Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Council

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Meta Project Template

The topic of a catchall project template seems to come up again and again, but obviously the task is too daunting for anybody to take on. I think that it is going to be very difficult both to create and mantain, but a simple solution to the project boxes cluttering the talk pages might be to enclose them in a box using the show/hide functionality: it would be fairly quick to code, and the same amount of time to implement. The only disadvantage I see is that anybody adding a project banner needs either to use the code to add it in the show/hide box (if it is the first project banner) or make sure they add their banner between the tags (id it is a subsequent addition). Thoughts? Yomangani^talk 10:01, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

The problem with that is that Project banners act as a way of promoting the WikiProject and so a template that hides them all will only result in a loss of advertising for at least one, if not several WikiProjects. Your average newbie user will typically not notice the show button, and if they do it is unlikely they will click on it. I would imagine a template like that would have a devastating effect on "passing trade". Dev920 (Have a nice day!) 10:21, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Yep, that's one issue to consider; could we set up the show/hide block such that the contents are shown by default.

(Another possibility that's been brought up a few times is coding all the WikiProject banners to use some particular CSS class that users could then hide via their own CSS settings. It's the established users you see complaining about them, after all, not the random passerby.) Kirill Lokshin 12:28, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Properly coded I'm sure it could list the projects that are hidden inside, still giving some "advertising" without dominating the page. Newbies perhaps don't complain because they are newbies, I'm not sure we can say that they like the big boxes just because we hear more complaints from established users who know where to complain and aren't nervous of charging in. Yomangani^talk 12:46, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

The WikiProject banners do a good job of 'advertising' the involvement of different WikiProjects in a particular article. I know that when a bot went through and tagged all the California articles for the California WikiProject, there was a big jump in project members. This was probably just from the editors seeing the banner's addition to the talk pages of articles on their watch lists.

On the other hand, I have no doubt that the verbiage in many of the WikiProjects banners can be condensed down to their absolute essentials. Especially for the article assessments, all that may be necessary is the boxes noting the article's class and importance, and none of the extra explanations. ^BlankVerse 13:23, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

One possibility. It might, emphasis might, be possible to create a single banner which includes a lot of options, which could then be "selected" for a given article. That banner might then display "This article is (phrasing of choice: part of, supported by, fanatically observed by, whatever) the following projects: (list). Such a single banner, if it were extant, would take up a lot less space. The problems would lie in that it would seemingly have to be changed every time a new project is called into existence. But, possibly, maybe making a group of banners, one for say every page of the Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory, or perhaps by a more specific main subject range, might be sufficient to prevent overburdening the servers every time the banner is changed. Badbilltucker 14:22, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Not practical at all. The main issue still remains: each project has an arbitrary number of subsidiary options which must be supported. (See, for example, {{WPMILHIST}}, which has ~50 parameters of various sorts, many of which tie into fairly complex conditional logic.) A single template that supported all the things each project needs for any significant number of projects will be an utter nightmare to maintain. Kirill Lokshin 14:39, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

If we do create a separate banner for assessments only, like the potential {{AAA}} banner, does anyone think it might be possible or practicable to change things such that the assessment that appears on that banner classifies articles for all the other banners that appear on the page? It would save space to have the assessment listed only once, and I do think that assessments should probably be uniform anyway. Also, it would make it easier to change an assessment grade if only one banner had to be changed, and probably make it easier for projects who don't have people with the time or inclination to do assessments. Badbilltucker 22:08, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

How would that work? Templates can't see other templates' parameters; the only way I could see something like that working would be to have the assessment grade placed on a subpage, which would probably be even messier an approach.

