Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals/Tayside and Fife

The following discussion is an archived proposal of the WikiProject below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the project's talk page (if created) or the WikiProject Council). No further edits should be made to this page.

The resulting WikiProject was not created

Description

I would possibly like to create a child wikiproject of WikiProject Scotland called WikiProject Tayside and Fife. I intend for this to include the regions of Angus, Dundee, Perth and Kinross and Fife. The scope of the project would be anything related to the regions. If there is not enough support for a WikiProject and task force on the WikiProject Scotland would be a possible alternative. Andrewmc123 13:46, 5 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Several editors have commented on the fact that Tayside & Fife may be too narrow of a scope. Another suggestion could be proposing WikiProject Scottish Geography instead with a much broader scope. This would allow a lot of Tayside & Fife articles along with geography-related articles from all across Scotland to be improved through the WikiProject. Please leave a comment below stating whether or not proposing WikiProject Scottish Geography would be a good idea. Andrewmc123 00:09, 8 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support

Please specify whether or not you would join the project.

Andrewmc123 13:46, 5 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Probably enough articles to justify a WikiProject. TheRetroGuy (talk) 18:55, 5 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I'm the one who started the Fife task force, but this is a lot better what is being proposed here.Kilnburn (talk) 22:13, 6 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

Just to point out that there is already a Fife task force within Wikiproject Scotland. It has one participant and would appear to be inactive. The regional Scotland projects on Glasgow and Edinburgh have also been relatively inactive, in fact WikiProject Glasgow has been deleted, though I'm not clear why. Still, all the best with improving Tayside articles, but its not really my area. Regards, Jonathan Oldenbuck (talk) 19:55, 6 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

With regards to Fife Task Force, it is only one region in the proposed project. Articles regarding Dundee, Perth and Kinross and Angus add some more contributors, several of which are Good Articles (Carnoustie and Arbroath are two examples). WikiProject Edinburgh and WikiProject Glasgow are as stated relatively inactive. One reason may be that they do not have enough participants. WikiProject Glasgow, which I rather hastily created without proposing it here, was deleted at my request as I felt that I should have proposed it here to gauge how many contributors there would be. Thank you for your comments. Andrewmc123 20:22, 6 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Just as a comment, I'd suggest Andrewmc123 might want to think much more (and explain to the rest of us) why he wants to create a new Project. After all, there is already a WikiProject T&F - it's called WP:SCOTLAND. :-) It's not like these articles that have no Project to look after them. If the intention is to encourage work on T&F articles, then that is often better done as part of a more active "general" project - by putting them into a ghetto you may reduce the number of people working on them, and time spent sorting out the Project means less time for just writing great articles. There's a good reason to create a daughter Project if discussion of a particular group of articles is dominating the general project, but I can't see that happening here. So I'd oppose such a Project, at least until there was evidence of more activity on T&F articles at WP:SCOTLAND, and/or Andrewmc123 can come up with something more definite than "it would be nice to have one". Le Deluge (talk) 23:34, 6 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I understand what you are trying to say. However, I feel that a WikiProject would allow interested contributors to focus more directly on articles in the scope of the proposed Project. WikiProject Scotland is, as you stated, a more "general" project. WikiProject England currently has over 35 daughter Projects (albeit 10 of these are inactive). I would like WikiProject Tayside and Fife to be similar to some of these projects. Most of these only have between 10 and 30 participants but still manage to maintain a Project. After all, Tayside and Fife has a larger area than most of the counties in England. Tayside and Fife covers 8,860 square kilometres of land, which is about equal to the area of North Yorkshire, England's largest county. So, I think that the reasons above are slightly more definite than "it would be nice to have one". Andrewmc123 00:11, 7 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You still need to explain exactly what goals you have and how a new Project would achieve them. There's nothing stopping people using the category system to explore Category:Fife and Category:Perth and Kinross to "focus" on such articles. Explain exactly what you want to achieve, and we might be able to help in ways other than further balkanising the Scotland project, which will just lead to the average member of WP Scotland spending less time on T&F articles - I know I tend to pass by articles which already have a dedicated sub-Project. For instance, there's things you can do with Selection Bot or I could use WP:AWB to spew out all the members of the Fife and P&K categories and knock them into some kind of shape that would be useful to you.

The analogy with North Yorks is a bit of a false one - if we're just going on area, then surely the Highlands are more deserving of a Project? But acres don't write Wiki articles, people do - and the evidence suggests that on average, geographical areas need a couple of million people to support a WikiProject unless you happen to have a group of real enthusiasts to sustain it like the Islands guys. For instance, North Yorks doesn't have its own Project, Yorkshire does - and Yorkshire has about the same population as Scotland. I'm not sure that England is a good guide - it's 10x the population of Scotland so some kind of subdivision is useful, and the county is the obvious way to do that, but even big ones like WP:WikiProject Essex (pop 1.7m) don't exist, as you say many of those that do are inactive, and the likes of Lancs and Cumbria have combined under one WP. Put it this way - the Glasgow project never seemed to really take off, so what makes you think T&F will have more critical mass than 2.3m people in Glasgow?

Scotland is a natural division, whereas combining Tayside and Fife is a bit artifical - why not just Tayside since the Fife tf never worked? I suspect that a more productive route might be to think about further divisions of WP Scotland by subject rather than locality. That would fit better the existing hierarchy of Transport, Castles and so on. There's probably an argument for a Scottish subdivision of WP:WikiProject UK geography, and certainly for a Scottish biography project, but I don't think the argument has yet been made for further regional ghettoes.Le Deluge (talk) 09:36, 7 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I now understand that such a narrow scope may be counter-productive. So perhaps instead of focusing on just T&F articles, I should focus on Scotland as a whole. I understand. Should I propose something less regional then? Perhaps proposing WikiProject Scottish Geography instead in which T&F geography articles along with geography articles from all across other parts of Scotland could be improved. Would that be a better idea? Andrewmc123 00:01, 8 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

So, just to clarify, does that mean that you are withdrawing this proposal? Might I suggest that a Scottish geography project should be discussed back at WP Scotland?

Don't take this the wrong way, this is just meant as friendly and constructive advice from someone who's been around a bit, but I've just been looking at your contributions in the WP Talk namespace. It seems that so far you have created WP River City (which you've had to expand to WP Scotish TV because there wasn't enough support), WP Glasgow (never took off, since deleted) and now these new ones. And yet, other than in relation to your own Projects, you've never actually participated in Projects such as WP Scotland! I can't help feeling that your lack of experience in participating in WikiProjects has given you a misleading impression of what they're about, or at least an unrealistic expectation of what they can achieve.

I'd slow down a bit, stop trying to set up new structures and just have a go at working within existing structures like WPS and UKgeo. It's not as though they're overwhelmed right now, and it would allow you to concentrate your time on writing articles rather than on the considerable amount of bureaucracy involved in creating (and more importantly maintaining) new Projects. Wikipedia doesn't really respond to top-down structures, the Projects that work tend to emerge organically, from groups of editors who are already working together. I'd just hold fire on proposing any new Projects for at least six months, and just spend a bit more time interacting with the existing ones. Anyway, this is getting kinda off-topic, I'll continue on your Talk page. Le Deluge (talk) 11:09, 8 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yes I am withdrawing my proposal. I think you're right. I should definitely slow down a bit and will spend some time improving articles at WPS and UKgeo.Andrewmc 123 12:31, 8 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]