Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Council/Archive 26

Determining the future of B-class checklists

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Clear consensus for option 2, i.e. B-class checklists will be removed from all projects which have not opted out of project-independent quality assessments. Any project wishing to use the B-class checklist in future will need to opt-out of WP:PIQA. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:11, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

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82 WikiProjects have opted-in to use the B1-B6 checklists as part of their assessments. For these banners, code like |b1=yes|b2=no (etc.) determines the class rating. Since these checklists are project-specific, they can lead to conflicting ratings between projects, which is an obstacle for the switch to project-independent quality assessments that reached near-unanimous consensus earlier this year.

So we have two options:

• Option 1 is to adopt the B-class checklists globally for all projects and move them to the WikiProject banner shell. See here for how it would look.
• Option 2 is to drop the use of B-checklists by these 82 projects. Note that WP:MILHIST will be exempted from this, since it opted-out of project-independent quality assessments.

I will notify all 82 WikiProjects so they can participate in this discussion. DFlhb (talk) 11:10, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

Pinging @Ixtal, InfiniteNexus, Favre1fan93, Monstrelet, and Kusma: who participated in the last related discussion — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 17:10, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

@MSGJ - Today for first time in along while, I did copy/paste of Class-B checklist (at Talk:Association football positions). How about Option 3? For articles with the checklist already there, Display it instead of "Show". For Class-B articles without the checklist, add it or display the copy/paste with instructions of how to add. BTW I do find that checklist very helpful. Regards, JoeNMLC (talk) 17:27, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

Survey

• Option 2, after some thought. The point of B-checklists is to indicate what still needs work to reach B-class (for example, referencing, or grammar), but that duplicates the role of cleanup templates, which can be far more precise, targeting specific sections, paragraphs, or sentences, and which are more actionable since they're added to various popular backlogs and draw the attention of cleanup-focused editors. To my knowledge, B-checklists are not used as backlogs for referencing/grammar/etc cleanup; their categorization makes this impossible. I also found that B-checklists are rarely used by these 82 projects; roughly 90% of their eligible articles (meaning B, C, or Start-class) lack a B-checklist. While article cleanup tags are useful, B-checklists are redundant, siloed, and unusable as backlogs. To fill out missing B-checklists, keep them up to date, or keep them in sync with article cleanup tags, would be busywork without tangible impact. Frankly they seem like a relic of an earlier time. DFlhb (talk) 11:10, 30 October 2023 (UTC)
• Option 2 I'm not convinced the benefits outweigh complexity of maintaining them, and agree with the reasoning given by DFlhb. -Kj cheetham (talk) 11:45, 30 October 2023 (UTC)
• Leaning Option 2. DFlhb makes a good case, and it aligns with my long-term feeling (as an active wikiprojectorizer on various topics) that the B-class checklist template flags are tedious, disused, and sometimes just outright faked. (More than once I have seen someone put a B-class rating on an article, find that it still showed up as C, then re-edit to include all the checklist flags as "yes"; when I looked in the article to see whether all the checklist items were in fact true they were not, and I had to bust it back down to C-class, with accurate checklist parameters set. And it was basically a waste of time for everyone.) A system people either mostly ignore, or occasionally abuse on purpose just to evade it, is not serving a useful purpose for us.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:49, 30 October 2023 (UTC)
• Option 2. Keep it simple. I am a simple editor who is involved in article assessments only occasionally. But when I did assessments, I found these B-checklists very confusing, especially because the banner would not update if I change the class (and while working in the wikitext editor, I did not even know what "B1" or "B2" refers to). In this case, less is more. I do not think the benefit of these checklists outweighs the added complexity and resulting confusion of less experienced editors. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 12:32, 30 October 2023 (UTC)
• Option 2. I've never found B-class checklists very helpful or useful. To keep things simple, I support dropping the checklists from all 82 projects that use them. Volcanoguy 12:45, 30 October 2023 (UTC)
• Option 1. I know that I at least use the B-class checklist, and have encouraged others to as well. Happy editing, SilverTiger12 (talk) 12:53, 30 October 2023 (UTC)
• Option 2, but not forever. I don't think the current B-class assessment system is useful, but I still think there should be a B-class assessment system. My vote is to scrap the current set-up and work towards creating a more intuitive and widely-adopted one, which is designed for the unified WikiProject assessment. Fritzmann (message me) 13:35, 30 October 2023 (UTC)
• Option 2. I concur with Fritzmann that long term there needs to be a better process, for determining B-class articles, standardized across all WikiProjects. I find all assessment to have quite a bit of wiggle room based on user beliefs, but if we are working to standardize this for all projects, B-Class will need a better defined assessment model moving forward. Demt1298 (talk) 14:03, 30 October 2023 (UTC)
• Option 2 Rather cumbersome to fix all the backlogs of list parameters and maintain it. I think there should be a better way of doing B-class. Noah, AA^Talk 16:27, 30 October 2023 (UTC)
• Option 1 Removing the checklist means that article classes will mean that article classification will not be related to article quality. The proposal is saying in bold capital letters that Wikipedia does not care about quality of articles or sourcing.Nigel Ish (talk) 17:30, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

