Wikipedia talk:WikiProject/Archive 4

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Deletion of Wikipedia redirect

Someone saw fit to delete the redirect Wikiproject as it is a cross-namespace redirect. Unless there is a bot which can go through and fix all of the affected articles that get red-inked as a result, can I ask what benefit this action is meant to deliver? (If there is such a bot, why hasn't it been deployed?) Manning 02:36, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Microformats

Please see Wikipedia:WikiProject Microformats, just created. Andy Mabbett 12:22, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

I could do with some assistance there, please, not least in formatting and advertising the project pages. Thank you. Andy Mabbett 11:51, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
This looks like a one editor project to advertise a product[1] of questionable notability, and potential WP:COI Signed Jeepday 14:56, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
Then how come there are several other editors, already helping to build microformats into Wikipedia templates? What "product" do you think I'm advertising? Since when was notability a criteria for discussion on talk pages? WP:AGF! Andy Mabbett 15:42, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Sample chess game

FYI - the arguments look valid, but someone may need to do the transwiki, and correct the links in Chess and elsewhere. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:02, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Campaign to create hundreds of new WikiProjects

It appears the User:Patricknoddy may be undertaking a campaign to create hundreds of new WikiProjects alphabetically beginning with the letter "A" (Wikipedia:WikiProject_Abkhazia, Wikipedia:WikiProject_Afghanistan, Wikipedia:WikiProject Åland Islands, Wikipedia:WikiProject Albania, Wikipedia:WikiProject Algeria), He is then requesting to have these WikiProjects be populated by bots (request made here). I would like to have a discussion here whether this is a good idea. I can foresee substantial issues with WikiProjects being created which don't really have any interested participants. Any reactions? Spamreporter1 15:26, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

I think a demonstration that users are willing to join a project would be a good idea before creating them. Though I don't see anything wrong with preemptively categorizing such articles. HighInBC (Need help? Ask me) 15:56, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
Sorry - not sure what "preemptively categorizing such articles" refers to? Simply creating a list of categories relating to that country? Those category lists presumably are already collected by looking at the subcategories listed under the category name. So, with apologies, could you give me more details about your thinking? Spamreporter1 16:03, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
One of the ideas of the project template is to categorize everything that falls into the scope of the project into a single category. Even if such a project has no demand, it may in the future, and the pre-categorization may help. No need for the actual project template though until there is a project, just the category will do. I don't really mind one way or another though. HighInBC (Need help? Ask me) 16:10, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
Such pre categorisation through bots is not a good idea. Taking a blanket category like Category:Afghanistan and then tagging all its subcategories with the project tag is likely to result in too many false positives. Please see related discussion here. The situation occurred because of taking very broad parent categories and then tagging all subcategories. — Lost(talk) 17:23, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
Valid point, I don't know too much about the intricacies of categorization. HighInBC (Need help? Ask me) 17:26, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Folks, before we get too caught up in the details of Patricknoddy's Afghanistan issues and the intricacies of categorization, is there a consensus to ask him to stop creating these blank WikiProject pages which don't have active users, and then asking that they be populated by bots? Or is that two separate questions? Spamreporter1 17:43, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Keeping the bot request apart, it may be a good idea if he was creating a related set of projects. But if he is going about it alphabetically and is just going to create pages without any defined scope, I would be against it. If he's willing to put some commitment to it and plans to maintain the projects, I dont see a problem — Lost(talk) 17:52, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

What I am meaning to do is that if a bot could put "scope templates" on certain talk pages. I am also willing to commit myself to these projects. - Patricknoddy (talk · contribs) 1:59pm, February 4, 2007

{{WikiProject Afghanistan}}, this is what I mean. - Patricknoddy (talk · contribs) 2:02pm, February 4, 2007

I guess here are my concerns: The creator of a WikiProject page I believe should be someone who is already seriously involved in a topic -- that is, someone who has been a regular contributor to the topic, with real knowledge about the topic. That creator can then intelligently monitor the page, recruit others that he/she knows, recognize the work of trolls, suggest projects, etc. With all due respect, it doesn't seem like a well-meaning user like Patricknoddy actually does have a long-standing track record of contributions to Abkazia, Afghanistan, Åland Islands, Albania, and Algeria (if he does have such a record, I will stand corrected).

Despite statements of good intentions (like that above), statements of commitment really need to be backed up by a history of prior contributions to the field. This is not a hard and fast requirement, of course, but a rule of thumb.

These concerns are amplified by the observation that Patricknoddy (judging from these first five creations) appeared to be undertaking a alphabetic pattern of setting up hundreds of WikiProject pages A through Z. It didn't seem that he would have the ability to really properly follow through and monitor the pages (despite statements of good intentions and commitment).

