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This is an archive of past discussions on Wikipedia:WikiProject X. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current main page.

Archive 1

Students in Andrew Lih's class at American University analyzed WikiProjects for an assignment. Reports here. Projects analyzed include Fashion, Women's History, District of Columbia, Breakfast, California, Journalism, China, Comedy, Environment, U2, Middle Ages, Travel and Tourism, Maryland, Visual Arts, Cities, World Heritage Sites, Food and Drink, and Virginia. Harej (talk) 17:18, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

Over the years, Signpost had done interviews with dozens of most active WikiProject members. See [1]. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 12:16, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

WikiProject Microsoft WikiProject Microsoft Windows WikiProject Lebanon

WikiProject Directory

Quite difficult as they were all "semi-active or in-active"

It has somewhat helped my editing by increasing my editing scope. STJMLCC (talk) 19:20, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for your feedback, STJMLCC! Harej (talk) 17:50, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

I just wanted to share a quick story of how I got involved in Wikipedia, because it was directly related to a WikiProject. My very first edits were to video game articles, mostly correcting small bits and pieces I had seen while reading. I wasn't really too sure where to go from those small changes until I found WikiProject video games and all the resources and guidance located there. Working on requested articles, utilising the reliable sources section, and having an active WikiProject to ask questions in really helped me learn how to edit Wikipedia and looking back I don't know how long I would have stayed editing without that project. Sam Walton (talk) 17:16, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Thank you, Samwalton9! I am happy to hear that the WikiProject was what encouraged you to stick around as an editor. I would like to see more WikiProjects doing that kind of outreach. Harej (talk) 17:52, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Personally, I was invited into the project by another user after some contributions I made to game articles including Beyond Good and Evil. While I've only been really active over the past couple of years or so, I've found this WikiProject really helpful. It generally has a friendly, helpful community who are willing to help with projects or receive help from you, and working as a body to resolve general issues can be huge fun. Often, our cooperation has managed to resolve deadlocks concerning article writing policies for our project, and clear backlogs of articles under GA and FA review. We've even managed to help each other find references for what we're working on.

There have been times when the lack of communication between different WikiProjects have interfered with things: I remember needing to go searching for someone outside the WikiProject to do a source review for a featured article as there was a rather pointed lack of project mingling. In the area where I am generally active, Japanese gaming, it can be awkward if I need some translation work done for me and I need to find another project that appears to be just as isolated as ours. Something I think that needs to improve is cooperation and communication between WikiProjects. --ProtoDrake (talk) 17:16, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

This is a good point, ProtoDrake; many articles belong to multiple WikiProjects, with some projects more invested in "their" articles than others, and this can cause people to feel like they're in opposing camps when at the end of the day we're all Wikipedians. This is something I would like to look into. Harej (talk) 17:54, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

I am the creator of the WikiProject Cosmology. I made this project not so long ago due to the fact that many articles related to physical cosmology and the universe as a whole were not well covered, as well as historical concepts of the cosmos. When I created it, many people decided to help. Some created the banner, others subscribed to AAlert bot etc. However, the activity seems to have decreased now. All the work was made to start and settle the project, and not to edit the articles in the scope.

I believe that the main problem of the Wikiprojects is that they are complicated to use. There should be a a much simpler way to check what do do, what needs to be improved etc. Most participants of the projects simply keep adding the banner in the talk pages of articles in the scope, but few people check the articles to see if they need any improvement. Tetra quark ^{(don't be shy)} 17:19, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for your feedback, Tetra quark. This is a known problem within WikiProjects, that after a lot of initial momentum they fall into inactivity. Ideally, projects would take very little effort to maintain; much of it should be automated anyway. I also see it as a design issue: WikiProjects are not always good at clearly conveying what work needs to be done. Do let me know if you'd be interested in helping out. Harej (talk) 18:35, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

• I've most contributed to WP:VG and WP:ALBUMS, as video games and music are my two main areas of interest and contributions.
• I discovered WikiProjects in general after using WP:VG as a venue for drumming up more input on a video game related discussion. WP:ALBUMS I just found from a talk page.
• I've found them to generally be easy to use, even in my earlier days when I first found them. I do advise people to start slow, as I advise with most aspects of Wikipedia. I started off only using WP:VG in posing questions, and after only after experiencing and understanding the Projects stance on things, did I start actually answering other people's questions. Some people rush right in and try to start answering questions or making changes, and then get scolded for being wrong, or get their ideas (rightfully usually) squashed, which can leave people soured on the idea of these projects. Additionally, sometimes it seems people don't like them because the WikiProject may continually put a stop to their proposals, though that's really more of a problem with having an unpopular stance/no consensus on an idea than the WikiProjects actual fault - but that doesn't stop people's perception.
• WikiProjects have helped my editing greatly:

1. Starting discussions there is a great way to solve disagreements, both in finding consensus, and to show that your viewpoints are rooted in guidelines and consensus rather than just a personal opinion.
2. It offers a place to ask for help on how to approach something.
3. Both of the WikiProjects I work with have a large list of commonly acceptable or unacceptable sources to be used in articles. (Like WP:VG/S.) This has helped in many disputes and WP:AFD discussions.

• I overall think they're great. The only problems I see occuring is

1. Its hard when you fall into a subject area of which their WikiProject is inactive.
2. I do think sometimes WikiProjects try to set up a little too much in regards to rules, guidelines, and structures. I've had to remind people a few times that if things are too strict/structured, it'll be too much for newcomers to take in, and may be too much to be very widely enforced by veteran editors in the area, which in turn renders the guidelines pointless. I've generally been able to sway people away from said situations though too.

Anyways, I hope this is the type of thing you were hoping for when you requested feedback. If not, I can try again. Thanks! Sergecross73 msg me 17:27, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

This is very thorough! Thank you, Sergecross73. I appreciate the emphasis on helping newcomers. Harej (talk) 18:39, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

I think the biggest problem is that there are too many projects and too little control over creating new projects or coordination among projects. The result is that what goes on (at least in all my editing experience) is that people sign up for projects but then forget about them and just go about their normal editing and discussions done all on the talk pages of articles. BTW, I should mention my one good exception to this: the pharmacology project. I posted an issue a while back that spanned multiple articles and the people associated with that project responded in a very timely manner and addressed the issue I was raising. But that was literally the only time in my experience a project acted as I would expect projects to act. I think we should be a lot more rigorous in doing some (this is probably heresy to some editors viewpoint) top down analysis about the space of an encyclopedia. Use some standard like the Dewey decimal or perhaps the Dublin Core model. Refactor the existing projects (and try to remove redundant and overlapping ones). --MadScientistX11 (talk) 17:54, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Thank you, MadScientistX11. You do raise an interesting point about the diffusion of effort through myriad WikiProjects, but I don't know if a top-down taxonomy of WikiProjects is the right answer. To the extent that WikiProjects are voluntary associations, people volunteering their time may not want to be told how they are supposed to organize. Consolidating purely redundant WikiProjects is a good idea, of course, but should be considered on a case-by-case basis. You also mention that people sign up for a WikiProject then don't do anything; research has indeed found that there is no correlation between identifying as a member and participating (there are members who don't participate and non-members who do). This is why we should consider more specific forms of participation. For example, rather than encouraging people to sign their name on a list, we could exhort them to answer a talk page question, or sign up for a newsletter, or review an article for quality. Things like that. Harej (talk) 18:57, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

@MadScientistX11:@Harej: I believe Wikiprojects should be diffuse, if not more. For instance, the scope of the Science wikiproject is too vast. There are members who know more about biology, others know more about physics etc but almost no one knows all the areas of science, and even if they did, there are way too many articles to edit, so they will naturally end up splitting into more specific projects. However, even the more specific projects (like the physics one) still have many articles in its scope, so that demotivates users to edit them Tetra quark ^{(don't be shy)} 00:52, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

@Tetra quark: I agree. For instance, the science project is essentially invalid, and so is the biology project. In fact, even the scope of projects like WikiProject Beetles (which is the great-greatgrandchild of WikiProject Science, if you get what I mean) covers an immense span. Gug01 (talk) 00:34, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

