Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Film/Coordinators/Archive 5

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Election results

The election has now been completed and the new (and returning) coordinators are: Collectonian, Erik, Girolamo Savonarola, Lugnuts, Nehrams2020, PC78, and Sephiroth BCR. Congratulations to returning members and welcome Collectonian and Lugnuts! As a result of Erik receiving the most votes, I have not placed Girolamo Savonarola as the lead coordinator on the main page just yet, in case Erik desires to hold that position. I'm assuming the same thing will occur as last year, but will allow that to be sorted before overstepping my bounds. I look forward to working with everyone again for the betterment of the project. Keep up the good work and happy editing! --Nehrams2020 (talk) 01:04, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

Third time is a charm, I suppose. I will assume the role of lead coordinator this time. Regardless, I anticipate for all coordinators to be involved in discussions on improving WikiProject Films and to be willing to bring new ideas to the table. We definitely have a fine gathering this time around! —Erik (talk • contrib) 05:31, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for the welcome! I look forward to participating and working with all of you! :) -- AnmaFinotera (talk · contribs) 05:35, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

Congrats to all, and look forward to working with you each in the coming six months. Additional congrats to Erik - you more than deserve the position, and I truthfully had been hoping to be succeeded by someone of your clear capabilities. I will be back home and with more internet access late this coming week and am eager to join in discussions then. :) Girolamo Savonarola (talk) 06:59, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

Well, welcome back to our returning coordinators, congrats to Collectonian and Lugnuts, and best of luck to Erik for assuming our lead coordinator spot. I look forward to future discussions on this page. Cheers, — sephiroth bcr ^(converse) 08:07, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

Congrats and welcome to all! :) May I point out that this election has seen our biggest turnout so far? A few quick statistics for you:

Election #	Total # of candidates	Total # of votes cast
1	3	11
2	5	58
3	8	73
4	9	108

Onwards and upwards! :) PC78 (talk) 11:19, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

That's fantastic to see, PC78! I'm glad to see the elections gaining more prominence. I look forward to working with everyone to keep WikiProject Films strong! Thoughts are running through my head currently about our WikiProject's mission. I will share my preliminary thoughts in the next 48 hours on what we can do this time around as coordinators, and I hope that others will bring their ideas to the table, too. Again, congratulations, everyone! —Erik (talk • contrib) 20:31, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

I look forward to seeing those. However, since we're fresh off the elections, may I propose that we adopt nomination rules to create some sort of minimum edit/account age requirement so as to prevent further new editors from distracting from the process? Girolamo Savonarola (talk) 07:22, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

I was going to suggest that. Perhaps something like 200 edits and/or 3 months with the project? --Nehrams2020 (talk) 07:42, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Eh, I would make it more stringent. Maybe 750-1000 edits along with the 3+ months. We have to set some sort of realistic limit. — sephiroth bcr ^(converse) 07:45, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

I was suggesting those figures (saw them as the requirements for voting in the Wikimedia Commons picture of the year contest) but for this position, you're right, something more significant would be better. --Nehrams2020 (talk) 07:48, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

I'd also suggest that the edits be deadlined to the time of the election's announcement, so as to prevent potential edit-count-stacking. Girolamo Savonarola (talk) 16:55, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm in favor of all this, although we should accept editors who have edited before on previous accounts but do not have sufficient edit counts on their new ones. (Of course, previous accounts should be in good standing.) Overall, let's not treat this as too major of an issue since nothing has actually happened. I think we're capable of self-policing, with or without these proposed thresholds. —Erik (talk • contrib) 17:14, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

To qualify as a candidate

Since we are interested in establishing a threshold for an editor to qualify as a candidate, we need to re-draft the "Selection" section at WP:FILMC. It currently reads, "Any member of the project may be a candidate; this includes current coordinators, who may be re-elected without limit." Based on others' comments above, I suggest the threshold to be 500 edits (averaging the suggestions) at the time of the announcement of elections. Presently, I do not think we need to include additional criteria. What we experienced was the repeat of a situation with the same party, so we do not need to be so reactive. In addition, can it go without saying that malicious sockpuppetry is grounds for exclusion? Also, do we need to justify in the draft the reason for the threshold? Here is the re-worded draft I propose:

"Any editor with membership in WikiProject Films and with at least 500 edits by the announcement of the election may be a candidate. This includes current coordinators, who may be re-elected without limit."

I welcome feedback. Once we finalize the draft, let's outline the matter at WT:FILM to be transparent with everyone and see if the qualification threshold is acceptable. —Erik (talk • contrib) 14:25, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

"Re-elected without limit"? Man, we're going to be doing this role for the rest of our lives! No, the 500 edit limit seems right and and the wording looks good to me. --Nehrams2020 (talk) 22:00, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

I decided to be bold and include the new draft. —Erik (talk • contrib) 15:05, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

I think 500 at the minimum should be good, though I'd also lean more towards 1,000 (also my min for RfAs LOL). I think it should also be clear that the 500 edits can't just be all user space edits, or the like, and should at least be a good portion of actual article editing. I also think it should be clear that they need to be an active member. Just sticking your name on the member roll really shouldn't be enough. -- AnmaFinotera (talk · contribs) 15:50, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

There is a lot of criteria we could apply, but we should be minimal here. As long as we have more candidates than slots, editors can be self-policing in choosing who they believe to be the most qualified coordinators. The pool of !voting editors this past election seemed diverse enough, and there are questions we can ask about the extent of candidates' involvement with film-related articles. —Erik (talk • contrib) 16:04, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Housekeeping

Hello, everyone! I decided to be bold today and make some adjustments to the coordinator-related pages. My edits are summarized below:

1. "Handbook" section was exported to WP:FILMC since it is not directly pertinent to discussion
2. WP:FILMC was edited to have a brief lead section, and section headings were edited to accustom previous sections and new sections (from "Handbook").
3. Discussions older than "Userbox" were archived; Tranche III had 240+ KBs' worth of discussion! Since archiving was imperfect, I tried to reinsert unarchived discussions in the archived timeline of when they first started.
4. Following the massive archiving, I split /Archive 3 into /Archive 3 and /Archive 4 (about 120 KBs each). In the future, especially with our growing circle of coordinators, we should not hesitate to have multiple archives for any given tranche!

Please let me know if these changes are agreeable. I plan to send out "A message from the lead coordinator" to all coordinators to officially welcome everyone and to outline goals for WikiProject Films. (For transparency's sake, I have a jumble of thoughts written down at User:Erik/Coordinators.) In the meantime, let's draft requirements for election candidates as was being discussed above! —Erik (talk • contrib) 13:12, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Thank you! When I first came to this talk page, it was a bit daunting with all the old conversations. And having the handbook in a easy to find section on the main page is also very useful. Am I dumb if I have to ask what is a Tranche? -- AnmaFinotera (talk · contribs) 13:58, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Girolamo Savonarola copied the election setup from Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Coordinators, so I assume that "tranche" definition was brought over in this setup. To be honest, I think we could use better wording -- something less formidable-sounding. Any ideas? —Erik (talk • contrib) 14:08, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

How odd...a portion of money or bonds? We get paid?? ;-) Is it basically referring to term discussions? Is so, why not just "term" ? -- AnmaFinotera (talk · contribs) 14:49, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

"Term" works for me! What we can do at WP:FILMC#History is rename "Tranche" to "Term" (or whatever else could be decided) and to rename "Term" to "Date range". Simplicity is key here. —Erik (talk • contrib) 16:24, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Further housekeeping: I summarized each discussion from /Archive 3 and /Archive 4 into one or two sentences. The summaries are listed at the top of each archive page and have anchor links to the specific discussions. Please take a moment to review briefly what topics were discussed in the past term; if you see any topics that are worth revisiting, remember them for our upcoming brainstorming session! —Erik (talk • contrib) 16:24, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

A message from the lead coordinator

Hello, everyone, and congratulations on being elected as coordinators for WikiProject Films! As the lead coordinator, I look forward to helping set an agenda for the WikiProject for this term and beyond, and I hope that you will actively participate in working through our agenda's objectives. I ask you to take a moment and review the goals of WikiProject Films (listed on the WikiProject's front page and reiterated here):

• To standardize the film articles in Wikipedia
• To improve Wikipedia coverage of films by adding, expanding and improving film articles
• To serve as a central point of discussion for issues related to Wikipedia film articles
• To provide the necessary framework to assist in bringing all articles within the project scope to the highest possible quality

