![]() | This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Hi everyone. I would like to suggest that we think about creating a list of active participants here. there are a few reasons for this.
I hope to move ahead with this in the near future. I will keep you posted. feel free to comment. thanks!!! -- Sm8900 ( talk) 05:26, 12 January 2020 (UTC)
hi there!! is anyone actually here? Please reply, if you are.
thanks!!! --
Sm8900 (
talk) 01:41, 13 January 2020 (UTC)
Another watcher. Been thinking about this Council lately.
Jusdafax (
talk) 03:32, 14 January 2020 (UTC)
Could you please Review „Alem Begic“ ☺️ B.tutundzic ( talk) 20:40, 1 February 2020 (UTC)
On the list of most active wikiprojects, WP Council does not appear among the first 100. I would be interested to see where it would be placed if the list was presented on the basis of the no bots count. It seems to me that with 708, it would be much higher on the list. Maybe it would be worthwhile relisting them all on this basis.-- Ipigott ( talk) 10:56, 14 January 2020 (UTC)
User:Sm8900, it appears that you are boldly re-writing the group's page. Can you explain what you hope to accomplish?
So far, it appears that you have:
WhatamIdoing ( talk) 20:38, 14 January 2020 (UTC)
(feel free to add any comments in this section)
I certainly appreciate the desire to remove cobwebs from a Wikipedia function. My concern is that, as with many WikiProjects, projects overhauled by a single editor tend not to be sustained once that editor's interest/time wanes. Currently, despite the lofty name, the WP Council pages have a minimal role in WikiProject operations. They basically serve only to host a WikiProject guide, task force guide, and the project proposals page. Maintaining a current directory of WikiProjects is a goal, but has become an unsustainably large task to do manually (encouragingly, the Reports bot-maintained automatic directory recently sprung back to life after a brief hiatus, and Bamyers99's list updates automatically). If there is interest in expanding the scope of this page (you mention the page having a lot of potential and of a council that serves some purpose), then I think we should discuss what that role would be. My personal feeling is that for the current narrow scope of this page (basically, as you point out, it's not a "council" in any meaningful way. It's more like Wikipeda:WikiProject WikiProjects) the smaller maintenance-requiring overhead we have, the better.
So I'd prefer we minimize or eliminate lists that need regular updating (e.g. current members, most-active projects, current coordinators). If there's a group of editors interested in expanding the scope of this page and forming an actual council that takes a more active role in WikiProjects, that's fine by me and I have no objection to the expansion of infrastructre to support that group; however, I probably wouldn't have the time/interest to meaningfully participate. Ajpolino ( talk) 21:51, 14 January 2020 (UTC)
I think "council" is a legacy name and I highly doubt there is any consensus for there to be an organizing group of the type that the word "council" implies. I disagree with making plans to overhaul this WikiProject along those lines without such a consensus in place first. isaacl ( talk) 21:58, 14 January 2020 (UTC)
Hey guys, some folks are trying to use this page below, to, ya know, I guess propose ideas or something, and try to get feedback. I know, I know, I tried to tell them not to, but you know how these folks can be.
lol just kidding!
if you want to help me knock some sense into these intractable folks who insist on actually trying to propose stuff, add your ideas, comments, or input, feel free to join the discussion at the link below.
thanks!!! --
Sm8900 (
talk) 23:04, 14 January 2020 (UTC)
@ Sm8900: I'm sorry to be a negative voice here. I appreciate your interest in making positive changes. However, on a particular change you've made to the proposals page, I don't see the value. Over a few edits you changed the beginning of the page from old version to new version. Basically you've added a new request that proposers add their signatures (which as far as I can tell has never been requested before) and moved the old introduction to a section called "Instructions". My opinion (for what it's worth) is that having the proposer's signature on that page is not helpful, and I preferred the older version (i.e. I prefer to read a page with fewer sections and fewer words). Am I missing some aspect of this? Opinions from anyone else would also be helpful. Thank you. Ajpolino ( talk) 01:13, 15 January 2020 (UTC)
inexperienced editors can't make a viable proposal. The gain is that they come here to make their non-viable proposal, where it rots ... and that's much better than having them charge straight into creating a new project. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 08:25, 15 January 2020 (UTC)
I have restored the page. A discussion should take place before the nature of the page is changed. I personally belive the the recent changes that made this a recruitment page rather than a authoritative page and a jumping off point is detrimental and shows bias towards certain projects that we don't want. Original intro should be restored as the majority will not read beyond it. The most important links have now been regulated to subsections.
Why are we recruiting on this page for specific projects... we should be giving the appearance of arbitrators rather than recruiters. Overall not sure about the huge change that seem to ramble on rather than being precise and direct.
Why are we listening people's names did they agree to be listed here.... do they even participate in the council?-- Moxy 🍁 03:22, 15 January 2020 (UTC)
I was asked to weigh in, so here we go.
1. Thanks to Sm8900 for your eager assistance.
2. The old version of the Proposals page was a lot more concise and precise, with the new version, I get where Sm is trying to go, but I don't know if they are exactly improvements persay. SM's version is a lot cleaner, but it was also a bit wordy, and I had to read through it twice to understand it. Overall, I believe that the new structure is better, but the way it is worded leaves something to be desired. So here's my propossl. If we kept the organization, but improved the wording, I think that page would be greatly improved. (Was this even the issue we were talking about? This whole thing is rather unclear to me, I'm not even a member of the Council.) Anyways, thank you to Sm8900 for your enthusiastic efforts, I and even the people who revert you do appreciate your enthusiasm! Thanks, Puddleglum 2.0 05:10, 15 January 2020 (UTC)
As per @ WhatamIdoing:, and others, I know WikiProjects are groups of people (not 'resources' or 'pages'), and I know I'm still the new guy in this old group. I have some ideas, but perhaps I don't know much about this group's history. I feel that I do know a solid amount about the purpose here, and the shared goals, based on my years of experience of editing Wikipedia. Is anyone interested in hearing some of my ideas? I truly appreciate it. thanks. -- Sm8900 ( talk) 05:30, 15 January 2020 (UTC)
@ WhatamIdoing: ok, fair enough. as the "What do we do?" section currently says explicitly, this page is here to assist editors who might need some help with building a WikiProject, to document some of the successful efforts and practices in current WikiProjects, and to help editors with finding their way to current WikiProjects, i.e. by providing links and a current directory. is that somewhat correct? -- Sm8900 ( talk) 06:02, 15 January 2020 (UTC)
I have been following with interest Sm8900's efforts to make this project more effective. As a result, I have looked into the project's background in some detail and am impressed to see the high number of page views the project's main page constantly receives. This obviously indicates that it has been serving as a useful reference for those interested in embarking on new wikiprojects or perhaps simply wishing to improve those that already exist. I believe one of the reasons Sm felt the project needed to be "revived" was that it is listed as semi-active, a rating apparently based on the number of edits on its talk page. This misleading rating obviously needs attention. I also think it would be useful to enlarge the scope of the project to accommodate more general views and difficulties encountered with wikiprojects. One aspect which could receive attention is the reformatting of the main pages of a number of wikiprojects in line with developments under Project X. Another is the development of more effective coordination and linkage between wikiprojects covering a given area of interest, for example all those relating to women or those to do with history or with science. I hope therefore discussion can continue on constructive developments and that the efforts of Sm and others who have offered assistance will not be completely overruled.-- Ipigott ( talk) 12:04, 15 January 2020 (UTC)
OK this is out of hand.....stop reverting until people agree to changes. Not a good start to someone who is planing to coordinate any Wiki project.-- Moxy 🍁 17:11, 15 January 2020 (UTC)
14+ years with Wikipedia & I didn't know (until today) that this WikiProject existed. GoodDay ( talk) 18:29, 15 January 2020 (UTC)
Whoever's adding section breaks here (and at related ANI report)? please stop doing that. It's being done too frequently & should only be applied if a discussion becomes extremely too long. GoodDay ( talk) 20:09, 15 January 2020 (UTC)
Well this has been a bit of a mess. For anyone who tuned out as this discussion got spread over several sections, I believe here's where we're at: This page has been restored to how it was a month ago. Sm8900 would like to propose revitalizing this page, possibly(?) expanding its role. They're drafting a sandbox proposal to replace this page here. If you have comments on that, I'm sure Sm would love help. At some point, that sandbox draft will be brought up here for discussion. During the discussion above, a few editors commented on the proposals page as well, suggesting we find a way to streamline it or abandon it completely. We can continue that discussion here or a few sections above. If folks could stop making new sections and sub-sections unless they have a new topic they wish to discuss, I would be much obliged. Fragmented discussion is challenging for a slow-poke like me to follow. Thanks all for your comments. I'm hopeful that this is the start of a quieter phase of productive discussion. Happy editing! Ajpolino ( talk) 21:03, 15 January 2020 (UTC)
"I think more experience is needed before you jump in and change a project that you just found."See my detailed comments in #Some general background, below. PS: This multi-thread, confused pile of squabbling has already driven off one of the regulars, which is ironic (in the tragic sense, not the silly sense that millennials misuse the word), given that the espoused intent of all this is to "revitalize" WP:COUNCIL (a very iffy idea to begin with, as I detail below). — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 22:38, 16 January 2020 (UTC)
I see another edit that has again removed all the main sub pages from the lead. .. like our guideline and frequently Asked question page.....as mentioned above this is contentious edit. We like having our FAQ and guidline linked in in the lead as most will not read more then the lead.-- Moxy 🍁 23:54, 15 January 2020 (UTC)
When one makes sudden changes (such as at this WikiProject) to any area on Wikipedia, which has a lot of interested parties? It's best that one propose those changes on the talkpage & see if it's accepted. Otherwise, one risks peeving a lot of editors, with the results being poor for the proposer. GoodDay ( talk) 00:19, 16 January 2020 (UTC)
For my part, I like this stuff being in the sidebar template, which is close enough to the top and distinct enough that it very well serves the needed navigation purpose. As an aside, however, I really do not like these giant blue bars across the page. They're an eyesore, and a confusing thing to do (they don't match other WP process/project pages). — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 22:35, 16 January 2020 (UTC)
I know the project says "there is no list of participants, just watch the talk page," and that's cool and all (and it looks lilke it goes back >10 years), but I think the recent issues are strong evidence that is a bad idea (especially since the current version of an archived talk page gives a pretty narrow view of any project: in our case we also now have 27 archived pages to go back and look at to get a complete view). Two (of many) values of listing WikiProject participants are: 1) increasing the social aspect of participation: when you see a fellow participant elsewhere on WikiPedia, you think "cool, they work on the WikiProject council with me too."; and 2) showing how active the project is: if a bunch of very active editors are on the participants list (as would definitely be the case here), it gives the project extra weight (and may give someone pause before they BOLDly make undiscussed changes). Accordingly, I propose we restart a participants page for this project. Thoughts? UnitedStatesian ( talk) 03:23, 16 January 2020 (UTC)
This discussion is kinda confusing me. Is it about restoring the lead or starting a WikiProject membership drive. Also, through out this talkpage, indenting of posts seem mixed up. GoodDay ( talk) 06:30, 16 January 2020 (UTC)
My take on all this is in a detailed comment in the related thread below this one. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 22:30, 16 January 2020 (UTC)
In connection with the above discussions, I thought it might be useful to look into WP Council's background and its main contributors. It turns out that two of the project's main contributors, Kirill Lokshin and John Carter, are no longer active. Indeed, the only editors who have been really active recently are WhatamIdoing, who has been contributing since June 2008, and Moxy, who started contributing in October 2010. I also note that Sm8900 first contributed in September 2015. (In this connection, I was surprised to see he was recently referred to as a "newbie" as he has in fact been an active Wikipedian since September 2006.)
