Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Council/Archive 2

Inactive WP criteria
Several discussions above (like the one about a directory, PR,...) could benifit from determining what the criteria are to tag a WP as inactive.

My brainstorm:
 * WP that has no participants listed.
 * WP with project or talk page totally unmodified for 6 months or more.

I have some issues with "inactive": it might scare away people instead of attrackting new ones is my main concern. That's why I would prefer a "populate this WP"-tag and a category:underpopulated WP. --Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 22:23, 28 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Strong support! NCurse [[Image:Edu science.png|16px]]work 06:06, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Request for opinion
I have recently signed on to the Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Work via Wikiprojects group. One of my functions there will be to ask various projects about what they consider to be their best articles and their most important articles. There are several cases out there, such as Thomas Aquinas, where a very important article have recently been at a rather unimpressive stage. (It's been expanded lately. Didn't see that before.  I feel stupid). Would the council here be interested in collating information on the various important articles out there and possibly advising the various projects which might be interested in it of its current status? I am thinking about perhaps making a statement to that effect in my contacts with the various projects for the above group, but wanted to receive approval from this project before seeming to commit it to actions of any sort. I also should say that I anticipate the collation, if it is done, would be done by me personally, so there'd be no extra work for anyone else. Badbilltucker 23:49, 28 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Hmm, very interesting idea; but what would it actually involve after notifying the projects? Would we be trying to have some sort of "important article collaboration", or merely leaving messages for projects that certain important articles needed attention? Kirill Lokshin 00:01, 29 August 2006 (UTC)


 * The hope would be that, if there were to be an important article requiring improvement which fell in the scope of more than one project, at least one of which has an active collaboration, that they might at least see if it would be possible for the projects to collaborate on the same article at the same time. (Yes, I am addicted to run-on sentences.)  Alternately, I or someone else might inform them that an important article which fell within the scope of their particular project is a collaboration article for another project, and that their input, particularly within their area of expertise, would be more than welcome.  And, possibly, if I or someone else knew of someone who belonged to both groups (which ideally would each have collaborations) that person could propose it as a collaboration in both groups to which they belonged, saying that it was being proposed as the collaboration of both projects.  Other permutations on the idea are possible as well.  Badbilltucker 14:45, 29 August 2006 (UTC)


 * As part of WP:WVWP, you often end up in dialogues with projects, sometimes these can get quite in-depth. I have always felt that WVWP should help to build a community of WikiProjects to share ideas and help each other (now the main mission of this Council).  It may be that you see an article appearing on a couple of lists as a key article that is only Start-class, and it would seem perfectly reasonable to try and foster some collaborations.  Although that would strictly be outside of the main scope of WVWP itself, it certainly helps the overall goals of both WVWP and WP Council, and it may lead to some permanent collaborations.  I'd suggest trying this informally, then if it works you can set up a more formal system.  Walkerma 20:45, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

My plan
What would you think if:
 * I fix and fulfill the list of wikiprojects related to science (or more specifically first medicine, health)
 * we would create a new page for inactive projects for those who would like to maintain one but can't find out how to find a project without active maintainer. Because now inactive projects are hidden, but they should be more advertised...

What is an inactive project? Like Steven Fruitsmaak mentioned above (and modified a bit by me):
 * WP that has no participants listed. AND/OR
 * WP with project or talk page totally unmodified for 3 months or more.

So if the members here would take a topic (like me above) and fulfill the list of active projects, then we would be ready at least with WikiProject Council/Directory soon. NCurse work 16:09, 29 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Good idea. One point to consider is that, for the first (alphabetical) portion of the directory, we'd want to collect a set of links (where available) for the active projects:
 * Project assessment page
 * Project peer review page
 * Project collaboration page
 * Whether or not the project has task forces?
 * Anything else?
 * Kirill Lokshin 16:13, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

So for example: But this project has a peer review box in the main page not a subpage. So what to do in a case like that? That's why I don't find it a good idea to attach such a set of links. Or we should create a template for this task, and make links where possible. NCurse work 16:26, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
 * WikiProject Medical Genetics; assessment page; collaboration page?


 * We just need them collected at this point; we can figure out how to format them in the table later. (But just to make it clear: when speaking of the peer review, I was referring to a separate internal peer review process, not just a listing of articles being peer reviewed somewhere else.) Kirill Lokshin 16:48, 29 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Sounds wonderful. A few questions though.  I have noticed that there are several projects with only one, or even no, member listed in the Category:WikiProjects.  Would these projects, most of which have not been included in the Wikipedia:List of WikiProjects, be included or not?  Also, I noted on some of them that there seems or at least seemed to have been some sort of semi-official project recognition process.  Is such a thing ongoing or not? If yes, that should probably be taken into account. Badbilltucker 00:27, 30 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Well, I've never heard of any recognition process actually being used; so I'm not sure what you're referring to. As far as the extremely small projects: if they're new or seem reasonable, we can probably list them.  If they seem questionable, we can bring them up here and discuss whether we need to do anything in that regard. Kirill Lokshin 00:40, 30 August 2006 (UTC)


 * SUM: if you find a project with no participants listed AND/OR it hasn't been modified for at least 3 months, then we shouldn't include it. But if you find a project somewhere on the borderline, list it here and we'll discuss (as Kirill Lokshin mentioned above). NCurse [[Image:Edu science.png|16px]]work 05:12, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Naming

 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the . Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

No consensus to change. --kingboyk 09:08, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

I am a bit concerned by the capitalisation on the c in "Council". In fact, I am a bit concerned by the use of that word at all. Its use, and especially its capitalisation, strongly suggests, to quote Eric Cartman, "You Will Respect My authority!" Is that the intention?

Also, if we are "The Council", then we are a self-appointed legislature. Those are rarely serendipitous experiments. --Mais oui! 07:57, 16 August 2006 (UTC)


 * The naming issue was actually discussed up-page; if you have a better idea, we'd love to hear it. :-)
 * I think that discussions of "legislature" and "authority" are a bit inapplicable here, though. While we obviously do think that the ideas we're putting forward are good ones—presumably we wouldn't bother setting this up if we believed otherwise—and would like people to adopt them, we don't have any executive authority, and can't actually enforce anything.  Perhaps the choice of name was somewhat unrealistically optimistic (the idea being that all of the various WikiProjects would come on board with this, creating a good place to have centralized discussions), but I don't really think it's fair to fault us for that.
 * (Maybe I'm just being utterly dense, though, but what does the capitalization of the word have to do with it? If it's a bad name, then wouldn't it still be bad even in lowercase?) Kirill Lokshin 12:42, 16 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree with Mais oui! on the word "Council": it's pretentious, it suggests elitism (that's probably why Mais oui! was concerned) and is not good for our public relations.
 * We could change it to WikiProject Group, in analogy to a this similar project on meta. But even then, the stress is on the fact that we are a group of people doing something different. It might not be pleasing to the ear, but my vote goes to WikiProject WikiProjects: not pretentious at all, and everyone instantly knows what it is about.--Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 14:47, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
 * WikiProject Group would get my vote- it doesn't sound as elitist as Council, and I like standardising the name to be the same as the meta equivalent. I can live with Council or WikiProject WikiProjects, though. Walkerma 15:06, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I could live with "the WikiProject Group" as opposed to "the WikiProject Council". "WikiProject WikiProjects", aside from sounding rather silly, is quite inaccurate; we are not, fundamentally, operating on the same way as regular WikiProjects (in particular, our approach here is primarily hands-off—meaning that we advise, rather than going in and fixing things ourselves—which stands in sharp contrast to actual WikiProjects, which are expected to actually go forth and edit the pages in their scope).
 * (I would also point out that, while we should perhaps take steps to appear less pretentious, this should not mean that we must appear useless or unimportant. "WikiProject Bunch of random people debating silly things" we are not.) Kirill Lokshin 15:58, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Another possibility might be something along the lines of "WikiProject for Multidisciplinary Subjects." This also would make it clear that the primary purpose of the project was to assist in matters which fall within the purview of more than one individual project, not world domination in general. (Not that there's anything against that idea, of course.  See User:Give Peace A Chance).  Badbilltucker 21:55, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I think it could serve other purposes as well and therefore should have a more general title (like WP WikiProjects). I don't understand why everyone wants a name that emphasises on us, contributors, instead of the goal of the project, i.e. providing help and a place for coordination.--Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 22:15, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

I agree with changing the name. Maurreen 16:06, 30 August 2006 (UTC)


 * To what? My favorite option so far is "WikiProject Group". Kirill Lokshin 16:24, 30 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Jokes about redundancy aside, I vote for "WikiProject WikiProjects". I agree with Steven Fruitsmaak in that the current name is somewhat pretentious and places too much emphasis on the members than the topic at hand.  I think "WikiProject Group" is ambiguous and doesn't follow the naming convention for projects: "WikiProject Name of topic ".  To me, "WikiProject Group" would be about some topic called "Group", whereas "WikiProject WikiProjects" implies a project devoted to improving WikiProjects (regardless of the mechanics of how we go about improving them).  I disagree with the contention that we are somehow fundamentally different from other projects and therefore shouldn't follow their conventions.  Myself, I do go into projects and change things, albeit as a member of said projects (not random ones without prior discussion).  I think considering ourselves as somehow being different is the cause of some of our problems here.  Practicing what we preach would be  a good goal for this project.


 * Anywho, rather than continuing to bicker, how about a straw poll instead? Add your signature below to vote.  Even if you said "I vote for XXX" above, please add yourself again below, so that no one can say that we were presumptuous and voted for them. EvilSuggestions 19:30, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Would it really be asking too much to say that you should only vote for one option? Presumably you have a favorite...EvilSuggestions 20:24, 30 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Why? It's only a poll; just indicate the ones you support, and we can see which is acceptable to the most people.  Kirill Lokshin 20:42, 30 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Comment: Counsel and Collaboration are two different objectives for us here, that's why I didn't vote for a title emphasising either one of them specifically.--Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 06:47, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Counsel in British English is one or more barristers. It's a wholly unsuitable word imho. --kingboyk 08:33, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
 * The only real reservation I have about "Association" is its passivity. Would maybe a more active "Alliance", despite the martial suggestions to some, give a more accurate impression? Badbilltucker 18:23, 31 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Just a note about the Oxford English Dictionary's definitions of the words council and counsel:

council


 * • noun 1 a formally constituted advisory, deliberative, or administrative body. 2 a body elected to manage the affairs of a city, county, or district. 3 before another noun Brit. denoting housing provided by a local council.

counsel


 * • noun 1 advice, especially that given formally. 2 (pl. same) a barrister or other legal adviser conducting a case. 3 archaic consultation, especially to seek advice.


 * • verb (counselled, counselling; US counseled, counseling) 1 give advice to. 2 give professional help and advice to (someone) to resolve personal or psychological problems. 3 recommend (a course of action).