These concerns were still further amplified by using bots to populate the WikiProjects (by "populate" I mean using bots to add the Project template to the talk pages of thousands of articles per project). I have nothing against using bots to do this task in general. However, here, it appeared that a relatively uninformed (but well-intended) user, was setting up hundreds of WikiProjects, and then using bots to add thousands of templates per project, resulting in (do the math) hundreds of thousands of talk pages being affected . . . well, you can see why I asked for a discussion on this plan as a concept first.

Does anyone other than Patricknoddy think that this plan is a good idea? Spamreporter1 06:55, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

If no one is interested other than creating a starting page and a hand full of templates it will likely find itself at WP:MFD, where many WikiProjects have gone to. Keep in mind, if a WikiProject actually has something of value other than the basic generic WikiProject content, it will usually be marked as inactive.. but so many times it's not even that and/or is a bad/very narrow scope. Even if the idea itself isn't bad or narrow, I do see harm in preemptively choosing groupings of articles. WikiProject scopes can come from many things, such as a number of machines used in a particular industry or a collection of poems seen in plays. It's much better to allow these scopes and groupings to occur naturally. -- Ned Scott 07:03, 5 February 2007 (UTC)


I don't think its a good idea. Its better if projects are started by humans with an intrest. Patricknoddy is already committed to dozens of projects, so I don't see that he would be able to make a good contribution to 100's of them. That is just spreading too thin. But the issue of a bot adding pages to a project seems to be rasonable, provided that it is a project with people willing to work on all those pages! Mr Patricknoddy has joined up with one of the projects I belong to, so it would be appreciated if he could put some time into working on it! GB 04:04, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Rename Wikipedia:Wikiproject to Project: or Wikiproject:

We can finally rename the Wikiproject namespace, if people want to do so. Please chime in with your opinions here or on wikien. Regards. -Ste|vertigo 09:31, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm not really sure I see the point, quite honestly. It'll be an unbelievable amount of work for seemingly little benefit; what, exactly, is the problem with having them in the Wikipedia: namespace, along with all the other internal processes and groups? Kirill Lokshin 13:12, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
It seems logical enough, but it almost seems to me that Portal: could/ought to be used instead of thise (pseudo-)namespace. Yes, I know there may be projects that don't want portals, well then they don't have to have much public content. But they're tightly coupled concepts, and so it'd both reduce redundancy and promote the development of quality portals. --Belg4mit 03:07, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Curious Question About Removing WikiProject Tags

Curiosity ... Is there a recognized protocol about adding or removing WikiProject tags from articles? There's a interesting experience going on over at WikiProject California and WikiProject Southern California.

Some time ago, WikiProject California members had placed their project tags on all articles about California cities. Those tags have been in place for some time. Recently certain members of WikiProject Southern California, after discussion on that project's talk page (only), decided to remove the WikiProject California tags for (almost all) Southern California cities, and replace the tags with WikiProject Southern California tags - only.

That is, the WikiProject Southern California members didn't simply add the WikiProject Southern California tag to Southern California cities, the WikiProject California tags were completely removed. This was done apparently without consultation with the WikiProject California members.

It would seem at first glance that all the cities in Southern California could appropriately remain as part of both WikiProject California and WikiProject Southern California - it is after all one state! There are many articles across Wikipedia which have multiple WikiProject tags.

I don't know what the answer is if there is a recognized protocol about the following:

  • Is there a consensus here (or a guideline or policy) about who can add and who can remove WikiProject tags?
  • Is there a consensus here (or a guideline or policy) about when an article can have more than one WikiProject tag?

Are there any observations that anyone in this group has about this situation? Spamreporter1 06:49, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Broadly speaking, the consensus (or gentleman's agreement among WikiProjects, really) has been:
  • Properly-placed WikiProject tags are never removed; the only time they get taken off is if the article is deleted/merged/redirected/etc., or if it's not in scope of the project in the first place.
  • It's perfectly normal for articles to have multiple WikiProject tags.
The real answer here would have been to set up something like {{WP India}}, with the child project's tag absorbed into the parent's. (Quite honestly, I don't understand what the point of having a Southern California project completely separate from the main California one is to begin with; but that's a broader issue.) Kirill Lokshin 06:59, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
Note: The above comment has been copied by Spamreporter1 to the SoCal WikiProject's talk page.

