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Archive 1Archive 2Archive 3

Some feedback

Hi! Have some ideas/questions.

  1. Question. How these automated reports were made? You just took P21:Q6581072 and pick those, which don't have enwiki link?
Ideas
  1. For some missing content stats, projects could use also other Wikipedia projects as a data source. For example, I would like to know what articles about Latvia are missing here, but are in for example in Russian Wikipedia, or French Wikipedia. OK, this won't work for all projects, but for country projects this should work fine.
  2. For some missing content stats 2. There could be generated most wanted red links for those pages, which are in the project. That shouldn't be too difficult to write proper SQL query for that. Have something similar (scans all Wikipedia, excludes links from templates/modules and links from one page) for Latvian Wikipedia.
  3. Don't know where/if it fits, but section "Featured/good articles in other languages" would be nice, I think. So bot would find all those articles, that are in the project scope, that have some badge (via Wikidata) in other Wikipedias. (Harej or anybody else - if you want to test it, you can do it with Wikiproject Latvia - would like to know at least partial results)
  4. I support Piotrus idea about place for tools. I think it is an important part for projects, so that a new section for them could be finded
  5. Untagged pages within projects. Also - projects could use also other Wikipedia projects as a data source (see my first idea).
  6. Something for to-do list. Do some work related to Wikidata! For country specific projects, pick your country, and start getting some fun - add images, some information about people etc. It is really easy for your country, where you live.
  7. Have this project or Harej talked with other Wikipedias? I think other Wikipedias have good ideas about design, tools etc. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 12:41, 4 September 2015 (UTC)
Hello Edgars2007! To answer each question:
  1. You're generally correct. The Women in Red was made semi-manually but I have since made it into a daily report script. The general idea is to take a Wikidata query and only include results that don't have English Wikipedia articles. (It is up to editors to decide whether the subject is notable by English Wikipedia's standards.)
  2. For our next phase of this project we'll be looking into coordinating across languages. I hope to have more information on that in the next few months.
  3. Thank you. I will look into those tools.
  4. This generally fits into ideas for multilingual coordination—Wikidata helps facilitate that. This would be a good fit for a content translation module.
  5. Which tools in particular do you recommend? I see a lot of lists of tools on WikiProjects and they are outdated, often by referencing the Toolserver, which was taken down over a year ago. I would support making this into a centralized list maintained by a broad community.
  6. What do you mean by untagged pages within projects?
  7. To-do lists in the sense of people make requests or as in automated to-do lists?
  8. Language barriers have made it difficult to work with other language editions of Wikipedia, but I would be interested in seeing how things work differently.
Harej (talk) 02:12, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
Thanks for responses.
  • About the tools - will gather list later.
  • About untagged pages within projects. Yes, sorry, wasn't clear enough :) Example: there is article "Foo", that isn't tagged within "Wikiproject Lorem" here @enwp. And the article exists in French Wikipedia, where it is tagged in their "Wikiproject Lorem", so most probably it should be tagged within "Wikiproject Lorem" also here. Is it clear now? Note: OK, French Wikipedia don't have Wikiproject banners, but they have portal banners, that can be used for this purpose.
  • About to-do lists. As automated to-do lists. I was thinking about something like this (in Wikiproject France page):
Add some statements about France people, objects in Wikidata!
Of course, you can make the sentence much more better and interesting :) --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 08:50, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Some ideas

On the user side WikiProjects my experience lead me to believe that primarily serve three purposes: to facilitate the self-identification of users with specific topical interests; to provide a springboard from which users both inside and outside the project can assess and access active contributors within a given topical area (and from there, access them); and to provide a springboard from which users (again, both inside and outside the project) can keep track of ongoing changes in their topical area. Some ideas, then, that I will try to present somewhat axiomatically:

  • WikiProjects should at their core aim to function as community noticeboards.
The WikiProject talk space is the best place on Wikipedia to discuss any ideas or changes particular users have about anything specific to the topic in question—anything from policies or ways of doing things affecting the particular project in question, to notifications about or calls for help with particular nominations or proceedings on articles or topics of interest to the project. You don't need tens of thousands of dollars to see the correlation between successful projects and ones that can maintain successful dialogues on their talk pages. I think that this is a problem more broadly with the technical lack of non-article space tools amongst the Wikimedia projects. A lot of article writing tools have been automated and we've even deployed and backed away from a WYSIWYG visual editor—but the discussion tools remain so very rudimentary! Still, we're beginning to catch up to the rest of the Internet in that regard, which brings me to a suggestion:
  • Proposal: A way to tie Notifications not just to user talk or name callouts but to any Wikipedia talk pages (or heck, any talk pages at all) of interest to the user.
  • WikiProjects should become better at maintaining lists of their most active users.
Project contributor lists are manually edited and thus, broadly speaking, anachronisms. It is not necessarily true that the users self-assigned to a particular project are editing in it: I, personally, only finally opted out of Military history WikiProject newsletters last year, despite never having contributed anything substantial to the project, whilst on the other hand I didn't list myself in the Hawaii WikiProject until I already had half of Hawaii island's volcanoes under my articles written! A list consisting overwhelmingly of people that quit editing in 2011, new accounts that never actually contributed anything, and whatever else floats along, is tantamount to useless.
  • Proposal: A mechanism—bot or otherwise—which maintains an automatic list of the most topically active editors (defined as those that edit articles whose talk pages bear the WikiProject's banners).

In many cases I think that trying to arrive at technical solutions for social problems—re: VisualEditor—amounts to a cop-out. But in this case I believe there's nowhere to go but up.