 * What might put me off council is its association with the idea of a body of deliberation. To me, counsel is more appropriate. It reminds me of The Lord of the Rings, when many of the characters sought counsel of other groups or characters. --Mal 05:26, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
 * WikiProject One-Stop Advice Shop? (WOSAS). :) --kingboyk 08:16, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

I voted abstain because the project name really isn't as important an issue to me. Slambo (Speak) 01:45, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Formatting question
Just as a matter of curiousity, does anyone know how to get those wee boxes (see the word definitions above) to wordwrap? I've seen them before on talk pages, and they seem to be keyed off by including either a TAB or a certain number of spaces. --Mal 05:29, 1 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Any whitespace at the start of a line, actually. If it's there, everything on the line is rendered as though it's enclosed in   tags, so no formatting (which includes wordwrapping) is done. Kirill Lokshin 02:29, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

How long?
How long do we want to leave this discussion open for? I'm not seeing any consensus to change from the status quo. --kingboyk 13:52, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
 * If we wanted to get really picky about it, we could go for some variation on preferential voting, but it does seem to me that the existing name would probably win there too. I second the motion to close this discussion.  Badbilltucker 14:28, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm suspicious that the "Council" tag may put people off getting involved, so we wouldn't be seeing their opinions here anyway, but since that is a Catch-22 situation, I third the motion to close the debate. Maybe we can look at creating a less imperial looking logo as an alternative to the name change? Yomangani talk 22:20, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Project Lists
As many of you already know, there are a large number of WikiProjects. I have decided to separate the list out at Alphabetical list of WikiProjects. The current listing includes all the Projects listed in the Category:WikiProjects through the History subcategory. Please feel free to add any others you might know of. Badbilltucker 20:40, 31 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Are you using AWB? That should help immensely with a task like this. Walkerma 00:43, 1 September 2006 (UTC)


 * I think the list is finished now. I may have missed a few though.  I'll be back on Tuesday to look it over again.  Badbilltucker 23:13, 3 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Great job! Thanks a lot for that. Walkerma 03:44, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Work began
I started work with list of health related wikiprojects. I made a list (including inactives) in Directory#Health. What do you think? NCurse work 12:22, 2 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Nice, although it's a bit unclear whether we're using alphabetical listing or hierarchical listing. Or maybe we just want to combine the two: hierarchical listing to broad subject areas (e.g. History, Health, etc.) and do the alphabetical tables with links within that? Kirill Lokshin 16:43, 2 September 2006 (UTC)


 * I didn't think of that... :) We have an alphabetical listing without topic sections. I thought this directory is cut into sections, so within the sections I didn't want to make hierarchical listing. I hope everyone understands. :) I can't see which is bette. NCurse [[Image:Edu science.png|16px]]work 16:55, 2 September 2006 (UTC)


 * No, I think your approach is fine (and, if I'm not mistaken, the alphabetical listing you linked to was meant as a work area more than a finished product?). My suggestion would be to follow the format you've created, but to expand the bullet-point listing into the table format (discussed somewhere above) giving links to peer reviews, collaborations, etc.  Kirill Lokshin 17:02, 2 September 2006 (UTC)


 * You're right, I remember. I'll make this table. Thanks. NCurse [[Image:Edu science.png|16px]]work 17:05, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Oh, before creating table, what to do with inactive projects? NCurse work


 * Maybe add an "Active" column to the table? Kirill Lokshin 17:13, 2 September 2006 (UTC)


 * For that matter, what columns are we going to use? Using the above, I think it might be something like:
 * Active
 * Assessment
 * Peer review
 * Collaboration
 * Task forces
 * Anything I've missed? Kirill Lokshin 17:14, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Participants' list? Why do we need Task forces? If peer review for example is not a subpage of the project, but it is in the main page of it, then what to link? NCurse work 17:15, 2 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Most participants lists are on the main project page, so that might be a little redundant. I suggested indicating (not linking) the presence of task forces becaust those projects tend to have absorbed the more specific sub-topics, which would be something people looking for a particular project might like to know.  As for peer review: if a project is running a separate (from the main WP:PR) process on the main page, just link to it (possibly with a section link); if it's just a list of entries from WP:PR relevant to the project, it might not be necessary to link to it, since the reviews are still submitted through the central process. Kirill Lokshin 17:19, 2 September 2006 (UTC)


 * I've created a box for active projects. Please have a look here. NCurse [[Image:Edu science.png|16px]]work 17:52, 2 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Very nice. Three questions (or ideas):
 * What do the unlinked "yes" cells represent: a process on the main project page (in which case linking them there might be worthwhile) or something else?
 * Should we have separate tables for actives/inactives, or one table with a column giving the status? The second option would give the inactives more prominence, but would also make changing the status easier (no copying between tables).
 * Should we create a final "Notes" column to give any miscellaneous information about projects? (We could put notes about things like task forces, project structure, etc. there as needed and avoid proliferating a bunch of extra columns.)
 * Kirill Lokshin 17:58, 2 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Also, another column we might want to add would be a link to the project's open task template/listing, if any. Kirill Lokshin 18:03, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Replies: NCurse work 23:05, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
 * unlinked yes means, for example, there is a peer review, but just on the main page of the project, not in a subpage.
 * one table with a column giving the status, I'll make an example this night
 * "Notes" seems to be a good idea (maybe this should include open task template/listing)
 * what about maintainers?


 * Ok. It might be better to link the "yes" to the main project page (or a section of it) in that case, to avoid seeming cryptic; but it's a minor point.
 * Not quite sure what you mean by "maintainers", though: something in the project itself, or what? Kirill Lokshin 23:12, 2 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Maybe now the table is ready, it could be an example.

NCurse work 23:18, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
 * But I'll link unlinked yes parts...
 * projects have maintainers, don't they?

If you have time, please have a look at those yes links, in some cases, it was hard to decide whether I should link that section, or not. NCurse work 23:21, 2 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Will do.
 * As far as "maintainers" (or any other title used—c.f. "coordinators"), this is a somewhat sensitive point. If the project has formally named some, great; but if it has not, we risk causing tremendous discord by arbitrarily selecting someone as a "de facto" maintainer without the project's approval. Kirill Lokshin 23:23, 2 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks. I agree. Then good night, I go to sleep now. :) I'll continue the work with other science-related projects' table... NCurse [[Image:Edu science.png|16px]]work 23:26, 2 September 2006 (UTC)


 * I trimmed three links that I thought weren't going to be very useful, but the others seem OK (if often quite inactive). If we've gotten anything wrong, I'm sure it'll be caught eventually, anyways. :-)
 * I've also converted the raw table to use a row template; hopefully that'll make future modifications a bit easier. All the parameters except for the main "project" one are optional, but the links must be given raw (e.g. "Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine" rather than WikiProject Medicine).  The template also uses the "active" parameter to set a background color; I thought this might be more intuitive than a simple column listing, but it would be easy to change it back to a raw column if people think that's more useful.
 * Comments are, as always, quite welcome! Kirill Lokshin 00:15, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

Seems to be perfect for me. I continue with other tables... NCurse work 07:06, 3 September 2006 (UTC)


 * I created a box for astronomy/space related projects. But now I'm stucked because don't know how to mak groups. For example: Biology and Tree of life should have separate boxes? NCurse [[Image:Edu science.png|16px]]work 07:38, 3 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Not quite sure I understand what the issue is, but if it's really necessary, we can always create another level of headings for major project groups. I would use this sparingly, though, so that we don't have every project asking for its own. Kirill Lokshin 07:42, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

Any idea why WikiProject Cigars is categorised under health? Hmm... --kingboyk 08:57, 3 September 2006 (UTC)


 * It was not my own idea: List_of_WikiProjects... I was suprised too, but didn't want to overwrite this list. NCurse [[Image:Edu science.png|16px]]work 09:00, 3 September 2006 (UTC)


 * We can probably do some shuffling around once we have a better idea of what the various sub-sections are going to be. ;-) Kirill Lokshin 15:24, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Any ideas on how to break up the categorization? The List of WikiProjects lists several projects at least twice, and doesn't list others at all.  I like the idea of breaking up the projects into groups/types, but am unsure as to how to break them up.  Badbilltucker 17:34, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Questions
I'm interested in creating a proposal for a WikiProject devoted to volcanoes. I'm not sure if I can propose it because I'm what you Wikipedians call anons. Also, I'm not sure if there's another WikiProject out there that relates to volcanoes, so can I propose a Volcano WikiProject even though I'm an anonymous user? 74.225.117.237 17:03, 3 September 2006 (UTC)


 * You can certainly propose a WikiProject (although you might need someone else to actually create the initial page, since I don't believe the restriction on anons doing that has been lifted yet). The closest existing WikiProject would be WikiProject Mountains; presumably they handle volcanoes in some way, so I would suggest talking to them and seeing what the best way to set things up would be (as there are several options: separate descendant project, task force within the Mountains project, working directly within the Mountains project, etc.).  Hope that helps! Kirill Lokshin 17:07, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

Disputes
What do i do with a dispute?

There is a Sharks WikiProject that originally was set up on userspace in October to make up members and then moved to its current, official location in August. Just after that a user, User:Unisouth made another project, but since Sharks was taken he called his Shark. Since he began he has just stolen stuff from Sharks and tried to pass it off as his own. So things that took Editors of Sharks hours to do, he just took and added to his in minutes. I know that Wikipedia is GFDL so this doesnt bother us so much. We tried request a merge with his to have just one project numerous times, but he always refused. Then he made up somethign called a co-project which meant both projects would exist, everyone voted against it but he still tried to implement it. I don't think he understands the voting procedure.

Looking at his userspace everything on his discussion page seems to be about him stealing images and essentially vandalising stuff. I am not sure why he hasn't been blocked, it may sound severe but he is the most worthy person i have met on wikipedia for blocking. What are we supposed to do about this, everything we try to do to reason with him or just continue with the project he tries to outdo us, and it just seems petty. We are trying to improve shark articles while he is trying to have a project to his name, just for the sake of it. --chris_huh 13:54, 5 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Hmm, that editor seems to have a number of... misunderstandings (to put it kindly) about how Wikipedia functions. A patient mentor might help here, if anyone has the time to take on such a task.
 * My personal opinion is that straight-out forking of existing WikiProjects is probably the one cardinal sin in the area, and should be forcefully prevented. If he won't listen to reason, just merge the project over his objections; there's absolutely no legitimate reason for it to have been created. Kirill Lokshin 14:03, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Gosh, that's a difficult one isn't it. Good luck and wear some flameproof pants! I can report more happily that WikiProject Biography got a new child project yesterday - WikiProject British Royalty. It's a real boost for the royalty & nobility workgroup as the child-project founder's clearly means business :) --kingboyk 14:09, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Ooh, nice! If you could perhaps suggest to them that a very helpful thing to work on would be to add inline citations to the relevant articles listed here, as we'll likely have some tragic FARCs otherwise. Kirill Lokshin 14:11, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
 * That guy's new to me, but it seems like he was incredibly prolific! Thanks for the heads up Kirill, I'll pass it on. --kingboyk 14:15, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Chris, I'm not too worried about him - I think he'll burn himself out after a while as he doesn't edit anything apart from "his" project and the talk pages. I know it's frustrating to see your work copied over and claimed, but I suggest we don't feed him for a while and hope he gets bored when there is nothing new to "adapt". While the mentoring idea is laudable I think any mentor patient enough to take him on would be easily recognised by their halo.  Yomangani talk 16:20, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
 * You get everywhere. i agree about the halo. Ignoring him will be the best thing to do then. At least it's not just me that seems to be a bit bothered by him. He's just left some threatening notes on Stefens page and on mine so i can't be bothered with him anymore. He still seems to think that projects are owned by people. chris_huh 16:24, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Warned him about making personal attacks; if he keeps that attitude up, he'll likely be departing shortly. Kirill Lokshin 16:41, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
 * This article is up for decommission. If the result is yes then this article will no longer feature in WikiProject Shark and may also lose its place in Category:Sharks. Hmm... --kingboyk 16:38, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
 * There's a nice running monologue here. ;-) Kirill Lokshin 16:41, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Don't think I don't appreciate your careful choice of the word "monologue"!! :) --kingboyk 17:01, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
 * That SharkdeBait thing was brilliant in my opinion, a damn good read. Loved every minute of it. --chris_huh 17:03, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
 * WP:BJAODN? Or would that be too mean? --kingboyk 17:27, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Only one way to find out... --chris_huh 17:29, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
 * A bit too provocative, at this point. Once the second project dies off, it would be a different story. Kirill Lokshin 17:29, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Oh of course I don't mean now - it hasn't even been deleted yet :) I have a funny feeling it might be at some point though. Anyway, a cracking read, thanks for finding that Kirill. --kingboyk 17:31, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
 * The plot thickens! ;-) Kirill Lokshin 17:37, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
 * I didn't see that coming.., i tell a lie, it was obviously going to happen. chris_huh 17:39, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Subtlety...it's a lost art. Yomangani talk 17:41, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
 * There's any number of unpleasantly creative things that could be done with  sections in this scenario, though. ;-) Kirill Lokshin 17:42, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
 * That's evil.... and hilarious, hehehe. --kingboyk 17:58, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Since I'm already in trouble for throwing my weight around... do you guys think that some future wikiproject newbies coming along to read this are going to get the idea that the regulars here are caring, supportive, helpful folk, or that they are enjoying laughing at disputes? If the former, you all may want to take it down a notch. I'm just sayin... ++Lar: t/c 18:24, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Meh. If this were actually a serious dispute, we certainly wouldn't be taking such a light-hearted tone; but considering the actual situation, perhaps laughing it off is the best thing?  All the other options that come to mind are rather more forceful, and that might not be the most diplomatic way of proceeding here. Kirill Lokshin 18:44, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Well, come on Lar, this is an extraordinary scenario. But, as it happens, I had planned to return to the more serious matter in hand :) so here we go -


