This category is within the scope of WikiProject Photography, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of photography on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.PhotographyWikipedia:WikiProject PhotographyTemplate:WikiProject PhotographyPhotography articles
This category is within the scope of WikiProject Hawaii, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Hawaii on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.HawaiiWikipedia:WikiProject HawaiiTemplate:WikiProject HawaiiHawaii articles
This page is the within the scope of WikiProject Edit requests, a collaborative effort to improve Wikipedia's edit request process and reduce the number of edit requests in the edit request queue.Edit requestsWikipedia:WikiProject Edit requestsTemplate:WikiProject Edit requestsEdit requests articles
There are several issues with your suggestion, and I've recently raised them on Greg's page. For some reason, he has not addressed my concerns. If you are willing to discuss it here, please let me know. —Viriditas | Talk07:25, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
What are the concerns? A number of regional projects have been edited so that there is only one place for photo requests. There are advantages to the reqphoto template in that it allows more than one subject in the template and its existence is more widely know than any specific project. Project template are also useful for those working on that topic. Is there any problem with combining the category location? Traveler100 (talk) 07:52, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I am not ideologically opposed to anything. In fact, I left GregManninLB's changes to the template in place until I realized how inaccurate it was. Please review a few of my concerns in this discusison; I have many more to discuss. However, I am confident that we are all working towards the same goal and we will quickly reach a compromise. Of that, I am sure. To begin with, I would like for you to briefly educate me as to what you and Greg are trying to achieve. It is my opinion, and that of many others, that the reqphoto system is useless. Now, with that said, I support NauticaShades's propsal to "incorporate" Wikipedia:Requested pictures into Wikipedia:WikiProject Photography or a similar project. I think that the system is already operating as an informal WikiProject and merely needs to be formalized. However, while I am optimistic towards the future, the past has been pretty bleak. In September, 20007, on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Photography, NauticaShades wrote: Not much requests actually seem to be fulfilled, and I think a better organization as well as connections to a large number of photographers here could help. I completely agree with NauticaShades. Not much requests have been fulfilled, and this is due to the continuing structure and organization of reqphotos. And, it needs to change, which is why I hope to see it operating as a true supporting maintenance WikiProject like Wikipedia:WikiProject Timeline Tracer, Wikipedia:WikiProject Update Watch, and all the other WikiProjects that work hard to support all articles, regardless of topic. With that said, what is the current status of reqphotos? Is it operating as a WikiProject or under the control of WikiProject Photography? And, has it tapped into the more than 1700 editors who are members of Category:Wikipedians interested in photography? The concentration on categorizing articles instead of allowing WikiProjects to deal with image requests themselves, is the wrong way to go about things. Instead, reqphotos should be spending their time and energy talking with the 1700 editors (and many more) who are ready and willing to add images, many of whom are already members of a WikiProject. The centralization of reqphotos is preventing it from achieving its goals. And, the naming conventions are inaccurate. These are only a few problems that I have raised. I have dozens more, and I am willing to talk specifics. For example, there has been concern about "talk page clutter", recently detailed in an article in the Signpost. I am concerned that reqphoto requests are contributing to talk page clutter, and should be converted to parameters and used inside the WikiProject template(s). Allowing WikiProject assessors to take over reqphoto requests by assessing their own articles would give the reqphoto people the ability to focus on recruiting Wikipedia photographers to clean out the categories and add images to articles. We don't need more reqphoto categories. The active projects, for the most part, have that under control. What we need is a reqphoto team (like you and Greg) to work on creating a system that will pair Wikipedian photographers with reqphoto categories that match their topic of interest and/or locale. What we do not need, is for Greg to be adding reqphoto requests simply because he feels like it. He's been doing that lately and he's doing it to justify the new categories he's creating. That's overcategorization and we don't need it. Educate the project people about what you are doing and they will add the tags as they see fit. We don't need dozens of categories and subcats divorced from the main projects. What we need, is a team of editors to actively recruit and direct photographers to the project pages and project categories. The time, effort, and energy wasted on creating useless categories like Category:Wikipedia requested photos in X is not helpful. We already have these categories, and they are best represented by shorter, succint titles specifying images not photographs. Images include maps, drawings, scans, animations, graphics, and photos. The title of this category is accurate. It refers to Hawaii articles that need images. Not requests, and not photographs. Not all articles need images, and I would suggest that many of the articles presently listed in reqphoto cats probably do not need images. Let's focus on the task at hand and let the projects determine which articles need images and which do not. If an editor who is not affiliated with a project wants to make that decision, that's ok too, but having the reqphoto team go around adding the tag just to populate categories is not appropriate. —Viriditas | Talk09:29, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I think Viriditas makes some good points. I made some suggestions for a similar template at Template talk:WikiProject GeorgiaUS. Where should the general discussion be held? Probably not in Hawaii-specific or Georgia-specific template talk pages. I agree with some of Viriditas concerns, but I do think that creating more specific categories, like "photo requests in Orange County, California" to be helpful, much better for anyone planning a photo expedition than having to wade through photo requests in California, which would just be too huge. doncram (talk) 21:37, 7 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