One further note: you could make more explicit that this talk page is (or, perhaps, isn't; still not sure) for bouncing ideas around the court. At first I went to the stories page but quickly realized that that serves a slightly different purpose. ResMar 03:30, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Hello, Resident Mario! What we're finding from the Stories page is that WikiProjects by and large serve as community noticeboards. It would be reasonable, therefore, to focus on making them the best community noticeboards they can be. As for Notifications being tied to talk pages / discussions of interest, I think that's a key feature of Flow; Quiddity could speak more on that. (I have thought about what role Flow could play for WikiProjects. I think it could be very promising, but it's understandably a controversy magnet so I am not necessarily going to push it. Maybe as an optional thing.) But you're absolutely right about the dearth of tools for discussion and collaboration; the Internet has made a lot of advances in this area in the past ten years, while Wikipedia still uses what is basically pages full of text.
I would also be very interested in overhauling the membership list system; WikiProject membership is an ambiguous concept, found by studies to not be indicative of anything useful. An automatic list of the most topically active editors would indeed be useful, if done right. Harej (talk) 02:41, 27 February 2015 (UTC)
@Harej: I'm actually now making a feature request for something along these lines on the Notifications talk page, though with specific reference to the Signpost only (we're currently looking at ways to increase editor engagement and increase our relevance to the community). I'm happy to see that the research backs up my intuition! Whatever the problems with Flow may be I think that notifications are nothing short of spectacular, and I'm eager to see them integrated into more channels. When I first saw it my thoughts were this is amazing followed by why wasn't this implemented years ago? ResMar 15:57, 2 March 2015 (UTC)
I agree that the idea of membership lists need an update. The current system makes a lot of projects seem like ghost-towns of users who left around 2008. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)talk 02:02, 31 May 2015 (UTC)
As the founder of WP:LOU and participant in WP:KY, I do agree we need a much better approach for notifying and keeping track of members and/or editors frequently editing articles included in our projects. I'm not looking for any wholesale changes to these projects, but rather new tools I can plug into the existing design. Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 13:59, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

New automated WikiProject directory

Hello everyone! I have been working on a new WikiProject directory that (a) automatically updates itself via bot; (b) provides information on who is participating on projects and in those projects' subject area with opt-out for individuals; (c) lists related WikiProjects based on the number of pages in common. The draft directory is located here. Note that during this demonstration phase, only 500 WikiProjects are included in the index, out of the 2,600+ in existence, so the listings may look sparse in some places. Please review the draft and let me know what you think. Thanks, Harej (talk) 02:37, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

Excellent improvement upon the previous page! Can WikiProjects transclude the Active WikiProject Editors section? It might be more useful than the usual participants lists that typically out of date. Indeed, a slightly broader list of users who've edited the WikiProject page in the last year would be good. (NB: I have no idea how much work I've just suggested so feel free to ignore) T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)talk 23:29, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
Two suggestions: (a) info on which projects are marked as defunct and b) all the info as a csv to maximise the opportunities for data reuse. Stuartyeates (talk) 00:14, 18 June 2015 (UTC)
  • There should be some documentation on how to add (or at least report) projects which are missing, such as WP:TAFI – assuming you want this to be "an exhaustive, comprehensive WikiProject Directory ... [with] the broadest possible definition", per the latest newsletter. - Evad37 [talk] 06:41, 18 June 2015 (UTC)
The problem with TAFI is that it is not categorized in any WikiProject categories, only at Category:Wikipedia collaborations which is not the same thing. Is it even a WikiProject? — Jeraphine Gryphon (talk) 12:09, 18 June 2015 (UTC)
Whether the word "WikiProject" is used as part of the name depends on context, as can be seen in the project's templates, but it definitely fits within the definition of a WP:WikiProject ("A WikiProject is a group of contributors who want to work together as a team to improve Wikipedia."), and has various elements of more traditional wikiprojects: members, assessment, and (per WP:WikiProject) a "focus on a specific topic area... location or... kind of task" (in this case, article improvement). Plus its on your list of potential pilot projects. As for categories: Wikipedia is not being written in an organized fashion applies just as well to Wikipedia namespace as to articles. What specific category or categories should it be in? And more generally, there should be some documentation as to how projects become listed in the directory – just "magically" appearing there is fine if you just want to read the directory, but isn't good enough if you want to add to it (eg new projects, or other non-traditional projects that may have been missed). - Evad37 [talk] 12:44, 18 June 2015 (UTC)
Well that's probably why it wasn't listed to start with, because it's not in WikiProject categories and its name doesn't contain the word "WikiProject", that's all I'm saying. — Jeraphine Gryphon (talk) 12:54, 18 June 2015 (UTC)
Okay, I've added a category[1] – is that all that is needed? - Evad37 [talk] 12:59, 18 June 2015 (UTC)
Yup! It will be added next run. Sorry about the confusion. Harej (talk) 14:08, 18 June 2015 (UTC)
Harej this is really brilliant. I think it's some basic functionality that Wikipedia should already have provided. Thanks for developing it. --Tom (LT) (talk) 09:12, 20 June 2015 (UTC)
Really great stuff! It would be really useful if you could add a link next to each WikiProject on the Related WikiProjects pages so one could easily navigate through the network. For example like this:
  • WikiProject Open [View related]
    68 articles in common
    • Also another suggestion which is way more useful than the one above: how about allowing users to find WikiProject-overlaps? I long thought that this could become a major use of the WikiProject-tags on the talk pages: it allows users to find articles in which specific fields of interest, culture or research overlap which is information not provided by categories and currently entirely missing from Wikipedia.
    And the "x articles in common" could then link to the page that shows those x articles. Like:
  • WikiProject Open [View related]
    68 articles in common
    • Also, is there a separate talk page dedicated to just that related WikiProjects directory or should everything related to it be posted in here?
    --Fixuture (talk) 18:26, 7 July 2015 (UTC)
    Suggestion: It would be nice if WP:WikiProject United States could be broken down into its constituent projects. I think most of us in that mother project would rather see stats for the actual projects we're involved with. Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 17:34, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

    initial note re project

    I like this idea! please keep me informed. I have signed up. thanks! --Sm8900 (talk) 15:14, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

    Improving to create lists

    As a side note, I know many WikiProjects have "to do lists" of articles to write. I would like to point out a tool of mine that can be used for the purpose of cross-checking entries on a list to Wikidata. This, or something like this, may be useful for some projects, and might help to make it less "enwiki" and more international. --Magnus Manske (talk) 10:55, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

