Wikipedia talk:Spotlight

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This page was nominated for deletion on 11 December 2007. The result of the discussion was keep, but tag inactive.

Contents 1 Some considerations... 2 Meta-tasks 3 DYK 4 Ad 5 Interesting 6 Coverage suggestion 7 New proposal 8 "historical" tag 9 We're active! 9.1 Kristallnacht 10 Issues. 11 Kerotan's election

[edit] Some considerations...

• Do we work on one article to completion, or do we work on one article up to a set limit of time?
• What criteria should we use in determining what articles to spotlight?

- Stephanie Daugherty (Triona) - Talk - Comment - 20:33, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Meta-tasks

Here's a bunch of meta-stuff about the spotlight project to be considered:

• Turnaround - how often do we want to switch articles?
• Recruitment - how many collaborators do we need and how to attract them?
• Choice of topics - should they be easily researchable so that a visible impact can be made in short time, or should they be hard topics, so that we improve articles which are not likely to be improved otherwise?
• Scope - should we choose red links and stubs or poorly written articles of decent size, and should we try to make them just decent, or to make them good or featured articles?
• Workflow - how to achieve the most with the least effort and time expended

Here's my view: We're doing this on IRC and we should adapt to the medium, which is fast-paced and immediate. That means relatively short turn-around, maybe a day or two, maybe less, which would necessitate that we work on easily researchable topics and that we don't try to get articles to FA. That's a good thing, IMO, because wiki is a better format than IRC for hard topics and slow work, and we already have FA drive. A relatively large output of material of decent quality would also be good for recruitment of new collaborators, as well as for the moral of existing ones. A few more links around the project space, and a template to put on the talk page of the selected article would also be useful.

As for the workflow, I once started work on User:Zocky/Article checklist (and never finished it). We may need something like that to guide the work in useful directions. Also, the relatively massive real-time collaboration carries risks of duplication of effort, as we experienced yesterday more than once. In the future, we may get a smarter bot on which you'll be able to "claim" tasks, but in the meantime, we should get into the habit of announcing what we're doing on the channel. Zocky | picture popups 15:19, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

My thoughts on this:

• Turnaround: One article per day seems good; I say we stick with that for a while and see how we go.
• Recruitment: I've posted a notice at the Community Portal, that should get the attention of most potentially interested editors.
• Scope: I'm not entirely sure about starting new articles, it's not quite the same as expanding something that's already there, and we have so many articles now I get the feeling that most things that deserve articles have them, even if they're not very good. But if we find a good topic, then I don't see why not.
• Workflow: We're entering new territory here, we're going to have to think of this as we go along. I think the very fact that we're able to talk in real-time already reduced the time expended significantly; as for effort, that remains to be seen – Gurch 03:47, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] DYK

On April 20, 2007, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Icelanders, which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the "Did you know?" talk page.

Blnguyen (bananabucket) 08:03, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Ad

Ad as a part of Qxz/Gurch's ad cycle...Real96 07:43, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Interesting

Interesting. I came here after following the Spotlight advert, but I disagree with the tagline "collaboration the way it should work". The first tagline "a different approach" is more accurate. Collaboration can take many forms, and this is one of many. The most common alternative, I guess is seen on quiet talk pages, where two or three editors can collaborate and achieve the same result over several days or weeks. Those who like to work a bit faster can use IRC, but I like to see the process documented on talk pages as well. See Talk:Anne of Denmark for an example. In general, rebranding and relaunching the various collaboration efforts is in general a good idea. Keeps people interested. Impressive work on the articles tackled so far. Carcharoth 15:15, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Coverage suggestion

I would recommend that coverage be focused on Wikipedia:Vital articles. Many, if not most, are in a sad state and as central topics, Wikipedia would greatly benefit from the attention. Just a thought. Cheers! Vassyana 02:11, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

This is an old comment, for sure, but I strongly agree. There are many Vital Articles which no one with a knowledge of English seems to want to touch. I look forward to helping out when I can. -RunningOnBrains 07:00, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Well, feel free to add anything you think is in need of collaborative improvement to the list at the bottom of the project page, leaving a little note here. I agree that some of them are in very bad shape and the revitalisation of this project is just the thing to fix that!...... Dendodge .. Talk^Help 23:05, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] New proposal

May I propose Saint Petersburg and the Winter War as candidates? Colchicum 13:42, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "historical" tag

I noticed this project had a Template:historical tag, which I replaced with Template:inactive. The former tag appears intended for proposals (discussion or votes on a course of action) rather than pages or collaborations. I also see that the deletion discussion explicitly called for tagging as inactive rather than historical. Judging by what links to historical, I suspect the tag has been misapplied in many other instances (WP:ACID is another I fixed just now) and should be modified to make it clear that it is only for decisions, not projects. It seems like the kiss of death to put it on a WikiProject, because it makes it sound impossible for editors to get it going again. A project like this one may not be easily restarted (it may need to be reworked to not rely on unlikely real-time IRC chats, for example) but it can be done without going all the way out to the Village Pump to await developments. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Wnt (talk • contribs) 20:05, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] We're active!

I am officially reactivating this! Our new collaboration (for this week) is Kristallnacht. I have emailed the bot operator and begun collaborating on the article. The involved WikiProjects have been informed and I have removed the 'inactive' tag. So, welcome back everyone. I am determined not to let this meet the same fate as it did before...... Dendodge .. Talk^Help 00:51, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Kristallnacht

The article doesn't detail the actual rioting and pillaging that took place so I'm not sure if it will meet the GA criteria, I started working on it but sort of stopped because I didn't know how to phrase it. But if you want this article to pass the GA the timeline section needs to detail the rioting --Hadseys 18:28, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Issues.