  Not what the proposal says. DFlhb (talk) 18:42, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

• Option 2 It's difficult to keep those checklists in sync with the quality of the article. TarkusAB^talk/contrib 17:47, 30 October 2023 (UTC)
• Option 2 per the previous discussion. InfiniteNexus (talk) 18:02, 30 October 2023 (UTC)
• Option 1 The checklist provides a means to evaluate and give basic feedback to an article. That it can be outdated is a shared problem with the entire assessment system. While it is not always used, I see no benefit to cutting out the option if a user wishes to use it. CMD (talk) 18:02, 30 October 2023 (UTC)
• Option 1 (as "not broken- don't fix" has been ruled out). The B-class checklists help projects identify specific issues. THey also allow editors to judge particular aspects of quality even if they are unsure about others (I might not be able to judge if an article covers a subject accurately but I can definitely note that references are missing) They exist alongside specific cleanup templates not instead of them. Quality rating is in the eye of the beholder so editors from different projects rating the same article differently is to be expected whether they use B-lists or not.GraemeLeggett (talk) 18:28, 30 October 2023 (UTC)
  • Different projects rating the same article differently is what WP:PIQA is moving away from though. -Kj cheetham (talk) 21:45, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

    Indeed. Regardless of the outcome here, any project can retain B-checklists by opting-out of PIQA, as MILHIST did. If a project decides that they expect to rate articles differently from other projects, that by definition also means opting-out of PIQA, and they're perfectly welcome to do so. Option 1 is of course an option here, but it's not the only option for projects that decide they want to keep B-checklists. This proposal isn't about limiting any projects; it's about deciding how global assessment (PIQA) should work. DFlhb (talk) 22:40, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

• Option 1 if. I lean towards O1 but we need to make it esier to use them and edit them. When clicked, there should be some kind of popup. Editing them in code, and remembering if a given project uses 5 of 6, and what they are called, and whether they accept a yes or y parameter or whatever is a major pain. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 00:54, 31 October 2023 (UTC)
• Option 2, hesitantly. I feel like these lists are very cumbersome and so I am hesitant to edit them, but I feel as if they should be replaced with something - but I am not sure what. For most editors, including myself, they do not adequately serve their intended function. PARAKANYAA (talk) 01:02, 31 October 2023 (UTC)
• Option 2, with some regret (could support option 1 if some improvements are made). In theory, the B-Class checklists are a mini-review that gives an article author some feedback on why their article has received a certain classification. In practice, the B-Class checklists are under-utilised and often years out of date. One other problem is that I can never remember what B1 through B6 even are; if Rater or other tools had nicer and well labelled checkboxes it could help a lot. If the checklists are removed, I suggest that this is preceded or accompanied by a bot run that posts to the talk page what the assessment used to be ("On 6 March 2013 this article was rated C-Class. It passed the B-Class criteria for citations, but failed on accessibility for a general audience"). —Kusma (talk) 09:36, 31 October 2023 (UTC)
• Option 2, Keep it simple, I agree with most of the points brought up by people who voted option 2. WanderingMorpheme 18:33, 31 October 2023 (UTC)
• Option 2 per my comments in the previous discussion, where I've felt the checklist perhaps no longer as served its purpose. - Favre1fan93 (talk) 02:39, 1 November 2023 (UTC)
• Option 1 weakly per WP:BROKE. This whole thing has been very unnecessary, and I really believe that it would be much better to just keep as-is. The article assessments are useful, and deprecating the checklists seems like a problem to the WikiProjects that have opted in. 🐔 Chicdat  ^{Bawk to me!} 11:06, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

