Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2010-09-20/WikiProject report

This week, we have a ticket to ride with WikiProject Trains. Started in March 2004, the project has grown to include over 58,000 pages, including 35 featured articles, 22 featured lists, 157 good articles, and an unassessed article backlog of 13,000. The project's total number of members is staggering. WikiProject Trains is aided by a network of related projects, including WikiProject Stations, WikiProject Streetcars, and several projects covering country-specific railways. The project maintains a featured portal, to-do list, manual of style, resources for new articles, and 12 task forces. We interviewed Mjroots, DavidCane, Slambo, Iridescent, Redrose64, Simply south, and Oakshade.

'''What motivated you to join WikiProject Trains? Do you consider yourself a railfan?'''
 * Mjroots: I've always been interested in railways. I was a trainspotter in my youth, but stopped when British Rail was split up.


 * DavidCane: A specific London Underground-focused enthusiast, but definitely not a trainspotter; I'm interested mostly in the infrastructure and the engineers behind it rather than the trains. My interest stems from growing up in Morden at the southern end of the London Underground's Northern line; a childhood trip into central London usually involved an exciting journey on the tube - alternately rushing through dark tunnels and stopping at a brightly lit stations. I can remember writing a school essay when I was about ten on the building of Morden tube station and discovering photos of the suburb where I lived in the 1920s when its was still just fields.


 * Slambo: I am very much a railfan. In fact, the lead image of the railfan article, File:Railfans at prairie du chien.jpg is a photo that I took showing my wife and a friend of ours when we went on one of our railfanning trips to Prairie du Chien.  I've been interested in trains and model railroading as far as I can remember, which dates back to about the early 1970s.  When I started editing here in September 2004, I looked at the amount of railroad-related articles and thought I could help out with them.  The first edits I made were to correct and add links to railroad historical society websites.  It was Morven who introduced me to WikiProject Trains, and it seemed like an excellent way to focus my editing on the subjects that I was most interested in.


 * Iridescent: I'd worked on a lot of train related articles so thought I ought to put my name on the list. And no, definitely not; I've come from the social history side, not the engineering side.


 * Redrose64: A school trip on Wednesday 21 March 1979 (yes, it's etched in my memory) to the National Railway Museum changed my life permanently. That was the day I first collected engine numbers; the following weekend I rifled my father's bookshelves in search of anything railway related. I stopped collecting numbers when it became clear that locomotives on passenger trains were doomed to disappear. I to WikiProject Trains just over a year after getting a Wikipedia account, although I had already  WikiProject UK Railways, after less than 150 edits across the whole of Wikipedia. I would say that the vast majority of my 17000+ edits are rail-related.


 * Simply south: There are many different terms for the same thing and i would call myself a rail enthusiast. I have always been interested in rail transport since i was younger and only recently became interested elsewhere. However i am not a trainspotter.

'''The project covers a wide range of articles related to modern and historical trains throughout the world. What are some of your favorite articles?'''
 * Mjroots: Some of the articles on lines outside the UK, such as the North Friesland Railway in the Netherlands, the Chemin de Fer de la Baie de Somme and Réseau Breton in France, all of which I've had a hand in.


 * DavidCane: Historical articles, ones that feature interesting engineering and articles on things that are no more or that were planned but did not happen. These tend to be in fairly obscure areas, so article development on these is sometimes minimal. Tunnel Railway is a good example of something gone and mostly forgotten. The Victorians and Edwardians were hugely keen on the idea of building underground railways in London but very few schemes were able to raise money. City and Brixton Railway is an interesting short article on one such failure.


 * Oakshade: I very much enjoyed reading Berlin Friedrichstraße station. It was a fascinating station as it was located directly on the border between East and West Berlin, therefore separated countries within the working station.  I never knew any of this and the article explains this history in great detail.  Another article I enjoyed is Rack railway.  This is an excellent detailed description of this unique type of rail infrastructure and its examples around the world.


 * Slambo: I wish I could be a little less selfish about this question, but right now I have two favorites: Pioneer Zephyr and John Bull (locomotive). I started both of these articles and researched and edited them both up to Featured Article status.  For a while I was researching the history of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway with an eye toward getting that article up to featured status as well; I got a little distracted with some of the associated articles, starting articles for the railroad's presidents and a few of the subsidiary companies, such as California Southern Railroad, and significant events, like the operation of the Scott Special (both of these ancillary articles are now listed as Good Articles).


 * Iridescent: By their nature, most of them are boring to non-specialists, just because it's often necessarily a technical and inherently boring topic. DavidCane's biographical articles such as Edgar Speyer are probably the most interesting to non-specialists.


 * Simply south: It is hard to pick out which are my favourite articles. It has been interesting learning about systems around the world, for example the Vancouver SkyTrain or the Wuppertal Schwebebahn. There are also odd articles, an example which is the British Rail flying saucer.

'''The project has 34 featured articles, 22 featured lists, and 156 good articles. Have you contributed to any of these articles? Are there any other articles you are currently working on bringing to FA or GA status?'''
 * Mjroots: I've been responsible for two GAs - Charles Fryatt and the Hawkhurst Branch Line. I'm not currently working on any GAs or FAs.


 * DavidCane: I've written and taken through the approval process seven of the featured articles, three of the featured lists and nine of the good articles. I am currently working on improving to GA standard the article on architect Charles Holden, who designed many of the tube's best stations. After that I will be developing Metropolitan District Railway to FA to complete a Featured Topic on the Underground Electric Railways Company of London.