Since you have stepped forward to take on the responsibilities of the coordinator position, my expectations are for you to play an active role in most coordinator-related discussions and to bring new ideas to the circle whenever possible. Since all seven of us will collaborate in discussions, I ask you to take a moment and leave a comment below about your background as an editor (I started with my own background). Outline what you believe your strengths and your weaknesses are, and summarize what you want to accomplish for WikiProject Films this term. (Also, please take a moment to review the Election results and Housekeeping discussions!) —Erik (talk • contrib) 16:09, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

• Hello, I'm Erik, and I have been editing film articles for several years now. In my time here, I feel like I have mastered the policies and guidelines in writing good articles, both in style and content. My strengths include my mantra to focus on the content and not the contributor(s) and my growing familiarity with research necessary for great film articles. I enjoy discussion and do my best to keep my comments from being too long. My weaknesses include lack of knowledge for broader topics like filmmaking and film studies, so I tend to focus on articles about individual films. I am also unfamiliar with coding (bless those who can tinker with the {{Film}} template) and the function of bots to the extent that they could be used by us. I am somewhat averse to janitorial clean-up, especially if I feel I am the only one doing it. What I want to accomplish as a coordinator for WikiProject Films is to set a clear agenda that we can follow in a structured format (check off item #1, move on to item #2) and to make discussions more active so we can reach conclusions faster. I look forward to working with everyone. —Erik (talk • contrib) 12:57, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
• Hi, I'm Nehrams2020 (or N2020 for short), and have been a part of this project for over two years now. I have enjoyed being a part of the project and have learned from many of the editors here what it takes to improve articles to higher classes. Since joining, I became interested in helping with assessing all of the project's articles which would give a better representation of what work needed to be done as well as the quality of our project. I would say my strengths are finding sources for articles, helping others to improve their article writing, completing tedious tasks, and keeping a cool head in discussions. My weaknesses are plot summaries, not being able to catch my own mistakes, and like Erik above, coding for templates (I'm just happy I can handle complex tables!). I would like to see us continue to improve the quality of our articles by seeing clearer guidelines and perhaps returning to a collaboration of the week/month. I would also like to have our project reassess all of our articles in a Tag & Assess drive, but we have a few hurdles before beginning that. Again, I'm glad to be here working with some of the most knowledgeable and hard-working members of the project. --Nehrams2020 (talk) 20:30, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
• Hi, all. I'm TomStar81, and I am one of two coordinators from the military history project attached to the War Films Task force. Since our project's spheres of influence happen to overlap here, I thought I'd drop by and say hi even though I am not technically a part of the FILMS project. Although there is little chance that we will ever have a need to collaborate closely, I will be available to assist your project on any matter related to War Films. Pleasure to meet you all. TomStar81 (Talk) 20:54, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

• Hi, Tom! You are welcome to drop by with any thoughts you may have about the war films task force. :) Hopefully we will have reason to collaborate at some point. —Erik (talk • contrib) 21:25, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

• Hello, I'm Collectonian. I've been editing at Wikipedia actively since July 07 and joined the Films project in September that same year. I would say it is my second major area of focus, behind Wikipedia:WikiProject Anime and manga, and I am also active in Wikipedia:Wikiproject Television. Like most editors, I started as a bad one who had no clue about what Wikipedia was really like. I still shudder to look at my first article creations. Over the last two years I've not only learned, but come to really appreciate the need for reliable sourcing, fair use of images, the various manuals of style, and the overall policies and guidelines of Wikipedia. I'm a very creative person who loves writing, and I also enjoy doing research, so Wikipedia has become a large part of my overall life and hobbies because it can feed both needs in a way that meets my sometimes personality. I would say my strengths are my enjoyment and skills in research (and access to the Texas A&M library and many journal/news databases) having plenty of time to commit to projects most of the time, my fondness of B-rated Sci Fi channel films and working on their articles, and I love of learning. For weaknesses, my grammar and spelling is not always the best, so my "lovely" writing efforts often need copyediting. :) Like Erik, I tend towards articles on individual films lacking the knowledge to work with the broader topics. I also would say that sometimes my temper does get the better of me when dealing with newer editors, pure "fans", and the like, though great guidance and advice (and patience) from others are helping me with this (I hope...always hard to tell for yourself if you are improving). Oh, and I'm sometimes long-winded and I like emotes :P For things to accomplish this term...I'd like to help project address some of its departments, particularly seemingly dead ones, to see if they can be infused with new life or should be folded somewhere else. I'd also like to see some renewed focus and maybe coordinated efforts to bring many film articles that seem like they could/should be FAs with the wealth of resources, but aren't due to lack of attention, such as the many "Classic" Disney films (still plagued by Disney vandal though) and our Core articles, which are almost all Start class. Above all, I just want to be helpful and useful to the project at a new/increased level and enjoy working with everyone. -- AnmaFinotera (talk · contribs) 01:01, 3 April 2009 (UTC)
• Hello everyone! I am Lugnuts (not Lugash). My name comes from 1/2 of one sentence used in one episode of Futurama. A bit like the naming rationale behind 8 1/2 I guess... I've been on WP since April 2006 and not long after that I got involved with the film side of the project. I like to create articles - so much is missing from WP in general, and WP:FILM is no exception. I'm not a big fan on working on existing articles (in terms of expansion), but I will add infoboxes, categories, etc. I aim to ensure that where possible, every article is in the correct categories & task force. Short and to the point, more can be found at my original nomination. Lugnuts (talk) 10:16, 3 April 2009 (UTC)
• Greetings all, I'm PC78 and have been here on Wikipedia for about two and a half years now. I've been involved with film-related articles for most of that time, carving out a niche for myself writing about Korean cinema, which allows me to do my own thing in my own quiet little corner of mainspace without much interuption or interferance from others. :) Weaknesses... I can have a bit of a short attention span when writing articles, and find plot summaries a bit of a chore; my work in the project space is often at the expense of my mainspace contributions; my knowledge of the techical side of films and filmmaking is a bit lacking; and I can be less diplomatic when dealing with disputes and such than some of the others here. On the plus side of things, I'm getting pretty handy with template coding and don't mind doing the more tedious janatorial tasks with regards to templates and categories. I'm never short of an idea or two, and this coming term I would like to see a greater focus on outreach with a view to increasing our membership, bolstering support for the task forces, and creating a greater sense of community within the project. A more personal goal is for me to try and write a film GA, but we shall see! :) PC78 (talk) 01:48, 4 April 2009 (UTC)
• Hello to coordinators new and old! As the former lead coordinator, I'm sure most of you already know and have some opinions about me; both Nehrams2020 and I have been part of the coordinatorship since its inception. My background is from what was originally WP Filmmaking, and my desire to merge that with WP Films is what led to our adopting the task force structure, as well as creating the coordinatorship. I must admit that I do feel somewhat pleased to be "relieved" of the lead role by Erik; while I was happy to continue in the position, having a (peaceful) regime change tends to be beneficial for continued progress in the way of new ideas and approaches. As such, I'm specifically looking forward to devoting a greater percentage of my time to the Filmmaking task force, although I also have no plans to abandon my attention towards the project at large. I think I've already delineated my strengths in my last several election statements; as for my weaknesses, I do try hard to be diplomatic, but I do sometimes fall short of the mark. Also, my work commitments can sometimes leave me only a cursory amount of time per day to edit, although I usually try to make up for it as soon as the opportunity presents itself. This term, I'd like to focus on looking at ways of strengthening the quality of the task forces, including more direct coordinator interaction through liaisoning. I believe that the task forces can help the project as much as the project can help the task forces, and by keeping lines of communication going both ways, they can advise us on matters such as the Resources department, translation, and the crafting of guidelines for non-film title articles (something which we are sorely lacking and need the non-regional/national task forces to help us with). I'd also like to help find out how best to channel editorial collaboration, though not necessarily towards a CotW as much as towards a regular rotating open-task of the week/fortnight/month, a contest department, further awards, or whatever else will work. (I really need to reopen discussion about the Core anniversary articles, for one.) Look forward to working with you all again or for the first time! :) Girolamo Savonarola (talk) 22:15, 5 April 2009 (UTC)
• TomStar81 was nice enough to pass along advice that has been gathered for WikiProject Military History coordinators. Feel free to read it here: Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Academy/Being a coordinator#Advice from current and former coordinators. —Erik (talk • contrib) 18:03, 8 April 2009 (UTC)
• My apologies for the (very) late response. I've been busy with work at school recently, and haven't had a whole lot of time for Wikipedia. This should change in the coming weeks as my workload drops off a bit. Anyhow, as all of you probably know, I'm a returning coordinator, and I've been editing Wikipedia for about three years now. In relation to film articles, my main focus is featured lists, namely awards-related lists, although I'm open to giving advice on other film-related lists. Aside from this, my primary body of edits on Wikipedia is to fiction-related articles, and I'm pretty knowledgeable on how to structure articles on fictional topics, especially character lists and individual character articles and how to effectively incorporate in-universe details in an encyclopedic manner. Insofar as what I plan to do as a coordinator aside from participating in discussions here, I've been interested in a while in creating a collaboration between the anime and manga project for task force that would cover anime films, many of which are in pretty bad shape. If possible, I'd also like to revive the topic workshop I created, but I understand that it's difficult to maintain interest in such a long-term item as featured topics. That said, I definitely am open to questions about how to make featured topics, as I've made five myself. Looking forward to working with you all. Cheers, — sephiroth bcr ^(converse) 23:13, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Thank you all for introducing yourselves! Hope you all had the chance to read about each other to know where we're all coming from and what we want to get done here. —Erik (talk • contrib) 17:00, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

