Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Pharmacology/Collaboration of the Week

Nomination setup
Glad to see this is starting up. I might suggest copying the nomination setup code at WikiProject Molecular and Cellular Biology/Collaboration of the Month--it allows a continuous update of active and "past-due" noms to keep the system rolling. If there's no objections (or alternative suggestions), I might use my mediocre programmin' skillz to implement that later this week. &mdash; Scientizzle 23:41, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
 * No objections here. Good idea. Fvasconcellos (t·c) 00:27, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
 * I actually modeled this after WikiProject Medicine's COTW page, and I think they use a similar type of script. Ultimately, a script may be the best way to go. Dr. Cash 01:43, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Okay...I had a go at it. See Template:RxCOTW. &mdash; Scientizzle 00:50, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

How to nominate
This looks great! The only change might be to add some instructions to voting, so that people know to increment the vote= option in the template when adding their support. Dr. Cash 06:06, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Please, add anything that you think helps clarify the process...I'm just glad I didn't completely screw it up! &mdash; Scientizzle 14:27, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

Week vs. fortnight
I'm impressed at the cracking pace of editors getting stuck into aspirin - sorry I can't do more as I am a bit preoccupied elsewhere and NSAIDS are a bit outside my field (psych)...lung cancer is up at FAC and really needs some medical input but I digress...

Anyway, what I meant to say was having run a few collabs at WP: Dinosaurs is that a collab a fortnight or month seemed to be more realistic rather than weekly to really work things over - however both aspirin and paracetamol are more advanced than successful collab noms we had at WP dinosaurs so both may be FA ready within a week....ultimately it may be worth revisiting interval at which collabs are selected at some stage (but I'd be glad to be wrong in this case) :) cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 13:25, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Asprin is still a way off FA quality but I too am pleased folk are getting stuck in. However, weekly or fortnightly is unrealistically short for reaching FA. There are three solutions to this:


 * 1) Keep the regular churn of articles on a weekly/fortnightly cycle. This keeps interest up, with something new on a regular basis. Possibly most of the improvement comes in the first week (wild guess). However, the target should be changed from achieving FA to simply moving the article up the grade spectrum from sub → start → B → GA → A → FA.
 * 2) Increase the period to monthly. This is long enough to reach FA IMO. The downside is if a difficult subject is chosen, or one that simply lacks enough sources to become comprehensive and interesting, then project members will lose interest and effort stalls.
 * 3) A combination. If an article attracts a critical mass of editors and is still undergoing productive edits, then keep it at as the current topic. If the CotW maintainers think that progress has slowed, then it can be replaced by the next. Alternatively, editors "vote" each week to keep the article running.

I think 1 and 3 have merit. The choice depends on what this project sees as its goal. Do we want lots of good articles or fewer excellent articles? If we do want to aim for FA, then I think we need to keep Aspirin open longer. Frankly, if we can't get Aspirin to FA, what hope do we have. Colin°Talk 13:57, 7 September 2007 (UTC)


 * I could see going with a possible biweekly cycle in some cases, depending on interest (oh wait, I guess that's the definition of a 'fortnight' -- sorry, I've never used the term before). I am hesitant to go with a monthly cycle, because I think it's a bit too long between changing them, and I think we need to keep the project updated a little more frequently to keep people interested. I think we should also focus on other aspects, instead of just FA. Although FA is the ultimate goal, GA is becoming increasingly more respected these days, and if WP:PHARM had more of both FA & GA categories, that would make the project look better. My original intention was to nominate an article at WP:FAC after the collaboration period; if that passed, great; if not, we got some good comments and review to improve the article, and in the meantime, nominate it at WP:GAC to get more useful comments. Dr. Cash 19:30, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
 * I made WP dino collab monthly when (a) old collabs had insufficient work and (b) people didn't get stuck into new collabs, so enthusiasm appeared to have died down a bit. It was no biggie - this is a volunteer project after all and the art was trying to modulate the process to get the best bang (or FA in this case) for yer buck. OTOH there's something to be said for alot of work, then sitting back and digesting for a while before going the final stretch. There's also a huge difference between such a global drug like aspirin and something narrower and more well defined - I reckon clozapine would be a lot more demarkated and easy to roll over into FAC but that may change after I get stuck into it later. Anyway, just watching how it evolves is cool - the potental FA collabs (both official and unoffical) are the best thing in WP I reckon. cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 21:33, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
 * I have to agree with Colin that there is certainly a potential for burnout with collaborations, and that a week may not be enough for some articles (probably won't be enough for aspirin). Having said that, I do feel a case-by-case "extension" would be better than changing the period altogether. After all, nothing is set in stone :) Fvasconcellos (t·c) 15:32, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

At the moment, I'm kind of leaning towards making this a biweekly/fortnight kind of thing. I think we're making good progress on Aspirin, and another week could help it out. Plus, at least for the time being, given the relatively low participation in the parent WP, combined with the start of the academic school year, I wouldn't want to overburden people. I still believe that we should not have a set determination on the amount of time -- each article will be different -- if an article only takes a week to get to FA status, then great, we'll move on to a new one. If not, we'll do two weeks. I don't think we should go longer than two weeks, however, as the project could run the risk of getting stale too quickly with too infrequent updates. Any other thoughts? Dr. Cash 03:32, 11 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I've been slow to reply. As I said above, I do think this is the best solution at the moment :) Fvasconcellos (t·c) 01:30, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Aspirin extension
I have decided to extend Aspirin for one more week, to give it a little bit more time to fix up the article and get it closer to featured status. Also, given the participation level in WP:PHARM, I don't want to overburden too many people too early on. I think progress is being made on Aspirin, and an additional week will help it out tremendously. I am still opposed to any further extensions towards three weeks or one month, as I don't think that would necessarily help the article in question and I don't want this new collaboration to become too stale too quickly. So a new article for collaboration of the week will be chosen on September 19, 2007, whether Aspirin is finished or not. Dr. Cash 01:32, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

WP Pharmacology: Collaboration of the month?
It looks from the experience of aspirin that Casliber was right, and that a month is the best term for the collaboration. After a couple of weeks of work aspirin stays abandoned without much improvement. It has not even been moved to GA nomination. My impression is that WP Pharm Collaboration project failed completely in this case. Paul gene 11:14, 5 October 2007 (UTC)


 * Based on participation levels, I've decided to make this a monthly collaboration instead of a weekly collaboration. I think this has the best chance of producing a Featured quality article, and it won't wear people out too quickly. I've kept the page at Collaboration of the Week for the time-being, however, since we might ultimately decide to go weekly at some point (no need to change all the template names and everything quite yet). Dr. Cash 21:32, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

Next Pharmacology Collaboration
I'm traveling out of town on business, so I haven't had a chance to review the progress on Paracetamol too much. At first glance, I see a couple of areas in the history section that are unsourced, which should be addressed per the featured article criteria. Let's give it another week, and I'll decide on the next collaboration on October 23, 2007. So far, Melatonin seems to be edging out Receptor antagonist here (6 votes to 5). Dr. Cash 01:35, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Quarterly year suggestion
This should be a quarterly of a year project. Have a selected article, and possibly not through requirement a runner up article to be improved. There should be a historical list of previous articles. Sidelight 12 Talk 23:52, 15 April 2013 (UTC)