Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Council/Archive 3

This is an archive of past discussions on Wikipedia:WikiProject Council. 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.

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Archive 4

Archive 5

→

Archive 10

Questions regarding portals

I'm figuring to send out to the various projects notice of the directory so that they all can make any improvements or corrections in their listings. I also intend to subtly (as subtly as I get, anyway) mention the possibility of perhaps beginning collaborations and assessments if they have not already done so, partially on the basis of the colums in the directory. I'm also working on a similarly-organized list of portals, which I am currently developing. However, I note that many of these portals seem to exist independent of projects. Should I attempt a draft of a note to the portal managers which might not "turn off" the portal managers or not? You all have much more experience in this than I do, so I very much welcome any input in this potentially delicate matter.

There is also questions to be asked about some of these portals. Specifically, are there any similar guidelines in place for determining when a portal is defunct? Also, I note that one portal which relates to the new Germany project is, of course, Portal:Nazism. As a person of German ancestry, I'm kind of put out by having the low point of my ancestral fatherland getting that extraordinary degree of attention. Does anyone think it might be a decent idea to create an alternative World War II portal to ~~replace~~ complement the Nazism portal? Badbilltucker 19:00, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

A Portal:World War II is something that's been wanted for a long time (primarily because it can then replace the unnecessarily large {{World War II}} on articles); but, so far, nobody has actually volunteered to maintain it. WP:WWII would be the logical group to get involved in the issue, though. Kirill Lokshin 19:04, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Nazism would be sufficiently covered under both Portal:Fascism and a Portal:World War II, were it to be created. I agree that guidelines need to be set to determine when a portal is defunct. Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals is not very organised, so any help in that area is appreciated. As an aside, is this listing of portals a replacement for Wikipedia:Portal/Directory?--cj | talk 23:19, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

What I'm trying to do is create a listing that the projects can used which will be useful to them. Basically, it's being arranged in the same outline format with the portals specifically mentioned by specific projects as related to them or obviously dealing with the same area included. However, they'll be listed in "reverse" order, so that if a project doesn't see any existing portals that deal with their specific subject area, they can go "up" a level or two and find portals dealing with the broader areas. I regret words fail me here, but I think (this time, I really do) it'll be ready tomorrow, and everyone can look at it then. Badbilltucker 20:05, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Hello and what can I do

Hey everyone, just joined the project. I founded WikiProject Guitarists so I am familiar with the ongoing issues of scope overlap that have been discussed here.

And yes, I have been known to be a tad persnickety about the prospect of being swallowed by another project, but I'm trying to get over it. :)

Anyway, what can I do? My first thought after reviewing the to-do list is that I could sort through the Proposed list. A good start would be to alphabetize for easiest browsing - I think anyone browsing that list would be better served by alpha rather than chronological organization. I could also contact people who have proposed projects that are still listed after a defined length of time to find out if they plan to create it or just delist the proposal, etc.

Thoughts? --Aguerriero (talk) 19:22, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

There's been talk in the past of moving WP:PR into something that funnels articles to the most appropriate WikiProjects' review departments, so encouraging projects to at least put together a basic "these pages within our scope are currently under peer review" page would be helpful. Slambo (Speak) 19:36, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

I guess I could start with my own project, eh? :) I take it from the vast empty column in the directory that very few projects have a peer review department right now. --Aguerriero (talk) 19:48, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, there's only about a dozen or so that are regularly active. There are a lot of articles being listed on PR, though, so the potential is there even without any additional traffic. Kirill Lokshin 20:12, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm wondering if it might be possible to create some sort of code to the general PR templates so that the user can very specifically categorize the article. That way, the review can automatically be added both to the WP's peer review listing and still remain in the general PR list. I think that an article should ideally be subjected to review both through a community of editors specifically interested in the subject as well as non-specialists who may also be able to make other comments which could identify potential errors not necessarily related to the specific technical content. Is something like this possible? Girolamo Savonarola 20:20, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

It would probably be possible to do this in a technical sense, but I think it would be cleaner to use the reverse strategy. The project peer review would be the primary one (and hence the peer reviews would be linked from the project's template rather than a generic one), but a link (or a transclusion, but that might blow up the page too much) to the review could be added to a central list. This would allow input from editors who might not otherwise monitor the project peer review pages, but also let multiple projects to run independent reviews of the same article without creating a template/subpage mess. Kirill Lokshin 20:25, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, that does seem much simpler! :) Whichever makes it easy for both projects to see their scope and general editors to see everything without having to start two separate PRs - that is the best of both worlds, IMHO. Girolamo Savonarola 21:04, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

So, I want to make sure I understand this correctly. If a WikiProject has their own peer review page, we want to encourage placing requests there, and they can be linked or transcluded on the main PR page? --Aguerriero (talk) 21:17, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes, basically. (And, by extension, we'd like to encourage those projects that don't have one to start one up. Ideally, we'll eventually get to the point where all requests can be listed directly with a project, and are present on the central list only indirectly.) Kirill Lokshin 21:21, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

It would be simpler, IMO, to keep everything under WP:PR (e.g. instead of Wikipedia:WikiProject Tropical cyclones/Assessment/Hurricane Mitch have Wikipedia:Peer review/Hurricane Mitch/archive1) and transclude the PR subpage in the WikiProject, not the other way around. That also maintains archiving centralized. The fact that there's two peer review pages is a coincidence, but I think you get the idea. Tito xd^(?!?) 21:25, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

I think that's a bad idea. The major flaw with PR is that the people who should be commenting don't generally keep a close eye on the page, because of the relatively high noise-to-signal ratio (as most requests won't be of interest to them). Having the primary spot for requests—in other words, the place where users will first place the subpage—be a project page helps to ensure that project members will watch it closely; the centralized listing is merely a bonus. (My experience has been that project peer reviews tend to be much higher-traffic than the central one, so increased centralization doesn't seem to be a net positive in any case.) Kirill Lokshin 21:33, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't really understand that - the peer reviews are already transcluded into the central peer review, so if we are already talking about an extra transclusion there is no reason not to list it in both places (with neither as the "primary"). That way the peer review gets the maximum possible exposure without creating a mismash of the central list. If we are trying to encourage smaller projects to run peer reviews then making them the primary place for listing probably isn't a good idea - they will like to see if somebody puts forward an article on a related topic, but when the number of members is small a lot of the time they will have already worked on it and perhaps want a non-partisan eye to look over it. Or maybe I've missed something. Yomangani ^talk 22:44, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Mmm, you're approaching this from the perspective of someone responding to reviews, not someone making the initial request. The primary/secondary issue really boils down to this: when an editor creates a peer review request, does he add it to the central listing, or to a project listing? (And no, "both" won't really work as an answer here. Aside from people being averse to extra work to begin with, it would be entirely unreasonable to expect an editor to add a peer review listing for every project that may be related to the article—which is what would be required, as the concept of asking for a review by a specific project would no longer be present.)

In other words, the two possible setups I see are:

Project-based

Editor creates peer review request subpage.
Editor transcludes subpage onto the peer review list run by the project he's requesting a review from.
Different editor copies the listing to the central list. (This could even be done by bot.)