Question on Future-class coding errors

Hopefully this is an appropriate place to ask. I was going through Category:Films with incorrect Future-Class coding to fix all the entries, but I wasn't sure how to fix the futyear issue if there is no release year set, yet the article is sourced enough to not be prodded or has already survived 1-2 AfDs. Also, for obviously canceled promotions, should it be switched to a regular class? -- AnmaFinotera (talk · contribs) 05:53, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Can the ones with no release years not be left alone for the time being? For "obviously canceled promotions", I assume you mean Death Walks the Streets? I think that the content of the planned film could be moved to the prequel comic article... a bit of clean-up is necessary, though. —Erik (talk • contrib) 15:28, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

They can be, and its what I did, I just wanted to be sure that was correct :) -- AnmaFinotera (talk · contribs) 15:59, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Guidelines for coordinator-related discussions

Hello, I would like to set up guidelines for coordinator-related discussions on this talk page. My goal is to outline an agenda to display at WP:FILMC. When I reviewed the previous term's discussions, I thought that too many were inconclusive. I would like to discuss what approaches everyone would prefer to conduct an active discussion and to draw a conclusion from everyone's comments. Below, I list some points pertinent to finding out how coordinators prefer to discuss objectives on the agenda that we will eventually set up, and I hope for feedback from everyone.

• Not everyone will participate in a discussion, even a major one. What are the reasons for this? Not having time to comment when first encountering the discussion, then forgetting later? Feeling that the discussion is not related to your area(s) of expertise? Having no particular opinion and being fine with what is decided?
• Since coordinators dedicate themselves to WikiProject-related matters more so than other editors, expectation for them to participate in discussions is higher. Is it helpful to notify coordinators on their user talk pages about an active discussion and requesting their input? How should notifications work -- wait 48 or 72 hours after the last comment before contacting those who have not weighed in? Or ask for input to specific discussions on a weekly basis? Or at all?
• I don't expect everyone to make thorough comments for every discussion. I was thinking, though, that maybe everyone who may not have a strong opinion either way could leave a note saying something like, "I have no strong opinion either way, and I am fine with what others decide." We do not know who reads what discussions, so this note from those who are basically saying "present" could tell other editors, "You don't have to wait perpetually for others' opinions; feel free to move forward."
• Notifications and "present" notes can apply solely to discussions directly related to objectives on the agenda. For example, Collectonian's discussion above about future film tagging does not require everyone's input, so notifications and "present" notes are not necessary. For a discussion about how to take care of unassessed articles, though, such approaches could be useful to reach a conclusion.
• Is there a time of the month, week, or day when near-active discussion among coordinators can best be held? The weekend, for example?

These are my preliminary thoughts for conducting coordinator-related discussions. What do you think? Would notifications be too intrusive in a particular form or any form? Would "present" notes help editors know that their comments were read and acknowledged? I would like us to come up with a set of guidelines that we can include in the "Guidelines" section above the "Discussion" section on this talk page. —Erik (talk • contrib) 15:50, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Generally speaking, if I don't comment in a discussion it's because I have nothing to add and/or no strong opinion on the outcome. It seems rather redundant to post a comment saying that I have nothing to say; for the most part it should be sufficient to work on the principle of silence=consent. If a discussion requires further input to either move it along or bring it to some sort of resolution, then it should be fine to give people a nudge on their talk pages. PC78 (talk) 18:37, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

That seems contradictory. If we assume that silence equals consensus, why would we notify coordinators who have not participated in discussions? That's why I was considering the notes, so we know that the discussion so far was read and that we do not have to wonder if a non-participating coordinator could be nudged to get involved or not. I don't know the best setup for something like that; the image I had in my head for this was a "Present: —Erik (talk • contrib), PC78 (talk)" line at the very bottom of every discussion pertinent to the agenda. Some kind of roll call, you know? I'm all for a better way to do this, if everyone is interested in something like this to keep discussions moving along to conclusions. —Erik (talk • contrib) 20:20, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

I don't think it's contradictory; as you said above, some discussions are more important than others and require a greater level of contribution. PC78 (talk) 20:29, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

So for non-agenda discussions, we can skip notifications and "present" notes. For agenda discussions, is it fair to want everyone to participate? (We'll all discuss what objectives to put on the agenda, anyway, so there should be more vested interest than topics in non-agenda discussions.) —Erik (talk • contrib) 20:37, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

I usually contribute to a discussion if I believe that I can point out something that hasn't been said yet, answer a question from another editor, suggest an alternative, or add a really bad joke. I've tried to join in on more of the discussions on this page (probably more than at WP:FILM). Usually the reason that I don't quickly join a discussion is because I lose it in my watchlist (so I try and visit the main discussion pages every few days to keep up with current discussions). If we have an important discussion that would benefit from consensus, then I see no reason not to nudge the other coordinators if they have not yet responded. After all, we're not just here to collect our paychecks and attend film premieres, right? No, that would be nice though (see above on really bad jokes). Obviously each coordinator has knowledge/interests in various aspects of the project and will likely respond accordingly. Perhaps some discussions should have a little tag/statement in the header indicating if its a general question, one that needs to be responded to right away (problem with an editor for example), needs input from all of the coordinators, etc. This would provide a clearer objective of the discussion, but not hinder coordinators from adding to any discussion. I could probably attend some-near live discussions on the weekends, but I'm usually pretty active as it is, so whatever works for everyone else is fine with me. --Nehrams2020 (talk) 18:47, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

My input usually is contingent on my work schedule, which is unpredictable at best. I'm not certain that nudging is needed as a standard course of action - clearly on big important issues such as co-option, it is, but most of our work here is brainstorming or involves actions that can be easily reversed with minimal repercussion. If a discussion has stalled for a lack of input, then certainly the proposing editor can use their discretion to personally request further input from specific editors, but I don't think that requires any form of codification or standard protocol, IMHO. Many of our best ideas here have come from editors who took the initiative to craft something first, though, and then present it for further input and refinement - these threads tend to be more productive by their nature, since there is something concrete and ready-made. Other proposals which start out more abstract or require discussion before proceeding with a course of action are more likely to founder or at least require multiple rounds of talk - again, by their nature, some of these may be harder to get responses back, as well. Girolamo Savonarola (talk) 19:00, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Nehrams2020, I like the idea of labeling a discussion to identify its priority, like if it is for an agenda item. Girolamo, I like the notion of presenting something tangible in a proposal, such as a sandbox template or a rough draft of proposed re-wording. I think that's encouragement we can include in the guidelines. Regarding notifications, my goal is to encourage participation by as many coordinators as possible. We do not have to codify notifications on a specific time table. At the very least, though, we should have a guideline that encourages coordinators to use discretion to reach out to others for additional input. I don't recall that being done much in the past, so I think it's a practice we could adopt for when the need arises. (Now this preparing ahead of time is making me think I should write my own preliminary agenda for you all to pick apart...) —Erik (talk • contrib) 21:17, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Proposed guidelines

Below, I propose guidelines for coordinator-related discussions that we can include at the top of the talk page. They are by no means policy, but they are approaches I encourage everyone to adhere to to the best of their ability. I ask for feedback to tweak them so we can set a kind of foundation to effectively discuss objectives from the agenda and to discuss other topics, too. For example, better wording, like what it means to "identify" such a discussion. (I was personally thinking of an italicized byline preceding the discussion thread.)