  At WikiProject Germany, I pushed for the use of these checklists more than a decade ago, and I regret it. The Germany project has a far too large scope and insufficient manpower to run an independent B class assessment scheme. I would like for us to opt out again, project independent assessment is the way to go. —Kusma (talk) 19:56, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

  It would be helpful to know how many articles actually have filled B-class checklists. For the Germany project, it seems rather uncommon, and most existing ones are MILHIST or haven't been updated in ten years. —Kusma (talk) 20:02, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

  I note that @DFlhb already answered my question (I should learn to read!) If there are checklists on under 10% of the articles where checklists would be applicable, then given the age of many of the existing checklists we probably have under 5%, more likely under 3% of eligible articles with roughly up to date (less than five years old) checklists, and those would better be converted to talk page messages or cleanup tags. —Kusma (talk) 12:08, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

  In fact looking at the above I agree with Fritzmann's reasoning above. 🐔 Chicdat  ^{Bawk to me!} 21:33, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

• Option 2 The checklist is only meaningful if the article is below B-class. If an editor notices problems it would be a more valuable use of their time to place an inline tag, place an inline comment, place a cleanup banner, start a talk page discussion, and so on. B-class is not reader facing, it's entirely about article improvement, and the template checklists have little impact on article improvement. Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 04:31, 3 November 2023 (UTC)
• Option 2 For a editor-facing to-do list on article talk pages, we already have the more flexible Template:To do and Template:Tasks. QuietCicada - Talk 00:33, 4 November 2023 (UTC)
• Option 2 - I do a lot of assessments and have not found these helpful; I use cleanup templates. But, it's not all about me. Is there an option to create a separate checklist template that can be added separately to the talk page of articles where desired? ~Kvng (talk) 16:56, 5 November 2023 (UTC)
• Option 2. If an editor wants to rate an article B... let them. Don't make them fetch a shrubbery as well with the b1=y, b2=y, bloat. If an editor truly isn't familiar with the B-class guidelines, they should look them up before rating the article, but we already encourage that with a link to Wikipedia:Content assessment. Once an editor knows the B-class guidelines, there's no need to make them recite them over and over again. Besides, the B-class assessment doesn't even "matter". Assessments are routinely ten+ years out of date with no ill effect. The only assessments that really matter are GA, A, and FA, aka the ones that involve some sort of peer review. B-class is meant to be lightweight and quick, so let it be that way. If there is more detailed feedback to give on article improvement, use cleanup templates or a normal talk page discussion section instead. Besides, if an editor is bound and determined to mis-rate an article, the individual B-class criteria are unlikely to stop them. If there's some desire to replace or resurrect something similar, it should be only with assessments that can be fully automated by a bot, e.g. how most of the MILHIST B-class assessments are performed. SnowFire (talk) 18:32, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

  If there's some desire to replace or resurrect something similar, it should be only with assessments that can be fully automated by a bot, e.g. how most of the MILHIST B-class assessments are performed Fully agree - DFlhb (talk) 18:49, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

• Option 2. The checklists are a pain, and I suspect 99% of editors assessing just tick all the boxes without reading the rubric. If a project wants to opt out and do a more-thorough review for B class, nothing is preventing that. If someone thinks the article is almost B class but, say, needs a fuller lead, then just rewrite the lead, or at least comment on the talkpage that that is what is needed. Espresso Addict (talk) 03:05, 8 November 2023 (UTC)
• Option 2, not used anymore. Not suitable for Wikipedia's scale. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 13:10, 9 November 2023 (UTC)
• Option 2: Aside from GAN reviews, I personally don't see the difference between B-class and Good articles. Issues such as missing citations or weak writing can be dealt with during the review process. ResPM (T🔈🎵C) 14:26, 10 November 2023 (UTC)
• Option 2. I think that in the rare case that a project wants to have a project-specific evaluation, it should be a separate track from the usual evaluations. A-class does that (it is only project-specific), so that's ok. Special variations on B-class does not, so B-class evaluation should be standardized rather than forcing reviewers to vary their evaluation depending on project or to pay attention to project-specific rules for projects that may not even be the most salient ones for an article or its reviewer. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:35, 10 November 2023 (UTC)
• Note: consensus is becoming fairly clear, so I may close this discussion in a couple of days in favour of option 2 — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:03, 12 November 2023 (UTC)
• Option 2: It seems to me as if many, if not most wikiprojects chose B1 to B6 years ago and that the editors now involved are no longer set on this complex approach.--Ipigott (talk) 07:39, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

