Wikipedia talk:WikiProject/Archive 4

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Archive 4

Deletion of Wikipedia redirect

Someone saw fit to delete the redirect Wikiproject as it is a cross-namespace redirect. Unless there is a bot which can go through and fix all of the affected articles that get red-inked as a result, can I ask what benefit this action is meant to deliver? (If there is such a bot, why hasn't it been deployed?) Manning 02:36, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Microformats

Please see Wikipedia:WikiProject Microformats, just created. Andy Mabbett 12:22, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

I could do with some assistance there, please, not least in formatting and advertising the project pages. Thank you. Andy Mabbett 11:51, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

This looks like a one editor project to advertise a product[1] of questionable notability, and potential WP:COI Signed Jeepday 14:56, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Then how come there are several other editors, already helping to build microformats into Wikipedia templates? What "product" do you think I'm advertising? Since when was notability a criteria for discussion on talk pages? WP:AGF! Andy Mabbett 15:42, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Sample chess game

FYI – the arguments look valid, but someone may need to do the transwiki, and correct the links in Chess and elsewhere. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:02, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Campaign to create hundreds of new WikiProjects

It appears the User:Patricknoddy may be undertaking a campaign to create hundreds of new WikiProjects alphabetically beginning with the letter "A" (Wikipedia:WikiProject Abkhazia, Wikipedia:WikiProject Afghanistan, Wikipedia:WikiProject Åland Islands, Wikipedia:WikiProject Albania, Wikipedia:WikiProject Algeria), He is then requesting to have these WikiProjects be populated by bots (request made here). I would like to have a discussion here whether this is a good idea. I can foresee substantial issues with WikiProjects being created which don't really have any interested participants. Any reactions? Spamreporter1 15:26, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

I think a demonstration that users are willing to join a project would be a good idea before creating them. Though I don't see anything wrong with preemptively categorizing such articles. HighInBC ^{(Need help? Ask me)} 15:56, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Sorry – not sure what "preemptively categorizing such articles" refers to? Simply creating a list of categories relating to that country? Those category lists presumably are already collected by looking at the subcategories listed under the category name. So, with apologies, could you give me more details about your thinking? Spamreporter1 16:03, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

One of the ideas of the project template is to categorize everything that falls into the scope of the project into a single category. Even if such a project has no demand, it may in the future, and the pre-categorization may help. No need for the actual project template though until there is a project, just the category will do. I don't really mind one way or another though. HighInBC ^{(Need help? Ask me)} 16:10, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Such pre categorisation through bots is not a good idea. Taking a blanket category like Category:Afghanistan and then tagging all its subcategories with the project tag is likely to result in too many false positives. Please see related discussion here. The situation occurred because of taking very broad parent categories and then tagging all subcategories. — Lost^(talk) 17:23, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Valid point, I don't know too much about the intricacies of categorization. HighInBC ^{(Need help? Ask me)} 17:26, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Folks, before we get too caught up in the details of Patricknoddy's Afghanistan issues and the intricacies of categorization, is there a consensus to ask him to stop creating these blank WikiProject pages which don't have active users, and then asking that they be populated by bots? Or is that two separate questions? Spamreporter1 17:43, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Keeping the bot request apart, it may be a good idea if he was creating a related set of projects. But if he is going about it alphabetically and is just going to create pages without any defined scope, I would be against it. If he's willing to put some commitment to it and plans to maintain the projects, I dont see a problem — Lost^(talk) 17:52, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

What I am meaning to do is that if a bot could put "scope templates" on certain talk pages. I am also willing to commit myself to these projects. - Patricknoddy (talk · contribs) 1:59pm, February 4, 2007

{{WikiProject Afghanistan}}, this is what I mean. - Patricknoddy (talk · contribs) 2:02pm, February 4, 2007

I guess here are my concerns: The creator of a WikiProject page I believe should be someone who is already seriously involved in a topic -- that is, someone who has been a regular contributor to the topic, with real knowledge about the topic. That creator can then intelligently monitor the page, recruit others that he/she knows, recognize the work of trolls, suggest projects, etc. With all due respect, it doesn't seem like a well-meaning user like Patricknoddy actually does have a long-standing track record of contributions to Abkazia, Afghanistan, Åland Islands, Albania, and Algeria (if he does have such a record, I will stand corrected).

Despite statements of good intentions (like that above), statements of commitment really need to be backed up by a history of prior contributions to the field. This is not a hard and fast requirement, of course, but a rule of thumb.

These concerns are amplified by the observation that Patricknoddy (judging from these first five creations) appeared to be undertaking a alphabetic pattern of setting up hundreds of WikiProject pages A through Z. It didn't seem that he would have the ability to really properly follow through and monitor the pages (despite statements of good intentions and commitment).

These concerns were still further amplified by using bots to populate the WikiProjects (by "populate" I mean using bots to add the Project template to the talk pages of thousands of articles per project). I have nothing against using bots to do this task in general. However, here, it appeared that a relatively uninformed (but well-intended) user, was setting up hundreds of WikiProjects, and then using bots to add thousands of templates per project, resulting in (do the math) hundreds of thousands of talk pages being affected . . . well, you can see why I asked for a discussion on this plan as a concept first.

Does anyone other than Patricknoddy think that this plan is a good idea? Spamreporter1 06:55, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

If no one is interested other than creating a starting page and a hand full of templates it will likely find itself at WP:MFD, where many WikiProjects have gone to. Keep in mind, if a WikiProject actually has something of value other than the basic generic WikiProject content, it will usually be marked as inactive.. but so many times it's not even that and/or is a bad/very narrow scope. Even if the idea itself isn't bad or narrow, I do see harm in preemptively choosing groupings of articles. WikiProject scopes can come from many things, such as a number of machines used in a particular industry or a collection of poems seen in plays. It's much better to allow these scopes and groupings to occur naturally. -- Ned Scott 07:03, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

I don't think its a good idea. Its better if projects are started by humans with an intrest. Patricknoddy is already committed to dozens of projects, so I don't see that he would be able to make a good contribution to 100's of them. That is just spreading too thin. But the issue of a bot adding pages to a project seems to be rasonable, provided that it is a project with people willing to work on all those pages! Mr Patricknoddy has joined up with one of the projects I belong to, so it would be appreciated if he could put some time into working on it! GB 04:04, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Rename Wikipedia:Wikiproject to Project: or Wikiproject

We can finally rename the Wikiproject namespace, if people want to do so. Please chime in with your opinions here or on wikien. Regards. -Ste|vertigo 09:31, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm not really sure I see the point, quite honestly. It'll be an unbelievable amount of work for seemingly little benefit; what, exactly, is the problem with having them in the Wikipedia: namespace, along with all the other internal processes and groups? Kirill Lokshin 13:12, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

It seems logical enough, but it almost seems to me that Portal: could/ought to be used instead of thise (pseudo-)namespace. Yes, I know there may be projects that don't want portals, well then they don't have to have much public content. But they're tightly coupled concepts, and so it'd both reduce redundancy and promote the development of quality portals. --Belg4mit 03:07, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Curious Question About Removing WikiProject Tags

Curiosity ... Is there a recognized protocol about adding or removing WikiProject tags from articles? There's a interesting experience going on over at WikiProject California and WikiProject Southern California.