• Watchlist WT:FILM and WT:FILMC to keep up discussions at both and check page histories occasionally to see which discussions had activity recently
• Include "Agenda:" in a discussion heading if it relates to the coordinators' agenda
• When making a proposal, craft the proposal into a tangible product (e.g., rough draft of proposed re-wording, sandboxed template) to present for further input and refinement
• If a discussion needs further input, nudge uninvolved coordinators with a talk page message to participate
• If you have no strong opinion about proposed tasks in accomplishing an agenda objective, say so to let other coordinators know you have read the discussion and move to finalize consensus

Your thoughts are welcome! —Erik (talk • contrib) 17:10, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

Looks good to me. The only suggestion I would make is that we indicate agenda discussions in the section heading, i.e. == Agenda: Should we get paid for this gig? ==. PC78 (talk) 19:21, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

Yeah I agree with PC78 and like I said above, it would be great to include in the header the importance/category of the discussion in the heading itself. Anybody can feel free to nudge me if I miss a discussion or if I haven't replied in a few days. These guidelines should help to improve the quality of our discussions. --Nehrams2020 (talk) 20:43, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

Okay, I modified the agenda sentence. I also included watchlisting the two talk pages. We've been instructed to watchlist WT:FILMC before, and I think it's fair to ask coordinators to at least be aware of what goes on at WT:FILM. Thoughts on that change? (And speaking of the agenda, I've been putting one together at User:Erik/Coordinators; will be giving it a final look-over soon before putting it on WP:FILMC, where we can all tinker with it in classic wiki-style.) —Erik (talk • contrib) 21:43, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

Look good to me. :) -- AnmaFinotera (talk · contribs) 23:31, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

Showcase/Spotlight

I'll ask here because I know some of you guys maintain them: the Showcase section of the main project page seems (to me) to be redundant to the more extensive Spotlight page. Maintaining the same information seperately on two different pages must surely be an unnecessary duplication of effort. Would there be any objection to removing the Showcase and mergeing it into the Spotlight? PC78 (talk) 15:27, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

I think this is a good idea, and I think that a link should be provided to the spotlight page. I was wondering, though, can anything be transcluded there like we do in other quarters of the WikiProject? —Erik (talk • contrib) 15:38, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

A transclusion would certainly be possible, though to be honest I was thinking that the main page could do to be a bit more streamlined. PC78 (talk) 16:15, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

You mean to just link to the spotlight page and be done with it? That makes sense to me, too. :) —Erik (talk • contrib) 16:19, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

Rolling out the preliminary agenda

Hello, everyone! On WP:FILMC, I added an "Agenda" section with five subsections, and each of them has several objectives as well as tasks to complete them. I ask other coordinators to review this preliminary agenda and to provide feedback about anything, even presentation. I believe that an agenda will help us outline goals to accomplish for WikiProject Films, so I put together the draft and placed it in the open so we can all tinker with it in traditional wiki style. I anticipate for a lot of discussions here to be related to the agenda, but this does not mean we cannot introduce our own topics. In fact, if you have any ideas for topics for which objectives and tasks could be written, feel free to contribute these! Below are several questions to get the ball rolling on feedback. —Erik (talk • contrib) 15:36, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

• Are the five areas a proper way to divide up objectives? Do the areas need to be further divided?
• Are the tables presentable, or can the presentation be improved?
• What do you suggest for measuring the progress of a task, like in the "Completion" column? (After all, some objectives like article clean-up will never be complete.)
• Do the priorities make sense? Should there be another way to identify them?
• Do any existing objectives need to be removed or combined due to redundancy? Are there any new ones that can be added?

Okay, I guess I'll be the first to take a stab at this. First off, I would consider the style guidelines audit to be a high priority, since there has been confusion among editors for various areas in the guidelines. Some of the sections do need to be clarified and expanded to help assist new editors. Looking over the other sections, it looks like you've covered all of the main issues. The presentation is sufficient, and I'm sure another column can be added to display our current progress on the tasks to illustrate to members what has been accomplished. Concerning the collaboration of the week, based on our survey, it looks like there were not that many active members that would be able to contribute to this. Perhaps expanding this to two weeks/month would probably be best. But then again, maybe this should be discussed when we actually start talking about that. Anyway, I'd say that it all looks good, and we just need to start working on each task as interest and time permits. Good job with the list so far. Happy editing! --Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 21:34, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

I am fine with making the style guidelines a higher priority. I have wanted to update them in a big way, but I have tried to be cautious and gradual in the past when making changes. Perhaps we could start off with the new layout and maybe encourage a link to starting a new discussion for empty subsections? We can be dynamic, after all. Also, monthly collaboration sounds like a good idea, too... should such collaboration be focused on core articles, or does it not matter? —Erik (talk • contrib) 16:30, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

We could consider having various types of collaborations (maybe a collaboration department or have it branch off of one of the other ones). A collaboration of the month could be one of the core articles, and a collaboration of the week/two weeks could be article cleanup/tagging/other article improvement/etc. Or this could be flipped around. Maybe awards can be given out for the monthly collaboration to encourage participation. Even if we don't have separate collaborations going on at the same time, we should have at least one to encourage coordination among members. If they feel part of something that is steady and well-maintained, it may be likely that they will return to future collaborations or advertise to others to join in. Happy editing! --Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 01:07, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

On the whole, looks good, presentation, content, etc. I would say, though, that the notability guidelines should probably be higher (Middle priority, at least), particularly with the current RfC. Would also agree with Nehrams2020 on "collaboration of the week". Would also say it would depend on the amount of work needed. If it something that is already in decent shape, doing a collaborative push to GA or FA might only need a week beyond the actual reviews. -- AnmaFinotera (talk · contribs) 22:47, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

We can definitely take a look at the notability guidelines, though I am not sure if the "box office" discussion is indicative of a pressing need. My intent in auditing the guidelines is to do so in a concerted manner since guidelines usually develop in a piecemeal fashion. In regard to collaboration, what do you think is more favorable -- giving GAs and FAs a push or blossoming stubs into full articles? —Erik (talk • contrib) 16:30, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

What you've put down looks good. To offer my thoughts on those issues you've identified as "High priority":

• Assessment. I'm certainly in favour of more bot runs to tag and assess articles (and it would probably be a good idea to reactivate the |auto= parameter in the banner to better keep track of things), but I don't think we should pursue this until we've cleared the current assessment backlog. I spent some time on this last week and cleared about 500 articles, but that still leaves more than 2000 to do. Regarding a list of articles that may need splitting, I'm fairly certain there is one somewhere. Giro might know, it may be in his userspace.
• Improvement of core articles. This is something I'm keen on doing; I have a few specific ideas, but I'll save those until we're ready to discuss this properly. If this it to be a project drive, is it to come after the often mentioned tag & assess drive, or will tag & assess be taking a backseat?
• Article cleanup. More of an ongoing task. Is there much we can do with regards to this? Those articles with the most number of cleanup categories assigned might make for good collaboration candidates, if nothing else.
• Outreach. Again, something else I'm interested in pursuing this term. We need to find ways of boosting our membership and raising the level of participation, but we also need to keep our membership active, so this ties in with project drives and collaboration.

A few things I would add to the above:

• Task forces. Raising the level of activity within our task forces is something I think needs to be tackled. This ties in with outreach to an extent, but we also need to get collaborating WikiProjects to pull their weight. I think it would be of benefit to have a more formalised process for setting up new task forces, to ensure that they have a necessary level of support from the start (see also discussion below). We gained quit e afew new task forces last year, and I personally think some of them were set up in haste.
• A-Class review is being largely ignored, so we may want to have a rethink. Also, I will most likely want to bore you all with another C-Class discussion in the near future, so you've been warned! :) PC78 (talk) 22:05, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea to tackle the present backlog! I think we should have a checklist to tag and assess that could be distributed among not just coordinators, but editors as well. (Maybe in time for the next newsletter?) I have monitored recent changes recently and often see you and Lugnuts doing this work, but I was not sure if there was any specific process either of you were using. Also, can you clarify what |auto= is supposed to do?