    I am a big fan of this tool. It could use some user-interface and functionality improvements (ex. the inability to sort entries alphabetically, to search for a string, etc., are a bummer). But yes, I do think that developing and integrating such tools with WikiProjects is one of the worthwile goals to pursue. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 12:15, 14 January 2015 (UTC)
    Excellent recommendations. Thank you! Harej (talk) 15:01, 14 January 2015 (UTC)
    Adding some functionality for "Create articles based on this book" would be really helpful for biographies. I have a book of Vietnamese artists who need biographies, but I'm not quite sure where to put this, as it would be better to list it all under the book so that editors could work efficiently. --Djembayz (talk) 15:48, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

    Systematic listing of cleanup by WikiProject with list of articles cleared

    The current history lists for cleanup by WikiProject (sample: Cleanup history for WikiProject Women's History} don't tell you how many articles were resolved each week. Adding this information would make it easy to tell which WikiProjects don't have anyone working on cleanup.

    Also, a standard way to present the cleanup listing on the WikiProject pages would help more gnomish editors discover this useful cleanup listing tool.

    You might even consider a WikiProject X cleanup editathon ... --Djembayz (talk) 15:53, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

    This is certainly a powerful tool, and I wish a lot more Wikipedians knew about it and used the cleanup lists to find issues to work on. Currently, on the "By category" page, it shows how many articles were "resolved" since the previous cleanup list build a week before. Would this be enough to indicate if anyone is working cleanup duty for a project? I tend to think so. Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 16:14, 3 October 2015 (UTC)
    @Djembayz: I have added the New and Resolved article counts to the history pages. They will start showing up on the next run. --Bamyers99 (talk) 15:19, 4 October 2015 (UTC)
    @Bamyers99:, @Stevietheman:, that's great! Looking forward to checking this out. --Djembayz (talk) 22:49, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

    List of tools or MediaWiki changes WikiProjects need

    It seems to me that we could use a page that is dedicated to making a list of all the tools we need in WikiProjects in addition to any helpful MediaWiki changes. I realize we can log suggestions in Phabricator, but a nice, crisp list of ideas that we can easily brainstorm and discuss on one page would help us come together on what's really needed. Ultimately any idea on this page can be added to Phabricator if it's not there already. Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 11:29, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

    Renewal proposal

    Hello everyone! First, here is our final report for the WikiProject X grant. Since there is still more work to be done, I have applied for a renewal. I invite comments on the renewal request. Thanks, Harej (talk) 09:07, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

    Also! The Wikimedia Foundation is interested in providing some amount of technical support for WikiProjects through their community tech team. Ideas are welcome here (or you can also post them on this talk page). Harej (talk) 16:22, 26 October 2015 (UTC)
    Links to freely available sources, like maybe databanks or bibliographies on the topic or to directly relevant reliable sources for the broad topic area, might be particularly useful. Somewhere or other I might still have a listing I had begun of the various periodicals/news sources in the Gale directory, but, as I think anyone can understand, it quickly became inconveniently long. John Carter (talk) 19:27, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

    What's happening on talk pages of pages included in projects

    Take a look at WP:LOU's solution for project change patrol. We use "Related changes" (built into Mediawiki) to patrol all changes to included pages and their talk pages. The only downside is that the "Watchall" list has to be periodically updated (I use AWB's list builder to do it). It seems to me that with some minor changes to "Related changes" in Mediawiki, we would be able to monitor all changes to project pages and talk pages without having to build that "Watchall" list. "Related changes" could have "Associated namespace" be checkable when namespace is set to all, so that when viewing related changes to the project's article category (talk pages), it would show them for both talk pages and regular pages. Perhaps there is a performance reason this isn't provided for already? Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 19:24, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

    In old Toolserver times, there was "Wikiproject Watchlist" (for example, link for Wikiproject Latvia). Maybe somebody can get in touch with tool writers. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 10:51, 22 September 2015 (UTC)
    To my astonishment, "Associated namespace" doesn't mean what I thought it meant, and having it checkable when Namespace is set to 'all' actually doesn't make any sense. "Associated namespace" only applies to actual category members from the associated namespace (like if a talk page and its associated subject page were both already members), and in the case of Special:RecentChangesLinked/Category:WikiProject_Foo_articles, checking that won't show anything that isn't there. What is necessary is an additional checkbox named "Reveal associated pages". Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 20:04, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
    Agreed. It would be a very simple solution to the problem of WikiProject watchlists. Thank you for your comment on the Phabricator task; I hope we get action on this soon. Harej (talk) 14:53, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

    Discussion at WikiProject Council talk page

    Cross reference to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Council#Wikiproject X. Harej (talk) 14:48, 3 December 2015 (UTC)

    Code repository

    In case anyone else is looking for the code, I found this wikiproject_scripts repo. Are there any other code repositories? By the way, hats off for the great work!! :)II | (t - c)

    ImperfectlyInformed, yes; I renamed projanalysis to wikiproject_scripts. Sorry for not updating the link! Harej (talk) 22:49, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

    Help with converting defunct WikiProjects into task forces

    There are several defunct Serbia-related WP's that need to be converted into task forces of WikiProject Serbia, and edits to be made to the Template:WPBannerMeta. It was agreed that after a year, this would be done.--Zoupan 02:41, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

    Anyone care to help?--Zoupan 02:41, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

    Just tell the members to use the main Serbia project and archive the old ones; what needs to be migrated? Don't create new task force subpages, they'll be as inactive as the old full project pages. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 07:44, 3 March 2015 (UTC)
    @Piotrus: I would like some help converting these into task forces, from an user that is experienced with AWB. WikiProject Serbia would appreciate it greatly. We are looking to revamp the project, the converting in line with our much needed "centralization". Are you up for it?--Zoupan 07:13, 19 February 2016 (UTC)
    @Zoupan: Sorry, I don't use AWB. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 04:16, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

