Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-03-28/WikiProject report



This week, we turn our attention to the maintenance-oriented WikiProject Wikify. Started in August 2006 by Draicone, it currently has 68 active members. The project focuses on wikification, as well as improving the layout and formatting of articles that have been tagged with the Wikify template. Although a relatively old project, participation had dwindled until recently, when it enjoyed a revival of sorts. The project is currently preparing for their fourth backlog elimination drive in April, which aims to reduce the backlog of over 21,000 articles. The Signpost interviewed four members of the project.

Sumsum2010 has been an editor on Wikipedia since January 2010: "I became interested in WikiProject Wikify when I saw an invitation to the first drive posted on NerdyScienceDude's talkpage. I participated in the drive and managed to get first place on the leaderboard. Ever since then, I've been hooked on the project! I have been a coordinator in both the December and February drives, and was recently elected to be an assistant coordinator [of the project]." WikiCopter has been an editor since August 2010, and can't recall the exact reason for joining, "but it might have something to do with the shabby shape of the project and the thousands of articles tagged for wikification. The project was going down. I started the first drive along with User:Mono modeled after the Guild of Copy Editor's copy editing drive, and ever since, every drive has been a further step to destroying the backlog." Nolelover had participated in the backlog elimination drives held by the Guild of Copy Editors, "and Mono invited me to the October 2010 wikification drive as someone who might be interested. After that, I began taking part in all the work that needed to be done as the project became active again, and [was] assistant coordinator for the December drive." Guoguo12 has been on Wikipedia since February 2009, and was recently made executive coordinator for the project upon the retirement of User:Mono.

'''Your project has adopted an unusual page design for a WikiProject. What are the advantages of such a design?'''
 * Sumsum2010: The advantages are that it looks very sleek and you don't feel like you're being bombarded with information. For navigation, I can normally find everything I need on the news bar, except for the main newsletter page.
 * WikiCopter: I personally like the new page design... In fact, it's more like a menu rather than a list of subpages. Which one is easier to navigate?
 * Nolelover: Because of the relative youth of this project (founded in 2006 but only active within since late 2010), many of our members are fairly new to Wikipedia and we have to be careful not to overwhelm them with information and instructions. We've tried to slim down the page and most of what remains is the only thing that new members really need to know: how to wikify. That said, a navigation bar has been recently added, and it is available to those looking for more detailed information on the project.

'''WikiProject Wikify has over 21,000 articles that need to be wikified. How do you keep all these up and what are your biggest challenges?'''
 * Sumsum2010: One of the best ways to keep that number somewhat under control is to hold drives. Another big one is to try to educate people on when to use, and when not to use, the Wikify tag. The second is very difficult to do. Sometimes an article needs to be fixed and people don't know just what needs to be fixed, so they slap on a Wikify tag and hope someone else will figure it out.

'''Your project has conducted three drives: October and December in 2010, and February 2011. How successful were these, and what did you learn?'''
 * Sumsum2010: These drives were very successful, although the numbers may not show it. Hundreds of new articles are added everyday, to even slow stabilize this is a huge accomplishment. I learned a lot about the Wikify tag. Such as what it really means, need to be done. Some of my first "wikifyings" would be better classified as copy-edits. I was re-writing entire paragraphs and trying to place commas. Eventually, I figured out that wikifying is not very difficult. It is as easy as fixing wiki-markup, adding links, fixing heading levels, and adding an infobox (if possible).
 * Nolelover: Our drives were based on the ones held by the Guild of Copy Editors (GOCE), and over the course of the three drives we have been trying to figure out what works for this project – the rewards, the methods, etc. In October 2010, we tried to make our drive look as much like those put on by the GOCE, because that was the only proven method. Since then, a lot has been learned by trial-and-error, and we've changed as a result of that. Each drive has gotten better and better, both in results and in organization, and we are looking forward to continuing that trend with our upcoming April drive.
 * Guoguo12: More specifically, for our next drive we have introduced a new scoring system aimed at making the drive easier to understand for newcomers. Awards are no longer being handed out for word counts, but for number of articles completed only.

Do you collaborate with other WikiProjects?
 * Sumsum2010: Yes, we collaborate with the Guild of Copy Editors. We stagger our drive schedule with theirs, to allow people plenty of time to devote to each. Many of our participants also belong to GOCE. The people on their participant list is where a large portion of our October drive advertisements were sent out to.
 * Guoguo12: In addition, we are thankful for partnering WikiProjects like WikiProject Novels, which supported our last drive.

'''What are the most pressing needs for WikiProject Wikify? How can a new contributor help today?'''
 * Sumsum2010: The most pressing need is for more people who can stay on top of the backlog all the time, not just during drives. If people are always hacking away at the backlog, it will not jump up between drives and will eventually get very low. While this may take some time it can still be done. A new contributor could help by reading the cheetsheet and then looking at how a Featured article is formatted and organized. This area of Wikipedia can be very daunting to a new editor, mostly due to the mass of Manual of Style (MoS) reading. While the MoS contains good information, it is way more than an average editor would want to read in its entirety (even I've never read the whole thing).
 * Nolelover: For an article maintenance project like us, helping out isn't too complicated – having editors sit down and wikify articles is the only way we'll ever make headway into our massive backlog. Our backlog drives are also an easy, rewarding way to help out. We're preparing one for April, and that's as good a time as any to start wikifying.
 * Guoguo12: WikiProject Wikify needs all the help it can get. Every month, over a thousand articles are tagged newly for wikification. Sometimes we get even bigger surges, like in January 2011, in which over 5,000 articles were added to the backlog. It really isn't hard to help out. If you have spare time, just click here (or on the WikiProject logo on our project page) to find a random article to wikify. Don't forget to add yourself to the member list here.

Next week, we keep our hydrostatic equilibrium in check while we launch into orbit. Until then, let gravity draw you to our archives.