Discussion

• I've been far too busy with real life to participate in discussions at the appropriate times, though I have been able to follow some discussions. What I see is a hijacking of less active projects, specifically their ability to manage their own content. If it keeps going at this rate, most projects will have no reason to exist except for a venue for editors to push their favored sources. Obviously, there's "near-unanimous consensus" for such a thing. More to the point, there already is a B-class checklist at Wikipedia:Content assessment, where you click on "show" next to "More detailed criteria". Are many editors aware of this? I previously expressed concerns about unearned B and C assessments based largely on the number of subject headers and/or the number of images in an article. I don't recall anyone seriously tackling that concern during any of the discussions I did read. Is this going to be addressed whenever PIQA is fully rolled out? Style over substance has become a glaring problem across the encyclopedia over the past five or so years. Rewarding editors for such only makes it worse. RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions 03:40, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

  As I wrote in the previous discussion, the whole system is broken. If you ask me, I would throw away A-class, B-class, and C-class entirely — all subjective ratings arbitrarily assigned by random editors without an "official" process, subject to change if one editor feels like it, or neglect if no one bothers to re-assess an article's quality. InfiniteNexus (talk) 04:42, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Post-close comment

After closing the above I thought I would leave a comment, that there is a possible compromise for projects that wish to continue using the checklist without leaving PIQA. They could use the checklist without it having any effect on the quality class - so just an advisory checklist to help editors, but when all the criteria is satisfied they would then have to manually change |class=B — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:59, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

What's the status of the checklist being removed? Has it? - Favre1fan93 (talk) 16:01, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

It's gone. There was no interest in my post-close suggestion so all checklists (except milhist) were removed. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 17:16, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

I was only curious, because I didn't see any edits to {{WikiProject Film}} (one of the ones that had the checklist) and the code still includes |b1=, |b2=, etc. Should that ultimately be removed from those project templates, and subsequently from the articles still using the B-class checklists? - Favre1fan93 (talk) 18:44, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

Those parameters will be identified as deprecated and removed at some point. I don't think there is any hurry to remove from articles, but could perhaps be done one day. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 19:03, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

Perhaps this task can be bundled with the implementation of project-independent assessments by bots, if that's still happening. InfiniteNexus (talk) 19:20, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

WikiProject Louisville converted to participation (action center) model

Per recent consensus and after waiting to see if there were any objections, I converted WikiProject Louisville away from "membership thinking" as much as I reasonably could without eliminating the sign-up sheet, which still holds some usefulness. Note that I was already moving the project in an "action center" direction, so this conversion wasn't that difficult. Lemme know what you think. Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 04:28, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

help

I was recommended to come here from a wikiEdu. student advisor about reviewing my page and possibly getting some tags removed.

When I moved my page from my student sandbox, I got confused between my class tab that was open and the wikipedia move page I made a mistake and tried to fix it making a bigger mistake. My page has been flagged but I have continued to work on it, to improve it and correct errors. Can someone here check it out to see if the citation work is worthy of removing the tag? and could you please leave me information on my talk page. thank you

the page is Swaddled infant votive WikiTikiTavi63 (talk) 00:48, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

WikiTikiTavi63, this is probably not the page you were recommended to visit. That said, you correctly opened a discussion on the article talkpage, where ideally the tag issues are resolved. CMD (talk) 01:46, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

ok. Thank you.