@Gug01: even my Cosmology Wikiproject is too vast Tetra quark ^(talk) 00:50, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

@Tetra quark: Actually, I couldn't disagree more. In fact your project is a perfect example of what I think is wrong with the current project system. The goal of projects should be to help write better articles. Period. Yet approximately 90% of the articles covered by Cosmology were already covered by Astronomy and the other 10% were covered by Physics. So why did we even need a Cosmology project? What value added work does that project do that couldn't already be done by Astronomy or Physics? It seems to me that your project, like many of them, is essentially a vanity project. You spent a lot of time getting a cool looking background (how does that contribute to better articles?) and doing other things that may help people who like Cosmology get to know each other but that is what Facebook is for. Can you describe any specific accomplishments that the Cosmology project has led to regarding improved articles that couldn't have just as well been done by Astronomy or Physics? If not then its really just a waste of resources that could be better spent editing articles. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 01:21, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

@MadScientistX11: What exactly does it mean to "cover" an article? You said most of the cosmology articles have been covered by other wikiprojects, but so what? No one will ever check on them. For instance, the Astronomy project has their banner pasted on 38,276 talk pages. According to your logic, that's a good thing. No - it's not. It is useless and means absolutely nothing. Most WP Astronomy participants don't know a single thing about physical cosmology, but the banner is still in the articles. This same argument applies to the Physics project. Just because someone started deliberately putting a banner on several talk pages, doesn't mean the article will receive some attention, if any. So as I said in my message which you replied to, vastness is a problem, and the purpose of my project is to focus editor's attentions in a more specific thing. Take the Science Wikiproject as an example: It's vaster than vast and look - no one has left a non-spam message there since October 2014. Last but not least, if you ask me about the accomplishments of my project, I say there aren't any so far. Most wikiprojects are very inactive and mine isn't going to be an exception. Improving WPs is a major concern and that's why we're here in WP X as far as I know. Tetra quark ^(talk) 01:57, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

@Tetra quark: What I meant by "covered" is that all the articles listed under your project were already listed under other projects. And I agree with you that people belonging to projects but then not participating in them is a problem. But I hardly see how just making more projects is going to solve that. If anything I think it makes it worse. One thing I learned in managing large software projects is if several people have responsibility for something then no one has responsibility for it. If there are lots of pages under Astronomy that the Astronomy people aren't really paying attention to then having yet another project isn't going to solve that problem. The way to solve it is for people like you to stop spending time creating cool graphics for their new projects and start getting active in doing the things that a project is supposed to do: reviewing and editing articles, creating templates, etc. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 15:24, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

@MadScientistX11: The cool graphics I was working on was for the Cosmology Portal, not the wikiproject, but anyway. The thing is that making that project didn't cost me anything. I mean, I wouldn't have edited more or less articles if I hadn't created the project. First, we gotta settle the project so then we start working. I tried creating a task once to call people to edit the universe article (here) but people didn't seem so interested. Rather, they were more worried about the project page itself. Tetra quark ^(talk) 15:37, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

@Tetra quark: I was thinking that if projects were really specialized, that would help. However, this shouldn't be applied everywhere, as sometimes there is no need (WP:WikiProject Cats is good, but WP:WikiProject Mammals is active enough to cover the whole mammalian class) but sometimes (such as in the case of WikiProject Insects) there is need of division. Editors have raised a good point that specialization can also be bad for WikiProjects. Gug01 (talk) 00:56, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

@MadScientistX11 and Harej: "The result is that what goes on (at least in all my editing experience) is that people sign up for projects but then forget about them and just go about their normal editing and discussions done all on the talk pages of articles." The wide splitting asunder of talk pages has resulted in thousands of articles needing help that don't get it because, well, they haven't already attracted the attention of the editors who could help. Commenting on these obscure talk pages won't get them there. Transcluding these talk pages has obvious limitations. Redirecting them to the talk pages of more primary articles (something Wikisource should do) might benefit these smaller articles, at the cost of confusing discussion about the primary article. It might help if there were a way to "ping" WikiProjects to discussions needing their input, without requiring an editor in need to navigate deep into the WikiProject forest to find the right, proper, and mythical well-attended talk (or project, or portal, or portal talk, or template) page just to say "help me over here please."

"The result is that what goes on (at least in all my editing experience) is that people sign up for projects but then forget about them and just go about their normal editing and discussions done all on the talk pages of articles." This is a great solution to a related problem! People interested in a WikiProject often expect that by putting their name on a list, they'll be pulled into the fold—that they'll be helped if they need it, be offered clear ways they might help others and the project, and that they'll be kept informed on important information that could affect their editing habits on the subject matter. Right now, those lists are nothing more than a guestbook, ignored by the project, which results in the project being ignored by the users, which results in a ton of outdated and useless project and -talk pages that meant well, which .... djr13 (talk) 23:39, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

Djr13 and MadScientistX11, we will be looking into a system that will allow people to ping WikiProjects for help. The connection between WikiProjects and talk pages should be seamless. Harej (talk) 00:58, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

That's an interesting issue to look into. For example, I recall there were controversies about whether to split (or not) Wikipedia:WikiProject United States into state-wikiprojects. Most of the state ones are inactive or semi-active, and so is the US one, as far as I can tell. I wonder if the creation of those state wikiprojects had a determinetal effect here. I remember that long time ago in Poland, we had WProjects Polish history and geography that we merged back to Poland, as we decided we don't have the membership to maintain three different noticeboards/sets of tools (and I am very happy we did so). Another example would be the existence of semi-active Wikipedia:WikiProject Pennsylvania, Wikipedia:WikiProject Pittsburgh and even Wikipedia:WikiProject University of Pittsburgh. The latter two seemed to have been primarily run by one - two editors, and after they became less active, so did their creations. Again, I have to wonder if WP:PENN would have been better served if there were no child projects? One of the possible solutions would be to transclude the discussion pages on higher levels, perhaps, through that still creates watchlist problems. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 11:13, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Whatever the solution is, there's no fix-all. Ultimately it is up to the volunteers to decide how to organize themselves. For example, I could get a group of students at my alma mater, American University, to create a WikiProject dedicated to their university, on the basis that they are interested in coverage of their university. However, being interested in their university may not necessarily mean they would be interested in working on the District of Columbia project, since there is far more to D.C. than the university, even though it would be more efficient for these students to join the D.C. project than to create their own. But the organizing prerogatives will change over time. Say the university students graduate and do other things with their lives; then WikiProject AU will go dead. What of the massive infrastructure of pages and categories built up by WikiProject AU? This is why whether the solution is more discretely defined WikiProjects, or task forces within WikiProjects, it should be easy to adapt and split or consolidate. Harej (talk) 13:59, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

The relatively new mass message delivery system might help if designated project members are willing to draft and disseminate WikiProject newsletters and/or Collaboration of the Month (or whatever length of time) notifications to interested recipients. Before, delivering these messages was a manual and time-consuming process. So, maybe I am suggesting that when users sign up to participate at WikiProjects, they do so in the form of a MassMessage delivery list. Of course, someone could easily argue that there are plenty of people who want to participate at WikiProjects but not receive talk page notifications. Just "thinking out loud" about ways to engage project members and make use of this tool. ---Another Believer _(Talk) 18:42, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Good recommendation, Another Believer! What I'd also like to see is something to make writing newsletters dead simple. To the extent that people do want to write newsletters, it should not take much effort. Harej (talk) 19:01, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Agreed. A newsletter template would be helpful. ---Another Believer _(Talk) 19:02, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

And while I am thinking about it, it's been a while since I created a new WikiProject and set up the entire article assessment system (table, categories, etc.), but that was quite a convoluted process. It should not be so difficult, though perhaps the implementation process has improved in recent years? ---Another Believer _(Talk) 19:03, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

I have been a member of WikiProject Frank Zappa for a couple of years now. The project started out great, with a lot of eager editors ready to improve all Zappa based pages, but it turned into something that was for the most part stagnant. I think a big problem with the project had to do with its members being too busy to do all of the edits they promised. As one of the few members who weren't too busy, I tried the best I could to keep it going, but I ended up with no support. I can understand how this could happen to a lot of WikiProjects and if anyone is still interested in the project I'd love some support.

