that each one uses is identical. --Redrose64 (talk) 18:54, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

  The classification scheme is fairly standardized. Importance is something the WikiProjects get to assign themselves. I'm puzzled why you would think otherwise on this point. --Izno (talk) 21:55, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

  • I clicked random article 5 times. I'd say the worst assessment example is Jitendra_Prasada, stub class. This is clearly not a stub. I'd say the primary bias is to underrate articles. If one looks at the actual criteria, a C class article is supposed to be one that needs major cleanup and might only cite a couple sources. Another one of the 5 random articles was Martin_Scorsese_(song) listed as stub as well. For such a narrow topic, this is a somewhat complete article.

    Coming at this from another angle, I took a look at a C class article by navigating through the top level category. Horse_teeth. Is this an article that contains a bunch of irrelevant information and needs major cleanup? Sure, we may have "standardized" criteria, but they aren't being applied in a useful way. Gigs (talk) 20:34, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

• Support I do not think that these lists are a useful way to recruit editors to engage in the tasks on the list or to draw attention to projects. I do not know of any WikiProject which has a community which regularly maintains its to-do list, and I think that perhaps all to-do lists are either stagnant or at best maintained by a single person. Removing this non-functional process would improve the banner by not presenting a disappointing feature to users. Blue Rasberry (talk) 20:23, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

  I can think of at least one which does maintain its to do list (amusingly not in the list above—I'm not sure why): WP:VG ({{WikiProject Video games}}). --Izno (talk) 21:55, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

  Izno I am not seeing exactly how in the code they are generating their to-do list. It looks completely different from other to-do lists I have seen, so may rely on other code, and be excluded from anything that happens as a result of this discussion. That could explain why it is not on this list. Could someone else look at this? Blue Rasberry (talk) 22:10, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

  Yes, I looked into it myself after making the above comment. They're basically not using the to_do hook as per the meta template; instead they are inserting a template into the "bottom miscellaneous" hook of the meta template, which was already developed separately from a /todo page (which I bet is still lying around). --Izno (talk) 22:17, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

Comment I don't have an opinion, just wanted to say that I hope the projects affected received a notice of this discussion. Ottawahitech (talk) 16:30, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

• 'Support—they take up a lot of screen real estate for little benefit. The items in the to do lists are rarely pertinent to many of the individual articles upon which they appear. Imzadi 1979 → 03:21, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

Outdated WikiProjects

I do realize that many of the WikiProjects, other than those popular active ones, are either outdated, relatively unknown, or just simply abandoned. Why is that so? Are there any suggestions on how this situation can be improved? My suggestion would be to introduce newly registered users to WikiProjects, and show them how it works to coordinate contributions and also to replace inactive users. What are your thoughts on this?

Also, I do realize the WikiProject task forces links are not prominent enough. Sometimes articles are not clearly shown that they are a part of a WikiProject. Maybe putting something like, "This article is part of the XX WikiProject task force. You may, optionally, join as a member to help coordinate and improve this article" at the header or footer will help, perhaps? 115.66.106.201 (talk) 19:28, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

Basically, there seems to be a sort of "standard history" for most WikiProjects, which, basically, get to the point of getting a lot of the most popular or core content related to their topic developed, much of which can be fairly easily sourced, and then becoming a bit more "work" thereafter, when they become a bit less popular. There are also a lot of cases where editors who may have been, as it were, the central driving force of a WikiProject leave wikipedia, making it less likely for the projects to stay current. I honestly don't know if any of the welcome templates in Category:Welcome templates include specific links to WikiProjects, possibly/probably because of the lack of activity of at least some of them and the likelihood of no response or inadequate response if they seek an inactive project. Not a very good answer, admittedly, but it is what comes to mind.

Regarding your second point, policies and guidelines prohibit placing any sort of notification for the strictly informal WikiProjects in the articles themselves, indicating they are supposed to be placed on the article talk page. Admittedly, though, several Wikiprojects haven't placed notices there either. John Carter (talk) 20:06, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

Hello, 115.66.106.201. I'm currently working on WikiProject X, an effort to improve WikiProjects. We've found that WikiProjects have trouble sustaining the interest of contributors, even if they start out strong. This is for a lot of reasons, including the central organizers going away, the lack of continuous recruitment of new participants, and the diminishing excitement as the workload shifts from creating new articles to maintenance work. I would love to make WikiProjects part of the Wikipedia onboarding process, but it would be difficult with a lot of inactive WikiProjects (a chicken and egg problem). I also had an idea of automated recruitment based on editing patterns; I'm currently working on the infrastructure that helps to make that possible. Any additional ideas you have would be appreciated. Harej (talk) 15:07, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

Gathering editors/finding new ones for a project

Hello, there. I've submitted a grant proposal for the Inspire Project, and have been trying to figure out the best way to attract existing editors to the project and/or attract new editors. This is obviously a system-wide problem (reading the above discussions and the discussions they link to)

My questions for this group:

• Is it best to find individual editors who are active and invite them to the project via their talk pages?
• Is it appropriate to request publicity for the project on the various blogs?
• When doing online organizing, do members normally use social media, email, or some other medium? What has tended to work best?

Thanks in advance!
Natalie Bueno Vasquez (talk) 17:24, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

Hello Natalie Bueno Vasquez, can you clarify whether you are referring to your specific Inspire Campaign project, the WikiProject Women's History mentioned in the proposal, or Wikipedia as a project writ large? Harej (talk) 19:47, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

Hi, Harej, I'm sorry if I wasn't clear. I'm referring to the specific project to add more women to the days of the year. At this point I'm unclear on what I should link you to, since there is the Inspire project grant page with its talk page, the project proposal page with its talk page, and there's been activity on all four pages. From reading on this talk pages and others, there appears to be a widespread issue with recruiting and retention. I'd like to know if what I'm suggesting above is appropriate in the context of Wikipedia "manners", and if those techniques have been or are considered to be successful. Natalie Bueno Vasquez (talk) 21:55, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Hillary Rodham Clinton

I'm not sure where to list this in the directory, but I created WikiProject Hillary Rodham Clinton as a collaborative effort to improve Wikipedia articles related to Hillary Clinton, similar to the WikiProject for Barack Obama. ---Another Believer _(Talk) 18:02, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

"Library" pages for wikiprojects

It may not be a particularly good idea, but I am in the early stages of putting together a "Library" subpage for WikiProject Religion, which I hope will list all the PD sources included in the bibliographies of the individual articles in the most recent Lindsay Jones Encyclopedia of Religion. With some luck, if those sources are available at archive.org or elsewhere as PD entites, we might be able to add the .pdf files or .djvu files to commons, and, maybe, get some people involved in transcribing them for wikisource. It's actually because of their preference for .djvu files that I mentioned that format, even though I myself have yet to figure out how to get the damn plug-in to work to allow me to download and upload such files. It might be worthwhile for other rather broad projects to try something similar. Maybe, if it winds up being at all useful. John Carter (talk) 18:50, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

John Carter

• It seems like a lot of work, but yes, it would be useful if someone wanted to do it, and a nice proof of concept which I have not seen elsewhere.
• To download .djvu files from archive.org replace /stream/ with /download/ in the URL. That problem has existed for years and the only way to know how to do it is to have someone tell you.

Blue Rasberry (talk) 18:58, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

Redesign for Template:WikiProject Footer

I have created a redesign for Template:WikiProject Footer in the style of a navbox.

If changed: see this revision.

