Wikipedia talk:WikiProject reform/Archive 2

Membership authority

My view is that project members should place the project template on the talk page of any article/page they think is applicable under the project's scope. If the project has absolutely nothing to do with the article, then it should be removed by anyone. But, if it's arguable whether it's applicable, it should be initially kept and a discussion on the project's talk page started to seek a consensus from participants/members of the project on whether the article truly fits within the scope. I myself have experienced only several cases (amongst hundreds, if not, thousands of placements) where project banners were challenged, with only one case where my head was basically beaten in over the placement, even though there was a glaringly clear connection to the project's scope. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 02:55, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Such discussion is not simply closed to all but those who list themselves as participants or members. Anyone can bring it to discussion. Banners are not about "what we can categorize, they are about helping the article. If placing a banner on an article helps it, great. If placing a banner on an article does nothing but add clutter, not great. -- Ned Scott 03:09, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

I do understand that you assert these points as your opinion. It is indeed generally up to project members to make the scope determination, as after all, they know more than others how the scope is defined -- if one wants to join in that conversation, they are more than welcome, but the decision is ultimately up to the project. And while projects are certainly about helping the article, they are for a lot more than that, including a different kind of categorization for project-related purposes, such as development prioritizing, assessment, change patrol, etc. (all which also help articles and the overall Wikipedia project). I am frankly amazed that you continue to think that I think that article cataloging is about traditional categorization. Maybe it's time to drop this straw man? Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 03:24, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Stevie, get over yourself, I'm talking in general about people categorizing articles for scopes. If you take the time to look, it's usually my general complaint about many projects.

As far as the "authority" of "members", it's not really like that. Rather, the more likely situation is that such editors will simply be more persuasive since they are more familiar with said topic, and not because they put their name on a list. Wikipedians are not required to list themselves to join, participate, or make decisions in WikiProjects.

This is how I've described Participation and "membership" on a number of WikiProjects:

"Technically speaking, anyone who edits / contributes to X articles is a participant, and there are no requirements other than that. If one wishes they can further identify themselves with the project by listing their name as a participant. This helps spread the word about the project and can help other editors see what types of articles that user is interested in editing."

We want to preserve both the group identity and community feeling, while also making groups more open and inviting for other users, and helping WikiProjects avoid needless isolation. A balance between the "group" feeling and still being open is what it's all about. Being open in discussions and decisions is better for everyone. -- Ned Scott 03:36, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure what is meant by "categorizing articles for scopes". If you mean categorizing outside the project scope, then I agree, that's a no-no. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 04:31, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

As far as participation with respect to working on articles catalogued by the project, you are absolutely correct. With regards to project business and decision-making, we remain in total disagreement. I'm afraid that an assertion is unconvincing to me. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 04:31, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

In the case you state, the individuals are valued Wikipedians working on articles catalogued by the X project, and this is absolutely welcome and encouraged, but unless they actually join the project, they aren't members. Sorry, but this is a clear logical line. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 04:31, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

WikiProjects are very open to membership, and projects do virtually nothing but encourage Wikipedians within the project or not within the project to work on articles catalogued by the project. It's slap-easy to join wikiprojects, so if one wants to help out with project processes and decision-making, joining is a very easy logical line to cross. If that is not welcoming, I don't know what is. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 04:31, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

If you look we've been phasing out even using the word "membership" for most WikiProjects. The idea that you have to join, or that there is an actual "membership" doesn't help anything, and can easily be a turn off to many editors. WikiProjects are not clubs. Some WikiProjects operate with concepts like project leaders, but even then that still doesn't mean that "non-members" have no voice. Making "joining" a requirement to discuss such things helps nothing and only leads to needless bureaucracy. It will never be a requirement that someone has to join a WikiProject in order to discuss and take part in project operation and decisions, and that's just the way it is. -- Ned Scott 04:40, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

There was a category renaming question a while back about whether to make every project use the term "participant". This failed, and I believe that was due to the concept of maintaining respect for the autonomy of the various wikiprojects.

Again, everything you say is an assertion. There are no policies or guidelines that you present to back up your position. Each project can decide which degree of regimentation or decision-making process it will adhere to, and I assure you, projects I work with are far more open than some others. That said, nobody can reasonably expect to participate in internal project decision-making unless they are a member, *unless* a project states otherwise -- that's the only out I'm giving you. Just because you want it to work differently won't automatically make it so. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 04:48, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

nobody can reasonably expect to participate in internal project decision-making unless they are a member - wikipedia is the encyclopedia that anyone can edit. I don't need to join wikipedia to edit. An anon IP editor has as much say as me about article content - this is a principle that should apply to projects too. Dan Beale 12:02, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

It's not up to the project, and it's not just my assertion. Did you miss the WP:NOT#BUREAUCRACY link? There's a big ass policy link for you. How about Wikipedia:Consensus or WP:OWN? This is how it's always been, and I'm sorry that you've developed this misunderstanding of how WikiProjects work. -- Ned Scott 04:53, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Although, that is not to say that WikiProjects are not allowed to "run themselves". I'm only saying that other editors are not required to be "members" to participate if they desire. -- Ned Scott 05:00, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Oh, and the category renaming didn't "fail". Saying such things makes the suggestion that there was opposition to the proposition, when this really wasn't the case. It was simply a matter of lack of input. -- Ned Scott 05:02, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

• There was an earlier issue about this, where a handful of Wikiproject members asserted that since they had discussed and reached consensus on some matter, the broader discussion involving more editors was somehow invalid. This eventually came down to arbitration and was a nasty affair for most of the involved. Bottom line is that Wikiprojects don't WP:OWN articles or categories or whatnot, and that "non-members" have equal "status" and can discuss anything they like. Aside from that, Wikiprojects don't have requirements for membership, so if some policy wonk says that you can't join the talk because "you're not a member", you could technically just declare yourself a member then and there and continue talking. But that would be jumping through hoops, and we don't do hoops. Aside from that, edit warring over a "wikiproject" tag on some article talk page is really WP:LAME. >Radiant< 11:49, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Some related points