I discovered WikiProject X because it was posted on WikiProject Frank Zappa's talk page. Mrmoustache14 (talk) 19:17, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

I think WikiProjects have had a difficult time adjusting the changing landscape of Wikipedia, including adapting to the ways in which people interact and assimilate mass information and rely upon them for functionality. Most people reading this will find a much of what I describe below to be common knowledge, and perhaps others will have had a different experience.

Looking back at the English Wikipedia over the past decade, there are some significant differences worth noting. In 2005, the English Wikipedia had a mere 440,000 articles. Half that number the previous year, and half again the year before that. WikiProjects then had walls of red-links for articles. They were sometimes the only opportunity for editors to discuss and collaborate at a time when there weren't existing baselines or standards. Much of the writing needed to "pioneer" the very basics such as section structure and section titles, English spellings (Brit, American, Aussie), dates & measurements standards (imperial or metric), reference styles (Oxford, Chicago, etc.), and so forth. I think the first infobox I used had only 3 data inputs and the labels also needed to be defined. I recall a lengthy discussion about trying to find a consensus amongst the city article writers for what should be the standard 3 infobox labels. Even working on an existing article usually meant a major undertaking. WikiProjects provided a space in which these issues could be discussed and worked through.

There are now some 4.68 million articles on the English Wikipedia. As more and more articles were created, a number of things changed for WikiProjects. The establishment of policies, guidelines, essays, and other articles to reference as examples (especially FA's) provided a foundation for anyone writing new or expanding existing articles. Established WikiProjects have already had elaborate discussions and set conventions in their scope. Rarely are these revisited outside of minor tweaks. More importantly, the need to ask questions in a forum, or create a policy or standard is not incumbent of content creators now that they already exist. An editor can now go and write an FA or GA by simply reviewing the relevant policies and using a few other FAs as a baseline, without needing to visit the associated WikiProject. Previously, FA articles were often WikiProject efforts. This also comes with the increased number of veteran editors who now have years of experience where previously it was an almost unheard of tenure.

The other noticeable change for WikiProjects was the rapidly shrinking list of to-do articles in direct relation to the number of interested and knowledgeable editors. In some WikiProjects that I been a longtime participant, there are some red-link topics that I haven't any knowledge and therefore much interest in. They're usually difficult subjects to cover and the number of references available are even fewer. A lot of WikiProjects don't have a running list of to-do article creations anymore. Either because the participants have completed the existing list, or the knowledge about potential topics has been exhausted by current participants. The subjects have become more and more esoteric and therefore the number of interested editors have decreased. Even when I do take on an obscure topic, often have difficulty in finding another editor at the WikiProject to engage with and the subject isn't large enough to have its own WikiProject. This has meant that some of these WikiProjects have needed to shift away from "article writing" and moved into article maintenance or collective watch groups for changes that are against consensus/convention set many years ago.

There are several other changes that have affected WikiProjects but fundamentally I think there needs to be a discussion and evaluation on the practical applications of WikiProjects. There are certain things WikiProjects endeavour to do but do not necessarily succeed in doing them. I'm not sure how to fix them -- enter someone more clever than I.

1. There could be an overhaul in the way WikiProjects entice and introduce new editors to Wikipedia. I have seen some great adoption and mentorship programs so editors can work directly with knowledgeable editors in a specific subject or field. They benefit from not only having someone to explain or navigate them to the basic policies, but also open up a wealth of knowledge about editing and working inside a specific area. Most new editors are directed to the Tea House which is a big melting pot of people from all over the encyclopedia. There are some really great editors there doing outstanding work but sometimes it can be more about the backlog than bringing them into the community. Aside from WikiProject participation, Wikipedia is experiencing another major and possibly more important problem. The number of new prolific content writers is rapidly decreasing while the number of retiring and inactive editors is increasing. In 2014, the English Wikipedia was at its 2005 growth rate. Significantly down from the growth rates in 2007-2010.
2. WikiProjects could be changed so that AFC's when submitted are submitted directly to a corresponding WikiProject for review. There would need to be some mechanism in place where if an AFC sat idle for too long in a WikiProject queue, it would be moved into a general or "outstanding" queue. Additionally, the article could be queued under multiple WikiProjects at a time. The benefits could be quite profound as not only would there be editors reviewing an article against basic notability and RS guidelines, but would be in a position to significantly grow and expand the article. AFC also has a notorious backlog.

I'm very curious to hear from some of the editors who have been apart of a WikiProject that has flourished. For example in my experience, I've always found it's taken a handful of very dedicated editors to keep a WikiProject alive. Aside from maintaining the list and consistently replying to inquiries on the talk page, they work to keep the project relevant, message its members, plan collaborative sessions, Wiki-meets, and so forth. It can be an exhausting process to sustain over a lengthy period of time. Hopefully I haven't said anything overly controversial and again, others may have had a much different experience. Cheers, Mkdw^talk 23:15, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

That was very interesting and a great perspective. I've only been editing for a couple of years and didn't know most of that. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 00:20, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

@Mkdw: Regarding the diminishing use of to-do lists, while I agree that the traditional ones have became less useful, I think most projects (members) also failed to embrace new tools, such as dynamic cleanup listings or this.

Overall, we have a lot of tools that are not properly integrated/advertised. I like your AfC idea; I personally added and advertised a number of tools to some of the projects I help with (such as WP:AA or the New Article reports), but most projects don't know about them, ditto for most members. The Project pages are often an inconsistent clutter, designed differently for different projects. We need standardization that will make it easy to move between pojects, and highlight the useful tools, badly.

The "very few active editors who keep things moving" narrative is certainly true for WP:POLAND, WP:SOCIO and WP:PITTSBURGH. I am not sure about WP:KOREA, I haven't been involved with them that long... those are the four projects I've been involved with the most.--_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 11:23, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

My experience is with Wikipedia:WikiProject_Molecular_and_Cellular_Biology

There are a great many project-associated pages, but many are wildly out of date. I think they used to be updated by now-defunct bots and so can be misleading. For example:

• Wikipedia:WikiProject_Molecular_and_Cellular_Biology/Worklist - has a table of article quality scores but they're only correct as of 2007.
• Wikipedia:WikiProject_Molecular_and_Cellular_Biology/Collaboration_of_the_Month - contains only links up to 2008
• Wikipedia:WikiProject_Molecular_and_Cellular_Biology#participants - lists hundreds of members, many of whom have long left the project and/or wikipedia so it is hard to gauge how much support is really present, or who to contact.

I guess that members have been slowly declining leading to the abandonment of a lot of pages, but they are still prominent on the main project page, diluting the actually active sections of the project. Some things that would therefore be very useful:

• A way of resurrecting defunct bots
• Clearer demarcation of 'archive' pages that are no longer active
• Removal of project members who've ont contributed in e.g. 2 years

I have no idea how feasible any of this is, but hopefully the comments are useful. T. Shafee (Evo&Evo) (talk) 23:22, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

A big problem is that much of those tools rely on manual updates, and as soon as the person doing it becomes less active, the system breaks down. We need more automatic tools. The worklist with quality score should've been long replaced by WP:ASSESS, for example. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 11:24, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Thank you, T. Shafee (Evo&Evo). We are definitely looking into process automation as part of this. To mitigate the risk of bot maintainers disappearing, all bots will have the source code published online for anyone to use and adapt. I have a good deal of experience in this front; I used to maintain several bots, but subsequently gave them away to other users. These users disappeared, but because the code was open source, others were able to take their place. The ability of others to take over projects is an important feature of Wikimedia Labs, a Wikimedia Foundation-run project for running bots and the like. Harej (talk) 13:26, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

