Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2012-10-22/WikiProject report

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24 October 2012

Thanks for making me realize that, being Italian, I might help with the WikiProject Italy :) I am also so glad you mentioned WikiAfrica, and would like to point out that within that project we developed a database of African villages, municipalities and so on. They might be easily published on Wikipedia by using a bot, but unfortunately, some linguistic versions do not seem interested. If someone reading this operates a bot and is interested in filling that gap this article talks about, please drop me a line. Thanks! --Elitre (talk) 11:28, 24 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
- Hi Elitre, I was not aware that bots can be used to publish articles on Wikipedia. Would you please elaborate. thanx Ottawahitech (talk) 18:38, 24 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  - Bots are allowed to publish articles, but require prior approval (see WP:BAG and WP:BOTREQ). Realistically, a bot would not be approved except for a high-volume task, such as the above-mentioned database. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 00:06, 25 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

South America and Oceania do not exist in this post. :( Oceania probably actually has bigger issues in regards to representation than Africa. Look at sports for a start. How bad is the coverage for those? And ironic moment: Articles on women's football in Africa are better, based on assessment alone, than men's football. --LauraHale (talk) 11:37, 24 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

South American countries Argentina, Brazil, and Venezuela were mentioned in the "What can be done?" section. Aside from Australia, I did neglect Oceania, which I agree can use a lot of help. We'll be publishing an interview with WP Brazil next month, so be sure to check back. –Mabeenot (talk) 02:15, 25 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

A very useful report, and yes it is certainly time to start drastic consolidation among the projects, sub-projects, task-forces etc etc set up with high hopes in a different period. The ones where no one objects to consolidation are the ones to go. Johnbod (talk) 12:58, 24 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yes I agree it is a useful report, I am not so sure though about consolidating wiki-projects. Some of us prefer to be BIG FISH in small bowls rather than the other way around :-) Ottawahitech (talk) 18:43, 24 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

This was seriously the best Signpost report ever! ♛♚★Vaibhav Jain★♚♛ ^Talk ^Email 13:15, 24 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Standardizing wikiprojects?

I think you should be cautious in assessing active WikiProjects based on their talk page frequency. To me the most useful part of WikiProjects is the cleanup lists, article alerts, assessment logs and counts, dab solver and other maintenance activities that are much more easily managed when it is related to topics that you know about. But my experience with tracking some of these, especially from the WP:URBLP work, is that most projects aren't active in cleaning up their own articles. It's normally either a very small number of editors who decide to work through a backlog, or a generic backlog drive that covers all projects. One thing that would be a good start, would be to standardise all WikiProjects setups and ensure that the tools to track, monitor and maintain the articles are always running, and WMF backed, so that they don't fall over when someone's toolserver account expires (anyone seen User:DASHBot lately?) or when the toolserver gets lagged. And has anyone ever run a report of pages that aren't in any WikiProjects? Are there thousands, hundreds of thousands or millions of articles that are project orphans? The-Pope (talk) 14:42, 24 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
No doubt there are, but since so little happens to maintain most of the ones that are in projects, of what use is that information? Johnbod (talk) 14:51, 24 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
It at least gives them a chance of being seen, one day, by someone who is aware of these lists or the Wikipedia:Article alerts automated system (for when the manual delsort system isn't working). I shudder to think how many "lost" articles are out there, with the only real chance of ever being improved/vandal watched etc is to have enough relevant categories or wikiprojects on them for them to be found (especially those with strange spellings in the titles. The-Pope (talk) 15:07, 24 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The main page indicates 4,082,654 articles while from this it appears that there are 3,919,430 articles tagged by at least one WikiProject, that leaves 163,224 (4%) without a WikiProject. --ELEKHH^T 02:54, 25 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

@ELEKHH, actually I am surprised to find out there are only 163,224 articles that do not belong to a wiki-project. I have been tagging such articles for some time now and from my vantage point there are a lot more than 4% that need that service. I guess I must have been working the slums of Wikipedia :-)