I am trying to figure things out. WikiTikiTavi63 (talk) 01:48, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

No problem, just letting you know. I have commented on the talkpage. CMD (talk) 02:44, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

Set index articles

Happy new year everyone! Please see Wikipedia talk:Content assessment#Request for comment. I am trying to get consensus on what an SIA is and whether they are a useful classification of article on Wikipedia. Please comment there. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 17:53, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

Editors most active in a WikiProject's articles

There used to be a regularly produced report which showed the most active editors working on a specific WikiProject's articles. I forgot where that was, but I sure could use something like that to figure out who to invite to participate or who to give an occasional barnstar to. Does anyone remember what I'm talking about, and if there's any tool available today to help with this? Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 08:55, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

Those lists made it easier to identify potential new members, too, especially for someone trying to WP:REVIVE a group. It's at pages like Wikipedia:WikiProject Directory/Description/WikiProject Video games, but the bot has been broken for a long time. MusikAnimal (WMF), is getting this bot fixed a realistic project for the Community Wishlist? WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:24, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

Reviving is what I'm trying to do, although the main project I maintain uses a participation model now. I've taken other efforts to try to raise the project's profile, but having this list updated again would be of special assistance. Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 19:07, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

I wonder if it could be replaced by a Quarry query, for one-off/on-demand information. I'll go ask at Wikipedia:Request a query. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:11, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for your assistance over at Quarry. This looks to be of great assistance. Having a bot make a list automatically would be great, but running this query is a good stopgap. Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 00:01, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

@StefenTower, I don't know how far along with the process you are, but I've got my (remaining) list at User:WhatamIdoing/WPMED invitations, and the ones I've invited so far seem happy to be contacted. I expect (and kind of hope) that future lists will be shorter. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:54, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Also, my interest is in relatively new editors (to get them connected and on the right track), but you might want to focus on more experienced editors (e.g., 100 or even 1,000 edits), as high-volume editors are more likely to be active participants in watching the WikiProject's talk page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:23, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Even though I raised the editcount to 50,000, I got a list of just 13 entries (6 of them IPs) in my first try. I've looked at just one of them so far. They already had my project's banner on their user page but wasn't in the project's optional participant list. I gave them a barnstar for their longtime dedication to a particular article included in the project and noted they could add their username to the participant list if they wished to. I'll explore more of them probably this week. Running this query should be of great use over time. Thank you for following up! Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 19:38, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

For your purposes, you probably shouldn't have an upper limit on contributions. I think a lower limit of 100 or 1,000 edits might be reasonable, though. OTOH, if you're finding such a small group already, then a lower limit of 10 total edits is probably fine. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:49, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Yes, I suppose I can go without an editcount limit, but I was thinking that if an editor has been around past 50,000 edits, they would already be well aware of wikiprojects, but I of course could be wrong. :) I can play around with the query and see what happens. Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 19:56, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

They'll probably be aware of WikiProjects, but they might not be aware that you'd like them to put your favorite WikiProject on their watchlists. That's the "news" for your message. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:41, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Fair enough. :) Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 00:42, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

I ran the query again with no upper limit on edits, and it gave me one additional entry... me. LOL. Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 04:24, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

It's a pretty small subject area. Perhaps looking edits over a longer time period would help you get more than seven names? You could run it for a year instead of a month. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:31, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

Oh I thought the data that was available doesn't go back more than 30 days. Isn't that what we were told over at Quarry? Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 04:34, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

I lowered "% in project" to 5, and now I have 12 named editors other than me, so perhaps that's more workable. Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 04:41, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

I suggested 30 days, because that seemed like a reasonable first step for me, but I think that page history data can be queried for as far back as the page existed. It's less useful to invite someone who hasn't edited for months, but you should still be able to get the names. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:57, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Women Do News

A new Wikiproject appears to have been created at Wikipedia:WikiProject Women Do News. I'm not exactly sure how to do all the categorization/talk page formatting, but I think that help would be appreciated. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 22:47, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

Why don't they join forces with WikiProject Women? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 23:06, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

That would be a good question to ask the Wikiproject's creator. It might be worth suggesting that on her user talk page. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 03:46, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

It sounds like this is an edit-a-thon group, like Wikipedia:Art+Feminism or Wikipedia:Black Lunch Table. They're "a group of editors who want to work together", so they're welcome to call themselves a WikiProject if they want to, but they might find the Wikipedia:Meetup approach to be a better fit (or to have additional value; it's not an either/or thing).