Throughout the discussions over the past two or three days, it has appeared to me that the two surviving contributors have sought to maintain the old WP Council page at all costs. As there are only two of them, I think it is quite unreasonable of them to refer to themselves as a "group". I, for one, would welcome far wider participation and am pleased to see how many other editors have begun to show interest in the project. As for me, despite not remembering the project as such, I see I made a number of contributions to WP Council's talk page back in 2015 -- so I'm hardly a newbie either!
I think it would be useful at this point to identify editors who are interested in contributing to making this project more effective. If there really is an argument for not including them on the main project page, then we could perhaps start a subpage of some kind. To untangle all the ideas put forward in the form of (now reverted) edits by Sm8900 and by the others who have been involved in the discussions, I think it would be useful to start a new project talk page, laying out the project's present shortcomings and presenting ideas on how (and which) improvements could be implemented.
I hope these remarks do not appear too critical. WhatamIdoing and Moxy have devoted time and effort to maintaining the project in recent years. As I pointed out earlier, the fact that the main project page gets over 100 page views per day clearly shows it is a really useful reference or starting point for those interested in finding detailed information on wikiprojects. It is to be hoped that any improvements to the project will lead to even wider interest.-- Ipigott ( talk) 08:41, 16 January 2020 (UTC)
Perhaps more to a deeper point, it is perfectly fine for WP:COUNCIL to be much less active today that it was a decade ago. We already have developed the stable guidelines and more technical advice that we need. Wikipedia already has almost all the wikiprojects it needs (most proposals for new ones either generate little interest; or are actively opposed as redundant, unencyclopedic, or otherwise problematic; or at best get semi-support as taskforces/workgroups of extant projects). At least half, and probably much more than half, of existing wikiprojects are either moribund or (worse) have turned into barriers to open collaboration (attempts by small WP:FACTIONs to create walled gardens for WP:OWN and WP:POV purposes) rather than aids to cooperatively building the encyclopedia. Some of the most active and high-participation ones (e.g. WP:MILHIST) have proven to be problematic in multiple ways, though a few legitimately have a boatload of work to do (e.g. WP:TOL which helps manage WP's treatment of the fast-moving target of biological classification of millions of species, and various other highly expertise-heavy ones (medicine, law, maths, etc.) for which there is a daily-ongoing need to "police" content for blatantly wrong (sometimes dangerously wrong) "information" added by cluebags. Aside from exceptions like that, more and more of us realize that actually practical wikiprojects that are not problematic tend to have finite lifespans of serious activity: they actually get the job done of providing a sensible category structure, sample article layouts, infoboxes and other templates, naming conventions, topical notability guides, and other reusable resources for a topical tree. After that, they mostly just get out of the way, providing initial assessment and peer-review "service" upon request (on the way to GA/FA), having low-traffic talk pages that help keep categories of articles consistent and stable (and not, e.g., overrun by spates of promotional articles), and acting as places to round up some topic-specific [alleged-]expert input. The more active they are on their own talk pages after the bulk of the real wikiproject work is done, the more often they are hotbeds of dispute and strife. These are among the reasons that more and more editors every year think the wikiproject system should simply be retired, perhaps in favor of something like topic-specific noticeboards.
So, I'm skeptical of any push to generate a whole bunch of new WP:COUNCIL activity. Seems like a solution in search of a problem. See also
WP:WikiProject Stub sorting, another "wikiproject" that is actually a process/resource for internal maintenance purposes. It is (and needs to be) only a tiny fraction as active today as it was ten years ago, because we already have almost all the stub templates and categories we need, and most of the questionable ones have been removed or merged (with the rate of bad new ones been created very low today), while the related guidelines and other resources are already done and long-stable. There's just not much to actually do there, nor any need to "manufacture" busywork. I'm especially suspicious of the above-mentioned motivation to go in a get-WP:COUNCIL-swollen-and-busy direction for "social" reasons; see
WP:NOT#FACEBOOK and
WP:NOT#FORUM. Two more examples of internal-maint wikiprojects in near-to-total dormancy are
WP:WPMOS and
WP:ILT, both of which also just basically got the job done, and are either effectively over (in the case of WPMOS; all current MoS-related discussion and development happens at the individual MoS guidelines' talk pages), or in the case of ILT, needing barely any activity besides occasional checking for new inline templates to categorize and code-normalize. COUNCIL is kind of in the same boat; unless someone proposes a new project, there's not a lot to do or talk about here, and that is okay.
—
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ 😼 22:30, 16 January 2020 (UTC)
On community skepticism of wikiprojects: I've founded and co-founded various projects myself (both content-topical and internal-procedural), so I'm not anti-wikiproject; I just notice trends (including problem trends) with them, and that community skepticism about them has grown, especially over the last ~5 years. Aside from general fear of change, I'm sure many wikiproject booster would not welcome topical noticeboards as an alternative (nor anything else that doesn't smack of being a clubhouse with barriers to entry and bars to continued participation), but the replacement idea will appeal to those with concerns about what wikiprojects have been up to when they're not at their best. Such a transition would most of all be opposed by those who generate those concerns: the dominators of malfunctional projects consisting of half a dozen buddies acting as a wiki-gang (including against other would-be participants in the project). It would erode their factional content-control power by eliminating a bogus "membership" structure (with a sotto voce hazing/winnowing process to preserve the hive mind), and an insular canvassing farm for them to run to when challenged. Even noticeboards might retain some of the latter problem, it they don't have broad enough participation (perhaps through a mechanism like WP:FRS). But noticeboards or some other replacement for wikiprojects is what a growing number of editors who are not wikiproject fans are increasingly likely to eventually support.
On problematic wikiprojects, and the problems: I didn't suggest MILHIST does nothing good; rather, the good it still does these days comes at a high (and rising) cost. It's been my long experience that any time there is a tendentious conflict between a wikiproject and some site-wide guideline or process (with the rest of the editorship following it properly), odds are the cause will be one of these, in descending order of frequency, to the extent these categorizations don't overlap: an entertainment franchise project, a sports/games project, MILHIST, or some other geeky project for a very narrow jargon-heavy subject that is highly credentialist or attracts obsessive fandom. All other projects barely ever register on the disrupt-o-meter (not even politics, religion, and other ideology-related ones, surprisingly). But they're also mostly semi-active at best, like WP:SNOOKER, WP:DOGS, and WP:NEWMEXICO; or are tightly focused on doing really-needed systemic work every day, as are WIR and TIL. There seem to be two diametrically opposite "sweet spots" with a huge, swampy middle ground that's much less productive and collegial than either pole. The middle morass mostly consists of tiresome squabbling, and attempts to game the system to suit the subjective preferences of people who focus near-exclusively on a topic (often professionally or as an all-consuming hobby), versus the needs of the broader readership and editorship. Most of the longest-running and most disruptive "campaigns" of battlegrounding in Wikipedia history (outside areas of real-world strife of the "my ethnicity/religion/nationality/race/politics versus yours" sort that ArbCom locks down via WP:AC/DS and that WP:MFD won't permit "wikiprojects" for if they're PoV-laden) have a firm locus in a wikiproject with a small number of loud and browbeating ringmasters claiming to speak on behalf of everyone who cares about the topic. They wear out and drive off anyone in said project who doesn't tow their party line, and chase away non-"members" from meaningful contribution to articles in the topic, especially toward GA and higher development where only the wikiproject's orthodoxy will be tolerated. I've seen it over and over again. It'll sometimes be enforced by "pet" admins in the faction, who block and topic-ban people who irritate their friends. In one case, several such admins set up their own counter- WP:RM board inside a wikiproject to make out-of-process mass-moves of articles at the behest of other project "members" (for which they could have been desysopped, obviously, though that did not happen; WP:MR and RfC action finally brought that to an end). Another "WTF?" example was a clique of "wikiproject leaders" trying to organize an editing boycott, and also proposing to leave the site to set up a competing encyclopedia, while openly canvassing (including through off-site meatpuppetry) to derail RfCs they didn't like the probable outcome of – all over a spelling quibble (I kid you not, and something similar happened again more recently and repeatedly over another style matter, then descended into off-site harassment of at least two parties, including trying to get one fired from their job). Another was a project "leader" colluding with an offsite organization to push their viewpoint (not well-accepted by other real-world orgs in the same field) to be adopted as a Wikipedia "standard", and who was actually updating the other org's public website on "progress" in forcing such a change at WP (which eventually failed, of course). This sort of stuff is not a new problem. Some of these patterns of tendentious, OWNish, win-at-all-costs, externally-motivated, "rules and consensuses do not apply to our topic unless we like them" factionalism date back 15+ years.
If WP:COUNCIL were to take on something "new and exciting" it should probably be only "How do we fix this before it's too late?" While I'm more vociferous about these issues than average, I'm hardly alone in observing these sort of things and that their connection to wikiprojects is non-incidental and not improving. A whole lot of ArbCom cases and otherwise-unnecessary discretionary sanctions, the codification of
WP:CONLEVEL policy and of the
WP:PROJPAGE guideline, the creation of
WP:RM as a centralized process, and even the rather rapid corruption of the
WP:RFC process from "attract people to a discussion for more input" into "set up a voting system with formal closure and treat it almost like legislation and legal precedent", all came about in large part because of wikiproject-engendered, entrenched battlegrounding. At what point does the community decide that the cost–benefit analysis isn't favorable toward wikiprojects continuing to exist? Or, what can be done to change near-endemic flaws in the wikiproject system to prevent such an outcome? To date, "improvement" is generally accidental and in the form of dissolution, to community relief – through wikiprojects with too much time on their hands and territorial designs on their minds going dormant. In only two cases have I seen a viewpoint-conformity and canvassing-farm "wikiproject off the rails" get reformed into a stable, productive (and – no surprise – intermittently active but content-work focused) one. Even these only happened because the original projects fell apart (a dozen or more years after they started) due to one drama festival too many, then were flatline moribund for over a year before being restarted with nearly all-new active participants. In both cases it was basically a replacement from scratch, not a correction. One hopes there's a better way.
PS, re: it might be useful to improve the assessment tools
– Yes, no doubt, though probably best as a separate thread! See also the new thread below about upgrading some tabular data. A while back, I identified a couple of assessment classes that were never used by more than a project or two and which were effectively dead, and MfDed/TfDed them, and removed them from in situ use, so at least the assessment ranges are more consistent now.
—
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ 😼 14:53, 17 January 2020 (UTC)
Ya'll do as you wish. Way too much to read, to figure out what's being discussed about this WikiProject. GoodDay ( talk) 03:11, 20 January 2020 (UTC)
I've asked if WikiProject Omaha should be converted into a task force of WikiProject Nebraska at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Omaha. --- Another Believer ( Talk) 20:50, 1 February 2020 (UTC)
I've asked if WikiProject Louisville should be converted into a task force of WikiProject Kentucky at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Louisville. --- Another Believer ( Talk) 20:51, 1 February 2020 (UTC)
I have attempted to improve the functionality of the page pages of WP:HOU by installing the quality log reporting bot. Please bear with me if am not proficient in tech-language. I scraped the code from the WP Texas assessment page, pasted it into my sandbox page, and changed the target. It appeared to be working: only Houston articles were being reported. I created a new page for the reports and pasted the code into that file. I attempted to further test it by creating new events: I changed the status of some articles in two ways. First, I added Henry Howell Williams to WP HOU. Second, I assessed some unassessed articles and reassessed others. All of these events should have appeared on the quality log, but none of them did. Does this bot need to be customized for each project, or do the data objects need to be restructured, and how would I obtain help for this? Thanks, Oldsanfelipe2 ( talk) 22:21, 30 January 2020 (UTC)
I think there may be disagreement about how to define a WikiProject's status as active/semi-active/inactive. Is there even a consensus for what constitutes a WikiProject activity. I propose the following as WikiProject activities:
Any thoughts? Oldsanfelipe2 ( talk) 16:00, 28 January 2020 (UTC)
Most of us can quote it: "A WikiProject is a group of people that wants to work together."
