Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-04-18/WikiProject report



This week, we take our first in-depth look at the WikiProject Council. Started in August 2006 by Kirill Lokshin, the Council is a group of Wikipedians gathered to encourage and assist with the development of active and new WikiProjects, and to act as a central point for inter-WikiProject discussion and collaboration. The project does not maintain a formal list of members, but there are 128 editors with the project's userbox. The Signpost interviewed project members John Carter, WhatamIdoing and Kirill Lokshin.

John is an administrator, and has been on Wikipedia since January 2007. He describes himself as "a reviewer-type editor who helped establish a lot of the existing WikiProjects". WhatamIdoing has been a Wikipedian since March 2007, and joined the project because of her interest in clarifying the rights of WikiProjects, "Who decides the group's scope? Who decides which articles to tag? Who gets to write advice pages?" Kirill is an engineer who designs and builds ground systems for satellites and spacecrafts. He has been on Wikipedia since June 2005, and is also an administrator, as well as a current member of the Arbitration Committee. During 2005–07, he was particularly involved with WikiProject Military history (MILHIST), and was one of the main players in the consolidation of different projects in that topic area into a single entity, later serving as the lead coordinator of the amalgamated project for a number of years. Kirill said, "The idea of the WikiProject Council came about primarily because of a number of editors who approached myself and the other MILHIST coordinators for advice on setting up or reviving other WikiProjects; the number of such requests was sufficient to suggest that creating a central place to share ideas and recommendations would be beneficial. The initial concept of the Council was somewhat more formal than the current one. One of the models originally considered was that of an assembly composed of elected representatives from different projects; but the key objectives of documenting best practices and encouraging inter-project dialogue and collaboration were identified at the outset, and have continued to drive the direction of the Council in the time since."

Many Wikipedians have come across the WikiProject Council, but few know what it actually does. So, what are the most important functions of the project? According to Kirill, the project has three major functions. The first is the maintenance of the WikiProject Guide: "The initial drafts of the WikiProject Guide were written in mid-2006... Since then, the guide has seen extensive revision and updating. Some sections are, admittedly, rather dated at this point and a number of more recent approaches to WikiProject infrastructure and organization are not described, but the guide remains a useful resource overall." The second is maintenance of the WikiProject directory and the WikiProject proposal process. "A third function, which has always been an objective, but which has generally seen little activity, is serving as a central discussion point for matters concerning WikiProjects in general. While many of the editors most active in WikiProject maintenance do monitor the Council's discussion pages, many do not; and so there has traditionally been a tendency for discussions on WikiProject matters to be split among a number of venues (such as the Council, the various Village Pumps, and a variety of other pages), without participants at any particular venue necessarily following, or even being aware of the others," added Kirill.

We asked what their advice is for someone wanting to propose a new WikiProject or Task force, and the main reasons proposals fail. John's advice is to check whether an active or inactive project which deals with the subject of the proposal already exists: "Many projects, particularly those related to pop culture in some form, become inactive when the artist, TV show, movies, etc., become inactive. Also, I think it makes a great deal of sense to in most cases check to see if there is an existing project with which the new proposal can work some sort of subproject status. Regarding why projects fail, that can be for any number of reasons. Sometimes, the proposal seems to be promoting POV of some sort – if that is the case, the project will likely be eventually merged with something else so our existing POV guidelines are followed. Other times, it may simply be that the subject is not one which is so interesting to others that they feel they are likely to devote much time to it. And, of course, if there aren't many materials available on the subject, however much interest there might be, there might not be sources enough to develop content." For Kirill, "the first, and most important piece of advice, is to be quite sure that you're willing to put in the time and effort in making a project successful before creating one. While WikiProjects might have many members, their infrastructure and processes are typically maintained by a much smaller group, even in the largest projects; and newer or smaller projects are particularly reliant on a small group or even a single editor, to keep the project "running" during periods of lower activity. The behind-the-scenes work involved is typically neither particularly exciting nor particularly enjoyable; but it must be done if a project is to function as an entity in its own right, and many projects fail because no individual member is able or willing to take responsibility for doing it."

WhatamIdoing believes that most people forget that a WikiProject is a group of people – not a subject area, a project page or a talk page banner: "There's a sort of 'build it and they will come' mentality. If you just make a pretty enough project page, then surely a dozen editors will show up and collaborate with you. It actually works the other way around. If you've got a dozen editors working with you, then it's probably time to create a WikiProject page. If you're on your own, creating a project page is likely to be isolating, discouraging, and ineffective. Almost all "WikiProjects" with only a couple of members go Inactive, often within a few months. You need a critical mass of people to make a project successful. Proposals by inexperienced editors are highly likely to die—and the English Wikipedia usually loses those enthusiastic editors entirely in the process."

What are the biggest challenges for the project? John says that keeping track of all the projects that get created is a big challenge, "Considering several are made without consultation from anyone, that is a bigger problem than may be obvious. Another situation we face is trying to bring editors who are affiliated with individual projects to cooperate with other projects. Kirill says that while the Council has some level of visibility into the creation of projects that go through the proposal process, there is no requirement that projects be formally proposed before creation, and many new projects bypass the proposal process entirely. "With deletions, the situation is even more challenging; as a general rule, the Council has no visibility into deletion nominations beyond individual participants who might want to keep an eye on MFD. In addition, because many of the projects nominated for deletion are inactive, there is nobody with any real reason to inform anyone about the nomination," he added.

Does the Council collaborate with other WikiProjects? John is keen to see more of this, "We would like to help encourage interaction among editors from related projects to help develop content which may be only peripherally related to their topic, and the proposed 2011 religion-philosophy meeting is one way we are trying to help encourage such interaction. Results, sadly, aren't in yet on how effective they are. Kirill says, "There has always been a vision, albeit a rather vague one, of the Council serving as a central forum for discussions that involve multiple WikiProjects. To date, we've had only limited success in actually bringing this vision to life. In large part, this is because the Council is a lower-traffic discussion area than most of the projects who might otherwise be motivated to participate in such discussions; most projects will therefore prefer to hold discussions "in-house" to attract more participation. We are, however, continuing to explore ways in which we can promote increased dialogue and collaboration."

Finally, we wanted to know what the most pressing needs for the WikiProject Council are, and how a new contributor can help. John says that keeping track of all the extant groups is a priority, "Once that is done, it will help a lot to encourage and promote inter-project collaboration. In general, maybe one of the easiest ways to help it achieve some of its purposes is help promote the interaction of extant projects and task forces, and helping make the pages of such groups more useful to new editors interested in working on related content." Kirill sees the most pressing need as the area of directory maintenance, "...updating the WikiProject directory to reflect new projects, and changes in existing ones, is something that requires little experience, and can be readily done by new participants. The directory underlies much of what the Council does and might wish to do in the future. Without a clear picture of what WikiProjects exist, it's difficult to organize anything involving them, so this task is not an unimportant one. Beyond that, the Council discussed a number of ideas for improvement earlier this year. Many of them have yet to be implemented, and assistance with any of them would certainly be appreciated." WhatamIdoing says that anyone who feels responsible for any WikiProject would likely benefit from watching the Council's pages, "Seeing the "mistakes" that other groups make can help you avoid them in your own group. Make a particular effort to respond to messages that are posted. Tell your fellow members what you're doing and pass along any news that might interest them."

Next week, we visit the home of the Stanton Drew stone circles and the Glastonbury Festival. Until then, do take a stroll through our archives.