    Issues with WikiProject setup Wikiproject Udaipur

    This is with reference to another discussion going on at Wikipedia_talk:Noticeboard_for_India-related_topics#Reviving_request_for_Wikiproject_Udaipur regarding setting up a dedicated project for the Indian city Udaipur. I had created several pages and categories for this Wikiproject, and very recently, collection of statistics for the relevant articles have started. I know that we need to update the article's talk page to include the term 'udaipur=yes' in the project template. But even after doing so, the articles are not shown in the table. When i manually add some relevant category to the talk page, it starts showing in the table. For instance, i added the category 'Category-Class Udaipur articles' to the talk page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category_talk:Udaipur, it started showing in the table. But for the main article's talk page Talk:Udaipur, i have added same tags, but it is not showing in the statistics. What should be done to get this task automated. ?? Vishal0soni (talk) 10:36, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

    Improving WikiProject participation

    I just wanted to share something I was doing a few years ago to get more people using Wikipedia:WikiProject Mixed martial arts. I found a tool that would list all the edits to all pages relating to a WikiProject. The tool died, and i wasn't able to find a replacement so it kind of ended my fun. Anyway If someone edited a page that related to MMA i would put a banner on their talk page. I would keep a list and only ever invite each person once even if they never joined the project. Then if they did join i would put a second welcome banner on their talk page. So at most only ever 2 posts on their talk page. I also kept a log of the activity here. Anyway it was reasonably successful, and could probably be automated with a bot. Kevlar (talk) 16:39, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

    That sounds like one of my tools — Dispenser 04:07, 17 March 2016 (UTC)
    Here are two ways you can achieve the same without any external tools:
    I'm hoping for WikiProject X to make this hacky mess redundant by building such a "recent changes" list into the basic template of WikiProjects. Not sure if this has been proposed before? Is this the right place to propose this?