Any comments at all? --Mrjulesd (talk) 17:00, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

Much better 'support change to old template ...I say we replce the old one with this new one. Old one just links to other pages with listings of links..the new one actually has the info so editors done have link runaround. -- Moxy (talk) 17:40, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

The status quo is much simpler and doesn't try to show everything at once. Harej (talk) 18:22, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

• Prefer new version The old version presents three links, all of which can only be useful to Wikipedians with a deep understanding of the WikiProject system. This new version presents a hope of being useful, and is it subjectively curated to present information which is more likely to be relevant, and the navigation box system is already used throughout Wikipedia so would be recognizable here. I cannot see serious drawbacks to replacing the older system with this one, and I see benefits to using this template. Blue Rasberry (talk) 18:30, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

• @Bluerasberry: and @Moxy: thanks for that. @Harej: can you think of any improvements? Or do you just not like the navbox idea? --Mrjulesd (talk) 20:39, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

•  Like -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 11:27, 16 April 2015 (UTC)
•  Done there seems to be consensus for the change. --Mrjulesd (talk) 08:53, 17 April 2015 (UTC)
• Also  Like. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 00:53, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 3

Greetings! For this month's issue...

We have demos!

After a lengthy research and design process, we decided for WikiProject X to focus on two things:

• A WikiProject workflow that focuses on action items: discussions you can participate in and tasks you can perform to improve the encyclopedia; and
• An automatically updating WikiProject directory that gives you lists of users participating in the WikiProject and editing in that subject area.

We have a live demonstration of the new WikiProject workflow at WikiProject Women in Technology, a brand new WikiProject that was set up as an adjunct to a related edit-a-thon in Washington, DC. The goal is to surface action items for editors, and we intend on doing that through automatically updated working lists. We are looking into using SuggestBot to generate lists of outstanding tasks, and we are looking into additional options for automatic worklist generation. This takes the burden off of WikiProject editors to generate these worklists, though there is also a "requests" section for Wikipedians to make individual requests. (As of writing, these automated lists are not yet live, so you will see a blank space under "edit articles" on the demo WikiProject. Sorry about that!) I invite you to check out the WikiProject and leave feedback on WikiProject X's talk page.

Once the demo is sufficiently developed, we will be working on a limited deployment on our pilot WikiProjects. We have selected five for the first round of testing based on the highest potential for impact and will scale up from there.

While a re-designed WikiProject experience is much needed, that alone isn't enough. A WikiProject isn't any good if people have no way of discovering it. This is why we are also developing an automatically updated WikiProject directory. This directory will surface project-related metrics, including a count of active WikiProject participants and of active editors in that project's subject area. The purpose of these metrics is to highlight how active the WikiProject is at the given point of time, but also to highlight that project's potential for success. The directory is not yet live but there is a demonstration featuring a sampling of WikiProjects.

Each directory entry will link to a WikiProject description page which automatically list the active WikiProject participants and subject-area article editors. This allows Wikipedians to find each other based on the areas they are interested in, and this information can be used to revive a WikiProject, start a new one, or even for some other purpose. These description pages are not online yet, but they will use this template, if you want to get a feel of what they will look like.

We need volunteers!

WikiProject X is a huge undertaking, and we need volunteers to support our efforts, including testers and coders. Check out our volunteer portal and see what you can do to help us!

As an aside...

Wouldn't it be cool if lists of requested articles could not only be integrated directly with WikiProjects, but also shared between WikiProjects? Well, we got the crazy idea of having experimental software feature Flow deployed (on a totally experimental basis) on the new Article Request Workshop, which seeks to be a place where editors can "workshop" article ideas before they get created. It uses Flow because Flow allows, essentially, section-level categorization, and in the future will allow "sections" (known as "topics" within Flow) to be included across different pages. What this means is that you have a recommendation for a new article tagged by multiple WikiProjects, allowing for the recommendation to appear on lists for each WikiProject. This will facilitate inter-WikiProject collaboration and will help to reduce duplicated work. The Article Request Workshop is not entirely ready yet due to some bugs with Flow, but we hope to integrate it into our pilot WikiProjects at some point.

Harej (talk) 00:57, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

RFC at WikiProject Film

There's a discussion that may concern this project at WT:FILM#RfC: Do list items need their own WP article in order to be sourced in list articles?. More input is appreciated. Lapadite (talk) 15:34, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

Bibliography

Hello. I am a student in a class on modern and contemporary Japanese theatre, and I am going to be editing this page as part of a class project. Here is a list of sources I am going to use. Please let me know if you have any comments! Thank you. Secondabroad0909 (talk) 08:08, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

Extended content

Dorsey, John T. "Reviewed Work: Between God and Man: A Judgment on War Crimes by Kinoshita Junji, Eric J. Gangloff." Comparative Literature Studies 18.2 (1981): 208-10. JSTOR. Web. 25 Apr. 2015. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40246255. Kinoshita, Junji. Between God and Man: A Judgment on War Crimes: a Play in Two Parts. Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1979. Print. Haley, John O. "Reviewed Works: Between God and Man: A Judgment on War Crimes by Kinoshita Junji; The Japanese on Trial: Allied War Crimes Operations in the East, 1945-1951 by Philip R. Piccigallo." Journal of Japanese Studies 8.1 (1982): 165-70. JSTOR. Web. 27 Apr. 2015. http://www.jstor.org/stable/132280. Kinoshita, Junji. Nihon No Minwa. Tokyo: Mainichi Shinbunsha, 1960. Print. Goodman, David G. "Reviewed Work: Junji Kinoshita, Requiem on the Great Meridian and Selected Essays by Brian Powell, Jason Daniel, Junji Kinoshita." Asian Theatre Journal 19.2 (2002): 362-64. JSTOR. Web. 25 Apr. 2015. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1124320. Kinoshita, Junji, Susumu Ono, and Saiichi Maruya. Gikyoku No Nihongo. Tokyo: Chuo Koronsha, 1982. Print.

@Secondabroad0909: the best place to discuss an article is on that article's talk page, not here. For example, to discuss the article Kyōka Izumi you should post on Talk:Kyōka Izumi. Best wishes — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:37, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

@MSGJ: Thank you very much, Martin. I will move my post to the talk page. Thank you again.---Shiori Secondabroad0909 (talk) 00:06, 29 April 2015 (UTC)

Input pls

....Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Project advice for no movies in navboxes -- Moxy (talk) 17:13, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Ageing and culture

The WikiProject Ageing and culture was created outside of the Proposals process, and I'm wondering if they should just go ahead or if any editors have any comments or objections about this. What I'm thinking is that it seems like a niche topic, and the founder is quite new here, and the other two members are completely new. Being new isn't a bad thing but I'm afraid they might not stay here long and the project will be abandoned soon. — Jeraphine Gryphon ^(talk) 17:05, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

Editors are free to form projects as they see fit...hopefully they are not forming a project that is already covered or has been rejected in the past. That said all-ways a good thing to see editors collaborate....give the project some time....if there is a problem because they are new...bring it up here and more experienced editors can chime in if need be. If the project never gets of the ground (abandoned) we can deal with it then. -- Moxy (talk) 17:14, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

Maybe "Ageing and society" would've been a better title? — Jeraphine Gryphon ^(talk) 10:45, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Miscellany_for_deletion/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Hillary_Rodham_Clinton

Please be aware that there is currently a deletion discussion regarding the above-named new Hillary Rodham Clinton WikiProject, which was previously announced at this talk page.Anythingyouwant (talk) 14:14, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

Can I join?