• For an example of overtagging, or rather a complaint about overtagging, see my comments here. In particular, the points I am making is that pointless out-of-scope overtagging just makes more work for a WikiProject to do and detracts from the work that could be done on articles of central importance to that WikiProject. Sometimes it feels like the WikiProject tagging is just mirroring the category tagging that is done on the articles... Carcharoth 16:21, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
  • In many projects that do assessments, they also assign importance with the importance parameter -- this allows them to put their concentration where it's needed most in terms of article development, while still providing oversight (e.g., reverting vandalism, updating as events happen, etc.) over all the articles under their scope. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 23:21, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
• Small, inactive, obviously subsidiary WikiProjects can easily be dealt with by moving to a subpage of an active WikiProject. For an example of this, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Middle-earth/WikiProject Silmarillion and the MfD. The idea is that inactive projects could be merged into active ones without the bureaucracy of an MfD. Just check out a few links, see if there is any activity or members, and then carry out the move. Carcharoth 16:21, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Actually, speaking from experience, in several cases I have been involved in project tagging literally does reflect categorization. Personally, I can (and do) at least try to justify this on the basis that if an earlier editor of the page saw it as being sufficient to include in a specific category (I generally don't add categories and banner myself), then presumably it's enough to tag the article with the specific banner. I acknowledge that this can and does often go to far, but, with the increasing proliferation of smaller, more subject-specific projects, it seems to me to be at least to a degree reasonable as well. This is not to say that I can easily see that a banner (or category) might not be removed or changed later, but at least by doing this we are at least drawing attention to the often hard-to-follow categorization that we are I think finding increasingly often. John Carter 16:29, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Hard-to-follow categorisation? If it is hard to follow, it needs fixing, surely? And the tagging will have been a waste of time, especially if people don't realise it was due to inappropriate categorisation. Carcharoth 16:43, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Banning automated tagging of talk pages based on categories would help. Simple rule of thumb - only tag a page if you can assess the relevance to the WikiProject at the same time. Much better to go through a category and weed out the irrelevant ones and create a clean list for a bot, rather than over-tag. Sadly, I think many people just bot-tag away on whole categories without thinking about it. Carcharoth 16:45, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Maybe one of the best examples of what I'm describing that I've seen yet is Category:Religion in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Right now, we've got the Roman Catholic Diocese of Harrisburg included in daughter categories of Category:Amish and Category:Mennonitism, which would probably really surprise members of the diocese there. Now, in this case, I haven't tagged any of the articles in this category because I know it's, well, itself oddly categorized. But there could be several others which are less reasonable. Certainly, if someone were to contact me or a project regarding an article I tagged and I couldn't justify it, I would (I think/hope) remove the banner, and try to change the categorization to at least make it less inexact. If that's done right, the article might then also get some recognition by someone in that project and maybe draw the attention of the appropriate goup(s) of editors. John Carter 16:52, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject scope

Thread moved from Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Biography#Banner --kingboyk 23:17, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Hi, I am getting the WP:WPChi assessment division started using techniques learned while briefly contributing to your Feb bio unassessed article tagging drive. In the last 3 weeks we have gone from 400 articles to 7500 articles. Yesterday, I was helping a user solve talk page clutter problems at Ella Cara Deloria after a bot kept tagging a talk page and the user kept trying to remove our tag. It came to my attention that WP Bio seems to be using a possibly outdated format for some of its parameters. In particular, I believe the photo and living persons (and possibly the autostubbing) banners are formatted to produce more clutter than necessary. E.g., on the aforementioned page in order to work out a clutter solution I removed the "needs-photo = yes" parameter and put it in the {{ChicagoWikiProject}} banner. Later, I realized that this is probably not the best solution because if projects do this every time a talk page is cluttered with your parameterized banner you will begin to lose your hard work and the information from the categorization facilitated by such parameters. My suggestion is to change your parameters to appear as lines within the banner instead of as additional banners.

Also, I was curious why WP Bio does not use the analogue to our Category:Disambig-Class Chicago articles, which would be Category:Disambig-Class biography articles. It would seem this would be a useful category and could be easily populated with a bot looking for WP Bio tagged articles that have {{hndis}} or {{disamb}}. TonyTheTiger (talk/cont/bio) 15:26, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

7500 Chicago articles? Are you sure all those are strictly relevant to Chicago? I had a look at the unassessed articles and found Aaron Downey. He played ice hockey in Chicago at some point in his career. He doesn't come from Chicago. How can WP:WPChi really hope to assess the article? It would be better to concentrate on the 400 initial articles, which I will guess were more focused on Chicago. At the very least, I hope Mr Downey get a very low importance rating for his article's relevance to WikiProject Chicago. This reminds me of when characters from Tolkien's books were getting tagged by the film wikiproject because they featured in the film of the book. Pointless over-tagging. BTW, this is more a general diatribe, and not really directed at you or WP:WPChi. Please don't get personally offended, but I do wish people didn't see going from 400 to 7500 articles as a good thing. It just makes more work for you and detracts from the work that could be done on articles of central importance to WP:WPChi. Carcharoth 15:50, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

The bot is about half way through. We will end up with much more in our domain. Obviously, by adding every player who has ever played for a Chicago professional sports team we will get our share of Aaron Downeys and Lawrence Funderburkes. However, adding importance=low to them will remedy this. The biggest problem comes from the Chicago Area University alumni categories. I still think they properly fall under our domain. I am not sure if Wikipedia:WikiProject Cities has any policy on such issues, but after we get our articles tagged and send a bot to look for WP:FAs and WP:GAs within our list we will probably be pleasantly surprised. The bot will also autostub for us. Clearly many low importance articles will be autostubbed. Take a look at the WP Chi categories page. Basically, everything in one of the Category:Chicago, Illinois and its subcategories (except those under Category:Chicago railroads will be tagged. In addition, everything in Category:Cook County, Illinois and all statewide officials categories will be tagged. Let me know what categories you don't think we should be tagging if you have any advice. TonyTheTiger (talk/cont/bio) 18:42, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

The bot? In your domain? Seriously. Stop. And. Think. What is the point in generating a huge category like this? And "low importance articles will be autostubbed"? Please tell me I misread that? Low importance has nothing to do with whether something is a stub. Why not get a group of people (not bots) to go through the list and manually select the ones most relevant to WikiProject Chicago? The ones that you will be able to productively and efficiently spend time on. What the bot is currently producing for you will have to be looked over by people anyway, and when they stick "importance=low" on lots of the articles, they are effectively saying "no, we won't have time to work on this article". It is much more efficent to use the categories to generate a first pass list. Then to have a small group go through the list and select the ones that fall within the domain of WikiProject Chicago (preferably people who live there and can judge this sort of thing). And then assess those. Thousands and thousands of articles just overwhelms things. Start small and work up from there. Carcharoth 21:18, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

I should probably be more constructive in my criticism after what I wrote above (sorry, I was in a rather bad mood concerning over-tagging). I've looked at the Chicago category structure you pointed me too, and it looks very nice. Any fixed structure (building etc) is obviously fine, along with teams and companies based in Chicago. Basically, anything geographical can fall within the purview of a geographical wikiproject. People though, I would seriously advise should be manually looked at. If they have spent most of their life in Chicago, or are famous for being from Chicago, then yes, add them. But not a Hollywood star who grew up in Chicago and now lives in Los Angeles. And if there are any pages better tackled by other WikiProjects, there is no need to tag them. If there is a Due South WikiProject, leave those articles to them. If there are baseball/ice hockey/football wikiprojects, leave those articles to them. The team articles, tag, but not the individual player articles. I'd avoid the alumi categories altogether. Carcharoth 21:27, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

The thing is a Hollywood star who grew up in Chicago is still well within the project. Glance at the first three bios in Category:People from Wilmette, Illinois for example (Lester Crown was just added so skip him when counting the first 3). I think Chicagoans would care about these people. I am in the very early stages of this task. I have not yet determined what I will do with all these articles. The first task here is just taking inventory. If an article includes a category indicating relevance we take it. This is not a cut and dry thing like whether an article is a bio or not. I have overstepped my bounds in a few cases. E.G., Nancy Reagan grew up in Chicago. Her article lists her in Category:People from New York City and Category:People from Queens, but it does not list her in any Chicago categories. However, I have decided to give article has a WikiProject Chicago banner and although it does not have a WikiProject New York City one. I think we will care about her article.TonyTheTiger (talk/cont/bio) 22:53, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