Some time ago, WikiProject California members had placed their project tags on all articles about California cities. Those tags have been in place for some time. Recently certain members of WikiProject Southern California, after discussion on that project's talk page (only), decided to remove the WikiProject California tags for (almost all) Southern California cities, and replace the tags with WikiProject Southern California tags – only.

That is, the WikiProject Southern California members didn't simply add the WikiProject Southern California tag to Southern California cities, the WikiProject California tags were completely removed. This was done apparently without consultation with the WikiProject California members.

It would seem at first glance that all the cities in Southern California could appropriately remain as part of both WikiProject California and WikiProject Southern California – it is after all one state! There are many articles across Wikipedia which have multiple WikiProject tags.

I don't know what the answer is if there is a recognized protocol about the following:

• Is there a consensus here (or a guideline or policy) about who can add and who can remove WikiProject tags?

• Is there a consensus here (or a guideline or policy) about when an article can have more than one WikiProject tag?

Are there any observations that anyone in this group has about this situation? Spamreporter1 06:49, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Broadly speaking, the consensus (or gentleman's agreement among WikiProjects, really) has been:

• Properly-placed WikiProject tags are never removed; the only time they get taken off is if the article is deleted/merged/redirected/etc., or if it's not in scope of the project in the first place.
• It's perfectly normal for articles to have multiple WikiProject tags.

The real answer here would have been to set up something like {{WP India}}, with the child project's tag absorbed into the parent's. (Quite honestly, I don't understand what the point of having a Southern California project completely separate from the main California one is to begin with; but that's a broader issue.) Kirill Lokshin 06:59, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Note: The above comment has been copied by Spamreporter1 to the SoCal WikiProject's talk page.

The precident on the Wikipedia has always been to use only the most specific category for articles when there is a very clear hierachy between categories. This is true for Stubs and for Categories, and should also be true for WikiProjects as well. For further discussion, please see The argument for the migration from California to Southern California banners for SoCal articles on the SoCal WikiProject's talk page. BlankVerse 16:04, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Neither categories nor stubs are a good parallel here; the parent category is not harmed by being stripped of articles. The parent WikiProject, however, is; one of the major roles of WikiProject banners is as a recruitment tool, and thus having ones banner removed from articles inhibits a project's ability to actually get editors involved.

(Consider, for example, what happens when the hypothetical WikiProject Northern California starts up. The California project will, in a single stroke, lose the vast bulk of its tags; editors will hence function primarily as members of either NoCal or SoCal projects, with the "parent" project being largely defunct. See, for example, Wikipedia:WikiProject Music.)

Beyond all this, of course, is the simple matter that we have gone for a number of years without provoking turf wars between WikiProjects, and, frankly, I'm not particularly looking forward to starting them now. Not being a dick applies as much to entire projects as it does to individual editors; merely being "correct"—even if you were correct—is not a sufficient reason to go and make a nuisance of yourself in spite of people's complaints. Kirill Lokshin 16:52, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

The real issue there is that we have the two WikiProjects... One really should be a task force of the other one, and thus we solve the problem. We can apply this same logic to most of these kinds of situations. -- Ned Scott 06:43, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

While I understand Kirill's example, here's a different situation: WP:DIGI is a child of WP:ANIME. The majority of Digimon-related articles there is only the DIGI banner. On the "main" anime articles, both banners are shown, but not on articles for individual characters or "sub pages" related to the larger topics. The intro of the WP:DIGI page says "You may also be interested in joining our parent project, WikiProject Anime and manga, which is dedicated to all anime and manga articles on Wikipedia." There are also a few other links back to ANIME and other general fiction areas of Wikipedia. (no project is an island) WP:DIGI is also a child of WP:CVG, but WP:DIGI mostly deals with plot-driven stuff and doesn't share as many articles with CVG as it does with ANIME, so on those pages both banners are displayed. -- Ned Scott 06:52, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Basic geographical knowledge means that a "Southern California" project implies a "whole" or "Northern California" project. Articles don't need to have tags for every conceivable project: California State University, San Bernardino doesn't need to be tagged as WP:SOCAL, WP:CAL, and WP:USA, as well as WP:EDUCATION, WP:SCH, and WP:UNI. It can fall under the scope of any and all of these, but it doesn't need to be tagged as all. Sufficient corss-references to and "plugs" for other projects are a better way of gaining interest, membership, and participation for projects.

Projects should be small enough that their members can concentrate on what is important to that project: over 10,000 WP:CAL articles is not. I, frankly, am generally unknowledged in anything outside the scope of WP:SOCAL (with the exception of the Sequoia National Forest and area), and will rarely, if ever, be able to do more than scan a few articles for errors. But even that would require adding them to my growing watchlist, and/or taking time away from Southern California articles, which is really my interest in this state. Again, I think that cross-linking projects is a better way than multiple tags. —ScouterSig 15:00, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Ah, I found an example of where I had removed some project banners, Talk:Stargate SG-1#Templates at the top of this page. The Egypt one seems to have been added back.. and I'm tempted to remove it again (the show has been on for 10 years, and the Egyptian theme was really only big for the earlier years), but whatever. Removing the Colorado project banner is probably a better example of when to remove a banner. -- Ned Scott 07:00, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

There's an obvious difference between the occasional un-tagging of pages that aren't really in a project's scope (keeping in mind, though, that each project defines its own), and the systematic removal of tags from articles that a project considers to be in-scope, but that someone else thinks shouldn't be. Kirill Lokshin 13:22, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Several people have mentioned "sub-projects" that share the parent's banner; in particular WP:INDIA was mentioned as an example. I'm not familiar with how "sub-projects" work from a practical point of view – do the sub-projects have their own "sub-project page" analogous to "project pages?" Do "sub-projects" develop their own sense of community and camaraderie, like projects do? Are there "sub-project" tasks, like COTW?

If these sub-projects have all the benefits of projects, and we don't have to hassle about "who's tag" appears on which page, that may offer some of the best of both worlds.