Centralized

Editor creates peer review request subpage.
Editor transcludes subpage onto the central list.
Somebody has to copy it to the peer review lists of the relevant projects. ← Not going to happen, in my opinion.

It's my contention that having the review added to the central listing (rather than being added to a project listing, and then getting copied over to the central listing at some later point) will substantially reduce the attention reviews are getting. The main PR page won't be watched, because most listings aren't actually of interest to the average editor; and experience suggests that the review listings are not going to be filtered out to dozens of project pages after the fact, since nobody is going to bother going through all of them on a regular basis. Going the other way is much more reasonable, in my opinion, since it would only require an occasional copying of listings to one page from the project listing (which is something that can presumably be done by a project member—or even a bot, as it's a straightforward copy).

(There's also the secondary technical point that direct transclusion of reviews into a central listing will produce an absurdly large page for even a fairly small number of reviews. I expect that we'll need to change the central page to only giving the links in fairly short order.) Kirill Lokshin 23:03, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

OK, got it. If the reviews are copied over into the main listing by a bot then that will work (I can't see reviewers or other members of the project being encouraged by putting the onus on them to copy into the central review) and unless you think this is going to lead to a vast increase in the number of peer review request overall then the central listing mechanism doesn't need changing - it already has full transclusions of all the peer reviews that are still receiving responses. What will possibly need changing is the archiving procedure, in order that the old reviews can be removed from the project peer review list when they are archived from the central list or vice versa. Yomangani ^talk 23:23, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

The bot seems conceptually simple (watch particular pages for additions, then copy those additions to the central list); I don't know if anyone would be up for creating it, though. (Some projects have people to handle this sort of stuff, though. ;-) Kirill Lokshin 23:27, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

M a rtinp23 was offering bot services further up this page. Are you still watching, Martin? Yomangani ^talk 23:34, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Yep - sorry, I've been away for a couple of days. I'll be happy to do this, but I'd just like to check - do PR requests which were at WP:PR stay on the project listings after being archived at WP:PR? M a rtinp23 16:39, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

That would probably be the best approach. Given page size constraints, I suspect that the central listing will be archived more rapidly than the project listings would need to be, and I don't think this should necessarily artificially limit how long a particular project can keep its review open. Kirill Lokshin 17:16, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Follow-up

I just want to make sure I have a handle on what needs to be done. We approach WikiProject coordinators and ask them to:

Set up a peer review page within their project.
Publish instructions for editors to post requests that the bot will transclude to the common list.

Is that correct? Will it be problematic if editors still post requests to the main list? There must be peer review requests that won't fall under the scope of any WikiProject. --Aguerriero (talk) 15:32, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

OK - I've written a prototype bot. I just need some testers. If anyone has a peer review page already set up, containing transclusions of peer review requests not already on WP:PR, could you add {{WikiProject peer review}} to the main listing page, and notify me on my talk page? If there are requests which are already listed at WP:PR, could you add {{WikiProject peer review a}} to them (this prevents double listing). I'll then conduct very careful testing of the bot (aving real pages gives me a change to stop runtime and see what the bot is doing - and read the wikitext of what it's proposing to change). Thanks, M a rtinp23 21:20, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Tests have been run - all working well :) M a rtinp23 22:39, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Proposing projects

So, now that the directory seems to be taking shape, what would be the best way to clean up Wikipedia:WikiProject/List of proposed projects?

My suggestion:

Move it to a subpage here rather than off somewhere.
Simplify each proposal to include only three sections (description, interested editors, and general comments). The practice of having proposers create "temporary" project pages beforehand, in particular, seems unnecessarily complicated and quite inflexible.
Archive proposals after some period of time (a month? two months?), regardless of whether the project winds up being created or not.
Suggest that projects can be set up after some minimal number of people (5? 10?) have expressed interest (provided there's no major objections, but these seem to be extremely rare in any case).

Thoughts? Does any of that seem sensible, or am I way off here? Kirill Lokshin 23:56, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

So long as it doesn't get people offside as Wikipedia:Portal/Proposals managed to do (though I realise this will be something different), I think you're right to proceed.--cj | talk 00:09, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes, it should be our subpage.
Agree.
A month is enough. But only created or rejected proposals should be archived.
5 seems to be a good number with no major objections.

NCurs e _work 07:00, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Is it so horrible to ask that proposed projects at least create some sort of general mock-up? It seems that it is at least a low-bar show of willingness to put the effort into the project. We already have a template to assist in this (mind you I don't really like the template, but at least it's something), and it would also give potential project leaders an idea of what kind of work really goes into creating and maintaining a project. I'm not certain it's the worst thing to request, although perhaps it doesn't need to be a requirement. Girolamo Savonarola 14:07, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Actually, there's a major drawback in that once a "temporary" page has been created, it becomes quite difficult to propose alternate names/structures/etc. for the nascent project, as people are unwilling to see their work on creating it wind up not being used. (It also leads to a proliferation of old temporary pages for projects that don't get created, which nobody ever cleans up.) Kirill Lokshin 17:14, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

I think it might help a lot if we could establish a new column on the Wikipedia:Community Portal to list proposed projects, as opposed to having only the "new" projects listed there. This way, people would be able to see what proposals are out there more easily, and with any luck we'll have interested parties sign on faster. Also, I agree that the majority of them should probably have a limited shelf-life as a "proposed" project, but that shouldn't be a hard and fast rule. Certainly, I could see real advantages to giving a "main heading" umbrella project (like, say, WikiProject Anthropology) longer to gain members than, say WikiProject:Famous People Named Fred. Also, I can see how a project could be "transferred" from the proposed project section of the portal to the "new" project section of the portal, and effectively declared a new, real project, when it reaches a set number of members. So, maybe, something like this. Contact the people at the Community Portal and ask them to set up a new column for "proposed" projects. Projects can stay in that list for a maximum of 30 days. At the end of that time, projects which have met the minimum guidelines for inclusion in the "new projects" column established by the Community Portal people (five or six members, maybe?) could then be added to that column for the existing 7 days. Projects which do not meet these criteria established by the Community Portal could stay on the separate, existing proposed project page as long as they want, as that lies outside the scope of the Community Portal. However, when the 30 days are up, it would certainly be possible for any existing project which covers basically the same area to propose either expanding to cover the subject of the proposed project or maybe creating a smaller sub-project entity (work group, task force, whatever) to deal with the subject matter. Also, after, say, 90 days on the proposed project page, the projects could be automatically archived. Doing it this way, where the people at Community Portal are deciding their own standards of what constitutes a "live" proposal, avoids the matter of being seen as proposing policy for wikipedia overall and might be the best way to get the work which the project proposes to accomplish done. Personally, I have no idea how to contact the people at Community Portal to discuss with them how to do this, but if anyone else does, I'd love to hear from you. Badbilltucker 15:00, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Mmm, the Community Portal has generally been somewhat unwilling to add sections that grow in an uncontrolled manner. (And, for that matter, I'm not really convinced that having them decide on when a proposal goes live would be any better than having us do the same thing. What I originally had in mind was a more-or-less automatic process—if you get the necessary number of members and nobody is screaming yet, create the project—that wouldn't really involve any significant degree of centralized control.)