Tagging and assessing should be considered higher priority than the improvement of core articles because we still need to discuss how we want to go about the improvement. Tagging and assessing does not need that kind of discussion, though the checklist may help editors know what they should do. Perhaps once we figure out a tagging and assessing routine (post-bot run, that is), we can switch focus to the core articles.

Regarding outreach, I have been doing this a little bit myself by monitoring recent changes (through links at my portal), looking for editors who have made worthwhile contributions to film-related articles, and inviting them to WikiProject Films. Outreach needs to be quantitative since not everyone will accept the invitation; I think perhaps a tenth or less of people I've invited have signed up. I have been in contact with some of them directly to provide a bit more of a personal touch; that might be a role that coordinators could play in the outreach process.

I will respond about the task forces and A-Class review in five minutes; need to close up shop here. —Erik (talk • contrib) 16:30, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

We do need a serious discussion about task forces. My concern is that there is little payoff for the bureaucracy and maintenance involved. (I'd like to start a science fiction film task force, for example, but there does not seem to be likely interest nor payoff.) There have been some small discussions on a couple of task force pages, so we need to encourage quick responses to them. May be worth implementing GS's idea of assigning coordinators to different task forces. (I'd personally be fine with watchlisting them all at this point.) We could use a prolific task force to set a gold standard, though the American cinema task force isn't ideal since it's not very niche.

Regarding A-Class reviews, I admit I am not so great with such large reviews. It requires devoting a large chunk of time to look through the candidates (which are often pretty large). Sometimes I'm not sure whether to copy-edit myself or to highlight what needs to be fixed. Are we sort of preferring for coordinators to be involved with A-Class reviews? Never saw a good reason for that since there are competent editors that do not run for coordinatorship. I'm happy to hear others' thoughts about this. —Erik (talk • contrib) 17:02, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

OK, a few things to reply to here... :)

There's no real rhyme or reason to the assessment work I've been doing, it's just a case of getting stuck in. Regarding the use of an |auto= parameter in the project banner, this will do several things: a) adds all article tagged/assessed by the bot to a category which can be checked manually later, and b) adds a notice to the banner to say that the article has been tagged/assessed by a bot, and prompting users to verify things and remove the parameter if correct. I've thrown together a quick exampel at Template talk:Film/sandbox (as well as a preliminary attempt at getting the banner to collapse the task forces if there are more than three).

As for tagging and assessing, obviously this is one of those ongoing tasks that needs to be done anyway, but I was under the impression that we were going to have a coordinated drives similar to Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/Tag & Assess 2008. Is this no longer the case? Certainly I feel such drives would be useful (in addition to their specified objective) in motivating members and encouraging participation and collaboration within the project. I envision something similar with the core articles in the future, but if tagging and assessing is a higher priority then we should really get moving with it.

Outreach... I think it would be useful for the department to have some general guidelines for identifying potential new members. The things you mention are all good, but a it might be beneficial to have a brainstroming session. Perhaps there are also some one-time tasks to consider, a mailshot to all ex-members inviting them to re-join the project, for example?

I hope I didn't give the impression that I thought A-Class reviews were for coordinators only. Certainly that isn't the case, though we do have a responsibility to take the lead. Maybe we need a clearer definition of what we expect at A-Class. At the moment I have only the vaugue notion that an article should be nearly but not quite FA standard. Random thought: perhaps we could start transcluding A-Class reviews on an article's talk page to raise their visibility?

If no one beats me too it I'll try and start an Agenda discussion on one of the above later in the week. PC78 (talk) 12:23, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Do you think it would be beneficial to have an unassessed articles checklist, like the one that was created for B-class? I had to visit Template:Film a couple of times to see what "needs" parameters and what task forces parameters were available to fill out in the template. I started the newsletter for this month... maybe get such a checklist done (wouldn't take too long) to present in the newsletter to at least initiate members with the tagging and assessing process? We could try for a Tag & Assess 2009 drive in a few weeks once we work out the process. (I noticed brief discussion about such a drive from the previous term's discussions and wondered what happened to the idea!)

For outreach, we definitely could use some discussion to come up with some useful ideas. I think we've discussed before about "cleaning up" the mailing list but didn't go through with it. Perhaps consider anyone who hasn't edited since 2007 to be removed? For 2008 and after, we can do some prodding as proposed.

I also think for A-Class reviews and other reviews to succeed, editors need to be more interested in helping each other out. This can be encouraged through a quid pro quo approach where similar-minded editors can give feedback on each other's articles. Not sure how to pair up such editors or if the pairing is easier said than done. —Erik (talk • contrib) 15:58, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by a checklist for unassessed articles. Can you elaborate? PC78 (talk) 22:57, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

I had in mind a checklist that could outline the parameters. For example, I'm not sure if it is noted explicitly anywhere that the nationality of a director would place a film under a national cinema task force. (For example German director Roland Emmerich's films, like 2012, are part of the German cinema task force. For the "needs" parameters, perhaps clarification on something like |needs-plot=... what if there is only one paragraph? Does that count as having one? Also have the concern about filling out |needs-image= if the article is too stubby (per WP:NFC#Images, "cover art"). For |class=, maybe multiple examples, especially to differentiate between Stub-class and Start-class. It could be a checklist to share with editors who have not been as involved with the tagging and assessing process as we have. What do you think? —Erik (talk • contrib) 23:00, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Presumably we're not talking about something that would go in the actual banner itself? If you think it would help then by all means go for it, but the parameters are already covered at Template:film/doc. How would this be different? PC78 (talk) 10:46, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

I was thinking of the checklist as a WikiProject page that serves as a step-by-step guide. The template documentation is more to-the-point; I was thinking that the checklist would be more in-depth for editors who are not as intimate with filling out the template's parameters. Maybe we can edit the documentation to be like this, but it seems fine to keep it to-the-point as-is. —Erik (talk • contrib) 15:19, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Appreciate all the feedback! I have been a bit busy in real life the past few days and seems like the next few as well, but I will try to respond to everybody. Please feel free to edit the agenda itself if you think that your suggestions have merit. After all, I doubt we'll get in an edit war here! :) —Erik (talk • contrib) 16:21, 21 April 2009 (UTC) (Responded to each person above. —Erik (talk • contrib) 16:30, 23 April 2009 (UTC))

Re A-Class reviews (or reviews of any sort), I was never under the impression that coordinators had a preferred role - it was more my idea that they should have a responsibility to get involved particularly in reviews which had little or no input, and thus required more eyes to be valuable for the submitting editor. In the case of A-Class this is even more prominent since articles require at least a three vote margin of support before they can be passed - hence two reviews are insufficient for the process.

As for task forces, I'd like to recapitulate my idea that discussion areas will be bolstered if we took all project talk threads which are specific to areas within only one or two task forces' concern and moved them to those task forces' talk pages. This is already standard practice in larger projects such as MilHist which have many task forces, and helps keep them active. The main project talk page would then only contain threads pertaining to matters of the project at large. We can still keep members alert to notable task force discussions by creating notice threads where germane. And as mentioned above, I also support the idea of using the coordinators as project liaisons to the task forces; this is particularly valuable in the task forces which we share with other projects. Thoughts? Girolamo Savonarola (talk) 00:16, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

In theory, I agree with that idea, but in practice, I'm wondering if it would really lower discussions on the main talk? Can you give some examples from our current discussions of ones that might be moved so I can get a better idea? -- AnmaFinotera (talk · contribs) 06:19, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

I think it may be worth discussing the migration of task force-related discussions to their talk pages from WT:FILM as long as we use {{Moved conversation}} templates to point general visitors to these discussions. Is there a general notification template that can be used by editors who start discussions on task forces pages and may want more eyes? —Erik (talk • contrib) 18:04, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

I'm not against the idea, but is it really a major issue? I am also curious to know which of our current discussions would be affected by this. PC78 (talk) 12:42, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

It is not an issue; it is a way to get task forces more active with discussions added to them. For examples "Attention needed for Cinema of France" could have been moved to the French cinema task force. "Announcing the celebrities expected to be photographed at the Tribeca Film Festival" could have been moved to the film festivals task force. "Ran" could have been moved to the Japanese cinema task force. To compensate for the moved discussions, the discussions themselves should be better titled. For example, "Ran" should be titled "Featured Article Review of Ran". —Erik (talk • contrib) 14:06, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

