Wikipedia talk:Join in

Initial brainstorming for the project

Might I suggest a time limit for failed article nominations? Also, a more descriptive name so people know what they are joining would be good too. pschemp | talk 18:36, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the comment - which name do you mean as having to be more descriptive? The URL? - Samsara _contrib ^talk 18:51, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

no, the join in part. So people know what they are joining. If they just see the name randomly its hard to tell what the project is for. Ideally the word article should be in there, but I'm not sure exactly what I'd call it. I think the whole idea is brilliant though and I'd love to see it replace COTW. pschemp | talk 18:59, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

It might be a good idea to tell people to only vote for one candiate at a time, if two articles they have voted for reach critical mass at the same time, they will be split otherwise.MartinRe 19:03, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Alternatively, as this seems to aim to more informal than AID, more "I'm working on this article, anyone want to help?", which is a cool idea, how about the following structure: Anyone can nominate an article they are working on. By voting on an article, you are saying you will join in *now* to help. Articles that fail to get a certain amount of interest in the first week are removed. Articles that receive "enough" votes are removed, as are articles that remain there for four weeks. That should result in a fairly quick turnover of articles, allow people to work straight away, knowing there are other active editors, but also not focus too many people on one article by having the "enough" threashold. MartinRe 19:03, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Okay, yeah, I just did sort of the same thing that you suggest. I like your ideas to only allow nominations if the person is already working on the article, and to encourage starting on the article immediately. - Samsara _contrib ^talk 19:09, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

If you don't mind, I'm going to update the instructions to make it a little simpler, feel free to revert if you disagree (esp about a fixed threashold). MartinRe 19:12, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Name idea: "Join in Now!" :) MartinRe 19:03, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Nice. :) Samsara _contrib ^talk 19:09, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

I like that too. pschemp | talk 19:15, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Wrt to "Bringing up to featured status" would this really be the case? That to me is too formal, I would much prefer to express this something like "This is not designed to bring articles up to featured status in one go (although that would be nice!) but more to allow people to pool efforts on an article, knowing that there are other editors active on the same article, which makes editing much more fun!" Just my 2p :) MartinRe 19:33, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Just looked it over, and I think you'll need a numerical cap on the number of nominees, in the region of 30 to 50, maybe? Otherwise I fear that you will get flooded with requests. My original bias was towards three weeks rather than four, which would make another marginal difference. - Samsara _contrib ^talk 00:50, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

I picked four weeks as an completely arbitary limit (as with the 12), I'm fine with any changes. I'm not sure about having a fixed nomination limit, hopefully it will stabilse itself as items get dropped off. Maybe we should wait until we get our first nomination before worring too much! :) MartinRe 01:02, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

MartinRe, it seems we each have a vision for a Collaboration project. I think there's space for both, so I've moved your version to Wikipedia:Join in Now!. If you agree, just add the following to Template:COTWs and you're away:

*[[Wikipedia:Join in Now!|Join in Now!]] ('''new''')

Best, Samsara _contrib ^talk 03:10, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Um...that's great but its terribly confusing to have two projects with such similar names and goals. I really would like to see one cohesive plan that I can support here. (Maybe I'm just confused about what you moved?)pschemp | talk 04:59, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Summary: The original suggestion was to include a threshold of editors needed, and to start work on the article only when that was reached. During brainstorming, my suggestion was for all interested editors to start work on the nominated articles immediately, using a arbitary theashold of 12 to remove nominations from the list once "enough" editors were working on a particular article. The orignal suggestion got more support, so it's now the current one again. While my suggestion was moved elsewhere (see above) I've marked it as historical, as I also don't think having two similar projects would work. MartinRe 08:56, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Well, one would be for getting immediate help, the other for waiting until a threshold is reached. It would be interesting to see whether one of them works out to be more successful than the other, or whether different people use either, or for different pages. As for similar names, that's what we call a "brand identity". ;) - Samsara _contrib ^talk 10:43, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

This is a great idea Samsara, good work. The only thing I can see wrong with the page, is the history sub-page. It says "For past winners", but I thought the idea of this was for there to be no winners. --liquidGhoul 03:15, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Maybe we should change the history from "winners", to "succesful collaborations", or similar wording. --liquidGhoul 04:44, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Comments

This is a good idea, for people who want to work on a certain article with help from a couple editors but know their nomination isn't likely to succeed in AID. I'm tempted to nominate Oregon State University as I've been meaning to improve that for a while. VegaDark 01:35, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Please do! - Samsara _contrib ^talk 02:43, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Competing proposal

I'd like to make another proposal (competition drives business), a draft of which is here. - Samsara _contrib ^talk 02:46, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Litefantastic's suggestion

Since nobody reads large paragraph blocks, I'll be succinct. 1: You make a good point. A collaboration based around a 'crtical mass' of editors is a brillaint idea. 2: Revise the rules just a tad. Follow your own suggestion, and allow the nominator to specify the number of people required. Once that number has ammased, someone should notify them all and they can get cracking together, for a set period of time. Your idea:

===[[ARTICLE]]===
====(1 volunteer)====
:''nominated'' [[DATE]]: Expires [[Date four weeks from now]]
::''requires 3 votes by [[Date one week from now]] to remain

; Join in now!
# (sign with four tildes) 

; Comments:
* (put your reason for nomination, sign again)

----

My modifications:

==[Category]==
===[[ARTICLE]]===
:''nominated'' [[DATE]]: Expires [[Date four weeks from now]]
::''Editor requires [#] of people to begin work.

; Join in now!
# (sign with four tildes) 

; Comments:
* (put your reason for nomination, sign again)

----

-Litefantastic 00:12, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Yes, once again, exactly what I was thinking. - Samsara _contrib ^talk 02:53, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

I don't follow what the "category" section is supposed to have. VegaDark 03:28, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Yes, thanks for pointing that out, I was just pasting blindly. See what we have now. Don't worry about making a mistake - we'll fix it promptly if necessary. - Samsara _contrib ^talk 03:49, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Displaying active collaborations

I've tentatively suggested displaying active collaborations for a short time in a separate section (for three days, but do disagree!). Let me know whether you think this is too formal, distracting, whatever! - Samsara _contrib ^talk 10:51, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Do you mean the ones which have gotten the required number of contributors, and are regularly being worked on? If so, I think there should be a page of those, but the collaboration stays for as long as it is active. That way, new-comers can add themselves to the list and begin work. The original contributors should remove it when they feel the work has cooled down, and there is much less contributions (like it is now with frog). If there is a problem with the number of collaborations, then maybe they should be categorised so people can browse in their field of preference. --liquidGhoul 11:17, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

I think this is a good idea. I just came accross this page, and I was left wondering which articles were still up for nomination and which ones were active collaborations. I think there should be a section called "active collaborations" that lists all collaborations. Perhaps leave them on the list for a month, whatever makes the page manageable. jacoplane 02:04, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

comment

You should probably try and spread the word about this collaboration if you want it to be successful. I'll post something on my userpage and try to tell some people about it. Maybe post something on the community bulletin board? Gflores ^Talk 06:26, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Good idea, the only reason I found it was looking through the AID cantidates, I bet most people don't know about this yet. VegaDark 06:56, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

I've listed it there. Also well done to Litefantastic for making a template. - Samsara (talk • contribs) 14:06, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Let's hope that I'm redundant

Over to you now, whoever you may be, friend or stranger! - Samsara (talk • contribs) 02:27, 17 March 2006 (UTC)