What may be workable, though, would be to have a section of the CP simply mirroring the proposed names listed on the main proposals page; it would give greater exposure to the proposals without splitting the process into two separate areas.

(Incidentally, I see nothing wrong with a larger project proposing a task force structure at any time durig the proposal. There's no real benefit in forcing people to wait 30 days to propose an obvious solution—particularly as it may just mean that a project is created and then merged in as a task force.)

(Speaking of the CP: I recall there was a discussion at one point about having a "WikiProject of the Day" or something along those lines. It's somewhat disappointing that the CP lists out every collaboration in exhaustive detail, but WikiProjects only get a single link to the list.) Kirill Lokshin 17:14, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

The only question that comes to mind for me is the "automatic" part. I myself have written to individuals involved in proposed projects which seemed to have what I thought were enough members, asking them to acknowledge being a "real" project. In several cases, nothing happened and the project stayed, unmodified, on the "proposed" list. I sent User:Wizkid357 a note about how his Disney project proposal had ten members, enough to I think create a project, a month ago, and it's still unchanged today. If there were an existing proposed project page, I could see a statement on the page listing the proposed projects that any listed project would be automatically shifted over to wikipedia space as soon as it reached say 6 members, because in those cases there already is a project page. Some other project proposals have no project page. I acknowledge it wouldn't be hard to use a boilerplate to create a rough project page, but then if an outsider were to do that, someone might object about the involuntary move of their proposal. And I only meant to imply that if, after 30 days with few if any "bites", the average proposer of a project would probably be overjoyed at having his unsuccessful proposal becoming a sub-project of any existing project, not that there would necessarily be a 30-day wait period before the project could be contacted in such a way. Badbilltucker 17:50, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

We could probably get away with a certain level of creating boilerplate project pages and the contacting everyone who had signed up (not just the proposer—they may be inactive, and have no particular "claim" to the project in any case) letting them know that there's a project page ready for their use. Some people will create their own, of course; but, in my experience, the people who're comfortable enough with editing to do that tend to mostly bypass the proposal page anyways. The people who really are using it are often not experienced enough to be comfortable with creating project pages and so forth. Kirill Lokshin 17:59, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

I have started trying to clean up the list. Until we decide on criteria, I am just messaging editors whose proposals have been there for longer than 60 days, asking if they can be removed. If the editor has not even been active in the last 60 days, I am just nuking the entry. After we clean it out, we can alphabetize it and post whatever criteria we decide on. I think people should be required to post an outline, but probably not a mock-up. --Aguerriero (talk) 18:02, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

I know that this idea is based on the propect of having two different groups working together, which is always a difficult thing to do, but maybe the Community Portal could be talked into doing a featured Project of the day based on the number of project-related articles which have appeared on the main page tagged for each project for the past month, or maybe based on some sort of points system based on the number of articles/pictures and where they appeared. So, as it were, the project which had the most articles/pictures or points make the main page for October would be profiled on November 1, the second highest number of articles/pictures or points to make the main page on the 2nd (more than one if a tie), and so on. It would tend to introduce a level of (I hope) friendly competition among the projects, and would ensure that at least thirty or so get highlighted every month. The only problem would be to get the wikipedia maintainance projects included, but I think something could probably be worked out fairly easily there. Certain of the biggest projects like Military history and Biography would probably be featured every month, but that is probably appropriate, given their size and scope. Badbilltucker 16:57, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Oh, I almost forgot. I was playing around with a template idea for helping us with organizing proposed projects. One of the problems I see is that it's hard to keep updated on if anyone has commented or taken interest in a proposed project, since there's so many sharing one edit history. I was thinking we could do some transclusion kind of like an AfD page does, using the temp page that users are supposed to make. I threw this together, Template:wpp1, and when you do {{subst:wpp1|Project Name}} on a new user subpage you get the basic layout that proposals use (with automatic date-stamp). Then they can fill things out, and them put the temp page contents in the <noincude> section. Then they list their page on the proposal page via {{User:User Name/Subpage name}}.

Like an AfD or FAC, etc, users can track discussion and such on an individual subpage, but without making two different subpages. Thoughts? -- Ned Scott 19:30, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. If I have time, I will work out a subpage/transclusion scheme. What does everyone think of the list now? It is alpha, and I have archiving most of the entries up through around August of this year. If within the last six months or so and the author was still active, I asked their permission. --Aguerriero (talk) 21:48, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

It's much better now, excellent work. It makes it a lot more inviting tool to use when there's not over 100 other proposals all crammed onto one page :) -- Ned Scott 01:06, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

I was planning on proposing a WikiProject for South Dakota articles, but should I wait until you guys decide what you're going to do? - Lex 18:19, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Nope; please feel free to use the current system for the time being. We'll take care of any changes that need to be made if/when we do something with this. Kirill Lokshin 18:20, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Portal list

The list of portals which I have created to accompany the list of projects which we will be sending out to the various projects is at User:B2T2/Portal. If there are no objections, I anticipate sending information about the new, expanded, directory out to the various projects starting tomorrow, giving them an opportunity to make any changes they see fit related to their own projects until the beginning of November. At that time, we could substitute the more recent draft of the directory in for the current draft. Badbilltucker 16:24, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Seems like a sensible approach. It might bring some more people to participate here in general, too, which would be a very good thing. :-) Kirill Lokshin 18:01, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Also, the draft of the letter I am intending to send out is at User:B2T2/Letter. I figure I'll try to send it out in about six hours from now. Anyone who sees this, please feel free to make any changes you deem called for in it by that time. B2T2 15:10, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Looks good, if a bit dense. I'm not sure that we need to go into such detail about the subtleties of the 1.0 project, but I'm probably a bit jaded because I've seen so much of it. ;-) Kirill Lokshin 15:14, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Stupid question

So, this isn't a WikiProject about sorting out councils then, is it? Simply south 19:18, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

It is not. :)) NCurs e _work 19:24, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

No, it's a council to "sort out" WikiProjects! Walkerma 21:30, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

So then shouldn't this be Wikipedia:WikiProject WP Council? Simply south 18:03, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Mmm, strictly speaking, this isn't a WikiProject in its own right, just a common place for other WikiProjects to discuss things. Kirill Lokshin 18:11, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Referee time

It looks like someone involved in Wikipedia:WikiProject Terrorism and counter-terrorism merged some templates and other material from Wikipedia:WikiProject Terrorism into his own project. The founder of the latter project is understandably upset about it. Maybe someone with more experience than me should step in to handle this one; I don't think I'm qualified. B2T2 22:25, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Bleh, there are some major WP:OWN issues coming into play there. Not a pretty picture in any sense. Kirill Lokshin 23:16, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Status templates