Could I ask a contributor more knowledgeable about sub-projects to fill us in on how these actually work? Spamreporter1 17:17, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

This page isn't heavily watchlisted, so you may be better off asking at one of the projects that uses that system (e.g. India or Australia) directly; but, briefly, yes—unlike task forces, true sub-projects maintain a largely separate and autonomous setup. Kirill Lokshin 17:39, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

I'll follow up at those projects, and report back what I learn. Spamreporter1 18:19, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Responses from WikiProject Australia and WikiProject India

I have received the following responses to my inquiries to WikiProject Australia and WikiProject India about their "sub-project" structure:

Your question to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Australia

In reality, subprojects of WikiProject Australia are their own autonomous group with their own sense of community. Sub-projects of WP:AUS generally maintain themselves, however fall under the parent WikiProject Australia for WP:1.0 assessment purposes. Some Australian sub-projects fall outside of the parent project and have decided to assess their own aticles (an example is Wikipedia:WikiProject Football (soccer) in Australia, leading to the situation where a talk page becomes cluttered with many unneccessary templates. We're about to combine assessments for sub-projects into the master {{WP Australia}} template so that sub-projects need not create their own assessment scheme. The benefit of this is that sub-projects can assess their own articles, and their assessments contribute to provide an overall look at the state of Australia-related articles without fragmenting the results. You may want to look at WP:INDIA which has already adapted what we require. -- Longhair\^talk 19:45, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

We're try to change to adapt to editor's needs. Check back often, you never know what we've been up to until you take a look ;) -- —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Longhair (talk • contribs) 04:00, 17 February 2007 (UTC).

Your question to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject India

Our response will be similar to the Australian one above. I had initially copied their template and improved upon it.

1) Sub-projects work autonomously and have their own community. They have seperate project pages and discussion pages. See WP:KERALA.

2) COTW still works at the parent level since participation is low.

3) All sub-projects use the same project banner. For example, {{WP India|kerala=yes}} for an article that falls under the scope of India and Kerala.

4) The project banner creates assessment categories at individual project level as well as at the parent. Class tag is shared across projects. Since Importance could differ between sub-projects, we have separate importance tags for each project. For example, {{WP India|kerala=yes|class=FA|importance=High|kerala-importance=Top}} will put the article under Top importance for Kerala project and High for the India project.

5) Sub-projects are identified as workgroups on the talk page banner. For a few of our projects (Indian cinema), banner displays the sub-project in a separate box. For example, {{WP India|cinema=yes}} will generate two boxes, one for India and one for Cinema. This way, the sub-project gets more ad-space. See Talk:Aishwarya Rai. This is needed for topical projects that loosely integrate into the national project. Indian cinema has both India and Films as parents.

6) The parent project's menu bar is displayed on all sub-project pages. This will give visibility and help invite more participants into various sub-projects. In topical projects such as Indian cinema, the menu bar is trimmed down to a small box. The menu bar displays assessment statistics table of the project currently displayed. See WP:KERALA and WP:INCINE.

7) The automation department at the parent level supports all sub-projects. They help with automated talk page tagging.

This type of integration avoids redundancy and helps sub-projects concentrate on the article improvement than worry about templates and technical stuff.

Hope that helps. Regards, Ganeshk (talk) 03:38, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Summary of Inter-WikiProject discussion thus far

The question: Where there is a parent/descendent relationship between two WikiProjects (WPs), when should the descendant WP tag be the only tag that appears, and when should articles have both the parent and descendent tags?

The following is my (hopefully very brief) summary of the discussion thus far on the issue of when and whether WP tags should be removed, or whether articles should have two WP tags ("dual-tagged"). To use a (hypothetical) example when should the [[WP:OHIO]] tag be "dual-tagged" on all Ohio city articles, and when should the [[WP:WEST OHIO]] tag be the only tag that appears on Ohio city articles?

Option 1 – "Very limited dual-tagging." Just a few, the "most important," local articles are dual-tagged; all other local articles have only the descendent WP tag.

• Pro – promotes clarity, focus for the descendent WP; analogize to category structure: only the most local cat appears in the cat hierarchy; reduces conflict in assessment scales
• Con – parent WP is harmed by not being able to recruit or offer standards; analogy to category structure not valid, because senior cat is not harmed; no harm to local WP by dual-tagging

Option 2 – "Full dual-tagging." All articles within a relevant area have both parent and descendent tags.

• Pro – promotes cooperation between WP, allows both WP to recruit, does not harm descendent, avoids "tag revert wars" (no WP tags should be removed without consent of that WP)
• Con – creates tag-clutter and confusion; encourages inter-WP conflict; reduces ability of local WP to recruit

Option 3 – "Some dual-tagging." Middle-ground between Option 1 and Option 2 – a significant number (but not all) are dual-tagged.

• Pro – "best of both worlds"? Allows parent access to a significant number of articles, while giving descendent focus and clarity; "where to draw the line" is subject to express agreement between the WP
• Con – needlessly complex; will lead to endless debates about "where to draw the line"

Option 4 – "Project/Sub-project" structure. Avoids tagging controversy altogether by having local project be a "sub-project" (that is, it has its own page, COTW, etc., but not a separate tag) – see WP:AUSTRALIA and WP:INDIA as examples.

• Pro – this is the best of both worlds; both projects are able to have their own identity, community and tasks, without having to argue about tags; WPs are able to interact without worrying about "turf wars"
• Con – this makes it too difficult for the local WP to maintain its identity, and the local will wither into the parent

I have likely neglected some arguments (probably your favorite argument) pro and con – but the intent here is to summarize briefly the points of view that have been expressed thus far. Responses are being collected at WT:SOCAL and/or on this Talk page. Spamreporter1 15:40, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Note

To try to follow all discussions on this issue, you have to look at the talk pages for at least four different WikiProjects (California, SoCal, CITIES, and COUNCIL), as well as the talk page for Wikipedia:WikiProject, because the sockpuppet [2] Spamreporter1 has been copying different comments to the different pages without telling the different WikiProjects or the authors of those comments, and without identifying where the different comments came from. BlankVerse 14:38, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

The views of each of those Projects was solicited because each is affected by the topic. I have requested that any responses be condensed, and have assisted that process. People are going to respond where they want, and I'm trying to avoid disputes over where the conversation is going to take place, by performing the clerical act of copying responses. If anyone has a suggestion of a single place that all interested parties are comfortable watching and responding there, that would be a good solution. Spamreporter1 23:10, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

All done by a bot

I have to wonder if some of the extreme hostility and incivility that has been part of this discussion on this project's talk page, and some other project's talk pages is the result of some editors assuming that the SoCal WikiProject has been 'undoing' some editor's hard work. In reality, the tagging of almost all the article talk pages (on over 10,000 articles!) with the {{WikiProject California}} banner was done by a Bot, User:MetsBot. At the time, the bot's owner received quite a few complaints, and because of that quit doing any bot-tagging for WikiProjects. It really wasn't the bot's fault, but the fact that that some articles had been miscategorized (such as a couple of Oregon cities that probably some waggish vandal had categorized as California cities). BlankVerse 14:38, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Another option suggested

In an effort to keep the conversation condensed, the following suggestion was copied from here:

There is another option currently employed by WP:GER & its subprojects. Integrated tagging. The subproject is on a switch of the main banner. Agathoclea 08:26, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