It depends what you mean by "within" the project. I've always seen articles being "within" a project if all sections of the article concern that WIkiProject. If the WikiProject would only be concerned with a section of the article (eg. the time a person spent in Chicago), then it doesn't feel right to mark it as part of that WikiProject. List it somewhere as of peripheral importance, but that should be different from low importance. Article categories allow you to find articles to check the Chicago-related content of articles, but ones tagged for a WikiProject to deal with should be largely to do with Chicago, not just tangentially related. The tagging shouldn't be a way of generating a list for the WikiProject of all articles realated to Chicago - the article categories already do that. The tagging should be picking out the articles that the WikiProject can usefully spend time assessing and writing/improving. Carcharoth 23:10, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm with Carcharoth on this one. It's not a matter of anything remotely related to the WikiProject, it's about what articles the Wikiproject can realistically help as a tool and as a group of editors. The whole point is to narrow down the amount of pages and focus on them, so broadening the scope to such very minor articles is actually counter productive. -- Ned Scott 23:40, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

So basically, even if it can fall within a project, we should consider "does it help to put this under this project", instead. -- Ned Scott 23:42, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree with that sentiment. Wikiprojects exist to aid articles, not the other way around. If the page already falls under a couple more relevant projects, and there is no reason that a person looking at the page would want to contact your project, then slapping a banner on it just because you can is rather pointless. On the other hand, if an article was only minorly related to your project but had no other (active) projects that it fell under, then putting your wikiproject banner there could indeed be helpful since people who had problems with the article would have a place to look for assistance. --tjstrf talk 00:48, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

The problem with the entire article philosophy is that for regional projects, most people have contributed to several regions. Michael Jordan spent important parts of his life in North Carolina and in Chicago. By your definition neither could claim him as within their project. Similarly, Roger Clemens has won Cy Young Awards in Toronto, Boston, New York and possibly Houston (if I recall correctly). To say that no project can claim him as their own because his article is clearly a Biography article and not within any one region is ridiculous. A regional project should claim bio articles where a reasonably sized select group within the region might want to look the subject up in an encyclopedia. TonyTheTiger (talk/cont/bio) 14:11, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

(unindent) I think you are still confusing article categories with WikiProject tagging. If people from Chicago want to look up articles related to Chicago, they can use search engines and browse using portals, the Wikipedia category system, or just by starting from the article Chicago. Wikiprojects are not for helping people find Chicago-related articles per se (though the related Portal:Chicago is useful there). Rather, WikiProjects are places for editors (not readers) to collaborate on articles that contain large amounts of content about Chicago, and which they can contribute a lot towards. Thus the scope should, as Ned says, be narrowed to focus editing efforts. I realise you realise this, and you intend to narrow the scope, but starting with a wide scope and then narrowing it is an inefficient way to proceed. The narrowing will have to be done by humans anyway, so why not make that the first step? As an example, Nancy Reagan and Michael Jordan could appear on Portal:Chicago, with short blurbs rewritten especially to focus on their time in Chicago, but new editors arriving at WP:WPChi are more likely to want to help out with editing History of Chicago, or assessing articles related to Geography of Chicago. Again, apologies for picking out WP:WPChi as an example, but this is something a lot of WikiProjects seem to do. They like to cast their net as wide as possible and are pleased when the net brings back thousands of articles for them to assess and read and look at. A better way to proceed is to look at the number of active participants (I count about 75 members for WP:WPChi - how many are active?), and find an amount of work that fits the number of people available to do the work. Then expand later. Carcharoth 12:42, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

Basically, your suggestion is a managerial style issue. If you look at Category:Top-importance Chicago articles, you will see included biographies of people who are not lifelong Chicagoans (Michael Jordan, Barack Obama, Oprah Winfrey & Jesse Jackson). I still believe they are among our highest priority Chicago articles. My approach will be to tag as much as possible by bot and then get the bot to autostub, and identify GAs and FAs. We will find a lot of interesting things this way. Right now our WP:CHICOTW is running out of good projects to work on because we don't know what is out there to work on. This effort will help. I view the importance tag as a signal of where to expend editorial efforts and will attempt to use it in this manner. TonyTheTiger (talk/cont/bio) 14:22, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

OK. We will have to agree to disagree on those people you mention being relevant to WP:WPChi, but good luck with your efforts at finding articles for WP:WPChi to collaborate on. Don't get too caught up in assigning low importance to irrelevant (to WP:WPChi) articles - my advice is too concentrate on identifying the high and top importance ones first. ie. Don't set as a goal the assessment of 7000+ articles, but first identify a core groups of 1000 or so articles, assess those, and start work on those. Assessing the 6000+ unassessed articles can be left until later. Good luck with prioritising this sort of thing! Carcharoth 15:10, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

Once the bot completes its first pass, we will send it back to identify articles already evaluated as FA and GA on other banners. This should be a great start to that end. TonyTheTiger (talk/cont/bio) 18:37, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

Tier 3?

• Tiers: I've been fiddling with Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Guide and not realising all this other discussion was going on (call me stupid :) ), but I came up with a Tier 3 as well (called "Topic Co-ordination" on that page).

-- TimNelson 06:17, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Task forces/Work Groups/Tier 2 ideas

Here are my various ideas on task forces:

• Ease of use: I think the person who made a point about a separate WikiProject being easier had a point. That's why there's now Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Guide/Task_forces (although it probably needs some work).

• Core topics task forces: A problem I've run into with WikiProject Calvinism (which would've happened even if it'd been a task force) is that often there are articles like Salvation which need attention from someone in our project, but could also be covered by a number of other projects, like Anglicanism, Lutheranism, Christianity, Jesus, and the like (yes, these are all WikiProjects). With a "Core topics" task force of eg. the Christianity WikiProject, we could leave all these topics untagged, but still know that they needed attention because they're under "Core topics", without having to worry about getting lost in a sea of articles that are irrelevant (eg. Icons are irrelevant to Calvinism, even though they're an important part of Christianity of some other kinds).

• Autonomy: If we let the task forces be more autonomous (ie. give them design control over their own page, etc), and limit the demands on them to something minimal (ie. must have parent project navigation bar), then that will make them happier, and make things seem like less of a downgrade.

-- TimNelson 07:14, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Just as an additional comment, until recently I never joined WikiProjects because I thought it meant I was promising to work on them, rather than just help out from time to time. I'd like to find a name for task forces that expresses this. I think that, rather than "task forces" (WPMILHIST) or "Work Groups" (WPBIO), the name "Interest Group" (or maybe Special Interest Group, aka SIG) would be better.

-- TimNelson 13:45, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Inactive WikiProjects

I'm all in favour of not forcing projects to do anything, but I think that a few policy-related things may be useful. Did you know that in the last 2 months, the number of inactive WikiProjects has gone from 192 to 257? At this rate (assuming a constant rate, rather than exponential), in 2 years, we will have 720 inactive WikiProjects! Here's my policy recommendations

• Very inactive WikiProjects (where we need to define a standard for "very inactive") should be allowed to be abducted and forcibly converted to task forces
• People should not be allowed to create WikiProjects in areas that are already covered by a task force, unless they have the consensus of the task force (apparently there has already been problems with this with Wikipedia:WikiProject Chattanooga vs. Wikipedia:WikiProject Tennessee, although this has been resolved, basically the suggested policy would have resulted anyway).
• Require that all new WikiProjects to be proposed on the WikiProjects proposals page, and that links to the proposal be posted on any appropriate parent WikiProjects' talk pages. After all, we do this for stub categories.
  • In the proposal, have them define the Tier of the project, with a link to the Guide for more information.