My experience with projects is almost entirely negative. You spend time adding content to one or more articles and then someone from some project comes and yells at you for doing it contrary to some agreement that they made years ago and demands you do a massive amount of rework or they threaten to delete everything you've done. I create a lot of new articles and very soon they are covered in project tags from people who have not contributed a single edit to the article itself. I thought nobody owned Wikipedia articles, but projects seem to think they do. Projects appear to be little more than schoolyard gangs of bullies and project tagging appears to be no different to dogs marking their territory with their urine. There appears to be no way that a project non-member can be aware of any expectations before making contributions, renegotiate any expectations, or have any control over which articles get tagged by projects. It's not unreasonable for a group of people who are making the bulk of contributions to articles to be able to exert some control over them, but it is quite unreasonable for people who are not making the bulk of contributions to do so. It should be possible to automate the calculation of the historic/recent contribution of project members to an article, and then automatically tag/untag articles according to some contribution metric. Let's give control of articles only to those projects which merit it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.150.91.220 (talk) 00:35, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Very sorry to hear of your bad experience, 124.150.91.220. It should be more clearly expressed (and expected) that WikiProject tagging does not mean that anyone owns an article. It should mean "we are interested in this subject matter," and nothing more. Harej (talk) 13:31, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

I would suggest reading this section about WikiProject article tagging. It may clear up some misunderstandings about the why's and wherefore's of such tagging. Basically, it would be an unmanageable mess if article editors could untag projects against the projects' will. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 21:49, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

My regular haunt is WP:WikiProject Ancient Egypt. I found it because I frequently visited ancient Egypt-related articles, though I can't remember exactly how I happened across it. Once I had decided to focus my editing on ancient Egypt-related articles, I just put my name on the list, late in 2008. These days, the project only has a handful of regular editors. Because our specific interests are rather different, we don't collaborate much, although we may do so in the future (this project talk discussion gives a good idea of the current state of affairs). But I like my fellow regulars, and the project talk page serves as a bulletin board for us to notify each other of what's going on and ask for comment. I find it easier than going to each editor's talk page. And I think we all use the recent changes list for the project. So, although it's obviously better for a project to have more manpower, projects can be useful even if they only have a few users. A. Parrot (talk) 01:20, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Thank you, A. Parrot, for sharing your experience. Even if there is little activity, WikiProjects are at their best when they allow editors to work together. Do you think it needs any improvements, or does it work well the way it is? Harej (talk) 13:35, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

I don't know what improvements we could make. What kind of improvements do you have in mind? A. Parrot (talk) 19:15, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Another fan of underpopulated and relatively inactive WikiProjects here. The WikiProject pages are the only way to keep a shareable list of sources, resources, and articles handy that can give other editors some hints on where to start. You can also link to the recent changes, the cleanup list, requested articles, the list of stubs and articles by quality, the participating or interested editors, and links to meetup pages or editing events for later reference.

Just because people aren't visibly talking back and forth doesn't mean the WikiProject page is not useful. People may be discussing over e-mail with editors they identified on the page.

Since this is a volunteer effort, you can expect people to jump around from one project to the next, and possibly come back after a period of absence to check in. Sometimes redlinked articles from WikiProject lists have magically appeared in the meantime, but often the articles that need serious research require GLAM/education outreach, or an in-person editing event to get them started. If focused content improvement is an important priority, then there needs to be more IEG outreach to the WikiProjects in question. (To some extent, your editing event simply diverts established editors from what they were working on to your priorities; but once an article is noticeably expanded and starts showing up in the recent changes queue, that's when the general purpose bots and gnomes come out of the woodwork to start making minor cleanup changes.)

As you point out, it's too labor-intensive to merge projects, and an automated tool would be helpful. Two WikiProjects which have pretty much completed their tasks for now could be folded into larger projects as a Task Force or subsection: WikiProject Vienna and WikiProject Indigenous languages of California. You don't want to lose the separate assessment section, resources, or links when you do this ...--Djembayz (talk) 03:32, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

Hmmm, it would appear I'm not the only one in the vast cosmos of Wikipedia who thought of making it easy to patrol changes to pages in our project. Cool. I wonder if all the projects copied what we do we would generate more effort on projects' articles in general. Oftentimes when I'm watching articles for vandalism, I see lots of good updates as well and have ideas for other improvements while I'm looking at them. This patrolling invites article development, even if in small chunks.

As for the goodness of small projects, I certainly agree for the same reasons stated above. I have gradually re-imagined the project I started in 2006 to be less about group activities and more about providing resources for self-directed activity. Sure, I'd love to see more group work, but I tend to think that cannot be forced, especially since the overall engagement has declined. I'm now of the mindset: "When they show up, they'll have some ideas of what they can work on and how to do it". Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 22:09, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

One of the best ways I can imagine doing the above is going out there and finding the extant reference sources which deal with the topic, and if they are of an encyclopedic nature the various articles they contain and their relative length, which is a good indicator of their importance to the topic. Pages like Wikipedia:WikiProject Christianity/Encyclopedic articles, if they are used to their greatest benefit, which would include indicating elsewhere, possibly by tagging "Missing" articles found in those sources, and adding some sort of link to the page in the project banner, might be among the most effective ways of making it easier for new editors to jump in. John Carter (talk) 22:28, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

My first edits to the project included starting an article regarding an amateur actress in pornography. While I agree that I would not create the article now, my efforts were met not only with absolutely not only no welcome, but a complete lack of respect. The never ending wikilinks and dismissive explanations of what the PORN project had already decided were off putting. We would later find out that many IPs are wary of becoming editors after similar experiences while learning how to edit.

My second chance working with a project has been different but the same. Everyone seems more than decent on the FOOTY project but it feels like editors are so worried about an influx of poor articles that they become "Exclusionists". Additional notability standards were used as a barrier even if the General Notability Guidelines were met. I've noticed that deletion discussions now tend to include both but the tendency to default to the deletion of content is worrisome.

Besides the above, I haven't found use for many projects. I've seen banners and go to pages that have not had activity in years.Cptnono (talk) 07:08, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

I had a similar initial experience with members of the Pornography Project (which has very few active members in it these days) as well a long while ago, but that was mostly due to myself not knowing a lot about Wikipedia's myriad of notability standards. Some Projects unfortunately have to worry about deletionists or Wikipedia editors/administrators with a particular POV that might occasionally want to come into a Project's area and "clean house" by deleting large numbers of articles (some that may have, at one time, met some kind of notability standard that's since been changed) or stir up some trouble in general. I've also been surprised at how wide the range is between Projects when it comes to a sense (or a lack thereof) of working together to improve Wikipedia articles in a particular subject area...the Meteorology Project (and its sub-Project Severe weather) and the disambiguation "project" are pretty good in this area. Both the Red Link Recovery Project & the Sexology & sexuality Project have seemed pretty dead for almost as long as I've been a member of them. Guy1890 (talk) 08:00, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for your feedback, Cptnono and Guy1890. This is indeed a common complaint, that certain WikiProjects are over-assertive and others are just straight-up inactive (despite their tags being everywhere). This backfires no matter what: you have projects that scare away newcomers or fail to provide support. I'm also troubled by WikiProjects having the sense that they can assert policies that are contrary to existing ones, but I don't have a good answer for how to resolve that in projects that currently practice this, since it is more a political question that should be resolved by the community writ large. The sense of project solidarity would be interesting to investigate in more detail; perhaps some projects never take off because they're too general in scope or exist with no particular goal in mind? Harej (talk) 13:50, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

"perhaps some projects never take off because they're too general in scope or exist with no particular goal in mind?" Actually, as I read through these comments; btw it's kind of amazing how diverse we all are; the one thing that occurs to me (this is my engineering background I admit) is that perhaps what we need most are some specific metrics for a project: For a new project to exist it must demonstrate need. (E.g., a large number of articles on a certain topic that is not currently covered by a project). And for a project to continue it needs to have met some minimum requirements for the year (articles created, templates created or edited, active editors, etc.) --MadScientistX11 (talk) 14:29, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Another thing or two that would be useful would be a list or group of lists of sources which are specifically useful on the particular topic, hopefully including periodicals and updated websites. And maybe some sort of general indicators like MadScientistX11 proposed above for continued activity of a given wikiproject as a separate project, as opposed to one to be merged to other projects, might be useful as well. John Carter (talk) 19:51, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

• Having attainable & truly common goals are always important to having a successful WikiProject. I saw an interesting idea in another thread on another part of this Project's talk pages recently: "If people were to select their interest or from articles they edited be recommended Wikiprojects, as well as include the number of people included in said wikiproject, people would join them." This shouldn't be too hard to do, since the SuggestBot basically already trolls through one's recent Wikipedia contributions to recommend articles that one might like to edit. It could just be modified somehow to recommend WikiProjects that one might want to get involved in. Guy1890 (talk) 21:23, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Back in the old days, I did a lot of the work involved in creating new projects and the associated pages, templates, etc.. Many, probably most of them, are inactive, because, unfortunately, I tended to think that the people who indicated they were interested were actually willing to do some of the work themselves. They often weren't. Anyway, my two cents:

• 1) I think it probably would help most projects a lot if they had pretty much from the beginning a clear indication as to what relevant existing articles they had, and what articles and/or content is still missing. I've actually started a few pages like Wikipedia:WikiProject Christianity/Encyclopedic articles based on the articles and subarticles in leading reference sources on the same topics, and the broad comparative length in those sources, and I have to think that it would help most, if not all, projects to have them, although, admittedly, they can take an incredible amount of time to develop.