I would like to join this WikiProject. Please tell me if there is anything I need to know. Leave me messages on my talk page. Thanks! Writer freak Contributions 18:32, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

Hello, Writer_freak! To quote Wikipedia:WikiProject Council, "we do not maintain a formal list of members, so there's no need to sign up." So, by posting this message, you can say you are a participant. Welcome! Cheers, self-appointed council member Harej (talk) 19:23, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

I second that welcome...here here!--Moxy (talk) 22:19, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

@Moxy: the term is "hear, hear". --Redrose64 (talk) 22:41, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

lol :0--Moxy (talk) 02:26, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

Ditto. Welcome! ---Another Believer _(Talk) 22:40, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

@Harej: What can I do to help? Writer freak Contributions 15:11, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

@Writer freak:: It doesn't seem like the WikiProject Council has a lot of standing business, but it does have talk page activity from time to time. So I recommend adding this page to your watchlist and participating in conversations as you see fit. (Especially since I will be starting some conversations here soon as part of my WikiProject X work!) Harej (talk) 17:12, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

Mobile viewability (tables vs columns)

I've noticed that a lot of WikiProject pages are formatted using tables. This causes unreadably narrow columns on any mobile device. It'd be useful if sections could be reflowed into vertical sections in mobile view (e.g. using {{col-begin}}). I've done it in WP:MCB, although it took quite a bit of reformatting to get it to work. Perhaps there's a better way to do it than using columns, but it might be useful for other projects as a possible solution. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 12:36, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

With WikiProject X we're working on a design that is supposed to work on mobile devices. It may require some adjustments to MediaWiki:Common.css, but in the meantime, some of the CSS classes intended for two-column portals are quite helpful. (They don't impose any designs, but make it so that you have two columns collapse to one.) Harej (talk) 18:40, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

Scope of a certain WikiProject

I'm looking for some comments over here: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Television_Stations#Are_you_kidding_me.3F. — Jeraphine Gryphon ^(talk) 08:21, 24 May 2015 (UTC)

I left a note at the talk page, but WP:SCOPEWAR is the relevant advice. To put it bluntly, unless someone is a bona fide member of the group in question, then it's not really any of his/her business which articles some other volunteers choose to work on (or choose not to work on). WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:35, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, you're right. I should've probably just asked there and on WikiProject Television for their thoughts on how to tag the articles. — Jeraphine Gryphon ^(talk) 16:53, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

Confusing guideline

This guideline says: "If your area fits neatly within an existing group with a larger scope (e.g., your favorite video game vs WP:WikiProject Video games), then please join that project, rather than starting yet another WikiProject." This makes no sense to me given that there seems to be no problem with WikiProject United States presidential elections being a sub-project of WikiProject United States. Can someone please explain? Thanks.Anythingyouwant (talk) 03:29, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

Anythingyouwant, while there is an informal recommendation to not create redundant WikiProjects, people certainly have done so anyway. This isn't inherently a bad thing; a more focused WikiProject can offer more specific guidance particular to that topic. The United States WikiProject for example covers an extremely large base of articles and is meant more as a central portal for "all things U.S." while a project focused on U.S. presidential elections can provide help on matters specific to the elections, for example the presentation of polling data or which primary candidates to include—questions that may be too specific for a generic U.S. project. Harej (talk) 15:00, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

Harej, assuming that it's a good idea to have a WikiProject for US presidential elections, even though that topic fits neatly within Wikiproject United States, I don't understand why there is a guideline asking not to do it.Anythingyouwant (talk) 15:10, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

Because creating a taskforce inside an existing WikiProject is in such cases a better idea? — Jeraphine Gryphon ^(talk) 15:57, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

Rather than a rule, think of it as a guideline for a recommended practice. Having a separate WikiProject really has more to do with building a separate community with its own talk page. (There are a number of tools that work with WikiProjects, but you can make use of the tools as if your, say, task force were a Wiki Project without actually having a separate WikiProject page.) So many WikiProjects have been started and not gotten off the ground, so unless you have a sizeable number of interested editors right off the bat with a lot of topics to discuss that would swamp the talk page of a parent project, it's probably better to just start your work within the scope of the parent project, where you can attract the attention of more editors and build a community of people interested in the topic in question. Then if it seems advantageous to separate discussion into a separate page, a new WikiProject can be spun out. isaacl (talk) 16:06, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

Can you think of a way to rephrase this sentence so that it no longer discourages people from ever doing what you say it's okay to do? "If your area fits neatly within an existing group with a larger scope (e.g., your favorite video game vs WP:WikiProject Video games), then please join that project, rather than starting yet another WikiProject." Thanks.Anythingyouwant (talk) 16:22, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

Can you tell me how this advice came to your attention and whom it's preventing from improving Wikipedia? WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:31, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

Sure. Above on this page (here), I mentioned that there was a deletion discussion for a new WikiProject: Hillary Rodham Clinton. During that discussion (which is now over), I pointed out that the proposed project fits neatly into WikiProject:United States Presidential Elections. So, I spent a lot of time arguing that the project was against the guideline that says "If your area fits neatly within an existing group with a larger scope (e.g., your favorite video game vs WP:WikiProject Video games), then please join that project, rather than starting yet another WikiProject." Ultimately, someone pointed out that a lot of WikiProjects violate this guideline, and they gave the example of WikiProject: United States Presidential Elections which exists despite the fact that it would fit neatly into WikiProject: United States. So, I switched my !vote to keep, after wasting a ton of my time (and other peoples' time) trying to comply with this guideline that does not even seem to be applicable a lot of the time. Anyway, if you people would be willing to clarify the guideline, I'm sure it would save other people lots of time in the future.Anythingyouwant (talk) 16:46, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

It's hard to do without discouraging new editors. Based on past experience, the appropriate guidance would be to try to find an existing community of users who are interested in the given topic area, start conversations within that community, and after a period of time, have a discussion to see if the interested editors would benefit from separating their discussions from the larger group. Unfortunately often new editors don't like to hear that they should wait before creating a new WikiProject. isaacl (talk) 18:33, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

It would be easy enough to add a few words to the guideline: "If your area fits neatly within an existing group with a larger scope (e.g., your favorite video game vs WP:WikiProject Video games), then please join that project, rather than starting yet another WikiProject, unless you are sure that there is sufficient interest, and even so you may want to first try setting up a task force within an existing WikiProject." If the guideline had said that, then I wouldn't have wasted a ton of time mistakenly opposing a new WikiProject.Anythingyouwant (talk) 19:49, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

As I think was mentioned in the deletion discussion thread, almost all potential WikiProjects have an encompassing parent scope covered by an existing WikiProject, so personally I'd just focus on the community aspect: Try joining an existing community first, and if it becomes unwieldy, consider the benefits of setting up a separate discussion page. isaacl (talk) 20:26, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

isaacl, you mean setting up a separate discussion page within the existing WikiProject, or in a new WikiProject?Anythingyouwant (talk) 20:32, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

Both are possible options that can be pursued; the interested parties would have to weigh the pros and cons of each. isaacl (talk) 02:20, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Okay, maybe this is what we're aiming for:

“ If your area fits neatly within an existing group with a larger scope (e.g., your favorite video game vs WP:WikiProject Video games), please consider joining that project rather than starting yet another WikiProject, and if that turns out not to work well then consider forming a separate discussion page or task force within that existing WikiProject before deciding to set up a new one. ”

Anythingyouwant (talk) 04:00, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

This is sounding WP:CREEPy.

I'd like to know more about why you opposed that particular WikiProject. If the guideline hadn't existed, would you still have thought that the new group was a bad idea? (There's no right or wrong answer to that question.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:15, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

I opposed it (for a long time before ultimately !voting to keep) because the guideline as it's presently written forbids any new WikiProject that fits within an existing one: "If your area fits neatly within an existing group with a larger scope (e.g., your favorite video game vs WP:WikiProject Video games), then please join that project, rather than starting yet another WikiProject." If this guideline hadn't existed, then I would have !voted a lot earlier to keep the new one. I basically had to ignore the guideline to !vote keep, per WP:IAR.Anythingyouwant (talk) 05:39, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

As I said, since the first portion of that statement is essentially redundant, I'd prefer focusing on what the community believes is the best approach, more along the lines of the proposal I made earlier. For example:

WikiProjects can only survive with sufficient participation, and having too many can spread interested editors too thin. If you have an idea for a new WikiProject, you should first participate in the existing active WikiProject whose scope includes your topic of interest. After a few months, the existing WikiProject's community can evaluate the pros and cons of creating a separate discussion area, task force, or WikiProject for the topic.