I'd also suggest that a project be considered "very inactive" when all of the following are true:

• It has had an "Inactive" banner on its page for over 2 months, and fits the "Inactive" criteria
• It is missing one of: assessment, outreach, OR it covers less than 10 articles
• Nobody objects in 3 days after you propose turning the WikiProject into a task force
• A task force is the appropriate size for the project (I mention this because of World music, which lacked an outreach program, but is still too large to make a sensible task force)

-- TimNelson 06:17, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Inter-WikiProject co-ordination/Tier 0/Proposals

I'd suggest that, once we have the tiers thing sorted out more, we get rid of the current Proposals page, and instead have separate proposals pages at each Tier 0 WikiProject (and maybe the Tier 1 ones too). I think that would get more and better gauging of interest and discussion than the current system.

-- TimNelson 07:25, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Minimum requirements for Tier 1 projects?

As an alternative (and in conjunction with the Task force autonomy comment above), I'd like to suggest that maybe there should be some minimum requirements for a WikiProject, as follows:

Required for all Tier 0 and Tier 1 projects:

• A proposals page
• An assessment setup

Required for all Tier 1 projects:

• An outreach page
• A list of tasks to do
• A list of members

Any project that doesn't have the above within 30 days can be abducted and turned into a task force. I mean, really, if they can't be bothered doing those things, they should be AfD, not inactive WikiProjects.

-- TimNelson 07:25, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Well, not all WikiProjects use assessments, but the general idea isn't bad. -- Ned Scott 07:33, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Can you give me an example? I'm interested to see what they do instead -- TimNelson 07:39, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Well, there's not-directly-article projects like WikiProject Free images, and there's also projects like WP:STARGATE that don't currently use assessments (but they could). -- Ned Scott 07:44, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Hmm, I see what you mean. How about we only require assessment setups of Tier 0 projects, but then require a more expansive task list from Tier 1 projects (ie. tasks must include at least 12 articles from at least 4 of the following classes: Requests, Wikify, Stubs, ... (the usual) or other reasonable classes). Would that work? Hmm. That still leaves Free Images in the dark. What about if we have those requirements for topic-based projects, but not ones like Free Images? -- TimNelson 07:59, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Blanket requirements probably won't work, but maybe if we set up some kind of "WikiProject review" as an alternative to MfDs, etc. A review would even be a positive thing, as any project could be reviewed just to help get on track or to improve themselves. -- Ned Scott 03:32, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

I think blanket requirements could work in one of two ways. One way would be to make the standards fairly minimal (ie. the stuff above, but only what works for all projects, including Free Images, so not the assessment stuff), or the other way is, have a list of requirements, and have a review process for projects that don't meet the requirements. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by TimNelson (talk • contribs) 23:57, 7 May 2007 (UTC).

I could agree to having some minimum requirements, but those proposed seem to me to be possibly questionable. My ideas would be

• Tier 0 rarely uses a banner - such projects should be only those which have a number of different projects within the same area which basically "split away" most of the content. Probably could have a banner, with tabs for other groups in it, but might not need assessments if all their content is under the scope of other projects which do do assessments. Excellent place to conduct peer review or collaboration, though.
• Maybe make a Tier I project one that has a minimum number of relevant articles or required articles (some multiple of 1000 or more). These projects should develop assessments within perhaps a month of creation, possibly have peer review and/or collaboration (depending on whether there is a relevant Tier 0 projects). I want to stipulate here that creating an article for every character in a TV show to reaach the 1000 articles or more probably wouldn't reach the standard of "required" articles. Yeah, I know that's vague, put phrasing ain't my strong point.
• Tier 2 projects have and are expected to have no more than 1000 articles. They would tend to utilize the banner of some larger project. They could engage in collaboration, but would probably leave peer review and assessment to larger projects.
• Anyway, I'm not thinking real clearly right now, so I'm sure each of the above is at least reasonably arguable. Feel free to rip into the proposals above. John Carter 00:08, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

• Tier 0 and assessment: The article says "In particular, they will not engage in article tagging except in cases where no more suitable descendant project's tag is available". My thought was that this could be used as a system to try to locate areas that are not covered by WikiProjects.
• Tier 1 and assessment: I guess my thought is that if we raise the bar for Tier 1 WikiProjects, people will be less likely to create them. In my case, it was easy -- people joined so quickly after I created the project that by the time I got around to investigating an Assessment setup, it was already done by someone else :). I don't want to raise the bar too high, but some inactive WikiProjects were whims, not projects.
• I don't think it's useful to limit the number of articles in tier 2. I'd like to see Tier 2 have at least the option of their own assessment systems, like WPMILHIST does.
• I'm mainly interested in the crtieria as a way of deciding which projects need the full infrastructure themselves, and which would operate better as task forces.

-- TimNelson 02:01, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

My apologies for my earlier poor phrasing. Personally, I think that the Tier 2 projects would probably use a banner which may well allow them their own assessment criteria, even if they do use the banner of some larger project. And, certainly, it might be possible that depending on the size of the larger Tier 1, a Tier 2 may well have more than 1000 articles. Certainly, if Wikipedia:WikiProject Africa were to form national subprojects, I would hope most of them would have more than 1000 articles. In cases like that, though, it might make sense for them to eventually split off "on their own." John Carter 02:19, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Sure. I'm trying to keep the list short and mandatory here :). I'll make a revised list -- TimNelson 14:11, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Minimum requirements for Tier 0 & 1 projects? (take 2)

As an alternative (and in conjunction with the Task force autonomy comment above), I'd like to suggest that maybe there should be some minimum requirements for a WikiProject, as follows:

Required for all Tier 0 and Tier 1 projects:

• A proposals page for proposing new Tier 1&2 child WikiProjects
• An assessment setup (only required for topic-based projects; Wikipedia maintenance projects and non-topical projects like Wikipedia:WikiProject Free images are exempt)

Required for all Tier 1 projects:

• Outreach page/section
• Todo list
• List of members
• List of related WikiProjects
• Statement of goals
• Sections for Scope, Departments, and Guidelines (even if the sections are almost empty)
• Any project over 50 members must also have a tier 2/task force support structure

A project would have 2 months to get all this in place.

--

I'll argue in favour of some of the changes now:

• If people haven't bothered to find out what WikiProjects are related, the project needs to be tied in with something else
• If there's no statement of goals, the project isn't doing anything
• The tier 2/task force requirement is to make it so that WikiProjects don't proliferate so much

-- TimNelson 14:11, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Actually, if these were the conditions of a project continuing to exist, I would probably have no real objections. However, I do think that we would want to allow any new project at least a month or two, potentially, to have all its structure in place before demanding these things. And I could certainly see having some sort of official "review" policy, which could potentially include outside assistance, in ensuring projects meet these criteria. John Carter 14:20, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

(Note: Have since modified proposal to include startup time -- TimNelson 15:07, 9 May 2007 (UTC))

The fact that no existing project actually meets all of these requirements might suggest—at least to me—that they're a bit over the top. ;-) Kirill Lokshin 14:36, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

No? Well, the only one that Wikipedia:WikiProject Calvinism doesn't meet is the "Proposals" one, and that mainly because we don't have a task force infrastructure yet. But I can fix that if you like :). I've added a note about some of the sections being empty. And after a quick check, WP:BIO and WP:MILHIST also appear to comply. But to go for a much lower activity one, the World music WikiProject (with which I'm also involved) complies with all of these except (again) the proposals page. My conclusion is that you must be interpreting some of the line items differently than me; if you're willing to highlight which ones you think that projects don't comply with, I'll try to explain that further

--TimNelson

Okay, fair enough:

• Proposals page: as far as I know, no project actually has a dedicated page set up for this; and, frankly, I can't imagine why it would be a good idea. Projects should not be dealing with a sufficiently high-volume stream of such requests that a separate page would be needed; in other cases, the higher traffic of the main discussion page would make that the preferred location for dealing with issues like this.
• Outreach department: this is essentially a miscellaneous holding area for various sorts of (highly optional) fluff; why would we want to require it? ("Outreach" is not rigorously defined, in any case; it could be used to mean just about anything.)
• Sections for ...: pointless if the sections are empty, I think.
• Task force support: at a certain point, a project is sufficiently granular that further splitting doesn't make sense. Making a blanket requirement that projects with a certain (membership) size must create further subdivisions isn't going to work; in many cases, there's no natural sub-area that could actually sustain a smaller group.