 * Oakshade: I'm quite proud of creating Santa Fe Depot (San Bernardino) and providing much of the content seen today. It has been suggested it can be Good Article status.  Perhaps more detail is needed. But that's what's great about this project.  There's an endless supply of editors that can be motivated to improve upon existing articles.


 * Slambo: I took four articles from creation to Featured Article status: Pioneer Zephyr, John Bull (locomotive), Rogers Locomotive and Machine Works and an older version of the Franklin B. Gowen article. The article on the Pioneer Zephyr was created from nothing and promoted to Featured status in just five days (February 24 to March 1), which at the time was the fastest for any article from creation to Featured status.  The article on Franklin Gowen has since been updated by another editor with quite a bit more information and also retains Featured status.  I have taken many articles to Good Article status, including Scott Special, California Southern Railroad, Dakota, Minnesota and Eastern Railroad and Cyrus K. Holliday.  Many more articles I created are former Good Articles; they were removed from the list after the inline citation and length standards improved.  These include: Weyauwega, Wisconsin derailment, Timken 1111, El Gobernador, C. P. Huntington, stock car (rail), dome car, autorack (in collaboration with another editor), EMD BL2 and others.


 * Iridescent: Eight of the FAs and two of the GAs, plus minor edits and encouraging noises on a number of the others. Until an article's near complete it's impossible to say whether it's GA/FA material so it's pointless making predictions, although I do want to get Quainton Road railway station up to scratch to complete the Brill Tramway set.


 * Redrose64: I have made various edits, small and large, to articles which later reached GA/FA; of these, the most important were probably helping get Hawkhurst Branch Line to GA, and SECR K and SR K1 classes to FA. Although I did create Wotton (Metropolitan Railway) railway station, which is now FA, most of the FA work was carried out by iridescent (above); I don't consider my own somewhat factual style would satisfy WP:FAC should I write the whole article and submit it. Consider Reading Southern railway station: that's mostly mine, but will need the attention of others if it's to rise above C-Class (it doesn't satisfy B-class article criterion 2, and possibly not 5 and 6).


 * Simply south: I have made small edits to a few GAs such as Railway stations in Cromer.

'''The project is home to 12 task forces with focuses ranging from drawing maps and adding images to reducing the assessment backlog and maintaining the project's portal. Tell us a little about how these task forces contribute to the project's overall goals.'''
 * DavidCane: I'm not involved with any of these. I think people are most likely to edit what they are most interested in so formalised administrative structures are probably not of interest to most editors. Having a series of niche activities like these also has the potential to discourage users from doing these things because they think that it's someone else's problem.


 * Slambo: I was involved in founding many of the task forces. I was hoping more editors would step up and take to the tasks that are listed in each.  Each task force was designed with the idea of giving newer editors an area of the WikiProject on which to focus.  Most of my own focus recently has been on the assessment backlog and maintaining the portal.


 * Iridescent: I'm not involved with any. "Reducing the backlog" is a will-o-the-wisp which doesn't mesh with how Wikipedia operates in reality; things are improved by people who are interested in improving them, and no project that aims to dictate what people ought to be doing has any chance of working. In my experience, "improvement drives" generally have a counterproductive effect, in steering people who don't really understand a subject towards material they're not competent to work on. I think task forces are great in theory, but generally they just don't work.


 * Redrose64: It's not altogether clear what the scope of the various task forces is. When I add to a talk page, I usually omit all the task force parameters; the only ones I ever set are yes and/or yes, since it's a pretty clear decision whether the article falls within those or not. As for participation in task forces, I don't.

Are there any other projects that collaborate and share resources with WikiProject Trains?
 * DavidCane: There are a number of projects that have overlapping fields of interest and common members, but I am not aware of any specific collaborative efforts or resource sharing.


 * Slambo: There have been some efforts in the past to collaborate with other WikiProjects. Most of the collaborations that I watched didn't get as far as we wanted them to, but they all led to some improvements in article quality here and there.  A few WikiProjects use the TrainsWikiProject talk page banner that I originally created (Streetcars, Rapid transit, Metros of the former Soviet Union, Trains in Japan, New Zealand Railways and UK Railways).


 * Redrose64: There's a significant overlap with WikiProject London Transport, which has many areas (such as buses) entirely outside the WikiProject Trains remit. The Route Diagram Template (RDT) is definitely a resource shared between WikiProject Trains, WikiProject London Transport and others (WikiProject UK Waterways is one that I know of, but it's outside my interests).


 * Simply south: RDT is a resource that was originally set up for rail transport articles and the like and was copied from the German Wikipedia but has been used by a lot of projects such as WikiProject UK Waterways and WikiProject Hiking Trails.

Anything else you'd like to add?
 * Slambo: I created Portal:Trains in May 2005 based on a quick suggestion on the project talk page. I volunteered that I would be willing to maintain it for the future as well, and have been making updates to the portal (mostly in the Did You Know section) on a daily basis.  My efforts got the portal promoted to be a Featured portal in January 2006, and it has retained Featured status since then.  Some of the templates that I created for portal maintenance are now also being used by other portals.

Next week we'll admire a buttress. Until then, you can build up your knowledge of WikiProjects in the archive.