(The question of consistency among ratings is somewhat more complicated than one might guess. Some projects are more demanding than others in terms of requiring specific things for specific levels. If everyone is forced to have the same rating, which criteria would be used for it: the strictest set or the laxest one?) Kirill Lokshin 22:20, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

I have no idea how it would work, which was why I bolded the if. And I was hoping, actually, if it came to that, the strictest criteria would be used, as I think it would probably result in fewer disappointed GA or FA nominators. But I see your point. Badbilltucker 22:22, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

The difference in ratings between projects is not a healthy situation. I would be strongly supportive of any function which consolidates assessments, so long as said function also supports article quality categories for relevant projects.--cj | talk 01:37, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Quality assessments should converge, but importance ones logically can't. A topic can inherently be more important to one project than another. Will Eisner is more important to understanding comics than to biography, for example. Steve block Talk 11:47, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

This is what I meant (in case anybody missed it and would like to comment). Yomangani^talk 09:46, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject Derbyshire

I proposed that a WikiProject for the county of Derbyshire, [[1]] should be created. I couple of people have put their names down for it. Im just wondering what happens now? JFBurton 17:21, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Organizations and Wikipedians by WikiProject listing

Hello everyone! I've just begun overhauling the Organizations WikiProject, and I can't seem to figure out how to get our members list to work with the Wikipedians by WikiProject category properly. Any concise help and direction here would be appreciated. Cheers! Oldsoul 22:24, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject banners, cleaning up the clutter

Template talk:WikiProjectBanners, thoughts? -- Ned Scott 05:39, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Comments should be made directly there, ideally. ;-) Kirill Lokshin 05:57, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Missing articles lists for projects?

Hello. I'm new here, and apologize if you aren't the right people to bring this to. I'm from the Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles, which doesn't seem to have been doing a lot lately. Do you here think that maybe it might be more productive to create project-specific missing article lists for the various projects, as opposed to trying to keep the missing articles project itself as a completely separate entity? I personally think that doing so might possibly be more effective and result in better quality articles faster than the current method. Thanks for any responses, and my apologies again if you aren't the right people to bring this to. John Carter 21:08, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea to me. If you contact a WikiProject on Fish and say, "These fish articles are in EB, but not in Wikipedia" that will certainly spur people into action. You should be sure that those fish aren't already in Wikipedia, of course, because the lists you are working from are (probably) mostly out of date. I suspect when that project was active there were far fewer specialised WikiProjects, so it made sense to work that way. In 2007, it seems we have a WikiProject for almost everything (this is good, I'm not complaining!), so now we have access to people who will care a lot about writing an article about a small fish or a suburb of Dallas. That energy should be used to help achieve the very laudable goal of your project. Walkerma 22:41, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Any ideas which projects should be contacted in this way first? I'm also a member of the Mythology and Saints projects (I've done a few articles there) and noticed all the Religion and Philosophy projects. Would it be best to try to contact the projects that relate to the more general topics, say Mythology or Religion, and ask them to diffuse out the relevant articles to the other various projects in their fields, or to try to break up the lists to each individual project? Or, if it isn't best, as I don't think I would be qualified to do the specific individual project lists in all cases, would it be possibly at least acceptable? John Carter 23:37, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

I would think it best to compile lists of missing articles over at Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles, then perhaps use WP:AWB to sort these via categories into topics. Then use listings from Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory to locate active projects you could contact for help. I'd try to go for active projects first. I found at WP:WVWP that sometimes broad topics could be quite dead, but more narrow projects were very active. Record your activity - contacts and responses (perhaps like we did at WVWP) - and hopefully see some redlinks turning blue! I think you may find other people will start to work with you once you start making progress. Are there other suggestions out there? Walkerma 06:02, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Interesting disussion at WikiProject Cities about inter-project relations

There is an interesting discussion going on at WikiProject Cities (discussion here) about inter-project relationships. In particular, what project tags should appear in which articles where there is a parent/descendant relationship between projects.

For example, if there were a WikiProject New York and a WikiProject Upstate New York, what should be the general guideline between the two of them:

• Full "dual-tagging": The New York tag should be on all New York-related articles, with the Upstate tag appearing in addition on articles of interest to the Upstate project.
• Limited "dual-tagging": The "New York" tag should be dual-tagged on only a few articles in the Upstate area, and only the Upstate tag appearing on almost all Upstate articles.

Example of limited dual-tagging: almost all Upstate cities would have just one tag (the Upstate tag only), and only the most important cities in the Upstate area (like Albany) would have both tags.