But some of the (mostly newer) folks proposing groups don't know it, or they don't quite believe it. Over at User talk:Sm8900/item draft 2#Be aware of similar efforts, User:Bluerasberry suggests five as a minimum number for a viable group. I've said before that sustainable groups need half a dozen editors to survive the first year, based on some preliminary head-counting I did in the past. I believe that we've arrived at our estimates independently.
First (most important) question: Does anyone think we're wrong? Can anyone think of a thriving WikiProject with just two or three people in it?
Second (contingent) question: If (and only if) our estimates are correct, do you think that the community should (for the first time ever) require people to produce a minimum number (perhaps four/five/six?) of named participants to start a new WikiProject? WhatamIdoing ( talk) 17:40, 8 February 2020 (UTC)
What constitutes "just two or three people in it"?and
Also, what is out metric for "thriving"?
To expand on my previous comment: by all means, if you want to work on anything, you should proceed, whether or not you've made a group to work on it. If this means making some pages in Wikipedia space in order to lay out the work, great! If it's just you so far, though, rather than take on the extra overhead of creating a new WikiProject page and then recruiting specifically for that project, I think you'd be better off finding a home in an existing WikiProject, and looking for other editors with similar interests there. Some editors seem to think that if they create a WikiProject, participants will come, but I believe the reverse is far more common: find enough interested editors, and the need for a new WikiProject will emerge.
As discussed in another thread, WikiProject activity is difficult to measure. WhatamIdoing suggested a possible metric might be responsiveness to questions on the WikiProject talk page. I do think projects can do a lot of useful work establishing consensus on various issues, and then mostly be in maintenance mode, where there won't be a lot of activity on the project talk page. But when there is something to discuss, there should be enough people offering up a reasonably diverse set of viewpoints in order to have a broad discussion. If it's just an occasional person posting with no responses, eventually they'll get tired of posting, and the WikiProject will no longer serve as a central discussion point for editors interested in that area. isaacl ( talk) 18:26, 10 February 2020 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:WikiProject History/History Town Hall. I noticed before but didn't realize to what extent till now because of this nomination....the history project has been overwhelmed by what seems to be a brand new editor despite them being here for a decade. Perhaps a review of what has happened to the project overall is warranted. This editor is all over the map with things of this nature.-- Moxy 🍁 06:09, 16 February 2020 (UTC)
WhatamIdoing has kindly let us know on the Women in Red talk page that WikiProjects by number of changes to all its pages has recently been updated. Even though the new version contains identical figures in the "count" and "no bots count" column, I think it would be useful to substitute it for Wikipedia:Database reports/WikiProjects by changes (dated 11 July 2016) which is linked from Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory under "Lists and reports".-- Ipigott ( talk) 11:20, 17 January 2020 (UTC)
Am I seeing this right? Wikipedia talk:WikiProject History#Request help with new Council for WikiProjects.-- Moxy 🍁 05:44, 26 January 2020 (UTC)
Thanks to considerable support, WikiProject Women in Green which has been a task force of WikiProject Women is now a wikiproject in its own right. Anyone interested in upgrading articles about women to GA status or higher is welcome to participate in the project.-- Ipigott ( talk) 11:40, 10 February 2020 (UTC)
Please check that I got Q6 right on WT:WikiProject Internet culture#Project YouTube + WT:WikiProject YouTube#Closing shop? Notably, does that bot exist? Assuming too much instead of good old MASM assume:nothing is one of my weak spots. – 84.46.53.188 ( talk) 04:31, 18 February 2020 (UTC)
I have tried to revive the Wikipedia:WikiProject Newspapers by updating the content, instructions and monitoring the unassessed articles. There are now alerts and popular articles for this project. It has been broadened to include all newspapers, worldwide. It should be listed on this page below the Media project.
G. Moore 17:28, 1 March 2020 (UTC)
The bots have stopped updating the WikiWork and Relative Wikiwork. User:WP 1.0 bot/WikiWork/all stopped updating in June 2019. So even though the assessment tables for a project are up-to-date on the distribution of classes, the statistics at the bottom are very old (I've been manually calculating them). I'm not even sure who to tell about this. Thoughts? Enwebb ( talk) 03:14, 3 March 2020 (UTC)
(Long ago, I had requested some other similar tables for other road projects, so if we can get one of these built, it should be an easy matter to recycle the code.) Imzadi 1979 → 23:21, 4 March 2020 (UTC)
Hey team, as many of you know the link that is at the bottom of many WikiProjects, that begins with [[tools:~dispenser/cgi-bin/transcluded_changes.py, has been dead for quite some time. Any objection to my reaching out to a bot operator to begin automated removal of the busted link from every project where it appears? If it ever magically comes back to life, we can have the same bot put it back. Let me know, and thanks, UnitedStatesian ( talk) 02:46, 10 March 2020 (UTC)
I've created WikiProject COVID-19 as a temporary or permanent WikiProject and invite editors to use this space for discussing ways to improve coverage of the ongoing 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic. Please bring your ideas to the project/talk page. Stay safe, -- Another Believer ( Talk) 17:24, 15 March 2020 (UTC)
Today
Template:WPBannerMeta uses {{
Category TOC}}
. I recently created the required category pages to support article assessment. Then I saw another editor updating all those pages with {{
CatAutoTOC}}
because of the number of pages in each category. The system and instructions should be updated for the, perhaps newer, template. I explored the update in WPBannerMeta's supporting sub template—see the diff link that follows. I am not familiar enough with the system yet to know what the right 'fix' is and where it might need to be updated. See the
diff.
—¿philoserf? (
talk) 22:44, 29 March 2020 (UTC)
On 29 January, I posted an inquiry at the talk pages of the various subprojects of WikiProject Texas in order to gauge interest in these WikiProjects. So far I found only one other editor to indicate that they intend to help coordinate WikiProject Texas or any of its subprojects. As a result, there is no other choice than to convert all of the subprojects into Task Forces in order to reduce the administrative responsibility. These subprojects include: WP:ATX, WP:DFW, WP:HOU, WP:TAMU, WP:Texas Tech, WP:UH, Wikipedia:WikiProject University of North Texas, and Wikipedia:WikiProject University of Texas at Austin. For the sake of simplicity, I suggest that all of the university projects convert to direct children of WP Texas, such that WP Texas will be the direct parent of all of these subprojects and will result in a two-level structure.
Below I have included a few assessments statistics for the subprojects as of 3 February 2020: (x): x is the total number of articles within the project
A merger of the various subprojects could result in a stronger WikiProject Texas: with a merger, the backlogs of the various subprojects for assessments and reassessments all go away. As task forces, the subprojects can share the burden of assessments, spend more time on other project functions, or spend more time in main space.
Benefits of a stronger WikiProject Texas:
Today I am notifying the various subprojects of this proposal. Oldsanfelipe2 ( talk) 16:54, 7 February 2020 (UTC)
;-)
WhatamIdoing (
talk) 04:58, 9 February 2020 (UTC)
Support mergers: The Houston and DFW areas are entirely in Texas, and so a single poor of statewide editors can serve them. There is not as much editing traffic on WP as there used to be, so I think we need some consolidation. Also I don't see a problem with TAMU already have been put in the WPUS family as WPTX is within WPUS. WhisperToMe ( talk) 22:33, 2 April 2020 (UTC)
Support —¿philoserf? ( talk) 22:40, 2 April 2020 (UTC)
If anybody has the know how & patients, they could/should make a list of inactive WikiProjects & any inactive WikiProject branches. Have them all nominated for deletion. GoodDay ( talk) 22:58, 11 February 2020 (UTC)
|importance=
ratings of inactive projects can still be useful to the
WP:1.0 work. That's why merging them (even of the blank-and-redirect variety) is often preferable to outright deletion of the pages for formerly active groups.
WhatamIdoing (
talk) 03:32, 14 February 2020 (UTC)
Oppose The defunct status is sufficient. —¿philoserf? ( talk) 22:43, 2 April 2020 (UTC)
Hi all. Based on Sm8900's suggestions, I've made a mock-up of a slightly tweaked look for the WP:COUNCIL page with the hope of making it less ugly and more accessible to edit. Differences:
Theoretically I'd add the navbar to the top of all the pages it's linked to. See the WP:GA-related pages to get a sense of how that looks and would work. The current version is at User:Ajpolino/sandbox3 (and the header is at User:Ajpolino/sandbox2 in case you'd like to play with it; it's easy to understand and to edit, which is a big plus). Thoughts are welcome. I won't be offended if you think it's ugly. Thanks all! Ajpolino ( talk) 21:35, 13 February 2020 (UTC)
Less ugly Nice layout. —¿philoserf? ( talk) 22:46, 2 April 2020 (UTC)
We couldn't figure out how to add class "draft" here Wikipedia:WikiProject Estonia/Assessment. The discussion in question is here: [1]. Maybe someone can solve the problem?-- Estopedist1 ( talk) 12:03, 21 February 2020 (UTC)
Can a bot go through and remove appearances of Portal:Pandemic from articles? --- Another Believer ( Talk) 16:33, 18 April 2020 (UTC)
A requested move discussion has been initiated for Wikipedia:WikiProject Royalty and Nobility to be moved to Wikipedia:WikiProject Royalty and nobility. This page is of interest to this WikiProject and interested members may want to participate in the discussion here. — RMCD bot 13:47, 19 March 2020 (UTC)
I need help expanding Wikipedia:WikiProject Inca Empire. I didn't create it, but I've been working hard on it. I was wondering if I could get some help. It is very short and I barely know anything about WikiProjects. Koridas ( Speak) 06:47, 5 April 2020 (UTC)
Is there any written/consensus guidance on how importance of an article is decided for a WikiProject? · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 19:51, 12 April 2020 (UTC)
Unlike the quality scale, the priority scale varies based on the project scope, which implies a bit, but says nothing definite. I am trying to persuade an editor not to make importance rating changes for projects that they are not a member of, based on number of recent pageviews.· · · Peter Southwood (talk): 05:11, 13 April 2020 (UTC)
I just restarted a bot task that removes the "class" parameter from WikiProject banners on the talk pages of redirects. The task was approved on the assumption that WPBannerMeta would auto-classify the pages as redirects. However, in practice, some banners do not seem to do this automatic classification; an example I just ran into was {{ WikiProject Ships}} ( example showing "unassessed"). I think this has to do with WPBannerMeta's "auto" parameter (but {{ WikiProject Animation}} seems to auto-assess even though it lacks one?). I certainly can't just enable auto-classification of redirects for such projects, right? In that case, should I just have the bot skip such banners? I'm not sure there's an easy way for the bot to make that check. Thoughts are very much appreciated. Enterprisey ( talk!) 06:22, 15 April 2020 (UTC)
I want to restart this project. Computer Science is very broad topic and so is the topic of Programming Languages. It is very odd to have it merged in WikiProject Computer Science and makes it very difficult to find topics solely related to Programming Languages. Harsh Rathod Poke me! 19:22, 27 April 2020 (UTC)
I was wondering if these two projects should be merged in to one and make Military a task force of the History project? Govvy ( talk) 13:23, 23 April 2020 (UTC)
Sorry about this, but I appear to have done something wrong in attempting to add WikiProject Mysticism to a proposal for new WikiProjects. If one looks at proposals for new WikiProjects for April 2020, one will see "Brass Bands" and if you click on this, you will get a proposal for a project on brass bands, but if you click on Mysticism, you will just get taken to the Wikipedia article on Mysticism. Does any one know what I have done wrong, or more specifically, what I have not done right? Vorbee ( talk) 16:09, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
I am in the process of reviving both Wikipedia:WikiProject_Spoken_Wikipedia & Wikipedia:WikiProject_Spoken_Wikipedia/Pronunciation_task_force per the guidelines located at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Council/Guide#Revival. When I removed the inactive links, Nardog reverted my edits asking why?, however, it was stated when I removed the tags that I am reviving them. There are a few people interested in this project and the task force is under the spoken project, so I am reviving them both as some words within certain dialects need help from those around the world who know of or speak the language. After I reverted Nardog's edits to make them back to the old status, I posted on his talk page that I am reviving both of them and asked him to stop reverting what I am doing. He then went after that and reverted again. Am I misinterpreting the Revival of Councils article in which it states in the opening sentence "Any editor may revive an inactive WikiProject by changing the {{WikiProject status}} template parameter to active"?
