Wikipedia:Collaborations
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Current collaborations |
|---|
| General: Article Creation and Improvement Drive:
Aang • • Core topics: Boat • • Biography: Ali |
To improve the quality of articles that are short or lacking in detail, Wikipedia's community has taken part in collaborations to expand articles. On each collaboration, an article is chosen by people interested in the topic, and for a period of time (a week, fortnight, or month) the chosen article is worked on, under Wikipedia's principle of collaborative editing.
| Collaborations |
|---|
| Arts & entertainment |
| Games & sports |
| Geography & places |
| Government & politics |
| Religion |
| Education |
| Science & technology |
|
Birds |
| Miscellaneous |
|
|
Collaborations can be created on nearly any subject. Existing collaborations have taken on topical areas (e.g. cinema, cryptography, or science), and regional focuses (e.g. India or Africa). Many collaborations are set up in conjunction with related WikiProjects or WikiPortals. Some have taken on other functional areas, such as translations of foreign-language articles, or book reporting. A few even focus on Wikipedia maintenance issues, rather than substantive additions. Collaborations can also range in the scope and aim of their work—most attempt to raise articles from stub level to comprehensive articles, while others attempt to polish larger articles until they reach featured status.
Contents |
[edit] Collaborating on Wikipedia
One of the attractions of Wikipedia is that editing is collaborative. Anyone may edit an article, and anyone may edit another person's edits. Therefore, more than one person is able to contribute to an article, which has the advantages that the article may be developed more quickly than if it were just one person writing it, and the article has the experience of many contributors.
[edit] To-do lists
During a collaboration, to-do lists can be extremely helpful in organizing group efforts to quickly increase the quality of an article. When a new collaboration is selected, in addition to the collaboration template, you should consider placing a to-do template where contributors can list the aspects of the page that they believe need work. In this way, all collaborators can see where the article is going, and can potentially add to sections that they might not have thought of themselves. If a collaborator needs to drop out in the middle of a collaboration (due to real life concerns, for example), adding to the to-do list can still help the other collaborators focus their efforts.
[edit] Creating a new collaboration
- Create the main collaboration page at Wikipedia:Collaborationname. (See Starting a new page)
- Create an outline on your collaboration page:
- Most collaborations have the following content: introductory overview text; Template:COTWs; a notice of the current collaborations; links to subpages listing previous collaborations and failed nominations; selection process rules; directions for nominating articles; the list of nominees; a list of the templates used by the collaboration; and a list of relevant collaborations on other projects.
- Identify topical areas within the scope of your collaboration:
- A good way to do this is to copy the listings of Special:Whatlinkshere for the most important articles related to your project.
- If possible, link to a sample article to let other Wikipedians see what the collaboration hopes to achieve.
- Advertise!
- Create a collaboration notice template, and insert it at the top of the talk page of current or nominated collaborations.
- Post a notice at the Village Pump to alert potential new members.
- You could also notify any appropriate Wikiproject
- Look at the history of contributors to articles that fall within your collaboration's topical area. Many of them might consider joining your collaboration if you leave a message on their talk page.
- Find prospective members on IRC at Freenode in the general #wikipedia discussion channel.
- Collaborate!
[edit] Templates
- See Category:Wikipedia Collaboration templates for collaboration templates
Most collaborations use templates to mark the current collaboration and candidates for future collaborations. The template marking the current collaboration should be placed at the top of the article in question. If a collaboration project is abandoned or neglected (such as left for twice as long as an article is scheduled to be current), the template should be removed from the current article and the collaboration marked as {{inactive}}.
Candidacy templates should be on the talk page. As talk page templates these candidacy ones should use the Coffee Roll format established at Template standardisation, or be incorporated into a WikiProject template.
