Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Task forces

=== Task forces ===

Task forces are groups of Wikipedians gathered for collaborative work on a particular topic within a WikiProject.

The medicine project is organized into task forces to deal with smaller chunks of medicine as it is a huge topic. All are encouraged to participate in any task forces that interest them.

List of WikiProject Medicine task forces
To propose a new task force, please visit Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine/Task forces.
 * Anaesthesiology (talk)
 * Cardiology (talk)
 * Dermatology (talk)
 * Emergency medicine and EMS (talk)
 * Gastroenterology (talk)
 * Hematology-oncology (talk)
 * Medical genetics (talk)
 * Nephrology (talk)
 * Neurology (talk)
 * Ophthalmology (talk)
 * Pathology (talk)
 * Psychiatry (talk)
 * Pulmonology (talk)
 * Radiology (talk)
 * Reproductive medicine (talk)
 * Society and medicine (talk)
 * Toxicology (talk)

Why task forces?
The major reasons for using task forces are convenience and lifespan:
 * Maintaining an independent WikiProject entails some administrative hassle: You have to keep a current entry for the WikiProject in the WikiProject Council's directory.  You have to decide whether or not to be involved in article assessment, and if you are, then you have to create project-specific standards for assessment.  You have to create project-specific templates.  You have to find a source of new members.  In short, it can be a bureaucratic hassle that significantly distracts a small group from the major point, which is to improve articles.
 * Small WikiProjects often have short lifespans. When one or two active editors change their focus, or become inactive, the projects die.  Task forces, however, are meant to be smaller groups and can wax and wane as needed, without needing to worry about the task force itself disappearing.

Task force creation guidelines
Once a proposed task force has been discussed at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine/Task forces, follow the steps below. Replace name with the name of the task force (usually the name of the specialty).


 * Categories
 * Create a category called "name task force" within Category:WikiProject Medicine task forces
 * Create a category called "name task force articles" within "name task force" and Category:Medicine articles by task force
 * Create a category called "name articles by quality" within "name task force articles" and Category:Wikipedia 1.0 assessments
 * Create the typical categories for article classification within "name articles by quality" (see Category:Medicine articles by quality as an example)
 * Create a category called "name articles by importance" within "name task force articles" and Category:Wikipedia 1.0 assessments
 * Create the typical categories for article classification within "name articles by quality" (see Category:Medicine articles by importance as an example)


 * Pages
 * Create "Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/name task force"
 * Add links to the task force and its talk page to WikiProject Medicine/Task forces (this page)
 * Add link to the task force at WikiProject Council/Directory/Science
 * Add link to the task force at Portal:Medicine/WikiProjects
 * Add row to bottom of WikiProject Medicine/Milestones to record date of task force creation


 * Templates
 * Add links to the task force and its talk page to
 * Add coding to WPMED to accept two new parameters (requires an administrator)
 * Document the two new parameters at both Template:WPMED/doc and WP:WikiProject Medicine/Assessment
 * Add assessment table to WikiProject Medicine/Assessment


 * Announce
 * Announce the creation of the task force at the doctors' mess
 * Consider announcing its creation at a very small number of key articles within the task force's scope (such as Cardiology for the cardiology task force)

Converting existing projects to task forces
To convert existing projects, follow the above steps with a few modifications.


 * Get consensus from the existing project
 * The participants of the future task force must agree to it. This can be done through two methods:
 * Demonstration that there are no active participants in the project to be converted. This is generally done for projects that have been tagged as  for months.  Leave a note on the talk page to invite responses.  If there are no responses after a long time, then it may be assumed that there are no active participants (or at least none that object).
 * Demonstration of consensus by the active participants. This is generally done through a discussion on the group's own talk page.
 * If the existing project is medicine- or health-related, WPMED will probably agree to the conversion. However, a note should be posted either at WT:MED or WT:MEDTF to allow WPMED's members to object.  This need not be done unless and until the other group has decided that they would like to become part of WPMED.
 * Categories
 * If the project performed article assessments, some categories may already exist. These should be modified to fit the new category structure as mentioned above.
 * Pages
 * Instead of creating a new task force page, move the project and its talk page to "Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/name task force"
 * Check for subpages and move them as well. Be sure to update links that point to those pages.
 * Check for pre-existing auto-archiving on talk pages, and update those links as well.
 * Remove link to old WikiProject at WikiProject Medicine
 * Templates
 * The project template used on article talk pages will become obsolete.
 * Article talk pages with both the project's banner and WPMED's banner need to have the project's banner removed, and the task force's parameters added to WPMED
 * Article talk pages with only the project's banner need to have WPMED added with the task force's parameters
 * Either redirect the old template or have it deleted.
 * Remove the old template from the list of alternatives at this page.
 * These steps can be performed manually, or for larger projects, with the help of a bot. A bot has already been created for such a move.  See Bot requests/Archive 22 and Bots/Requests for approval/AnomieBOT 7 for details.