    Also, for your suggestion: instead of a bot making talk page entries I think a major overhaul of how newcomers are dealt with is overdue. People keep asking how to get more active editors and how to keep those active: I think a or the main answer to that would be to have them find articles they're interested in (and suited for) editing plus clearer instructions/guidance on what can be done / where help is needed plus making the whole thing more social (saying more coordination amongst editors, people finding people that are interested in the same things that they are, direct and indirect competition for who is helping out most, etc. etc.) -> all of this can be achieved by a restructuring and reembedment of WikiProjects. All of this doesn't necessarily require as much changes as one would think at first: it's just a new approach to newcomers and WikiProjects. So here's the main idea how to get this working:
    • WikiProjects basically equal domains of interest - if there are still sufficiently large domains of interest without a WikiProject it should probably created by someone or some group (or at least requested to be created).
    • When new users register on the site they're getting some suggestions for WikiProjects to join. Those first suggestions would be very general suggestions of things many people are interested in. My suggestion would 5-10 WikiProjects like WP Football, WP Novels, WP Internet, WP Harry Potter, WP {country of the user}, WP Economics, WP Plants and WP Film to get them started by picking at least one. Many websites have something similar; reddit suggests some subreddits and Twitter some people to follow. There should also be a non-intrusively visible option to efficiently search for a topic of interest (completion-suggestion for cleartext search, way to search via a category system [Category:WikiProjects by area], not just the names of the WikiProjects but boxes with the WikiProject icon [proper icons should become mandatory for WikiProjects], ...)
    • Once they're editing their edits can be analyzed - the most basic analysis would be to count the WikiProjects on the respective edited pages so later suggestions could be personalized to the user (note: the algorithm can be improved by considering extra info such as which edits caused someone to thank the user for it and how much text was added etc). Furthermore as the WikiProjects they've joined have related WikiProjects so these can be used for the suggestions as well.
    • From the start on they're getting actively integrated into Wikipedia. They don't have to do anything to get info on where they could help out. If they need help in editing other WikiProject members could help them out. They get notified when there are new decisions to be made within the WikiProject. etc. etc. Mainly the tribes of interest are better brought together and made more effective (or active in the first place) than this current loose everybody-on-their-own (they might learn how to edit and maybe even about the tea-house at some point) floating around. The current collaborations, events and workshops etc. that are currently taking place at Wikipedia events in the physical world could also take place via WikiProjects. Rankinglists and competitions between and within WikiProjects (making use of various new and existent tools such as ways to evaluate a users' contributions, the WP quality assessments etc.). Maybe even an irc channel (or alike chat) per WikiProject which can only be joined if one has joined the respective WP (e.g. by requiring the Wikipedia-password) embedded via web-irc on the WikiProject page. There are tons of things that can be done once WikiProjects get more members and are restructured.
    • It goes so far that people can take WikiProjects as an entry point to invite new users to Wikipedia - they can say "hey you're interested in x...did you know there was a Wikipedia-subcommunity for that? What about joining them and helping out with your knowledge in that area?". They can even send a link that automatically lets the user join a WikiProject and adjust Wikipedia by a little when registering (the registration page has some info on Wikipedia and the Wikiproject). (Btw. this is also relevant to this outreach.)
    • The suggestions are posted as a new entry some talk-page - this is really 1990s-style. They're plopping up as colored boxes with their WikiProject-icon on the intro-page the user sees after registering or after logging in or something alike. If it's just some strange talk page entry the whole thing really is useless.
    I think most of the restructuring is already being done by WikiProject X. Maybe streamlining would be a better term for it. What I mean by it is that for example to join a WikiProject one doesn't have to manually edit a page to kind of add ones name to it which doesn't have any direct, immediate effect. It's kind of ridicolous that it's still arranged like that. One clicks "join" on the (properly redesigned) WikiProject page (btw. no 2nd "save" button to save some source-code changes or the like - after the click one has joined and the button then switches to "leave") and has joined the WikiProject which implies various things such as becoming part of a category and/or index, having the WP-box (every WikiProject has one) on ones userpage, being subscribed to WikiProject alerts (including these) and discussions, etc. etc.
    Note that this suggestion isn't complete and that I don't know if this is the right place to propose this and whether or not I should have rather created a new section for this.
    I'd be really interested to hear what you people think of it.
    --Fixuture (talk) 20:58, 13 April 2016 (UTC)
    Thank you, Fixuture. I like your post because it mirrors my thinking very closely. I view WikiProjects as an entry point for potential Wikipedia editors and would like to make it easier for people to find stuff to work on. So far a lot of WikiProject X's work has focused on the "find stuff to work on" aspect. From the beginning I wanted to be able to focus on recruiting newcomers through WikiProjects but I think more work needs to get done before we get there. Harej (talk) 16:34, 18 April 2016 (UTC)
    @Harej: That's nice to hear! ...really makes me happy to know that my ideas were apprehended and are at least somewhat shared by you. For the "find stuff to work on" I think a lot can be done by some basic changes that don't require as much effort as many other features. So for instance I think that Wikipedia:Community portal#Todo is a really, really simple thing but can have a pretty considerable impact (my issue with said page is that usually people find that page just long after they have registered when they're well experienced anyway - imo it should be modified and put on a page like the main page or on one that's 1 click away from it and well-visible there). I think that a similar page could become a default "work to do"-page for every WikiProject which can be edited by WikiProject members afterwards. It features some large-sized, modern tiles with task-types - e.g. "Quality assessment", "Peer review", "Translate", "Expand short articles", "Create a new article", "Add images", "Update with new information", "Research and add references", "Fix spelling and grammar", "Fix page issues", "Help with a draft", etc. Each of these tiles is properly visually designed - like having a fitting, iconic image/icon of whatever task; it's important not to have too much information here. Upon click on a tile one gets to a page where one can find a very short introduction to how to perform the task; just so much that one can start right away - maybe 5 sentences with 2 screenshots - or better yet: a 20second (auto-starting) webm. Depending on the task the page features various other things. Exemplary ideas for what those pages could be (the basic version could be much simpler and would already be useful):
    • "Create a new article" has the article creation wizard embedded and a list of requested articles of the WP (a click on a request auto-populates the article-creation wizard appropriately),
    • "Translate" uses the currently in beta translator with the articles on the left side either being the English articles of the WP for users to translate the english WP to other languages or articles of another language that other users have requested the WP to translate,
    • "Quality assessment" has an instruction on how and why to install the tool "Rater" (if it's not built into Wikipedia by then) and a link to find all unassessed articles of the WP,
    • "Expand short articles" is a link to categorized stub articles of the WP,
    • "Add images" has the upload-wizard embedded and features some information on using, finding, requesting etc. images from 3rd party sources,
    • "Fix page issues" leads to another tiled page subdiving the various issues (those in turn lead to a page that makes use of the category for the page issue),
    • "Help with a draft" has a new system for WP-drafts (I think this is one of the most useful tasks a WP can do - collaborating on drafts; it's really strange how it's currently not being done by almost all WPs nor encouraged by Wikipedia)
    Note that WikiProjects can modify all of these pages and add their own tiles for their own types of tasks.
    But indeed, a lot more work needs to be done :( There probably are more people willing and skilled to help out with this. Not sure what the best way to get them involved would be - reaching out to developers would be another issue. I just think that even if this project doesn't get more funds there are ways to get higher man-power behind this and that it would be really worth pursuing those.
    Also I'd like to know if there is (present or planned) a list of things the project aims to achieve / a task list / issue-tracker or something alike. Maybe it would be a good idea to properly document, index etc. the various goals, ideas and suggestions for the WikiProject system / WikiProject X in one place (also for other developers and so that whatever goals & ideas can be found, discussed, drafted, improved upon, rated, etc.).
    Well, this has grown once again... Thanks for what you helped achieve with WikiProject X already!
    --Fixuture (talk) 19:54, 18 April 2016 (UTC)
    Fixuture, many of the SuggestBot-powered feeds (stubs to expand, articles in need of cleanup, etc.) would benefit from better instructions. And to answer your question, we do keep track of all the recommendations and outstanding tasks. For the MediaWiki extension under development, we have the CollaborationKit board; for Wikipedia Requests there's the Wikipedia Requests board; for Reports bot there's the Reports bot board; and for everything else, the general WikiProject X board. Involving volunteer developers is something I am interested in, but I haven't quite figured it out. The issue is that as grantees we are responsible for delivering outputs on a fairly tight schedule. Volunteers—not being compensated for their time and presumably having other responsibilities in life—should not be expected to be held to such schedules. That said, there should be opportunities for volunteers to chip in and work on components that aren't so central to the grant timeline. I linked to the reports bot backlog; we have a long list of requests for different features, and it would be great if others could work on those. (I am not actively pushing for that yet since the bot is about to undergo refactoring—unfortunately we've had long delays in this department—and so anything that is written would likely need to be rewritten.) Harej (talk) 03:59, 4 May 2016 (UTC)
    Maybe riding my own personal hobbyhorse here (again), but I personally think maybe one of the more effective ways to use WikiProjects as an entry point might be if the individual WikiProjects had actively maintained pages like those in Category:WikiProject prospectuses and Category:WikiProject libraries which potential new members could consult to see what articles currently exist, what topics discussed in relevant print or other reference sources are covered in other reference works related to the topic, and, maybe, what freely available works are available which might be useful for developing such content. Such pages can be and are a bit of a royal pain to develop, particularly in terms of time expenditure, and even more for the libraries pages than the prospectus pages, but I think if a newer editor were to able to quickly see a list of potential articles not yet extant or poorly developed, and/or sources which could be easily used to develop content, that might help a lot. John Carter (talk) 17:11, 18 April 2016 (UTC)
    I agree, John Carter. I'm currently working out a new system called Wikipedia Requests which will put all the "to do" lists of Wikipedia in one central place that can then be syndicated to different pages, including WikiProjects. This way, the work of developing these prospectus lists can be distributed throughout Wikipedia, especially when projects have overlapping scopes. (The problem right now is that these lists are spread throughout Wikipedia; they should be centralized.) The WikiProject libraries you link to also remind me of work I am doing to create a references database, stemming from this long-stalled proposal to provide recommendations for sources. So these projects are underway to make this an option for all WikiProjects, but I will look at what you've done with WikiProject prospectuses and libraries to see how it might work on different WikiProjects. Harej (talk) 19:44, 18 April 2016 (UTC)
    I think that would be a nifty thing each WikiProject can develop (and be encouraged to do so via the technical structure of WikiProjects) now or after any general overhauls. But it's not something that can be done for all WikiProjects by WP:X or alike - it's groundwork by individual WikiProject members. Also I don't think that it would have any considerable effect on the amount of newcomers. Rather, imo it would simply make (already existent & active) editors' lives easier. Note that most WikiProjects already have "recognized pages" (which is sth. similar) as well as the importance-rated articles...and then there's also the outlines - btw. I've proposed linking "outlines" with WikiProjects here: Outlines and WikiProjects.
    but I think if a newer editor were to able to quickly see a list of potential articles not yet extant or poorly developed
    For this there's the stub & start rating of the quality-assessment (Category:Stub-Class articles). Also relevant to this are the "requested articles" and the collaboration on drafts I mentioned further up.
    --Fixuture (talk) 19:54, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