 * My recommendation would be, if a formal outcome is desired, to list all of the "Project"'s pages and templates on WP:MFD. It should be routine to get consensus for deletion of a one-member forked (and plagiaristic) WikiProject. --kingboyk 18:49, 5 September 2006 (UTC) (edit conflict)
 * Unless things are becoming too troublesome, I wouldn't do that. However, I wouldn't oppose it either, as a one-member WikiProject isn't really a WikiProject, especially when the only thing being worked on is a userbox. However, ignoring the issue may be the best strategy here. Tito xd (?!?) 20:43, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Well it is a bit troublesome, as he's been tagging talk pages with his project banner even if the other project has their banner on it (or at least from what I've seen, when I checked out a shark article earlier). Other than that it's not really doing any harm, no. --kingboyk 20:53, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
 * I am going to just ignore him for a while at least. It is annoying that he takes our stuff and steals it, then when you confront him about it he says he made it. And that he adds his templates to the talk pages making it seem that the sharks articles are more amateur since there appears to be two projects arguing about it. I might just use on some of the pages so that he can't just directly use them as templates. But apart from that, just get on with it, and perhaps hope for an update to the SharkDeBait thing. --chris_huh 20:57, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
 * As the one who started project sharkS, I agree, my tactics have been to negotiate until I could not take it anymore, after that just not to feed the troll. As I see it the only problem is 'his' userboxes for his project, but I can live with theh clutter and any serious editor would very soon figure out which project he would want to be part of so nothing much to bother about. I also agree that we shoould easily be able to delete 'his' project, but I can not see why we would at this point. Stefan 23:59, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

A related bit of discussion: WP:AN. Image:This article was created by unisouth.PNG is also rather telling re the above. --TeaDrinker 00:36, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Ha, he's going to love that! So much for ignoring him...although I suppose making new images will keep him busy tomorrow. Yomangani talk 01:14, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Um, I think I may have sparked that off... ++Lar: t/c 01:37, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
 * I have noticed something quite funny. I put a on that page he tried to use as a template and then you can see him on his contributions getting very confused about what is happening - you can practically see him scratching his head. Endless entertainment. --chris_huh 10:58, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Perhaps this information is sensitive (email if it is) but is there any reason why this user needs to be treated so gently? (kid? disabled?). It's really doing nobody any good - despite the amusement value of SharkDeBait - to have two WikiProjects. We're also letting him waste him time because at some point or another his WikiProject will disappear. I say nominate it. (Again, if there's something sensitive I've missed, email me). --kingboyk 12:46, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
 * I sometimes get the feeling he is a kid, with his attitude and way he does stuff. But then i notice that he is offline during office hours and back again from about 1 to 2 - lunchhour, then on again at about 5. You can see that at his contributions page. But then again on his user page he has a userbox saying he is a child and born in the year of the sheep, so 14 maybe.
 * I second the idea of nominating the project for deletion. We hope that it will end soon, but we can't be sure of that, and we have no idea whether, if we let it go on too long, he might branch out into creating a second redundant project somewhere else.  But I think we should probably get at least a third agreement before proceeding. Badbilltucker 13:17, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Yep, stuff like this is just plain silly; the longer we leave him to his own devices, the bigger the mess we'll need to clean up afterwards. Kirill Lokshin 14:34, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm not going to object - he may have a high boredom threshold and as long as WikiProject Sharks is actively developing he has a constant stream of thing to adapt (for example, almost as I type, - now I wonder which project would have COTW?) Yomangani talk 14:51, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree, it seems to keep him happy but i am sure the project will be deleted as some point, so keeping it on for longer might just be wasting his time even further. --chris_huh 14:56, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
 * I meant I wouldn't object to it being put up for deletion (I seem to be having trouble expressing myself today - maybe I should take my gloves and blindfold off). Although yesterday I said he'd eventually get bored and go away, I didn't really consider the cleanup we'd have to do during and afterwards. Yomangani talk 15:19, 6 September 2006 (UTC)


 * The project has been listed in Miscellany for deletion. Badbilltucker 15:39, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
 * I really think that's the correct approach rather than talking about it here. I know people are being lighthearted and I'm a fuddy duddy but this whole thread comes off looking meanspirited. I'm sorry, but it does. This user needs to be helped to find something more productive to do with their time. ++Lar: t/c 15:45, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Well, while the tone was lighthearted, I think there was a genuine desire for discussion on what should be done before we rushed off to get it deleted, and I think the appropriate place for that to take place was here. Yomangani talk 16:04, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I think it goes to show - WikiProject Council, slightly pompous name but they have a sense of humour :) --kingboyk 16:16, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Guys, take a look at this edit, the section has coarse language in it. Make sure appropriate sanctions are applied. This user is behaving less and less civilly. Lincher 19:06, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Last time I blocked someone who slagged me off I got told off for it, so it would have to be another admin. I've had a lot of personal attacks lately, though, and this one is more amusing than upsetting and nothing compared to the others so I wouldn't block over it. There is the wider issue of whether this editor is able to work within the community, but that's a community matter (kingboyk 19:17, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the quick answer. Lincher 19:45, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Note The editor described above just announced the creation of WikiProject Underground. This time, I don't know of a duplication of efforts, so here's hoping that he can direct his energies in a positive manner. Slambo (Speak) 16:13, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
 * He's got a new member to that project, which is good. I'm hopeful. He's clearly energetic and he has quite a talent for designing templates. Fingers crossed! --kingboyk 12:35, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
 * WikiProject Underground appears to be on a healthy growth pattern. The editor noted above started Portal:Tube today in conjunction with the project, and I'm seeing some good collaboration between the participants so far.  I think we can call this one a success so far. Slambo (Speak)  20:37, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:WikiProject Shark was closed, and I've deleted everything I can find (with something of a heavy heart, I have to say - that's a lot of work zapped). There'll be a few redlinked template uses and so on for you Sharks people to clean up. If there's any infrastructure that's been missed and you're not an admin post here. --kingboyk 12:32, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Just thought you all might like to now that our buddy has recently started the WikiProject BBC and WikiProject Brighton. He also hasn't given up on his interest in sharks, with the new WikiProject Shark Films, which has it's own portal, Portal:Jaws. I have no idea if anything should be done about any of them, just letting you all know. Badbilltucker 22:23, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Banner templates
looking at this discussion: I decided the thing to do was to flip the two names already used. WikiProject Council is now the user banner (it was't used anywher esiginficant) and WPCouncil the project page banner... it just seems to make more sense... many projects use this naming style. (this would be one thing we could speak to as a convention) ++Lar: t/c 01:35, 6 September 2006 (UTC)


 * These look nice, but I don't recall ever seeing a project use its full name for the user banner (as opposed to the talk page banner, which is quite commonly at WikiProject Foo).
 * (I'm still not convinced we even need a talk page banner, incidentally; the only page to which it has been applied is going to be merged to the directory once that's complete, and won't need a banner by virtue of being a subpage.) Kirill Lokshin 02:09, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Look on my userpage, all my user banners but one are the name style I used for this one... I dunno if we need an article/special talk page banner either... maybe it could go. but we have them both if we need them... and if any of the words are wrong please fix them! ++Lar: t/c 03:34, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Portals
Can't remember if this has been brought up, but it would be great if we somehow coordinated efforts to maintain Portals-- I know poor AudeVivere keeps things propped up and going (how she does it and get sleep I don't know), and that it's her hope projects will take over. For some Portals, there's a clear jurisdiction (Portal:Biography), but for others, there's not: Portal:History which went a couple of days this month without a selected article or photo. Biography obviously can feed things to it, but so can MILHIST and many others and it would be great if there was a way to coordinate this.... Thoughts? --plange 19:48, 6 September 2006 (UTC)


 * How could we encourage projects to maintain portals? NCurse [[Image:Edu science.png|16px]]work 19:51, 6 September 2006 (UTC)


 * A more general version of this question: how could we encourage projects to assume responsibility for doing X, where X is not immediately useful to the project itself, but is beneficial to Wikipedia as a whole? Kirill Lokshin 19:54, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Maybe have a Council Award or something given to the project (not an individual)? Just thinking out loud here. I know I've tried to encourage participation just in the Bio Portal and can you believe that not a single editor has nominated an article to be a selected article?? --plange 19:57, 6 September 2006 (UTC)


 * The award is a good idea. I see no other way... NCurse [[Image:Edu science.png|16px]]work 19:59, 6 September 2006 (UTC)


 * I also started a Portal Upkeep department for WP:WPBIO, so maybe we add it to our Guide and flesh it out with all the relevant portals, etc., and nomination links and tasks... --plange 20:01, 6 September 2006 (UTC)


 * And there's the Portal task force in WikiProject Trains too. Currently, I'm the only participant there, but others have stopped by with some updates here and there. Slambo (Speak)  20:06, 6 September 2006 (UTC)


 * An award of some sort is a good idea. Another thing to consider might be some variation on having a "Featured WikiProject" (or a "WikiProject of the Day/Week/Etc."); if we could cajole people into giving us some space on the Community Portal, we could even feature it there. Kirill Lokshin 20:05, 6 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Some variation of barnstars seems a good way to start. Slambo (Speak)  20:06, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Does anyone want a "related portal" column added to the directory chart? I think it might be a good idea, particularly if like with the video games there may only be one portal covering the scope of several projects.  Maybe the projects could take the portal in alternation or whatever.  But I think maybe for some of the portals it might be one of the best ways to get information about it out.  Badbilltucker 20:21, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Interesting idea, but how would we deal with projects that had multiple related portals? Would we want to just list the main one, or all of them? Kirill Lokshin 21:31, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm guessing we could list the one most closely related to the project overall in the list, and separately inform the projects individually of the other portals which relate to their projects to a lesser degree. Unless the chart were to be worked on in such a way to list more than one portal.  That would probably be beyond my personal abilities, though.  Badbilltucker 21:38, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
 * It gets somewhat rather ugly if we try to do that. ;-)
 * I've added a  field to the template; it should be set to the short portal name (e.g. to link to Portal:Chemistry, you'd set  ).  If there are other portals of direct interest, they can be listed under the "Notes" field, but I doubt this will come up for many projects. Kirill Lokshin 21:50, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Where is the directory chart? I must have missed something. --plange 21:56, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
 * WikiProject Council/Directory. Kirill Lokshin 22:02, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Cool, I see how to add, but wasn't sure which place Biography would fit. What do you think? --plange 22:26, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
 * "History and society," presumably? Kirill Lokshin 22:29, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