You must have been in a particular territory, as I haven't encountered that many. On the other hand in absolute terms 163,224 is a fairly large number. That's more articles than most (250 of 285) Wikipedias have in total. --ELEKHH^T 22:22, 25 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

@Elekhh, Maybe, but I sure come across many talk pages that have no wikiproject associated with them. Just minutes ago I found 3: Talk:Consumer protection, Talk:Notary and Talk:Pocket veto. Ottawahitech (talk) 19:52, 28 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

@The-Pope, I agree wiki-projects should be a lot more standard to allow Wikipedians to participate without having to learn a whole new set of rules, locations,rating articles, etc. How this can be accomplished is another question, though. For example, there are many wiki-projects with no articles at all, for example Wikipedia:WikiProject Editor Retention. Ottawahitech (talk) 03:40, 25 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'd agree. Do those figures allow for the thousands of articles claimed by (usually far too many) multiple projects, I wonder? Johnbod (talk) 21:15, 25 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

According to the explanation on that page yes, articles are only once counted and only the tag with highest importance rating is considered. --ELEKHH^T 22:22, 25 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Wikiproject deletions

Wasn't the Gibralter wiki-project just barely saved from deletion earlier this month? Another wikiproject, Wikipedia: WikiProject Nortel (a Canadian company) had just disappeared into a black hole. So why encourage wikipedians to join these semi-active projects and waste precious time trying to save them? Ottawahitech (talk) 18:33, 24 October 2012 (UTC) Just thought I would add a link to the deletion discussion in case someone is still checking in here. Ottawahitech (talk) 15:55, 2 January 2016 (UTC)please ping me[reply]

I can't speak for the Nortel one, but the Gibraltar one survived deletion by a wide margin - there was never any real danger it would get deleted. Active WikiProjects never do. Inactive ones either get marked as inactive and archived, or merged into more active projects. Prioryman (talk) 22:05, 24 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

@Prioryman, I thought this deletion was defeated by a no-consensus - but I guess I will have to check when I get a chance. In any event a deletion of a wikiproject can happen with only a couple of participants in the deletion discussion itself.

As far as inactive wikiprojects being archived, or merged - that is simply not true and there is no such consensus at Wikipedia as you can clearly see in these comments: Wikipedia_talk:Canadian_Wikipedians'_notice_board#deletion of inactive projects Ottawahitech (talk) 15:01, 25 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Since you are linking to my comments. I am not sure exactly what you are getting at. It does happen fairly regularly that inactive projects get merged into others or deleted. I have been in a few such discussions in the past. If you are referring to active WikiProjects. Then it is pretty rare that they get deleted, the only time I have seen it happen is when there is A> already a WikiProject with the same scope B> the project is doing something counter to the goals of the wiki. I have seen the second situation in a number of cases where the project was being used to push a particular POV. -DJSasso (talk) 15:06, 25 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

@Djsasso, this is what I should have said:

As far as inactive wikiprojects ALWAYS being either archived, or merged, but NOT deleted - that is simply not true ... Ottawahitech (talk) 02:13, 27 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You are correct - in that despite our policy on the matter (as seen here and here many still get deleted for the wrong reasons - (resulting in userfication of some if someone is willing). That said many that have been deleted fall into the useless category. See an old talk on the problem of deletions HERE. Moxy (talk) 18:27, 27 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

@Moxy, Thanks again for the relevant wikilinks which document Wikipedia's policy in regards to wikiproject deletions:

Wikipedia:WikiProject_Council/Guide#Other_options

Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion

I wonder if the admins who carry out deletions pay attention to these policies? Ottawahitech (talk) 15:47, 29 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Canada info error