I have some issues with the perceived way that article selection works for spotlight, (and yes I realise I haven't been around to actually see selection, but this is part of the problem) I dislike the idea of project coordinators of having the final say in the chose of article, since it means that non-coordinators may find themselves on a article that have little enjoyment editing and thus causing disharmony in the project.

Ah ha! I here you cry, "this will lead to the project becoming overly bureaucratic!" and yes it could do to a certain extent, and the downside of a more democratic selection system over the current oligarchic system is that decisions on what article we should spotlight could take longer, however I think that if there is a page is this project where contributors can decide what article should be next after the current article, or next after the next article, I think the project should be better for it, because if we want to envisage a slightly larger project with more people contributing than there are now, we need these decisions to be quick and organised, so that we draw a close on one article, we can say right afterwards "BAM! now go edit this one", which retains the spontaneity of choosing the article on IRC the night before, but means that how we choose is more in the clear, since we can't currently reveal why and/or what grounds an article was chosen due to the rules of no posting of IRC logs.

I also have some concerns over the suggestions section, I can see the list getting very long and unwieldy very quickly, however this situation is yet to happen and I can't foresee that it would cause any major problems in the near future. watch this space.

Also a small note, most of the talk subpages for this project will now redirect here to aid discussion so that no user leaves a message on a rarely visited talk page.

Finally the last issue of the day. Coordinators. Firstly I ask, how to we define one, what there purpose is the wider scope of the project, and what do you need to fulfil to be one? (and yes the reader may take note that I have a small disagreement with Mm40 as to whether I hold the position of project coordinator) Personally I find the idea of coordinators to be a bit of potential problem child.--Kerotan^{Leave Me a Message} Have a nice day :) 00:41, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I want to implement a democratic system for choice of coordinators and articles. I, personally, think you deserve coordinator status but we can make that the first vote. Like RfA, you need 70% to pass...... Dendodge .. Talk^Help 14:00, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Well, you draw compassions with RFA here, but nit picking slightly, RFA isn't a vote, the vote like aspect is purely so that 'crats can gauge the feeling of the community and peoples opinions of the candidate can be aired, and this is why there are no set limits for RFA, and the only limits to RFA are perceived and based on general trends of who passes and who doesn't.

Now the relevance that this has to the project is that voting for coordinators cannot work in exactly the same way as it does in RFA , I don't want to go out on a limb and say that candidates should have X amounts of edits and have spent X amount of time on the project, because I believe in the words of Bertrand Russel, "that is a wooly-headed idea." and is exactly why WP:IAR exists, but on the other hand the vote must work on a purely democratic basis that is if a candidate gets over 70% support they should be elected, but there should only be such exactness in this sphere alone, so I urge voters to vote on candidates on the ability to fulfill the role, rather than a set of strict and limiting criteria. A further point that we must consider in the creation and running of this project is the the caution which we should use when basing our systems on ones that are already pre-established, for example, there is a noticeable feeling in the community that RFA has grown to rather silly levels, so I again urge caution to make sure that if and or when we adopt similar systems to ones pre-established that we must be wary that our systems don't run into the same problems as these pre-established.--Kerotan^{Leave Me a Message} Have a nice day :) 14:25, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

(indent) Kerotan, I've been reading what you were saying, and I had some thoughts about this. First off, I agree, we need a sub-page where any contributors, whether members of the project or not, can leave suggestions on what article's should be in the Spotlight, so it's not solely the decision of "the coordinators", but rather having a more friendly, anyone-can-be-involved feel. I really think that being a project coordinator means that you want to be in this for the longer run, or at least for a couple/few months. A coordinator has to want to help start up new areas of the project, coordinate the newsletter discussing it with other coordinators, and basically getting behind things and helping the article get improved by others, and yourself as well. It shouldn't really be a position of having the last say in scheduling articles, and even altering the project in certain ways. If a potential change relates to the project, then it'd be a little group decision amongst those users. Relating to the articles, it would be a community decision, yes perhaps a small portion, on what articles come in the queue, or even ideas for the project itself, but the coordinators are just the ones who are more busy with the project management itself, and working with its system. In a way, it's like bureaucratship (not that serious, of course). A user might have lots of experience being an admin, some folks want to nom him for RfB, and a good deal of people want him to become a bureaucrat. But what if the admin doesn't really like the RFA system in general, and he doesn't want to work with it as the closing 'crat. So he turns down the nom offers.

I know you seem in support of this project and all, Kerotan, but I wanted to ask, would you want to be working with this system? Now, there's the possibility that one could decide to be a coordinator of an area, if others agreed, to change it and solve some potential issues. But do you want to coordinate this project, per my little definition above? I'm not against you being in that position; if you feel that you want to work with this type of system for a little while, I'm all for it. In short, it's not a big deal, but I'd like to know that you really want to be one of the core people involved and working with this project, staying around for a few months. Those are some of my ideas and thoughts. Thanks for reading this, JamieS93 17:38, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

I agree more or less unreserved with everything you said above, and I would like to confirm that I believe that I will stay contributing on the project in some form or another for as long as I edit wikipedia, and yes I would content with working with the system, since I believe that in order to have the front of the project working correctly, there must be cohesion in the system. Now if you excuse me, I am going to go edit our Wiki-Ad so that it advertises the fact that we are now active, since I have a theory that most people that see that advert are under the the delusion that like ACID, we are no longer active...--^{Kerotan-Have a nice day :)} 19:35, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Kerotan's election

Closes 31 May 2008.

Support

1. Support: He deserved it, having been a regular and great contributor - especially on IRC...... Dendodge .. Talk^Help 13:55, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Oppose

Neutral