Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Australia/Future

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[edit] Changes to WP:AUS banner

There are two related problems with the current banner that I would like to see improved. Firstly, articles using a sub-project parameter still get included into the comprehesive automated worklist. This list is really cumbersome to work with the way it is now, but could be VERY useful, if the WP:1.0 bot was able to categorize them by sub-project - ie history articles would have their own automated worklist page. Secondly, it would be great to be able to give an importance rating for the sub-project, and not as it relates to wikipedia as a general use encyclopedia. Certain history articles may not be highly important for an international general use encyclopedia, but they would be for a more local, or subject specific encyclopedia. What I would propose then is that in addition to the sub-project parameter (history=yes), an additional parameter be added for importance. sub-history="yes; importance=high". This way the bot could read the sub-prefix (or some type of parameter that the parser can use) and the importance for that sub-project. It would then add the article to an automatically generated worklist for that specific sub-project, and not to the WP:AUS worklist. Statistics for WP:AUS could be aggregated from the various sub-projects if desired.

I know that this is really an issue for WP:1.0 and not WP:AUS per se, but the idea would keep the consistency of WP:AUS going, and bring into the fold other projects also. ie WP:BANKSIA ... sorry Hesperian!! :) SauliH 02:39, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

I remain opposed to having a single banner, because

1. The main purpose of the (visible part of the) banner is to advertise the project. The banner should therefore be as specific as possible, because people who visit an article like Perth, Western Australia are far more likely to respond to an advertisement for WP:PERTH than WP:AUS.
2. The WP:AUS template is already a virtually unreadable mess of complicated template esoterica. It offends my instinct for modularity.
3. On the flip side, I'm not aware of any argument in favour of the single banner system (as opposed to the single assessment system, an entirely different matter). The argument that having a single banner reduces banner clutter is moot. When an article belongs to multiple Australian subprojects, having a single banner does reduce clutter. But when a subproject belongs to multiple parent projects, having a single banner increases banner clutter. e.g. when WP:PLANTS ever gets around to doing assessments, then using only parent banners would require replacing the WP:BANKSIA banner by two banners on every banksia article.
   There is also the related question of just where the buck stops, encapsulated in the sarcastic rebuttal (which I would never stoop to, even though I am about to ;-) ), that if WP:AUS wants to settle on a parent banner, why doesn't it convert to a {{WP 1.0 | Australia = yes}} banner format?

Regarding WP:BANKSIA specifically (No apology necessary, SauliH), Banksia is not an indigenous Australian genus; every species occurs in Australia, but Banksia dentata also occurs outside Australia. Its membership as a subproject of WP:AUS is therefore somewhat dubious. I don't mind listing it as a WP:AUS subcategory for convenience' sake under the current system, but if WP:AUS wanted to bring all its subprojects into a single banner system, I think it would be more appropriate to kick WP:BANKSIA out of WP:AUS than to enforce an artificially strong subordination relationship.

Hesperian 05:19, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Banksia is not totally Australian? huh... you learn something everyday. Maybe marsupials are not endemic to Australia either? :) SauliH 05:33, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

And Eucalyptus. And Acacia. And Russell Crowe. The mind boggles. ;-) Hesperian 01:11, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Banner again

Things are coming to a head, my friends. WP:PLANTS has started assessment. It adopted a bottom-up approach, whereby subprojects WP:BANKSIA and WP:CPLANTS have their own assessment templates, which categorise into their own and their parent projects' assessment categories. Since I had to revise {{WP Banksia}} to include WP:PLANTS assessments, I added WP:AUS assessments too. See, for example, Talk:Banksia epica.

Having implemented WP:AUS assessments via the {{WP Banksia}} banner, I proceeded to remove (actually comment out) the WP:AUS banners. Ah, but in doing so I removed the capacity for articles to be tagged into WP:WA, for example. WP:WA has lost two of its featured articles from its stats, because I've removed the WP:AUS banner from Banksia brownii and Banksia epica. The only way to reinsert these into the WA project is to reinsert the WP:AUS banner. If I re-insert it as {{WP Australia | WA = yes}} then it will end up in Category:Unassessed Australia articles. No, I have to give all the assessment all over again, and suffer a redundant tag on the talk page, just to get the article into WA assessments.

The problem is of course that WP:PLANTS uses bottom up subproject integration, whereas WP:AUS uses top down, and WP:BANKSIA is stuck in the middle. Neither system is wrong, but they are utterly incompatible, so only one can survive. This is annoying the buggery out of me, and I'm sure you're not enjoying me whinging all the time either. I think, though, that this problem is much bigger than the three of us, and may be about to reach tipping point. Kirill has posted Wikipedia:WikiProject reform, which might get the ball rolling.

Hesperian 01:33, 16 March 2007 (UTC)