Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Taxation

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[edit] WikiProject

I've been wanting to create a Taxation WikiProject for a while now and here it is! I see many of the same usernames on most of the tax articles, so I figured this would be a good way to focus and discuss our efforts. I've added some tags out there so hopefully it will be enough to grow the group. Some things that I'd like to work on for the WikiProject.

  • Peer Reviews
  • Article Assessments
  • GA & FA drives
  • Standards

For those wishing to work on the WikiProject itself - see the WikiProject Council Guide for suggestions. Glad to have you in the Project and I look forward to improving some articles.  :-) Morphh (talk) 20:09, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Sounds good. Let's pick an article and get it moving towards FA status. We might as well throw out suggestions and go with one we agree on. Subtopics are a little easier to start out with, so how about Individual Retirement Account? As we go, I'm sure the project will develop. - Taxman Talk 22:19, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
This one could certainly use some attention. Though I think a push to get it to GA would be better suited for this article. I suggest we reserve FA pushes for articles that have already achieved GA. Our initial focus might be to get several articles to GA and then push to FA. Morphh (talk) 22:26, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
Whether it's GA or FA for the target isn't critical, but FA isn't an unreasonable target given a few motivated and able participants. I have a fair amount of experience with them. I'm certainly open to another topic if there are any other suggestions people are more familiar with. - Taxman Talk 23:59, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Countering systemic bias

Kudos on starting this WikiProject. Seeing as most people are only familiar with the tax laws of their home country, myself included, one of the biggest challenges will be writing articles that reflect a worldwide view. —Quarl (talk) 2006-12-19 22:29Z

Indeed. And I'm not even sure how to combat that effectively. It's not like there are many books comparing and contrasting various national tax laws. The vast majority of tax material is country specific. - Taxman Talk 23:59, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for the Kudos! We may have some issues with systemic bias but in many cases the articles are about tax systems or tax theory/terms that are applicable to all. As a project with a worldwide view (english speaking world), I expect we will put a higher priority on articles that have the largest impact and importance to all, such as Taxation, Income tax, Sales tax, VAT, Progressive tax, Regressive tax, etc. These articles will have examples and sources that become more specific as the articles become more detailed. However, expanding articles is only part of the group's purpose - standards, copyediting, organizing, improving formating/wiki-standards, peer review, assessment, and discussion are other areas where articles can be improved across national lines without detailed knowledge of their tax law. I expect that groups may organize on country specific articles and pull overall support from the project when needed. I can only see articles benefiting from such organization (including systemic bias), even if we run into some issues. This is certainly something we'll have to keep in mind. Thanks Morphh (talk) 02:50, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Assessment

I was considering adding the project template to lots of talk pages in Category:Taxation and subcategories using AWB, but thought that it would be better to include the assessment material in the template first. I'd rather make an assessment of each article I added the template too. I'm not really good with the template code, but what do you think of adding the assessment variables to it so we can use those? There's suggested code on Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Guide of course. - Taxman Talk 03:49, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Working on it as you typed this... see Assessment. Morphh (talk) 03:58, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
OK - this should be working now... Go for it! I would only assess up to B-Class, leave GA for the GA process (if you believe it to be GA or better - put in the comments that you recommend they submit for GA). If the article is a GA, A-Class should have multiple project reviewers. FA should be left to the FA process.  :-) Priority should work too. We need to modify our examples so they reflect something more relevant. Morphh (talk) 05:45, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
Yep, that's great. I assessed Tax because I think that one was pretty straightforward on both parameters, and wanted to do a test. Is it possible to suppress the parameters when they are absent rather than the large text saying they haven't been assessed? And yes GA and FA should certainly only be those that have run those processes. Also you're right we need to replace examples with topic appropriate ones and descriptions. We'll get there. - Taxman Talk 06:20, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
Excellent - I'll see what I can do to make the text appear only when the variables are present. Morphh (talk) 13:49, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
Alrighty - The assessment information should now be hidden until the variable is added to the tag. Other information should be hidden until the appropriate variable is added. For example, the line about "Comments" after review will only show up after the "class=" attribute is added. The comment and dotted line will show up if either variable is added. Morphh (talk) 17:23, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
Peer Review should be working now. I still need to create a few categories but everything else should be set. I'm going to talk to the WP:1.0 group about the dynamic generation of statistics and such for assessment. Morphh (talk) 04:35, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] What about articles on individuals?