(unindent) I'm thinking too maybe I should create a project award or something for if you nominate an article and it gets picked. Perhaps we also encourage projects to create project awards for Portal participation; or instead, since Portals cover multiple projects, we create a Portal award for each portal that is given to whomever has a nomination picked, or has kept the DYKs populated for X months or something. --plange 20:42, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
 * At Chemistry when we first set up Portal:Chemistry in 2005 we divided up the work - I look after the picture, V8rik and I look after news (needs an update, I admit!) and K looks after the selected article, etc. We're small compared to many projects, but just having 3 or 4 people from a project taking responsibility for the portal seems to make it work (not perfectly, but OK).  Maybe this approach is another one that could be suggested, particularly for new portals. BTW, listing closely related portals would be a good idea IMHO. Walkerma 21:44, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

So, if a wikiproject maintains a portal, then I should add that portal name to the template. And what if I find a portal related (just in topic, not in maintaining) to a project. Should I add it too? NCurse work 21:59, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Mmm, I would say that if you think the project should maintain the portal (meaning that there isn't a more specific project available), then sure. We can try to prod them into doing some maintenance, then. Kirill Lokshin 22:02, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
 * I think some portals are not directly connected with a project - they may have been started earlier or later by different people. Perhaps they should only be added if they are not actively maintained or if the project already "claims" them. Yomangani talk 22:33, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
 * That was the case with WP:BEATLES, but we simply claimed the Beatles portal. Not that it gets updated much mind you! --kingboyk 16:25, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Peer review
Is any work being done on "Develop a system to funnel peer reviews and other requests to the appropriate WikiProjects"? I'm occasionally pointing people to the appropriate projects if a question comes up in WP:PR or WP:RFF, but that's somewhat primitive. Yomangani talk 11:27, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
 * I think that first we need to have the projects actually engage in peer review. Right now, comparatively few do.  You'll note it is the least commonly filled book in the Directory.  When we get this Directory finished, I intend to contact all of the projects for various reasons.  One of them will be to try to assess the quality and importance of their articles.  If they will, then funnel review requests will be a great deal easier. Badbilltucker 20:11, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
 * I was thinking that a category set-up, similar to that recently introduced in AFD might be the way to go - listing any articles submitted to WP:PR in a category relevant to WikiProjects with their own peer reviews or interested in knowing when related articles come up in PR. It's a non-intrusive mechanism - we wouldn't be relisting peer review requests elsewhere, and there is no requirement for editing individual project pages (except perhaps for an initial announcement of the category's existence). We could encourage editors listing articles in WP:PR to categorise their requests in the first place, and the occasional sweep through could pick up those which haven't been categorised. Yomangani talk 22:02, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Category:AfD debates
The deletion sorting project, and WikiProject bolt ons to that, didn't really seem to take off, so I think a heads up here about Category:AfD debates is worthwhile. It seems to me that we could be encouraging the people behind this scheme (categorising AFDs into subject) to work with WikiProjects and to have the subcategories match WikiProject themes wherever possible. --kingboyk 13:54, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Support this notion. Good idea. Why have two dissimilar structures? ++Lar: t/c 14:35, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Questions regarding Directory.
Two questions I would like to pose to the rest of you regarding the directory. I notice that the inactive Wikipedia:WikiProject Silmarillion has a banner on its page indicating that the work of the project has been continued by the Wikipedia:WikiProject Middle-earth. In the event that there is another project which is currently inactive which also covers territory covered by an active larger project, would you want to place similar banners of the more inclusive project on the page of the inactive smaller project?

The second question relates to the first. I note on the old project list that the Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/American Civil War task force was listed as a separate project. Would we want to list all such task forces of larger projects separately as well? I know it would make the list much longer, but it would also make it clearer. Also, in those instances where, for instance, the work of an inactive "Political figures" project might be continued by a Biography project task force (for example) the task force would be seen on the directory as well. Personally, for what little it's worth, I tend to favor doing both of the above, but would want to know what the consensus opinion is before I do anything. Badbilltucker 14:46, 9 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Some thoughts:
 * Re: Silmarillion: In general, I would say that the best think might be to approach the larger, active project and ask if there would be any problems with simply redirecting the inactive project there. There's little benefit, in my opinion, with keeping around dead projects indefinitely when their work is being handled elsewhere; so long as the actual members don't object, I'd merge them formally.  (Certainly this is a strategy that has been carried out with great success by WP:MILHIST.)
 * As far as task force: I'm not sure whether we want to keep a list—it would probably be out of date rather quickly, as they tend to be created with little red tape—but if we do, we should probably create a different versio of the template that would be more applicable to them, as task forces, almost by definition, won't duplicate the parent project's major processes.
 * Kirill Lokshin 17:32, 9 September 2006 (UTC)


 * I actually hadn't contemplated setting up a redirect, but that would seem to be the best and most workable way to address the matter. I am assuming that the members (if still active) of the older smaller project would also be contacted to agree to it as well.  If they would agree to it, or if a proposed merger were to be carried out, then potentially all the paraphenalia of the older project could be deleted or merged as well.  I regret that I am not so well informed about all the task forces which might be involved in the larger projects.  Are there such things as "standing" task forces of these larger projects (for instance, military biography)?  If so, possibly they might be the only ones listed, possibly with the list modified to allow them to be listed indented a little, to indicate their subordinate status.  If they were to be listed at all, of course.  Badbilltucker 17:59, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Most of the task forces are standing; but they are (in some cases) created on request. It's no big deal either way; I'll see if I can put together a version of the template that makes sense for task forces, and we'll go from there. :-) Kirill Lokshin 18:18, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Okay, I've added support for a  parameter to the template; an example of it in use can be seen here.  Does that work? Kirill Lokshin 21:00, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
 * The beauty of a redirect is that it doesn't delete anything. Thus, if a project seems to be long gone, it can be boldly replaced by redirects provided the new project don't mind (and I can't imagine why they would mind). If some of the original members come back and complain it's just as easily undone. I imagine that's the kind of land grab Kirill was advocating ;) --kingboyk 18:07, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
 * In many cases (at least in my experience) the members of the old project are also members of the new one, which makes things even easier. ;-) Kirill Lokshin 18:18, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Do we want to deal with hot button issues or not?
There has recently been a rather heated discussion on the Catholic Church or Roman Catholic Church talk page regarding what the title of that article should be. It seems to be that one side favors using Catholic Church for a disambiguation page for all the bodies which use the word "catholic" in their name, another wants to use it for the body headed by the Pope. Unfortunately, there is no other body which exists to which the matter could be referred, given that both the Anglicanism project and the Catholic project are involved in the dispute. The Christianity project could be asked to decide it, but I have a feeling that one side or the other would question the objectivity of the consensus within the project. Same goes for the Religion project. Would this body like to step in as arbiter in cases like this one or not? If yes, my suggestion would be to try to set up some location where both sides might be able to pitch their arguments for a day or so, and then gather together a variety of project leaders and others to vote on the basis of their own understanding of the subject and of what is and is not in the best interests of wikipedia. That is a very big "if", however. Badbilltucker 15:20, 9 September 2006 (UTC)


 * I don't see how the issue directly pertains to the WikiProjects per se. If it were a matter of procedural propriety or something similar, perhaps. But this case seems to be isolated to a specific content dispute, and that (to me) seems to be something which needs to be left to the discretion of the dispute resolution processes already in place. Certainly, as has been discussed before, WPC has no intention of claims of jurisdiction over the projects and thus wouldn't have any higher authority on the matter. Plus it might leave a bad taste in the mouths of people who might otherwise want to work with WPC, which is an advisory group for those administering WikiProjects. That's my two cents... Girolamo Savonarola 16:03, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Agree. --kingboyk 16:19, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree too - there are already a number of mechanisms for dealing with this sort of thing, and sticking our oar in would risk alienating some of the people we want to be attracting. Yomangani talk 21:45, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Hierarchical list?
Are we going to make a hierarchical version of the directory as well?--Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 11:32, 10 September 2006 (UTC)


 * It has a rough hierarchy breakdown already; I'm not sure that trying to determine a deeper hierarchy within fairly narrow subject areas will be very productive. Kirill Lokshin 15:43, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Have to agree with Kirill here. Many subprojects are so diverse that a hierarchical breakdown would be likely to only exceed in making the directory even longer.  However, I don't think anyone would necessarily oppose it if someone could break a given area or group of projects into a hirearchy if it included enough projects in a small enough group of headings.  The "history" projects, however, would probably be a different story. Badbilltucker 15:14, 12 September 2006 (UTC)


 * I asked because it would simplify the search for a WP that people might want to join: I remember looking for a WP:Medicine and overlooking the obvious child projects WP:Clinical medicine and WP:Preclinical medicine, while at that time WP:Medicine wasn't that active.--Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 20:11, 12 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Well, they'd all be listed within a (reasonably short) section on the directory page now; hopefully this will let people find what they're looking for without arguing over the exact "hierarchy" of projects and so forth. :-) Kirill Lokshin 20:13, 12 September 2006 (UTC)


 * I just noticed this change now and seriously oppose it. I prefered the nested hierarchy from the previous "List of Wikiprojects". There are 9 or so Wikiprojects for Christian denominations. Before the change, they were all listed in the religion seciton under the Christianity project. Now, they are all mixed in together with the other religious wikiprojects. Same goes for medicine, US Highways, Novels, and a number of other bigger topics that have numerous more specific sub-topics. If we could restore this nested hierarchy from before, I would be really happy (and I feel it would be more navigatable for users to help them find exactly what they are looking for).--Andrew c 15:49, 22 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Mmm, why not just split up the sections more (e.g. create a "Christianity" sub-section under the "Religion" section, and so forth)? If we reduce the overall section size to a dozen or so projects in each, it shouldn't be a problem to find things.  I'd like to avoid necessarily showing a "hierarchy" of projects (as opposed to topics) because it usually doesn't mean quite what people assume it means, though. Kirill Lokshin 15:57, 22 September 2006 (UTC)


 * See, for example, the new sub-sections (which probably need to be checked by someone with a better knowledge of the area than I have) on WikiProject Council/Directory/Culture/Philosophy and religion; all the Christianity projects are grouped together, but without implying any particular hierarchy within that field. Kirill Lokshin 16:16, 22 September 2006 (UTC)