One of the items under the Assessment of unassessed articles is "File bot request to find articles using {{Infobox Film}} and lacking {{Film}} on their talk pages and to list the articles". In case anyone missed it, User:Jarry1250 released two scripts for helping to find articles (per PC78's request :-) ) that are tagged as needing an infobox but have one[1] or tagged as needing an image but have one[2]. I ran the former over Category:Film articles needing an infobox and it came back with over 500 articles.[3] I did some random spot checks and it seems to be pretty accurate, so I took that list and cleaned it up for easy importing into AWB. I've stared going through them and removing the parameters. Anyone want to join in? :) If so, I've gone through up to K so far. The cleaned up list of ones remaining is at User:Collectonian/WIP2.-- AnmaFinotera (talk · contribs) 05:52, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

I finished L through P. Going to bed now, but will work on some more later today. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 08:56, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

They have all been updated. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 23:12, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Sweet! Thanks! I was just about to get back to it too. :P -- AnmaFinotera (talk · contribs) 00:49, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Task force proposal

I hadn't been in a hurry to get around to this, but I may as well mention it now while a new task force is being discussed over at WT:FILM. I would like to suggest setting up a "Task force department" (or whatever you want to call it) to oversee the task forces. This wouldn't really be anything new, more a reorganisation of what we already have, i.e. the stuff on the main project page and the coordinators page, into a more centralised location. What I would like to add is a dedicated page for proposing and discussing new task forces, rather than doing it at WT:FILM.

Also, what should the threshold be for setting up a new task force? Giro said around five interested editors, but is that enough?

Thoughts on the above? PC78 (talk) 10:20, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

I don't know - I think it's superfluous. The talk page is the natural place to discuss, since we want maximal project eyes on the proposal. As for a department, that doesn't seem very natural to me either - setting the task force up is our purview, and only takes 15 minutes or so. After that, the natural place to manage it is from within the task force itself. Meta-matters can be brought either to the project talk page, here, or the Council page, depending on which is most germane. What would a department do that would improve this? Girolamo Savonarola (talk) 10:40, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

The improvement is in the restructuring, the drawing together of bits and pieces that are currently scattered throughout the project. I don't think it would require a seperate talk page, but it would help to streamline the main project page a bit more (for which my long term thinking is a facelift similar to what they've done over at WP:MILHIST, though that's not really the issue here). I disagree that the main talk page is the natural place for discussion; proposals can get lost amongst the other discussion, then whisked away into the archives. A seperate, more permanent and formalised area of discussion would be better equipped to gauge long term interest. It's not that long since the Soviet task force was set up, and that only has one listed participant; we need to ensure that any proposed task force has a genuine and sustainable interest. And don't forget that we're still stuck with the issue of needing to tag articles for the American and British task forces. I would also argue that it's less our eyes that need to be on these discussions, and more other projects who we'll be collaborating (and who we need to try and get pulling their weight a bit more). A transcludable proposal that we could have in multiple places would draw more attention to it, not less. PC78 (talk) 11:13, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

I think that a departmental page for task forces is a good idea. We only have a section of the main page for the task forces, and we could outline the usage of task forces better. We have to remember that we've mastered the learning curve in regard to editing and collaboration, so it may help to provide documentation that may seem simple to us. For example, to explain how to find like-minded editors for collaboration and more specifically how task forces can be used. —Erik (talk • contrib) 16:19, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Christian films task force

I think that this needs to be dealt with shortly, as they have now garnered five supports from legit editors. (Two of the seven currently signed on have no significant editing history prior to or subsequent to signing.) Some of the editors are getting impatient, and while there is no rush in theory, it currently looks like we've ignored them. I'd deal with it myself, but I just wanted to bring it up with the other coordinators first to gauge their thoughts. Thanks, Girolamo Savonarola (talk) 06:12, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

I've been trying to follow that discussion, but it seems like they still aren't totally sure of what the task force should include, i.e. what "Christian films" means. Is it films with Christian elements, films from Christian production companies, self-identified Christian films, etc? Other than that, though, they do have five supporters who seem eager to work on this subset of films, so I'm inclined to say give it a whirl, if someone is willing to keep an eye on things. -- AnmaFinotera (talk · contribs) 06:28, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

I've gone ahead and created it. Any concerns or objections? Please feel free to air them... Girolamo Savonarola (talk) 07:21, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

I have no concerns or objections. I think it's great that the interest level is so high. I'm attaching myself to the task force to provide some guidance. I made a suggestion to keep the scope large but also informed them this does not mean they have to work on articles all across the scope. —Erik (talk • contrib) 17:34, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Agenda: Revitalising A-Class review

Since the current A-Class review system was introduced (about a year ago, I think) we've had the grand sum of ten reviews, three of which have resulted in an article being promoted. Currently we have two open reviews, one of which is now nearly three months old. Clearly things aren't working as they should, and largely this seems to be down to a lack of interest and participation. Perhaps this can be addressed by making the process more accessible, so let's see if we can't put our heads together and come up with a plan of action. :) Some ideas I've had:

• We could transclude reviews directly on the relevant article's talk page, much as is done with Good article reviews. This could raise awareness of the review amongst interested editors.
• Perhaps we could have a more explicit notice for current reviews in our banner template. At present there is nothing obvious on an talk page to signify that a review is in progress.
• We could reduce the number of approval !votes from three to two. Getting support from three editors seems to be a tall order, so this might help to move things along.
• At present we have no specific criteria for A-Class other than the rather vague notion that an article should be close to Featured status. We could introduce criteria similar to what they use at WP:MILHIST (essentially a more stringent version of the B-Class criteria).
• A more radical notion perhaps, but we could scrap A-Class altogether and focus our efforts on FAC instead.

Thoughts on the above and further suggestions welcome! PC78 (talk) 23:19, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

I have to admit, I've never seen the purpose of A-Class, and maybe others are having that issue. I know it seems to vary from project to project whether A class goes between GA and FA, or if it supposed to be "above" FA (which I never got at all). If I have an article at GA, I'll just go for FA, and I think most people will. So it would be good to perhaps show why A might be a good option to aim for first (presuming what you said that our A goes between GA and FA on the scale). Then, second, would definitely be specific criteria for reviewers. When I do GA or FA reviews, after general checks, I go straight down the list. It helps me know what I should be looking for, considering, etc, and to what degree. -- AnmaFinotera (talk · contribs) 01:04, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

I pursued A-class review for Little Miss Sunshine and Tropic Thunder because I believed the review process was not really being used and that our project should have some A-class articles as models for other editors. In the time since it's been open, there have been many film FACs that bypassed A-class review. Some failed and some passed. A-class may not be an indicator that an article is ready for FA (Sunshine failed on its first attempt, but that was likely my fault), and bypassing it can still result in a FA (Changeling was a very well-written article that had few problems). I could go either way on keeping the review process. As it currently stands, there isn't too much participation, and three reviewers may be a bit much. However, the process was beneficial to me and helped me to avoid many of the problems I would have faced at FAC. If we can greatly improve the process and participation, I'd say keep it. But the fact that A-class is so close to FA, many editors won't stick with A-class for long before moving up. Perhaps we should scrap it and just improve the peer review process. Sorry for being undecided. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 03:28, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Scrap it. The value of A-class review is when you have enough reviewers to make the process meaningful, especially as a preparation for FAC (as evinced by how thorough the MILHIST review is). With barely two or three reviews here, you might as well open a peer review if you're going for FAC. — sephiroth bcr ^(converse) 07:48, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

My opinion of A-Class review is that it is too much work for so little payoff. The reviews I've done in the past feel like how I would have reviewed if the articles were nominated as Featured Articles. For the time it takes to pore through candidate articles, I'd rather that my reviews help it toward FA status. My impression is that we do not have enough collaborative film editors in our WikiProject ranks to push A-Class reviews through. Peer reviews seem more useful in the sense that outside opinions can weigh in through the existing setup. There are quite a few peer reviews already, and it may help to focus on these instead. —Erik (talk • contrib) 15:44, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Interesting, we now have another A-Class nomination to contend with. PC78 (talk) 10:26, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

I agree that A-Class is fundamentally flawed in its current state, but there's plenty of room for renovation short of demolition! :)