The precident on the Wikipedia has always been to use only the most specific category for articles when there is a very clear hierachy between categories. This is true for Stubs and for Categories, and should also be true for WikiProjects as well. For further discussion, please see The argument for the migration from California to Southern California banners for SoCal articles on the SoCal WikiProject's talk page. BlankVerse 16:04, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Neither categories nor stubs are a good parallel here; the parent category is not harmed by being stripped of articles. The parent WikiProject, however, is; one of the major roles of WikiProject banners is as a recruitment tool, and thus having ones banner removed from articles inhibits a project's ability to actually get editors involved.
(Consider, for example, what happens when the hypothetical WikiProject Northern California starts up. The California project will, in a single stroke, lose the vast bulk of its tags; editors will hence function primarily as members of either NoCal or SoCal projects, with the "parent" project being largely defunct. See, for example, Wikipedia:WikiProject Music.)
Beyond all this, of course, is the simple matter that we have gone for a number of years without provoking turf wars between WikiProjects, and, frankly, I'm not particularly looking forward to starting them now. Not being a dick applies as much to entire projects as it does to individual editors; merely being "correct"—even if you were correct—is not a sufficient reason to go and make a nuisance of yourself in spite of people's complaints. Kirill Lokshin 16:52, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
The real issue there is that we have the two WikiProjects... One really should be a task force of the other one, and thus we solve the problem. We can apply this same logic to most of these kinds of situations. -- Ned Scott 06:43, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
While I understand Kirill's example, here's a different situation: WP:DIGI is a child of WP:ANIME. The majority of Digimon-related articles there is only the DIGI banner. On the "main" anime articles, both banners are shown, but not on articles for individual characters or "sub pages" related to the larger topics. The intro of the WP:DIGI page says "You may also be interested in joining our parent project, WikiProject Anime and manga, which is dedicated to all anime and manga articles on Wikipedia." There are also a few other links back to ANIME and other general fiction areas of Wikipedia. (no project is an island) WP:DIGI is also a child of WP:CVG, but WP:DIGI mostly deals with plot-driven stuff and doesn't share as many articles with CVG as it does with ANIME, so on those pages both banners are displayed. -- Ned Scott 06:52, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
Basic geographical knowledge means that a "Southern California" project implies a "whole" or "Northern California" project. Articles don't need to have tags for every conceivable project: California State University, San Bernardino doesn't need to be tagged as WP:SOCAL, WP:CAL, and WP:USA, as well as WP:EDUCATION, WP:SCH, and WP:UNI. It can fall under the scope of any and all of these, but it doesn't need to be tagged as all. Sufficient corss-references to and "plugs" for other projects are a better way of gaining interest, membership, and participation for projects.
Projects should be small enough that their members can concentrate on what is important to that project: over 10,000 WP:CAL articles is not. I, frankly, am generally unknowledged in anything outside the scope of WP:SOCAL (with the exception of the Sequoia National Forest and area), and will rarely, if ever, be able to do more than scan a few articles for errors. But even that would require adding them to my growing watchlist, and/or taking time away from Southern California articles, which is really my interest in this state. Again, I think that cross-linking projects is a better way than multiple tags. —ScouterSig 15:00, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Ah, I found an example of where I had removed some project banners, Talk:Stargate SG-1#Templates at the top of this page. The Egypt one seems to have been added back.. and I'm tempted to remove it again (the show has been on for 10 years, and the Egyptian theme was really only big for the earlier years), but whatever. Removing the Colorado project banner is probably a better example of when to remove a banner. -- Ned Scott 07:00, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

There's an obvious difference between the occasional un-tagging of pages that aren't really in a project's scope (keeping in mind, though, that each project defines its own), and the systematic removal of tags from articles that a project considers to be in-scope, but that someone else thinks shouldn't be. Kirill Lokshin 13:22, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Several people have mentioned "sub-projects" that share the parent's banner; in particular WP:INDIA was mentioned as an example. I'm not familiar with how "sub-projects" work from a practical point of view - do the sub-projects have their own "sub-project page" analogous to "project pages?" Do "sub-projects" develop their own sense of community and camaraderie, like projects do? Are there "sub-project" tasks, like COTW?

If these sub-projects have all the benefits of projects, and we don't have to hassle about "who's tag" appears on which page, that may offer some of the best of both worlds.

Could I ask a contributor more knowledgeable about sub-projects to fill us in on how these actually work? Spamreporter1 17:17, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

This page isn't heavily watchlisted, so you may be better off asking at one of the projects that uses that system (e.g. India or Australia) directly; but, briefly, yes—unlike task forces, true sub-projects maintain a largely separate and autonomous setup. Kirill Lokshin 17:39, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

I'll follow up at those projects, and report back what I learn. Spamreporter1 18:19, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Responses from WikiProject Australia and WikiProject India

I have received the following responses to my inquiries to WikiProject Australia and WikiProject India about their "sub-project" structure:

Your question to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Australia

In reality, subprojects of WikiProject Australia are their own autonomous group with their own sense of community. Sub-projects of WP:AUS generally maintain themselves, however fall under the parent WikiProject Australia for WP:1.0 assessment purposes. Some Australian sub-projects fall outside of the parent project and have decided to assess their own aticles (an example is Wikipedia:WikiProject Football (soccer) in Australia, leading to the situation where a talk page becomes cluttered with many unneccessary templates. We're about to combine assessments for sub-projects into the master {{WP Australia}} template so that sub-projects need not create their own assessment scheme. The benefit of this is that sub-projects can assess their own articles, and their assessments contribute to provide an overall look at the state of Australia-related articles without fragmenting the results. You may want to look at WP:INDIA which has already adapted what we require. -- Longhair\talk 19:45, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
We're try to change to adapt to editor's needs. Check back often, you never know what we've been up to until you take a look ;) -- —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Longhair (talk • contribs) 04:00, 17 February 2007 (UTC).

Your question to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject India

Our response will be similar to the Australian one above. I had initially copied their template and improved upon it.
1) Sub-projects work autonomously and have their own community. They have seperate project pages and discussion pages. See WP:KERALA.
2) COTW still works at the parent level since participation is low.
3) All sub-projects use the same project banner. For example, {{WP India|kerala=yes}} for an article that falls under the scope of India and Kerala.
4) The project banner creates assessment categories at individual project level as well as at the parent. Class tag is shared across projects. Since Importance could differ between sub-projects, we have separate importance tags for each project. For example, {{WP India|kerala=yes|class=FA|importance=High|kerala-importance=Top}} will put the article under Top importance for Kerala project and High for the India project.
5) Sub-projects are identified as workgroups on the talk page banner. For a few of our projects (Indian cinema), banner displays the sub-project in a separate box. For example, {{WP India|cinema=yes}} will generate two boxes, one for India and one for Cinema. This way, the sub-project gets more ad-space. See Talk:Aishwarya Rai. This is needed for topical projects that loosely integrate into the national project. Indian cinema has both India and Films as parents.
6) The parent project's menu bar is displayed on all sub-project pages. This will give visibility and help invite more participants into various sub-projects. In topical projects such as Indian cinema, the menu bar is trimmed down to a small box. The menu bar displays assessment statistics table of the project currently displayed. See WP:KERALA and WP:INCINE.
7) The automation department at the parent level supports all sub-projects. They help with automated talk page tagging.
This type of integration avoids redundancy and helps sub-projects concentrate on the article improvement than worry about templates and technical stuff.
Hope that helps. Regards, Ganeshk (talk) 03:38, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Summary of Inter-WikiProject discussion thus far

The question: Where there is a parent/descendent relationship between two WikiProjects (WPs), when should the descendant WP tag be the only tag that appears, and when should articles have both the parent and descendent tags?

The following is my (hopefully very brief) summary of the discussion thus far on the issue of when and whether WP tags should be removed, or whether articles should have two WP tags ("dual-tagged"). To use a (hypothetical) example when should the [[WP:OHIO]] tag be "dual-tagged" on all Ohio city articles, and when should the [[WP:WEST OHIO]] tag be the only tag that appears on Ohio city articles?

Option 1 - "Very limited dual-tagging." Just a few, the "most important," local articles are dual-tagged; all other local articles have only the descendent WP tag.

  • Pro - promotes clarity, focus for the descendent WP; analogize to category structure: only the most local cat appears in the cat hierarchy; reduces conflict in assessment scales
  • Con - parent WP is harmed by not being able to recruit or offer standards; analogy to category structure not valid, because senior cat is not harmed; no harm to local WP by dual-tagging

Option 2 - "Full dual-tagging." All articles within a relevant area have both parent and descendent tags.

  • Pro - promotes cooperation between WP, allows both WP to recruit, does not harm descendent, avoids "tag revert wars" (no WP tags should be removed without consent of that WP)
  • Con - creates tag-clutter and confusion; encourages inter-WP conflict; reduces ability of local WP to recruit

Option 3 - "Some dual-tagging." Middle-ground between Option 1 and Option 2 - a significant number (but not all) are dual-tagged.

  • Pro - "best of both worlds"? Allows parent access to a significant number of articles, while giving descendent focus and clarity; "where to draw the line" is subject to express agreement between the WP
  • Con - needlessly complex; will lead to endless debates about "where to draw the line"

Option 4 - "Project/Sub-project" structure. Avoids tagging controversy altogether by having local project be a "sub-project" (that is, it has its own page, COTW, etc., but not a separate tag) - see WP:AUSTRALIA and WP:INDIA as examples.