I suggest that this discussion raises larger issues of inter-project cooperation and relationship, that are going to arise routinely as WikiProject continue to grow:

• Who decides which tag appears on which article (the parent? the descendant?)
• What are the costs/benefits of "full dual-tagging" versus "limited dual-tagging"?
• Does one method or the other promote cooperation/Balkanization?
• Are there alternatives to the parent/descendant separate WikiProject model which might work better?

These issues may well arise in many contexts - for example (hypothetically) WikiProject American Folk Dancing versus WikiProject American Square Dancing. I suggest these issues are worthy of a closer look before conflicts develop. Spamreporter1 18:16, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Another area is where the topic is interdisciplinary and is claimed by two Projects. One example is that many articles on Physical Chemistry and Chemical Physics have both the Chemistry Project tags and the Physics Project tags. This does not cause any problems but it points to the need for collaboration between the two groups and that is not always happening. --Bduke 22:30, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

A great many WikiProjects are started by topic rather than by "work needing to be done" or some other logical scoping of articles. It's not always a good idea (nor is it a bad idea, just inefficient) to make so many specific groups or even non-specific but "already covered" scopes. The ones that are a good idea for better focus within a scope are usually best done via task forces, which is an idea that has great potential and is already being seen as a good organization method. -- Ned Scott 00:02, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

In fact, promoting the idea of task forces seems like the easiest way to deal with the bulk of this problem. Not only that, but from the Proposals page you can see that a lot of people are suggesting projects before they know if they should or even if a project already exists. Maybe we could have something like "please read this FAQ before suggesting a new project" to help with this? -- Ned Scott 00:06, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

The basic problem with task forces/work groups is that is assumes a strict hierarchical relationship (almost ownership like) between two WikiProjects, when things are often more of a web of connections. Why is WikiProject Indian cinema a "work group" of Wikipedia:WikiProject India, but a descendent of Wikipedia:WikiProject Films? BlankVerse 14:52, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Because Films hasn't adopted a task force structure from its end, I'd guess; compare Wikipedia:WikiProject Korea/Military history. Kirill Lokshin 16:25, 20 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 WPs, allows both WPs 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 WPs
• 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 Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject. Spamreporter1 15:58, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

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)

Thanks, Agathoclea. In order that others may also see your suggestion, I have copied your comment to the pages where this conversation is taking place. Thanks again.Spamreporter1 15:15, 21 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 14:37, 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 22:18, 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 14:37, 20 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 08:04, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

This is pretty important. {{WikiProjectBanners}} is a dreadful idea. The entire point of it is to hide WikiProject talk page banners completely, unless someone goes intentionally looking for them, which of course will never happen. It effectively removes ratings and assessments, /Comments, sub-project/task force labels and all other features intended for editor eyes, unless the editor happens to be a WikiProject supergeek and goes manually looking for the information. This template doesn't even bother to briefly name what the projects are! Ick. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 21:55, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

There is no need to debate this here, there is plenty of that on the TFD. I, for one, am for it.↔NMajdan•talk•EditorReview 21:58, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

I do think that this is a red-flag to all of us in this project, that WikiProjects need stronger guidelines. Frustrated Wikipedians can be very scary. We need to make simple, easy to use, helpful, and more aggressive guidelines on WikiProjects and things like their banners. We have some good stuff now in the guide, but a lot of people haven't even seen the guide. I also think we should have a more simplistic guide that covers the main issues and most common stuff, with a second page for the more advanced stuff. We should also move the guide out of our sub-pages, giving it more presence. -- Ned Scott 04:36, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProjects Noticeboard

I created a noticeboard for WikiProjects so that mass-messages for WikiProjects are no longer needed. Enjoy! How do you suggest I increase awareness of this board? —Signed, your friendly neighborhood MessedRocker. 12:24, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

A good start would be notes on WP:VP and WP:AN. Perhaps a note in the instructions for starting a new project too... Slambo (Speak) 12:38, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Also Wikipedia:Community Portal. Walkerma 15:08, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Why do we have a notice board when we have this talk page that is hardly used, as well as Wikipedia talk:WikiProject? -- Ned Scott 20:46, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