Kirill Lokshin 16:00, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

• Proposals page: Sure, I know no projects have a dedicated page for this. I guess what I'm really thinking is, I think the proposals process would work better if it were managed on the pages of the parent WikiProject(s), rather than on a central page, and I was trying to think of a good way of doing this. Maybe it'd be better to just have them proposed on the project's general talk page. So I guess I'm retracting my proposal for a proposals page, but still proposing a new proposals structure.
• Outreach: I think that, in general, outreach is relatively important for getting new members and communicating with them. Without these, a project dies, and gets added to the Inactive Projects list
• Blank sections: Good point. I've changed it to "almost empty". I guess my point is that I think these things need some work, and I'm hoping that the mere presence of the sections means that someone, sometime, will fill them in
• Task force support: That's why I'm only proposing that tier 0 and tier 1 WikiProjects have task force support. Tier 2 projects don't need it. In fact, we could make that the determining criterion; could this project someday have subprojects? If the answer is no, then they're a tier 2 project.

-- TimNelson 23:42, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

I think tying the tier determination to a question of pure size is going to make reform go down in flames, given that the assumption all along has been that well-functioning small projects would not be forcibly task-force-ified in cases where the structure didn't make sense. Most obviously, projects that are focused enough that they don't have any easily constrained sub-areas, but that couldn't become Tier 2 projects because they don't have a natural parent project to play Tier 1 project to them would thus be left in limbo.

(Conversely, if you're including even unreasonable or trivial potential sub-projects, then this simply becomes useless.) Kirill Lokshin 18:17, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Definitely not including trivial sub-projects. Yeah, I take your point. -- TimNelson 00:04, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

In response to John Carter, I'm not so keen on a review structure -- If a non-compliant WikiProject is found, some sort of notice could be put on the page with a note about the requirements, and if the requirements aren't fulfilled within a month of the notice being placed, the page can be abducted and turned into a task force/tier 2.

-- TimNelson 15:07, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

As I have stated elsewhere, I think that having some sort of review structure, if only for listing a project on the Project Directory and elsewhere, might be a good idea in that it ensures we don't have people creating whole projects when their efforts duplicate existing projects and/or have some degree of demonstrable support. If we indicated that projects which don't meet certain objective criteria will not be included in the directory, I could see that working too. In any event, if there were such a process which would ensure that projects which are created are at least reasonably well founded, I don't think that would be a bad thing. Maybe just requesting that all projects, before created, get listed on the Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals page would ensure that any new projects are at least competently put together. John Carter 16:41, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Sure, with the exception that I want to make the proposals process a responsibility of the individual WikiProjects, so I'd say they should be proposed on eg. the talk page of the parent WikiProjects.

-- TimNelson 23:42, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

why have banners at all?

its very annoying to see article's "talk" button in blue, expecting there to be some discussion there, only to discover some wikiproject banners - you have just wasted your click. the banners provide very little benefit, and could easily be replaced by lists held in the wikiproject's space instead of spamming every article's talk page. 86.31.103.208 12:51, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

The point is to allow those reviewing such articles an easy way to switch from the article page to an "assessment" page. Rather than have more tabs at the top, the assessement schemes seem to have been tied into the talk page tab, rather than having their own tabs. Given the amount of effort spent on this, I'd actually welcome talk pages becoming talk pages again, and banners and whatnot put on a separate page. So you'd have the a tab (bolded):

• Article
• Discussion
• Assessments
• Edit this page
• History
• Watch

But that is such a radical change, it would need far-reaching and widespread discussion, beyond the scope of this discussion here. Carcharoth 13:49, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

I've frequently seen the suggestion to create a "Meta" tab that would contain all of the information about the article (project banners, peer review notices, GA and FA banners as appropriate, etc.), while discussion about the article's content would remain on "Talk". I don't know how far along these discussions are, but the devs have heard it. Slambo (Speak) 14:12, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

Not heard that one before, but I think it's an excellent idea. My own idea long ago was to change the colour of the Discussion tab if the talk page contained only templates. --kingboyk 13:49, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

I will have to also support this idea. There should be an additional space for meta-info other than actual discussion. Greg Bard 04:21, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

WP Chicago

I have assumed the role of the Director of the Chicago Project, which has begun tagging articles with {{ChicagoWikiProject}}. This is a newly active project. In order to quickly assess all the thousands of articles within the domain of the project I have created a list of categories that I am having a bot tag. A bot is adding the tag to virtually all articles and subcategories that fall under either Category:Chicago, Illinois or Category:Cook County, Illinois and a few other categories except for some subcategories of Category:Chicago railroads that will likely be manually tagged. As you can see the greatest difficulty is the structure of the Chicago railroads category. Although for some time Chicago was the nexus of railroad transportation this category is quite problematic. Most of the subcategories contain fewer than 80% articles that are relevant for WP:WPChi. It is the only category structured in a way that causes such a problem. Its parent category Category:Illinois railroads is one of 50 state by state categories structured in this way within its parent Category:Railway_companies_of_the_United_States. This category is basically structured in a way that is akin Category:Industry by states in which they provide service with each state containing categories of Category:Industry members by state in which they provide services. The problem is that these categories include predecessor companies that did not provide service in that state and both lines and locomotives that served other states.

Is there any chance that the category could be reorganized or an alternate hierarchy could be established to make it friendly to regional bot tagging. I imagine that in the future many regional projects would want something that a bot could handle analogous to:

Railroad companies headquartered in Chicago a sub cat of Category:Companies based in Chicago

Railroad companies providing service in Chicago a sub cat of Category:Transportation in Chicago

Railroad routes reaching Chicago Category:Transportation in Chicago

Railroad trains/lines serving Chicago Category:Transportation in Chicago

- TonyTheTiger (talk/cont/bio) 14:35, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree the Category:Chicago railroads is misleading at the moment. It should be all railroads in (or passing through) Chicago. It seems to me to be more like a 'history of the Chicago railroad companies' category. I suggest you find the Railroad WikiProject (where-ever that is) and ask them about re-doing the category structure. But please focus on getting the category struture in a better state for the readers. The category structure must not, on any account, be mangled to enable easier WikiProject tagging. That would be a disasterous reversal of priorities. If a category structure is poorly organised, or idiosyncratic, WikiProjects will have to manually produce a list of articles for bot tagging, or repair the category structure to make it easier for a reader to navigate. Carcharoth 15:17, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

Try Wikipedia:WikiProject Trains. Carcharoth 15:19, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