Given how useful articles about media and journalists are to editors, I particularly appreciate their subject-area focus, and I wish them lots of luck. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:38, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

Still not a single post on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Women Do News. They seem to be operating off-wiki. Mollystarkdean would you like to comment? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:36, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

Africa

Should Wikipedia:WikiAfrica be merged with Wikipedia:WikiProject Africa? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:26, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

It appears to be an external project working with Wikimedia, rather than something Wikiprojecty. CMD (talk) 00:57, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

WikiProject Fire Safety + Fire Protection

Hello, this is kind of a big question, but I would really appreciate it if someone could respond. I would like to combine the defunct Fire Service and Fire Protection WikiProjects into one encompassing WikiProject Firefighting. How would I go about doing this, since neither has much (if any) active members at the moment. Can I go ahead and be WP:BOLD with it?

After creating the WikiProject I will go about trying to recruit possibly interested editors (as I have done before at WikiProject Somaliland) but I am mainly curious on how I would logistically go about the first part of this. Again, any feedback is much appreciated, cheers! Johnson524 23:20, 17 December 2023 (UTC)

It sounds sensible. I would make the proposal on each project's talk page to see if there is any response. Ifre is no opposition, then go ahead. You'll need a decent number of editors to make a success of it. Let us know if you need help with any part!the — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 23:23, 17 December 2023 (UTC)

@MSGJ: Thanks for the feedback! I'll let you know in a week if there was any response. Cheers! Johnson524 23:25, 17 December 2023 (UTC)

@Johnson524, thank you for taking this on. I suggest waiting a month. We have rarely encountered an semi-active editor who turns up right after the merge happens, and is mad because he didn't get "enough" notice. A week can be argued to be insufficient, but pretty much all the other editors will agree that a month is plenty.

You may find the checklist at Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Guide/Task forces#Converting existing projects to task forces useful, even though you're talking about a simple merge-and-redirect. WP:REVIVE has advice for how to get the group going. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:03, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

Hello @WhatamIdoing, and I'm sorry for completely forgetting to respond 😅 Thanks for the helpful information, and I'll take your advice in waiting for a month. Cheers! Johnson524 23:33, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

@Johnson524: I made a few tweaks to clean up the merger you performed. I see each of the defunct-now-merged projects had one or more members listed on its respective project page, at least some of which have been recently active and at least one of those in fire/emergency-response topic-areas. Would it be worthwhile inviting all (or "all active within the last XX months") of them to the new project? DMacks (talk) 07:39, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

@DMacks: I think that sounds like a great idea 🙂 Thank you for your help on the merger, there was a lot more work to do than I originally thought, and I fell asleep before I could get it all done. Going to keep working on it today though, cheers! Johnson524 16:08, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

Discussions at Template talk:User in region § Template-protected edit request on 19 October 2023 and Template talk:User WP § Members vs. participants

 You are invited to join the discussions at Template talk:User in region § Template-protected edit request on 19 October 2023 and Template talk:User WP § Members vs. participants. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 15:52, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

WikiProject Electronic literature

In connection with this project, I am trying to introduce stats for article quality assessment. I have created Category:WikiProject Electronic literature articles by quality but there seems to be a problem. Can anyone help? Would also appreciate help with populating the empty categories Category:Unknown-importance Electronic literature articles and Category:NA-importance Electronic literature articles. (cc:MSGJ, Bearcat)--Ipigott (talk) 11:45, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

I think we've solved the problem with the categories but it would be good to have the project listed under Literature on the Directory.--Ipigott (talk) 14:05, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

A wikiproject move/merge proposal

FYI

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Wine#Requested move 18 October 2023. These don't come up all that often and are probably of "infrastructural" interest to regulars here.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:30, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

@SMcCandlish, thanks for this note. I'm sorry I didn't see it until now. There's a (non-RM) process for merging WikiProjects that respects the fact that WikiProjects are groups of people, rather than groups of pages, and that sometimes a division is due to human reasons (e.g., personality conflict).

I do agree with the sentiment that many WikiProjects need to be merged up to bigger groups. One could imagine, e.g., this wine group as well as Wikipedia:WikiProject Beer becoming part of the more generic Wikipedia:WikiProject Food and drink/Beverages Task Force. The problem is that this process takes a couple of hours per full merge, and nobody wants to do that systematically. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:05, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

Well, there should never be a wikiproject split (or failure of one to merge that needs to merge) on the basis of two editors having a personality conflict. That would be a WP:PROJECTFORK. If two editors have an issue with each other, they need dispute resolution, or for one or both of them to simply withdraw from the topic area if the dispute remains intractable after DR attempts. A merge of two projects into one might take a few hours, but is not all that big a deal. It's not like merging hundreds of articles or something.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:48, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

A WikiProject is not a process of any sort, so it won't ever fall under the heading of ==Process forks==.