• 2) Merging closely related wikiprojects or groups is also generally a good idea. WP:MILHIST has one common wikipedia space talk page for all their groups. Such concentration of requests can help a lot of them get more attention.

• 3) Newsletters are a good idea if you know how to develop them and what is the kind of thing that editors would want to see in them. The latter is particularly important. They can also indicate upcoming collaborations and maybe draw more attention to them.

• 4) Having people who can keep quality assessment standards up would help a lot, as they can help indicate which pages are already good and which aren't.

Anyway, a few ideas. John Carter (talk) 19:38, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

I think your experience is consistent with what I was saying elsewhere: what we need are some metrics. Some basic statements about the minimum requirements for creating a new project and also the requirements for keeping an existing project active. I realize that sounds rather bureaucratic but it doesn't have to be. Just some simple guidelines such as for a new project you have to have an existing set of articles that fall within the scope of the project but aren't covered by other projects. That may not be the right metric I just give it as an example. The main idea I think is that we need to have some way to quantify what we expect from projects and what a project creator must do to demonstrate a need for a new project and a demand to continue with an existing projet. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 19:51, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

As project founder, I am (obviously) biased, I believe WikiProject Iowa and its workgroups were successful in

• Introducing people to each other
• Organizing people to edit on various sub-topics
• Providing some much-needed spaces for
  • Planning, particularly where multiple articles were of a similar subject and nature
  • Listing of both on-wiki and off-wiki resources

After a while, though, much of the activity died down as various key participants (including me) became inactive or semi-active. Today, it functions mostly as a

• Message-board

though parts of it may revert to their previous forms of activity from time to time. This last mode of activity provided a place for Billwhittaker to post about this treasure trove of photos for Wikipedians to use when making further improvements to our articles.

Each of these forms of activity are useful, though different ones may be more appropriate at different times.

The one major down-side to the project was that while collaboration has worked well on specific issues and on sub-topics with multiple interested editors, we never managed to make a project-wide collaboration work. Consequently, our core article, Iowa, remains in fairly poor shape.

A few side-effects of the project's creation, which are helpful to me personally, are

• Deletion sorting for Iowa,
• Article alerts, and
• The cleanup listing.

I also periodically put suggestions up at the to do list and maintain the project watchlist, though I don't know if anyone uses these. – Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 23:29, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

I have notified Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Iowa of this posing. – Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 23:29, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Thank you, Philosopher, for your history of WikiProject Iowa! Harej (talk) 02:26, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

I stumbled upon this page quite by accident, and in hind sight having read through it I suppose its a good thing I did since I like to observe and report.

First, a little about me and my relation to milhist: I found Wikipedia by accident back in 2004, and created an account on here a few weeks after I found it because I was intrigued with the idea of writing and publishing material online for the benefit of others. Changing standards and practice over the years have largely beat that out of me, and now I spend my time somewhat in fear in content creation because these days the there are no dirt roads and covered wagons, its all highways and byways with limits and laws, and God help you if you step over anything because the people here will persecute you relentlessly for you error(s), no matter how small they may be.

As for projects here, our Military history Project has its roots in three formally independent projects - wars, battles, and military as I recall - which made the decision to merge around '07 to form a single unified military history project. At the time it was spread out pretty wide, and at the time with all the red links and the growing demand for more accurate coverage there was a lot to do with task forces, article creation, article improvement, and community outreach. Of course back in those days we had far fewer regulations, and the isp people could still create and edit - we were after all, and an encyclopedia that anyone could edit, not a gated community like we are today where everyone lives behind the fences of perceived mandatory registration and the gates of policy and guideline criteria, which have grown heavy over the years to keep the unwanted out.

My initial encounter with the wikiproject was positive, and after some circling to size it up I joined because it seemed that military history related articles agreed better with my editorial appetite than the fictional articles i had worked with up until that time. Participation is and remains easy - its essentially a AAA membership, so you go where you want to go and do what you want to do, and if you have trouble you leave a message and someone will be along to help you with your problem so you can get back to your activity quickly. As time has gone by though we've reached a point where the entirety of Wikipedia is beginning to feel the burden of so many policy and guideline changes, and now that these have started to suffocate the contributor's pool its beginning to affect our ability to handle matters that were once simple.

Our review departments and our in house ACR review suffer now from a perpetual lack of participation, where as they were only a few years back the first destination for our editors since they offered our contributing editors the best feedback on how to improve articles. Our once active task forces have largely disappeared, and many would have been shuttered if not for the fact that they help organize our articles into more manageable bites for tracking purposes. In a limited number of cases these task forces serve a dual role as fleets in being to prevent competing wikiprojects from forming - both our World War I and World War II task forces in particular share in this dual role since the formation of projects dedicated specifically to them was once a very popular area of proposal. Where the coordinators of the project were once actively engaged in replying to posts made on task force talk pages those task force talk pages have now redirected to the main talk page. Our contributor pool has continued to shrink, as has the pools for other wikiprojects across the site, suggesting that the problem may not be with us so much as the current editorial model on Wikipedia. I dare say victory has defeated Wikipedia, since we began this project as a kind of South Harmon Institute of Technology, and it now operates closer to Harvard or Yale.

I've read through the posts above, and some of the editors to bring up good points - for starts, most projects have overlapping areas, which can be confusing for editors. In our case two easy examples come from our association with naval and aviation articles, which puts us in a position to to compete with WP:SHIPS and WP:AVIATION. In some respects the task forces help to serve as a mediating ground for parties to the conflict, in other cases projects have simply spun out their military related article development to us. I'd also concede that an over saturation of Wikiprojects is not helpful either - one gets the impression from our project that if you sign up your gonna be part of the ships project and aviation project and biography project and geography project and the nations & regions project and so forth in that manner since all of these projects have at least one overreaching area with WP:MILHIST, and if you edit under the impression that you have to known all the other project's guidelines then that can look very daunting indeed. It doesn't help any that the projects themselves (ours included) do not broadcast that their guidelines are a second fiddle to the Wikipedia-wide policies and guidelines established for editors. Since most projects have some kind of style or guideline criteria I'd be of the mind to say merge the like points and note only the differences in individual points for a project (we all know to use inline citations for articles, for example, but some project favor Chicago style citations and others don't, noting only that would be of use to editors rather than having a page that rehashing 9200 other points that everyone else's project has already established).

Bother of these points lead into another unmentioned point - a practiced apathy. After having done things the same for so long many projects have no desire to reorganize or when they do bump up against editors who have a vested interest in changing or retaining the status quo, which causes potentially life resuscitating ideas for wikiprojects to stagnate and die. As an example, I once proposed reorganizing the milhist geography task forces into a larger set of task forces based on generally accepted continents and regions, which would have allowed the task forces to cover every existing nation without the need for individual task forces for all of them, and to alleviate some pressure on the project at the time from nations that had a military but no associated task force. The idea didn't really catch on, and as a result it died from a lack of participation from project members.