 * I can see this as a workable solution, but I still prefer the previous nested hierarchy. And I am not refering to having the order representative of relevence. What I mean is that, for example, in the Gaming section, there is a subsection of video games, and within that, there is a subsection for nintendo games. Or within religion is Christianity, and within Christianity we have Catholicism, and within Catholicism we have a few subprojects. The way we have it now, the Nintendo games and the sub-Catholic projects are listed alongside other topics, including the more inclusive containing projects (if that makes sense). Anyway, I'm slowly going through splitting up some of the larger sections that previously were nested within subsection. Hope that isn't being too bold.--Andrew c 19:40, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Hmmm, I've reached an interesting situation. How can it be said that the new version is easier to navigate than the old format? Seriously, we have an American state next to a Canadian province, next to an American territory, next to a south American country next to a US region, next to a US state, next to a Canadia city, a latin american country, next to a more general classification such as "U.S. counties". The nested hierachy, in this specific instance, makes much more sense than grouping them all together alphabetically. And I don't really see an easy way to split this up. I mean, we could pull the states and cities and provinces all out into their own box, but we still have the case where California has 2 subcategories, and Ontario has 3, and then we have Puerto Rico, etc. A solution does not pop out at me. Maybe I am not familiar enough with the template in order to format it in a 'nest'. Or maybe I am too personally attached to the old format and maybe its a good thing that such diverse topics are listed seemingly arbitrarily together. Anyway, just my thoughts.--Andrew c 20:00, 22 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Meh. My (strictly personal) opinion it that this is a problem with the way WikiProjects have been created essentially at random, rather than an issue with listing them.  If we prodded them into doing a bit of merging (e.g. an overall WikiProject United States w/ some general task forces + one project per state w/ optional task forces, or even a single US WikiProject with each state becoming a task force, and perhaps sub-task-forces for counties/cities/etc.), we'd not only simplify the structure considerably, but also form some large—and hence active—projects, as opposed to the sallow dozen-member things that seem to have proliferated.  But I suspect others will disagree with me here. ;-) Kirill Lokshin 20:17, 22 September 2006 (UTC)


 * What about listing those that truly are sub-projects on their own page (Wikipedia:WikiProject_Council/Directory/[maingroup]/[parentprojectname]) and linking to it through the extra field Kirill put in for the linked projects? The members of the project could decide whether they are a real sub-project or not and place their project either in the alphabetical list or in a hierachical page below the parent project depending on the decision (I, for one, don't want projects relisted in a faux hierachy when they don't actually interact). Yomangani talk 20:41, 22 September 2006 (UTC)


 * I totally respect wanting to streamline the collaboration between projects, and I think that is a good idea (and maybe combining projects with only a handful of particapants is also a good idea). My concerns, however, deal more with organization/categorizing than this other issue of "linked projects". I feel that if there are 20+ US state projects, they shouldn't be listed under the general header of American Geography that includes international countries, cities, provinces, etc. Same thing goes for a number of other projects (especially Literature). I think what we have done on the Philosophy and religion page is a good start, and I've been told that this directory is a work in progress (and subcategories are on the way) so I will hold of my strong views and edits for the time being. Sorry if I just barged into the middle of things here.--Andrew c 22:38, 22 September 2006 (UTC)


 * I think that there is more logic in grouping the projects than you think. And sometimes, they do work together! We could mention what the "hierarchy" means. I think the headers don't work, but I don't have the technical skills to create a hierarchical version of the current database. Hierarchy adds to the overview and doesn't hurt anyone!--Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 00:15, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Layout
The layout of most WikiProjects isn't very attractive. On fr: there's a standardized presentation for projects which gives results such as this one or that one. Do you think we could make something like that ? It would also be possible to improve it by creating a template such as this one. Sigo 19:36, 11 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Thoroughly bad idea, in my opinion. The "neat boxes" approach may work for small, inactive projects; but a large and active one (e.g. this) will have far too much material on the project page—much of it with unusual alignment requirements, different widths, and other such issues—to be presentable in that form.  WikiProjects are primarily work areas, and should be allowed to develop as fluidly as possible, without the rigid constraints on layout imposed by a portal-like design. Kirill Lokshin 19:43, 11 September 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree that the French layout is not functional. However, our present template could be improved upon (perhaps by taking elements from the more successful projects (WP:WPBIO, WP:WARS, and WP:AUS).--cj | talk 02:43, 12 September 2006 (UTC)


 * I considered doing that, actually; but my concern was that borrowing from one of the larger and more structured projects might prove overwhelming for a new project that's just getting off the ground (which is what that template was intended for). Kirill Lokshin 02:54, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Mysterious "Wikipedia maintenance" projects
Looking over what's been collected on the Wikipedia maintenance page of the directory, we've got some pretty bizarre stuff. Can anyone (a) figure out what the point of the following "projects" is or (b) suggest any reasons not to list them on MFD?


 * United Groups And Committees & United Groups And Committees Administration
 * WikiProject quality
 * WikiProject Unused templates
 * WikiProject Wikipedia Audit
 * WikiProject (xlsc)

Kirill Lokshin 20:27, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
 * a) Mostly "no". b) Nope. Pretty clear MFDs I think (or even speedy delete as "housekeeping", they're not in article space and nobody loves them). --kingboyk 20:50, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
 * b) Nope. I particularly like United Groups And Committees Administration - who doesn't watch the non-watchmen? Nice logo though. Yomangani talk 21:24, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

When and if should a Wikiproject beome a portal?
Im thinking of WikiProject Electronics--Light current 23:51, 11 September 2006 (UTC)


 * A WikiProject should never "become" a portal, as they're fundamentally different things; but if you mean the time when a WikiProject should create a portal, the answer is typically "as soon as it can maintain it." Running a portal isn't too difficult, so even small projects should be able to manage quite well. Kirill Lokshin 00:56, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Though it should be noted that a WikiProject does not automatically require a corresponding portal.--cj | talk 02:35, 12 September 2006 (UTC)


 * I believe that with a few subjects, there was no WikiProject and a portal became the meeting place for people interested in a particular subject area. One example is Portal:Aviation - there is no Aviation WikiProject (though there are projects on subsets of aviation such as history of aviation).  I suspect there are a few more.  A more common scenario is for RNBs to become de facto WikiProjects for articles relating to a particular region/country such as Sweden. In some cases such as Scotland I suspect the bot assessment of Scottish articles may have been a driving force for creating the project to work alongside the RNB.  At some point the council will need to consider its relationships with these sort-of-WikiProjects.  We may also want to find out (from examples like Scotland?) what lessons can be learnt about developing a new WikiProject from an established portal or RNB.  Walkerma 16:32, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Adding a link to a WikiProject in a stub template
Is this considered "acceptable"? I only ask because I've recently see this done and while I think that it's a great way of raising project awareness among those who don't regularly read the talk pages, I also fear that it may violate the self-reference guideline. Thoughts? Girolamo Savonarola 20:00, 12 September 2006 (UTC)


 * I really would discourage such practices. Remove it and let us know where it is, than we can join the discussion if needed.--Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 20:03, 12 September 2006 (UTC)


 * It's caused problems in the past (see the history of WWII-stub, for example), so I wouldn't really recommend it too much. ;-) Kirill Lokshin 20:04, 12 September 2006 (UTC)


 * In my opinion it's not allowed as a violation of Avoid self-references. --kingboyk 20:09, 12 September 2006 (UTC)


 * It's stagecraft-stub. I haven't done anything with it because I'm not certain how to proceed, but feel free to do what you will. Girolamo Savonarola 20:23, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

The practice was discussed at WP:WSS, but the consensus was not to include links to the connected WikiProjects. Don't have a link, but if you check the talk page archives, you should be able to find it. Slambo (Speak) 20:34, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
 * I found two discussion on the issue, both point to this being an on-going discussion with no clear consensus. Most editors involved in the discussion didn't seem to think it mattered much either way. Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Stub sorting/Archive 7 and Wikipedia talk:Stub. There is also no note of this on WP:WSS or on Stub. -- Ned Scott 10:37, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

That seems to be rather out of the norm to me. The stub message itself is a self-reference, but is one we accept since it's basically a cleanup template in nature. Linking to WikiProjects is no different than a cleanup template that links to an appropriate guideline or policy. As I said, these are generally acceptable self-references, since they are just meant to be a way to notify editors that something needs to be worked on and there's a place where they can get help to do so. I'm completely in favor of linking to WikiProjects in the stub templates. -- Ned Scott 10:01, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Well I disagree on that, since I think cleanup messages are about as far as we should go in terms of self-references, and they should always be as generic as possible. Your mileage may vary etc etc :) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Kingboyk (talk • contribs).


 * I'm not sure I understand what you disagree on. I'm basically saying stub messages are on the same level as a cleanup template. They are only there to encourage the growth of an article, and sometimes there is good growth and bad growth. Linking to a WikiProject not only gives editors resources to make the growth faster, but it also says "hey, if you're gonna expand this article it might be a good idea to use the ideas from his place". What's the point if the article just grows into something that will only need a larger cleanup later on.


 * Again, stub messages are self-references, and it's pretty pointless to pretend they're not. Cleanup templates often link to specific guidelines, and I see this as being no different. Is there any other reason to object to the project linking in stub messages? -- Ned Scott 10:26, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Thought you all might like to know that the Bridge-struct-stub, at least, does contain a reference to a specific project. I personally think it's probably a bad idea, as we can't be sure a project will never be deleted or renamed. Just an opinion, of course. Badbilltucker 15:19, 21 September 2006 (UTC)


 * If any WikiProject gets re-named or deleted then one would have to sort through other templates that the project was using anyways (such as the project banners). It might be a good idea to have projects get "approval" of some sort before adding their link, so that only projects that will most likely be around for a while and follow proper guidelines, etc, will be linked to. This would also create a record of which stub messages have a project link so that it can be tracked. This might be a good proposal for WP:WSS. -- Ned Scott 19:23, 21 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Ideally, each WikiProject would have a list of templates used (example), including stub templates, which would make make tracking them down a cinch. That said, I really like the idea of projects getting approval and tracking them like that, but there's no guarantee that someone won't see a WP link in one stub and blindly include it in another without registering (perhaps a comment in the template pushing for registration, but that's no guarantee). EVula 19:43, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Different logo?
Yomangani suggested in an earlier discussion on this page that maybe one way to reduce the impression of "imperiousness" of the council would be to put in a different logo. Maybe something like this could be done. I remember that the biographies of living people banner had an image of a handshake on the left side of the banner, and that at least one other project (I think Vermont?) has two images on its banner. Perhaps if we could put something like the handshake in on the left side of the banner, and shift the existing logo (which I do think is wonderful work) to the right, it might help to get across the cooperation idea better. Maybe. Maybe not. I dunno. Badbilltucker 20:13, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Are banners really necessary?
I have been wondering about this and I thought this might be the best place to ask...Are wikiproject banners really necessary? I know their purposes were to indicate that an article is somehow "monitored" by a wikiproject (which isn't the case most of the time). But recently I've been seeing banners being made and stuck on talk pages just for the sake having them. This somehow reeks of advertisement for me. More importantly, for articles covering a board range of topics, there is much overlap with respect to wikiprojects, and as a result the talk page gets clogged with wikiproject banners and other tags (see Talk:World War I for example, but I'm sure there are articles much worse than this), making them an eyesore to even scroll through. I have even seen revert wars about the inclusion of wikiproject banners on some articles, which strikes me as hillarious, meh.