May I recommend that certain templates be made that classify a WikiProject by Activity so new users will not join a dead project? I think that much can be done to improve the WikiProject system, perhaps even limiting their creation to where a critical mass has already formed. I fell strongly on the issue of the large amount of inactive projects; see my essay.--Here T oHelp 01:33, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

The new directory does show the project's status. As far as templates for the project pages themselves, I don't think it's the best approach, as they tend to get removed by occasional visitors even if the project stays inactive. In the long term, merging the inactive ones somewhere may be the best approach, I suspect. Kirill Lokshin 01:39, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Relating to the inactivity of projects, I now have a new bot which has been created for me to determine if any activity has taken place on project pages in the past 90 days, which also lists the day of last activity on the project page(s). I intend to be using it on a monthly basis to determine which if any projects have been inactive over the past month or more, and will be tagging projects appropriately. Also, at least one merger based on inactivity has been proposed. Wikipedia:WikiProject Cat breeds, which has been inactive for some time, has been suggested to be merged with Wikipedia:WikiProject Cats. The only responses I have seen to date have been good, and I think that merger may take place shortly. I think we can expect that any projects which have not been active for 90 days may well be either considered for deletion or merged into other projects, if there are other projects which cover the same basic area. B2T2 13:21, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

That'll be very useful, I think. Kirill Lokshin 16:42, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Founders

Anyone else think we should discourage the use of people labeling themselves as a "founder" of a WikiProject? I don't think we should "forbid" it or anything like that, but it just rubs me the wrong way whenever I see someone make that claim. It sends the wrong message about WikiProjects, as WikiProjects have no hierarchy. -- Ned Scott 02:18, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Meh, I can't really see any reason to get involved in this. If they try to use the label to push other editors around, we can deal with it as a garden-variety ownership issue; and if they don't actually try to do anything with it, why forbid them from noting it? Kirill Lokshin 02:28, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

I wouldn't force the issue, but I thought it might be just good advice to avoid hierarchy labels. But, as you said, if there's no issue then.. there's likely no harm. -- Ned Scott 11:21, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Navigation temlpate

It’s nice to see a central place for projects. Would it make sense to open up a few sub-pages for the “main objectives”? I’ve modified a navigation template for the page (~~User:Bookandcoffee/Sandbox~~) that reflects the sub-section, and I added a third section for “Proposals” - not in the sense of new projects, but for bouncing around new ideas for established projects. Good? Bad? Otherwise? :)--Bookandcoffee 18:02, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Let's see...

A few too many links to the main page, I think; in my experience, merely trying to replicate the existing TOC isn't particularly useful.
What are we going to put on these department pages?
And finally: why bright yellow? It's a bit hard on the eyes. ;-)

Kirill Lokshin 18:15, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

I would agree that just replacing the TOC is pointless on a single page – however a navigation template can be useful on a project that has more than one page. It provides both navigation and a sense of continuity. I would put it on Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Guide, Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Assessment FAQ, and Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory.

Yellow (cough), yeah it's a bit bright isn't it.:) I reworded things to be a bit more fitting to this project. --Bookandcoffee 20:59, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes, but do we need four identical "talk" links in the top section, though? Why not just leave off the bottom three? Kirill Lokshin 22:45, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Sure, we can take them off - it doesn't matter too much to me. I just left them there as not everyone will twig to the fact that they're all on the same talk page.--Bookandcoffee 15:50, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

{{Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Navigation}} - Well there's my best effort. I'll leave it here for you to decide if you want to use it or not. Cheers.--Bookandcoffee 22:06, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Beta proposal submission page

I worked up a rough idea of how we could handle proposal submission. Please see User:Aguerriero/Proposal. The idea is that this would be at the top of the new proposal page, located at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Council/Proposals. So if someone wants to submit a new proposal, they use the inputbox. All they have to do is append the name of their project to the end, click Create, and it gives them a template to fill in. When they save, it creates a subpage to /Proposals named whatever their project is. I think. ;) We'd have to have a bot check for new subpages and transclude them to the main list, which is under the heading Current Proposals.

Possible issues:

I'm not sure if we need to include the date in there somewhere for the bot to recognize it as new, or to be able to archive it after 30 days. Perhaps a "Proposal date" field in the template that automatically pulls in the current date.
I couldn't figure out a way to take them to a default error page or something if they try to click Create without actually typing anything in the box, or try to break the rules in other ways. I think that's probably necessary.

Anyway, let me know what you think. --Aguerriero (talk) 21:50, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Neat! Can we get a continously-running bot for this, though? Kirill Lokshin 22:44, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Do you mean, can we get one written, or can we get permission to operate one? I don't see much problem on either - it would run once every 10 minutes (or whatever else we decide) and check for additions to a category. If any, it would add them to the main list. Thoughts? --Aguerriero (talk) 18:31, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Expanding/Changing Wikiprojects

I have proposed to members of WikiProject Hard Rock that the WikiProject be expanded to include rock music in general, as there isn't one that exists. The creator is all for it, and I haven't gotten any other response as the WikiProject is inactive. So I would like to get going on expanding it, so how would I go about that? Is it possible to move all the related pages to new names, or just start a new project? -- Reaper X 23:46, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Moving the project pages to a new, more suitable, name would probably be the easiest option here, given that there's no real need to retain the old project. Kirill Lokshin 01:15, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Wikiproject council

I'm trying to organize something like this in nl:, but what i miss is an elaboration on Wikipedia:WikiProject_Council/Guide#Common_pitfalls. Aleichem 13:25, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Categories in Category:WikiProject Council

First, thanks for your work trying to (re)organize the WikiProject's structure. Second, I'll now proceed to step on some toes and get my nose broken! :-)

I have several questions regarding "closer to home" (for you) problems with the categories in Category:WikiProject Council :

Category:WikiProject Council pages (4 members) -- what's the purpose of this Cat? It has no defining statement. One of its members is a "Template talk:WikiProject" page which would appear to belong in: "WikiProject Council templates" ?

Category:WikiProject Council (26 members / 8 of which are "User" pages) It's my understanding that user pages should only be categorized into "User" related spaces, e.g.: Wikipedians who... ; Users who are... ; etc.? Also, it seems that some are duplicating pages already t/here.

Category:WikiProject Council participants (24 pages / but really only 20 different users) Shouldn't users only categorize themselves once (on their main User page) and not also on their subpages? The clutter makes it esp. difficult when many users do the same thing.

I certainly have come across these issues/problems with categories in many other areas of the encyclopedia--and I know there's a project page, that's how I wound up here, trying to bring a little order into a disordered world. But this is an especially proper place to raise these questions since a number of admins appear to be members of the team and yet these are "newbie" type problems? --Thanks for your "considered" response. RCEberwein | Talk 14:07, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Hmm, good questions. Let's see...

Category:WikiProject Council pages - this needs to be gotten rid of, I think. I have no idea why some WikiProjects have tagged themselves into it, but that was never the intent here; all things considered, I don't think we'll ever have a real use for this caegory.
Category:WikiProject Council - the user pages being here is a consequence of some user-space sandboxes (which were being used to develop the directory) transcluding a template that automatically adds this category; they'll presumably go away once those sandboxes are cleared or deleted.
Category:WikiProject Council participants - this category is, in most cases, added automatically by the userbox; I'm not aware of any technical means to prevent double-categorization if that userbox is transcluded through a subpage.