Thank you, Galendalia CVU Member \ Chat Me Up 22:28, 6 May 2020 (UTC)
{{
WikiProject status|Defunct}}
instead of {{
Update}}
, which I have now
corrected. Again, I have no problem with your revival and I hope this explanation clears it up for you.
Nardog (
talk) 13:05, 16 May 2020 (UTC)Hello all! I'm putting together an op-ed for The Signpost on how wikiprojects have gradually been phasing out and becoming defunct, and I was curious if there was a graph or chart somewhere showing wikiproject activity declining over the years. If not, do any of you know of a good tool to put such a graph together? Thank you all. -- puddleglum 2.0 00:55, 18 May 2020 (UTC)
I have put forward a proposal for my idea at Wikipedia: Village pump, but no one appears to have taken any notice of it there, so I shall put forth my proposal here. I have made a proposal here for WikiProject Mysticism, and if one goes to the article on mysticism, one can see that the information about this proposal is on the talk page of this article. Similarly, if one goes to the article on Justin Bieber, one can see that information about the relevant WikiProject proposal is on the talk page. My proposal is that when some one puts in a proposal for a new WikiProject, a new template gets added to the relevant article on the main page (not just the talk page) saying "A proposal has been made at Wikipedia: WikiProject Council to start a WikiProject on..." This might help people to become more aware of new WikiProject proposals. One can see that there are proposals for WikiProject Brass Bands and WikiProject Hausa, but if one goes to the articles on Brass band and Hausa people, one can see nothing to inform one about the news of these proposals for WikiProjects, which I feel strengthens the case for such a template. What do other Wikipedians think of this idea? Many thanks in advance for any feedback. Vorbee ( talk) 13:04, 15 May 2020 (UTC) The article on Brass band is headed by a template saying "This article needs additional sources for verification". My idea is to have a similar template heading the relevant article, only saying "A proposal has been made at Wikipedia: WikiProject Council for a WikiProject on..." Vorbee ( talk) 13:28, 15 May 2020 (UTC)
I've started WikiProject Black Lives Matter, for any editors who may be interested in joining or helping to improve the project's framework with helpful tools, etc. Thank you. --- Another Believer ( Talk) 22:29, 2 June 2020 (UTC)
Your feedback concerning the expression "Click [show] for further details" used in Template:WikiProject banner shell would be appreciated, at this discussion. Thanks, Mathglot ( talk) 02:20, 13 June 2020 (UTC)
When you feel have enough Wikipedians to start a WikiProject, how do start it? Do you just type in "WikiProject (name of WikiProject)" and seeing that will be in red Wikilinks, then start it? Vorbee ( talk) 19:43, 17 June 2020 (UTC)
Attention has been called to the new Wikipedia:WikiProject ConwayLibrary, which seems to function more like a WikiEd course (though it isn't one) than a WikiProject - a single user group all centered around a school, with a set list of articles and a principle editor for each of them. Just alerting the WP council group to it, perhaps you can offer some guidance. Their coordinator also seems unfamiliar with Wikipedia, so may need help on that front. Best, Kingsif ( talk) 13:50, 18 June 2020 (UTC)
How many Wikipedians does one need to show an interest in a new WikiProject before the WikiProject can be started? Vorbee ( talk) 08:49, 23 May 2020 (UTC)
Hi folks! Just thought I'd drop a note here for WikiProject coordinators who might be interested: my bot, Yapperbot ( talk · contribs), is now running a "user list pruning" task.
What this means is you can configure the bot with a template, much like an archiving bot, and it will automatically detect users on your signup list's page, remove users who haven't edited in a time you specify, remove indefinitely-blocked users, and rename users who've undergone a global rename. Hopefully, this'll make lists of members and the like a little easier to manage.
You can find out how to use the bot over at User:Yapperbot/Pruner.
Hope this is helpful, feel free to shoot me any questions! Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 21:35, 6 July 2020 (UTC)
# ~~~~
as long as there's at least one link to a user page or a user talk page in there, correct? Potential errors I can think of are double-counting or partially renaming # [[User:Example]] ~~~~
or ignoring # [[User talk:Example|Example]]
New maintenance category Pages by WikiProject has been created. It is an analogue of Category:Articles by WikiProject, but for categories, which are not restricted to articles. — andrybak ( talk) 14:40, 2 August 2020 (UTC)
You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2020 August 2 § Category:WikiProjects. — andrybak ( talk) 14:47, 2 August 2020 (UTC)
Category:River Thames articles by quality and Category:River Thames articles by importance are empty despite many articles tagged with this project. The project (and subsequently templates) was renamed and this fix was made but the categories are still empty. Crouch, Swale ( talk) 16:28, 2 August 2020 (UTC)
Hi, hope you are doing well, I recently created a WikiProject Wikipedia: WikiProject Chenab Valley and it's template Template: WikiProject Chenab Valley. I am getting many issues as I am not expert in this. Whenever I rate any article related to this project, there is no option for rating as Stub, Start C, B etc. And there are other issues to. Kindly help me to fix this issues and guide me how to fix other issues. Thank You. — The Chunky urf Al Kashmiri (Speak🗣️ or Write✍️) 18:38, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
You are invited to join the discussion at
Template talk:Tasks § Adding a "date of last update" line. {{u|
Sdkb}}
talk 03:07, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
In last years there has been a Dissociation between Wikiprojects and portals. Many active Wikiprojects like Buddhism and Basketball no longer have a portal. Some portals are maintained by several Wikiprojects like Portal:Computer programming and Portal:Society, there are Wikiprojects that maintain several portals like WikiProject Military history and WikiProject Germany and portals without any associated Wikiprojects like Portal:Civilizations and Portal:Telephones. So I suggest removing the portal, portal2 and portal3 parameters from Wikipedia: WikiProject Council/Directory/WikiProject. Guilherme Burn ( talk) 19:56, 11 August 2020 (UTC)
At Template talk:AFC submission#Improving the odds of a speedy review, User:Headbomb told me "Active WikiProjects are a dime a dozen, and are far from the exception". This interests me, and I think it is better continued here.
It has been my "impression" for a long time that most WikiProjects are inactive. I have perused Category:WikiProjects by status from time to time, and I find that a survey of Category:Active WikiProjects main talk pages shows mostly negligible activity. Noting biases here, I am counting WikiProjects by title, not coverage; there may be activity not reflected on the main talk page; and my attention tends to be drawn to problem areas.
It is also my impression over many years that when Headbomb says something, he is right. I have two questions.
-- SmokeyJoe ( talk) 01:03, 26 August 2020 (UTC)
Most WikiProjects seem inactive I'm going to put a big fat citation needed on this. Now, on the other issues
1. Very few things are a good measure of WikiProject activity on their own. Which project is 'active' and which is 'not active', or whatever, is a complex a nebulous function of
2. Why does it even matters? WikiProjects are merged and revived all the time. WP:GLASS is pretty much dead currently. But if 3 months from now, a few people from the Glass Packaging Institute decide to get involved, they'll have the infrastructure already setup for them. Or maybe someone reads Talk:Glass and notices that WikiProject, and decides to gets involve with it. Sure they may be lonely, but they'll again have the infrastructure setup and can start watching Wikipedia:WikiProject Physics/Taskforces/Glass/Article alerts and get involved with those discussions. There might be a case to remove the banners of a handful of WikiProjects that are so tiny and hopelessly specialized (WikiProject Blue Flowers of North Ireland; WikiProject Short Stories of H.P. Lovecraft), but those have usually been merged into more useful projects and with their banners replaced and G6'd. Headbomb { t · c · p · b} 02:56, 26 August 2020 (UTC)
are there enough WikiProjects such that every one of the 6-million-plus articles can be in at least one active WikiProject? Of course the answer is yes.I'm not so sure about that. There are plenty of extremely niche inactive WikiProjects, but there are also a bunch in important, high-level areas (often ones impacted by WP:Systemic bias) that are inactive. I recently wanted to bring up something relating to stove, and the only really relevant pages were WT:WikiProject Food and drink and WT:WikiProject Home Living. I posted at both of those, but it was only a month later when I found an excuse to mention the issue somewhere else (I think at one of the pumps, perhaps) that I finally got any reply. Take a look at those two pages — you'll see a decent number of posts (a disconcerting percentage of which are
One of your project's articles has been selected for improvement!), but what you won't see is any threading. What that means is that no one is watching those pages, and the only people going there are those who are throwing out questions into the void. {{u| Sdkb}} talk 04:54, 26 August 2020 (UTC)
Reports bot is now updating the automated wikiproject directory again, including the "active wikiproject editors" pages. Presumably Harej found and fixed the issue, so thanks Harej! PJvanMill) talk( 13:08, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
The main way I use participant lists (other than adding myself to them) is when I come across a topic area I'm unfamiliar with and am seeking someone knowledgeable about it to ping. However, the lists as they currently exist don't serve that function well—there are way too many names, many of whom are no longer active or were never that active in the first place. The list is also redundant to the category of project contributors, which creates excess work for editors who have to list themselves in two places. And it's worth emphasizing that Wikipedia places no intrinsic value on "badges" unless they do something to help build the encyclopedia.
Given all this, I think an overhaul of participant lists is in order. I propose that we replace participant lists at most WikiProjects (if some want to opt out, fine) with the following:
I think that this change would help a lot for less active WikiProjects, where the question for someone coming across them is mainly "who is still around who I can talk to"? Listing a single editor or two for the representative would be a lot easier to maintain than trying to keep a full participant list up to date, and the category list/most active list would be generally self-maintaining. What do you all think? {{u| Sdkb}} talk 19:15, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
Can someone revert the image used on {{ WikiProject Rocketry}} to the old one? The new one barely has any rocket, and is mostly a U.S. flag instead. Since the WikiProject isn't a U.S. WikiProject, this is a bad choice. -- 65.94.170.98 ( talk) 03:58, 28 September 2020 (UTC)
![]() | This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Hi everyone. I would like to suggest that we think about creating a list of active participants here. there are a few reasons for this.
