User:Jarry1250/WPECON

Firstly, a personal thank you to everyone who has signed on to help with WikiProject Economics. It's clear that there are enough willing and able people to be able to achieve something; for everyone who signed up here there are probably more who, for whatever reason, did not get the chance. I have prepared a few ideas below, which it would be nice to have some opinion on; in particular viewpoints contrary to my own.

Reliable sources and weight
Nils von Barth has clearly put in a lot of time in recent weeks on the talk page of this rather older proposal. I hope that he will be able to turn this into a new proposed guideline that can gain a local consensus. Any which way, I'm sure he would appreciate some comment, now or later.

Collaboration
Almost two years ago now, the WikiProject had a concerted effort to get Adam Smith to FA status. This proved, in the words of FrankTobia, to be more difficult than first thought. FAs require a staggering amount of work; an argument can be made, I think, for trying to focus instead on the long tail of economics articles. So instead, I think the Project could reward the efforts of editors who get articles to meet the standards of WP:DYK (though not necessarily putting them through that). The idea would be to improve existing low quality articles and to fill in gaps. A competition would be nice, or a system of barnstars, perhaps.

Peer review
The WikiProject currently has no go-to place for reviews or requesting peer review. These can get lost in the mixture of items on the main talk page of the project; might it be worth having a separate page or does that just thin the thing out?

Notability
Currently, there exists no specific guidelines on notability in the world of economics. There may well be no need for them (in the spirit of WP:CREEP); the general guideline may be sufficient. Roughly speaking, there exists at the moment, in the scope of WPECON:


 * Articles about economists: these seem well covered by WP:ACADEMIC;
 * Articles about institutions and groups: these seem well covered by WP:ORG;
 * Articles about economic events, crises, and so forth: equally well covered;
 * Articles about economics terminology: what guidelines cover these? WP:NEO? WP:NOTDICT?

So, if there is need of a guidelines on notability, it should be the last category; it should also answer the question of when we want separate, short articles, or just redirects to the greater concept.

Style guide
The page is, at the moment, rather unfilled. Ideally some of the more experienced editors should get together and build a proper proposal when they get the chance, not only covering what is listed there but other aspects of writing about economics and its pitfalls.

Naming conventions
Probably not much to say in terms of naming conventions for this particular WikiProject other than that mentioned above at.

Scope
The project's current scope is listed, rather succinctly, as "the field of economics". Is this being properly applied? Does anyone have any comments to make?

Newsletter
I'm sure my mass bombarding of user talk pages wasn't to everyone's taste, but that form of communication is, undoubtedly the easiest way to make sure people read a message. Newsletters pick up on this, and allow the project to feel more like a community. They are also something I am prepared - and able - to do if people feel it useful. Opt-in or opt-out? I guess that may depend on usefulness. Some things that could be mentioned:
 * New members, and retiring members;
 * Articles for deletion that economists may be in;
 * Requests for peer reviews and suggestions for articles that ought to be written;
 * Newly promoted articles;
 * Collaboration or competition results;