I'd imagine that Wikipedia talk:WikiProject is a talk page for WikiProjects in general, and this talk page is for the council. The noticeboard is blatantly for announcements relevant to all WikiProjects. —Signed, your friendly neighborhood MessedRocker. 20:52, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

I understand that, but given the lack of activity on the first two talk pages it just seems it might just spread out discussion in an undesired way (people not noticing the notice board). But I guess it's worth a shot. -- Ned Scott 02:16, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

I thought one of the purposes of this talk page was also to serve as a de-facto WikiProject noticeboard? Titoxd^(?!?) 03:04, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Wikiproject's Collaberation of the Month/Week

Some Wikiproject's COTM have banners added to the article space. (See The Maltese Falcon (1941 film), Mormon pioneers, Tax, Muhammad Ali for examples.) GameKeeper has brought this up as a general point here Wikipedia talk:Avoid self-references#Wikiproject's Collaberation of the Month/Week. He would much prefer them to be added to the talk , rather than the article space. Since such a policy would affect all WikiProjects, with about half of the projects using the talk space and about half using the article space, I thought the council should weigh in on the discussion. Morphh ^(talk) 01:21, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Assuming the banners serve to promote the collaboration and advertise the project, than it makes sense that they would go on the talk page along with the project templates, which serve a similar purpose. - Mocko13 03:47, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Announcements for All WikiProjects box

Someone -- I think it was Phil Boswell -- had an idea for a collapsable box that could be placed on every WikiProject page that would have announcements relevant to all WikiProjects. I suppose this would work in tandem with the noticeboard; discussion could take place on the noticeboard and the template could be used for short announcements. Who has more ideas about this announcement box? —Signed, your friendly neighborhood MessedRocker. 03:32, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Are there really enough cross-project announcements to make this worthwhile? I've seen maybe three in the last year or so. Kirill Lokshin 03:35, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

As many as three? I've seen Badbilltucker's announcement about Wikipedia week and nothing else. If an announcement was broad enough to warrent alerting every single wikiproject, why wouldn't it be put on the Community Portal? Dev920 (Have a nice day!) 18:11, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

"WikiProject Banners"

If anyone is interested I have proposed "WikiProject Banners", a WikiProject to set standards for, and help projects with, WikiProject banners at Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals.— miketm - Queen WikiProject - 10:58, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Banners

I note that there are now talk page templates which a new project without having to create their own separate template. For newer projects, this might save a lot of time and effort involved in creating a new template. Does anyone think it might be a good idea to encourage newer projects to use this template (User:Kirill Lokshin/Sandbox/Template14) and simply "plug in" their own project data, rather than going through the effort of creating one. That also might prevent cases where people create templates for projects before they create the project itself, as was done with Template:WikiProject Alabama. John Carter 17:25, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject reform

I've put together an embryonic proposal for some general reforms of how WikiProjects are set up; comments and suggestions would be very appreciated! Kirill Lokshin 20:49, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

IMHO, basic principles are sound, Wikipedia would benefit from better definitions between overlapping WPs. Some comments:

First, whether the junior projects are going to be known as "task forces," "sub-projects," or some other name is, I think, a fair topic of discussion. How many current WPs will be prepared to give up "WP status" to become mere "task forces" is I think a topic of legitimate administrative concern. Marketing the new structure with appealing terminology will be important I suggest.

Second, on geographically-based WPs, I suggest that for most countries, having the country WP be the main WP makes sense (having a WP France with a "Normandy Task Force," for example). However, for (at least) the United States, having State WPs be the main WP structure appeals to me - hence, have a "WP Texas" with a "Southeast Texas Task Force" (rather than having the whole state of Texas be a task force of WP USA).

Finally, how would "sub-task forces" work? Would a "Houston Task Force" be a subpart of the "Southeast Texas Task Force" or a subpart of WP Texas?

Overall, an important step in the right direction! Spamreporter1 22:59, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

The specifics are largely open to discussion; the main distinction between a fully independent project and a whatever we call this new thing is the removal of independent infrastructure (in particular, the change to a merged project tag), not the name (or even the subpage issue).