The "number of admins" thing cuts both ways, incidentally; a large proportion of people participating here are extremely busy outside of this group, and don't generally have time to poke around in our categories. ;-) Kirill Lokshin 17:12, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Conflicting Wikiprojects

I'm not sure where else to bring this, so I hope you can help. I've essentially taken over Wikipedia:WikiProject Paranormal and have been restructuring it as well as building it up to standards. However, I've run into a serious problem with another wikiproject, Wikipedia:WikiProject Rational Skepticism. Our scope is exactly the same, but their goal is essentially to 'correct' POV from our project (and in general), which has created a very adversarial atmosphere. I'm not quite sure how to remedy this; a merger seems like the best option, but I'm not sure it could happen voluntarily. Any thoughts? --InShaneee 02:17, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Hmm, has there been any direct interaction between the two projects? From reading the project pages, I would have thought the RS group was more interested in things like pseudoscience, rather than the paranormal per se.

(In any case, I'm not really convinced that their goals are as crude as their project page might suggest; c.f. the discussion here.) Kirill Lokshin 02:31, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

It's mostly been a lot of indirect; I bring it up now because of the extremely rude discussion here, where several Skepticism members attempt to assert 'authority', and claim that Paranormal members all 'represent a certain POV', while they represent the opposite. At the very least, there will be some overlap (Paranormal has claimed Psychics), and things like this make me wonder about that 'adversarial atmosphere' I mentioned. --InShaneee 03:13, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Well I've chipped in with a few comments in an attempt to take the sting out of it. I can see a case for merging, but it's not water tight. Hiding Talk 08:46, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks Hiding. As per my above concerns, is there any way I could request a merge that would get wider opinion than simply asking them? --InShaneee 14:21, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Another overlap in the making?

See Wikipedia:WikiProject/List_of_proposed_projects#Relativity --plange 19:24, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

It seems that people are starting to tag actual WikiProjects with this thing, which seems to be a rather bad idea. Given that we've basically moved (or are in the process of moving) all the pages of interest to us under the main project as subpages, do we actually need this? If it's going to cause problems, it seems better to just get rid of it. Kirill Lokshin 14:03, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

New Project

We now have a Wikipedia:WikiProject Counter-Jihad Education Taskforce. So far as I can tell, the purpose seems to be to cover articles relataing to Islamic terrorism. It also has the "little green footballs" picture which I have learned to have reservations about. It also seems to intentionally, potentially be a POV fork. The scope, "all topics about Islam and about terrorism". seems to be wholly inapprorpriate to the other stated goal, Islamic terrorism. To quote Sergeant Schultz, "I know nothing" about this and sincerely hope that one or more of the rest of you might be able to help this editor and his project, one way or another. Thank you. Badbilltucker 21:33, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Looks like someone has listed it for speedy deletion as an attack page. The creator seems to have also have a history of NPOV disruptions. Looks like this little mess will be quickly thrown in the trash, where it belongs. -- Ned Scott 22:10, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

The tag's been removed. I am now proposing it for Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion on the basis of it being both NPOV and clearly redundant to a number of existing projects. Any and all comments are welcome, as I may be opening myself for attack on this one. Badbilltucker 23:10, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

And it's been snowballed - [1] (yes -- as delete). M a rtinp23 13:09, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

recommendations... Summary WikiProject stats

These may not be new:

Summary WikiProject stats:

Make a strong suggestion (not requirement, of course) that all WikiProjects standardize their membership roll to a subpage named either /Members or /Particpants, then ask User:Mathbot to make a summary table showing membership count. If projects wanna have their mebership list on their project page, they can transclude it.
Get a bot to count the number of contribs to the talk page in the past 30 days, avg. per day, hmmm, what other stats? Projects added past 30 days, avg. per day. etc etc. Make a summary table somewhere.

Cheers--Ling.Nut 22:59, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

I personally prefer using categories. I think editors are more likely to update their user page more often than going to individual participation pages, if they decided to list or de-list themselves with any of the projects. A while ago I took from the format that WP:ANIME had (WP:ANIME#Participants) and applied it to WP:DIGI#Participants with a message emphasizing that there are no requirements to membership, and that it's not required for members / participants to even list themselves if they don't wish to. But at the same time, notes the benefits of listing one's self with a Project. I've since applied this to other projects such as WP:TV#Participants, WP:LOE#Participants, WP:LOST#Participants, and maybe another one that I can't remember right now.. but in any case, that general idea would be how I would prefer to list participants in a WikiProject.

The other stats idea, while interesting, I'm not sure would really be beneficial. Not that I'm opposed to it, if anyone wants to try it out. -- Ned Scott 05:42, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

On a similar but not totally related note, some bright spark knocked together a script to provide more detailed WikiProject article stats, including % of articles at each grade. See Wikipedia_talk:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team/Index#Article_counts. --kingboyk 11:50, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

All good comments, plus a link to an interesting table. Thanks, Ned Scott & kingboyk.--Ling.Nut 15:36, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

As a computer illiterate, I'm just curious. Could the table be reworked in such a way as to list each assessed article only once, giving us an idea of the total number and rough percentage of articles assessed to date? Badbilltucker 15:57, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

If you are referring to the overall stats on the main Index page, the bot DOES only count each assessed article once. However, if you want the stats by project (Salix Alba's new table), you have to double/triple count some articles, otherwise you have to make choices about which project's assessment doesn't get counted! Does this make sense? Walkerma 20:39, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

I just need to have things explained to me slowly and carefully, like you just did. Thank you. By those numbers, we've gotten around 25% of the articles assessed so far. Considering how few projects do assessments, and how many articles some of the largest have in them yet to be assessed, that ain't bad at all. :) Badbilltucker 20:47, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

WikiProject Trivia Cleanup

I feel that WikiProject Trivia Cleanup is very much a POV project and the actions taken by its members should be assessed to determine whether the project is necessary and should continue as it has. The members seem to have a very narrow viewpoint on what constitutes "too much trivia", and I believe that if they apply this viewpoint to Wikipedia as a whole, they will leave a significant number of articles "gutted" in their wake. This is especially true for articles whose subject matter is by nature trivia-heavy, such as articles for pop-culture-referencing entertainment such as episodes of South Park, The Simpsons, Family Guy, etc., where noting such references are an integral part of the description. Just one man's opinion, of course, but I thought this should be noted. -- Pennyforth 16:31, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Power to them. Trivia should be extirpated from this encyclopedia. Joelito (talk) 16:43, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

The question of how, precisely, to distinguish "trivia" being one of those we've never been able to solve, of course. ;-) Kirill Lokshin 16:48, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

I looked at it briefly the other day, and I thought they were simply cutting down on trivia sections, utilising information within the body of an article where it could be better contextualised. A lot of these pop-culture references border on original research, to be honest. Hiding Talk 20:40, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Demented ravings

