Category talk:WikiProjects

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[edit] Please answer this question

If this category represents how a category is supposed to work, I am asking the following question. What normal human being could possibly read this page and makes heads or tails about the informational content? -- John Gohde 12:48, 6 Jun 2004 (UTC)

No, this is not. It is simply a listing of all the WikiProjects, generated by placing [[Category:WikiProjects]] at the bottom of all the WikiProject pages. - UtherSRG 14:39, 10 Jun 2004 (UTC)
We've started to try to use things in the Category: namespace to organize things using Wikiportals that are derived from the top of Wikipedia - the Main_Page:
Culture | Geography | History | Life | Mathematics | Science | Society | Technology
see WP:PJ and Wikipedia:WikiProject_Wikiportals for details. Thanks Quinobi 29 June 2005 01:35 (UTC)

[edit] missing project

As a tourist to this page I have no idea how to update it. However, it needs a bit of updating as the WikiProject Cryptography doesn't appear to be here. I looked in the alfa section and at the end where there is some non alfa stuff. If anyone reads this who can update this page, it would be good to do so. Thanks. ww 17:01, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC) Matt

Crypto did. Done. ww 14:07, 10 Jun 2004 (UTC)

For all users who are interested: A WikiProject can be added to this category by adding this code to the WikiProject page: [[Category:WikiProjects | {{PAGENAME}}]] - Gr0ff 21:21, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Alpha order? 3 months later not quite

Under "W" (possibly where Ww saw "at the end ... some non alfa stuff"), we now find a dozen WikiProjects that seem to be sorted by the "Wikiproject" part of the name. No obvious reason why they do that but most don't. Is this a sorting-software problem? I hope someone can permanently fix it. Robin Patterson 01:20, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

It can be fixed by providing a sorting title with the category link, e.g. [[Category:WikiProjects|Example]] for WikiProject Example, sorts it under 'E' instead of 'W'. Most are alreday set up this way, and I'm fixing the rest now. T.P.K. 06:11, 26 Sep 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Cleanup request

There are too many WikiProjects here, making any given one very hard to find, and causing subcategory spillover onto a separate page. Topical subcategories should be created, along the lines of Wikipedia:List of WikiProjects. -- Beland 21:56, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

Boldly removing {{cleancat}} tag. Looks like the problems (subcategories, sorting) have already been addressed. If you disagree with the removal, please talk to me instead of reinstating the notice (I have free time, and would gladly address any concerns!) Happy editing! - Corbin ∫ 1 ɱ p s ɔ ♫ Rock on, dude! 02:20, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Okay, this is getting insane

Since when are WikiProjects not listed under their related main namespace categories? I thought the whole point of categories was to help people to find related articles and categories. If so, then it makes absolute sense to include, say, Wikipedia:WikiProject Shinto in the Category:Shinto. If not, why not? I can understand not having an article as part of too many categories, but having a project being a part of 2-3 categories is hardly overkill. --日本穣 Nihonjoe 02:47, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

