Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2008-03-13/WikiProject report

This week, we interviewed three members from the Professional Wrestling WikiProject - (iMatthew, Nikki311 and TJ Spyke). After enjoying a year of promotions (whether they be to FA/FL status or to GA), the project had grown significantly to become one of the most acclaimed.

History
Started in March 2005 by, the project has been going for nearly three years, celebrating its anniversary in just under two weeks now, on the 21st. It started with relatively few editors but now has over 350 participants. In that time they have established themselves to be one of the highest achieving projects on Wikipedia, with a featured topic, 25+ featured articles & lists, 30+ good articles and nearing 250 B-class articles. According to the project mainpage, the aims for it achieve are as follows: Additionally, the project has a large number of departments, including: Collaboration of the Week, an Assessment centre and a Style guide to model pages on.
 * To create and edit featured article quality professional wrestling articles on Wikipedia, with the intent of making Wikipedia an accurate and valued reference for pro wrestling information.
 * To keep articles encyclopedic in nature.
 * To establish a uniform style for wrestler biographies, wrestling events and wrestling promotions.


 * 1) What does the WikiProject do?
 * Nikki311: Our project is focused on maintaining and improving all wrestling-related articles on Wikipedia. Most of our work is focused on reverting vandalism, as most active wrestlers are targets of daily IP and new-user vandalism. We also focus on improving articles to Good and Featured levels.
 * 1) How is the project organized? Are there any coordinators for example?
 * TJ Spyke: The members vote on a weekly article which our members will focus on to improve as much as possible. Anybody is free to expand articles; when it comes to expanding pay-per-view articles though, we usually have one person volunteer to start the expansion and have the rest of the project come in afterward. This helps make sure the article is written in the same style. Since wrestling in general tends to looked down on, there is an unofficial rule against other project members from voting in FA nominations in order to avoid any claims of vote stacking. When there is big news (like a major wrestler dying or getting fired) it's posted on the project talkpage and usually added to the watchlists of several editors in order to keep an eye on them. There are no specific coordinators, other than The Chronic as he originally ran the project newsletter.
 * 1) What are the advantages of having the project's newsletter?
 * iMatthew:The project's newsletter is a very important part of the project. The newsletter is the best way to keep members of the project informed of everything going on in the project. In the newsletter, there are different sections. Recent Articles for Deletion notify users of the AfD's and allow them to get involved. Article statistics keeps the project members informed of the progress of our stub article expansion, as well as our progress in gaining Good and Featured articles. Project news lists current GA, FA, and FL nominations, as well as results from recently closed nominations. It also lists any other news relating to our WikiProject. The Collaboration of the Week is the article that project members will focus on for a week to help improve the article's quality. Member interviews allows project members to get to know some of our active members better. Member news contains the project's calendar for the month, as well as the updated tally of project members and active project members. Current events informs members of the "current events" going on in the professional wrestling world today.
 * 1) Where does the project progress go from here?
 * iMatthew: Right now, our focus is on improving stub articles, and the pay-per-view expansion. At the start of the stub article expansion, the stubs were 24.06% of our articles. Currently, the stubs are less than 19% of our articles. We have a large group of active members that contribute to the stub article expansion. The stub expansion has expanded over 100 articles from stubs to Start and B-Class.Our other main focus is the pay-per-view expansion. The expansion started in October 2007. In total, we have expanded over 75 pay-per-view articles. Out of those, one is a Featured article and eight are Good articles. Overall, our progress from here should get nothing but better. We are constantly gaining more and more Good articles, which shows the project's progress.
 * 1) Do you think there may be any weaknesses to the project, if any?
 * Nikki311: As with any project, we do have weaknesses. Although we are fortunate to have so many active members, more members equals more opinions, so sometimes it is harder to reach a consensus. Also, finding reliable sources is sometimes difficult, as wrestlers under contract with World Wrestling Entertainment aren't supposed to reveal too much backstage information. Lastly, as previously mentioned, we deal with high levels of vandalism, reverting which sometimes takes editors away from improving articles.
 * 1) What do you think about the project, and has it strengthened your relations to the community?
 * TJ Spyke: The project has improved a lot over the last year, with some really talented editors (like NiciVampireHeart) and having three members become admins (Lid, Nikki311, and LAX) has really helped in fighting vandalism and stopping socks even faster. These have made the project and Wikipedia in general more enjoyable, they also make me feel more comfortable knowing that if I can't access the Internet, I won't have to worry about vandalism lasting long (except for some of the more obscure articles that I don't think anyone else has on their watchlist).
 * 1) How could somebody who isn't a member of the project become involved?
 * Nikki311: We'd love anybody who is interested in improving wrestling-related articles to join our project. All one has to do is add to your user page, introduce yourself on our talk page, and begin editing! If a new member has questions, there are several members, myself included, who would love to help him/her out.