I hope to move ahead with this in the near future. I will keep you posted. feel free to comment. thanks!!! -- Sm8900 ( talk) 05:26, 12 January 2020 (UTC)
hi there!! is anyone actually here? Please reply, if you are.
thanks!!! --
Sm8900 (
talk) 01:41, 13 January 2020 (UTC)
Another watcher. Been thinking about this Council lately.
Jusdafax (
talk) 03:32, 14 January 2020 (UTC)
Could you please Review „Alem Begic“ ☺️ B.tutundzic ( talk) 20:40, 1 February 2020 (UTC)
On the list of most active wikiprojects, WP Council does not appear among the first 100. I would be interested to see where it would be placed if the list was presented on the basis of the no bots count. It seems to me that with 708, it would be much higher on the list. Maybe it would be worthwhile relisting them all on this basis.-- Ipigott ( talk) 10:56, 14 January 2020 (UTC)
User:Sm8900, it appears that you are boldly re-writing the group's page. Can you explain what you hope to accomplish?
So far, it appears that you have:
WhatamIdoing ( talk) 20:38, 14 January 2020 (UTC)
(feel free to add any comments in this section)
I certainly appreciate the desire to remove cobwebs from a Wikipedia function. My concern is that, as with many WikiProjects, projects overhauled by a single editor tend not to be sustained once that editor's interest/time wanes. Currently, despite the lofty name, the WP Council pages have a minimal role in WikiProject operations. They basically serve only to host a WikiProject guide, task force guide, and the project proposals page. Maintaining a current directory of WikiProjects is a goal, but has become an unsustainably large task to do manually (encouragingly, the Reports bot-maintained automatic directory recently sprung back to life after a brief hiatus, and Bamyers99's list updates automatically). If there is interest in expanding the scope of this page (you mention the page having a lot of potential and of a council that serves some purpose), then I think we should discuss what that role would be. My personal feeling is that for the current narrow scope of this page (basically, as you point out, it's not a "council" in any meaningful way. It's more like Wikipeda:WikiProject WikiProjects) the smaller maintenance-requiring overhead we have, the better.
So I'd prefer we minimize or eliminate lists that need regular updating (e.g. current members, most-active projects, current coordinators). If there's a group of editors interested in expanding the scope of this page and forming an actual council that takes a more active role in WikiProjects, that's fine by me and I have no objection to the expansion of infrastructre to support that group; however, I probably wouldn't have the time/interest to meaningfully participate. Ajpolino ( talk) 21:51, 14 January 2020 (UTC)
I think "council" is a legacy name and I highly doubt there is any consensus for there to be an organizing group of the type that the word "council" implies. I disagree with making plans to overhaul this WikiProject along those lines without such a consensus in place first. isaacl ( talk) 21:58, 14 January 2020 (UTC)
Hey guys, some folks are trying to use this page below, to, ya know, I guess propose ideas or something, and try to get feedback. I know, I know, I tried to tell them not to, but you know how these folks can be.
lol just kidding!
if you want to help me knock some sense into these intractable folks who insist on actually trying to propose stuff, add your ideas, comments, or input, feel free to join the discussion at the link below.
thanks!!! --
Sm8900 (
talk) 23:04, 14 January 2020 (UTC)
@ Sm8900: I'm sorry to be a negative voice here. I appreciate your interest in making positive changes. However, on a particular change you've made to the proposals page, I don't see the value. Over a few edits you changed the beginning of the page from old version to new version. Basically you've added a new request that proposers add their signatures (which as far as I can tell has never been requested before) and moved the old introduction to a section called "Instructions". My opinion (for what it's worth) is that having the proposer's signature on that page is not helpful, and I preferred the older version (i.e. I prefer to read a page with fewer sections and fewer words). Am I missing some aspect of this? Opinions from anyone else would also be helpful. Thank you. Ajpolino ( talk) 01:13, 15 January 2020 (UTC)
inexperienced editors can't make a viable proposal. The gain is that they come here to make their non-viable proposal, where it rots ... and that's much better than having them charge straight into creating a new project. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 08:25, 15 January 2020 (UTC)
I have restored the page. A discussion should take place before the nature of the page is changed. I personally belive the the recent changes that made this a recruitment page rather than a authoritative page and a jumping off point is detrimental and shows bias towards certain projects that we don't want. Original intro should be restored as the majority will not read beyond it. The most important links have now been regulated to subsections.
Why are we recruiting on this page for specific projects... we should be giving the appearance of arbitrators rather than recruiters. Overall not sure about the huge change that seem to ramble on rather than being precise and direct.
Why are we listening people's names did they agree to be listed here.... do they even participate in the council?-- Moxy 🍁 03:22, 15 January 2020 (UTC)
I was asked to weigh in, so here we go.
1. Thanks to Sm8900 for your eager assistance.
2. The old version of the Proposals page was a lot more concise and precise, with the new version, I get where Sm is trying to go, but I don't know if they are exactly improvements persay. SM's version is a lot cleaner, but it was also a bit wordy, and I had to read through it twice to understand it. Overall, I believe that the new structure is better, but the way it is worded leaves something to be desired. So here's my propossl. If we kept the organization, but improved the wording, I think that page would be greatly improved. (Was this even the issue we were talking about? This whole thing is rather unclear to me, I'm not even a member of the Council.) Anyways, thank you to Sm8900 for your enthusiastic efforts, I and even the people who revert you do appreciate your enthusiasm! Thanks, Puddleglum 2.0 05:10, 15 January 2020 (UTC)
As per @ WhatamIdoing:, and others, I know WikiProjects are groups of people (not 'resources' or 'pages'), and I know I'm still the new guy in this old group. I have some ideas, but perhaps I don't know much about this group's history. I feel that I do know a solid amount about the purpose here, and the shared goals, based on my years of experience of editing Wikipedia. Is anyone interested in hearing some of my ideas? I truly appreciate it. thanks. -- Sm8900 ( talk) 05:30, 15 January 2020 (UTC)
@ WhatamIdoing: ok, fair enough. as the "What do we do?" section currently says explicitly, this page is here to assist editors who might need some help with building a WikiProject, to document some of the successful efforts and practices in current WikiProjects, and to help editors with finding their way to current WikiProjects, i.e. by providing links and a current directory. is that somewhat correct? -- Sm8900 ( talk) 06:02, 15 January 2020 (UTC)
I have been following with interest Sm8900's efforts to make this project more effective. As a result, I have looked into the project's background in some detail and am impressed to see the high number of page views the project's main page constantly receives. This obviously indicates that it has been serving as a useful reference for those interested in embarking on new wikiprojects or perhaps simply wishing to improve those that already exist. I believe one of the reasons Sm felt the project needed to be "revived" was that it is listed as semi-active, a rating apparently based on the number of edits on its talk page. This misleading rating obviously needs attention. I also think it would be useful to enlarge the scope of the project to accommodate more general views and difficulties encountered with wikiprojects. One aspect which could receive attention is the reformatting of the main pages of a number of wikiprojects in line with developments under Project X. Another is the development of more effective coordination and linkage between wikiprojects covering a given area of interest, for example all those relating to women or those to do with history or with science. I hope therefore discussion can continue on constructive developments and that the efforts of Sm and others who have offered assistance will not be completely overruled.-- Ipigott ( talk) 12:04, 15 January 2020 (UTC)
OK this is out of hand.....stop reverting until people agree to changes. Not a good start to someone who is planing to coordinate any Wiki project.-- Moxy 🍁 17:11, 15 January 2020 (UTC)
14+ years with Wikipedia & I didn't know (until today) that this WikiProject existed. GoodDay ( talk) 18:29, 15 January 2020 (UTC)
Whoever's adding section breaks here (and at related ANI report)? please stop doing that. It's being done too frequently & should only be applied if a discussion becomes extremely too long. GoodDay ( talk) 20:09, 15 January 2020 (UTC)
Well this has been a bit of a mess. For anyone who tuned out as this discussion got spread over several sections, I believe here's where we're at: This page has been restored to how it was a month ago. Sm8900 would like to propose revitalizing this page, possibly(?) expanding its role. They're drafting a sandbox proposal to replace this page here. If you have comments on that, I'm sure Sm would love help. At some point, that sandbox draft will be brought up here for discussion. During the discussion above, a few editors commented on the proposals page as well, suggesting we find a way to streamline it or abandon it completely. We can continue that discussion here or a few sections above. If folks could stop making new sections and sub-sections unless they have a new topic they wish to discuss, I would be much obliged. Fragmented discussion is challenging for a slow-poke like me to follow. Thanks all for your comments. I'm hopeful that this is the start of a quieter phase of productive discussion. Happy editing! Ajpolino ( talk) 21:03, 15 January 2020 (UTC)
"I think more experience is needed before you jump in and change a project that you just found."See my detailed comments in #Some general background, below. PS: This multi-thread, confused pile of squabbling has already driven off one of the regulars, which is ironic (in the tragic sense, not the silly sense that millennials misuse the word), given that the espoused intent of all this is to "revitalize" WP:COUNCIL (a very iffy idea to begin with, as I detail below). — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 22:38, 16 January 2020 (UTC)
I see another edit that has again removed all the main sub pages from the lead. .. like our guideline and frequently Asked question page.....as mentioned above this is contentious edit. We like having our FAQ and guidline linked in in the lead as most will not read more then the lead.-- Moxy 🍁 23:54, 15 January 2020 (UTC)
When one makes sudden changes (such as at this WikiProject) to any area on Wikipedia, which has a lot of interested parties? It's best that one propose those changes on the talkpage & see if it's accepted. Otherwise, one risks peeving a lot of editors, with the results being poor for the proposer. GoodDay ( talk) 00:19, 16 January 2020 (UTC)
For my part, I like this stuff being in the sidebar template, which is close enough to the top and distinct enough that it very well serves the needed navigation purpose. As an aside, however, I really do not like these giant blue bars across the page. They're an eyesore, and a confusing thing to do (they don't match other WP process/project pages). — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 22:35, 16 January 2020 (UTC)
I know the project says "there is no list of participants, just watch the talk page," and that's cool and all (and it looks lilke it goes back >10 years), but I think the recent issues are strong evidence that is a bad idea (especially since the current version of an archived talk page gives a pretty narrow view of any project: in our case we also now have 27 archived pages to go back and look at to get a complete view). Two (of many) values of listing WikiProject participants are: 1) increasing the social aspect of participation: when you see a fellow participant elsewhere on WikiPedia, you think "cool, they work on the WikiProject council with me too."; and 2) showing how active the project is: if a bunch of very active editors are on the participants list (as would definitely be the case here), it gives the project extra weight (and may give someone pause before they BOLDly make undiscussed changes). Accordingly, I propose we restart a participants page for this project. Thoughts? UnitedStatesian ( talk) 03:23, 16 January 2020 (UTC)
This discussion is kinda confusing me. Is it about restoring the lead or starting a WikiProject membership drive. Also, through out this talkpage, indenting of posts seem mixed up. GoodDay ( talk) 06:30, 16 January 2020 (UTC)
My take on all this is in a detailed comment in the related thread below this one. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 22:30, 16 January 2020 (UTC)
In connection with the above discussions, I thought it might be useful to look into WP Council's background and its main contributors. It turns out that two of the project's main contributors, Kirill Lokshin and John Carter, are no longer active. Indeed, the only editors who have been really active recently are WhatamIdoing, who has been contributing since June 2008, and Moxy, who started contributing in October 2010. I also note that Sm8900 first contributed in September 2015. (In this connection, I was surprised to see he was recently referred to as a "newbie" as he has in fact been an active Wikipedian since September 2006.)