As far as your last point: the difference isn't a substantial one. They would both use the WP Texas banner/processes/etc.; what their exact relationship beyond that would be is entirely up to them. Kirill Lokshin 23:49, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

One thing we should definitely try to do is not make task forces seem like "downgrades". WikiProjects in general are just groupings of things that already exist (the editors, the ideas, many of the guidelines, discussions). How we portray this image is very important and will determine how smoothly this process will go. -- Ned Scott 00:07, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Hi Kirill, given your current interest, it would be interesting to have your input on the reorganisation currently going on here, regards sbandrews 23:08, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Although I do not have a problem with the general concept, I do have a problem with the logistics of your proposal. This may be best described with an example.

I am a member of WP:SOCAL but not a member of the parent wikiproject WP:CAL. The following are the statistics for the two projects:

WP:CAL

California articles by quality and importance
Quality	Importance
	Top	High	Mid	Low	NA	???	Total
FA	2	16	29	94		1	142
FL	1	2	10	85			98
FM					125		125
A				2			2
GA	2	27	82	518		29	658
B	34	140	405	1,398	1	452	2,430
C	24	208	892	5,231	2	1,356	7,713
Start	10	199	1,600	16,960	9	6,593	25,371
Stub		14	321	13,137	11	5,910	19,393
List	6	19	80	865	2	352	1,324
Draft				9	158		167
Category				1	12,074		12,075
Disambig				1	202		203
File				6	450		456
Portal					1,383		1,383
Project					113		113
Redirect	2	5	36	770	2,970		3,783
Template		1		6	1,573		1,580
Assessed	81	631	3,455	39,083	19,073	14,693	77,016
Unassessed				85		1,207	1,292
Total	81	631	3,455	39,168	19,073	15,900	78,308
WikiWork factors (?)		ω = 282,673			Ω = 5.07

WP:SOCAL

Southern California articles by quality and importance
Quality	Importance
	Top	High	Mid	Low	NA	???	Total
FA		1	8	10		5	24
FL		1	1	2		1	5
FM					4		4
GA	1	6	11	52		29	99
B	7	29	51	108		151	346
C	7	45	126	364		505	1,047
Start	2	24	137	895	1	1,310	2,369
Stub		4	37	587	6	709	1,343
List	1	2	9	47		64	123
Category					663		663
Disambig					6		6
File					17		17
Project					4		4
Redirect	3	2	5	27	169		206
Template					206		206
Other					6		6
Assessed	21	114	385	2,092	1,082	2,774	6,468
Unassessed				6		48	54
Total	21	114	385	2,098	1,082	2,822	6,522
WikiWork factors (?)		ω = 25,327			Ω = 4.84

Say you combine the two projects with single banner. Now if I want to assess articles with no importance rating for the Southern California Region, I would have to sift through 9171 articles instead of 435. A large majority of these articles would be from Northern California, of which I could not fairly assess since I have little expertise of that region.

Unless the single banner proposal can subcategorize articles, you might find it hard for editors to support this proposal.

For anyone interested, this debate has been ongoing here, taking up most of the sub-conversations. Brien Clark 04:49, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

As concisely as possible: Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus! ;-) Kirill Lokshin 04:52, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

I have a hard time figuring out why people would look for articles to edit / assess based on it being in Southern California rather than just California. It's only one of many possible ways to group articles, and not necessarily the best. You could make the same argument for SOCAL as one could for ANY topic or region. It's not always best to break things down in that way, especially considering pre-existing projects and so on. Unless it's to divide a massive amount of work, that I might be able to see, but how many of these articles keep being tagged with both banners? Notice that when WP:ANIME tags an article you don't also see WP:TV, because there it makes sense to divide the work rather than share the work.