TfD nomination of Template:WikiProjectBanners

Template:WikiProjectBanners has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. -- Ned Scott 08:03, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Wikia site WikiProject

I like to know if it is allowed or not to create a project page on a wikia site? If it is allowed, how is it done? Thanks. Sundogs 07:41, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

I would think it would be allowed. What kind of project did you have in mind? I've seen people do Wikipedia-Wikia cross collaboration before, and no one seemed to have a problem with it. -- Ned Scott 14:59, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Proposed template for talk pages of articles

While there have been attempts to solve the issues involving WikiProject banners, I have thought of something: the boxes are all very much repetitive: they all say the same thing about how there's a WikiProject and how if you need help they're around, etc. Besides, the only info people really care about is the evaluation. To help slim down on the amount of space needed, I created an alternative banner, which can be seen in application here (the actual template is here). As you can see, it lists that (a) there are WikiProjects involved in the article, (b) the evaluation stats for each listed WikiProject (c) optional notes, and (d) a short blurb on what WikiProjects are all about. At the moment, the template has capacity to store information on five WikiProject; this can be expanded. While some WikiProjects, like WP Biography, are too large and unique to be adapted into a generic template, most projects should be able to make do with this. Please improve wherever possible, and give opinions. —Signed, your friendly neighborhood MessedRocker. 09:01, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Basically sound idea for all but the largest projects, I think. There's a lot of multiply tagged pages, hit and run tagging, projects with near overlapping scope, etc etc. Something like this might help.

On the downside, I've put a lot of work into templates like {{WPBeatles}}, {{WPKLF}} (and {{WPBiography}}, but you said that's safe), to make them imitate other templates and to provide info and features for our tightly focussed projects. Probably lots of other folks will have done the same with their templates. --kingboyk 09:31, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

If you haven't noticed, there's an optional "notes" feature where people can add additional detail if they so wish. They could take advantage of this by transcluding some sort of to-do template in the relevant notes section. In any case, if you see room for improvement, please go ahead. —Signed, your friendly neighborhood MessedRocker. 16:24, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

It sounds like you have given this a lot of thought and put some work into it. But I think you might have a mistaken assumption "Besides, the only info people really care about is the evaluation." I for one care about the project summarization as it gives me an idea what the project is about, when I stumble across it. If people really only cared about the evaluation you would not need a template on the talk page, just a list someplace to keep track of it. I believe the template has two uses and the other is to inform and potentially attract editors to the project. Jeepday 12:46, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Ahh, well then it's just me who only cares about the evaluations. :) In any case, I'm sure that if someone clicks on the project name they should be able to get more information. —Signed, your friendly neighborhood MessedRocker. 16:24, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Personally I'd like us to change our banner concept altogether. I think it would be great to have a collapsable space where one can list (with a short optional summary) any relevant page/ area to that article. Just put it in the whole area instead of separating things by boxes and such. Then guidelines can easily be found as well as WikiProjects that may be of help. -- Ned Scott 14:58, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

If you'd like to make the box collapsable, go ahead. —Signed, your friendly neighborhood MessedRocker. 16:24, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

The obvious problem, which you've noted, is that this simply can't replace any of the more complex templates; given how many fall into that category, I'm not convinced that this template would be worth using in practical terms. Kirill Lokshin 16:52, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree with the comment about this template's inability to replace the more complex templates. Having said that, though, I personally wouldn't see any objections to using it for projects which either

• (1) do not use an existing banner,
• (2) do not currently engage in assessments, or
• (3) lack any dependent subprojects (like task forces).

For projects of that type, I would see no objections to using such a template, particularly if by doing more of the articles that fall within their scope are tagged than might otherwise be the case. Maybe it could be used in those instances. It might be particularly useful for either smaller projects or projects that are just starting out. Then, later, if they were to develop a separate template, it would be comparatively simple to remove their info from the template above when adding their own template. John Carter 13:41, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Good point. I think we should be able to make all the simpler projects into that one template. Until we can smoothly allow for more complicated features, the WikiProjects with complex templates can keep their own template. I know WikiProject Pharmacology only does article evaluation at this point, so they're a good candidate. —Signed, your friendly neighborhood MessedRocker. 03:19, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

{{WikiProjectBannerShell}} has much of the above already coded and working. -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 05:07, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

That template in my opinion is just a collapsable box. It does nothing to actually condense the space. —Signed, your friendly neighborhood MessedRocker. 10:10, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Both of those templates ({{WikiProjectBanners}} and {{WikiProjectBannerShell}}) are collapsible boxes. They do quite a bit to condense the space, though the content still is there, so bandwidth isn't decreased. -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 03:53, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

So here is another essential thread that I just discover. How many projects have been informed directly about this discussion before we find our project listed in one of the templates as having adopted it? I am trying to comment in WP Council talk, in WP Films talk (where a poll just started), on the way I learn there is also a guide about all this in some sub-page but haven't managed to locate it yet. I don't want to point an accusing finger to anyone, but it seems mostly WP Banner members have done all the talking and individual projects are faced with fragmented discussions where there are mostly technical issues discussed. In the meanwhile all our care to create project templates which make easily visible some information that we feel should be easily visible are about to get hidden and we will soon have to be pressing on several "show" buttons to get the full picture. If it's too late for projects to properly join in the implementation decision, I would like to have available for everyone a javascript that can be installed in our monobooks and by which the "show" option is chosen by default when we hit a talk page with this all-in-one Banner template. For many of us this is an inconvenience, although for some it may seem nice and tidy. Hoverfish Talk 08:32, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

A Wikiproject for wikiprojects?

Who here is into or knows if it is "legal" to create a wikiprojects for wikiprojects; if anyone is interested or has general information please let me know on my talk page. Lighthead 03:36, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

You mean like WP:COUNCIL? ;-) Kirill Lokshin 03:41, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm very concerned by the fact that there isn't a Wikiproject established for the maintainance of WP:COUNCIL though. I'll create a Wikiproject to oversee the process of creating a Wikiproject to maintain WP:COUNCIL. Seems like the smartest move. Manning 04:31, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject banners and scopes

Please see discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject reform#The scope, regarding WikiProject scopes getting off track. -- Ned Scott 00:35, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Participant lists

Does anyone consider the participant lists to be an issue in that they quickly become out of date? There are projects that I follow but am not a 'member' of where I see many people just signing up without actually doing anything, and the are many members who are on lists but haven't edited Wikipedia for months or years. I'm not proposing to get rid of the lists entirely, but is there something that could be done about it? What actions should I take regarding inactive members – should I leave a note on their talk page and remove them if I don't get a response? Should a guideline be added for this and situations, e.g. Template:Maintained users? Richard001 07:01, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

If it's a big deal, just create a second list of inactive members and move people there if they haven't edited for a few months. Kirill Lokshin 15:33, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

I mostly agree. I generally much prefer the method seen at Wikipedia:WikiProject Lists#Participants, which uses category/userbox to group participants.