So, what does the Council think on this? Please note I'm not opposed to banners, I just hope there can be a better implementation to them. _dk 05:39, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
 * I know what you mean, but that was a bad example, because of the 9 banners on there, only 2 are for WikiProjects. But to answer your question, which is just my opinion, others may disagree here, is that they are advertisements, yes (we need a way to let editors know that WikiProjects even exist so we can gain good editors), but they are so much more. A lot of them use them to tag them with assessments so that worklists can be created to tackle articles for improvement, some others also tag them as being part of specific task forces so that a subset of editors have a smaller set of articles to focus on, etc. They are also used to mark ones that need immediate attention, or that are requesting a peer review, and in the case of WPBiography it puts up two warnings if certain parameters are filled out: BLP and activepol
 * Also, we're trying to coax projects to re-word their banners so that it says "This article is within the scope" instead of the old wording of "This article is supported by" so that it's clearer that more than one project can state that an article is within their scope. --plange 05:58, 15 September 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree with what Plange said, basically; but I would like to further stress one point: aside from all the little special tagging/assessment/whatnot features, the banners are advertising, and were indeed originally developed with advertising being their only purpose. In practical terms, a WikiProject that fails to advertise (and hence recruit new members) will collapse fairly quickly due to attrition (and yes, there is practical data supporting a very strong relationship between placement of talk page banners and project growth).  Obviously this isn't really an acceptable outcome; hence the continued use of the banners.  Kirill Lokshin 09:43, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Yep, and to provide a real-world illustration -- When I first started here I was editing my little articles that interested me and one day I clicked on discussion on one and saw WP:MILHIST's banner and I was like 'what's this?' -- I had no idea WikiProjects even existed and was really excited about the idea and followed the link, joined up, and, well, have been on a spree since then :-) --plange 15:09, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Actually, the introduction of a banner was essential in getting MILHIST off the ground in the first place:
 * October 2002 - Project is first created
 * August 2005 (nearly three years later) - Project has 12 members
 * Early September 2005 - Project banner is introduced
 * October 2005 (one month later) - Project has 26 members, an increase greater than over the entire preceeding life of the project
 * September 2006 (one year later) - Project has ~400 members
 * Thus, I would say, from personal experience, that the advertising value of project banners is absolutely critical to a project's success. Kirill Lokshin 15:19, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

(unindent) - ditto for WikiProject Biography -- it had stagnated and when I revived it in July we started tagging and we now have over 100 active members! --plange 15:28, 15 September 2006 (UTC)


 * The banners also provide an individual who has a serious question about some specific content in a given article to have a place to address whether that content is a good idea at all. Personally, I wouldn't have even found out about the four street pages that I recently proposed for deletion is it weren't clear that they were mistakenly created by a new project.  However, I do think that it might be a good idea if, where possible, we could get some of the projects which are effectively sub-units of larger projects (like "Historical figures" could be seen as being a subgroup of "Biography") to agree to using a single banner with an indication on the bottom as to which unit is specifically involved.  I note that Biography, Military History, and to a lesser extent Australia have all been successful in this area, and hope that other groups might be willing to agree to it as well.  It certainly might reduce the clutter of some articles relating to Christianity, for instance.  Badbilltucker 16:37, 15 September 2006 (UTC)


 * The CVG was recently discussing banner bloat (and if you want an even worse example...), which included some proposals for banner consolidation. It started at WIkiProject banner headers and some light discussion (from me) spilled over to User talk:Pagrashtak. It seems that there is definitely a growing consensus that the banners are getting out of hand, though I think directing that ire at the project banners isn't the way to go. EVula 16:15, 22 September 2006 (UTC)


 * As I pointed out there, I'm not sure if it's really the banners that are getting out of hand as much as the forking of minor WikiProjects. I'm really confused as to why there is a WikiProject Nintendo when there's a WP:CVG... -- Ned Scott 06:25, 23 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Once we absorb the list of proposed projects, maybe we can start suggesting that the people proposing such things ought to work with the applicable existing project if possible? Kirill Lokshin 08:58, 23 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Indeed, recommending that people work with the existing projects would be a great idea. We've got sooooo many tiny WikiProjects, especially ones for topics on fiction and entertainment. It's really counter-productive to have so many different groups. -- Ned Scott 09:15, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

On that same note, the idea of making a "See also" box as an alternative to some WikiProject banners was brought up at WT:ANIME. In that example, it was a case where articles might benifit from a WikiProject's input, but aren't directly related (a good exmaple would be placing a see also of WP:ANIME on an article about a real life Anime artist.) Thoughts? -- Ned Scott 06:25, 23 September 2006 (UTC)


 * I doubt that making things more complicated in terms of defining scope is a particularly good idea. ;-) Kirill Lokshin 08:58, 23 September 2006 (UTC)


 * It wouldn't re-define the scope. Ideally, one would use it when an article contains a topic that is already under the existing Project scope, but the article on the whole is not. Or something to the extent of, this article is not under the scope of X, but you might be able to get useful advice from them on related issues. The "see also" box wouldn't be a full banner display, but, as the name suggests, a.. well.. a see also. It was brought up at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Anime and manga specifically because we did not want to expand our scope, but still be able to say "check here for useful advice". -- Ned Scott 09:11, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Back to banners themselves, I do think we should have guidelines to minimize the size of some banners. Here's the current one for WP:DIGI: WikiProject DIGI. -- Ned Scott 09:19, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
 * I know I know, Digimon.. but part of the efforts of this project is to reduce the number of articles and fancruft ;) -- Ned Scott 09:20, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Color schemes
Wasn't there a big list of which infobox colors went with which Wikiprojects? WP:CMC was about to get rid of their variable infobox color coding, it seems, and I'd rather not suggest a new standard color some other project is using. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire | past ops) 01:39, 17 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Any attempt at regulating infobox colors has been dead for a long time now. The colors generally mean nothing to the reader; just use whatever seems most appropriate aesthetically. Kirill Lokshin 01:57, 17 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Mmkay. We'll just pick a nice pastel or something. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire | past ops) 02:09, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Well, if you're interested, there's and Talk:2005 Atlantic hurricane season statistics/Colors... Tito xd (?!?) 03:03, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
 * We're moving away from topical color coding, as it's been deemed useless. Thanks, though. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire | past ops) 03:12, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
 * I saw that, but I just wanted to point out some of the things you may want to keep an eye on: contrast, brightness, meanings (even if you don't want them to mean anything), where it is going to be presented... etc. Tito xd (?!?) 03:16, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Directory inclusion finished
All the projects I could find are at least now included in the directory somewhere, with the exception of many of the proposed projects at Wikipedia:WikiProject/List of proposed projects. As has been said before, the directory needs a lot of straightening out, particularly in determining which categories a given project fits. I'll start working on that now. One question, though. Which of the proposed projects above, if any, do you all think deserve to be included on the list? Badbilltucker 16:32, 17 September 2006 (UTC)


 * We probably need to restructure that whole proposals page somehow. There are months-old listings there—including both abandoned proposals and projects that have actually been created—so a blanket statement is probably impossible. Kirill Lokshin 16:38, 17 September 2006 (UTC)


 * The categorization is proving to be Migraine City. I am trying to incorporate some of the smaller categories used in the Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Work via Wikiprojects, but it's taking a while.  Hope to have something tomorrow.  It'll likely be a bit of a mess, though. Badbilltucker 00:43, 21 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Does the new  parameter make things any easier in that regard? Kirill Lokshin 00:48, 21 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Yes, it does. Thank you for the help there.  I'm slowly trying to get all the subpages together in userspace and will transfer or whatever when they're done.  Just letting you all know, though, that I'm probably overdoing the multiple listings big time.  The redundant listings can always be eliminated later though. Badbilltucker 17:14, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

New project with major scope overlap
WikiProject Musicians have started tagging talk pages with their banner. I have major concerns about scope overlap between this project and other existing projects, most notably WPBio. If we take it as a rough estimate that half of their articles cover solo musicians, that means that half their talk pages - quite possibly tens of thousands - would be double-tagged. I've recommended to them that they become a quasi-autonomous child project of WPBIO - on the same terms as WikiProject British Royalty - and share our banner. This would also give them the use of my plugin (User:Kingbotk/Plugin) and I'd update WPKLF and WPBeatles to recognise this group too.

Discussion is at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Musicians. Please chip in, whether or not you agree with me and my strong-arm tactics :) --kingboyk 14:52, 19 September 2006 (UTC)


 * I personally think it's a great idea. The one real question that comes to mind is whether any other groups could have their banners integrated in as well.  I've noticed for instance that WikiProject Opera has two different banners for male and female singers, both of which would easily fall under the Biography umbrella.  Lots of the TV projects have their banners on their show's stars, too.  If contact could be established with these various groups, and those other groups which tag articles, it would make things a lot easier and less cluttered.  Do you think it might be possible, ultimately, to reduce the banners to a very small number overall, and just establish lines like you've done with the Musicians project for the various "smaller" entities involved.  I have recently tagged several biography pages with the banners of the states with which they are involved, and it would reduce clutter a lot if they could all be arranged like you've done above, or like the Australia projects have all agreed to do.  I guess I can see the "top level" project banners would be for people, places, and, broadly, events (hobbies, battles, TV shows/movies, literature, what have you).  "Events" would be all but impossible to put together with a single banner, but if the biography and geographical projects could agree on a single banner template to cover articles which fall in their spheres and those of other projects, it would make things much easier for all involved.  Badbilltucker 16:12, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep in mind, though, that integrating their banner into a larger project's necessarily adds some limitations to what the smaller project can do with it; they will find it difficult, for example, to run their own specialized assessment or peer review process using tags in the same banner, because there will be confusion with the parameters (as well as with the visual placement).
 * The combined-banner-idea was something that really emerged from the "task force" idea—where it was known that the task forces would not have their own processes (the lack thereof being one of the most prominent characteristics of task forces), and that it was therefore safe to absorb their banners. Doing it with actual independent projects—particularly if there isn't a one-to-one correspondence between large project and small project—is likely to become quite unpleasant if very active projects are involved on both sides of the issue. Kirill Lokshin 16:26, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
 * The only process they get on their own (for our work groups) is their own Mathbot worklist, which may be enough to entice, but I agree it should be a one-to-one correspondence in scope, i.e. WikiProject Composers. I personally don't like the use of our template for non-bio articles with the non-bio=yes flag as it clutters things. It was created for the few instances of such articles for WP:BRoy project, but I don't want what we did there to set a precedent for how other projects are "absorbed" by WP:WPBIO. If they don't move their page to our space and use our template (with their one line statement that it's in their project scope), I don't know that we gain anything. FWIW, I've approached all active projects potentially overlapping ours back in July to see if they would like to join and none except BRoy have done so. Guitarists seems to be working in tandem, they'll post things in our space from time to time.... --plange 16:39, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
 * I think the overlap with musicians is almost total. I don't imagine they'll have many (if any) non-biographical articles. Basically, they're a biographical project too - but extended to cover musical groups as well as individuals. Now, if I go to the library to get a book about the Beatles' story it'll be catalogued under "music biographies".


