Wikipedia:The Great Wikipedia Dramaout

In the Great Wikipedia Dramaout, similar to the Great American Smokeout, editors are asked to engage in a five-day period of abstinence from drama at Wikipedia; the most addictive and yet cancerous aspect of our community. During this five-day drama blackout, it is requested that regular contributors to the non-article-space areas of Wikipedia, including but not limited to, the various administrator noticeboards, the reference desks, the village pumps, or any other non-essential areas of Wikipedia cease working at those areas for the length of the Dramaout and instead work on article content. With the exception of areas deemed essential to improving articles directly, all participating editors are asked to voluntarily abstain from non-article edits.

The purpose of this campaign is to improve article quality in Wikipedia.

The 1st Great Wikipedia Dramaout, took place from July 18 to July 22, 2009; its article-improvement log is located at The Great Wikipedia Dramaout/1st/Log.

The 2nd Great Wikipedia Dramaout, began on 00:00, 18 January 2010 (UTC) and ended on 23:59, 22 January 2010 (UTC); its log is located at The Great Wikipedia Dramaout/2nd/Log.

The 3rd Great Wikipedia Dramaout began on July 5, 2010 and ended at 23:59 (UTC) on Friday, July 9, 2010; its log is located at The Great Wikipedia Dramaout/3rd/Log.

The 4th Great Wikipedia Dramaout started at March 1, 2012; its log is located at The Great Wikipedia Dramaout/4th/Log.

Areas of Wikipedia affected

 * Administrator's Noticeboard and all subboards (Incidents, edit wars, arbitration enforcement, etc.)
 * Reference Desks
 * Village pumps
 * All discussions to proposed changes to policies and guidelines
 * Talk page chatter, except for article collaboration
 * including Jimbo's talk page, often an informal venue for theatrics
 * deletion discussions
 * requests for unblock
 * discussion about RfA/RfB
 * WP:RfC
 * the Abuse Response project

Areas of Wikipedia exempted

 * WP:AIV, for reporting blatant vandalism
 * WP:UAA, for reporting self-evidently unacceptable usernames
 * WP:RFPP, for requesting page protection due to edit warring, repeated vandalism and BLP violations
 * WP:ANI/3RR for reporting violations of WP:3RR
 * WP:COPYVIO and WP:BLP violations
 * WP:TEAMWORK, for collaborations to improve the quality of articles (but no arguing allowed!)
 * WP:CSD, for reporting blatant vandalism, spam, attack pages and the like
 * WP:AFC, for the purpose that it's devoted to article creation
 * WP:MEA, for missing encyclopedic articles
 * WP:DYK nominations for articles you worked on through this campaign, and reviewing other nominations
 * WP:ITN nominations for articles you worked on through this campaign, and reviewing other nominations
 * WP:GA and WP:FA/WP:FL nominations for articles/lists you worked on through this campaign, and reviewing other nominations
 * WP:PR for getting a peer review of an article you are working on through this campaign, and reviewing other articles
 * Patrolling and tagging of new articles at Special:NewPages
 * Anything else that helps with maintenance or writing articles

Ideas for things to do during the Dramaout

 * Create an article on a notable subject which is missing from Wikipedia
 * Expand a stub to a fully developed article
 * Improve a poorly written or incomplete section of an article
 * Find an article in need of WP:CLEANUP and resolve ALL of the issues noted in the cleanup tags
 * Take a substandard article, list, or portal and start bringing it up to good article or featured article status
 * Provide needed pictures, graphics, audio/video or maps to articles
 * Correct existing errors, particularly those that editors know are incorrect but need to look for a reference to document the correct facts
 * Make translations
 * Create or expand articles for WP:DYK
 * Create or expand articles for WP:ITN
 * Add references to quotations, and anywhere one is requested. Google Book Search can be helpful
 * Support your WikiProject's articles needing attention
 * Complete the tasks on any to-do lists that you see (Category:Wikipedia pages with to-do lists)
 * Help with licence migration. You can help determine if media files used on Wikipedia Projects can be migrated to dual license.

Related projects

 * The Great Wikipedia Dramaonly
 * Gnome Week