    How to find articles not associated with any WikiProject(s)?

    I have a question somewhat related to this project. Is there a way to identify articles/pages that are not associated with any WikiProject(s)? ---Another Believer (Talk) 21:50, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

    I believe User:Tom Morris ran a bot a few years back, which not only found them, but tagged them with a suitable project. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 22:39, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
    Pigsonthewing, Another Believer, by my count, there are 321,865 articles not associated with any WikiProject. There might be false positives or false negatives, I don't know. Here is a list of 500 of them. Harej (talk) 14:41, 7 July 2015 (UTC)
    Fantastic. Aw, my "to list" just got a lot longer. :p ---Another Believer (Talk) 14:51, 7 July 2015 (UTC)
    @Harej: Does this "WikiProjectless" list update automatically, or can you provide a link to one that does, if one exists? I'd like to bookmark a page for when I feel like adding WikiProjects to talk pages. ---Another Believer (Talk) 20:23, 14 May 2016 (UTC)
    Another Believer, it does not, but I could make an automatically updating list. Harej (talk) 22:40, 18 May 2016 (UTC)
    No rush, and I am sure you have many more important things to do, but you get around to creating one, let me know and I will bookmark. Sometimes I spend time checking articles to see if they have assigned WikiProjects, so this would be very helpful. ---Another Believer (Talk) 22:43, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

    Pilot projects

    After months of development and design, we have initiated the pilot testing process for five WikiProjects. We selected the WikiProjects on Cannabis, Cognitive Science, Evolutionary Biology, Ghana, and Hampshire for pilot testing based on data analysis we did earlier this year. The proposed re-designs are available here:

    These designs are supported by a new template, {{Load WikiProject Modules}}, which renders a header for a WikiProject and loads specified modules onto the page with a standardized Table of Contents icon. The design for the project is based on the WPX UI, a design we established for these WikiProjects. Right now these templates are poorly documented, but in the next month, it should be relatively easy to design your own modules and even set up new WikiProjects with the WikiProject module loader. More is on the way.

    We invite everyone to review the designs and workflows developed. Keep in mind that we only had the time to focus in depth on certain modules, meaning some things do not necessarily work well with the design. More will be developed in time.

    We look forward to hearing your feedback. Harej (talk) 02:44, 8 July 2015 (UTC)

    Hi, Harej. Thanks for the work committed to building this new tool. I think the goals of the project are a welcome initiative that could reactivate the participation level around building new content, and I volunteered for testing the designs. Did you discuss the technical approach that you're following for building the tools? I've been following this page, and I think I've missed that.
    I'm confused by the overall structure of the project pages built with the provided modules. For a start, the styling doesn't look at all like the standard mediawiki theme; it's hard to tell where a section ends and the next begins, as each section seems to have its own styling for headers and subheaders. Some sections include "Edit" links that allow me to access and change the wikicode, but most of them do not; I can't add an introduction and commentaries to Tasks, Alerts nor Metrics, for example. Clicking the global "Edit source" at the top page shows just a template with none of the content included in the page (which you get when you edit the classic version); and the page history shows none of the changes made to the sections.
    The resulting page does not look at all like part of a wiki, which I find troubling, as it makes working with the page divert too much from how the rest of the project works - I'm having severe problems transferring my previous knowledge of how Wikipedia operates in order to work with the new design. Diego (talk) 12:58, 8 July 2015 (UTC)
    Hello Diego Moya. The technical approach is not well documented yet; it is brand new and the documentation is on my list of things to do. The member list, new discussions feed, related WikiProjects list, and assessment-related worklists are maintained by Reports bot, the notification service is maintained by WikiProject Notification Service, and the other worklists (wikify, cleanup, stub. etc.) will be maintained by SuggestBot. One of our strategies for making WikiProjects more useful is reducing the amount of effort needed to maintain them through the use of automated services, meaning entire sections of the page don't require human effort. The ones that do still have the edit button for that purpose.
    That said, if you want to edit these pages to add introductions and the like, here is how it works: each line-delineated section is a subpage of the project page, with the title corresponding to the section header. For example, the Resources section of WikiProject Ghana is Wikipedia:WikiProject Ghana/Resources. It would be a good idea for each page using the {{Load WikiProject Modules}} template to have an edit intro explaining this.
    Your comment about the section headings is interesting. There should be consistency. Major sections are marked off with blue lines (or whichever color the project chooses) via {{WPX header}}, with smaller sub-sections using {{WPX subheader}}. The present inconsistency is from where bot outputs do not match the style. It may solve the problem if we replaced {{WPX subheader}} with standard bog H3 headers; Isarra, what do you think?
    Any other comments or questions regarding the presentation of information? Harej (talk) 17:01, 8 July 2015 (UTC)
    Might as well. -— Isarra ༆ 17:23, 8 July 2015 (UTC)

    @Harej: I'd prefer each module having their own stand-alone tag that could be embedded in the page, so that each template does one thing and does it well.