With regard to the content editors, I would concur with the points raised in the section but I would hazard an additional observation: Content editors will work on whatever they decide to work on with or without a wikiproject's help. I elaborated on this in a signpost story a few months back when in response to the question "Have you been successful in attracting many new members this year, and how much do new participants tend to contribute to articles relating to this subject after they have joined; do some appear to forget their membership straight away?" I opined that:

... trying to attract new members to any project here is an exercise in futility since editors (and contributors in general for that matter) will always work on what they consider their own little part of Wikipedia. If it so happens that their little corner of Wikipedia happens to be one of the corners upon which our project has some invested interest then I consider it to be a victory for the project as it means someone cared enough to help us out with an article by editing and/or contributing. As for the project as a whole, were not particularly active in attracting new members since most of the editors here tend to be men and most men tend to have some interest in military history, so we do alright. That having been said, we are starting to see some of the generally apathy that has plagued Wikipedia the last few years creep into our project – notably, our members seem to have mentally shifted from full throttle to cruise control, so we've seen a slow down in participation in some projects, task forces, and review areas. We do have some members who join but contribute little if any, but on the whole most people who join stay with the project. I credit that to our size: with so many areas of military history you'd be hard pressed not to find at least one you have some interest in.

I had made similar comments on the subject before in the signpost back in 2012, when in response to the question "Why does the number of Wikipedia readers rise while the number of editors doesn't?" I opined that:

Our site is like the [Nuclear] power station, with the editors as the fuel rods and the guidelines, policies, bureaucracy, etc, as the control rods. Our problem on site is the the editors are increasingly frustrated by the control rods, which seem to sink further into the reactor each year and as a result of the control rod insertion more and more editors are experiencing the difficulty of having to work harder to get the article material heated to acceptable levels. Those at the top of the reactor have already experienced a total retardation of the nuclear fission process, while those at the bottom are unable or unwilling to pick up the slack. Despite this disturbing trend it does not effect the readers, who are outside the reactor's water loop and thus interact with the articles only in the heat exchanger, and as long as there is sufficient energy to boil the water - or in this case, to be more precise, maintain the articles and add new ones (even at a reduced rate) - the readers in the power loop will continue to power the machine that keeps Wikipedia moving.

In both cases the underlying issue with the registered content editors is that they are likely being frustrated by the ever expanding policy and guideline criteria popping up, which would suggest a desire to avoid dealing with this creep as much as possible by bailing on WikiProjects and other organized places of collaboration in favor of a DIY approach. For the isp editors, I think they've largely given up on having any kind of favorable interaction here since they've been unilaterally banned from article creation and with the roll out of pending changes now find their edits must be passed by the registered editors, which doesn't suggest a free encyclopedia or a place where anyone can edit.

On the matter of which projects are up to date, there has been some progress made to automate this system - JLbot I think updates the FA content for example - but that doesn't do much for projects if the outer appearance demonstrates neglect. Many project pages are actually composed of multiple subpages, so that when one looks in the page history one is left with the impress that the project hasn't been edited in years, or that the article material is updated by people who have either left or have grown too apathetic to care. Overcoming the former could be an issue of automation, but the latter is a more complicated issue entirely since apathy is a human issue and not an article or update issue.

Too many articles within a project's scope can cut both ways, on the way hand it does make a task seem daunting and impossible, on the other if the project breaks them up into more manageable bites such as milhist has with the task forces, and more recently with the special projects, then editors can see the progress being made more easily, which can help inspire people to be active. The overwhelming tendency of a project to shutter, merge, and redirect pages to lists or tables doesn't help either - just as men and women forget that some of the models and body builders whose bodies we all drool over started of very homely and very weak in their youth so to have the bulk of Wikipedia's long time editors forgotten that a great many of the current GA, A, and FA class articles started out as one or two liners and were painstakingly improved by people with the time and desire to work on them to become what they are today. All too quickly the one and two line articles created today end up slapped with csd tags or merge tags, or get redirected on obscure policy and guideline grounds that the new or uninitiated are unlikely to understand. We shrugg of the attempts by the editors to get answers by bouncing them from one unhelpful page to another until they either quite and never come back or give up and go back to try again, which causes the endless waltz to repeat. An unhelpful system compounded by the fact that we as a whole have largely lost our sense of community - essentially its like a scene out of the movie WALL-E since everyone editing here is so caught up in the screen there watching they forget about the people right next to them. I blame that on the 'gated community' mentality that has popped up over the last few years, and we now look more to exclude than to include on this site.

I know one of the reasons my own pet project (incorrectly named, but I think of it as mine) works so well is that I waited until I had a core of ship editors before announcing the formation of the special project Operation Majestic Titan, consequently the special project was built with a handful of people in mind who were going to edit the content with or without the existence of a special project for it. On some fundamental level I think this is where the reorganization of any WikiProject has to begin since all the incentives in the world will not compel, force, entice or otherwise cause a contributor to move too far away from what they considered to be their comfort zone.

I hope these observations help, and that they may be of some use to you. Sorry for any parts that seem mean or unhelpful, as its not my intention to bash a group or project, I just want to tell it like it is - or more appropriately, call it as I see it. Drop me a line if you need/want anything else, and I'll mosey back here when I get a moment. TomStar81 (Talk) 13:30, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

Thank you very much, TomStar81. Your comment generally mirrors sentiments expressed by others, and you mention problems that I am aware of and that I am looking to fix. I may want to re-read your exposition a few more times before responding to the individual points. Harej (talk) 01:43, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

I guess when I first started on Wiki, I was editing from my own experiences - I didn't really have a clue what I was doing and because I'd recently been in the psuedo-military (NAAFI - an article I must expand at some point!) I started on Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history. As you probably know, it's a very busy Project - and being a newbie I found it rather daunting just how busy it was. There were a lot of editors already involved and they all seemed to have access to much better sources than I did. So I didn't really do much there (although I have since wandered back and worked up a couple of Good Articles).

One thing it did teach me was the value of article improvement, something that I wanted to take to a new project. This was why I became involved with Wikipedia:WikiProject Dogs - and in fact it was working up Good Articles in that subject matter than taught me a good 95% of what I know about Wiki. I got very lucky, as my early reviewers were very forgiving to my stupid questions and I'll be forever thankful for that. If I'd been kicked in the shins and my articles called out at the time for the poorly sourced rubbish that they were when I started then I probably wouldn't have continued on Wiki.

Obviously the new project wasn't nearly as busy as MilHist, but there was a few people around - just not many who were as interested (perhaps obsessed?) in article improvement as I was. Still though, we'd have discussions on the talk page about various subject matters and we tried to do a collaboration of the month sort of thing but it never really came to much. I'd still be there if it wasn't for the IP edits - frankly I just got sick of almost constantly having to revert the addition of photos of people's dogs. So at this point I decided that I wanted to have access to the research materials to properly improve articles - and ended up working subject related to Wikipedia:WikiProject Star Trek. I'd say that the project is slightly busier than Dogs, certainly other editors have taken articles to GA for example which wasn't apparent at the previous project. We have the similar sort of discussions on the talk pages as at Dogs, but we haven't attempted anything collaboratively. Still though, it'd get boring without at least a few people to talk to on the subject matter. Miyagawa (talk) 19:49, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

Thank you, Miyagawa. I am very happy to hear that you were treated respectfully when you were new around here—it makes all the difference! Harej (talk) 02:08, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

Often I post notices on a WikiProject's Talk page to attract attention for relevant discussions happening elsewhere; see, e.g., Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Academic Journals and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Librarians. Fgnievinski (talk) 17:21, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

I find that some WikiProjects are very helpful, such as WikiProject Romania. The people from that article immediately helped me whenever I created a Romania-related article.