Throughout the discussions over the past two or three days, it has appeared to me that the two surviving contributors have sought to maintain the old WP Council page at all costs. As there are only two of them, I think it is quite unreasonable of them to refer to themselves as a "group". I, for one, would welcome far wider participation and am pleased to see how many other editors have begun to show interest in the project. As for me, despite not remembering the project as such, I see I made a number of contributions to WP Council's talk page back in 2015 -- so I'm hardly a newbie either!
I think it would be useful at this point to identify editors who are interested in contributing to making this project more effective. If there really is an argument for not including them on the main project page, then we could perhaps start a subpage of some kind. To untangle all the ideas put forward in the form of (now reverted) edits by Sm8900 and by the others who have been involved in the discussions, I think it would be useful to start a new project talk page, laying out the project's present shortcomings and presenting ideas on how (and which) improvements could be implemented.
I hope these remarks do not appear too critical. WhatamIdoing and Moxy have devoted time and effort to maintaining the project in recent years. As I pointed out earlier, the fact that the main project page gets over 100 page views per day clearly shows it is a really useful reference or starting point for those interested in finding detailed information on wikiprojects. It is to be hoped that any improvements to the project will lead to even wider interest.-- Ipigott ( talk) 08:41, 16 January 2020 (UTC)
Perhaps more to a deeper point, it is perfectly fine for WP:COUNCIL to be much less active today that it was a decade ago. We already have developed the stable guidelines and more technical advice that we need. Wikipedia already has almost all the wikiprojects it needs (most proposals for new ones either generate little interest; or are actively opposed as redundant, unencyclopedic, or otherwise problematic; or at best get semi-support as taskforces/workgroups of extant projects). At least half, and probably much more than half, of existing wikiprojects are either moribund or (worse) have turned into barriers to open collaboration (attempts by small WP:FACTIONs to create walled gardens for WP:OWN and WP:POV purposes) rather than aids to cooperatively building the encyclopedia. Some of the most active and high-participation ones (e.g. WP:MILHIST) have proven to be problematic in multiple ways, though a few legitimately have a boatload of work to do (e.g. WP:TOL which helps manage WP's treatment of the fast-moving target of biological classification of millions of species, and various other highly expertise-heavy ones (medicine, law, maths, etc.) for which there is a daily-ongoing need to "police" content for blatantly wrong (sometimes dangerously wrong) "information" added by cluebags. Aside from exceptions like that, more and more of us realize that actually practical wikiprojects that are not problematic tend to have finite lifespans of serious activity: they actually get the job done of providing a sensible category structure, sample article layouts, infoboxes and other templates, naming conventions, topical notability guides, and other reusable resources for a topical tree. After that, they mostly just get out of the way, providing initial assessment and peer-review "service" upon request (on the way to GA/FA), having low-traffic talk pages that help keep categories of articles consistent and stable (and not, e.g., overrun by spates of promotional articles), and acting as places to round up some topic-specific [alleged-]expert input. The more active they are on their own talk pages after the bulk of the real wikiproject work is done, the more often they are hotbeds of dispute and strife. These are among the reasons that more and more editors every year think the wikiproject system should simply be retired, perhaps in favor of something like topic-specific noticeboards.
So, I'm skeptical of any push to generate a whole bunch of new WP:COUNCIL activity. Seems like a solution in search of a problem. See also
WP:WikiProject Stub sorting, another "wikiproject" that is actually a process/resource for internal maintenance purposes. It is (and needs to be) only a tiny fraction as active today as it was ten years ago, because we already have almost all the stub templates and categories we need, and most of the questionable ones have been removed or merged (with the rate of bad new ones been created very low today), while the related guidelines and other resources are already done and long-stable. There's just not much to actually do there, nor any need to "manufacture" busywork. I'm especially suspicious of the above-mentioned motivation to go in a get-WP:COUNCIL-swollen-and-busy direction for "social" reasons; see
WP:NOT#FACEBOOK and
WP:NOT#FORUM. Two more examples of internal-maint wikiprojects in near-to-total dormancy are
WP:WPMOS and
WP:ILT, both of which also just basically got the job done, and are either effectively over (in the case of WPMOS; all current MoS-related discussion and development happens at the individual MoS guidelines' talk pages), or in the case of ILT, needing barely any activity besides occasional checking for new inline templates to categorize and code-normalize. COUNCIL is kind of in the same boat; unless someone proposes a new project, there's not a lot to do or talk about here, and that is okay.
—
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ 😼 22:30, 16 January 2020 (UTC)
On community skepticism of wikiprojects: I've founded and co-founded various projects myself (both content-topical and internal-procedural), so I'm not anti-wikiproject; I just notice trends (including problem trends) with them, and that community skepticism about them has grown, especially over the last ~5 years. Aside from general fear of change, I'm sure many wikiproject booster would not welcome topical noticeboards as an alternative (nor anything else that doesn't smack of being a clubhouse with barriers to entry and bars to continued participation), but the replacement idea will appeal to those with concerns about what wikiprojects have been up to when they're not at their best. Such a transition would most of all be opposed by those who generate those concerns: the dominators of malfunctional projects consisting of half a dozen buddies acting as a wiki-gang (including against other would-be participants in the project). It would erode their factional content-control power by eliminating a bogus "membership" structure (with a sotto voce hazing/winnowing process to preserve the hive mind), and an insular canvassing farm for them to run to when challenged. Even noticeboards might retain some of the latter problem, it they don't have broad enough participation (perhaps through a mechanism like WP:FRS). But noticeboards or some other replacement for wikiprojects is what a growing number of editors who are not wikiproject fans are increasingly likely to eventually support.
On problematic wikiprojects, and the problems: I didn't suggest MILHIST does nothing good; rather, the good it still does these days comes at a high (and rising) cost. It's been my long experience that any time there is a tendentious conflict between a wikiproject and some site-wide guideline or process (with the rest of the editorship following it properly), odds are the cause will be one of these, in descending order of frequency, to the extent these categorizations don't overlap: an entertainment franchise project, a sports/games project, MILHIST, or some other geeky project for a very narrow jargon-heavy subject that is highly credentialist or attracts obsessive fandom. All other projects barely ever register on the disrupt-o-meter (not even politics, religion, and other ideology-related ones, surprisingly). But they're also mostly semi-active at best, like WP:SNOOKER, WP:DOGS, and WP:NEWMEXICO; or are tightly focused on doing really-needed systemic work every day, as are WIR and TIL. There seem to be two diametrically opposite "sweet spots" with a huge, swampy middle ground that's much less productive and collegial than either pole. The middle morass mostly consists of tiresome squabbling, and attempts to game the system to suit the subjective preferences of people who focus near-exclusively on a topic (often professionally or as an all-consuming hobby), versus the needs of the broader readership and editorship. Most of the longest-running and most disruptive "campaigns" of battlegrounding in Wikipedia history (outside areas of real-world strife of the "my ethnicity/religion/nationality/race/politics versus yours" sort that ArbCom locks down via WP:AC/DS and that WP:MFD won't permit "wikiprojects" for if they're PoV-laden) have a firm locus in a wikiproject with a small number of loud and browbeating ringmasters claiming to speak on behalf of everyone who cares about the topic. They wear out and drive off anyone in said project who doesn't tow their party line, and chase away non-"members" from meaningful contribution to articles in the topic, especially toward GA and higher development where only the wikiproject's orthodoxy will be tolerated. I've seen it over and over again. It'll sometimes be enforced by "pet" admins in the faction, who block and topic-ban people who irritate their friends. In one case, several such admins set up their own counter- WP:RM board inside a wikiproject to make out-of-process mass-moves of articles at the behest of other project "members" (for which they could have been desysopped, obviously, though that did not happen; WP:MR and RfC action finally brought that to an end). Another "WTF?" example was a clique of "wikiproject leaders" trying to organize an editing boycott, and also proposing to leave the site to set up a competing encyclopedia, while openly canvassing (including through off-site meatpuppetry) to derail RfCs they didn't like the probable outcome of – all over a spelling quibble (I kid you not, and something similar happened again more recently and repeatedly over another style matter, then descended into off-site harassment of at least two parties, including trying to get one fired from their job). Another was a project "leader" colluding with an offsite organization to push their viewpoint (not well-accepted by other real-world orgs in the same field) to be adopted as a Wikipedia "standard", and who was actually updating the other org's public website on "progress" in forcing such a change at WP (which eventually failed, of course). This sort of stuff is not a new problem. Some of these patterns of tendentious, OWNish, win-at-all-costs, externally-motivated, "rules and consensuses do not apply to our topic unless we like them" factionalism date back 15+ years.
If WP:COUNCIL were to take on something "new and exciting" it should probably be only "How do we fix this before it's too late?" While I'm more vociferous about these issues than average, I'm hardly alone in observing these sort of things and that their connection to wikiprojects is non-incidental and not improving. A whole lot of ArbCom cases and otherwise-unnecessary discretionary sanctions, the codification of
WP:CONLEVEL policy and of the
WP:PROJPAGE guideline, the creation of
WP:RM as a centralized process, and even the rather rapid corruption of the
WP:RFC process from "attract people to a discussion for more input" into "set up a voting system with formal closure and treat it almost like legislation and legal precedent", all came about in large part because of wikiproject-engendered, entrenched battlegrounding. At what point does the community decide that the cost–benefit analysis isn't favorable toward wikiprojects continuing to exist? Or, what can be done to change near-endemic flaws in the wikiproject system to prevent such an outcome? To date, "improvement" is generally accidental and in the form of dissolution, to community relief – through wikiprojects with too much time on their hands and territorial designs on their minds going dormant. In only two cases have I seen a viewpoint-conformity and canvassing-farm "wikiproject off the rails" get reformed into a stable, productive (and – no surprise – intermittently active but content-work focused) one. Even these only happened because the original projects fell apart (a dozen or more years after they started) due to one drama festival too many, then were flatline moribund for over a year before being restarted with nearly all-new active participants. In both cases it was basically a replacement from scratch, not a correction. One hopes there's a better way.
PS, re: it might be useful to improve the assessment tools
– Yes, no doubt, though probably best as a separate thread! See also the new thread below about upgrading some tabular data. A while back, I identified a couple of assessment classes that were never used by more than a project or two and which were effectively dead, and MfDed/TfDed them, and removed them from in situ use, so at least the assessment ranges are more consistent now.
—
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ 😼 14:53, 17 January 2020 (UTC)
Ya'll do as you wish. Way too much to read, to figure out what's being discussed about this WikiProject. GoodDay ( talk) 03:11, 20 January 2020 (UTC)
I've asked if WikiProject Omaha should be converted into a task force of WikiProject Nebraska at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Omaha. --- Another Believer ( Talk) 20:50, 1 February 2020 (UTC)
I've asked if WikiProject Louisville should be converted into a task force of WikiProject Kentucky at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Louisville. --- Another Believer ( Talk) 20:51, 1 February 2020 (UTC)
I have attempted to improve the functionality of the page pages of WP:HOU by installing the quality log reporting bot. Please bear with me if am not proficient in tech-language. I scraped the code from the WP Texas assessment page, pasted it into my sandbox page, and changed the target. It appeared to be working: only Houston articles were being reported. I created a new page for the reports and pasted the code into that file. I attempted to further test it by creating new events: I changed the status of some articles in two ways. First, I added Henry Howell Williams to WP HOU. Second, I assessed some unassessed articles and reassessed others. All of these events should have appeared on the quality log, but none of them did. Does this bot need to be customized for each project, or do the data objects need to be restructured, and how would I obtain help for this? Thanks, Oldsanfelipe2 ( talk) 22:21, 30 January 2020 (UTC)
I think there may be disagreement about how to define a WikiProject's status as active/semi-active/inactive. Is there even a consensus for what constitutes a WikiProject activity. I propose the following as WikiProject activities:
Any thoughts? Oldsanfelipe2 ( talk) 16:00, 28 January 2020 (UTC)
Most of us can quote it: "A WikiProject is a group of people that wants to work together."