I hope that got your attention. This morning, I looked at the list of Wikipedia CD selections, and the first one I pulled up, Basilica of San Francesco d'Assisi, had yet to have any of the relevant project banners placed on it. Now, it has one. But this does bring into focus just how many articles have yet to be assessed, even important and relatively high-quality ones. If this situation continues, it will be much harder for many of these important or relatively high-quality articles to get any attention. I will try to start tagging the CD selections, but there's a very big limit on what I will be able to do on my own.
I wonder what the rest of you think of the following proposals. Right now, there still exist significant areas of human knowledge which do not have any specific close ties to any projects. These include radio, the nations of Russia, France, Italy, and, yes, the UK, anthropology, and many of the families and species of organic life. Do any of you think it might be a good idea to maybe list on the Wikipedia:WikiProject/List of proposed projects these projects which seem to be conspicuous by their absence, maybe under a different section? Also, if and when most of the big areas are covered, what would you all think of creating a different group, maybe one listed on the community portal, which would have the function of basically performing triage on as-yet unassessed articles, determining their relative quality and placing the appropriate banners on them? IF, and that is a big if, both of these things could be done, it would be a lot easier for everyone else to know what's out there and what needs most improvement.
I, of course, can and will do nothing really useful, simply throw out questions which I myself cannot answer. However, I would be very interested in the responses, if any. Thank you. Badbilltucker 20:55, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

The UK can be covered by the UK noticeboard, Wikipedia:UK Wikipedians' notice board. The noticeboards kind of predate projects, so I guess one never got sent off because there's an obvious overlap. However, there are a huge number of WikiProjects related to the UK, Wikipedia:UK Wikipedians' notice board#UK related WikiProjects. Hiding Talk 21:23, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
So, is there a good reason that WikiProject UK Railways and WikiProject Underground aren't listed there other than the project stewards might not have known about that page yet? I think creating a list on the proposed projects page to list conspicuous absences would be helpful. Slambo (Speak) 21:31, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
Nobody got round to adding them yet? That'd be a question best asked there, wouldn't it? Or else just adding them yourself? Hiding Talk 22:29, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

I can see a lot of value in identifying CD selections and trying to marry them to one or more WikiProjects (wait, wouldn't that be polygamy?). That falls under the category "Things I thought someone had probably already done" but the more time I spend here, the more things I find in that category that aren't actually done. :) I would be willing to help out. And now that you mention it, I might consider starting WikiProject Italy. --Aguerriero (talk) 21:55, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Is there a good reason why regional noticeboards haven't been merged with/migrated to WikiProjects? Girolamo Savonarola 21:57, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

That's probably best raised at the village pump. The noticeboards are, I think, older than the WikiProject structure, so they're well established in their current format. there may be feasibility issues. Hiding Talk 22:29, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

It can be a bit tricky identifying the lines between the noticeboards and WikiProjects. However, it's my experience that they compliment each other. For instance, Australian Wikipedians' Notice Board and WikiProject Australia.--cj | talk 16:34, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

There are some subtleties involved with noticeboards as far as whether they're for, say, "Australian Wikipedians" specifically, or all "Wikipedians interested in Australia". (This isn't a big deal for Australia, I suspect, but there have been concerns in the past that some noticeboards were adopting very nationalistic trappings.) Kirill Lokshin 23:24, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

For reference, such concerns were discussed at Wikipedia talk:Regional notice boards.--cj | talk 14:08, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Clearing up the mess that the top of some talk pages are turning into

Hello all I've been noticing lately that some article talk pages are getting a huge number of tags - so many that they're hiding the talk discussion. By tags, I mean both WikiProject (WP) and non-WP tags, but mainly the former. An example would have been Albert Einstein, but that's just undergone a serious trim (hence prompting this idea).

I'd like to put forward two seperate proposals for clearing up this mess, and returning talk pages to their proper use:

All WP templates would be merged into a single template, where different options can be selected for different wikiprojects.
A meta-template is set up that organizes the templates and puts them in a "hidden" division

I personally prefer #2, so I'll elaborate on that a little. Template-wise, I'd suggest something like the following:

{{TalkTemplate
| wikiprojects={{physics|importance=high}} {{WPBiography|priority=}}
| featured={{FAC}}
| goodarticle={{GA}}
| rating=A
}}

This could then set up a bar at the top of the page, which would reveal all of the tags in an appropriate order when the "show" button is pressed. Such show/hide buttons are currently used in various places in talk templates around wikipedia.

Note that I'm also suggesting that the ratings of the article, currently done on per-wikiproject basis, are done once. While I recognize that different WPs may want to rate the article differently, I have yet to see this in practice. I guess the importance tags would be a different matter.

What do people here think to this suggestion? Mike Peel 12:54, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

I believe the subject was touched some time ago. But as I recall, Kirill pointed out that a template transcluded in such a great number of pages would basically freeze the server each time it would be modified. So there might be a technical limit actually. -- Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 13:10, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm sure that there would be ways around this. Most obvious would be: don't modify the template. If it became necessary to modify the template, then it could either be done at a time when not many people are accessing wikipedia, or the update could be staggered across wikipedia - i.e. the change wouldn't be made everywhere at once. Mike Peel 13:19, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't know, I'm merely quoting what I heard. Another problem however, is to take into account peer reviews and stuff like that (which are proper to some projects), not to mention Task forces... -- Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 13:51, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

You have a good point about the proliferation of banners, and it has been raised before. One thing that is being done in some projects, like Wikipedia:WikiProject Australia, Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history, and Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography, is creation of task forces as opposed to separate projects, with each of the task forces having as it were mini-banners appended to the bottom of the main banner. Personally, I think trying to get more of the projects to agree to the consolidated banners would probably be the best way to go. In response to your comment about not modifying the banners, please remember that any time anyone seeks to change any of the details of a banner, like requesting a peer review, changing the assessment grade, or even on one banner, the Biography banner, indicating that someone is dead, qualifies as a modification of the banner. I do agree that this is probably the best place to come to to raise these questions, and hope that some of the more established members see this, as they are probably the ones best able to propose any details on changes. Badbilltucker 16:53, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

(move indent):This all sounds pretty top-downish to me. I suspect that the response to attempts to impose such top-down initiatives will probably be "Says who? Show me the policy/guideline?" [Speaking frankly, that would be my response as well.]--Ling.Nut 17:54, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Two obvious responses:

Combining all WikiProject templates will be a nightmare to use, even if it did work; but I strongly suspect it won't, as a template that supports every feature needed by every WikiProject will be over the 2MB pre-processing transclusion limit.
More importantly, this is a non-issue now that the "small" template option (see Wikipedia:Talk page templates) is being implemented.