Note, though, that the ultimate decision always lies with the general community. If someone decides to skip this step and creates a vibrant WikiProject from scratch, failing to incubate the project within its parent first would not be a reason to support dissolving the new project. isaacl (talk) 08:51, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

That sounds fine to me, and it much better reflects and reinforces actual practice than the current provision of the guideline. If there are no substantial objections, I hope we can swap the current provision for the one isaacl has drafted. Thanks. The only tweak I'd suggest is perhaps to remove the first sentence for conciseness and because there may sometimes be other considerations in addition to whether editors are spread too thin. And instead of "should" it might be better to say "should probably" if we want to leave open the opportunity to skip that step. But even if those tweaks are not accepted, I would still support Isaac's language as a big improvement.Anythingyouwant (talk) 14:42, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

For me, the reasoning is more important than the process, which can be adapted to suit each specific circumstance. The key bit to understand is that there are costs in trying to create a new community that affect related communities, and so editors should seek the best approach overall (at the current time; in future things may change, and new decisions can be made). There are other contributing costs beyond dividing editors' time, but I think this is the easiest one for everyone to understand and won't offend. isaacl (talk) 16:32, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Okay, I think we are now here:

“ There are costs in having too many WikiProjects, such as spreading interested editors too thin. If you have an idea for a new WikiProject, you should probably first participate in the existing active WikiProject whose scope includes your topic of interest. After a few months, the existing WikiProject's community can evaluate the pros and cons of creating a separate discussion area, task force, or WikiProject for your topic. ”

For me, that works fine, and is not too long. This would replace the current inflexible language:

“ If your area fits neatly within an existing group with a larger scope (e.g., your favorite video game vs WP:WikiProject Video games), then please join that project, rather than starting yet another WikiProject. ”

Anythingyouwant (talk) 20:33, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

I'm not sure that the problem is widespread enough to warrant weakening the advice. (Our bigger problem is that WP:Nobody reads the directions, and even when they do, then they don't that that advice seriously enough.)

If I'd been asked for advice by one of the would-be founders, I would have strongly advised against creating a separate group to deal with such a narrow topic. In short, I would have cast a virtual !vote to delete (although once a project is formally launched, my usual approach is to let them die a natural death, because the cost of withering away is lower than the cost of discouraging an enthusiastic group).

But what I'd like you to do, in the future, is to remember that WP:IAR is an important protection against creeping bureaucracy and unintended consequences. You should never make any edit or take any action that you personally believe is suboptimal, and especially not solely on the grounds that some policy or guideline tells you what The Right Answer™ (on average) is (even if it's a not-so-average situation). It's better to take no action than to take an action that you believe is undesirable "because the rules say so". A guideline can stand up for itself at MFD. We need editors like you to stand up for everything else. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:09, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

A Wikipedia guideline or policy is a bit more that advice, despite WP:IAR. After all, !votes are often discounted when they fail to comply with policies/guidelines, and editors are often sanctioned by citing rules and guidelines against them. The guideline in question is not phrased as a mere suggestion, but as a clear request: don't make a new WikiProject if it fits into an old one. I'm just asking to rephrase it so people don't have to resort to WP:IAR all the time. It would be better to get rid of this specific guideline than let it continue to mislead people and gobble up tons of discussion time.Anythingyouwant (talk) 15:22, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

You're concentrating too much on the trees and missing the forest. Volunteer editors choose the topics they wish to work on, and with whom they wish to consult. WikiProjects are a framework to make it easier to find the interested communities for a given topic. The purpose of the guideline is to try to avoid the creation of WikiProjects with little activity right off the bat, particularly if it would result in siphoning off activity from a fledgling parent project. Naturally, I support my own words being used for this page, as I think it makes the reasoning apparent and so it helps with avoiding a mechanical "follow this procedure" approach. But I don't think it will have a significant impact on avoiding extended conversation during future WikiProject deletion discussions; I think the value will be in trying to get people to re-consider if a new WikiProject is necessary before they create one. isaacl (talk) 15:49, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

It will at least have that value. The present guideline is simply wrong, and any discussion of a wrong guideline is too much.Anythingyouwant (talk) 15:53, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

These things are like an air bubble under wallpaper: try to push it down in one spot, and it pops up in another. If someone tries to treat this guideline as a written-in-stone recipe to follow, then discussion will inevitably ensue, no matter how it's written. So while eliminating any extraneous discussion is, I believe, an elusive goal, maybe some editors can be headed off at the pass from spending time on creating a WikiProject destined to be inactive from the start. isaacl (talk) 15:24, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

Anythingyouwant, have you seen this particular problem elsewhere? It's usually not a good idea to re-write a guideline when exactly one editor has ever misunderstood it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:51, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

I don't agree that I misunderstood it. It said, "If your area fits neatly within an existing group with a larger scope...then please join that project, rather than starting yet another WikiProject." That is an unambiguous request to not start new WikiProjects that fall within old ones.Anythingyouwant (talk) 08:47, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

I believe that most people interpret please as not being a synonym of must. You are still one (1) editor. have you ever seen this particular problem involving any editor except yourself? WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:14, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

I think it's generally understood at Wikipedia that when a policy or guideline says "please don't do X" it's just a polite way of saying "don't do X". For example, see Wikipedia:Please_do_not_bite_the_newcomers. As to whether others besides myself have viewed this WikiProject guideline similarly to the way I have, sure. WP:WikiProject Cricket exists, and so objections were raised as to WP:WikiProject Bangladesh_Premier_League and WP:WikiProject Indian_Premier_League, as discussed here. If I had been contemplating a new WikiProject that's a subset of an existing one, I wouldn't have even bothered discussing it after seeing this WikiProject guideline, because it really doesn't leave much room for discussion.Anythingyouwant (talk) 19:40, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

I suspect most people understand the guideline to mean that if the topic of your proposed WikiProject is manageable enough in scope that any related discussions and tasks can easily be accommodated by the talk page and other pages of the parent project, then it's not worthwhile to create a separate WikiProject. I believe editors appreciate that the circumstances of the specific topic in question have to be considered, and more than just a simple arithmetic set operation (A is a subset of B, so all discussion of A must be contained to the WikiProject of B) should be done.

I apologize for not having read the surrounding context of the instruction you sought to change prior to now. I don't think my proposed wording integrates well into the context. If there is consensus for adopting this type of change, then I can make some additional copy edits so the overall text is more cohesive. isaacl (talk) 20:57, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

Accordingly, I have reverted my edit to the guideline, and simply changed "then please join that project" to "then please consider joining that project".Anythingyouwant (talk) 21:57, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

Your collegiality is appreciated! I have made an edit to the guidance on starting a discussion on the prospective parent project's talk page to emphasize the desire to determine what works best for all interested groups. If anyone has feedback, please let me know. isaacl (talk) 23:08, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

Looks okay to me, thanks.Anythingyouwant (talk) 23:10, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

New automated WikiProject directory

Hello everyone! I have been working on a new WikiProject directory that (a) automatically updates itself via bot; (b) provides information on who is participating on projects and in those projects' subject area with opt-out for individuals; (c) lists related WikiProjects based on the number of pages in common. The draft directory is located here. Note that during this demonstration phase, only 500 WikiProjects are included in the index, out of the 2,600+ in existence, so the listings may look sparse in some places. Please review the draft and let me know what you think. Thanks, Harej (talk) 02:34, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

@Harej: This is great. Is the plan to supercede this page? It seems like the main elements here that aren't built into the new system are: information about task forces and the various columns for assessment, portals, peer review, collaboration, and notes. --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 14:44, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Ryan, I would like for it to replace the Council-maintained directory, which is often out of date. The new directory does in fact have information about task forces; they often don't show up in the topical sub-directories because they don't have the proper categories. (I am also thinking of a better way to present them in the directory in general.) As for the columns for assessment, portals, peer review, collaboration, and notes—are those needed? I don't see a reason to present all that information in what should be an overview of the WikiProjects. If people want to find out more about that project, they can visit the project. Harej (talk) 14:55, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

@Harej: Having a notes/description area might be good, at the risk of introducing something that could be outdated into what is otherwise a slicker system. Such a column could potentially take the place of all of the other columns should those aspects of the WikiProject be significant enough to mention. But generally speaking, no, I don't think any of those columns are necessary personally -- I just haven't been sufficiently involved in the organizational/administrative aspects of WikiProjects to do anything other than assume there is, or at least has been at some point, a consensus to list all of them. --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 15:03, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

I love the "membership" counts.