  • Pro - this is the best of both worlds; both projects are able to have their own identity, community and tasks, without having to argue about tags; WPs are able to interact without worrying about "turf wars"
  • Con - this makes it too difficult for the local WP to maintain its identity, and the local will wither into the parent

I have likely neglected some arguments (probably your favorite argument) pro and con - but the intent here is to summarize briefly the points of view that have been expressed thus far. Responses are being collected at WT:SOCAL and/or on this Talk page. Spamreporter1 15:40, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Note

To try to follow all discussions on this issue, you have to look at the talk pages for at least four different WikiProjects (California, SoCal, CITIES, and COUNCIL), as well as the talk page for Wikipedia:WikiProject, because the sockpuppet [2] Spamreporter1 has been copying different comments to the different pages without telling the different WikiProjects or the authors of those comments, and without identifying where the different comments came from. BlankVerse 14:38, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

The views of each of those Projects was solicited because each is affected by the topic. I have requested that any responses be condensed, and have assisted that process. People are going to respond where they want, and I'm trying to avoid disputes over where the conversation is going to take place, by performing the clerical act of copying responses. If anyone has a suggestion of a single place that all interested parties are comfortable watching and responding there, that would be a good solution. Spamreporter1 23:10, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

All done by a bot

I have to wonder if some of the extreme hostility and incivility that has been part of this discussion on this project's talk page, and some other project's talk pages is the result of some editors assuming that the SoCal WikiProject has been 'undoing' some editor's hard work. In reality, the tagging of almost all the article talk pages (on over 10,000 articles!) with the {{WikiProject California}} banner was done by a Bot, User:MetsBot. At the time, the bot's owner received quite a few complaints, and because of that quit doing any bot-tagging for WikiProjects. It really wasn't the bot's fault, but the fact that that some articles had been miscategorized (such as a couple of Oregon cities that probably some waggish vandal had categorized as California cities). BlankVerse 14:38, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Another option suggested

In an effort to keep the conversation condensed, the following suggestion was copied from here:

There is another option currently employed by WP:GER & its subprojects. Integrated tagging. The subproject is on a switch of the main banner. Agathoclea 08:26, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

TfD nomination of Template:WikiProjectBanners

Template:WikiProjectBanners has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. -- Ned Scott 08:03, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Wikia site WikiProject

I like to know if it is allowed or not to create a project page on a wikia site? If it is allowed, how is it done? Thanks. Sundogs 07:41, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

I would think it would be allowed. What kind of project did you have in mind? I've seen people do Wikipedia-Wikia cross collaboration before, and no one seemed to have a problem with it. -- Ned Scott 14:59, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Proposed template for talk pages of articles