Currently the section on Canada states "only a few of these projects have talk pages that don't redirect to the Canadian Wikipedians' notice board". I would like to point out that not one of the Canadian sub projects redirects its talk page to the main Canadian notice board. It would be correct to say the Canadians seem to use the main notice board for all topics .. but we don't redirect the talk pages - we have talked about it - but it did not seem logical at the time of the discussion. Moxy (talk) 18:44, 24 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Right you are. I seem to remember there being quite a few redirects, but looking back now, I'm clearly mistaken. I've corrected it in the article. Thanks! –Mabeenot (talk) 02:15, 25 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I am glad to see Moxy participating here. I have been trying to participate in Wikipedia:WikiProject Canada for a long time, but find the setup there very confusing and different from other wiki-projects. Since Moxy is the main organizer of this wikiproject, it is a great opportunity to have some questions answered (I hope?). Ottawahitech (talk) 03:20, 25 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I can try and answer any questions you have about most projects. As for organization (layout) - I (with others) have taken care of layouts for projects like - WP:USA - WP:CA - WP:AUS - WP:BIB.Moxy (talk) 16:55, 25 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

OK, Thanks: Who does the article assessments at the various sub-projects of wp:WikiProject Canada and where are these assessments discussed? Ottawahitech (talk) 02:00, 27 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Any editor is free to make assessments for any article (lets hope they understand the ranking) - That said we (the Canada project) do have a request section at Wikipedia:WikiProject Canada/Assessment#Requesting an assessment were help in this regard can be obtained. There is also Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Assessment FAQ for general questions.Moxy (talk) 18:46, 27 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

@Moxy, Do you mean ANY editor? - If so, who makes sure that each and every one of the over 104 thousand items tagged by this wikiproject is properly rated? Is this rating coordinated anwhere?

Like categories they are a part of Wikipedia that is 'in-general" not that important for accuracy because they are not seen (used) by the average reader - there more for editors and project organization. This is why GA and FA reviews are done independently of Wikiprojects. Most big projects will have a page with examples and explanations like Wikipedia:WikiProject Canada/Assessment#Quality scale.Moxy (talk) 21:20, 30 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

@Moxy, thanks. Can you recommend a place where interested parties can continue this discussion, since it appears few are left here(?) Ottawahitech (talk) 19:00, 31 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I would guess at Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Assessment.Moxy (talk) 19:44, 31 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Community

Effectively a Wikipedia geographic project will be successful in proportion to an number of factors. One of these is the sense of community the project engenders. For this purpose smaller is in some ways better. In particular when there is a sufficient pool of literate people with access to the technology, uncommitted time and a volunteer culture then small is indeed beautiful. Rich Farmbrough, 02:45, 25 October 2012 (UTC).[reply]

@Rich Farmbrough: I would like to offer my own personal observation regarding the sense of community: in my experience many talkpages are frequented by editors whose mission seems to be "jump down quick on any newbie who shows up here asking questions". Sometimes these editors are not associated with the talkpage at all, but just seem to get their kicks by disrupting the discussion, or simply showing off, at least this is how I interpret it when it happens to me :-)

Other times the "jumpers" are established members who have grown through hard-knocks school and figure others should too before being allowed into the inner circle. Just my $.02. XOttawahitech (talk) 19:15, 17 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

This is a frequently heard complaint. It would be worth looking at a sample and seeing how we can change the way we interact to lessen these confrontations. All the best, Rich Farmbrough, 09:32, 16 April 2014 (UTC).[reply]

Recruiting WikiProject participants

If someone uses an automated program to invite each editor included in Category:Wikipedians by location to participate in one or more WikiProjects included in Category:Geographical WikiProjects, then probably there will be more WikiProject participants, including some who have not been aware of the existence of WikiProjects. —Wavelength (talk) 19:24, 25 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Have always thought that our {{Welcome}} template(s) should mention and have a link to Wikipedia:WikiProject.Moxy (talk)

Or possibly, an option to fill in the name of a suitable WikiProject. Djembayz (talk) 02:51, 14 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]