Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-05-16/WikiProject report

Great to see this on reviving WikiProjects. Well written too - well done! Rd232 talk 00:57, 17 May 2011 (UTC)
 * I'd like to thank you for writing and maintaining several sections of the WikiProject Guide, including the sections on inactive projects and bots. They were very helpful while writing this article. -Mabeenot (talk) 01:31, 17 May 2011 (UTC)


 * I've noticed a drop in WikiProject activity recently. I think project members are at first keen to do a certain task or tasks and when they are done, or the bits a specific member is interested in being done is complete then members drop away. Finally you are left with things to do that no one is interested in doing and it all stops. I would think projects would be productive if they are task focused rather then subject focused. The copy editors WikiProject is a good example of a task based project. Regards, SunCreator (talk) 03:15, 17 May 2011 (UTC)
 * This is a good point, but what other "tasks" could be specified? Having groups like WikiProject Article writing is too broad. Guoguo12  --Talk--  03:49, 19 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Not everyone feels the need to 'write'. Infoboxes could be a project - creating the appropriate one for articles which don't have one and/or updating and/or finding additional parameters. Is there a bot which creates the links for all sister projects, such as Wikiquotes and Wikisource? If not, that could be a project. Another project could focus on External links to connect to ongoing coverage such as Worldcat id, C-SPAN, Charlie Rose, Guardian topics, NYT topics. We have templates for these, but we still have articles linking to a single article, or nothing at all. There are also various 'transparency' links for politicians, such as Follow the Money for US state politicians. Flatterworld (talk) 03:12, 23 May 2011 (UTC)


 * These pages and discussions may be of interest.
 * User:Wavelength/About Wikipedia/List of WikiProjects (permanent link here)
 * http://toolserver.org/~svick/projects.txt
 * Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Council (permanent link here)
 * User talk:Svick (permanent link here)
 * —Wavelength (talk) 06:32, 17 May 2011 (UTC)


 * This is well written and helpful. I've always thought that Wikipedia would be even more successful if its editors were more connected and engaged in more collaboration and discussion. WikiProjects are the perfect engines for such interaction, especially if collaboration and discussion could be accomplished at multiple levels (i.e., between users, between WikiProject task forces, between WikiProjects, etc.). Personally, I think we have too many narrow-coverage WikiProjects to accomplish this goal of interconnection. Merging and creating Task Forces within broad-coverage (but not too broad) WikiProjects is the answer. Guoguo12  --Talk--  03:49, 19 May 2011 (UTC)