Dear fellow editors: Should articles on tax protesters like Irwin Schiff be included in the project (even though they might also be listed as part of some other Wikipedia project)? Famspear 14:35, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

It is fine for articles to be part of multiple projects and each project can have their own priority. I guess the question is if we want them to be within the scope of this project. I would say that if the main reason the person has a biography on Wikipedia is for tax related reasons, then yes. For example, I would say yes to "Irwin Schiff" but no to "Wesly Snipes". Morphh (talk) 20:53, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia Day Awards

Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 23:24, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Taxation portal?

One aspect of WikiProjects is the creation of a portal. However, I'm not sure we have enough content to showcase tax articles on their own. I was thinking we might be able to request a small space on another portal such as Portal:Law. Other portal options might be Portal:Politics, Portal:Business and economics, or Portal:Society. Thoughts.. Should we create our own, work with the Law portal (or other), or maybe try to have space on all these portals...? Morphh (talk) 15:58, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

I've never figured out the benefit of portals that are worth the overhead. It just seems like a lot of work that doesn't go into articles. That said if someone really wants to keep it maintained that's fine, but you're right, we don't have much to go on yet. If we get some of the higher priority articles in decent shape then we'd be in a better position to showcase our material. - Taxman Talk 20:24, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Hello

I've just added my name on the members list. My main interest is UK corporation tax (indeed it was me who wrote United Kingdom corporation tax and got it up to FA status). I'm also, as of 7.30pm today, responsible for a good article, Accounting period and I'm (slowly) developing a Wikibook, b:Taxation in the United Kingdom.

It would be interesting to know what areas of taxation others are interested in. Could we expand the members list so that we can note these next to our names? Also, it would be nice to know of anyone else looking to develop Wikipedia or Wikibooks content on UK tax. jguk 19:42, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Welcome, of course. Personally I only know the US laws and a tiny bit of Canadian tax. But I'm more than happy to peer review articles from other jurisdictions to offer an outside view. - Taxman Talk 20:24, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
I had considered putting flag icons in front of the names such as Flag of United States Morphh (t·c). I thought this might help us in directing focus to articles with other like editors but then I thought it could also divide us and add to bias. I'd also be happy to peer review articles from other jurisdictions. I'm fine with putting short comments next to the name to specify interest. Though you might be more likely to find like editors by looking at the history page of the topic. Morphh (talk) 13:58, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

I think it would be useful to know who's writing on what as I think that would help with collaboration. Whether that is done by flags or by other device, I don't know.

Nor do I see that as divisive or likely to add bias. My knowledge only allows me to write about UK tax, and also allows me to write much more about corporation tax than any other type of tax. I'm not ever going to start writing about Zimbabwean taxes, say, in order to try to neutralise a systemic bias because I simply don't have the ability to do so.

Might I suggest a two column approach to the participants list, the first column being our names, the second allowing us to say what our interests are? jguk 13:10, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Ok - I've made some changes to the members list to better identify members interests as suggested. Morphh (talk) 19:33, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
Thanks. I've added my details already. As the project expands, it should make it easier to identify people to collaborate with on country- and tax- specific issues.
I do tend to agree with Taxman that nationality is irrelevant, it is people's area of interest that is the important bit. It wouldn't bother me in the slightest if I was collaborating with an Australian or New Zealander, say, on UK corporation tax articles as long as they know what they are talking about and/or are genuinely interested in the subject. jguk 10:44, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
I added the nationality section after seeing it on another WikiProject (Law I think). We can do it however - whatever the consensus is... I'm not sure how much additional value it adds either if people define their interests. However, it can provide a sense of background. Interests can be specific where Nationality may give a larger scope. I didn't see it as limiting interest but expanding background and interest. Users can choose to include it or not. Either way, I'm not attached to it - we can remove it if others prefer so. Morphh (talk) 14:33, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm doing a little bit of work on the only bit of UK taxation I know about - Business rates. Any corrections/advice on wikipedia style much appreciated. I intend to do a little to Rates (tax) and add a short article for rateable value as it's too long-winded a concept to do justice to in the more general articles. Any other business rate articles I haven't noted? Winklethorpe 00:40, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

I'll take a look at them for style. Morphh (talk) 01:36, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Taxation articles

Ok, I finished adding the tags to the list I was working on. For the most part I only added to articles that I didn't have any doubt about, so there may be some other's that should be tagged. Here's the list for review of the articles that are in almost any subcategory of Category:Taxation except the tax protesters and resistors. I didn't know which of those would have enough importance to their protesting activities to make them includable. I can make a full list of all articles in subcategories of Category:Taxation if anyone wants to see it. Also, while pension schemes in general have a significant tax character, I tried to avoid including articles on individual systems such as CalPERS. One thing I did notice is a lot of articles are mis-categorized.