Are you volunteering to merge up WikiProjects? I think I could literally keep you busy for a thousand hours with that, if you're willing. The first one or two are the hardest, but after you've done it a few times, it does get faster. You've already got the template editor user right, which will help with the banners. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:25, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

I would be down to help, if I had a list of the most wanted/relevant WikiProjects for merger. I'd rather merge two active/semi-active projects than bother with defunct projects. I'd also love to read documentation somewhere of what needs merging. Asides from archives of past discussions, categories for the different importance/quality categories...anything else? ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 00:50, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

The usual thing is to merge a defunct or barely active WikiProject into an active one. Some examples include:

• Seeing if Wikipedia:WikiProject Alien wants to merge up to Wikipedia:WikiProject Film
• Seeing if Wikipedia:WikiProject Turtles wants to merge up to Wikipedia:WikiProject Amphibians and Reptiles or Wikipedia:WikiProject Animals

Basically, I'd suggest going through Category:Inactive WikiProjects or Category:Semi-active WikiProjects and pulling out anything in the cat that seems interesting to you – Wikipedia:WikiProject Capitalism? Wikipedia:WikiProject Chinese in New York City? Wikipedia:WikiProject Cold War? Wikipedia:WikiProject Corruption? Wikipedia:WikiProject Demographics? Wikipedia:WikiProject Diversity? Wikipedia:WikiProject Endangered languages? Wikipedia:WikiProject Green Politics? – and that you can think of a broader subject area (economics, China, MILHIST, politics, statistics, and so on down the list) that it could be merged to.

See Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Guide/Task forces#Converting existing projects to task forces for a checklist. These pages don't necessarily need to be converted to task forces (=separate sub-pages), but it should give you an idea of what needs to be covered. Off hand, there's moving or redirecting all the pages+sub-pages, the talk-page banner itself (e.g., Template:WikiProject Capitalism), the cats produced by the banner, any userboxes or special barnstars the group made, and any cats produced by the userboxes. But the first step is to find a group that seems to be too small and another group they could merge into, and asking them if they are willing to have the groups merged. Like trying to merge groups of kids in school, if they don't want to play together, we can't really make them, but most are willing.

On the size of the groups: I don't think I'd recommend small steps. For example, if everyone is willing, it's probably better to jump straight from "Turtles" up to "Animals", because the "Animals" group isn't very big either. But if they think that amphibians and reptiles will get ignored too much in the bigger group, then merging up to Wikipedia:WikiProject Amphibians and Reptiles would give both the turtles group and the amphibians group a better chance at survival than leaving them separate. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:46, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

I don't think merging inactive projects is particularly useful though. When two dead wikiprojects are merged (with each other/or upstream) they don't increase community engagement. On other hand, to semi-active or even active WikiProjects will immediately see improved flows, if they're merged, with centralised talk discussions instead of fragmented discussions.

Some WikiProjects like WP:TRUMP or WP:OBAMA are best left dormant, until they become active again instead of attempting to shoehorn them into WP:USPOLITICS.

On other hand, something like WP:ISRAEL and WP:PALESTINE would be ripe for merger, but needs to be discussed with the communities first, on a common name etc.. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 17:46, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

This might not be the year for that particular one. Wikipedia:WikiProject Computing and Wikipedia:WikiProject Computer science might be viable candidates for merging. I'm not sure how they describe the differences in scope. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:42, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

How are two different countries a valid candidate in your opinion? Would you say that WP:GERMANY and WP:AUSTRIA should also merge? Gonnym (talk) 22:10, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

Merging small countries (as defined by the number of Wikipedia editors, not the actual population) up to regional areas or to whole continents might help all of them. A WP:WikiProject German-speaking countries might be more successful and sustainable than separate groups for Germany, Austria, and German-speaking Switzerland. When we have very few contributors, the groups fall apart. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:40, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