But some of the (mostly newer) folks proposing groups don't know it, or they don't quite believe it. Over at User talk:Sm8900/item draft 2#Be aware of similar efforts, User:Bluerasberry suggests five as a minimum number for a viable group. I've said before that sustainable groups need half a dozen editors to survive the first year, based on some preliminary head-counting I did in the past. I believe that we've arrived at our estimates independently.
First (most important) question: Does anyone think we're wrong? Can anyone think of a thriving WikiProject with just two or three people in it?
Second (contingent) question: If (and only if) our estimates are correct, do you think that the community should (for the first time ever) require people to produce a minimum number (perhaps four/five/six?) of named participants to start a new WikiProject? WhatamIdoing ( talk) 17:40, 8 February 2020 (UTC)
What constitutes "just two or three people in it"?and
Also, what is out metric for "thriving"?
To expand on my previous comment: by all means, if you want to work on anything, you should proceed, whether or not you've made a group to work on it. If this means making some pages in Wikipedia space in order to lay out the work, great! If it's just you so far, though, rather than take on the extra overhead of creating a new WikiProject page and then recruiting specifically for that project, I think you'd be better off finding a home in an existing WikiProject, and looking for other editors with similar interests there. Some editors seem to think that if they create a WikiProject, participants will come, but I believe the reverse is far more common: find enough interested editors, and the need for a new WikiProject will emerge.
As discussed in another thread, WikiProject activity is difficult to measure. WhatamIdoing suggested a possible metric might be responsiveness to questions on the WikiProject talk page. I do think projects can do a lot of useful work establishing consensus on various issues, and then mostly be in maintenance mode, where there won't be a lot of activity on the project talk page. But when there is something to discuss, there should be enough people offering up a reasonably diverse set of viewpoints in order to have a broad discussion. If it's just an occasional person posting with no responses, eventually they'll get tired of posting, and the WikiProject will no longer serve as a central discussion point for editors interested in that area. isaacl ( talk) 18:26, 10 February 2020 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:WikiProject History/History Town Hall. I noticed before but didn't realize to what extent till now because of this nomination....the history project has been overwhelmed by what seems to be a brand new editor despite them being here for a decade. Perhaps a review of what has happened to the project overall is warranted. This editor is all over the map with things of this nature.-- Moxy 🍁 06:09, 16 February 2020 (UTC)
WhatamIdoing has kindly let us know on the Women in Red talk page that WikiProjects by number of changes to all its pages has recently been updated. Even though the new version contains identical figures in the "count" and "no bots count" column, I think it would be useful to substitute it for Wikipedia:Database reports/WikiProjects by changes (dated 11 July 2016) which is linked from Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory under "Lists and reports".-- Ipigott ( talk) 11:20, 17 January 2020 (UTC)
Am I seeing this right? Wikipedia talk:WikiProject History#Request help with new Council for WikiProjects.-- Moxy 🍁 05:44, 26 January 2020 (UTC)
Thanks to considerable support, WikiProject Women in Green which has been a task force of WikiProject Women is now a wikiproject in its own right. Anyone interested in upgrading articles about women to GA status or higher is welcome to participate in the project.-- Ipigott ( talk) 11:40, 10 February 2020 (UTC)
Please check that I got Q6 right on WT:WikiProject Internet culture#Project YouTube + WT:WikiProject YouTube#Closing shop? Notably, does that bot exist? Assuming too much instead of good old MASM assume:nothing is one of my weak spots. – 84.46.53.188 ( talk) 04:31, 18 February 2020 (UTC)
I have tried to revive the Wikipedia:WikiProject Newspapers by updating the content, instructions and monitoring the unassessed articles. There are now alerts and popular articles for this project. It has been broadened to include all newspapers, worldwide. It should be listed on this page below the Media project.
G. Moore 17:28, 1 March 2020 (UTC)
The bots have stopped updating the WikiWork and Relative Wikiwork. User:WP 1.0 bot/WikiWork/all stopped updating in June 2019. So even though the assessment tables for a project are up-to-date on the distribution of classes, the statistics at the bottom are very old (I've been manually calculating them). I'm not even sure who to tell about this. Thoughts? Enwebb ( talk) 03:14, 3 March 2020 (UTC)
(Long ago, I had requested some other similar tables for other road projects, so if we can get one of these built, it should be an easy matter to recycle the code.) Imzadi 1979 → 23:21, 4 March 2020 (UTC)
Hey team, as many of you know the link that is at the bottom of many WikiProjects, that begins with [[tools:~dispenser/cgi-bin/transcluded_changes.py, has been dead for quite some time. Any objection to my reaching out to a bot operator to begin automated removal of the busted link from every project where it appears? If it ever magically comes back to life, we can have the same bot put it back. Let me know, and thanks, UnitedStatesian ( talk) 02:46, 10 March 2020 (UTC)
I've created WikiProject COVID-19 as a temporary or permanent WikiProject and invite editors to use this space for discussing ways to improve coverage of the ongoing 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic. Please bring your ideas to the project/talk page. Stay safe, -- Another Believer ( Talk) 17:24, 15 March 2020 (UTC)
Today
Template:WPBannerMeta uses {{
Category TOC}}
. I recently created the required category pages to support article assessment. Then I saw another editor updating all those pages with {{
CatAutoTOC}}
because of the number of pages in each category. The system and instructions should be updated for the, perhaps newer, template. I explored the update in WPBannerMeta's supporting sub template—see the diff link that follows. I am not familiar enough with the system yet to know what the right 'fix' is and where it might need to be updated. See the
diff.
—¿philoserf? (
talk) 22:44, 29 March 2020 (UTC)
On 29 January, I posted an inquiry at the talk pages of the various subprojects of WikiProject Texas in order to gauge interest in these WikiProjects. So far I found only one other editor to indicate that they intend to help coordinate WikiProject Texas or any of its subprojects. As a result, there is no other choice than to convert all of the subprojects into Task Forces in order to reduce the administrative responsibility. These subprojects include: WP:ATX, WP:DFW, WP:HOU, WP:TAMU, WP:Texas Tech, WP:UH, Wikipedia:WikiProject University of North Texas, and Wikipedia:WikiProject University of Texas at Austin. For the sake of simplicity, I suggest that all of the university projects convert to direct children of WP Texas, such that WP Texas will be the direct parent of all of these subprojects and will result in a two-level structure.
Below I have included a few assessments statistics for the subprojects as of 3 February 2020: (x): x is the total number of articles within the project
A merger of the various subprojects could result in a stronger WikiProject Texas: with a merger, the backlogs of the various subprojects for assessments and reassessments all go away. As task forces, the subprojects can share the burden of assessments, spend more time on other project functions, or spend more time in main space.
Benefits of a stronger WikiProject Texas:
Today I am notifying the various subprojects of this proposal. Oldsanfelipe2 ( talk) 16:54, 7 February 2020 (UTC)
;-)
WhatamIdoing (
talk) 04:58, 9 February 2020 (UTC)
Support mergers: The Houston and DFW areas are entirely in Texas, and so a single poor of statewide editors can serve them. There is not as much editing traffic on WP as there used to be, so I think we need some consolidation. Also I don't see a problem with TAMU already have been put in the WPUS family as WPTX is within WPUS. WhisperToMe ( talk) 22:33, 2 April 2020 (UTC)
Support —¿philoserf? ( talk) 22:40, 2 April 2020 (UTC)
If anybody has the know how & patients, they could/should make a list of inactive WikiProjects & any inactive WikiProject branches. Have them all nominated for deletion. GoodDay ( talk) 22:58, 11 February 2020 (UTC)
|importance=
ratings of inactive projects can still be useful to the
WP:1.0 work. That's why merging them (even of the blank-and-redirect variety) is often preferable to outright deletion of the pages for formerly active groups.
WhatamIdoing (
talk) 03:32, 14 February 2020 (UTC)
Oppose The defunct status is sufficient. —¿philoserf? ( talk) 22:43, 2 April 2020 (UTC)
Hi all. Based on Sm8900's suggestions, I've made a mock-up of a slightly tweaked look for the WP:COUNCIL page with the hope of making it less ugly and more accessible to edit. Differences:
Theoretically I'd add the navbar to the top of all the pages it's linked to. See the WP:GA-related pages to get a sense of how that looks and would work. The current version is at User:Ajpolino/sandbox3 (and the header is at User:Ajpolino/sandbox2 in case you'd like to play with it; it's easy to understand and to edit, which is a big plus). Thoughts are welcome. I won't be offended if you think it's ugly. Thanks all! Ajpolino ( talk) 21:35, 13 February 2020 (UTC)
Less ugly Nice layout. —¿philoserf? ( talk) 22:46, 2 April 2020 (UTC)
We couldn't figure out how to add class "draft" here Wikipedia:WikiProject Estonia/Assessment. The discussion in question is here: [1]. Maybe someone can solve the problem?-- Estopedist1 ( talk) 12:03, 21 February 2020 (UTC)
Can a bot go through and remove appearances of Portal:Pandemic from articles? --- Another Believer ( Talk) 16:33, 18 April 2020 (UTC)
A requested move discussion has been initiated for Wikipedia:WikiProject Royalty and Nobility to be moved to Wikipedia:WikiProject Royalty and nobility. This page is of interest to this WikiProject and interested members may want to participate in the discussion here. — RMCD bot 13:47, 19 March 2020 (UTC)
I need help expanding Wikipedia:WikiProject Inca Empire. I didn't create it, but I've been working hard on it. I was wondering if I could get some help. It is very short and I barely know anything about WikiProjects. Koridas ( Speak) 06:47, 5 April 2020 (UTC)
Is there any written/consensus guidance on how importance of an article is decided for a WikiProject? · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 19:51, 12 April 2020 (UTC)
Unlike the quality scale, the priority scale varies based on the project scope, which implies a bit, but says nothing definite. I am trying to persuade an editor not to make importance rating changes for projects that they are not a member of, based on number of recent pageviews.· · · Peter Southwood (talk): 05:11, 13 April 2020 (UTC)
I just restarted a bot task that removes the "class" parameter from WikiProject banners on the talk pages of redirects. The task was approved on the assumption that WPBannerMeta would auto-classify the pages as redirects. However, in practice, some banners do not seem to do this automatic classification; an example I just ran into was {{ WikiProject Ships}} ( example showing "unassessed"). I think this has to do with WPBannerMeta's "auto" parameter (but {{ WikiProject Animation}} seems to auto-assess even though it lacks one?). I certainly can't just enable auto-classification of redirects for such projects, right? In that case, should I just have the bot skip such banners? I'm not sure there's an easy way for the bot to make that check. Thoughts are very much appreciated. Enterprisey ( talk!) 06:22, 15 April 2020 (UTC)
I want to restart this project. Computer Science is very broad topic and so is the topic of Programming Languages. It is very odd to have it merged in WikiProject Computer Science and makes it very difficult to find topics solely related to Programming Languages. Harsh Rathod Poke me! 19:22, 27 April 2020 (UTC)
I was wondering if these two projects should be merged in to one and make Military a task force of the History project? Govvy ( talk) 13:23, 23 April 2020 (UTC)
Sorry about this, but I appear to have done something wrong in attempting to add WikiProject Mysticism to a proposal for new WikiProjects. If one looks at proposals for new WikiProjects for April 2020, one will see "Brass Bands" and if you click on this, you will get a proposal for a project on brass bands, but if you click on Mysticism, you will just get taken to the Wikipedia article on Mysticism. Does any one know what I have done wrong, or more specifically, what I have not done right? Vorbee ( talk) 16:09, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
I am in the process of reviving both Wikipedia:WikiProject_Spoken_Wikipedia & Wikipedia:WikiProject_Spoken_Wikipedia/Pronunciation_task_force per the guidelines located at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Council/Guide#Revival. When I removed the inactive links, Nardog reverted my edits asking why?, however, it was stated when I removed the tags that I am reviving them. There are a few people interested in this project and the task force is under the spoken project, so I am reviving them both as some words within certain dialects need help from those around the world who know of or speak the language. After I reverted Nardog's edits to make them back to the old status, I posted on his talk page that I am reviving both of them and asked him to stop reverting what I am doing. He then went after that and reverted again. Am I misinterpreting the Revival of Councils article in which it states in the opening sentence "Any editor may revive an inactive WikiProject by changing the {{WikiProject status}} template parameter to active"?