 * Guitarists is alright because it's small, although really as another biographical project it would be better if that were swallowed up too. My main concern is not allowing banners to take over talk pages too much - we have a quiet acceptance of the banners at the moment but a few folks are holding their tongues and if we get 3 biographical projects all tagging the same page - as could happen with, say, Brian May (guitarists=bio, musicians=bio, WPBIO; and WP Queen) it won't help our cause. --kingboyk 17:12, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
 * I think we could probably hack the templates to support such things if the need ever arose. I don't propose swallowing up such projects anyway; the project in question is small in terms of members but massive in terms of potential scope. --kingboyk 16:28, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
 * I think we could certainly be looking at consolidation in regards to people, countries, military and one or two other areas. I'd leave hobbies well alone (including musical groups) for (hopefully) obvious reasons. --kingboyk 16:23, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Although, given the huge number of Musically based projects (as seen from the WikiProject Council/Directory/Culture listing, it might be possible to get them all to agree to a "group" music banner like all the Australian projects and many of the computer game projects have already done. That would certainly reduce the clutter on the talk pages, particularly since many will have at least some degree of overlap.  Understand, no one is talking about trying to "pressure" them into adopting such a thing, simply seeing if they might agree to using one on their own.  Badbilltucker 17:13, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
 * It would be nice if they could combine templates with WP:Bio, but both groups could still maintain their own bot lists. For the chemical elements we had a similar situation - at Version 0.5 we agreed that we would include all of these, and I found the Elements WikiProject didn't have a template.  We have one simple template Template:Chemical Element which puts articles into both the 0.5 listing (under Natural sciences) and into the Chemistry listing. See Talk:Cerium as an example.  The elements people were thrilled that I tagged 118 pages for them, and we got all tagged for 0.5 at the same time, and incidentally for the WPCD Test Version as well.  I think these sorts of multiple use templates are the way to go in the future (wherever possible) to avoid taking over talk pages. Walkerma 18:42, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Just a note to report that WP Musicians successfully merged into WP Biography. --kingboyk 14:19, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Tagging talk pages and assessing articles
You've probably already been "spammed" about this, as I've just written to all WikiProjects I think that it can help, but anyway - I worked hard on this so I may as well share it with as many folks as I can:

Hi. If you still have work to do tagging talk pages and assessing articles, my AWB plugin might be of interest to you.

The plugin has two main modes of operation:
 * Tagging talk pages, great for high-speed tagging
 * Assessments mode, for reviewing articles (pictured)

As of the current version, WikiProjects with simple "generic" templates are supported by the plugin without the need for any special programatic support by me. I've had a look at your project's template and you seem to qualify.

For more information see:
 * About the plugin
 * About support for "generic" WikiProject templates
 * User guide
 * About AWB (AutoWikiBrowser)

Hope that helps. If you have any questions or find any bugs please let me know on the plugin's talk page. --Kingboyk 15:05, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

One too many child-projects
We've touched on this a bit in some of the above discussions, so I thought it would be a good idea to note a discussion I've started at WP:CVU via Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Computer and video games. This is an issue that effects a great deal of WikiProjects, mostly the ones dealing with entertainment and fiction. Basically, there are many needless child WikiProjects that unneeded, counter productive, confusing to new editors, encouraging fancruft, and so on. While most are created in good faith, something does need to be done about this.

That being said, I don't think we should exactly "kick down doors" and demand deleting and merging. Rather, I think we should find ways to present non-forking of WikiProjects as a better idea and a more efficient use of our editors times. Noting things like, WikiProjects aren't social clubs, declarations of fandom, etc. Projects are generally created when a topic / group of articles will benefit from collaborative editing and discussion, and that splitting those efforts defeats the whole reason of creating a centralized place to work on related topics. That also means that sometimes a TV show will benefit from a specific project, but that doesn't mean that all TV shows should have a project, even if one show is more notable than another. Not only that, but some topics, even if vast in article numbers related to that topic, are already in good working order, don't have issues, and are doing well without additional centralized discussion. -- Ned Scott 16:30, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Lots of other areas have this same problem. Christianity, to a lesser extent Islam and Hinduism, some sports-related projects, and all the Canada and United States higways projects come to mind. I think we'd all welcome any suggestions to deal with them.  Earlier today I suggested to the proposer that the proposed Iglesia ni Cristo project try to become an integrated subunit of WikiProject Christianity, but I don't have great hopes for that.  Anyone else have any ideas on how to deal with matters like these? Badbilltucker 18:38, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
 * I have a bit of experience with prodding projects into merging, so maybe I can offer something helpful here:
 * Set up the infrastructure in advance. Making vaguely-worded statements about task forces and combined banners and whatnot isn't useful if people can't actually see an example of the result.
 * Start with the really dead ones. They're less likely to object, and might be able to provide some sample task forces to begin with.
 * Use kid gloves. If you ignore everything else, this is the one cardinal rule here.  The proper way to get a project to accept a merger or restructuring (and we are looking for them to accept this, yes?) is to suggest it on the talk page and to persuade anyone who objects.  Ned's approach—leaving behind a trail of little pastel banners—will most likely be regarded as an insult (almost certainly so if the project happens to be active!) and is highly unconductive to actually getting the merger done quietly and uncontroversially.
 * (This assuming, of course, that the "task force" setup is one you want to pursue. If that's not the case, then it becomes somewhat more difficult to arrange for useable work areas for the sub-topics being merged in.) Kirill Lokshin 19:28, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
 * It would be good if people from the Council would participate in the WikiProject CVG discussion, since there's something of a backlash happening against this idea. Any arguments you might have of why this is necessary are most welcome. jaco ♫ plane  20:19, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
 * I wonder why... ;-) Kirill Lokshin 20:29, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
 * I was afraid this would happen. I guess my approach was indeed not the best way to go about this.. Hopefully I'll be able to redeem my suggestion with my last post (Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Computer and video games#Clarification). I even had the idea of keeping them as separate projects but finding ways to "share" guidelines and find ways to be better interconnected. -- Ned Scott 00:50, 24 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Well my latest proposal seems to be more acceptable. I'm proposing just absorbing dead projects like the Sega project. If this is successful we should be able to grow this WikiProject without having to create different WikiProjects for every single video game company or franchise. Feedback most welcome. jaco ♫ plane  21:58, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Seems sensible and practical. Turning some of the inactive ones into task forces should help encourage newer subgroups to start out that way rather than forming their own WikiProjects, in my experience. Kirill Lokshin 22:04, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

I thought I would note that I've also suggested WikiProject List of Television Episodes (a project I'm very much involved in) and WikiProject Television episodes be "merged" or made into task forces of WikiProject Television for many of the same reasons. The two child groups are mostly about style issues that don't change very often, and it helps when dealing with issues that spread across Lists of episodes and episode articles. Also, WP:TV's activity is very low, so this would help to not dilute the TV-related efforts. -- Ned Scott 22:35, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Wikiproject:Peru
Hello, I am a member of the WikiProject Peru and maintain the Portal:Peru. I am generally regarded as the user who maintains the project. I will say, to the credit of the project, that it is one of the more active projects on Latin-American countries (with the only one being more active possibly being the Argentine Wikiproject). I would, however, like to increase our activity and our relevance to Wikipedia. Since the purpose of this project is to help improve projects across Wikipedia I thought I might ask for some advice in improving the Wikiproject-Peru. Thank you in advance.--Jersey Devil 04:04, 24 September 2006 (UTC)


 * As a start, looking through the (incomplete—mea culpa!) WP:PROJGUIDE might help; there are some very critical things there that the project hasn't done. Kirill Lokshin 04:14, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Everybody Loves Raymond Project
It looks like someone at some point deleted/eliminated the Everybody Loves Raymond project. I find a few links indicating there was one, which now link directly to the show page. I'm not sure whether it was deleted because it was nonproductive in its time, has since merged, or some other reason. I am guessing the project should not be listed in the directory. However, if anyone knows anything to the contrary, please let me know. Badbilltucker 16:02, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Task forces/Work Groups/Departments
Do the rest of you think that the various "departments" of larger projects deserve to be included as task forces or not? I've noticed that, for instance, Indonesia has a cartography department, which could, I guess, also fall under the general Cartography group of projects. I personally feel myself to be completely and utterly unqualified to address this, and am thus throwing it out there for someone else to decide. Yep, I'm a real scum. Badbilltucker 21:53, 28 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Meh. The terminological distinction between "task force" and "department"—at least as it was originally developed by WP:MILHIST—was based on the fact that a "task force" was essentially a (non-independent) sub-project, having a different scope (and a distinct notion of membership) from the central project, while a "department" was merely a more pretentious name for a subpage of the central project on which some particular process ocurred or some resource was organized.  I don't know to what extent this distinction has become blurred as other projects have adopted the usage; but, at least in the beginning, departments were not meant to have any separate identity (in the same sense that one wouldn't speak of a project's peer review process having one).
 * (Having said that, I would suggest, as a practical solution, linking any relevant departments in the "Notes" field; this would make the links available without necessarily equating them to task forces.) Kirill Lokshin 22:29, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Guide header wording
There's been some editing of the guide header banner today, with the following three wording ideas coming up:


 * 1) (original) This is a guide produced by the WikiProject Council. While it is not an actual policy or guideline, it reflects the thoughts of some editors with considerable experience in creating and maintaining WikiProjects. Comments and suggestions are always welcome!
 * 2) This is a recommended guideline produced by the WikiProject Council. It reflects the thoughts of some editors with considerable experience in creating and maintaining WikiProjects. Comments and suggestions are always welcome!
 * 3) This page describes best practices recommended by the WikiProject Council; it reflects the thoughts of some editors with considerable experience in creating and maintaining WikiProjects. Comments and suggestions are always welcome!

Thoughts on which of these is the best version? Kirill Lokshin 23:20, 28 September 2006 (UTC)


 * 2 or 3 works for me. Non-threatening, but more "confidant" wording. -- Ned Scott 23:27, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Number 3 sounds best to me. In #2, "recommended guideline" sounds rather tautological. Walkerma 06:14, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Work group/Task force - which project does it belong to?
Is there a preferred order for which WikiProject a potential work group/task force should belong to? The example I'm currently trying to find consensus on is Indian cinema. There was a WikiProject Indian Cinema, which was moved without discussion to WikiProject India as a work group. I had earlier proposed that the Indian Cinema project consider moving to WikiProject Films as a work group, but as my proposal did not elicit any comments from an otherwise active project, I let the matter stand.

The wiki-wide question I want to ask is this: generally speaking, should a work group about [regional subject] belong to the region's WikiProject (in this case India) or the subject's WikiProject (in this case Films)? I believe that it should be the latter, since the subject project will be the best central place for editors to discuss issues of style, scope, organization, and other matters which are integral to the overall content of the page and pages about that type of subject. I also believe that integrating regional interests within the subject project is a better way of countering systematic bias and allowing other editors working on the same subject to have easier access to and review of articles on their subject which are out of their local knowledge base. Furthermore, I don't see any reason why the region WikiProject shouldn't still be able to link to and claim the work group as also affiliated with their project - so long as the actual work group remain under the subject WikiProject.

WikiProject Military history seems to have adopted this stance already (including an Indian military history task force), but the same editor involved with this project move has also indicated that he wishes to move that to WP India, so I think that getting some sort of consensus/precedent set up soon will avoid a lot of future problems.

Lastly, was this move correct to begin with? While I have no doubt that the move was done boldly, but in good faith, shouldn't be considered improper to move an entire active WikiProject without any consultation or discussion prior? As mentioned before, I tried to discuss the matter with the project before (as the Council Guide recommended) and received no response. I certainly wasn't going to just move the project anyway.