Other projects, like WikiProject Beetles, not only cover an impossibly large area to work with (there are 400,000 beetle species and tens of thousands of genera, tribes, subfamilies etc.) but also is unhelpful. Frequently I find myself wishing I had more backup. Always I seem to be a pioneer with no back up. Examples are my work on Cicindelinae (see Abroscelis among others), Harpalinae (see Eocarterus among others) and Broscinae. I work mostly on the Carabidae family and wish that there was an active, helpful WP:WikiProject Carabidae or a super-active, super-helpful WikiProject Beetles instead of a slow and unhelpful WikiProject Beetles. Gug01 (talk) 23:10, 18 January 2015 (UTC) Gug 01

I started working in Wikipedia:WikiProject Gastropods back in 2007, when it was still tiny. I have seen it grow and flourish for a number of years, and then in the last few years, shrink in size and activity. It is however still active, thanks to a few determined and dedicated people. Wikipedia:WikiProject Bivalves was started on an impulse two or three years ago; I was concerned at the time that it would not have enough members to keep it active, and that seems to have been the case; I appear to be pretty much the only active member of that project now. Using NewArtBot, I do actively look for and engage anyone who starts an article on gastropods or bivalves, and I always invite them to the relevant project. That helps recruit members. I would be happy to be interviewed about my experiences with these two projects. Invertzoo (talk) 13:57, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

Hello, I'm a veteran editor in Spanish- and English-language editions of Wikipedia. In English I often check the WikiProjects of the subjects I'm interested, but I usually edit randomly. Now, I'm very active in sports-related WikiProjects in Spanish, especially in auto racing.

I often distinguish between WikiProject pages and communities. A single person can create dozens of WikiProject pages without having a community. Also, sometimes very active editors but don't visit the WikiProject pages related to the subjects they write about.

In English I see that talk pages of articles are very active, which is a bad idea. A WikiProject may have a thousand articles, and members won't check each talk page. I think that a better model is to lead editors into talk pages of WikiProjects. I do that in Spanish by placing WikiProject templates on the talk page of each article.

The first step of course to build a WikiProject is to invite new active editors on the respective subjects. Then members should teach new editors and encourage them to improve the quality of pages and their edits. Sometimes new editors are shy, therefore veterans should ask them what they wish to do.

In the WikiProject Auto Racing have a few active editors, and sometimes we discuss issues or proposals on the talk page. We collaborate to edit pages, but we rarely coordinate or plan our edits.

We used to have specific WikiProject talk pages but we found that having so many subpages split us. So we merged them - it's easier to have just one talk page where we all meet.

I see other WikiProjects on very specific subjects, like individual music bands or television shows. This is a bad idea. I don't propose to have just one WikiProject on music, because it would be a mess too, but relatively large areas like American pop music, metal music, science fiction TV/movies, etc. There must be a balance to achieve a good number of WikiProject members, where the talk page is frequently used but doesn't overwhelm members.

--NaBUru38 (talk) 00:24, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

To start this off, Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2014-06-25/WikiProject report is an interview with me and other editors about WikiProject Film, and I think it encapsulates what the WikiProject is about.

In the late 2000s, WikiProject Film tried to emulate WP:MILHIST in having coordinators and elections. Unfortunately, this was not sustainable and ultimately fell apart. The elected coordinators, including myself, were not actively and consistently involved. I think this reveals the nature of WikiProject Film compared to WikiProject Military History. My assessment is that WikiProject Film consists of editors pursuing their own interests, which, considering the diversity of film, spread us out pretty thinly. WP:MILHIST seems like it is more concentrated. While military history can be all over the map, there may be similar enough interests and personalities to collaborate more closely than with film.

After we stopped bothering with coordinators at WikiProject Film, we mostly have been about the talk page and the guidelines. I think that the talk page is a pretty active forum where editors of film articles can ask for others' opinions. Discussions that impact a large set of articles are usually prolific. I think what editors respond less to are notifications to help with certain articles. If the notification is discussion-related, editors tend to weigh in. If the notification is related to adding content, editors do not get as involved. I think that reflects that editors prefer to work on their own projects but do not mind helping shape consensus. The guidelines exemplify this. While the guidelines are very useful in general, I think sometimes they have been followed too closely. We try to respond to that, such as clarifying misunderstandings about what a guideline may say.

WikiProject Film also has task forces, but most of them are not utilized at all. The task forces were a bureaucratic push that did not succeed. Most task forces are nationally based, but there are not enough editors who pool together for each one. I would say task forces are best used when such pools already exist. For example, a lot of editors work on comic book films, so they have come together and have used the task force layout.

I think what WikiProject Film could use are more automated tools to address the more tedious tasks. A few years ago, I tried to see about setting up a bot that could help WikiProject Film do these tasks, but it did not pan out. I think tools to identify articles that are problematic or need to be revised and to carry out the cycle of edits would be a boon to the project.

Please feel free to contact me if you have any more questions about WikiProject Film.

Thanks, Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 17:13, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

One of the problems with WikiProjects is that they are largely invisible to the public. Even for those interested in editing, it's not apparent where they are found, as even clicking on the "Edit" button does not reveal WikiProjects to the editor. Heck, when I was demonstrating it to my students, I had to remember to look on the Talk page to find what WikiProjects an article is part of.

Also, consider Wikipedia has lots of confusing, inconsistent pointers to "related" content for a given article, from top to bottom:

• Sidebar template links on the right (eg. Template:Philosophy_sidebar)
• See also section
• Navbox templates links at the bottom (multiple ones, eg. Template:U.S._holidays)
• Portals, which may or may not make an appearance as a box on a given article page (eg. Portal:Government_of_the_United_States)
• Categories at the bottom of the page (eg. Category:Nobel_Peace_Prize_laureates)
• And then, on the Talk page, we have Wikiprojects

Sidebar links, nav bar links, portals, See also, categories, Wikiprojects... They all have overlapping content but slightly different aims. It seems you need a pretty large and dedicated community to keep them all straight.

I'm not sure the solution is to consolidate all these types of groupings and related content together in some central way. All I know is right now, it's a mixed up jumble that is not user friendly. -- Fuzheado | Talk 16:25, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

One thing I think is VERY useful for projects is if there was a standard set of tools that can be provided. Tools that would be really useful include:

• Providing projects with a standard set of:
  • Templates for member users
  • Project template for pages (including with subsections for smaller taskforces if necessary)
  • A membership list that removes inactive users and can be easily used to send mass messages (eg newsletters)
• Providing automatically:
  • A popular pages listing
  • A cleanup listing
  • Recent changes listing

Having a standard set of tools that can be automatically activated for a project has a huge number of benefits. It makes it much easier to restart projects, tools can be easily added to the toolkit, and I think this would go some way to revitalising projects (many of which need metrics or 'task lists' so that users who are passing-by can stop and help... as opposed to user-updated lists, which are often very out-of-date.) --Tom (LT) (talk) 08:14, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

• @LT910001: The second set of tools is available, through one has to add them to the project pages manually: User:Mr.Z-bot#Task_3, User:CleanupWorklistBot, Wikipedia:Article alerts. But one has to know about them from other projects; they are hardly well advertised, well known, or standardized in how-to-ask-for-them-to-be-added-to-your-project. PS. An automated membrship list with activity measurement and mass contact functionality is a great idea! --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 21:25, 2 February 2015 (UTC)
  • Thanks Piotrus, what I am speaking about it exactly as you state. It would be very useful if these could be provided as a "package" to new projects. This would be much more convenient and save a lot of time and trouble (It took about 6 months for me to get these activated in totalis for WP:ANATOMY, as different users were online and offline). --Tom (LT) (talk) 09:29, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

The team at WP:WikiProject Opera have done an excellent job with documentation. It's extensive and well-organized which helps members keep to a consistent style. Learning to follow the community guidelines can take time to study, imposing a steep learning curve. From reading Wikipedia:WikiProject Opera/Article guidelines#Infoboxes, I first learned of the debates over Wikipedia:Disinfoboxes and Wikipedia:Disinfoboxes can be Useful. As a fan of infoboxes, at first, I was surprised to learn that biographical articles on opera singers should not contain these seemingly useful bits. Little did I know of the confusion that could cause. Creating local standards help to build high-quality articles. These same guides simultaneously impose certain barriers of entry for new members. They make some pages have a different style due to the watchful eye of a WikiProject community. Thus, local consistency can be counter to global consistency.

How do we communicate when a local standard should override a global one? Ideas welcome. I'm picturing visual cues to indicate level of activity/freshness by project members and a gauge of WikiProject affinity. The clues would help judge how closely monitored the page has been historically. A low affinity level would drift to a global standard thus encouraging free edits. A high affinity rating would pull it toward a local standard which encourages Talk page drafts/discussion/debate with invested, expert editors. Have we studied the difference between the two kinds of articles? I am interesting in reading more research in the area.