    See what I mean: using a structure of wikicode similar to this example, where each template would load the contents of a single module, you get all the benefits of the wiki with all the benefits of the automated content provided by WikiprojectX modules, and you don't need the complicated and disorienting workflow of navigating between subpages.

    We already have a tool for laying out sections which is more flexible, versatile and well-integrated with the platform: the Mediawiki code. It has the advantage of allowing users to define the page layout for themselves, without depending on a developer to tweak the page for them. I see no advantage in having a {{Load WikiProject Modules}} template that builds the whole page as if by magic (you could use a single-use page creation wizard instead), plus requiring tweaks to the page structure to be made in code, when we can allow users to be self-sufficient through editing wikicode directly (it's OK if it's not required, but it still should be possible).

    I say, let's avoid proliferation of redundant templates and limit their use to what they do well - embedding content that has been compiled automatically, wherever the editor wants to place it. It seems to me that you're reinventing the wheel and over-stepping what your specific code should handle by building an automatic layout, when we already have a standard layout system that is well known and fairly intuitive. Plus, if you rely on the standard layout of wiki pages instead of replacing it with your own solution, users will instantly benefit from changes to the whole platform for free - such as being able to select a new skin, or having extensions and gadgets like the Visual Editor work with these sections. Diego (talk) 17:56, 8 July 2015 (UTC)

    I see what you're saying, but the open-ended nature of pure wikitext does not tend lend itself well to things that are not articles. It was designed for articles, we're used to using it for articles, and using it here just leads to having more articles, hence why most wikiprojects currently just look like encyclopaedia articles even though that really isn't true to what they are. Really, they are so much more than that, with specific purposes and scope, and the templates here are intended to reflect that. Using templates, we still allow the open-ended possibilities of the underlying syntax, but direct the elements to perform their individual purposes by setting specific scopes (potentially any specific scope), and lowering the bar for long-term maintenance/automation by breaking things up into individual pieces. -— Isarra ༆ 19:06, 8 July 2015 (UTC)
    Pardon my french, but - what?? Wikis exist much earlier than Wikipedia, and were designed to allow for quick collaboration from many editors by adding content without any barrier to entry. Isn't that what Wikiprojects are about? Mediawiki is literally the most successful groupware that ever existed, we have this whole project as proof.
    I'm not advocating use pure wikitext either, I said that wikitext is better for layout than templates, and templates are better for transcluding non-editable lists of compiled items - not for defining automatically where each section should be placed. How is the more complex syntax of templates (which requires a developer to understand and tweak) preferable over the open-ended yet much simpler markup for defining the structure of the page? Raising the bar for collaboration is something that is known to kill wide usage by volunteers.
    What I say is that the modules are doing a good job at providing content that is useful for the projects and can keep them up to date; rather than creating a new way to design pages that users should learn and maintainers support, let's apply the same model that we already have and are using for navigation templates, infoboxes, project banners and user warnings. The {{Load WikiProject Modules}} template is a deviation from how we use templates everywhere else, and I don't see any advantage in this new approach given that it does the same as the old one. You can get the best of both worlds by combining templates and wikicode, rather than losing the advantage of 15 years of Mediawiki features. Create individual templates for specific purposes, one for each automated piece of content, and let markup work as the unifying glue. Diego (talk) 07:16, 9 July 2015 (UTC)
    The entire point of this is to lower the bar. As is, open-ended wikitext tends to accumulate cruft and become very difficult to navigate and maintain over time, so by adding a level of structure, we can prevent this from happening in the first place, making the same bar for new projects as for old. For now a lot of the complexity is largely the same, just moved around a bit, but our plan is to mitigate this through the use of formwizard, thus removing any need to interact with it directly. For those who want to, however, options for non-standard configurations will remain, as there is nothing to prevent people from simply manhandling it (and we do intend to further atomise the templates to facilitate this). -— Isarra ༆ 18:18, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

    BTW, the links to talk pages in the "Ask the WikiProject" and "View Other Discussions" buttons are broken for WikiProject Cannabis, WikiProject Ghana and WikiProject Hampshire. I would fix those links myself, but I have no idea where they are stored :-) The link to add a section at WikiProject Hampshire wouldn't work anyway, as this project is using Flow for their talk page. Diego (talk) 10:19, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

    Are you still getting this? As for flow, it's true using the same link seems counter-intuitive, but it does still take the user to the talkpage when flow is enabled, which is all they really need anyway. -— Isarra ༆ 18:18, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

    Looked at the WikiProject Ghana, and it looks great! Very nice job, Harej! Ijon (talk) 04:31, 11 July 2015 (UTC)

    Nearly a year later – is there an update on this? Is the pilot testing still ongoing? Is there a date when the new format is expected to be implemented, and will it be done automatically or after discussion with each WikiProject? And will each project be able to add bits and pieces and customise the layout (e.g. add a list of the FAs and GAs related to the project)? Richard3120 (talk) 18:15, 23 May 2016 (UTC)

    Signpost WikiProject article

    Hi! Would you like to talk about WikiProject X with me for the next Signpost WikiProject report? Please ping me if you are interested! Megalibrarygirl (talk) 20:47, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

    Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not a forum

    Hey all, i'm wondering if this is a "rule" that might need to be "broken"? The way i am reading this there is no distinction of where the discussion would happen when it comes to Wikipedia:Namespace. I fully agree and don't want to accidentally open any can of worms to having social chat on (Main/Article) namespace but i think a case can be made for having that within a wikiproject. One of the issues i feel wikiprojects have is active participation. Though thousands of edits are made on behalf of any given wikiproject's focus area, very few of the editors participate in the wikiprojects themselves. I do have some ideas on how we might structure it, but before i go on some wild rant or "be bold" and start one, i want to see if other people at least agree that this might be appropriate to do in the first place. Getting to know your fellow editors, having off topic discussions, sharing links and ideas might build more of a community around the topic. Please let me know your thoughts. Thanks! Kevlar (talk) 16:27, 25 July 2016 (UTC)

    I doubt you'll find significant agreement for waiving this Wikipedia community tradition for wikiprojects. The talk pages of content pages as well as wikiproejcts are supposed to be dedicated to the job of improving articles and pages that support them. However, I don't know of anything that stops anyone from creating a companion Facebook group where the discussion could be more open. Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 18:02, 25 July 2016 (UTC)
    I think that's actually a good idea. I am all for it. Jak474 (talk) 23:23, 14 August 2016 (UTC)

    Templates with poor or missing documentation; or underused

    A number of templates are tagged (sometimes on their /doc pages) with {{Improve documentation}}, because their documentation is poor, or non-existent. The template adds them to the category Category:Templates with missing or incorrect documentation.