I wrote my message here after contacting the Wikipedia:WikiProject Trains/Categories task force without response yesterday. I admit I only waited one day, but I just felt like expanding my query. TonyTheTiger (talk/cont/bio) 20:10, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

The categories task force has been pretty inactive. As a prominent contributor in TWP, I was also contacted directly about this issue. I haven't had a chance to formulate a response yet, but it is high on my list of action items. The biggest problem that we've seen with this automatic tagging is that it recurses through the subcategories tagging articles that aren't necessarily within CPChi's scope. I don't know how this bot's code is written, but I've written a few scripts that parse through subdirectories on my Linux box and I've been able to write them with exception lists to prevent parsing subdirectories that I don't want it to look through. There should be a similar method to note the exceptions here. Slambo (Speak) 10:41, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

BTW, SatyrBot (which is the bot working on this project) doesn't follow subcategories. Did that once - re-wrote the bot so it wouldn't happen again :) -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 02:15, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

A project about a single city seems very sily in my opinion. --Andersmusician $ 02:03, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Really? Even one with almost three million people? Seems significant enough to warrant a WikiProject to me... -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 02:12, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Why significant?, this would mean (4 example) that every capital city in SouthAm. would get its own project. --Andersmusician $ 03:01, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes, it would. Why is this bad? -Amarkov moo! 03:25, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

then we return to the overtagging problem, by tagging it with WP:CHICAGO, WP:ILLINOIS, WP:USA... --Andersmusician $ 03:47, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

For the largest, say, 5 cities in America, I don't see a problem with that. Each of those cities has at least a tenth of the population of their state, so there's tons of wikipedians from each city that would be a part of either or both (city or state) wikiprojects. Now, Center Harbor, NH - that would be a silly WikiProject. As for the cities in South America, how many residents of S.A. countries are wikipedians on EN.wikipedia.org? Not nearly enough to start a WikiProject, which is why there are so few for South America. WikiProjects, unlike articles, are about editors as much as they are about the articles they support. -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 04:30, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree with you on this. we're lost. --Andersmusician $ 20:33, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

OVER-TAGGING (again)

I really don't see any problem with overtagging artiles' talkpages with banners, since this brings more people from different projects to Improve these articles (that is what all us want). I consider that the real problem is the allowed creation of many worthless wikiprojects. You know --Andersmusician $ 02:03, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Exactly. -- Ned Scott 02:38, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

I disagree that overtagging is harmless (although I think tagging at all is generally harmful), but there is certainly a problem with the multiple Wikiprojects that are really too small to need existence. -Amarkov moo! 02:43, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

then why do you think overtagging is harmless?--Andersmusician $ 03:05, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't. Sorry, I would respond to what you're asking instead of being obtuse, but I'm not sure what you intended to ask. -Amarkov moo! 03:24, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

just to clear ideas among people who read this now. (see also above section comment)--Andersmusician $ 03:47, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia maintenence WikiProjects

I've noticed that the organization system for Wikipedia maintenence WikiProjects is even more disorganized than the one for regular projects. The category is underpopulated, the lengthy list of projects has no internal organizing structure, there is an great amount of overlap between projects, and in some cases there's no clear distinction between true WikiProjects and "Wikipedian organizations." I've made a proposal for organizing these projects, which can be found at: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Council/Directory#Proposal_for_organizing_Wikipedia_Maintenence_projects. Fishal 13:17, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

nEw proposal

this one is for reduce over-tagged articles by half at least. It's about forbidding to tag an article with for example a "A" wikiProject if it is already categorized by a "B" WikiProject if "A" is parent of "B". Please tell me whether you agree or not --Andersmusician $ 18:49, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

I think that "forbidding" is much too strong a word, but I'm all for encouraging editors to avoid tagging talkpages simultaneously as belonging to both a parent and a child WProject. Using the above Chicago discussion as an example, I think that when a WikiProject Chicago person goes to tag the article and finds it already covered under WikiProject Illinois, they can go to the Illinois project talk page and say, "Pardon me, would you mind if we took over this page, as well as a number of other Chicago-related pages, from you guys? I realize that you have worked hard tagging and assessing various Chicago articles, but as a project devoted to Chicago rather than to Illinois in general, we can give it more focused attention and ease some of your burden." Then, the Illinois people might say, "Sure, take the lot," or they might say, "No, we worked damn hard assessing those articles." Or, more likely, they'll say, "Take some of the articles that arene't as relevant to our project (like World's Columbian Exposition), but let's jointly work on (and tag) the articles relevant not just to Chicago, but to the entire state (like Chicago and Illinois and Michigan Canal). If we make this discussion process a guideline, it will cut back on genuine overtagging without forcing projects to compete for articles. If certain articles do accumulate lots of tags, I think the tag-nesting template used at Talk:Chicago makes the problem less of an issue. Fishal 20:03, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

The problems with Anders' suggestion that I see are:

• From what I've seen, the parent project tends to tag the article first, and the more specific one only tags it later.
• Probably the best solution is to suggest that people use m:CatScan to figure out which articles belong to child projects, and then untag any that aren't of general interest (eg. Salvation should be tagged by both the Calvinism project, and the general Christianity project, IMO, although the "Christianity core topics work group" should hopefully help with this).

-- TimNelson 00:49, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

That's a pretty good way of wording it. Having the parent not tagging the general interest articles seems like something that wouldn't offend anyone if a banner was removed. This is kind of like what's done for WP:DIGI and WP:ANIME (although WP:DIGI is pretty much a task force, just not in title, of WP:ANIME). Main anime articles are tagged with both project banners, but more specific topics are only tagged with the child project. -- Ned Scott 02:48, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

What gets me is like with WikiProject Sci-fi comes in and starts tagging articles about individual movies or TV shows. It's not a child project of anyone, and I'm not really sure what kind of help such a project is over-all, let alone with tagging. -- Ned Scott 02:50, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Tier approach?

Doesn't the tier approach outlined on this project page seem a bit bureaucratic and over-wieldy? Can't we just have two types of projects - active and inactive - and if a project stays inactive for a length of time (say a year), have it go through the MfD process? -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 04:53, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

I see your point, but I'm not sure about MfD for projects simply being inactive. (I'm starting to like the idea of a WikiProject review, which could also provide positive advice for growth). Some seem to be easily MFDable, but others it might just be that we need to label as inactive, and clean up left over banners or whatever. -- Ned Scott 05:00, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Yeh - I can see that combination. Do a review if a project is *mostly* inactive, with outside (the project) suggestions for making the project better - or even to "subsume" a project (as a task force?) into another one. And if it's still inactive after a while, the review could be to disband - with associated banner cleanup, etc. I like it. -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 05:50, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

yeah, but also, for avoiding many deletion process in the future we should designate more requirements for wikiproject creation. (eg. to require signatures of at least a certain quantity of users for applying creation) --Andersmusician $ 03:43, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

IIRC, the point of the tiering process is to encourage more people to create Task forces, which implies a co-ordinated appropach to banners (ie. one banner with task forces, rather than 3 or 4 overlapping ones). It also helps avoid duplication, and helps people find projects that they want.

Allow me to make a point here; I would never have started my first WikiProject if I'd had to seek permission. That WikiProject seems to me to have been justinfied by acquiring around 20 members in its first two months; not stacks in the way of completed articles yet, but its been useful for co-ordination. You've suggested that the problem is that people are allowed to create projects that are not worthwhile. I don't think people should be prevented from starting projects (unless they're against WIkipedia policy; ie. WikiProject POV :) ). I do think, though, that they should be guided to create task forces rather than projects.