In any case, some third-party thoughts would be greatly appreciated both here and at the discussion at WP Films. Many thanks! Girolamo Savonarola 21:08, 9 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Replied there. Suffice it to say that I am not exactly thrilled at this new development. Kirill Lokshin 22:43, 9 October 2006 (UTC)


 * I wonder if this group should draft some recommendations for this sort of situations, using Kirill's post (mentioned above) as a starting point. It could also apply in cases where a group from Project A want to start a new task force (or even full-blown WikiProject) that has content related to both Project A and an otherwise unrelated Project X. Another similar issue might be joint task forces with members from two or more similar WikiProjects collaborating - Project A and Project B - such as (made up example) Norway, Denmark & UK collaborating on a North Sea oil task force, These might be useful topics to discuss.  Walkerma 04:30, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Yes, might be a good idea. The scenario being discussed I would have thought to be quite simple and shouldn't really need a guideline - hijacking an active group without discussion probably isn't within the spirit of how we operate on Wikipedia. Carrot and stick, yes, strong encouragement, yes, but "being bold" in a case like this doesn't seem to me to achieve anything other than conflict.
 * However, guidelines for the future and in particular for new projects/workgroups which haven't started yet could be useful. We could think about the general scope overlap of WikiProjects at the same time (not that overlapping scope has so far caused me any real problems other than multiple tags on talk pages). --kingboyk 10:24, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
 * I think there is a potential problem as the number of projects grows: if all the geographical/topical taskforces sit under the parent topic project rather than the parent region project, it eventually devalues the region project since all its different aspects will slowly become subareas of the various topics (i.e. Indian geography becomes a taskforce of Geography, Indian film becomes a taskforce of Film, Indian history becomes a taskforce of History etc.). Maybe that's an inevitable progression, but I think, in the short term at least, there needs to be some way of maintaining a connection between the related projects with regards to the taskforces (and I currently have no idea what that might be or how we would describe it). Yomangani talk 10:38, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Interested persons from the regional projects joining the taskforces whatever the parentship would seem to solve that. It's not as if the WPs have ownership of the articles or restrict membership. If Indian wikipedians who belong to WP India want to work on films and influence the "managing" WikiProject, join the Indian film group!


 * Possibly a Project like WP India is too wide in scope anyway without workgroups, and has less claim over the subject-specific workgroups than the subject-specific WikiProjects do. It might indeed be that projects like WPIndia will come under pressure this way. The "regional community spirit" thing, too, can be done elsewhere, on regional noticeboards.


 * Another possibility is workgroups being children of multiple projects, but that might be unnecessarily complicated. I dread to think of the implications on talk page templates. --kingboyk 10:50, 10 October 2006 (UTC)


 * One other point to consider is that some of the top-level projects (e.g. History, Geography, etc.) may be too broad to actually function as cohesive bodies in their own right, and thus aren't going to be pulling task forces from anywhere. Conversely, there may also be limits in terms of levels of descent (e.g. WP:MILHIST has a U.S. task force, but may not want to further divide that into, say, a Florida task force, so WikiProject Florida could have a military task force under it should it desire to). Kirill Lokshin 12:08, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
 * For what little it might be worth, the little dweeb who disappeared a few weeks ago for no immediately apparent reason (me) has been working to organize the directory in such a way that the directory lists all the projects which direct relate to a given topic or geographical area under the same general topic heading. I'm right now putting together a list of all the projects which have been created in the interim to add to the list, and hope that the bulk of it will be ready tomorrow or the next day for review. Personally, I think that that might be the best way to go. Just list all the related projects under a general heading, but let them continue to exist as independent projects or sub-groups if that is what the membership of the group wants. Badbilltucker 14:25, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
 * ...and I thought you were just spending all your time tracking down obscure unfinished projects to list at WP:MFD ;) Yomangani talk 14:30, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

So then my next question is whether country WikiProjects are not better off as Portals with regional noticeboards? I can see how sub-topics regarding national topics (highways, towns, regions, history) could warrant WikiProjects or task forces, but it seems that WikiProject Country may not actually be the best structure for the overall topics of a country. Compare WP:USA to WP:UK. Girolamo Savonarola 20:25, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Certainly, it's a good idea if a country project helps to manage the portal for the country. However, there is also, generally, more than enough content related to a specific country to justify the existence of a project related to that specific country as a general entity. I think the sheer number of projects related to the United States is at least in part due to the huge number of editors in the United States, which allows for a very high degree of specialization. I am currently involved in the possible creation of a project on Germany, at User:Badbilltucker/WikiProject Germany, and it seems to me that it is probably a good idea for a "national" project to exist to cover those specific country-related articles which do not fall under the purview of any of the more focused projects. Also, some details, like management of portals, assessment, etc., can possibly be best handled by an "umbrella" project, like a national project. However, if, for whatever reason, there is little or any content related to a country which does not already fall under the purview of one or more focused projects, then I can agree that maybe there would be less purpose in having a really active umbrella project. I hope I didn't blather on too long in the response there. Badbilltucker 21:43, 10 October 2006 (UTC)


 * I think there's certainly room for a country project for (almost) any country, independent of whether particular sub-topics related to that country are covered by task forces of other projects. Indeed, given past experience with how regional noticeboards can get drawn in to national conflicts, I think that plain WikiProjects would probably be the better option (with or without an associated portal).
 * (More generally, this entire issue is, in my mind, a purely technical question of how a task force that forms the intersection of two projects is placed in the project banners (which, hopefully, can be resolved by some fairly simply and uncontroversial guideline). There's no problem with a single task force being part of two projects on a conceptual level; it's only when people get unnecessarily concerned with the perceived "claim" that they're staking out by putting a task force under one project or the other that we get these sorts of problems. Kirill Lokshin 02:57, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Advice please
Hello everyone. I'm trying to create a WikiProject Paintball, in order to improve the quality and comprehensiveness of the Paintball category as a whole. Any advice on how to run a WikiProject, or perhaps a suggestion on whom I might surrender such leadership to, would be greatly appreciated. Thanks! - Maximilli, 22:01, 10 October 2006 (UTC)


 * WP:PROJGUIDE might have some things that would be useful when starting off. :-) Kirill Lokshin 02:47, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Sustainability
This is the only pure disambiguation project page I have ever seen. Is there a real purpose in keeping it or not? It doesn't even have a talk page; it's a link to the talk page of WikiProject Ecology. Badbilltucker 23:15, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Offer of bot
Hi - I'm just leaving a message here to offer to do bot-related tasks for any wikiprojects who request it from me (well... I won't do the task - User:MartinBotII will, but you get the idea... :P). The sort of this that I thought of immediately was [] this sort of thing (ie- what Mathbot does for some projects)], but for all projects who request it. Aside from that, I'm open to any other ideas - anyone who'd like a bot for a wikiproject, just get in touch with me :) - M  a  rtinp23  17:29, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Project Banners
In the process of setting up Wikipedia:WikiProject Germany, the question has come up how the banner will be set up. I suggested that we perhaps use a generalized template, like WP:BIO has. Specifically, I was thinking we might use the WP:GEOGRAPHY banner, with a "drop-down" addition to the effect of "This page is supported by WikiProject Germany". Maybe a similar arrangement could be worked out with WP:BIO. Depending on how it goes with Germany, maybe the new Prussia project could be talked into following suit. I proposed this hoping it might reduce the amount of space taken up by the multiple banners. Any opinions? Badbilltucker 14:06, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Stupid question
Does anyone know if it is possible to set up a page a special page or anything similar which could be used to find new projects as they are added? I know about the special search page already for pages containing the word "WikiProject"  here, but don't think anyone would want to go through the entire list once a month or so hereafter to make sure that all the new projects are listed. I would welcome any response, positive or negative. Badbilltucker 14:23, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
 * query.php could give you list of everything in Category:WikiProjects that has been edited from a certain date, but that would include all projects that have had activity over the past month as well. Perhaps request a bot to do it? (Bot_requests). It would only need to request the page you listed once a month and compare the list to what it was the previous time it was requested. Yomangani talk 15:24, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

USS Sculpin (SS-494) and alike
I was just wondering who was taking care of such articles, I have stumbled on many and that is the best they will get. Since nobody watches them, we should block/stabilize them or something. Lincher 17:30, 16 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Meh, I'd just merge it into List of unbuilt submarines of the United States Navy or something like that. It's a question that can be discussed at WP:SHIPS and WP:MARITIME, though. Kirill Lokshin 17:36, 16 October 2006 (UTC)


 * I think Lincher is raising a wider issue here, with the "and alike", i.e. obscure pages that nobody watches. This is a very good point, but not one we can really sort out here at WP:COUNCIL, since it would need a system-wide solution, not a project-by-project one.  My suggestion would be to wait until we get stable versions here on the English Wikipedia (supposedly fairly soon), then we propose that certain classes of article like this be made into stable versions.  It may need a bot or something to go through and tag them, and we might need a whitelist of trusted editors - but this is how the German Stable Versions is going to be run anyway.  We could say, "Look for all articles that have had no activity for 3 months or longer" and tag those?  Walkerma 19:56, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Walkerma clearly knows more than I do about this subject (in my case - nothing whatsoever). However, I have asked to have a bot created to help determine which WikiProjects have been created since the last updating of the project directory. With only minor modifications, that same bot could be used to "tag" stable articles. I will change the request for the bot to permit easily fulfilling this function as well. Badbilltucker 20:21, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Draft directory
I think it's finally sorta done. I know that there are still quite a few red links, but I think most of them are because they link to the format of the proposed directory, which isn't identical to the existing one. Anyway, the pages are: User:Badbilltucker/Culture Directory, User:Badbilltucker/Culture Directory 2, User:Badbilltucker/Philosophy and religion Directory, User:Badbilltucker/Sports Directory, User:Badbilltucker/Geographical Directory, User:Badbilltucker/Geographical Directory/United States, User:Badbilltucker/History and society directory, and User:Badbilltucker/Science directory. I didn't do anything with the WikiProject Council/Directory/Wikipedia page except add relevant projects, because I'm not really sure how to organize them. Now, for the next day or two (this time I really hope it only is that short), I'm going to try to arrange a list of the various portals, which might be able to go as an extra page to the directory. I figure the portal managers could use the extra help, particularly when the portals aren't time to any projects. Anyway, feel free to have a good laugh at the pages above and make any of the blatantly obvious errors I made a bit more palatable. Badbilltucker 19:56, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Um... WP:WPTC is inactive? :| Tito xd (?!?) 20:02, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Yes, some double-checking on the new contents would probably be a good idea. ;-)
 * (A side note: there are a couple of different formats that seem to be used for cross-linking other projects' task forces—e.g. "Japanese military history" versus "Military history - Polish military history"—that should probably be made more consistent. Personally, I think the first form is neater, as I can't see particular reason to repeat the full project's name.) Kirill Lokshin 20:10, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
 * I knew that there would be at least a few errors, and that some things will have changed since the directory began. That's one of the reasons I'm preparing the list of portals now. I'm hoping that after you all review things and hopefully catch at least all of the more painfully obvious blunders to notify each of the active projects about it, and request each of them to make any revisions, barring subcategory creation, they see fit. They would also have the full list of portals, and possibly be able to indicate which portals they think their project would want to be associated with. Like I said, I hope that the portal list will be done in a day or two. I think I said that about the project directory about a month ago too, but this list does look significantly less complicated. Badbilltucker 21:06, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
 * This is an amazing piece of work, BadBill, thank you for all your hard work! Just make sure you don't list the Canadian projects under /United States in the final version, or you'll start World War III! Thanks, Walkerma 21:55, 17 October 2006 (UTC) (sitting 20 miles from the Canadian border, taking cover.. :) )
 * That was primarily based on alphabetical arrangement of the continents and later relocating sections because of length. Oh, and I should note that I didn't establish a main listing for the Horror Project, because I have no idea which would be counted as the "central" listing for it. Anyone who knows the genre better than I do is welcome to do so. Badbilltucker 22:02, 17 October 2006 (UTC)