Then the "joiners" (editors who add their name to multiple project lists without ever contributing) don't clutter watchlists or make obese page sections. The only thing an actual "list" of participants might be useful for, is if Credentials are noted for individuals who have specialized knowledge to contribute to an area. E.g. Wikipedia:WikiProject Cats#Participants is pointless page-filler, with only a single informative entry (#70. Flubeca).

Or e.g. Wikipedia:WikiProject Council#Participants is full of information, but most of that would be a lot more useful if it were part of the WikiProject Directory listing, like how the "creators/maintainers" are listed at Wikipedia:Portal/Directory. Thoughts? --Quiddity 17:27, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Well, I suspect that varies quite a bit among different projects; compare, for example, Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Members. (But we've been asking people to annotate the list since the beginning, which many projects don't explicitly do.) Kirill Lokshin 17:45, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject memberships

An interesting discussion has popped up between myself and another user about WikiProjects and the authority of "members". Basically, is "membership" required for an editor to be involved in project-level tasks and decision making? See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject reform#Membership authority. -- Ned Scott 05:04, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Title

I notice that a lot of projects begin with a section entitled 'Title', followed of course by the project title. Am I the only one who finds this a little redundant? What exactly is the point of having a section stating the project's title? Is it not adequate that the title is already at the top of the page, and (presumably) at the top of the web browser as well? It seems to be rather strange that so many projects do this. I can understand that it could have spread by people just copying the format of other projects, but do we need to continue doing this? Richard001 03:08, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Snake Project

Can someone please post the Snake Project where it belongs so people can find and help out. I can't cause this page makes really no since to me. Thx, oh, and information can be found on my userpage. §→Nikro 02:47, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Dinosaurs

This WikiProject is actively seeking recruitment and is in danger of foundering. Although there are 75 editors signed up on the participants page, there are only around six editors actively reverting vandalism, adding and refining content, and working on collaborations, and this has been the case for over a year. Real life may call some of these editors away at any time, leaving this project defunct, and hundreds of articles open to vandalism and inaccuracies.

If you are interested in improving Wikipedia's dinosaur coverage, whether you are a professional or amateur, please consider signing up and actively participating on WP:DINO. Firsfron of Ronchester 19:37, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

I try to trim participants down if any members have been inactive for say 6 months or so – it can become a little misleading otherwise. It would be better if there was an automated process to do it, but with popups it's not too bad. Richard001 22:30, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the advice, Richard. I wasn't sure what the courtesy length should be. I'd hate to offend someone who was inactive for a while, and came back to find themselves "kicked out" (so to speak). Firsfron of Ronchester 06:03, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

Does signing up to a WikiProject have to mean commitment to that subject to a degree?

Just curious – what's to stop me signing up to twenty WikiProjects and not editing articles on many of them?--h i s ^{s p a c e} _{r e s e a r c h} 15:49, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Only your conscience. - X201

Pretty much. Nobody is going to stop you; but it's a pretty pointless thing to do, really, as merely signing up for a project doesn't confer any benefits on the person doing so. Kirill Lokshin 16:16, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Wikiproject categorization of templates

I'm currently working on categorizing templates into the Category:Wikipedia templates subcategories. Some wikiprojects have been flagging templates as falling under their project, resulting in categories such as Category:Scouting templates. Now, that's great – but some wikiprojects categorize the template talk pages, rather than the templates directly. That means that they're incompatible with the way I (and other people) have been categorizing templates.

There are several options here that I can think of:

1. The two systems remain separate. That will result in a fair bit of duplicated effort, so from my point of view isn't ideal.
2. The current wikiproject template categorization changes into something compatible with the Category:Wikipedia templates setup. Category:Astronomical templates, which I have been involved with setting up, is a good example of this.

I'm of the opinion that the second of these is best. What do people here (e.g. you, the person reading this) think? Mike Peel 17:05, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

A consistent categorization procedure is much better. Richard001 09:23, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Keep in mind that at least part of the talk-page categorization is an automatically generated side-effect of the assessment system, and can't really be moved anywhere else. Kirill 16:03, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Mike, the problem is you're thinking one schema, and there are other needs you don't and haven't incorporated into your world view. You and David Kernow had and have one way of looking at template cats... by namespace used in and/or type of use... but if someone wants to collect a bunch of general purpose templates that might be a good browsing category to jar the brain memories in say "miscellaneous templates", that doesn't detract from or eliminate your scheme. The two methods can exist side by side... all it needs is for you to stop deleting other schemes and optimize yours and stop messing with the memories of those who are used to the other schemes.

Eliminating project templates on talk pages is very contraindicated, and all but impossible. IIRC, project guidelines are that such are to be on talk pages so article categories are navigable and relevant, not administrative. Since project templates are used for maintaining the articles, we're stuck with the talk pages.

OTOH, I see you're talking about them effectively categorizing the talk page of a template... that I think we can do without, as there is no need. No reason a project can't use the same technique within a noinclude block as I did with Template:Interwikitmp-grp(edit talk links history)... including a method I've proofed for using it on the /doc pages. Best regards (Have a happy fourth!) // FrankB 03:20, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

On further poking around, I think you just have to hold your nose and thank the Lord these enthusiasts have at least categorized in some manner. Take for example: this... and likely dozens of others. It's unlikely (Since attaining Eagle is no mean feat, and scouting is no where near as popular as it once was--too many computers and televisions!) that more than one or two people will have the credential or the desire to use such a user box, but it does no harm to have the user boxes. Shrug. To clean this up, I'd ask the wikiproject to move their template into the project's templates as I noted above. There is no need of it to be on the talk page in template space. But then, one's like these aren't in template space anyway, and how a project uses it's categories is hardly under your purview (unless you have far more free time than I think! <g>. I'd worry about widespread widely used templates and let the trash and geegaws slide with a sigh. Even if you should somehow by some samsonian feat manage perfection, someone will come along in five minutes and change something since this is a wiki, and entropy always increases... perfection is far too organized to last! Cheers// FrankB 03:54, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Any Very Active/Freindly WikiProjects

Hi does any know of any very active/friendly wikiprojects(Prefrably ones to do with sport(Netball in particular))? --Chris ^g 10:32, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

No idea if they're friendly, but there's been some recent activity at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Basketball. -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 13:32, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Wikiproject tags on articles instead of talk pages?