I couldn't find an easy way to pull a list for review of just the articles I tagged, but I did make a list of all talk pages I've edited that have the project tag. The majority of these I edited to add the tag. Let me know if you think I've tagged any you don't think we should be including. There's no need to include articles we don't want to work on. - Taxman Talk 10:16, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Excellent! Morphh (talk) 14:38, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Taxation Collaboration of the Month.

The banner for this should not be on the main article but on the talk page. I have moved the current one on Income Tax. GameKeeper 16:38, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Other COTW such as WP:USCOTW put this on the main article. Is this policy or something you are just assuming??? Morphh (talk) 23:24, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
It is a WP:SELF reference which are generally to be avoided. My experience had been that projects put these into the talk page ie the current Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history COTM Talk:Operation_Praying_Mantis but I see from your example many do not. In my opinon it would be better practice to avoid adding them to the main article space. GameKeeper 23:36, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
Selecting at random some others... WP:ACOTF, Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Congress/COTW, WP:AngCOTM, WP:GCOTW, Wikipedia:WikiProject Rugby union/Collaboration of the fortnight, WP:HOSCOTM - The point is to get the attention, like any banner on the main page. More users are likely to see it on the main page and participate. They are normally also added in the talk page under the project or something. Since only one article receives it at a time and it is very small - it does not intrude on the articles much. Since it is not a policy and other projects do it, I prefer we keep it on the main article. If other project members disagree, we can reconsider the placement. Morphh (talk) 23:48, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
For the record I disagree , but will happily go along with concensus. Note that the WP:COTM which is probably the most well established collaberation does not add it's banner to the main article space. If I get time I may take this up as a general point as you have pointed out this effects other Wikiprojects too. If I do I will add a link from here so people here can register their opinion. GameKeeper 23:58, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
WP:SELF notes templates in the article namespace that self-reference because they link to articles in the user, talk, or Wikipedia namespace or that are special articles. The COTM banner links to the Wikipedia namespace, which may reduce / remove the suggestion under this manual of style. Morphh (talk) 04:27, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
I have brough this up as a general point here Wikipedia talk:Avoid self-references#Wikiproject's Collaberation of the Month/Week. GameKeeper 22:34, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the notification. I've let the WikiProject Council know about the post so they could weight in. Morphh (talk) 01:24, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

It's that time - please vote for the next COTM. Morphh (talk) 02:03, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Pictures

Tax doesn't really lend itself to pictures in general, and unfortunately they seem to influence people's judgement of an article. One solution might be the use of editorial cartoons, of the old fashioned political satire type, such as the 19th century Punch cartoons. A quick poke around threw up this collection of British cartoons at the library of congress (and a wider search showed a large number of american cartoons, and photos of tax-related scenes): http://lcweb2.loc.gov/pp/cpbrquery.html

A search for tax got 56 results, two thirds of which were digitised, and at 200 years old they're certainly out of copyright.

They may well not be to everyones taste, however. Any opinions or further ideas? Winklethorpe 00:12, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

I like the idea. I haven't heard of any wikipedia policy that would prevent this as long as it fits within WP:NPOV for placement (meaning maybe add the picture to the criticism section or appropriate areas for the content) and image copyright. Morphh (talk) 01:09, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
In terms of images, I would like to see a few more graphs on economics pages in general. I have found OpenOffice.org's calc and Inkscape (both free) to be a good combination for generating graphs (examples Image:UK taxes.svg and Image:Income Taxes By Country.svg). But these would be unsuitable as a infobox image. I like the suggestion of cartoons, but it may be quite difficult to find ones that are suitably NPOV as Morph suggests. Tax is a very emotive issue for some people, as can be seen from the types of vandalism that occurs. An inappropriate cartoon may provoke even more. Some of those cartoons would probably go well in a history section or under a criticism section, where the context could take care of NPOV issues. GameKeeper 12:19, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
I have to admit, I didn't think about POV for the cartoons - to me they're just a historical curiosity. But of course you're right - the ones I'm referencing are actually quite savage criticisms of taxes in their time. Still, they'll be useful for the sections you mention.
I have found some photos on the same site (of tax offices, tax bills being signed etc), but they’re likely still in copyright and aren’t specific enough (unless we’re mentioning the tax bill in question) to meet fair use. Any further angles to try would be appreciated. Winklethorpe 21:24, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] FAR for London congestion charge

London congestion charge has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. Gzkn 02:28, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] FA Drive

I'm intend to put our FA drive article FairTax up for FAC this month. Please review - your welcome to leave comments here, on my talk, or the article talk. Morphh (talk) 1:07, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Thank you all for the FA drive and Pre-FAC contributions. The FairTax artilce has been put up as a candidate. Please vote on the WikiProject's first FA drive article! Morphh (talk) 16:12, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
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