I think that it might be useful to the WP:1.0 team to list participation in article assessments. It should be possible to identify that from the banner/categories alone, or to link to the stats pages that the 1.0 team's bot updates (e.g., User:WP 1.0 bot/Tables/Project/Medicine). If the bot hasn't needed to update the assessment stats in a while, then perhaps that would indicate that the group "participated in" rather than "is participating in" assessment. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:46, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

WhatamIdoing, participation in assessment is currently implied by the existence of articles-in-scope and active-subject-area-editor metrics. Projects that don't participate in assessment just have the middle column on WikiProject activity. Harej (talk) 02:51, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

It shouldn't be. "Participating in assessment" means that someone in your group assigns quality and priority ratings. Just editing articles is not the same thing. Banner tags can be placed without assessing anything. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:10, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Excellent page! It's a great improvement over the original. Certainly having it automatically maintained is vital. I also like the 'last updated' indicator which gives greater confidence that the page is reliable. It could be useful for the 'articles in project scope' statistic to wikilinks over to a list of those articles. Will the data be archived at regular intervals? It could be nice to see how projects grow and contract over the years. Either way, very well done. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 04:00, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo): The data will be archived insofar as the old versions of the pages will always be available in the edit history. I am also interested in creating a more structured, accessible archive of this data; that will be a future project. Harej (talk) 15:03, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

And one that could be mined for dead projects. Zero participants for a year could mean that it's time for MFD or merging.

May I suggest three edits to the project page during 90 days (or two edits that are more than an hour or two apart)? One note plus one typo correction = two edits, but isn't really an active participant. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:46, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

WhatamIdoing, the current rationale is that one edit is a passer-by leaving a note, while two edits is someone following up or engaged in conversation. That aside, it's still fairly arbitrary, and intentionally meant to include a large number of people (since WikiProjects don't always warrant more than occasional participation). Do you think increasing the count from two to three, or perhaps two non-minor edits, would make the data more useful? Harej (talk) 02:51, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Harej, I like your idea of two non-minor edits. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:26, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

How much does the accuracy of the directory suffer due to WikiProjects that are poorly categorized? Some WikiProjects(' categories) are only categorized inside other WikiProjects (like Category:WikiProject Cryptozoology was only categorized in Category:WikiProject Paranormal and Category:WikiProject Tree of Life -- I recently added it to Category:Science WikiProjects so that it would be properly categorized somewhere, although the relevance to science is a bit questionable in that case... do we need additional WikiProject sorting categories?) — Jeraphine Gryphon ^(talk) 16:03, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

Jeraphine Gryphon, the lackluster state of WikiProject categorization is a problem but it's getting better. I have a script that generates a report listing uncategorized WikiProjects, which helps toward sorting projects into the right buckets. There is also more I need to do to infer categorization from membership in other categories, like that Cryptozoology example you brought up. But now that there is a practical reason to keep the WikiProject categories in good order, I think that will serve as an incentive to properly categorize WikiProjects. And we will most certainly need more categories. Harej (talk) 02:51, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for this innovation. I have two requests. Please hyphenate values and units used as compound modifiers (for example, "90-day" in "90-day span"), according to MOS:HYPHEN, sub-subsection 3, point 8. Please add a column for popular pages (many of which are listed at WP:POPT and CAT:POP).

—Wavelength (talk) 00:02, 17 June 2015 (UTC) and 00:38, 17 June 2015 (UTC) and 05:48, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 4

Newsletter • May/June 2015

Hello friends! We have been hard at work these past two months. For this report:

The directory is live!

For the first time, we are happy to bring you an exhaustive, comprehensive WikiProject Directory. This directory endeavors to list every single WikiProject on the English Wikipedia, including those that don't participate in article assessment. In constructing the broadest possible definition, we have come up with a list of approximately 2,600 WikiProjects. The directory tracks activity statistics on the WikiProject's pages, and, for where it's available, statistics on the number of articles tracked by the WikiProject and the number of editors active on those articles. Complementing the directory are description pages for each project, listing usernames of people active on the WikiProject pages and the articles in the WikiProject's scope. This will help Wikipedians interested in a subject find each other, whether to seek feedback on an article or to revive an old project. (There is an opt-out option.) We have also come up with listings of related WikiProjects, listing the ten most relevant WikiProjects based on what articles they have in common. We would like to promote WikiProjects as interconnected systems, rather than isolated silos.

A tremendous amount of work went into preparing this directory. WikiProjects do not consistently categorize their pages, meaning we had to develop our own index to match WikiProjects with the articles in their scope. We also had to make some adjustments to how WikiProjects were categorized; indeed, I personally have racked up a few hundred edits re-categorizing WikiProjects. There remains more work to be done to make the WikiProject directory truly useful. In the meantime, take a look and feel free to leave feedback at the WikiProject X talk page.

Stuff in the works!

What have we been working on?

• A new design template—This has been in the works for a while, of course. But our goal is to design something that is useful and cleanly presented on all browsers and at all screen resolutions while working within the confines of what MediaWiki has to offer. Additionally, we are working on designs for the sub-components featured on the main project page.
• A new WikiProject talk page banner in Lua—Work has begun on implementing the WikiProject banner in Lua. The goal is to create a banner template that can be usable by any WikiProject in lieu of having its own template. Work has slowed down for now to focus on higher priority items, but we are interested in your thoughts on how we could go about creating a more useful project banner. We have a draft module on Test Wikipedia, with a demonstration.
• New discussion reports—We have over 4.8 million articles on the English Wikipedia, and almost as many talk pages as well. But what happens when someone posts on a talk page? What if no one is watching that talk page? We are currently testing out a system for an automatically-updating new discussions list, like RFC for WikiProjects. We currently have five test pages up for the WikiProjects on cannabis, cognitive science, evolutionary biology, and Ghana.
• SuggestBot for WikiProjects—We have asked the maintainer of SuggestBot to make some minor adjustments to SuggestBot that will allow it to post regular reports to those WikiProjects that ask for them. Stay tuned!
• Semi-automated article assessment—Using the new revision scoring service and another system currently under development, WikiProjects will be getting a new tool to facilitate the article assessment process by providing article quality/importance predictions for articles yet to be assessed. Aside from helping WikiProjects get through their backlogs, the goal is to help WikiProjects with collecting metrics and triaging their work. Semi-automation of this process will help achieve consistent results and keep the process running smoothly, as automation does on other parts of Wikipedia.

Want us to work on any other tools? Interested in volunteering? Leave a note on our talk page.

The WikiProject watchers report is back!

The database report which lists WikiProjects according to the number of watchers (i.e., people that have the project on their watchlist), is back! The report stopped being updated a year ago, following the deactivation of the Toolserver, but a replacement report has been generated.

Until next time, Harej (talk) 22:20, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

Copyright Violation Detection - EranBot Project

A new copy-paste detection bot is now in general use on English Wikipedia. Come check it out at the EranBot reporting page. This bot utilizes the Turnitin software (ithenticate), unlike User:CorenSearchBot that relies on a web search API from Yahoo. It checks individual edits rather than just new articles. Please take 15 seconds to visit the EranBot reporting page and check a few of the flagged concerns. Comments welcome regarding potential improvements. These likely copyright violations can be searched by WikiProject categories. Use "control-f" to jump to your area of interest.--Lucas559 (talk) 22:42, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

questions regarding project banner add

Hello,

I am a participant in WikiProject Organized Labour. Currently I am working on taking Americans for Prosperity to GA. Americans for Prosperity is included in Category:Labor relations in the United States. I added our project banner to Americans for Prosperity in March 2015. The article is bannered for WikiProject Conservatism, and the article content reflects that, but the subject has diverse stakeholders including Organized Labour and Environment/Climate Change.