Please look at this disputed edit: [3]. This is a large, Wikiproject related tag that is being placed on articles for the period of one week as a more specific version of the {{underconstruction}} tag. Is this appropriate? In my mind, it's fine for the talk page but I don't think it should be on the article itself. Comments? -- MisterHand (Talk to the Hand|Contribs) 20:16, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Unless the tag is modified, it is inappropriate as it self-references. (→O - RLY?) 20:19, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

WP:CHICOTW is the only WP:CO that focuses on articles (or redlinks) with sufficiently sparse text to still be eligible for WP:DYK. As such a typical article undergoes a much more radical change during the week under our care and a {{underconstruction}} tag would ordinarily be appropriate. In order to be more specific about why the page is undergoing great change we use our own template. The template has an explanation of why it is not a violation of WP:ASR in this case.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/tcfkaWCDbwincowtchatlotpsoplrttaDCLaM) 20:25, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Well, this is a talk page template being used on the main space. I think that it should be kept in the talk area, and not on the main page. If you have the underconstruction, a person can simply go to the talk page and find out why it is under construction. It shouldn't be on the mainpage.--Kranar drogin 23:05, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

I can't really remember, but I think other groups have tagged COTWs like this as well. I'm not sure how many still do that. A note about the COTW might be ok if it was smaller. -- Ned Scott 23:36, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

The explanation provided in the HTML comment is not sufficient to explain why it doesn't self-reference. The template currently self-references because of the link to the project page that clearly indicates a self-reference. Linking straight to WikiProject Chicago isn't going to cut it without removing information about the project (Wikipedia:WikiProject Chicago is the raw link which text needs to be changed). (→O - RLY?) 00:33, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Self-references aren't a concern for clean-up tags. Originally, all clean-up tags were on the talk page, and they all can be considered self-references. For a week-long note, it's not really an issue (as long as it isn't as huge). -- Ned Scott 00:44, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Its redundant. I have said it before and I will say it again. If you want to use the underconstruction template, use it. Why does this project talk page template keep turning up in the main space. This should stop, clearly its disruptive. Just look at this discussion, valuable time I could have used editing an article. IvoShandor 02:49, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Oh come off it, just because we discussed something does not make it disruptive. -- Ned Scott 04:04, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

I had designed this to be more informative than the underconstruction tag. If the underconstruction tag is appropriate this was suppose to be better. As far as being disruptive, a disruptive tag encourages the reader looking for one sort of piece of information to look for another. The purpose of this template is to say that what they are looking for is not really a complete thought. I concede it may be inappropriate to reference the entire project while the reason is just the COTW. That point is taken well. I will remove the project reference, but the collaboration part should remain for explanatory reasons.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/tcfkaWCDbwincowtchatlotpsoplrttaDCLaM) 14:29, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

New Template:Project header, like Template:Guideline, Template:Essay, etc.

There's a new {{Project}} header, based on {{Guideline}}, {{Essay}}, {{Policy}}, and the like, and serving the same purpose, for WikiProject's main pages. It absorbs a lot of the boilerplate WikiProject lead-section wording, so that projects can have more customized introductions more easily, without over-editing doing away with important links and information at page-top. Please deploy on your projects. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 05:06, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Seems alright to me. -- Ned Scott 07:56, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Largest WPs by listed participants?

Is this info tracked anywhere? I just joined MILHIST which has ~600 which seems much larger than the other ones I'm currently in. BrokenSphere^{Msg me} 01:01, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Is that very accurate though? I've seen a lot of projects with a reasonable list of participants with no actual activity. Richard001 11:48, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

That would be even harder to track, which is why the roster would have to suffice for these purposes. BrokenSphere^{Msg me} 14:49, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure if it could be done – it would be hard to make a bot that could work out such information, so someone doing it manually is probably the only option. Perhaps we should have a yearly census and clean out of members who have long been inactive? Richard001 07:22, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Actually, I got SatyrBot to do it :) It goes through the projects listed at Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory. Then it finds out if there's a /members or /participants page. Then it counts the number of links to user-space, which it defines as the number of members of the project.

It's not perfect. For instance, the biggest issue is that if there's an "inactive members" section on the page, it doesn't know how to subtract those. And if anyone (who isn't a member) signs the page, it counts them as a member. But as a rough estimate, it works.

Current numbers for the largest 20 projects:

1. Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history (883)
2. Wikipedia:WikiProject Films (492)
3. Wikipedia:WikiProject Comics (455)
4. Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography (382)
5. Wikipedia:WikiProject Football (339)
6. Wikipedia:WikiProject Harry Potter (272)
7. Wikipedia:WikiProject Novels (262)
8. Wikipedia:WikiProject Australia (245)
9. Wikipedia:WikiProject India (242)
10. Wikipedia:WikiProject Japan (236)
11. Wikipedia:WikiProject LGBT studies (234)
12. Wikipedia:WikiProject Aircraft (217)
13. Wikipedia:WikiProject Catholicism (207)
14. Wikipedia:WikiProject Doctor Who (207)
15. Wikipedia:WikiProject Judaism (196)
16. Wikipedia:WikiProject Nintendo (193)
17. Wikipedia:WikiProject Cricket (188)
18. Wikipedia:WikiProject Architecture (172)
19. Wikipedia:WikiProject Star Wars (172)

You can see it in action by going to http://www.radiantweb.net/ian/WikiProjectTop20.php -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 15:07, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

That is very cool; is this info put anywhere for interest/historical purposes or did you just run it now? :)

The thing with clearing out inactive members is that you would have to check each member's record and determine when their last contributions were to a particular WP, and what if an article falls within the scope of multiple? I don't know about you, but it seems like a thankless task do to do this for likely hundreds of listed participants. BrokenSphere^{Msg me} 17:48, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

It's easy enough to do for a small list with popups, though a bot would be necessary for something like those above. Richard001 00:15, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

Does this count categories? Such as Category:WikiProject Anime and manga participants. -- Ned Scott 21:36, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Project tags on the talk pages of redirects

What should be done to the talk page of a redirected article that contains one or more project tags? Should the tags remain or should they be removed (blanked, redirected, or deleted). Essentially, the question is whether redirects should appear in the various WikiProject X articles categories. – Black Falcon ^(Talk) 20:37, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

I'd remove them, but maybe place a category on the article to catch all the redirects under a given WikiProject. Keeping track of redirects can also be an important task for a project. I guess you could keep the banner on them and have a redirect= parameter, though.. hmm.. -- Ned Scott 21:33, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

I don't know of any project tags that have a "redirect=" parameter; however, I think I found a suitable solution: "class=NA", which places the talk page into Category:Non-article Comics pages. I don't believe that all project banners support a "class=NA" parameter, but this one does. – Black Falcon ^(Talk) 22:01, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

There's also the redirect project, which seems to be tagging everything. Richard001 08:35, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Category counter

At the request of Longhair I've set up a bot to count the number of articles in the Wikiproject Australia related categories and put that information on a Wikipedia page. This bot uses the database on the Toolserver and runs daily. Since I received a comment about it being useful for other Wikiprojects I'm mentioning it here. Information about using it is available at User:Erwin85/CatCount. --Erwin85 20:19, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

Example: Wikipedia:WikiProject Australia/BotStatistics/Sports. --Erwin85 20:37, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

WP:BIO/N

There is an ongoing discussion over on WP:BIO that you guys might be interested in. It is a proposal to establish a relationship between the guidelines of BIO/N and the various notability criteria different projects create. The most recent proposal can be found here.Balloonman (talk) 23:20, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

New Wikiproject

Wikipedia:Wikiproject free music – if anyone is interested. Raul654 (talk) 17:17, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Project banner template?