Allow me also to mention that the Christianity WikiProject has recently adopted the Jesus WikiProject as a task force (it's still nominally inactive, but we should probably change that).

In addition, there's a discussion at the World Music project about repurposing the project as a "Regional and National" music project, and having a separate "Roots and Folk" music project. So repurposing a project is probably quite possible too.

HTH, -- TimNelson 05:42, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree about "seeking permission" - it's unwiki.

But the tiered approach seems like there has to be a "governing body" that reviews which projects are in which tier - at least that's the way it seems. I haven't waded through the whole description. Which is another point.

And a review process, which is something most editors are familiar with, would also be able to steer projects into task forces, or collaboration with other projects, repurposing, etc. -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 13:33, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Has anyone defined what 'active' and 'inactive' mean? As long as these are defined much more objectively than subjectively, I would be OK with that. Further, just because a project is inactive doesn't mean it's dead -- it could instead mean that a project's most active members are generally burned out for a period of time, and will eventually return to re-energize the project. Also, apparent inactivity can happen while a project is spending most of its time working on initial assessments. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 00:51, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

The rule of thumb has been that if a project hasn't written anything on its talk page in two months, it's "inactive". Even if the members are working on initial assessments, etc., they're probably still discussing things on their talk page. So a time for review would be, IMHO, something like 4 months. If they haven't posted anything on their talk page in that long, most likely the project is dead. And a simple "Hey - anyone here?" should bring anyone out of the woodwork :) -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 01:51, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

{{WikiProjectBannerShell}}

I would encourage everyone to take a good look at this really useful new template for combining multiple projects on a talk page. It seems to be quickly gaining popularity and even supplanting the use of {{WikiProjectBanners}} to some degree. What's great about {{WikiProjectBannerShell}} is it shows the title of the various wikiprojects, and it even shows the assessment associated with each one. Thus, wikiprojects can inform article readers of their presence (i.e., advertise for new members), while not clogging up the talk page. Very nifty, IMHO. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 01:00, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

It seems like it requires |nested=. Well, the project templates are varied, so it isn't possible to completely use {{WikiProjectBannerShell}}. V60 ^{干什么？ · 喝掉的酒 · ER 4} 01:03, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Most project banners already have the code - over 250 of them do, anyway, with more being added every day. -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 01:49, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes, |nested= is required, but it's not absolutely so, as project templates which haven't been converted yet can be encapsulated within {{WikiProjectBannerShell}} using {{BannerShell}}. As far as I've seen so far, the only cases where this overall approach doesn't work is when a project template generates additional banners. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 01:51, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

New? -- Ned Scott 03:54, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Three months old is new to me, and I didn't discover them until the past week or two. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 04:20, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Fair enough. -- Ned Scott 04:28, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Standing lists at Wikiprojects

To facilitate throughput to GA and FA, I'm trialling this; I've listed Standing Lists of large articles with substantial content which may be within striking distance of GA with varying amounts of work WRT formatting and copyediting. Some are already being worked on but I'm seeing if this increases collaboration. So far I've done this on WP mammals talk page and WP Birds collab pages. Be interesting to see if more of these come through cheers, Cas Liber | talk | contribs 01:33, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

New Approach

As discussed above, I and a couple others feel this tiered approach might be over-bureaucratic and difficult to implement.

As a different approach, I've put together User:SatyrTN/WikiProject_reform. That proposal is to create a "WikiProject for Discussion" - a review process similar to the *fD process already in place. I'd appreciate any comments anyone has. If there's significant interest, I'd be interested in replacing the tiered approach with the review approach. -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 15:52, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

I'll comment here rather than there, to keep everyone in the loop.

The things I like about your proposal:

• It's short
• It makes a concrete proposal, rather than talking about possibilities

The things I don't like:

• The proposals aren't specific enough
• It's not complete enough -- I still like the tiering system

My problem with it is, first you agree on a merge, and then you tell the projects to sort it out. I think a better system would be to specify the type of merge in the proposal. This would essentially be equivalent to the "re-tiering" described in the other document, except that we wouldn't call it that. So I'm suggesting that you could propose two different types of merge, and a re-purpose. So if you propose a merge, it basically means that the two projects are stuck together to become one. If you propose a "re-tier" (feel free to come up with a better name), then you're proposing a task-force-isation of one project. If you propose a "repurpose", then you're essentially proposing a rename and a change of goals/scope.

I've already done both a retiering proposal (Jesus Wikiproject) and a repurposing, and I can assure you they're both useful. It also prevents people from agreeing to a merge and then becoming acrimonious as to how it's to be done -- they already know what the deal is before any voting takes place.

I think the real problem here is that we have no information as to how tiers are assigned. If it was the case that every project picked the tier they thought appropriate, and it was just used for identification purposes (ie. so that people know what to expect), then I think that would be useful. If we make people jump through lots of hoops to get into certain tiers, then that's a problem. So I guess my proposal is, keep the tiering idea, but go easy on the bureaucracy (which admittedly isn't what I've necessarily been doing above).

Ok, let me revise my proposal:

1. First, we focus on the tagging reform and merge/split/delete process, a la Satyr's proposal, get that working, and an accepted set of policy/guidelines/processes surrounding that
2. Then we get a tiering system working as an informational tool -- think of it as being a standard infobox for WikiProjects, telling you what you can expect of the project. We make it semi-optional -- basically, you're not required to have the infobox, but you should have one (ie. don't remove them if someone else sets one up). The inactive status could also be marked in this box
3. Finally, we set up an optional WikiProject review system (see the "accreditation" section of this page)

How do those three points sound to everyone?

-- TimNelson 07:05, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Ok, I've just realised -- if the Tiering system is purely informational (as I suggested above), then we don't need to go through any kind of official policy/guideline stuff (although we do need a bit of consensus). My plan is, if no-one objects, to make a WikiProject infobox, and document the tiering idea in the guide. Then that can be removed from this WikiProject reform proposal, and the policy documentation can continue apace, as there will be one less item for controversy.

--TimNelson 03:51, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

I like what you're saying, Tim. I could also see documenting the "tier" of a project in the Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory. And I like the idea of an infobox that lets potential project members know a) how active the project is and b) "what to expect".