I was reverted in June. I sought feedback from my fellow project members at our project talk page, at which time I discovered that the reverting editor had nominated the article for exclusion, please see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Organized Labour#Americans for Prosperity. I nominated the article for inclusion, briefly summarizing the evidence for inclusion. A fellow project participant concurred for inclusion, as did a third editor, not a project participant. Subsequent to an explanation of WP:PROJSCOPE from another editor at article talk, please see Talk:Americans for Prosperity#Article Wikiprojects and rating.3F, and subsequent to a consensus for inclusion at project talk, in which both threads the reverting editor participated, the reverting editor reverted the project add five more times.

I filed with WP:EWN, please see Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Edit_warring#User:Onel5969_reported_by_User:HughD_.28Result:_Page_restriction_applied.29. I did not ask for a block, I was just hoping I could get someone to explain WP:PROJSCOPE and ask the reverting editor to please stop. The EWN report resulted in page edit restrictions, but no action regarding the reversion of the project banner, which was deemed out-of-scope and referred to WP:ANI.

I re-filed at WP:ANI, please see Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Onel5969_repeated_removal_of_WikiProject_talk_page_banner. An admin at ANI told me I failed to invite article talk participants to project talk and told me to do an RfC at project talk.

Questions

1. An RfC is our mechanism for assessing community-wide consensus on a issue. A thread on project talk is our mechanism for assessing project-wide consensus. My humble read of WP:PROJSCOPE is that it is in effect us saying to each other, look, guys, adding a project banner to an article is way too trivial to edit war about, and it is way too trivial to RfC. WP:PROJSCOPE does specify a project's consensus mechanism but neither does it require an RfC. Is it appropriate to require an RfC for a project banner ad? Is this common? I could not find any such RfCs in the central archive. Might asking a project participant to RfC to add a project banner to an article conflict with the principle that scope is at the discretion of project participants? Does requiring an RfC for a project banner add imply that it is community, not project, purview?

2. What is the appropriate forum for reporting repeated reversion of a project banner add?

Sorry if this is a FAQ. Thank you for your time and attention and advice. Hugh (talk) 21:03, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

With WP:PROJSCOPE, if the project decides it wants to include any particular article in its scope, then that is that. If an editor keeps reverting, and they have been served this guideline repeatedly already, then the first course of action is to tag the user's talk page with a "disruptive editing" tag. Hopefully, if the editor gets enough of those, they will be blocked by an admin. You shouldn't have to do a special RfC because the guideline is crystal clear on this. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 22:26, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

Hugh, Stevie is right here. I would leave a message on their talk pages, telling them what WP:PROJSCOPE says. WikiProject Organized Labour has as much right to tag the AFP article as WikiProject Conservatism has to tag Eugene V. Debs. Harej (talk) 22:32, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

On further review of the situation, despite accusations of canvassing being made, I think the basic issue is whether the project did "decide" to include the subject article. Of the people involved in the related discussion on the project's talk page, only one was a long-term/significant member. I would say the decision rests with that individual at this point. If the decision is 'yes', then push forward with what I said before here. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 11:10, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

Husqvarna Group - wrong logo on the page

Hi, The logo on the page https://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Husqvarna_Group is unfortunately old (used between 1973 and 2012). Would it be possible for someone to change? I have added the correct logo in the logopedia, and of course I cans end it to you directly.

Best regards,

Cathrine Stjärnekull Corporate Communications, Husqvarna Group — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.126.81.100 (talk) 11:02, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

What makes a healthy online community?

People who hang out here may have some developed opinions on what constitutes a healthy online community. Please consider sharing your thoughts at m:Grants:Evaluation/Community Health learning campaign. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:16, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

Proposed name + scope change of Percy Jackson Task-force (under Novels WikiProject)

Hi, I'm looking to revive an inactive task-force, the Percy Jackson Task-force, and one of the ways I thought to do this was to change its scope and possibly rename/move it. I'm trying to get the project to include all the articles pertaining to Rick Riordan, the author of the book series it's currently focused on. The change-of-scope seems simple enough and perfectly "canon" (for lack of a better word), but I'm unsure about trying to change the name. I feel it would help attract more interested editors and eliminate some confusion about the project's "jurisdiction", but it also seems complex, and I can't find any examples of task-forces which have successfully done this. Any advice or other help would be greatly appreciated, either here or on my Talk page. 2ReinreB2 (talk) 03:20, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

WP:Be bold. Usually inactive projects you can just take over and use it as you want. --Izno (talk) 03:46, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

2ReinreB2, you might want to see WP:REVIVE. As a practical matter, merging it into a much larger group is likely to be more successful. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:18, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

Gadget for doing WikiProject assessments

I've created a user script to provide a nice user interface for adding WikiProject assessments to article talk pages and have proposed it as a gadget. To try it out, add ...

mw.loader.load( '//wiki.riteme.site/w/index.php?title=User:Kaldari/assessmentHelper.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript' );

... to your common.js. If you have any feedback or want to support it being added as a gadget, please comment at the Wikipedia:Gadget/proposals discussion. Thanks! Kaldari (talk) 18:54, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

Kaldari, my guy. That would go great with my new assessment-related reports. See User:Reports bot/WikiProject Ghana/Assessment/Assess for quality for articles not yet assessed on quality, and User:Reports bot/WikiProject Ghana/Assessment/Not tagged for articles/categories not tagged by the WikiProject but are potentially in scope. (A third report for assessing importance is in the works). Harej (talk) 18:59, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

I noticed your reports. Very nice work! Kaldari (talk) 19:58, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

User:Kaldari, how does yours differ from Kephir's? (User:Kephir/gadgets/rater.js) WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:12, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing: Kephir's gadget is only for editing existing assessments. My gadget is for adding new assessments. Maybe we should combine them into one mega-gadget. Kaldari (talk) 20:14, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

Kephir's can add them, too. I'm having some problems with it, because pages never seem to finish loading (in Firefox) when I've got it installed, but it does both. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:47, 30 July 2015 (UTC)

Looks like you're right. I wonder why he's never proposed it as a gadget. Kaldari (talk) 22:57, 30 July 2015 (UTC)

Banners of inactive projects

FYI, several WikiProject Banners have come up for deletion because the projects that use them are marked as inactive. See WP:TFD for the discussions. -- 67.70.32.190 (talk) 03:55, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for posting, @67.70.32.190. I was trying to see which WikiProjects were up for deletion (I am vehemently opposed to deletions of WikiProjects, whether active or "inactive"), but it is really hard to figure out what the "discussions" at Templates for Discussion are all about. Ottawahitech (talk) 08:43, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

FFA

If a WikiProject is marked FFA, can I then make it class=A?--DThomsen8 (talk) 13:45, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

You can only mark an article as class=A for a WikiProject if (a) the WikiProject has defined a process for assessing A-class, usually requiring the agreement of two or more editors and (b) the result of the WikiProject's assessment process is that the article qualifies for A-class. If the article is supported by multiple projects, then each project must separately evaluate A-class. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:14, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

@ WhatamIdoing, I don't know much about class=A ratings in WikiProjects, however in my experience most class=X are mass-determined by a few editors who make decisions for a large number of WikiProjects. I believe WikiProject Medicine is one of the few exceptions.Ottawahitech (talk) 08:51, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

Categorizing WikiProjects and their categories

WikiProjects are often sorted into categories of the variety "[Something] WikiProjects". WikiProjects also frequently have their own categories; for example, Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography has a corresponding Category:WikiProject Biography. I tend to refer to the former categories as "meta-categories" and the latter as "self-named categories". I have found that categorization of WikiProjects into appropriate meta-categories is inconsistent. Some projects have meta-categories on both the project page and the self-named categories; others have them just on the self-named categories, and some projects have different categories between the project pages and the self-named categories. It varies from project to project, and I apologize for contributing to this inconsistency.