That being said, Kirill has yet again found the best of both worlds. -- Ned Scott 05:38, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Why would we be only interested in Southern California articles? For the same reason anyone would be interested in Louisville rather than Kentucky, or New York Public Transportation rather than New York or Public transportation: it's just what we like. I live in SoCal, and am likweise more interested in it; I also know much more, and so can contribute more and better to those articles. —ScouterSig 15:59, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

I consider 10,000 articles of WP:CAL a lot of work. And the both banner issue is primarily the issue driving the debate between the two projects. Brien Clark 05:48, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Look at how {{WikiProject Germany}} handles for example Munich. One banner - seperate importance rating. Agathoclea 09:43, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Yep. It's not difficult to set up a single banner to provide each task force with the needed statistics. Kirill Lokshin 13:33, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

We've had separate importance ratings for some rail transport subprojects through {{TrainsWikiProject}} for some time now. There are separate importance ratings for WP:NYPT, WP:RTPJ and WP:LT integrated into the one banner. As importance ratings are established for subprojects, I add them to the template. Slambo (Speak) 14:19, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Nomenclature suggestion

Since one of the concerns expressed above is that some local WPs may resist feeling "downgraded" to "task forces" or some other title, how about the following: Leave "WikiProject" as the title of local projects, and come up with a new title instead for the Parent-level collections of editors. This gets over the resistance of local projects, and avoids the wholesale re-naming of many hundreds of existing communities.

Instead, we'll come up with a new title that would affect a much smaller number of Parent-level WPs, which would more cheerfully be accepted by them as an "upgrade." Hence, WikiProject France would now become "Wiki____ France" (whatever new title we come up with), and contained within it would be descendent WikiProjects Paris, Normandy and Provence (to use hypothetical examples).

If anyone likes this nomenclature idea, any bright suggestions of a new title for Parent-level collections of editors? Spamreporter1 15:17, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Maybe "WikiDepartment" as the name of a parent group? Alternately, maybe we could make the name WikiProject apply only to those specific projects which are responsible for the creation of infoboxes. Thus, we would probably limit the number of WikiProjects to maybe 20 or 30, including some of the smaller projects, like Wikipedia:WikiProject Cities. Then, all the other working groups, task forces, or whatever they're called wouldn't feel "downgraded". I know the Saints Project I work with probably only uses infoboxes which are properly under the domain of Biography. The others that come to mind as making infoboxes are Philosophy, Religion, Countries, Highways, Military History, History, Tree of Life and maybe a few more of the sciences, Video Games, Media, Music, and a few others. And, of course, if any of the smaller projects ever do go dormant, they could comparatively easily be absorbed into the WikiProject which creates their infoboxes. John Carter 15:44, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Bleh. The problem with that idea is that it requires pagemoves for the larger groups rather than the smaller ones, which is somewhat counterintuitive, and will make this into a lot more work than was intended.

Perhaps a better idea would be to have an explicit gradation of WikiProjects? For example, you'd have Tier 1 WikiProjects, Tier 2 WikiProject, Tier 3 WikiProjects, etc., each of which would have a somewhat different structural form. This would work best with some variant of the accreditation proposal, which could determine which tier the project qualified for; but it could be done even without that. Kirill Lokshin 15:48, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Making the "Tiers" explicit is a good idea. Are you thinking that the Tier would be part of the name itself, or simply some type of internal structural element? Spamreporter1 17:41, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Some sort of internal (or external) metadata, to remove the need for mass page moves. If we decide to actually use the tiers for something, we could have, say, an official "List of WikiProjects by tier" that people could use as a reference, and presumably the projects themselves would have notes to the effect of being certain-tier projects; but I envision it more of a shorthand notation for projects that are supposed to be doing something in particular (e.g. Tier 1 = project uses integrated field in parent project's tags; Tier 2 = project tags talk pages with own tags; etc.). Kirill Lokshin 17:46, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Some level of feeling downgraded might be unavoidable for some, but it's only a temporary and superficial feeling. We need to do our best in showing that this is not a downgrade, but a reorganization. Many people have the same misconception from articles being merged, that one topic is being "downgraded" rather than being reorganized information. One way I think we can do this is conveying the idea that the WikiProject participants are still just as important (and are able to be more helpful) in being a task force. Remind them that it helps their efforts and goals, which is the whole reason we are here, and they will be able to do more by being set up as a task force. -- Ned Scott 07:46, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

biggest projects by members.

Is there a way of working out a ranking of the largest projects by members? Of not, can we start one? A table with the date the projects started and membership would be useful to look at. Dev920 (Have a nice day!) 16:10, 28 February 2007 (UTC)