WP:ASR, presumably? Having said that, the major issue, in my opinion, is that nobody bothers to clean up the inactive projects, which tends to flood article-space categories with dead-project-cruft. If we can resolve that, I suspect there would be less opposition to including projects in said categories. Kirill Lokshin 03:01, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
I created a category specifically for inactive Japan-related projects just for this reason. I did it so they would still be accessible, but they wouldn't be mixed in with the active projects. Maybe this should be communicated to all the various projects out there, and suggested to them as a good course of action? I've been doing a lot of work to cleanup the whole Japan-realted article hierarchy so that it would be easier to figure out and better organized. To me, it makes perfect sense to have WikiProject Japan listed in Category:Japan as it may attract new good editors to the project. Otherwise, they may not even know about the project. The same applies to WikiProject Shinto and Category:Shinto, and any other similar project. In order to get more done, we need to attract more editors so that we can divide the work more and accomplish more. This can only help. --日本穣 Nihonjoe 03:22, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
  • For anyone else who's interested in the matter, I've explained the removals here, and will gladly answer any further questions or discuss possible other ways to handle the issue. In my mind, the best way to link to WikiProjects that are relevant to certain categories is to do just that: link to them, in a clearly-denoted self-referential notice akin to that in neutrality or wp; don't put them in the category itself, mixed in with all the article-space categories. This might require a tiny bit more effort, since you have to edit the category itself rather than simply putting the categorization tag in the new WikiProject, but it's worth it for being much more readily visible to interested users and much less likely to be mistaken by non-editor readers as encyclopedic content. Another option is to link to the WikiProjects on the talk pages, just as is done with article talk pages; see e.g. Category talk:Shinto. Or we could do both. :) It doesn't matter overmuch to me. The one thing we shouldn't do is mix up WikiProjects and articles, as that's inconvenient to both readers and editors, and contradicts WP:ASR more clearly than a simple indented-notice-at-the-top-of-the-page. -Silence 03:42, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
It probably doesn't matter too much in the long run. Certainly there are more effective methods of advertising a WikiProject than inclusion in a category. Kirill Lokshin 03:48, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
Perhaps it's time to create a WikiCategory (or something similar) so that projects can be listed there instead. --日本穣 Nihonjoe 03:49, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
That came up during the userbox affair; I recall the general feeling was that an entire new namespace wasn't worth the effort. Kirill Lokshin 03:51, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
That may be, but if Silence and others of his/her opinion don't want WikiProjects anywhere near their categories, it only makes sense to do something like this. It might be a bit of work, but nothing that couldn't be handled reasonably quickly. The current situation only makes finding the projects more difficult as it removes one more way for people to find out about them. --日本穣 Nihonjoe 03:57, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
Now you're just getting silly. I never said I "don't want WikiProjects anywhere near their categories"; indeed, I've spent three posts now explaining a wide variety of methods that would be much better ways to ensure that users are aware of WikiProjects related to certain Categories than hiding these WikiProjects within the category section at the bottom itself. And it's not my opinion that I'm trying to inflict upon these poor defenseless WikiProjects, but existing Wikipedia practices and guidelines, albeit not the most widely-known ones of the batch. At this point you're just completely fabricating my purposes here, and creating strawmen rather than responding to any of my points. I'm completely willing to compromise on this issue if necessary, and even to abandon it if it turns out that I'm somehow mistaken on this issue, but if that's to happen you'll have to go back to discussing the matter, responding to my points and raising new objections, rather than just using rhetoric to throw subtle jabs my way.
As for the "create new category namespaces" idea: if you can get it passed as a policy, I'll help implement it. :) If you feel that strongly about it, why not create a Wikipedia-space page to discuss the matter and try to formulate a consensus? That could also help with clarifying some of the ambiguities related to this problem. -Silence 04:12, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
Do you have any examples of how to do this? I've never done it before, so I'd need several examples. --日本穣 Nihonjoe 21:13, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
I don't really see the benefit, though. If it's going to be a separate namespace, what's the substantial difference between Wikipedia category:History and Category:History WikiProjects, for example? Kirill Lokshin 04:10, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
The main reason I was given is that those pushing to release a "printed" version of Wikipedia ("printed" meaning electronic print, too) don't want any of the WikiProjects in it since tehy aren't part of the main namespace. This would be the main benefit of going to a Wikipedia category:Foo, as it would allow for the projects to be completely excluded by ignoring the entire namespace. --日本穣 Nihonjoe 21:13, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Proposed template

I understand and support the concept of WP:ASR in principle. I also support the need to link projects with relevant articles and categories. Project templates seem to work fine for talk pages. For category pages, I support creating a template modeled after {{catmore}} using text adapted from what Silence has been using. I don’t know if the adapted template text below would work correctly, so I included a simple example for Education as well. Rfrisbietalk 14:54, 18 April 2006 (UTC)


Proposed template: {{catwikiproject}}

For Wikipedian collaboration on this topic, see Wikiproject WikiProjects.


Example project

For Wikipedian collaboration on this topic, see WikiProject Education.


  • Sounds like a good idea to me. Makes the WikiProject more visible while also clearly distinguishing it from the categorized articles. -Silence 14:59, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
That would work, and would probably be a little cleaner than just putting the regular WikiProject banner template on the category page. Kirill Lokshin 15:38, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Also, do WikiProject categories need a template or boilerplate intro like on Category:WikiProject Education? See example below. Rfrisbietalk 15:54, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

This category is part of WikiProject Education.

See also Category:Education, Portal:Education and Education.

I started the template {{catwikiproject}}. It uses PAGENAME, or it can take a page name parameter. Examples follow. Rfrisbietalk 21:56, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikiproject category naming convention

Is it "Category:Topic WikiProjects" like in the main subcats, or "Category:WikiProject Topic" like in the subcats? Rfrisbietalk 15:43, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

I think the distinction at this point is pretty arbitrary; "Category:Topic WikiProjects" was chosen for solely the really broad categories (some of which, like "Religion WikiProjects" and "Music WikiProjects", later ended up becoming subcategories of even broader categories), but "Category:WikiProject Topic" would have worked just as well even for those, considering that WikiProjects exist for all of those topics except "Regional". On the one hand, it would be easier to make everything conform to the "Topic WikiProjects" style (including ones that don't technically have WikiProjects at this point, but serve a categorizing purpose) because there are so many fewer exceptions than to a system that goes the other way around; but on the other hand, people could be confused by "WikiProject Topic" into thinking that it's a category only for that WikiProject and not for related and daughter projects (though one could argue that such confusion is more likely, not less, if we aren't completely consistent in what naming style we use). We should probably discuss this before making any further renames. -Silence 16:22, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
There's going to be some distinction between a category used by a single WikiProject (for its subpages and the like), which presumably can be set up to be most useful to that project, and categories that organize multiple WikiProjects, which need to concentrate more on being useful to the casual browser. Without delving too deeply into the exact nature of the relationship between "hierarchical" WikiProjects (that's a can of worms I think we should avoid opening for as long as possible), I think something like "Music-related WikiProjects" or "WikiProjects on music" (versus "WikiProject Music") might work. Kirill Lokshin 16:42, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
We already have Category:Music WikiProjects, which is much simpler than "Music-related" or "on music" or anything like that. -Silence 17:02, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
That's true; it would be good to establish this as the preferred naming convention for similar categories further down the category tree, though. Kirill Lokshin 17:16, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

