Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Wikiportals

I just realized that WikiProject badly needed an Upper left-hand corner!
 * Well, Here ya go!

Have fun!

Questions
Jacoplane 28 June 2005 22:49 (UTC)
 * 1) I'm kind of confused with this project. I'm active in WikiProject Computer and video games, and we've set up a simple Wikiportal Wikiportal/Computer and video games. What does this project have to do with what we're doing?
 * 2) Why are all the wikilinks here done with _ (underscores)?
 * Thanks for your interest. This is an effort to make a comprehensive sweep of existing Wikiprojects that are building and managing Wikiportals. The goal is to fill in the gaps. Maybe a look at WikiProject_Main_Page will help bring this schema into perspective. Think about how a reader would get from the Main Page from there to Wikiportal/Computer and video games, which I must say is an exquisite portal!.
 * Do you mean like Main Page or Main_Page? I just got in the habit of putting underscores instead of spaces, because spaces were't allowed in older versions of the type of code that runs wikipedia. Is that what you mean? It's probably OK either way. If you could elaborate...
 * Quinobi 29 June 2005 06:30 (UTC)

Answers
User_talk:Ancheta_Wis |

Status of this page
A few friendly observations:

First, I don't think it makes sense to ask groups to join this project as participants and discourage individuals. Groups of people don't edit pages. Individual people do. The point of a WikiProject is to rally individuals and coordinate their efforts. It doesn't matter whether or not someone has "joined" one of the projects they want to improve. I've certainly seen in practice that all "members" do not necessarily particpate in a project, and not everyone who is participating is actually signed up as a "member". Membership seems more like a sort of casual endorsement that the project is a good idea. Moreover, not everyone who thinks a given project is a good idea or who wants to participate in it will think a meta-project is a good idea or will want to participate in it. In the same way that not everyone who edits articles wants to edit the containing categories, or cares much about them.

Second, I'm not sure this page is really needed. Each Wikiporal has to have a community of people interested in the subject who create and maintain it. It doesn't really work to have a community of people who are only interested in the concept of Wikiportals in general to try to spawn new ones; they will soon become neglected. It is a good idea to have a coordination point for doing improvements across all portals, or discussion technical or community aspects about the concept in general. But we already have Wikiportal giving advice about Wikiportal best practices, and the talk page there discussion the creation of new ones, how they should be constructed and used, etc. This project seems largely redundant to that, which, combined with the discouragement of individuals from joining, is probably why it currently has no participants signed up.

I would recommend redirecting this project to Wikiportal and merging and cleaning up the mutual content. -- Beland 19:40, 23 July 2005 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your observations, Beland. I had it in my mind that there should be a WikiProject of this nature, but I'm not sure now. It does seem redundant to the Wikiportal page and its discussion page, which does enjoy participation. This WikiProject, I intended to feed into the WikiProject_Main_Page one, which is now on VfD. This one should probably be deleted also. At the time I created the two projects, I thought User:Ancheta_Wis might have been interested in the schema, but that appears not to be the case. The intent was to create a scheme to integrate WikiProject_Categories, WikiProject and Wikiportal into one big happy family to help out with Browse. I reckon that's not a reasonable proposal. Thanks for your comments. :) Quinobi 20:21, 23 July 2005 (UTC)
 * OK, I implemented the merger. -- Beland 06:07, 25 July 2005 (UTC)