Is there a template for the project banners? It looks like they are either being subst'd or copy/pasted. I'd like to have a better understanding of their markup. Ham Pastrami (talk) 19:11, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Clarence Darrow

I think he should be added to Wiki Project Michigan because of Ossian Sweet murder trials. 7&6=thirteen (talk) 23:15, 18 March 2008 (UTC)Stan

WikiProject:Article

Relationship to the Company

Company Name: Pacific West Foods Sdn Bhd
Relationship: Staff
Serving Years: 3
Nature of Company: Frozen Foods

• Colorgun23/New Article

--Colorgun23 (talk) 02:18, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Regarding Wikiprojects

Hi, as a newbie to Wikiprojects, could someone tell me what is generally expected of a member of a Wikiproject? What is the criteria for being entered into one? Is there an application process or removal process? Sorry for my ignorance :-). Thanks, GlobeGores (talk page | user page) 22:20, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

There are no criteria, generally it's nice if you do some editing in that topic but there is no such requirement for joining, just add your name to their list or add the userbox to your userpage or both, whatever the particular project page says to do. Generally, you cannot be required to jump through any hoops to join nor can you be kicked out of a project, short of being banned by the community. If you need any further help with anything let me know on my talk page.--Doug.^{(talk • contribs)} 20:24, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Are projects beneficial?

I have wondered how many projects are a net benefit to Wikipedia. Every so often I find my watchlist filled with articles that have been tagged as in the scope of some project, or assessed as being low-importance start-class, and this makes it difficult to watch for actual changes. I also noticed the chaos caused by WikiProject Museums. A lot of effort seems to go into all this administration, more than what seems to go into improving the articles. I had recently thought that projects may have a use for fixing articles that I am not confident to fix myself – after receiving no response on an article talk page I have escalated my concerns to a project talk page. This worked with WikiProject Football and WikiProject Mathematics, but my recent post at WikiProject Computer science has had no response, even though that project has over 100 participants. JonH (talk) 13:40, 5 April 2008 (UTC) updated 15:38 (UTC)

Some projects are obviously more functional than others; the quality tends to vary quite widely. ;-) Kirill 19:15, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Input needed

Hi! Could someone look here and write something about it? The problem is that one editor insists that putting that article within the scope of WikiProject Serbia 'sounds bad' and 'is continuation of Serbian aggression' (sic). Alæxis_¿question? 18:24, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

History of WikiProject

I am still relatively new as a wikipedian, after searching through appropriate information regarding wikipedia's structure, polices, guidelines etc etc etc... I have ended up here searching for an answer to a particular question, I have not yet received the answer and this is the place I should think I would find it.

My question is: What is the history behind WikiProject?

Why I ask this question: WikiProject is not a namespace and I have seen nothing to give it an official status so why is it so widely used & how did it come about?

Why I think that answer should be here: wikipedia has articles to explain stuff, I wanted to visit the article that explains stuff about WikiProject's, Hence I type WikiProject in the search bar it redirects me to Wikipedia:WikiProject project page which doesn't answer my question.

This leads me to another question: Why does WikiProject come under the Wikipedia namespace if its not information about Wikipedia or its sister projects ref.

Answers to my question:

1. Create an article that contains the answers to my question.
2. Create a History section on this project page.
3. If the answer is already available or the logic/reasoning I have used is invalid then redirect me to the answer or answer it here.Kevin hipwell (talk) 07:22, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

{{PageStatus}}

I would like to advertise the new template {{PageStatus}}, which makes WikiProject lists of articles easier to manage. Some WikiProjects may find it quite useful! --Aquillyne-- (talk) 20:26, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

How does one

Start a Wikiproject? --Jupiter Optimus Maximus (talk) 12:11, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

WikiProject Prehistoric

Can I create a WikiProject about Prehistoric Animals (excluding dinosaurs), you know, those animals are erroroneously sometimes called dinosaurs; Dimetrodon, Pterosaurs, Wooly Mammoth etc.? --PrehistoricManiac08 (talk) 22:44, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Veropedia WikiProject Certification

For more information, see Wikipedia:Veropedia WikiProject Certification. MessedRocker (talk) 01:54, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

Project Managers

After looking at several smaller project pages, it seems to me that a section/comment stating a primary point of contact (POC) would be very useful. Sometimes it's hard to tell who's running the show, or who's trying to be a primary manager. So a Project Manager position might be a useful addition with a generic or specific userbox. --THE FOUNDERS INTENT ^TALK 15:45, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. The MCB Project has a coordinator, and it's been a very good thing to have somebody to actually to the organizing that might not get done otherwise. – Clockwork Soul 12:34, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Wikiproject tags that are charitably described as "extremely tenuous"

I find many of these wikiproject tags in articles that relate to the subject project in only the remotest of possible fashions, if not being wholly ridiculous in asserting that the article is within the project scope. Is there any good reason not to just delete these absurd tags? CAVincent (talk) 22:43, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

I have found this to be the case as well. This is especially true for articles that have achieved GA or FA status. Some wikiprojects like to include as many as possible just to boost their project numbers. They'll crow that they've had X number of articles promoted to GA or FA status, when in reality, nobody in the wikiproject has had any significant hand in editing the pages at all. I say, be bold and eliminate the banners. Kinston eagle (talk) 02:23, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

• Yes, inappropriate tags may be removed. Colonel Warden (talk) 09:37, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

User:JpGrB/WikiProject Psychopathic Records

Is this accceptable? I've never seen a WikiProject in userspace before. Ten Pound Hammer and his otters • ^{(Broken clamshells • Otter chirps • HELP)} 22:11, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Well if it's active it should be allowed to stand. Seems a bit weird having it in userspace, but what's the problem? Totnesmartin (talk) 17:57, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

WikiProject banners in multiple namespaces

Please see the ongoing discussion regarding the use of WikiProject banners on the talk pages of non-article pages. Thanks, – Black Falcon ^(Talk) 23:11, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Naming convention proposal

Please see the naming convention proposal. LA (T) @ 21:51, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

?

Are only admin allowed to make projects? Because I would like to make a Wikiproject about Maplestory.

Negabandit86 (talk) 21:47, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

How do you join a WikiProject?

How do you join an existing Wikiproject? I'm now to Wikipedia and I don't know what a WikiProject is. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Æåm Fætsøn (talk • contribs) 07:39, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

WikiProjects will normally have a list of members. You add yourself to that list, and ideally begin editing on relevant articles or join the project's review system, or what not. JonCatalán^(Talk) 20:48, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

Reference library category

In order to help facilitate easier location of potential sources of offline information to help verify the notability of article subjects and contents, I have created Category:WikiProject reference libraries and placed into it all of the reference library pages of which I am aware. Please add more project reference libraries to this category if you know of more. Additionally, feel free to create new reference library pages for any particular project as well. They can be very useful. ···日本穣^{? · Talk to Nihonjoe} 20:06, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Buckethead task force

WP:BH wants to expand into a real WikiProject and maybe include additional related artists in the future. See WT:BH for discussion. Any input welcomed!