While there have been attempts to solve the issues involving WikiProject banners, I have thought of something: the boxes are all very much repetitive: they all say the same thing about how there's a WikiProject and how if you need help they're around, etc. Besides, the only info people really care about is the evaluation. To help slim down on the amount of space needed, I created an alternative banner, which can be seen in application here (the actual template is here). As you can see, it lists that (a) there are WikiProjects involved in the article, (b) the evaluation stats for each listed WikiProject (c) optional notes, and (d) a short blurb on what WikiProjects are all about. At the moment, the template has capacity to store information on five WikiProject; this can be expanded. While some WikiProjects, like WP Biography, are too large and unique to be adapted into a generic template, most projects should be able to make do with this. Please improve wherever possible, and give opinions. —Signed, your friendly neighborhood MessedRocker. 09:01, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Basically sound idea for all but the largest projects, I think. There's a lot of multiply tagged pages, hit and run tagging, projects with near overlapping scope, etc etc. Something like this might help.
On the downside, I've put a lot of work into templates like {{WPBeatles}}, {{KLF}} (and {{WPBiography}}, but you said that's safe), to make them imitate other templates and to provide info and features for our tightly focussed projects. Probably lots of other folks will have done the same with their templates. --kingboyk 09:31, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
If you haven't noticed, there's an optional "notes" feature where people can add additional detail if they so wish. They could take advantage of this by transcluding some sort of to-do template in the relevant notes section. In any case, if you see room for improvement, please go ahead. —Signed, your friendly neighborhood MessedRocker. 16:24, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
It sounds like you have given this a lot of thought and put some work into it. But I think you might have a mistaken assumption "Besides, the only info people really care about is the evaluation." I for one care about the project summarization as it gives me an idea what the project is about, when I stumble across it. If people really only cared about the evaluation you would not need a template on the talk page, just a list someplace to keep track of it. I believe the template has two uses and the other is to inform and potentially attract editors to the project. Jeepday 12:46, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
Ahh, well then it's just me who only cares about the evaluations. :) In any case, I'm sure that if someone clicks on the project name they should be able to get more information. —Signed, your friendly neighborhood MessedRocker. 16:24, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
Personally I'd like us to change our banner concept altogether. I think it would be great to have a collapsable space where one can list (with a short optional summary) any relevant page/ area to that article. Just put it in the whole area instead of separating things by boxes and such. Then guidelines can easily be found as well as WikiProjects that may be of help. -- Ned Scott 14:58, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
If you'd like to make the box collapsable, go ahead. —Signed, your friendly neighborhood MessedRocker. 16:24, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
The obvious problem, which you've noted, is that this simply can't replace any of the more complex templates; given how many fall into that category, I'm not convinced that this template would be worth using in practical terms. Kirill Lokshin 16:52, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
I agree with the comment about this template's inability to replace the more complex templates. Having said that, though, I personally wouldn't see any objections to using it for projects which either
  • (1) do not use an existing banner,
  • (2) do not currently engage in assessments, or
  • (3) lack any dependent subprojects (like task forces).
For projects of that type, I would see no objections to using such a template, particularly if by doing more of the articles that fall within their scope are tagged than might otherwise be the case. Maybe it could be used in those instances. It might be particularly useful for either smaller projects or projects that are just starting out. Then, later, if they were to develop a separate template, it would be comparatively simple to remove their info from the template above when adding their own template. John Carter 13:41, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
Good point. I think we should be able to make all the simpler projects into that one template. Until we can smoothly allow for more complicated features, the WikiProjects with complex templates can keep their own template. I know WikiProject Pharmacology only does article evaluation at this point, so they're a good candidate. —Signed, your friendly neighborhood MessedRocker. 03:19, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
{{WikiProjectBannerShell}} has much of the above already coded and working. -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 05:07, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
That template in my opinion is just a collapsable box. It does nothing to actually condense the space. —Signed, your friendly neighborhood MessedRocker. 10:10, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
Both of those templates ({{WikiProjectBanners}} and {{WikiProjectBannerShell}}) are collapsible boxes. They do quite a bit to condense the space, though the content still is there, so bandwidth isn't decreased. -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 03:53, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
So here is another essential thread that I just discover. How many projects have been informed directly about this discussion before we find our project listed in one of the templates as having adopted it? I am trying to comment in WP Council talk, in WP Films talk (where a poll just started), on the way I learn there is also a guide about all this in some sub-page but haven't managed to locate it yet. I don't want to point an accusing finger to anyone, but it seems mostly WP Banner members have done all the talking and individual projects are faced with fragmented discussions where there are mostly technical issues discussed. In the meanwhile all our care to create project templates which make easily visible some information that we feel should be easily visible are about to get hidden and we will soon have to be pressing on several "show" buttons to get the full picture. If it's too late for projects to properly join in the implementation decision, I would like to have available for everyone a javascript that can be installed in our monobooks and by which the "show" option is chosen by default when we hit a talk page with this all-in-one Banner template. For many of us this is an inconvenience, although for some it may seem nice and tidy. Hoverfish Talk 08:32, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

A Wikiproject for wikiprojects?

Who here is into or knows if it is "legal" to create a wikiprojects for wikiprojects; if anyone is interested or has general information please let me know on my talk page. Lighthead 03:36, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

You mean like WP:COUNCIL? ;-) Kirill Lokshin 03:41, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
I'm very concerned by the fact that there isn't a Wikiproject established for the maintainance of WP:COUNCIL though. I'll create a Wikiproject to oversee the process of creating a Wikiproject to maintain WP:COUNCIL. Seems like the smartest move. Manning 04:31, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject banners and scopes

Please see discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject reform#The scope, regarding WikiProject scopes getting off track. -- Ned Scott 00:35, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Participant lists

Does anyone consider the participant lists to be an issue in that they quickly become out of date? There are projects that I follow but am not a 'member' of where I see many people just signing up without actually doing anything, and the are many members who are on lists but haven't edited Wikipedia for months or years. I'm not proposing to get rid of the lists entirely, but is there something that could be done about it? What actions should I take regarding inactive members - should I leave a note on their talk page and remove them if I don't get a response? Should a guideline be added for this and situations, e.g. Template:Maintained users? Richard001 07:01, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

