Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory/WikiProject/doc

This template is used by the WikiProject Council Directory.

Adding a project's main listing
Please add projects in alphabetical order (with exceptions; key projects in a topic area may go at or near the top) under the most applicable heading in the directory, using this template with parameters as illustrated here:


 * project – a raw link to the main project page.
 * shortname – the short name of the project.
 * active – "yes" if the project is currently active.
 * assessment – a raw link to the project's assessment process, if one exists.
 * peer-review – a raw link to the project's internal peer review process, if one exists.
 * collaboration – a raw link to the project's collaboration, if one exists.
 * portal – the name of the most relevant portal (without the "Portal:" prefix)
 * portal2 – optional name of a second relevant portal
 * portal3 – optional name of a third relevant portal; additional portals can be listed under the notes field.
 * notes – any additional points of interest, such as the existence of task forces or additional portals.

Please do not indicate that your project has assessment or collaboration processes established until these actually are established, even if you think it will only take a couple of days. Add them later.

Adding a task force of a project
Task forces should always be added directly after the main project:


 * task-force – "yes" if the project is a task force of a larger project; if this is set, only the project, shortname, portal, and notes fields are shown; including others will only waste space. If the task force does not have and is unlikely to ever have its own portal,

Adding a project's secondary (cross-reference) listings
You can add a project to a second, third, etc., categorization by using a different configuration of this template. Task forces should not have secondary listings. A secondary listing need only give a few parameters (the ones not shown aren't used even if you include them):


 * listed-in – used for multi-listing projects in two sections. One listing is the primary link, and uses the fields given in the first section of this documentation; any others are secondary links, and should set this parameter to a raw link to the section where the primary listing is located (such as "" if on same page, or "WikiProject Council/Directory/Culture" if on a different page), and leave out any fields not shown immediately above.

Don't abuse secondary listings

 * Main: WikiProject Council/Guide

Please do not add your project to every conceivable category! This has been a problem especially with pop culture projects. Superman has a massive presence in the fields of comics (first and foremost), television and film, and belongs listed under all three; the fact that there may also be (very questionably notable) Superman action figures and a Superman video game does not mean that WikiProject Superman should be listed under "Toys" and "Video Games" too. Similarly, the fact that Firefly (TV show) spawned a graphic novel and a definitely notable movie does not mean that it should be listed anywhere but under "American TV shows" (or directly, palpably, obviously relevant future categorizations, perhaps "Science fiction TV shows" or "Fox Network TV shows"). Please, help us keep the listings clean, readable and maintainable.

Rules of thumb for pop culture project cross-listings: If the TV show in question has not spawned several series of comic books of more than a few dozen issues each, or one such series of 100+ issues (or a graphic novel series spanning several years of regular publication), it does not belong in "Comics". If the novel(s) in question have not spawned a truly notable TV show with a strong fanbase, that lasted several seasons, or spawned at least three movies of strong notoriety and influence, it does not belong in a "&#91;Something&#93; TV shows" or the "Films" section. If the film(s) in question have not spawned a video game series that provides a truly significant amount of character development and plot extension, it does not belong in "Video games" (even if the games were popular in their day.)

Examples: WikiProject Middle-earth arguably belongs in both "Fiction series" (of course) and "Films" (3 blockbusters), but not "Video games" &mdash; despite there being several games, they were only briefly popular and added virtually nothing to the story. WikiProject Star Wars certainly belongs in "Films" (obviously) and "Fiction series" (very popular and large follow-on novel series), and a case can be made that it also belongs in "Toys" (the most collectible series of action figures in history, effectively creating the genre), "Comics" (at least three series, one well over 100 issues and spanning over a decade of publication), and "Video games" (a great number of games, which taken together provide almost as much canonical storyline as the films) &mdash; provided that the project actually covers Star Wars from all of these angles. By further contrast, WikiProject Star Trek should not be added to "Comics"; while it did spawn several comic book series, none of them had staying power. What about WikiProject Pokémon? "Anime and manga", "Video games", and "Card games". Period. It might be tempting to also use "Films" and a "TV" category, but these already cross-reference "Anime and manga"; or "Toys", but those are only incidental to the Pokémon phenomenon &mdash; a marketing byproduct.

Note: The comparative-weight concepts above can be used, of course, to extrapolate similar rules of thumb for entirely different areas, such as military history or biological sciences. It boils down to: Use common sense and be kind to your fellow Wikipedians, for whom over-promotion of your project will simply be an irritation.

When is a project inactive?

 * Main: WikiProject Council/Guide

Although opinions differ, a WikiProject is likely to be considered inactive if any of the following conditions are met:
 * A completely empty list of participants.
 * A list of participants that has not grown beyond the initial 1 (or 2 or 3) founders in many months, unless clearly constructive work is being done despite the tiny membership (and in such a case, discussing a merger with a cognizable "parent" project may be recommended).
 * No changes to the WikiProject's pages (including any associated talk pages) for at least 3 months. Bot link/typo corrections and other similar minor activity are not counted as "changes".
 * There is no or very little evidence that the project is doing significant work in the area for which it was established, the point above notwithstanding. It is notable by way of analogy that the Wikipedia Administrators' noticeboard and Miscellany for deletion generally interpret a user's pattern of doing nothing but fiddling with their own user page for a long period of time as evidence that the user will not be a constructive editor, resulting in the user page being deleted. A WikiProject that does nothing but work on itself for months is evidence of a similar pattern of thumb-twiddling.

Inactive projects should be handled in the following ways: Projects with obvious collaboration and interaction among the participants should generally not be deleted. The WikiProject Council stresses project participant recruitment in order to avoid inactive or abortive projects. A very small but productive project can lapse into inactivity if its low number of members all happen to become busy with other things for an extended period of time.
 * 1) If the project never really got off the ground (no or few listed participants who have not collaborated on the talk page or shown evidence of any work on related articles, incomplete or non-existent project pages, and similar, after at least a few months since initial creation), it may be sent to Miscellany for deletion for removal from Wikipedia.
 * 2) If the project has had activity and collaboration, but has had no activity for about 6 months, tag it with.
 * 3) If the project has had activity and collaboration, and has been tagged with for about 6 months, replace that tag with.