I'll suggest a third option, in the singular: "Category:Topic WikiProject". This option is self-alpha sorting, plus it works grammatically whether it has subprojects or not. It also works when a project template adds the target page to the category. Any issues with a nonexistent project aren't affected one way or the other. Rfrisbietalk 18:30, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

But that would make no distinction between categories for WikiProjects and categories used internally by a single WikiProject. Or are you suggesting we combine the two? Kirill Lokshin 18:37, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
That's true, but I'm also not sure why two naming conventions would be necessary. For example, does it matter that Category:Music WikiProjects started off as a "main subcategory" but now is a notch lower? Does it matter that Category:WikiProject Education groups other subcategories and projects, even though it doesn't "supervise" them? Those who are most interested in these finer distinctions will readily recognize them. Those who aren't, won't have to worry about such subtle differences and try to change them. Rfrisbietalk 19:07, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
Of course, a big problem with using "Category:Topic WikiProject" for everything is that there's so much inertia for using "Category:WikiProject Topic". In any event, I still believe picking one convention for all categories here is the best way to go. Rfrisbietalk 19:39, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
I think the major practical distinction is the intended audience of the category. For example, Category:WikiProject Films lists all of the articles that project has tagged, which may be useful for its members; but for any other WikiProject that gets filed into it, it means that they'll be lost in a sea of (to them) irrelevant entries. On the other hand, I'm not sure that mandating a particular use of categories by all WikiProjects would be a good idea; individual projects have traditionally had significant latitude in running themselves, and I'd like for that to remain the case. Kirill Lokshin 20:13, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Organizing

I have moved many of the WikiProjects listed under "Pages in category 'WikiProjects'" into their respective subcategories on the page. I have also removed some that were already listed in the subcategories in addition to the "Pages" section. My reasoning was that since most of the WikiProjects are listed in the subcategories section and the majority of them aren't listed under the "Pages" section, it was redundant to have WikiProjects listed in both placed (all of the subcategories are descendants of Category:WikiProjects anyway) and it was easier to find one if you don't know the name (if you did, you probably wouldn't be on this page) if it was listed under subcategories (also, to reiterate, the majority are already listed there.) 24.126.199.129 01:07, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Users listed in the main page

Hi, I'm reasonably new to Wikipedia editing (6 months or so) so please excuse any ignorance on my part, but I see individual users have added WikiProjects as a category on their pages so that they appear on this page in the middle of all the category listings; is this right, or should they be deleted? Seems quite strange. Thanks for any advice. MarkThomas 10:49, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Added hopefully helpful hint

Being the intersection of Categories and WikiProjects, this page is very confusing. I was looking for a specific WikiProject myself and found it not thanks to but rather in spite of this page (what I was looking for was WikiProject_Climbing, that page is listed as WikiProjects -> Culture WikiProjects -> Sports WikiProjects -> WikiProject Sports -> WikiProject Climbing). I recycled/added a (rather ugly-looking) piece of advice, but I think this Category and its subCategories deserve some more attention, which I'm willing to help with (at least a bit). It seems that the discussion here has not yielded strong results though...--StevenDH (talk) 02:06, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree, the organisation here is bad. It is very confusing when some WikiProjects are diffused to subcategories and others are not. I suggest we diffuse them all, and I suggest we use the well-established Wikipedia 1.0 scheme (arts, language and literature, everyday life, philosophy and religion, social sciences and society, history, geography and places, engineering and technology, mathematics and natural sciences) to do it. Any objections? Any volunteers to help? Geometry guy 20:22, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
Okay, I'll help. I don't know how much time I can spend on it, but we'll see... Your suggestion seems like a good idea (though I'm not very familiar with WP 1.0), as that would reflect the subject tree already used elsewhere. Maybe we should set up some text somewhere explaining what we're doing because pages maintained by a lot of people are going to be affected. Also, does this job fit somewhere in what WP:WikiProject Council is doing? I suggested people look in the directory over there to find the WikiProject they're looking for, but apparently that's a mess too. Oh, before I forget, this task seems suited for some automation tool, is there anything of particular interest available? -- StevenDH (talk) 00:01, 29 February 2008 (UTC)