If it's a big deal, just create a second list of inactive members and move people there if they haven't edited for a few months. Kirill Lokshin 15:33, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
I mostly agree. I generally much prefer the method seen at Wikipedia:WikiProject Lists#Participants, which uses category/userbox to group participants.
Then the "joiners" (editors who add their name to multiple project lists without ever contributing) don't clutter watchlists or make obese page sections. The only thing an actual "list" of participants might be useful for, is if Credentials are noted for individuals who have specialized knowledge to contribute to an area. E.g. Wikipedia:WikiProject Cats#Participants is pointless page-filler, with only a single informative entry (#70. Flubeca).
Or e.g. Wikipedia:WikiProject Council#Participants is full of information, but most of that would be a lot more useful if it were part of the WikiProject Directory listing, like how the "creators/maintainers" are listed at Wikipedia:Portal/Directory. Thoughts? --Quiddity 17:27, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
Well, I suspect that varies quite a bit among different projects; compare, for example, Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Members. (But we've been asking people to annotate the list since the beginning, which many projects don't explicitly do.) Kirill Lokshin 17:45, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject memberships

An interesting discussion has popped up between myself and another user about WikiProjects and the authority of "members". Basically, is "membership" required for an editor to be involved in project-level tasks and decision making? See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject reform#Membership authority. -- Ned Scott 05:04, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Title

I notice that a lot of projects begin with a section entitled 'Title', followed of course by the project title. Am I the only one who finds this a little redundant? What exactly is the point of having a section stating the project's title? Is it not adequate that the title is already at the top of the page, and (presumably) at the top of the web browser as well? It seems to be rather strange that so many projects do this. I can understand that it could have spread by people just copying the format of other projects, but do we need to continue doing this? Richard001 03:08, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Snake Project

Can someone please post the Snake Project where it belongs so people can find and help out. I can't cause this page makes really no since to me. Thx, oh, and information can be found on my userpage. §→Nikro 02:47, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Dinosaurs

This WikiProject is actively seeking recruitment and is in danger of foundering. Although there are 75 editors signed up on the participants page, there are only around six editors actively reverting vandalism, adding and refining content, and working on collaborations, and this has been the case for over a year. Real life may call some of these editors away at any time, leaving this project defunct, and hundreds of articles open to vandalism and inaccuracies.

If you are interested in improving Wikipedia's dinosaur coverage, whether you are a professional or amateur, please consider signing up and actively participating on WP:DINO. Firsfron of Ronchester 19:37, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

I try to trim participants down if any members have been inactive for say 6 months or so - it can become a little misleading otherwise. It would be better if there was an automated process to do it, but with popups it's not too bad. Richard001 22:30, 19 June 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the advice, Richard. I wasn't sure what the courtesy length should be. I'd hate to offend someone who was inactive for a while, and came back to find themselves "kicked out" (so to speak). Firsfron of Ronchester 06:03, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

Does signing up to a WikiProject have to mean commitment to that subject to a degree?

Just curious - what's to stop me signing up to twenty WikiProjects and not editing articles on many of them?--h i s s p a c e r e s e a r c h 15:49, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Only your conscience. - X201
Pretty much. Nobody is going to stop you; but it's a pretty pointless thing to do, really, as merely signing up for a project doesn't confer any benefits on the person doing so. Kirill Lokshin 16:16, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Wikiproject categorization of templates

I'm currently working on categorizing templates into the Category:Wikipedia templates subcategories. Some wikiprojects have been flagging templates as falling under their project, resulting in categories such as Category:Scouting templates. Now, that's great - but some wikiprojects categorize the template talk pages, rather than the templates directly. That means that they're incompatible with the way I (and other people) have been categorizing templates.

There are several options here that I can think of:

  1. The two systems remain separate. That will result in a fair bit of duplicated effort, so from my point of view isn't ideal.
  2. The current wikiproject template categorization changes into something compatible with the Category:Wikipedia templates setup. Category:Astronomical templates, which I have been involved with setting up, is a good example of this.

I'm of the opinion that the second of these is best. What do people here (e.g. you, the person reading this) think? Mike Peel 17:05, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

A consistent categorization procedure is much better. Richard001 09:23, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
Keep in mind that at least part of the talk-page categorization is an automatically generated side-effect of the assessment system, and can't really be moved anywhere else. Kirill 16:03, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
Mike, the problem is you're thinking one schema, and there are other needs you don't and haven't incorporated into your world view. You and David Kernow had and have one way of looking at template cats... by namespace used in and/or type of use... but if someone wants to collect a bunch of general purpose templates that might be a good browsing category to jar the brain memories in say "miscellaneous templates", that doesn't detract from or eliminate your scheme. The two methods can exist side by side... all it needs is for you to stop deleting other schemes and optimize yours and stop messing with the memories of those who are used to the other schemes.

Eliminating project templates on talk pages is very contraindicated, and all but impossible. IIRC, project guidelines are that such are to be on talk pages so article categories are navigable and relevant, not administrative. Since project templates are used for maintaining the articles, we're stuck with the talk pages.