I propose that for the WikiProjects that have their own categories, that meta-categories are only sorted into the category and not the project page itself. For example, Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography, currently sorted under Category:WikiProject Biography and Category:Society WikiProjects, would only be sorted under Category:WikiProject Biography, and that category would be sorted under Category:Society WikiProjects. It makes the (much-needed) categorization effort easier, since categories will only need to be assigned in one place. I am volunteering to write a bot to enforce this.

I open this up for discussion. Harej (talk) 03:19, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

• I'm a bit dubious about this plan. The outcome might be desirable in some respects, but the process of getting there could cause confusion and stress. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:10, 6 June 2015 (UTC)
  • Confusion and stress are a natural part of the life of a Wikipedian. :v — Jeraphine Gryphon ^(talk) 15:52, 6 June 2015 (UTC)
    • If it would mitigate the confusion, each edit done as part of the category migration could have a link in the edit summary that explains what is happening. Harej (talk) 18:25, 7 June 2015 (UTC)
• I see no problem with this. — Jeraphine Gryphon ^(talk) 15:52, 6 June 2015 (UTC)
• This is logical. It's a good idea. --Rosiestep (talk) 16:01, 7 June 2015 (UTC)
• It's been 30 days. Shall I go ahead with writing the bot? Harej (talk) 18:37, 5 July 2015 (UTC)

I think this is a good idea (although some people argue that it's not worth time doing any category maintenance, since categories are rarely helpful). A few months ago, I cleaned up the WikiProject category structure a bit, but a bot would be nice. Generally, I think the WikiProject category structure should follow these rules:

1. Most WikiProjects should have an eponymous category ("self-named")
2. All pages of a WikiProject, including the main page, should only be categorized in this eponymous category
   • The main page of a WikiProject should have the sort key of " " (blank) in its eponymous category
3. The WikiProject's eponymous category should be categorized in a "meta-category" (ie "[Something] WikiProjects")
   • If the WikiProject does not have its own eponymous category, then the main project page should be categorized in a "meta-category"
   • If the WikiProject's name is the same as the name of the "Something" in "[Something] WikiProjects", then the WikiProject eponymous category should have the sort key of "*" in the "[Something] WikiProjects" category
4. Eponymous WikiProject categories should generally not be categorized within a different WikiProject's eponymous category
5. "Meta-categories" should be categorized within other "meta-categories" in the Category:WikiProjects by area hierarchy, with a sort key beginning with a " ", followed by the category's name

Using this logic, there won't be any circular categorization, which has been a problem in the past. Also, it should make category navigation easier, as you don't have to look in any WikiProject's categories to find other projects that would otherwise be difficult to find. All projects are strictly categorized according to type. --Scott Alter (talk) 07:34, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

Sounds great to me. Someone should have a look over the meta-categories we have now, to me it looks like the current main categories are not very helpful. I can't really tell the difference between "Society", "Culture", and "Humanities" categories. I'd vote for getting rid of the Humanities category and turning the "History WikiProjects" category into one of the main meta-categories. Other "humanities" can probably fit in the existent ones. (Also history isn't all about humans.) — Jeraphine Gryphon ^(talk) 09:13, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

I really like your idea, Scottalter. It covers all the bases. (To cover your specific point on category maintenance not being worth it, WikiProject categorization is being used to generate the WikiProject Directory, so having a good category system is now necessary.) Jeraphine Gryphon, I have more on the overall category structure below. Harej (talk) 22:07, 11 July 2015 (UTC)

Bot request for approval is here: Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Harej bot. Harej (talk) 22:56, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

• Sorry, I am late to the party.I wonder if Liz has any thoughts about this? Ottawahitech (talk) 09:05, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

Overall category structure

I'm more than open to the idea of changing the top-level categorization system. As Jeraphine pointed out, "Culture" and "Society" seem like such interchangeable categories (indeed, a lot of projects are sorted as both), and "Humanities" is fairly duplicative. The Council-maintained directory has:

• Culture and the Arts
• Geographical
• History and Society
• Science, Technology, and Engineering

as top-level categories. Compare to the current category system of:

• Culture
• Humanities
• Regional
• Science
• Society
• Technology

I think the former is a clearer grouping. What does everyone else think? Harej (talk) 22:07, 11 July 2015 (UTC)

Looking over this, I would rename "Geographical" to "Regional" and make it exclusively a category for projects of regional character (countries, continents, national subdivisions, cities, etc.). The elements of geography that include earth sciences would be put into an Earth Sciences category that would be sorted under Science, Technology, and Engineering. Harej (talk) 21:19, 12 July 2015 (UTC)

I have gone ahead with the change as originally proposed. Harej (talk) 22:56, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

Redirect Wikiproject tags

I have added Wikiproject tags to the talk page of a redirect. The tag shows:

??? This redirect does not require a rating on the project's quality scale.

Is there a way to get rid of the  ???

Thanks in advance, Ottawahitech (talk) 08:07, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

Template:WikiProject_Medicine#Special pages "This project does not normally tag the talk pages of redirect pages.". More than a little spooked to be looking at your contributions to find out which template you were talking about and have a Thanks from you appear at the same time :-) Bazj (talk) 10:00, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

Picking apart Talk:1421: The Year China Discovered the World (an example picked at random from the 34 NA redirects listed at Wikipedia:WikiProject History/Assessment), it uses "importance=NA" to get around the ??? issue. Bazj (talk) 10:09, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

Tortle's new WikiProject

I'd like to notify everyone here of this new WikiProject Wikipedia that Tortle has created. Eman235/talk 21:28, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

See https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Wikipedia at the Wayback Machine.

—Wavelength (talk) 21:49, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

According to this version of May 30, 2015, Wikipedia:WikiProject Wikipedia is "a collaboration area and group of editors dedicated to improving Wikipedia's coverage of itself".

—Wavelength (talk) 22:00, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

Tortle renamed an existing WikiProject without discussion and reused its name. I have posted this and other concerns at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Wikipedia/Members#Project creation. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:04, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

I noticed this change as well and was concerned the move was not discussed beforehand. I assume some reverts are in order? ---Another Believer _(Talk) 00:08, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

The original WikiProject Wikipedia has been renamed WikiProject Improving Wikipedia. I would suggest that the original WikiProject be moved back to the original title, and the new project moved to something like "WikiProject Meta Wikipedia". Eman235/talk 03:37, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

I have moved the original WikiProject Wikipedia page back to its location before it experienced several moves. The new version of the WikiProject Wikipedia was proposed for deletion but can be recreated under a different name that has achieved some consensus here. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 16:00, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

I like the concept for the project, though I agree it should have been created under a name that wasn't already taken. If Tortle is still interested, perhaps the project could be restored as a WikiProject dedicated to internal workflows? Harej (talk) 16:08, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

That sounds like a good idea, Harej. I just wish he had brought his idea here first and I'm reverting moves on dozens of pages. It's a lot of cleanup work that could have been avoided if he had just proposed his idea here. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 17:52, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

Tortle's new WikiProject may be a good idea, but isn't it redundant to the existing WP:Help Project? sovereign°sentinel (contribs) 01:46, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

If my memory serves me correctly, I believe Tortle mentioned somewhere that the new WikiProject would focus on all pages in the Wikipedia namespace. CabbagePotato (talk) 02:43, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