I wonder about the "accreditation system" - couldn't that be a part of the "WPfD" process? It seems very similar to me - review the project regarding scope, activities, and relationship to other wikiprojects and "assign" to a tier. That also underscores that the WPfD process isn't just for when there's a problem (inactivity, overtagging, whatever). It's also for review of how the project's working and potentially suggesting courses of action. -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 04:15, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

I've discovered that a WikiProject infobox already exists: Template:Infobox WikiProject. I'll expand on this a little so that it does what we want as far as tiering specification goes. However, I thought that it'd be better to get more specific than a generalised "tier". So my thought is that we can rate it according to the following:

• inactive (default = no) -- If true, includes Template:inactive (which includes the appropriate category)
• helps-organise-children (default = no) true if the project has "task forces"
• has-other-goals (default = yes) should be false for the old "Tier 0" projects
• assessment (default = null) -- links to assessment page

-- TimNelson 05:20, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

What's "has other goals"? -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 13:51, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

moved comment from project page

Wikpedia:Miscellany for deletion already serves this function adequately. We do not need an XfD process for every conceivable typo of Wikipedia file. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 01:34, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

Because no one's using MfD for this purpose. It could indeed be rolled in to the MfD process, but since this page is discussing WikiProject reform, it would be good to spell it out. Also, any suggestions for a project would be specific to WikiProjects, which MfD may not have dealt with yet. And finally, deletion wouldn't be the only option available. -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 01:50, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

Tim, Satyr, et al.: I like where this is going. I think a less rigid tier system could go a very long way toward relieving the second identified problem with WikiProjects: the "redundancy and fracturing." A more organized directory of WProjects will make it much easier for participants to look at what other projects are doing, and then avoid some of the duplication that's happening. And Tim, we briefly discussed reorganizing the maintenence projects; I think that this system could be applied to them as well. They suffer from even more redundancy than the regular projects (often, even redundancy with projects that operate outside the WikiProject structure, see WP:MAINT). Fishal 15:10, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

Reform Reform

So I guess the next step here would be to separate out the tier system into it's own guideline, then clean up the WPfD system and add in the process. Does that sound about right? -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 13:52, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

But that's the whole point -- we don't need a guideline, we're just talking about a definition of terms here. So if we note in Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Guide which tier is synonymous with what, and what would normally be expected of each tier, then we don't *need* an official guideline. -- TimNelson 01:37, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

So let me restate, then: the next step here would be to separate out the tier system, then clean up the WPfD system and add in the process. Kewl? -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 01:55, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

Right. But I wanted to retain that little bit about the tagging, so I did the removal myself. Note that by removing this, I'm not proposing that the entire tiering system is irrelevant, but just that we need to be focussed to get this stuff promoted from "people randomly arguing" to being a guideline. So lets get the WPfD system working argued about, and we can worry about formal tiering processes later. -- TimNelson 03:19, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

Incidentally, you'll notice that I've made task-force-isation a separate concept from merging. This is to prevent people all voting for something, but not agreeing on what they're actually voting for. -- TimNelson 07:04, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

Possible alternate way of differentiating projects

Maybe another way of "defining" projects would be according to how they fulfill the three basic functions of wikipedia:creating, developing, and maintaining articles. Smaller projects, like Wikipedia:WikiProject Crowded House, for instance, probably are initially created to create and develop content related to their subject. However, many such projects which deal with subjects which are inherently temporary, like TV shows, bands, specific video games, individual book series, etc., will almost certainly fairly quickly come to the point where they have basically created all the articles desired, and have developed them to at least a reasonable level. At that point, they will tend to become inactive. Then, it is reasonable for the larger projects to step in to maintain such articles. Such larger projects could be the basic "subject" projects, like Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography, Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine, Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history, specific national WikiProjects, and the like. These projects could request to as it were take over the management of the content of the smaller projects when they basically create all that they have wanted to. Anyway, just an idea. John Carter 13:48, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

My experiences

I have re-organized WP:PHILO around task forces. I think this form of organization is better for a more united Philosophy project. The banner includes fields. Any particular article may be in one or more fields.

I have also had success using transclusions as a way to have separate areas become united on one page and still keep their individual identity. The participants roster is a collection of transclusions from each task force. In the case of the Logic task force, transclusions have made it possible for the territorial WP:MATH people to keep their mathematical logic separate from the "philosophical" logic. The requested articles is another example under logic. The Philosophy noticeboard is another.

Perhaps WikiProject Reform can some make recommendations on standardized ways to set up a multi-task force, and interdisciplinary projects using these methods. Greg Bard 02:54, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Greg, I took a look at the project but couldn't figure this out, I'm desperately trying to understand how you are using transclusions. What happens if someone just adds their name to the main page participants list as instructed?--Doug.^{(talk • contribs)} 00:36, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Each transcluded file contains the header for a subsection (three equal signs). When the transcluded part comes up it will include an "edit" link for that section... That is, if your preferences allow it (I hadn't thought of that.) Perhaps I need to make a small edit link for those who don't have that option set.

Otherwise you will have to type the name into the addressbar manually. In all cases the file is the base name of the task force plus: "/participants"

If someone adds a name above or below the transclusion link, it can be moved to that file pretty easily. Perhaps there is a better way to deal with it? I think making the link clear will suffice. Greg Bard 02:17, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

I think I have solved the problem. If you look at how the aesthetics task force roster shows up on the task force page, and the same one appears on the philosophy WikiProject participants page

Greg Bard 05:06, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

WPfD: Banners are the most pressing issue, not Projects

Over-tagging has become rampant, and unfortunately few Projects have taken the lead of MILHIST, Biography, etc, and opted for a shared tag with parameters for child projects and workgroups.

In my opinion, in most cases it's not WikiProjects which need to be merged or deleted, it's talk page banners. {{WPBiography}} should be the model here, as we managed to integrate several independent WikiProjects into "workgroups" (British Royalty, Musicians) and have them share our template.

Of course, there are sometimes WikiProjects which need to be deleted (they've never done anything, they're against policy, etc) but MfD already handles these adequately. Furthermore, in the case of inactive projects, they should be archived.

Having a process whereby people are encouraged to nominate WikiProjects for deletion will lead to bad feeling and is using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. It is also ignorant of the fact that the main problem - template clutter - can be solved by forcing groups to become child projects and to share banners.

That said, there is also a growing problem with vanity Projects and talking shops; WikiProjects which have never actually done anything other than tag talk pages.

So, perhaps we would need the WPfD process to have options like this, with very clear guidelines so as to minimise bad feeling and the risk of editors feeling their Project is being bullied:

• "Become a child project of..." (called "Re-tiering" (or "task-force-isation") overleaf; nicer terms) - this should only apply where a project is clearly in the territory of a bigger, active project (England is part of UK; Musicians articles are biographies. The Beatles stands alones because it covers albums, songs, biographies and other things). The primary goal here is to get banner sharing
• Merger, only where a project has achieved little or nothing and is within the scope of a larger, active project (e.g. a non-performing WikiProject The Falklands War could be forceably mergedinto MilHist; in effect this would mean permanently archiving the project, directing visitors to Milhist, and deleting any banner).
• Deletion, only where MfD would delete the project (it violates policy, has no useful edit history, etc).

This would of course mean that many smaller, active projects who do not mostly overlap a large parent would be left alone. Rightly so, imho. Targetted instead would be the silly layers of projects who don't share banners (WP UK, WP England, WP UK Geography etc etc); projects who do naff all; and those we already delete at MfD. --kingboyk (talk) 11:28, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

"Re-purposing": changing the name, goals, and/or scope of a WikiProject; an example would be the proposal to change the World music WikiProject into a Regional and National music WikiProject - Totally impractical if the participants don't agree.

"Re-tiering" (or "task-force-isation"): an example would be the Jesus WikiProject becoming the Jesus taskforce of the Christianity WikiProject - As above, this can be forced and would achieve a lot.

If the consensus is to split the WikiProject into multiple projects, then the pages would be cloned to the new name(s)

Technically, different criteria would be used - for example, guidelines for when a Wikiproject should be split would be based on the number of tagged articles rather than the size of the project page. - Ghastly idea. Cloning WikiProjects?! Without the agreement of the participants? Based on number of articles? --kingboyk (talk) 11:35, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

The Jesus project is a task force of Wikipedia:WikiProject Christianity. John Carter (talk) 19:52, 4 January 2008 (UTC)