OTOH, I see you're talking about them effectively categorizing the talk page of a template... that I think we can do without, as there is no need. No reason a project can't use the same technique within a noinclude block as I did with Template:Interwikitmp-grp (edit talk links history)... including a method I've proofed for using it on the /doc pages. Best regards (Have a happy fourth!) // FrankB 03:20, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
On further poking around, I think you just have to hold your nose and thank the Lord these enthusiasts have at least categorized in some manner. Take for example: this... and likely dozens of others. It's unlikely (Since attaining Eagle is no mean feat, and scouting is no where near as popular as it once was--too many computers and televisions!) that more than one or two people will have the credential or the desire to use such a user box, but it does no harm to have the user boxes. Shrug. To clean this up, I'd ask the wikiproject to move their template into the project's templates as I noted above. There is no need of it to be on the talk page in template space. But then, one's like these aren't in template space anyway, and how a project uses it's categories is hardly under your purview (unless you have far more free time than I think! <g>. I'd worry about widespread widely used templates and let the trash and geegaws slide with a sigh. Even if you should somehow by some samsonian feat manage perfection, someone will come along in five minutes and change something since this is a wiki, and entropy always increases... perfection is far too organized to last! Cheers// FrankB 03:54, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Any Very Active/Freindly WikiProjects

Hi does any know of any very active/friendly wikiprojects(Prefrably ones to do with sport(Netball in particular))? --Chris g 10:32, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

No idea if they're friendly, but there's been some recent activity at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Basketball. -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 13:32, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Wikiproject tags on articles instead of talk pages?

Please look at this disputed edit: [3]. This is a large, Wikiproject related tag that is being placed on articles for the period of one week as a more specific version of the {{underconstruction}} tag. Is this appropriate? In my mind, it's fine for the talk page but I don't think it should be on the article itself. Comments? -- MisterHand (Talk to the Hand|Contribs) 20:16, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Unless the tag is modified, it is inappropriate as it self-references. (→O - RLY?) 20:19, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
WP:CHICOTW is the only WP:CO that focuses on articles (or redlinks) with sufficiently sparse text to still be eligible for WP:DYK. As such a typical article undergoes a much more radical change during the week under our care and a {{underconstruction}} tag would ordinarily be appropriate. In order to be more specific about why the page is undergoing great change we use our own template. The template has an explanation of why it is not a violation of WP:ASR in this case.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/tcfkaWCDbwincowtchatlotpsoplrttaDCLaM) 20:25, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
Well, this is a talk page template being used on the main space. I think that it should be kept in the talk area, and not on the main page. If you have the underconstruction, a person can simply go to the talk page and find out why it is under construction. It shouldn't be on the mainpage.--Kranar drogin 23:05, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
I can't really remember, but I think other groups have tagged COTWs like this as well. I'm not sure how many still do that. A note about the COTW might be ok if it was smaller. -- Ned Scott 23:36, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
The explanation provided in the HTML comment is not sufficient to explain why it doesn't self-reference. The template currently self-references because of the link to the project page that clearly indicates a self-reference. Linking straight to WikiProject Chicago isn't going to cut it without removing information about the project (Wikipedia:WikiProject Chicago is the raw link which text needs to be changed). (→O - RLY?) 00:33, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
Self-references aren't a concern for clean-up tags. Originally, all clean-up tags were on the talk page, and they all can be considered self-references. For a week-long note, it's not really an issue (as long as it isn't as huge). -- Ned Scott 00:44, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
Its redundant. I have said it before and I will say it again. If you want to use the underconstruction template, use it. Why does this project talk page template keep turning up in the main space. This should stop, clearly its disruptive. Just look at this discussion, valuable time I could have used editing an article. IvoShandor 02:49, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
Oh come off it, just because we discussed something does not make it disruptive. -- Ned Scott 04:04, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
I had designed this to be more informative than the underconstruction tag. If the underconstruction tag is appropriate this was suppose to be better. As far as being disruptive, a disruptive tag encourages the reader looking for one sort of piece of information to look for another. The purpose of this template is to say that what they are looking for is not really a complete thought. I concede it may be inappropriate to reference the entire project while the reason is just the COTW. That point is taken well. I will remove the project reference, but the collaboration part should remain for explanatory reasons.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/tcfkaWCDbwincowtchatlotpsoplrttaDCLaM) 14:29, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

New Template:Project header, like Template:Guideline, Template:Essay, etc.

There's a new {{Project}} header, based on {{Guideline}}, {{Essay}}, {{Policy}}, and the like, and serving the same purpose, for WikiProject's main pages. It absorbs a lot of the boilerplate WikiProject lead-section wording, so that projects can have more customized introductions more easily, without over-editing doing away with important links and information at page-top. Please deploy on your projects. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 05:06, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Seems alright to me. -- Ned Scott 07:56, 30 July 2007 (UTC)