We used to have a very nice and active Wikipedia:German-speaking Wikipedians' notice board (the talk page was where most of the action was). The Germany WikiProject has very nice article alerts, but is otherwise not very active these days. Given how massive its scope already is, merging it with other projects does not sound appealing to me, though. —Kusma (talk) 22:49, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

Quite a few countries are covered as taskforces already. Many separate projects set up for a specific country are moribund. (Even the regional ones are moribund, but small steps.) Any discussion would be ad-hoc based on activity (or other en.wiki considerations), rather than being connected to any actual metric relating to the actual country. CMD (talk) 02:19, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

I think creating a WikiProject without making a proposal should be a CSD criterion! There are so many created which will never get off the ground. A recent one to be reactivated was Wikipedia:WikiProject Polyhedra but that should really be part of Mathematics — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:31, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

I agree here. While I also agree that merging inactive projects into their parent is better than leaving them, I really don't see any value in even that. Most of the inactive ones can really just be deleted which would save countless editorial hours in the many fixes that these pages receive (be it in templates, categories or lint fixes). Gonnym (talk) 22:13, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

A lot of functionality such as article alerts and large-scale quality surveys are built off WikiProject infrastructure. Deleting them means these are lost, whereas making them a task force maintains these potential functions to my understanding. CMD (talk) 00:55, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

Yes, that's generally the case.

@MSGJ, if you wanted to create rules around creating WikiProjects, I think that a more relevant standard would be requiring a certain number of editors (e.g., six editors, not counting brand-new accounts) to self-identify as participants. A WikiProject is a group of editors, and a set of pages without a group is not a WikiProject. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:42, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

Yes, exactly. I would say 10 ideally, but 6 would be a good minimum. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:16, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

We have Wikipedia:WikiProject Glasgow created with one participant, but that one participant (Sahaib) has been spamming talk pages with {{WikiProject Glasgow}}. I don't think this is particularly helpful — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:17, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

It's worse than I thought. On the same day Sahaib also created Wikipedia:WikiProject Lanarkshire (again with only one participant). @Sahaib: please stop, this is disruptive — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:20, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

Yes, these aren't helpful. Not everything needs a WikiProject (and in most cases, most really don't). Most don't even need a separate task force. While the idea of a task force is good, in practice, if there aren't enough participants it just doesn't do a good job. Use (in this case) Wikipedia:WikiProject Scotland and its talk page for anything that's needed for these pages.

On a side note, I believe its time we also take a look at Category:Defunct WikiProjects (including Category:Defunct task forces, and later on Category:Inactive WikiProjects, including Category:Inactive task forces) and delete associated categories and templates. We (as a collective) waste too much time on fixing issues with pages related to these (including having thousand of pointless categories and banners). Gonnym (talk) 12:25, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

Oh, I think everything benefits from a WikiProject – but a WP:WikiProject is "a group of editors", not "one person". If there's only one person, there is no WikiProject.

@Gonnym, the only reason that 99% of those pages are in that category is because nobody has volunteered to do the work to merge them up to non-defunct projects. Are you willing to work on that? These pages about Lanarkshire, for example, would get a proposal to join Wikipedia:WikiProject Scotland, and you could put almost the entire list at Wikipedia:WikiProject Scotland#Specifically Scotland-related in the same merge proposal. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:11, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

No, I do not want to do work that I think is pointless. Every one of the projects listed there should be deleted. Gonnym (talk) 22:13, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

We don't normally delete a former group's pages because someone might try to WP:REVIVE a group, and because it helps understand historical actions. It'd be like deleting an article's talk page, rather than archiving it, just because it's old and not being used right now. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:24, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

MFD of WikiProject Glasgow and Lanarkshire

Discussion for the proposed deletion of two newly-created projects (Wikipedia:WikiProject Glasgow and Wikipedia:WikiProject Lanarkshire) has opened at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:WikiProject Glasgow. Thanks. Starcheerspeaksnewslostwars^{Talk to me} 20:16, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

MFD of WikiProject The Weeknd

An MfD discussion which proposes the deletion of Wikipedia:WikiProject The Weeknd is ongoing at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:WikiProject The Weeknd. All the best, ‍—‍a smart kitten_[meow] 16:06, 20 February 2024 (UTC)