    It would be good if this project's bot (or other tool) could produce a list of such templates, updated periodically, by project, and notify the projects concerned (perhaps by updating their "to do" lists, or making sub-categories).

    Similarly, I recently tagged a number of templates with {{Underused external link template}} (see Category:External link templates with potential for greater use) and lists of those, by project, would also be useful.

    Can this project help? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:14, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

    @Pigsonthewing: This looks like a good request to put to CleanupWorklistBot. Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 14:32, 6 September 2016 (UTC)
    Might as well throw category cleanup into there too. --Bamyers99 (talk) 15:17, 6 September 2016 (UTC)
    Thank you. Request posted. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:54, 6 September 2016 (UTC)
    @Pigsonthewing: CleanupWorklistBot has had the 2 categories added to it. Its next run will be Tuesday 13 September. After that run, for example, {{EFloras}} should show up in the Plants cleanup listing. --Bamyers99 (talk) 20:12, 7 September 2016 (UTC)
    @Bamyers99: Splendid, thank you! Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:38, 8 September 2016 (UTC)
    Timely… I just created Template:WikiProjectCard/doc. Minimal, but better than nothing. —Shelley V. Adams ‹blame
    credit    › 12:03, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

    Support for non-1:1 aspect ratios in member portaits

    Currently all images in the member lists are left aligned, which means that any image taken in normal landscape-mode with a face in the center will end up cutting off half the face in the thumbnail. You can see this on the users: Doc James and Shangkuanlc at [[2]]. Is there any way to support non-square images? Best, Carl Fredrik 💌 📧 12:35, 16 September 2016 (UTC)

    Request: Suppress bot discussions

    Currently the discussions section of the WikiProject pages risks being overwhelmed with bot posts such as: Talk:Diagnosis_of_HIV/AIDS#External_links_modified. Is it possible to introduce some form of optional block for these types of messages for large WikiProjects? It would also be nice if the discussions section could be sorted after "hot discussions", such as the {{Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Hot articles}} template.


    Best, Carl Fredrik 💌 📧 13:43, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

    CFCF, to clarify: are you asking for filters to block high-activity talk pages? Or to block messages from bots? The option to do either? Harej (talk) 22:53, 9 October 2016 (UTC)
    Might it be more worth simply having bots post on a subpage of the talk page, or on another page at the same level? — Sasuke Sarutobi (talk) 08:12, 10 October 2016 (UTC)

    Update on pilot projects

    I wanted to ask what the current situation was regarding the proposed new layouts for all WikiProjects, as demonstated via the five pilot projects and announced here: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject X/Archive 2#Pilot projects. I do understand that WikiProject X has about 9,467 more important things to do, and that implementing these new layouts take time – I just wanted to know if there was any update on this: are they still undergoing beta testing, is it still planned to roll them out to all WikiProjects over time, etc.? Thanks. Richard3120 (talk) 22:05, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

    Richard3120, thank you for asking. There are currently 13 pilot projects in progress, with another four on the way. More on our dashboard. The pilots are at varying levels of activities, ranging from small inactive projects to very active projects like Women in Red and Medicine. Currently I am focused on preparing CollaborationKit (basically the MediaWiki extension version of the new layout) for launch, but I would like to gather feedback from those using the pilot projects. This feedback is very helpful; for instance, the whole CollaborationKit project was due to concerns that the template-heavy layout was difficult to edit (and we saw this as a significant hindrance to broader adoption). I plan on surveying participants on the pilot projects once we have a demonstration ready so that we can collect feedback on both at once. I hope to have more to show soon. (And I am certainly overdue on putting out another newsletter.) Harej (talk) 14:09, 3 November 2016 (UTC)
    Thank you for replying Harej. I try and maintain WikiProject Colombia and I always thought the front page layout could do with updating, but have been putting it off until I find out if all the WikiProject pages are going to be updated anyway. Richard3120 (talk) 16:38, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

    Suggestion: Flow talk pages

    Hi! May I suggest that the participating WikiProjects in WikiProject X have their project talk page updated to the Flow talk page style, which is currently not used on the English Wikipedia. Thoughts? Daylen (talk) 03:48, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

    Daylen, I know Wikipedia:WikiProject Hampshire had Flow, but they recently reverted back. It doesn't look like there's a lot of appetite for it... Harej (talk) 18:34, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

    What is happening?

    There has been no news for a long time now, is anything still happening? I am keen to give WikiProject Scuba diving a facelift one of these years. • • • Peter (Southwood) (talk): 07:23, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

    Bump.• • • Peter (Southwood) (talk): 16:51, 16 February 2017 (UTC)
    Pbsouthwood, much of our energy is currently focused on getting CollaborationKit ready for Wikipedia. CollaborationKit is the previously announced MediaWiki extension that builds much of the UI features WIkiProject X developed directly into the software, such that we don't have to resort to byzantine template hacks. There is a demo up at [3] but I'm waiting on a few changes to go through before publicizing this more widely. Harej (talk) 10:47, 23 February 2017 (UTC)
    Let me know when you want someone to test it on an established project, I will upgrade WPSCUBA and give you feedback. • • • Peter (Southwood) (talk): 12:59, 23 February 2017 (UTC)
    Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_X/Archive_2&oldid=1076094126"