1. The idea for more clearly-stated criteria is an excellent one and probably will clear up much of the "what exactly is A-class material?" confusion. Both GAN and FAC are very clear about this - we should be too.
2. Most of PC78's other ideas sound fine to me, although I'm of no particular mind either way, with the exception of the number of reviewers. Part of the point behind the three-reviewer margin of approval is to serve as a mid-point between the single GAN reviewer and the larger numbers required for FAC. I don't think that changing this from three to two is of much point - after all, it is just one more reviewer, and a potentially valuable one at that (everyone catches vastly different things in their reviews). Two is just too few, IMHO. That being said, there may be merit to simply making ACR a consensus-based approval - if there are supports and they seem to outweigh the opposes significantly, then we allow a pass.
3. What is most lacking, though, is that the project makes no emphasis on the review department as a whole. While tagging, assessing, XfD'ing, and dealing with article disputes is doubtless important and rewarding work, most of it affects overall article quality and completeness far less than any review process does. We've all seen articles that in the course of one or two peer reviews (or ACRs or FACs) have matured by leaps and bounds in very short amounts o time. What's more, the amount of quality improvement is much more substantial, as is the assessment level of these articles. I'd rather have a project with huge housekeeping backlogs but hundreds of GA/A/FA articles than no backlogs but a few dozen quality articles.
4. The problem is that the project does not emphasize our need for good reviewers (who are just as vital if not moreso than good writers), nor do we adequately reward those editors. We only have a film barnstar and the service awards (which are kept in reserve at the moment for larger open tasks, such as our putative T&A drive). The barnstar tends to be awarded for content creation more than anything else, and this is worthy, but we have absolutely no awards or recognition for our reviewers. This not only creates no rewards incentive, but it also makes it appear that we don't particularly value this much. Compare with MilHist, to wit. Several of us probably would already qualify for at least one of these by now if we had a film equivalent.
5. Another question worth looking into is how in-depth do we want these reviews to be? Should this just be a simple thumbs-up/thumbs-down with some brief summary of problems or do we want to get into the nitty-gritty a la FAC? Perhaps part of the problem is that it looks too laborious and protracted to make it worthwhile. Rang De Basanti is an excellent case - and I am partly responsible. Perhaps both the project and the article would have been better served by simply failing it after it stalled - or at least when the nominator disappeared. (As it is, I'm currently trying to clean it up further, so I'm not sure what now.) Ironically, failing more articles quicker may be better for attracting more editors to use ACR than simply leaving reviews on life-support. It at least suggests that their review will be handled promptly and resolved in some manner or another.
6. As with above, should we be stricter about setting a deadline? Sure, some articles may fail with two supports, but this isn't uncommon in FAC either, and plenty of nominators quickly lick the articles' wounds and re-nom within a short period. If our reviews are more broad in content, this may give them more pause to consider another ACR rather than maybe say "I disagree with points 6, 11, and 23 of the copy-editing advice, so I'm gonna skip another ACR and go straight to FAC instead".

ACR ultimately allows us to vet content, expertise, and terminology in ways that could easily slip through without so much as a comment on FAC. It is crucial - IMHO - that this be tightened up rather than abandoned, and with the goal that all A-class articles should be able to pass FAC on the first attempt, and (ideally) that film articles don't go to FAC without an ACR. To do this we must make ACR more accessible, effective, desirable, and useable. Ultimately, I'm in favor of any pragmatic notions that will assist in this goal, whatever they may be. Thanks if you've made it this far! :) Girolamo Savonarola (talk) 04:27, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

I don't disagree that more than two reviewers is desirable, but a strict insistance on three is a luxury we don't currently have; removing this stipulation would help speed up the process – certainly it would help in wrapping up our current reviews. I'm all for trying to save A-Class before we bin it, so I'll look at implementing some of the things I mentioned. PC78 (talk) 07:51, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

OK then guys, I've picked this up again and have been busy tinkering away with certain things. I've made a few changes to the project banner which I would like to implement, placing a greater emphasis on open reviews:

There is now a boilerplate for new reviews which loads automatically via the link in the banner, and I have crafted a dedicated page detailing specific A-Class criteria (largely based on what they have at WP:MILHIST, but essentially a more stringent version of our B-Class criteria). I have also created {{WPFILMS A-Class review}} to transclude reviews onto article talk pages, and have updated the instructions for A-Class nominations accordingly.

Comments and crits on the above are welcome. More generally I agree with what Giro says above, about the need to place a greater emphasis on reviews and the need to reward reviewers (and not just for A-Class), but there's no quick fix for that and it's something we'll need to look at more in depth. PC78 (talk) 18:23, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

April 2009 Newsletter

Main page: Wikipedia:WikiProject Films/Outreach/April 2009 Newsletter

The newsletter should be rolled out in the next day or two. We need to fill out the "Did You Know?" section; I would have done it myself but was not sure from where to copy the actual DYK hooks. We also need to add the newly signed-up members and add members who have received the WikiProject Films Award. (How have we determined before who got it in the past month?) I intend to showcase the agenda to the community to show what we have in the works and perhaps ask for their opinions about existing items or new items. I was hoping to get an unassessed articles checklist together for this newsletter, but we can save it for another time. Any ideas about what else to include? —Erik (talk • contrib) 16:27, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

I added the new members...hopefully I did it right? Two people signed themselves up as inactive members, so wasn't sure if they should be included or not, but when ahead and added. -- AnmaFinotera (talk · contribs) 16:35, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

I think this is what needs to be looked at... it's a transcluded page of the one you looked at. —Erik (talk • contrib) 16:48, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

*doh* I forgot that is transcluded! Will fix :) -- AnmaFinotera (talk · contribs) 16:54, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

For the DYKs, should we mention that one of our hooks, for The Story of Menstruation was one of the most viewed DYK's for April with 17,000 views per Wikipedia:DYKSTATS#April_2009? -- AnmaFinotera (talk · contribs) 17:02, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Sure, why not? :) Thanks for adding the new participants! Do you know where to get the DYK hooks? I think PC78 pulled them together for Nehrams2020 for the previous newsletter... —Erik (talk • contrib) 17:11, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

No problem. Still hunting around to see if there is an easier way beyond going to each individual archive for the DYKs, unless PC78 wants to do it this month too :D. Looks like the hooks are all available one one page in the monthly archive...now its just a matter of finding the film ones.-- AnmaFinotera (talk · contribs) 17:25, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

I went to each respective film article to get the DYKs for last month's newsletter. It took me longer because I was updating the article history of each article as well. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 17:29, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

That's what I don't understand... the talk pages don't seem to have the DYK hooks themselves, just the DYK notices. Unless I'm missing something? —Erik (talk • contrib) 17:31, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

What I did was look at the date it passed, search the DYK archives, and then provide a link in the article history so it can be viewed by readers later. I'm starting right now, and will begin updating/expanding the newsletter. I'll send it out tonight so be sure to add any other details you want in the newsletter before then. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 17:35, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Absence

Hello, everyone! Hope that the summer is going well for all. Please excuse me for my lack of coordinator-related involvement; I've been coming off graduation and preparing for the transition to the next phase of my life. :) I will be gone nearly all of June, so wanted to give everyone the heads-up. Please feel free to carry on discussions about the WikiProject, whether or not it is on the agenda. :) I hope to come back soon enough so we can at least check off some objectives! —Erik (talk • contrib) 14:56, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Activities?

Really quiet while Erik is gone, so thought I'd poke us to see if anyone is working on anything at the moment or wants to get something going? For myself, I've been aiding in the GA sweeps for the anime/manga and films category. During this process, several film articles have already been delisted for lack of attention or enough attention. I hate to see so many film articles delisted when several could be kept if there was a spurt of coordinate/concentrated effort, particularly from our more experienced editors. Any thoughts on how we can better generate interest/attention here?