Kirill Lokshin 18:01, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

OK, I agree that the first option wouldn't work. The second option is intended to be more of a framework, putting things into the right order and show/hiding them as desired. It wouldn't necessarily need to be on every page, just the ones that are getting very overloaded. I didn't know about the small template option before. I'm unsure if this is a better option or not - IMO the small templates look a bit messy as they have too much text in them, but by having them visible on the page the templates will get looked at more. Mike Peel 18:13, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

If it would be done only on certain talk pages, it wouln't need any template changes; you'd just enclose the entire block of existing templates inside a show/hide block. Having said that, I think the small-size templates are preferable, as we do want people to see the templates. Kirill Lokshin 18:15, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

As the original proposer of the mini templates, I am aware that the text makes many of the templates unsightly when they are reduced. However, the answer seems fairly obvious: reduce superfluous text. Virtually all templates are not as concise as they could be. Dev920 (Please vote here) 21:13, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

...in your opinion, of course.--Ling.Nut 21:21, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Ok, what would your solution be? Give everyone larger monitors to cope with the templates? Dev920 (Please vote here) 21:27, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

No solution. Don't see a problem. The problem is purely a matter of opinion. --Ling.Nut 21:36, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

There is no spoon. Dev920 (Please vote here) 21:41, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

It should be pointed out that when a substantial number of people feel that there's a problem, and their concerns can be easily resolved, it's usually more productive to go along than to fight over the issue, even if you don't agree with them. :-) Kirill Lokshin 21:42, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

(move indents):

Of course. I would never fight such a proposal. But it rankles to have it asserted as fact rather than opinion. Aesthetics are always and everywhere opinion, inescapably. Good gravy, look how many people worship [insert name of "modern artist" here].
The fish.

--Ling.Nut 21:56, 12 November 2006 (UTC) Correction: I would never fight other peoples' right to follow such a proposal. If someone tries to force me to implement it, I will fight... of course. It might even be enough to make me quit Wikipedia; not that templates are important, but that principles are. --Ling.Nut 22:36, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Technically speaking, trying to put every single WikiProject template is a technological nightmare; we would need hundreds of parameters to address the needs of hundreds of WikiProjects. Some pages even have different assessments for different WikiProjects, so it means we can't condense all assessments to just one "Class" parameter. Would that mean we need one for each project? Now that is a nightmare. As to trying to reduce superfluous text: some users will undoubtedly have an opinion completely different than yours, and some will even take offense, if you don't address that complaint carefully. Personally, I don't see this as an issue; users who are looking for talk page templates see them, users who are not looking for them just ignore them, regardless of size. The only real solution is modifying all talk page templates to use a different CSS class, instead of messagebox standard-talk, which would inherit all the properties of the class, and would be able to be blocked out via Special:Mypage/monobook.css. Tito xd^(?!?) 22:38, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

I was trying to say (but bumped heads/edict conflict with Titoxd) The point is not aesthetics; it's some WPs telling others what to do. I will do what I want, following existing guidelines. DITTO for "only allowed one evaluation" Sheeeesh! You wanna control how I comb my hair while you're at it?--Ling.Nut 22:41, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

I doubt any of this will actually be an issue in practice. Technical improvements to templates tend to (a) be quite uncontroversial and (b) spread virally. Once the small-size templates become more widespread, I suspect we'll see projects fiddling with the text in their banners to condense it (possibly conditionally, based on the small size being turned on).

(In any case, I think this discussion is rapidly approaching a point where it will veer substantially off the topic of templates and into the metaphysics of inter-project relations, which isn't necessarily something that would be particularly worthwhile.) Kirill Lokshin 23:22, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

OK, I'll shut up then. :-) --Ling.Nut 23:26, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

I haven't actually read much of this discussion yet, but if it's involving boxes at the top of talk pages then you guys might be interested in the new changes to Wikipedia:Talk page templates#Small option. -- Ned Scott 05:34, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

For example: Talk:Leonardo da Vinci, Talk:Islam, Talk:TGV (especially that last one). -- Ned Scott 05:37, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Very glad to see this discussion, I was going to raise this. I've literally reviewed hundreds of talk pages in the last few weeks, from a variety of places, and I've seen three ways people have solved the problem:

Use the small option mentioned (thank you very much for this very clever option Dev920!).
Put in a new section called "Templates", so the table of contents appears at the top of the page
Put {{skiptotoctalk}} at the top of the page - this is also spreading "virally".

This group should probably (a) agree on a policy and (b) raise any relevant issues at Wikipedia talk:Talk page templates. I have also seen all sorts of different orders used; I think we should make a recommendation on that on the same page - I think the format used at Talk:George_W._Bush might be a starting point - the Talk page header first, then the ToDo, then a left toc with small project templates down the right. Walkerma 05:50, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Kill talkheader and put it into Mediawiki namespace, please. That one truly is clutter. --kingboyk 10:45, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't know whether this would even be remotely practical, but would there be any way to create a separate banner showing the article's quality assessment while still allowing it to be contained in the various class categories for each assessing project? As quality assessment should remain basically the same across projects, removing that duplication might free up some space. Badbilltucker 17:02, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Not really practical, as you still wind up with a template that needs to support 150+ different projects (not to mention the more interesting features some projects have adopted, like the by-workgroup breakdowns of Biographies).

(This quite aside from the point that quality assessments do, at times, intentionally vary between different projects; for example, some projects have more stringent requirements for assessing at certain levels than others do.) Kirill Lokshin 17:56, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

But surely that is an undesirable outcome? I don't see how it benefits an article to have differing ratings. If WikiProjects are assessing articles according to the standards laid out by Wikipedia:Version 0.5, the results should be uniform.--cj | talk 23:37, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Mmm, I would expect that some ratings will be taken more seriously than others (similarly to how FA is regarded as a more significant indication of an article's quality than GA). Some projects have instituted requirements beyond the typical "any editor rates" for particular levels in the scheme, feeling that the usual process wasn't producing sufficiently accurate ratings; but these more stringent processes won't work for all (or even most) projects in practical terms.

(And, of course, different projects [or, more precisely, editors working in different subject areas] can interpret criteria rather differently [as we have recently seen with the GA inline citation mess]. A science project and a humanities project rating the same article might come up with totally different ratings, depending on which project had more demanding requirements for high-quality articles.) Kirill Lokshin 23:47, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Some projects also have importance ratings, which would reasonably vary in the case of over-lapping WikiProjects. -- Ned Scott 00:25, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Template

I love the new template, and wonder whether the rest of you think that the list of proposed projects should be included on it. I would think so, as it would both serve as a link on that page to the council guide, which a lot of project proposers could benefit from reading, and so that the members of this group can more closely monitor activity on that page. Badbilltucker 19:32, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

I think the idea was that the proposed projects page would wind up getting moved to Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals (which is linked from the navigational template). Would there be any problems with doing that? Kirill Lokshin 19:37, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

None that I can see. Badbilltucker 21:28, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

So, shall we go ahead and move it, then? Kirill Lokshin 18:49, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Well, since there don't seem to be any objections, I've moved the proposed project page to a subpage here. Kirill Lokshin 13:31, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

General readers members

Maybe this is the right place for this (if not someone direct me in the right direction) - after looking at the output of many wikiproject, I feel strongly that every project should try and solicit at least 2 members who have no interest in that particular subject but are willing to look in as a general reader. Many wiki projects seems to be turning out articles by fans for fans. A guiding hand from the start might help reduce a lot of the massive rewrites that some articles now seem to require. --Charlesknight 23:51, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