• I've cut/pasted the content to his userspace at User:Tortle/Sandbox 2, User:Tortle/Sandbox 3, User:Tortle/Sandbox 4, User:Tortle/Sandbox 5. User:Tortle has expressed interest in having someone help navigate him through the process and I've strongly encouraged him to have a mentor throughout the entire process. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 07:26, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Thank you Tokyogirl79. I will probably continue the project under a new name at a later date and will gain more experience by then and/or get some help. Thanks Tortle (talk) 07:30, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Before starting a new project remember that the pages in Wikipedia namespace have projects for each type of page already see WP:Essays#Types of essays..... Wikipedia:WikiProject Policy and Guidelines covers policies, Wikipedia:WikiProject Essays covers essays in the Wikinamespace and Wikipedia:WikiProject Help covers how to, information, and supplemental pages. --Moxy (talk) 14:40, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Re-organization of WikiProject Women

Main page: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Women § Complete reorganization proposal

There currently is a discussion about the future organization of Wikipedia:WikiProject Women and several other women-related Wikiprojects and taskforces at the above link. Some aspects may be of interests to editors of this project and your participation in the discussion would be appreciated. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 12:40, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

initial notw

this looks like a great idea. feel free to keep me informed if you want. thanks! --Sm8900 (talk) 15:18, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

Huh? Are you posting on the right page?  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  22:49, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

Looking for a Pet WikiProject

Surely there is a wp:WikiProject here for Pet related articles? What is the best way to find projects on a specific topic? Thanks in advance, Ottawahitech (talk) 13:19, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Directory (by User:Harej) includes Wikipedia:WikiProject Cats and Wikipedia:WikiProject Dogs and Wikipedia:WikiProject Birds and Wikipedia:WikiProject Aquarium Fishes and Wikipedia:WikiProject Animals.

—Wavelength (talk) 16:11, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

There's also WP:EQUINE for horses and ponies (with a breeds taskforce), and there's a pigeons taskforce of WP:BIRDS in particular (that project is mostly about wild birds otherwise). For more farm-oriented livestock material, see WP:Agriculture, which has a livestock taskforce. For gerbils and such, there's WP:RODENTS, though there isn't a specific workgroup of it relating to rodents as pets, that I know of.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  22:55, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

Clarifying the "Advice pages" section

I've WP:BOLDly worked on Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Guide#Advice pages a bit. It seemed kind of diffusely critical, instead of providing more specific advice on what makes a great advice page, and how to avoid conflicts with both site-wide standards and other projects. It also gave an out-of-place example of an embedded advice section in a main wikiproject page without mentioning that WikiProject advice can be a separate page or not, so I explained and illustrated that it can be both. There were also a couple of redundantly worded bits that I tweaked. I don't believe I changed any sort of "do"/"don't" about project pages, just provided a more useful explication of what WikiProject advice material is and how it's useful.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  14:46, 6 August 2015 (UTC)

I have removed this: The most common source of conflict between WikiProject advice and site-wide norms is an attempt to "import" field-specific naming conventions, styles, or sourcing standards that are not Wikipedia's own, general-audience standards. on the grounds that it's not true. The most common source of conflict is trying to impose the members' Wikipedia-specific personal preferences on articles that they choose to support, e.g., demanding or refusing infoboxes. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:36, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

I don't see how those two items are not inclusive of the other. --Izno (talk) 19:03, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

There are no "field-specific styles" that say whether or not an infobox ought to be included. This refers to things like whether that bird is a "Bald Eagle" or a "bald eagle" and whether you should cite primary sources (beloved of academics) or secondary sources (Wikipedia's preferences). WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:58, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

These are still points of style to me given how the vast majority of those editors who fight over infoboxes or preferred sources treat style. Improvement of the sentence rather than removal seems to be correct to me rather than nitpicking over the examples. --Izno (talk) 22:24, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

Yes, they are points of style. But it is absolutely impossible to "import" a Wikipedia-only style from outside (=the point of the sentence). So yes: people fight over infoboxes, but no: They do not fight over infoboxes by saying that All True™ Historians use Chicago Manual of Style, and that CMoS demands the inclusion of infoboxes, and that Wikipedia must comply with the True Style for History-related Papers in the Real World.

Removal is IMO the correct response because the actual problems are already addressed, in this statement: "However, in a few cases, projects have wrongly used these pages as a means of asserting ownership over articles within their scope, such as insisting that all articles that interest the project must contain a criticism section or must not contain an infobox, or that a specific type of article can't be linked in navigation templates, and that other editors of the article get no say in this because of a "consensus" within the project". All this sentence does is add a factual error (the unverifiable claim that fights over real-world vs on-wiki styles are a bigger problem than fights over alternate Wikipedia-only styles) and delay the reader's attention on the main point of the section (which is the statement about WikiProjects not being permitted to demand or to refuse infoboxes). WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:03, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

Brazil Assessment Table class=Future Request

How do I get class=Future added to WikiProject Brazil? Articles for the 2015 Olympics include Talk:Cycling at the 2016 Summer Olympics – Men's cross-country and others.--DThomsen8 (talk) 19:23, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

Given WP:NOT#CRYSTAL, why?  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  22:49, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

DThomsen8, I believe that you would edit Template:WikiProject Brazil/class according to the directions given at Template:Class mask/doc. If you need help (or want a sanity check on a sandboxed version), then User:WOSlinker or User:MSGJ are probably your best contacts. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:07, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 5

Newsletter • October 2015

Hello there! Happy to be writing this newsletter once more. This month:

We did it!

In July, we launched five pilot WikiProjects: WikiProjects Cannabis, Evolutionary Biology, Ghana, Hampshire, and Women's Health. We also use the new design, named "WPX UI," on WikiProject Women in Technology, Women in Red, WikiProject Occupational Safety and Health. We are currently looking for projects for the next round of testing. If you are interested, please sign up on the Pilots page.

Shortly after our launch we presented at Wikimania 2015. Our slides are on Wikimedia Commons.

Then after all that work, we went through the process of figuring out whether we accomplished our goal. We reached out to participants on the redesigned WikiProjects, and we asked them to complete a survey. (If you filled out your survey—thank you!) While there are still some issues with the WikiProject tools and the new design, there appears to be general satisfaction (at least among those who responded). The results of the survey and more are documented in our grant report filed with the Wikimedia Foundation.

The work continues!

There is more work that needs to be done, so we have applied for a renewal of our grant. Comments on the proposal are welcome. We would like to improve what we have already started on the English Wikipedia and to also expand to Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata. Why those? Because they are multilingual projects and because there needs to be better coordination across Wikimedia projects. More details are available in the renewal proposal.

How can the Wikimedia Foundation support WikiProjects?

The Wikimedia Developer Summit will be held in San Francisco in January 2016. The recently established Community Tech team at the Wikimedia Foundation is interested in investigating what technical support they can provide for WikiProjects, i.e., support beyond just templates and bots. I have plenty of opinions myself, but I want to hear what you think. The session is being planned on Phabricator, the Wikimedia bug tracker. If you are not familiar with Phabricator, you can log in with your Wikipedia username and password through the "Login or Register: MediaWiki" button on the login page. Your feedback can help make editing Wikipedia a better experience.

Until next time,

Harej (talk) 09:03, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

Unassessed articles by quality and importance

I notice this earlier but there is a distinct Category:Unassessed-Class articles and Category:Unassessed articles (one redirects to the other at the moment). Most WikiProject have just Unassessed X articles but projects that do separate quality and importance subcategories have to have a separate Unassessed-Class articles I think. I presume it's a default from Template:Class or whichever template is doing that but I wanted to see if there's interest in renaming things like Category:Unassessed-Class India articles of High-importance to Category:Unassessed India articles of High-importance to match Category:Unassessed India articles where all unassessed articles are (therefore the child subcategory and the category are alined). -- Ricky81682 (talk) 06:24, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

Important WP:TAFI discussions

Important discussions regarding the TAFI Wikiproject are happening atm. Please weigh in at discussions like: Should TAFI return to the main page?.--Coin945 (talk) 18:43, 27 October 2015 (UTC)