In mild boredum (and to continue getting experienced with AWB), I've started going through and doing the "Retagging all instances of {{FilmsWikiProject}} to {{Film}}. Very low-priority." from the One-Time Tasks thing (as well as removing outdated importance tags while I'm at it). There are approximately 500-600 talk pages with the old links, so not a huge task, just a little time consuming. :) Someone has posted a note in the main project talk that there are approximately 70 film articles that are currently uncategorized. Any takers on running through those and putting in some basic cats? -- AnmaFinotera (talk · contribs) 22:16, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

I've actually already been working on the retagging task for some time, but it's always nice to have another helping hand! Additionally, I've secured the help of Jarry from the Bot Requests page in making us automated tools to detect WP Film/WP Biography cross-tags, as well as redirects that are still tagged on the talk pages. (In both of these cases, the vast majority of instances should be de-tagged.) These new tools can be found under Category:Incorrectly tagged WikiProject Films articles. Girolamo Savonarola (talk) 01:58, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Ah, that explains why there were so few :) Its now down to 328, woo hoo! I had noticed you were removing the importance tags, though took me awhile to catch on that importance had been removed from the project box *doh* Will the bot be able to help with that (cause there are still well over 9000 of those!)? -- AnmaFinotera (talk · contribs) 02:03, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

The bot would likely need to search within the film banner and find any occurrences of "importance=low", "importance=high", etc. and just remove them. I'm sure there must be some bot that has done this in the past or something similar to it. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 04:31, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

I've already asked BOTREQ - they won't approve bots to delete deprecated parameters, as it's regarded as frivolous work, IIRC. In the meantime, there's Category:Film banners using the importance parameter, which is nearly 10,000 strong at the moment. (Ouch.) Girolamo Savonarola (talk) 14:36, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Update: Alternative text, annual reviews, and additional activities

All coordinators should be aware of the alternative text for images guideline that is new to WikiProject Films. Please read the guideline to understand what it entails; I outlined the guideline to the community at large here. I incorporated alternative text at Fight Club (currently at FAC) and encouraged similar incorporation at Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, which I reviewed as a Good Article. We should look backward at the WikiProject's Good and Featured Articles and incorporate alternative text there. My proposal is to message the primary editors of such articles (as identified at our spotlight page) and ask them to write out the text. We can consolidate multiple articles to be addressed in one message to the editor. For example, I contributed to Doomsday (film) and Hancock (film), so a message to me can mention both of them. I also plan to explain the guideline in next month's newsletter and ask people to include alternative text for film articles. Do others agree with this proposal?

Nehrams2020 has been performing GA Sweeps, and there are quite a few Good Articles that have been demoted. In addition, some of WikiProject Films's older Featured Articles were nominated for Featured Article Review, and as far as I know, they have all been delisted. This WikiProject has raised the bar since then, and we should preserve the quality of our more recent Good and Featured Articles. I propose an annual review of articles that were elevated to Good or Featured status in 2008 at the earliest. The review would be comparing the article's revision the date it was elevated to its revision a year later. For example, Changeling (film) was promoted as a Featured Article on April 26, 2009. We can review it on April 26, 2010, on April 26, 2011, and so forth. This way we can check to see if an article's quality has degraded, and we can take the steps to fix it. Some fixes may be to grammatical errors, to uncited information inserted in otherwise cited passages, or poor presentation of newly added information. The best way to be notified of such annual reviews may be a bot that notifies WT:FILM of the date, such as "It has been a year since Changeling was last reviewed. Please compare diffs between today and a year ago and ensure that the article quality is still maintained." Someone can step in, make fixes, and mark the discussion {{Resolved}} to "close" it. With this process, we can take good care of our articles even as time goes by. Thoughts on this?

Lastly, I want to reiterate Collectonian's message above about doing activities together to clean up problems with articles under WikiProject Films. Two things I've done recently are assessing some unassessed articles and going through Category:Screenshots of films to see if screenshots comply with WP:FILMNFI. I had planned to do 50 unassessed articles a day, but it was not too motivating to do on my own. For screenshots, a lot of articles tend to have them without really anything in the article body, so I've removed them. I try not to do this too often because I don't want to be too much of a fair use hound, but if others have ideas of approaching this category, please share. Another note about screenshots: Some TV screenshots are inappropriately marked as film screenshots. In these cases, {{Non-free film screenshot}} should be replaced with {{Non-free television screenshot}} on the description page. So for unassessed articles, screenshots, or anything else, I'd like to start a group initiative. —Erik (talk • contrib) 18:26, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

The way you worded that sentence, it sounds like "Nehrams2020=demoted GAs". It almost looks like I'm trying to delist all of our GAs! That's definitely not the case, but we still have about ~40 film articles that need to be reviewed for Sweeps. I'm currently not focusing on Sweeps anymore (except for ones I have open), so other reviewers will be reviewing those film articles. It is a good idea to check on the film articles at least once a year. I already try to do that with my articles and do some cleanup/updates but if we were to do that for all of our spotlight articles it would help in preventing future delistings. If independent editors reviewed each other's articles, that would probably work best. Concerning the alt text, it would be a good idea to contact the main editors. I'll get to my articles this week. Perhaps we should start the tag and assess drive soon? I know I've been putting that off, but we should start it in the next few months. This would allow us to focus on multiple issues included tagging for classes, other parameters, check over the images, and look at other issues. This would hopefully be a better focus instead of just dealing with the screenshots by themselves (AWB counted over 8,000 film screenshots). Is this something we want to start soon or do we want to put it off further? --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 01:23, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Didn't mean to make it sound that way, Nehrams! :) Only mentioned you as the one coordinator participating in the sweeps. [Okay, Collectonian, too.] The sweeps in general, though, seem to reflect that Good Articles about films deteriorate in quality. Is that fair to assess, Nehrams, based on what you have seen?

I would be willing to do the tag and assess drive now. Depends on if the other coordinators are available to do it, too. Do we have any kind of checklist for the drive? That way, we know what to do for each article and be consistent about it. —Erik (talk • contrib) 01:39, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

I was just kidding, it just made for a funny connection. Article definitely deteriorate as the main editors focus on other articles (my earlier film GAs are noticeably different than more recent ones). Fans/critics of the films throw in major plot expansions, poor sources, trivial details, and vandalize existing content. In addition, guidelines are always changing, so earlier articles are lacking in certain aspects. A combination of this over time causes the article to deteriorate. For the tag and assess drive, I have two sandbox pages (User:Nehrams2020/Sandbox and User:Nehrams2020/Sandbox2) when I first started working on it back in December. Feel free to move them to project space if interested. Obviously we would need to expand on the instructions based on what we want to focus on. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 02:21, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Agree with the proposal re Alt. I only looked over the notice earlier, and didn't realize it was added as an FAC criteria already! That was fast. I've also been doing GA Sweeps and delisted pretty much every film one I hit due to lack of response and fixing of issues. :P I'm hoping to focus more on film ones in the coming weeks now that I'm almost done the anime/manga category. I like the idea of an annual review though. Being more proactive in this might have helped avoid so many delistings. It would also be good if we could find more ways to up the enthusiasm/response to current GARs. As noted, all of the ones I've done have failed due more to no response than because of overwhelming problems. Finally I also think the group initiative is a good idea. Nehram's suggestion of making it part of the tag/assess seems like a great way to get multiple, related tasks done at once.-- AnmaFinotera (talk · contribs) 01:34, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Looking at your sub-pages, Nehrams, the drive looks very much in place! I am trying to visualize the range adoptions, though... what does this mean? If multiple editors work on certain ranges of unassessed articles, aren't the ranges affected by others' shrinking? A specific example of what one editor can do might help me understand. —Erik (talk • contrib) 17:09, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

The ranges are for users to adopt 100-200 (this can be modified) articles so that there isn't overlap on the same articles being assessed. If we're only looking to review our unassessed, stub, and start class articles, there are currently around 50,700 articles. So we can develop ranges that we think users may be comfortable with such as 100, 200, 500, etc. As each user finishes a range, it is struck and they are free to go on to another set. The ranges will also be pre-determined (basically a screenshot of all of the articles at the start of the drive, and splitting them up into individual ranges). I had asked the coordinator of the military history's tag and assess drive, and he would be able to help us develop the ranges. The last time that all articles were reviewed a few years ago, we just used the film articles by quality lists. If we were to do that this time, it would shrink/expand as new articles were created/deleted, which would create overlap. The drive will likely take months (hopefully not years) which of course is based on the number of reviewers we can get to help out. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 17:35, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Looking over the worklist what we can do is just record the revision of a certain date for each section (after the first three since they include the FA/GA/B-class articles) and use those as our ranges. Each one has a range of 350 articles. We can put those into new lists for the reviewer to strike through the articles s/he reviews to keep up with his/her progress. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 17:38, 21 July 2009 (UTC)