---

Happy new Headcheese!-hexaChord² 02:22, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

Proposal re:talk page templates

I often tag the talk pages of stubs or other articles needing work with the relevant project templates. The templates don't have well-standardized names; I have to dig through the project pages themselves, which are all arranged in different ways, to find the template I need. It would be nice if all the template names were listed in the charts on the project category pages, as projects should want to encourage even non-members to help them find articles that fall into their scope. I'm bring this up to get consensus before I start adding the templates names to the charts, and to request some help doing so if there is a consensus. — Swpb^{τ • c} 18:00, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

Personally, I think that the name should be up to each project. However, it would be good to create a standardized set of redirects so that they are always easy to find. -Drilnoth (talk) 22:01, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Vital articles project

I didn't see a better place to put this, but is there a project which covers all of the Vital Articles? I didn't see any. Thanks! -Drilnoth (talk) 22:00, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

How to contact other WikiProjects

I've been working on WP:WikiProject Orphanage, and have completed a toolserver report that lists orphaned articles belonging to a specific project. The question is, what mechanism is there for me to make other WikiProjects aware of it? Is there a bot that can place a message on each WikiProject's talk page? Thanks, --JaGa ^talk 02:37, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

WikiProject – Article

Company Name: AMAX Information Technologies
Relationship: Staff
Nature of Company: Computer Industry
Draft Article: User: Amaxhelen/AMAX Information Technologies
Comments: Would like someone in the staff/project to review the article and make any suggestions to keep it at neutral point of view and not trying to self-advertise.
Amaxhelen (talk) 21:27, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Ernest Hemingway project?

I am interested in starting am Ernest Hemingway project to improve content related to his life and works. Is there anything like this already going on. Would that be ok to do? kilbad (talk) 21:30, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Disputed projects?

What do we do when editors disagree as to whether an article should fall under a given wikiproject? Blueboar (talk) 16:10, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

There are two ways to interpret your statement. So I'll just say that there are many articles that belong to more than one wikiproject, and I've also seen articles added to wikiprojects for the most trivial of reasons. I'd just go ahead and add the disputed wikiproject. — RJH (talk) 20:10, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Task force creation (merging inactive wikiprojects to their parent wikiproject as task forces).

Was browsing around and I stumbled upon this: Category:Inactive WikiProjects. Should I (or anyone else for that matter) bother to get those inactive wikiprojects under their parent project? E.g. merge wikiproject Montreal as a task force to wikiproject Canada? What I am trying to get at is: Should there be an effort to place those wikiprojects that seem to be inactive, place them under a larger viewership so perhaps they become more active and hence develop more productivity? There of course needs to be a consideration of whether this will do any difference (hence why I am posting here to get some feedback on what people generally think). Furthermore what is considered inactive? Just because there is no activity in the projects talk page, does that mean the project itself is inactive? Etc...

Any and all thoughts are welcome.Calaka (talk) 11:42, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

The Video Games Wikiproject has been doing just that for over a year now. WP:VG/IPC have a set method of notifying inactive/low participation projects, pointing out the benefits of becoming a task force under WP:VG and allaying the fears of users who's may feel they are being down-graded. It might be worth contacting them for their observations. - X201 (talk) 09:27, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

That is a very nice setup! Would make more sense to do multiple mergers rather than just one and I am sure there would be many cases of this. I noticed WP:MED has done a similar task force page to cater for all the other projects. Thanks for the link. Calaka (talk) 03:25, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Just saw this Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Inactive projects, although not sure how watched the talk page is over there?Calaka (talk) 11:44, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Should Wikiprojects be able to discuss deletion topics

Should Wikiprojects be able to discuss deletion topics? 18:16, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Should wikiprojects be able to discuss:

1. Articles for deletion
2. Templates for deletion
3. Miscellaneous for deletion and
4. Wikipedia:Deletion review

Within their topic area? Ikip (talk) 17:51, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

• Yes Of course. Why should they not? We're all here as volunteers doing what we can to improve Wikipedia. If being a member of an interest-specific project allows me to be better informed about the project's needs in order to assist in my own contributions, why would I not be able to discuss or input at AfD, TfD, MfD, or DRV when those discussions might have direct relationship to my work? Is it being suggested that one must be forced to quit a project in order to then offer an opinion about a subject to which he/she wishes to contribute?? Schmidt, ^{MICHAEL Q.} 21:51, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

• Yes Projects routinely have lists for such issues in my experience and so this is accepted practise. Deletion discussion often lack editors with good knowledge of the topic and many discussions stall for lack of participation. Publicity in relevant areas is therefore helpful. Colonel Warden (talk) 09:39, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

• Yes Absolutely. That is one of the main functions of the Projects.--2008Olympian^chitchat 07:10, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

GA Reassessment of Maria Rasputin

This is to notify the concerned projects that as part of the GA Sweeps the article, Maria Rasputin has been reassessed and found to need some work to maintain its GA status. The reassessment can be found here. Any questions or concerns can be posted on my talk page. H1nkles (talk) 04:19, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

WikiProject Policies applied to other Projects

Some editors tend to apply policies or guidelines developed in and for one project to other projects or to the subjects of other projects, often with disregard for the difference in topic and organization of the projects and sometimes somewhat forcefully (I'm not speaking of the thoughtful adaptation of one projects guideline to another projects needs). For example, the literal adaptation of WP:FILMPLOT to music topics which would fall under MOS:MUSIC, though they are quite different mediums. This seems highly inappropriate and that there should be a guideline or policy against this. Any help, thoughts, suggestions? Is there a policy or guideline against this some random place I haven't looked? Hyacinth (talk) 22:40, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Comments pages

Many WikiProjects have a banner that can be added to the talk page of a relevant article, and these banners often have a link to a Comments page (a sub-page of the Talk page) which I believe is for comments related to article assessment. However, a small problem I have noticed is that some editors, mostly inexperineced IP editors and particularly if the project banner is the only thing on the talk page, think the comments page is a place for general comments of the kind usually found on the talk page of article. Unfortunately, the comments page is often hidden behind a [show] link.

Is there a way that such editors can be "discouraged" from leaving comments on the comments page, because I think their comments are sometime valuable but will never get seen where thay have been left. For an example, see Talk:Lucknow Christian College/Comments.

On some occasions, I have moved a useful comment to the regular talk page, but this is a lengthy and fiddly process to do. Is it possible to automate the process somehow? Astronaut (talk) 19:47, 7 July 2009 (UTC)