You've got a point. I would think that many of the "pop culture" projects in particular could benefit from this. In fact, there is a real project whose sole purpose is to reduce the amount of "fancruft" in many pop culture projects. If you can think of any way to get people who aren't interested in the articles within the scope of a project to become a member of that project, I think it might work. Personally, I can't see what means to recruit them might work and how to determine that they aren't covert fans who take on the task of ensuring the fancruft isn't removed. Yeah, I know, I read too many spy novels. If you could suggest a way to recruit such members, though, it might work. Badbilltucker 00:01, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Hum need to think about that - what's the anticruff project called? Sounds my sort of thing! Not like this (althought I might join that project to see how my suggestion works in practice. --Charlesknight 00:05, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

It would be very good advice to avoid group think. Maybe we could have a list of examples on how to do this, such as the one given above or other methods of RfCs and peer reviews. We probably shouldn't make it sound like a requirement, but make it sound like a useful tool that (which it is).

On this same idea path, I've found myself in more than one conflict when I have made changes to WikiProject pages to help discourage cruft (one project had listed as a goal to create an episode guide for a TV series... despite episode guides being a specific example in WP:NOT. I think one way that WikiProject Council can help other WikiProjects is to make sure they're recommending good advice and not things that are contradicting policy and guidelines. -- Ned Scott 00:18, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Although, I would like to note that some WikiProjects have been excellent about removing fancruft from articles and helping to write articles to be relevant outside of the fan-world. -- Ned Scott 00:24, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

The project, it's a small one, is Wikipedia:WikiProject Indifference to Fictional Content. Badbilltucker 01:14, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Don't we call that Peer review? Tito xd^(?!?) 16:38, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia-wide discussion on WikiProject redirects

Specifically redirects such as WikiProject Tulips redirecting to Wikipedia:WikiProject Tulips (and the like). Join the discussion! Girolamo Savonarola 21:53, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Question?

How do you know if a WikiProject has been acceted?

There really is no "acceptance". The only problems arise when an established project has no activity. Generally, for a new or proposed project, particularly one listed on the Wikipedia:WikiProject/List of proposed projects, which we try to encourage everyone to use to list a project to see if it has any support, when a project or project proposal has ten individuals listed as members, it's got enough support to move its draft page into regular space and be listed as a regular project. You could also check the Project Guide for some information on how best to organize a new project. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Badbilltucker (talk • contribs) 23:15, 14 November 2006

Anyone check with the new members lately?

I've found two recent joiners are having some troubles with Wikipedia:WikiProject Silver Dollar City and the new proposed WikiProject Africa. Should we maybe contact those who join to see why they're joining? Badbilltucker 02:30, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Maybe some sort of welcoming message that would suggest a place to ask questions explicitly? Kirill Lokshin 03:07, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

I know that several projects have a template they use to welcome new members, but I personally can't think of what one for this group would say. It probably would be a good idea to have one though. Anyone who has any experience with this sort of thing out there willing to put one together? Badbilltucker 01:56, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Quick question

How do I go about editing this project template: {{subst:WikiProject|Name of project}}. I'm just working out how to create a project with a view to possibly starting one in the future. Or would I be better off copying the code from another WP page and trimming as required? Thanks RHB 21:07, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

The directions are given on the Template:WikiProject page, you subst: it onto the page you wish to create, and then edit it as needed. --tjstrf talk 23:07, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Speaking from a lot of experience here, though, make sure that the page you edit is your new project page, not the template. Trust me on this one. :( Badbilltucker 01:57, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Article Rating System - WikiProject Banner

It is a good idea for WikiProjects to use the rating system, but this inludes having that rating information in the WikiProject banner. The problem is that coding WikProject banners to inlcude this rating system requires quite a good coding experience (just see {{WPBeatles}}). Could it be possible to set up a small directory of volunteers willing to code templates to inlcude the rating system, maybe a list of users that you could contact? NauticaShad e s 17:09, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

There is of course another possibility. One of them is to just go to one of the templates that has the required code, like the Beatles template above, copy the original text and coding onto your new templage, and then replace the words specific to the old project with the words specific to the new project, in this case, maybe "Steely Dan articles" would replace "The Beatles articles". Speaking as someone who has done that several times for a number of projects, I can say that it works quite well. Badbilltucker 17:19, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

The project isn't underway yet, but when (if) it is, I will consider doing that. This actually made me thought of something else though. How about creating a sample banner, which includes all of this, but instead of the WikiProject this or WIkiproject that, it just has a blank space. Users could then copy and past this, then fill in the appropriate places. NauticaShad e s 17:26, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Could be done. I guess the problem there might be finding the exact location for the insertion of new text. One advantage to copying an existing banner (I pilfer the Virginia banner a lot) is that you know where the words you have to put in are, because that's where the word "Virginia" already is, and you just replace the one with the other. There is one other possibility which might reduce the amount of space taken by the banners, though, which also might reduce some occasional confusion. Generally, it's agreed that the quality assessments are pretty much uniform across projects. Would anyone think it might be a good idea to simply separate the quality assessments from the project banners, maybe in a banner of their own or maybe with a symbol like the small star on the pages of featured articles? Doing this might also make it possible for articles which do not fall in the scope of any projects engaged in assessment to get assessed too, something I think most of us would approve of. Badbilltucker 17:38, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

That is an idea, but I believe this is out of the hands of the Council, and is more up to the Village Pump. NauticaShad e s 17:43, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

That would make it impossible for (a) projects to rate articles differently and (b) make other changes to their banner based on the rating, though. Kirill Lokshin 17:55, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

The other option will be following the "Advanced project banners" section of the guide (which should be written sometime Real Soon Now (tm)—maybe I'll get a chance to fill it out today). {{WPBeatles}} isn't a particularly good place for someone not highly familiar with template coding tricks to copy things from, as it's one of the most complicated of the banners around. Kirill Lokshin 17:55, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

I've added an annotated example of a project banner to the guide. It needs a bit of cleanup to avoid having the code samples force so much scrolling, but I think it should be at a point where copying it will produce a reasonably useful banner. Comments? Kirill Lokshin 18:57, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

It's very detailed, and quite easy to understand. The only question I had was that if you don't want a peer review section, then you can just remove that part from the code? NauticaShad e s 06:45, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Yep. For that matter, you can remove the assessment code too, going back to the very basic template used as an example at the start of the guide. I'm not sure whether it's worth explicitly mentioning this in the instructons, though. Kirill Lokshin 07:06, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Actually, it shouldn't be that hard. {{Class parameter}} should do the trick... Tito xd^(?!?) 16:41, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

I added {{Inactive}} to Category: WikiProject Council templates and added the {{WPCouncil}} banner to its talk page, but I was wondering if this template should have a link to the Council, just like {{Historical}} links to The Village Pump. What do you think? NauticaShad e s 17:34, 17 November 2006 (UTC)