Thank you, Galendalia CVU Member \ Chat Me Up 22:28, 6 May 2020 (UTC)
{{
WikiProject status|Defunct}}
instead of {{
Update}}
, which I have now
corrected. Again, I have no problem with your revival and I hope this explanation clears it up for you.
Nardog (
talk) 13:05, 16 May 2020 (UTC)Hello all! I'm putting together an op-ed for The Signpost on how wikiprojects have gradually been phasing out and becoming defunct, and I was curious if there was a graph or chart somewhere showing wikiproject activity declining over the years. If not, do any of you know of a good tool to put such a graph together? Thank you all. -- puddleglum 2.0 00:55, 18 May 2020 (UTC)
I have put forward a proposal for my idea at Wikipedia: Village pump, but no one appears to have taken any notice of it there, so I shall put forth my proposal here. I have made a proposal here for WikiProject Mysticism, and if one goes to the article on mysticism, one can see that the information about this proposal is on the talk page of this article. Similarly, if one goes to the article on Justin Bieber, one can see that information about the relevant WikiProject proposal is on the talk page. My proposal is that when some one puts in a proposal for a new WikiProject, a new template gets added to the relevant article on the main page (not just the talk page) saying "A proposal has been made at Wikipedia: WikiProject Council to start a WikiProject on..." This might help people to become more aware of new WikiProject proposals. One can see that there are proposals for WikiProject Brass Bands and WikiProject Hausa, but if one goes to the articles on Brass band and Hausa people, one can see nothing to inform one about the news of these proposals for WikiProjects, which I feel strengthens the case for such a template. What do other Wikipedians think of this idea? Many thanks in advance for any feedback. Vorbee ( talk) 13:04, 15 May 2020 (UTC) The article on Brass band is headed by a template saying "This article needs additional sources for verification". My idea is to have a similar template heading the relevant article, only saying "A proposal has been made at Wikipedia: WikiProject Council for a WikiProject on..." Vorbee ( talk) 13:28, 15 May 2020 (UTC)
I've started WikiProject Black Lives Matter, for any editors who may be interested in joining or helping to improve the project's framework with helpful tools, etc. Thank you. --- Another Believer ( Talk) 22:29, 2 June 2020 (UTC)
Your feedback concerning the expression "Click [show] for further details" used in Template:WikiProject banner shell would be appreciated, at this discussion. Thanks, Mathglot ( talk) 02:20, 13 June 2020 (UTC)
When you feel have enough Wikipedians to start a WikiProject, how do start it? Do you just type in "WikiProject (name of WikiProject)" and seeing that will be in red Wikilinks, then start it? Vorbee ( talk) 19:43, 17 June 2020 (UTC)
Attention has been called to the new Wikipedia:WikiProject ConwayLibrary, which seems to function more like a WikiEd course (though it isn't one) than a WikiProject - a single user group all centered around a school, with a set list of articles and a principle editor for each of them. Just alerting the WP council group to it, perhaps you can offer some guidance. Their coordinator also seems unfamiliar with Wikipedia, so may need help on that front. Best, Kingsif ( talk) 13:50, 18 June 2020 (UTC)
How many Wikipedians does one need to show an interest in a new WikiProject before the WikiProject can be started? Vorbee ( talk) 08:49, 23 May 2020 (UTC)
Hi folks! Just thought I'd drop a note here for WikiProject coordinators who might be interested: my bot, Yapperbot ( talk · contribs), is now running a "user list pruning" task.
What this means is you can configure the bot with a template, much like an archiving bot, and it will automatically detect users on your signup list's page, remove users who haven't edited in a time you specify, remove indefinitely-blocked users, and rename users who've undergone a global rename. Hopefully, this'll make lists of members and the like a little easier to manage.
You can find out how to use the bot over at User:Yapperbot/Pruner.
Hope this is helpful, feel free to shoot me any questions! Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 21:35, 6 July 2020 (UTC)
# ~~~~
as long as there's at least one link to a user page or a user talk page in there, correct? Potential errors I can think of are double-counting or partially renaming # [[User:Example]] ~~~~
or ignoring # [[User talk:Example|Example]]
New maintenance category Pages by WikiProject has been created. It is an analogue of Category:Articles by WikiProject, but for categories, which are not restricted to articles. — andrybak ( talk) 14:40, 2 August 2020 (UTC)
You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2020 August 2 § Category:WikiProjects. — andrybak ( talk) 14:47, 2 August 2020 (UTC)
Category:River Thames articles by quality and Category:River Thames articles by importance are empty despite many articles tagged with this project. The project (and subsequently templates) was renamed and this fix was made but the categories are still empty. Crouch, Swale ( talk) 16:28, 2 August 2020 (UTC)
Hi, hope you are doing well, I recently created a WikiProject Wikipedia: WikiProject Chenab Valley and it's template Template: WikiProject Chenab Valley. I am getting many issues as I am not expert in this. Whenever I rate any article related to this project, there is no option for rating as Stub, Start C, B etc. And there are other issues to. Kindly help me to fix this issues and guide me how to fix other issues. Thank You. — The Chunky urf Al Kashmiri (Speak🗣️ or Write✍️) 18:38, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
You are invited to join the discussion at
Template talk:Tasks § Adding a "date of last update" line. {{u|
Sdkb}}
talk 03:07, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
In last years there has been a Dissociation between Wikiprojects and portals. Many active Wikiprojects like Buddhism and Basketball no longer have a portal. Some portals are maintained by several Wikiprojects like Portal:Computer programming and Portal:Society, there are Wikiprojects that maintain several portals like WikiProject Military history and WikiProject Germany and portals without any associated Wikiprojects like Portal:Civilizations and Portal:Telephones. So I suggest removing the portal, portal2 and portal3 parameters from Wikipedia: WikiProject Council/Directory/WikiProject. Guilherme Burn ( talk) 19:56, 11 August 2020 (UTC)
At Template talk:AFC submission#Improving the odds of a speedy review, User:Headbomb told me "Active WikiProjects are a dime a dozen, and are far from the exception". This interests me, and I think it is better continued here.
It has been my "impression" for a long time that most WikiProjects are inactive. I have perused Category:WikiProjects by status from time to time, and I find that a survey of Category:Active WikiProjects main talk pages shows mostly negligible activity. Noting biases here, I am counting WikiProjects by title, not coverage; there may be activity not reflected on the main talk page; and my attention tends to be drawn to problem areas.
It is also my impression over many years that when Headbomb says something, he is right. I have two questions.
-- SmokeyJoe ( talk) 01:03, 26 August 2020 (UTC)
Most WikiProjects seem inactive I'm going to put a big fat citation needed on this. Now, on the other issues
1. Very few things are a good measure of WikiProject activity on their own. Which project is 'active' and which is 'not active', or whatever, is a complex a nebulous function of
2. Why does it even matters? WikiProjects are merged and revived all the time. WP:GLASS is pretty much dead currently. But if 3 months from now, a few people from the Glass Packaging Institute decide to get involved, they'll have the infrastructure already setup for them. Or maybe someone reads Talk:Glass and notices that WikiProject, and decides to gets involve with it. Sure they may be lonely, but they'll again have the infrastructure setup and can start watching Wikipedia:WikiProject Physics/Taskforces/Glass/Article alerts and get involved with those discussions. There might be a case to remove the banners of a handful of WikiProjects that are so tiny and hopelessly specialized (WikiProject Blue Flowers of North Ireland; WikiProject Short Stories of H.P. Lovecraft), but those have usually been merged into more useful projects and with their banners replaced and G6'd. Headbomb { t · c · p · b} 02:56, 26 August 2020 (UTC)
are there enough WikiProjects such that every one of the 6-million-plus articles can be in at least one active WikiProject? Of course the answer is yes.I'm not so sure about that. There are plenty of extremely niche inactive WikiProjects, but there are also a bunch in important, high-level areas (often ones impacted by WP:Systemic bias) that are inactive. I recently wanted to bring up something relating to stove, and the only really relevant pages were WT:WikiProject Food and drink and WT:WikiProject Home Living. I posted at both of those, but it was only a month later when I found an excuse to mention the issue somewhere else (I think at one of the pumps, perhaps) that I finally got any reply. Take a look at those two pages — you'll see a decent number of posts (a disconcerting percentage of which are
One of your project's articles has been selected for improvement!), but what you won't see is any threading. What that means is that no one is watching those pages, and the only people going there are those who are throwing out questions into the void. {{u| Sdkb}} talk 04:54, 26 August 2020 (UTC)
Reports bot is now updating the automated wikiproject directory again, including the "active wikiproject editors" pages. Presumably Harej found and fixed the issue, so thanks Harej! PJvanMill) talk( 13:08, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
The main way I use participant lists (other than adding myself to them) is when I come across a topic area I'm unfamiliar with and am seeking someone knowledgeable about it to ping. However, the lists as they currently exist don't serve that function well—there are way too many names, many of whom are no longer active or were never that active in the first place. The list is also redundant to the category of project contributors, which creates excess work for editors who have to list themselves in two places. And it's worth emphasizing that Wikipedia places no intrinsic value on "badges" unless they do something to help build the encyclopedia.
Given all this, I think an overhaul of participant lists is in order. I propose that we replace participant lists at most WikiProjects (if some want to opt out, fine) with the following:
I think that this change would help a lot for less active WikiProjects, where the question for someone coming across them is mainly "who is still around who I can talk to"? Listing a single editor or two for the representative would be a lot easier to maintain than trying to keep a full participant list up to date, and the category list/most active list would be generally self-maintaining. What do you all think? {{u| Sdkb}} talk 19:15, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
Can someone revert the image used on {{ WikiProject Rocketry}} to the old one? The new one barely has any rocket, and is mostly a U.S. flag instead. Since the WikiProject isn't a U.S. WikiProject, this is a bad choice. -- 65.94.170.98 ( talk) 03:58, 28 September 2020 (UTC)