Over the years, I have found value in Talk pages for drafting changes to articles. This communication pattern works well for actively monitored pages where experts quickly provide feedback. The immense volume of articles on WP leave many talk pages unmonitored. This has left me thinking that many areas of the WP demand bold action and will reward an adventurous, useful edit. I suspect this may leave other new editors with the impression that WP is static or not active. Getting more editors into a supportive community will help sustain and build projects and the WP as a whole. When looking at which WikiProjects are within scope for a given article I edit, it's difficult to know which WikiProjects are active and able to offer advice verses a project which only provides a loose coupling to a category. I see great value in WikiProject X. Together, we can find the best and brightest editors and encourage their community actions. Keep up the good work! - DutchTreat (talk) 13:56, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

My experience with WikiProjects is through categorization of all WikiProjects that I did last year. I went through them all, made sure all of the subpages were categorized appropriately and grouped defunct, inactive or semi-active WikiProjects into appropriate categories. I believe the rule of thumb I used was I considered a WikiProject inactive if there had been no edits on its main page over the past 12 months and if the Talk Page was not being used and was full of questions editors had posted that went unanswered (sometimes for years). So, I guess I have a big picture or meta experience of WikiProjects.

The biggest surprise was how many inactive WikiProjects there are and how many of the WikiProjects were created around 2006-2008 (if I remember correctly). There must have been a wave of editors enthusiastic about collaboration and so many WikiProjects were created that then had no further activity beyond the creation of the main page. And it seemed like there was the habit of some editors to create similar WikiProjects rather than join an existing WikiProject. Also, compared to the number of existing WikiProject, few new WikiProjects have been created in the last five years.

I have no insight into why some WikiProjects last and some don't. There are a lot of successful WikiProjects in popular culture topics (sports, TV, films, etc.) but there are more editors in these areas and more WikiProjects created in these fields. My guess though is to be a viable WikiProject, it needs at least 4-5 active editors. By active, I mean, they check the WikiProject Talk Page, respond to comments there, work on maintaining and creating articles. Most WikiProjects have large membership lists (10-100+ editors) but, ordinarily, only a fraction of those listed focus on the WikiProject and many editors sign up because they are interested in the subject area and want to keep tabs on it, rather than choosing to actively work on WikiProject to do lists.

Additionally, if I could recommend one change it would be for more editors to participate on the WikiProjects Talk Page. When I was working on categorization, I had several questions about the best way to organize WikiProjects and posted them on the Talk Page and often one or two people (or none!) would answer which wasn't enough feedback to base a decision on. Unlike Templates or Categories, there didn't seem to be many editors interested WikiProjects as a general field on Wikipedia and instead focused on their own WikiProject rather than the general subject of collaborative editing.

Let me know if you have any questions I can answer. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 17:21, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

Thank you, Liz! I am currently working with the WikiProject Council on categorizing the WikiProjects and automating their directory. A part of this is settling on an standard definition for active vs. inactive projects so that we can get some proper metrics, allowing us to measure the overall health of WikiProjects over time. (It's also helpful to have a reliable index of WikiProjects so that they're easier to discover!)

With regards to categorization, I'm currently going through the WikiProject category tree and making sure everything is done consistently. I see WikiProjects often have their own categories, so I wonder: should WikiProjects be part of other categories, or should they just belong to their self-named category, with that category having all the meta-categories associated with it? I think you could make a case for either, but I think it should be consistent in any case. (My ultimate goal is to have the directory simply replicate the category tree, creating an auto-updating directory). Harej (talk) 19:40, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

Harej, I went through all of the WikiProjects last year and I think you'll find the categories they are assigned to are pretty consistent. My only question was whether to use more "groupings" of WikiProjects into topic areas. There is a grouping on the Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory page but that is not carried over into the categorization. Then, for inactive WikiProjects, Category:Inactive WikiProjects, there are several subcategories but they have been primarily grouped based on the quantity of inactive WikiProjects in certain subject areas. But my main advice is for you to pose this question on Wikipedia talk:Categories for discussion. There are a half dozen or so editors who are active in editing categories and not only are they knowledgeable about Wikipedia's category tree but I think they would appreciate you checking in before you attempted any major reorganization. While you don't need anyone's approval, it would be discouraging to put in a lot of work to see it reverted because editors were unaware of what you were taking on. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 23:01, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

Liz, that is a good idea, I will post a message there. Harej (talk) 21:00, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

• @Harej: You say above:" I am currently working with the WikiProject Council on ..." but there are no links for me to follow to see what you are talking about, or to get nvolved if I choose to. Ottawahitech (talk) 15:41, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

• Oops! Sorry about that. Ottawahitech, the conversation is here. Harej (talk) 20:38, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

Way back I participated in a project that had been deleted since. I spent a lot of energy trying to get it undeleted, all in vain. since then I have been dabling in many other WikiProjects but have not found one (yet) to call home. Ottawahitech (talk) 18:28, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

One of the things I do now is add the appropriate project banners to talk pages. This is a mindless occupation that in most cases can (and has been) automated. It can be as simple as locating a category that contains pages that belong to a project and traversing all the talk pages and inserting the banner.

A BOT that is dedicated to this purpose, that does not require a project member to ask for special favors, would be a great help. Ottawahitech (talk) 15:37, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

I am inclined to agree, Ottawahitech. There are a lot of bots that perform functions for specific projects, but not something that could be easily deployed for other WikiProjects. Harej (talk) 19:03, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

"The name of the WikiProject you have either participated in or otherwise encountered"

I encountered WikiProject X.

"How you discovered this WikiProject"

via a post directing me to its grants talk page on Meta

"How easy or difficult it was to participate in the WikiProject"

Participation anywhere on Wikipedia, including within WikiProjects, is always effortless. However, unlike an article talk page, participation in any WikiProject on an equal footing with other editors is always impossible. In the case of WikiProject X, its existence is based on a grant that assigns a compensated Project Manager position and a compensated Designer position to two people. I am unable to achieve an equal footing with these editors because, not only am I receiving nothing for my (admittedly tiny) contribution, but anything I type will most likely be misused by them as part of an effort to create a metric or a survey that I'll view as facile and inappropriate in the sense of not serving the article space of the encyclopedia. I am also unable to achieve an equal footing with most other editors here because I have such a dramatically negative view about WikiProjects compared to other editors contributing to WikiProject X.

"How the WikiProject helped (or hindered) your editing"

I noticed today that a large article I completely transformed in May 2005 had gone downhill some time in 2013-2014 after getting so much better due to the work of a small number of great editors in 2006-2012. I thought about editing it today to bring it back to its prior excellent condition. But then I remembered how much Wikipedia has changed and how there are these huge long-standing communities now of people that care more about organization instead of caring about articles. I remembered the WikiProject X grant application which was all about research and design to improve these WikiProjects that I believe have done more harm than good to articles. So I came here and saw these questions that are all about me (my participation, my discovery, me being helped/hindered) with nothing about the quality of the articles I used to care about. It reminded me of the over-organization that's damaged Wikipedia. It reminded me of the general societal over-organization that Aldous Huxley warned the world about in 1958. So I'm grateful to WikiProject X for preventing me from wasting my time by editing in the article space of an encyclopedia that is so obviously in decline. If there is anything more damaging than over-organization, it's a team of over-organizers looking to organize other over-organizers. That's WikiProject X, a WikiProject that I encountered. Flying Jazz (talk) 05:31, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

@Flying Jazz: Good point. I am not part of the project but agree with you except in one point. Organization is in fact helpful. For instance, I am pretty much by myself in creating and raising articles related to Aleocharinae. I'm sure that if many people helped, things would be better. So WikiProject X is in fact very helpful because it is helping there be more cooperation on areas that really need some help. Gug01 (talk) 22:25, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

Organization is helpful, but over-organization is harmful. The power of any wiki is that the act of storing information allows for intrinsic organization with no managerial class, no motivational team, no member/non-member status, and no grant-receiving group to develop project management tools for managers that don't even need to exist in the first place. If you're interested in editing and not managing then I'm confident that you'll be able to find other editors interested in Aleocharinae in a very direct way without a WikiProject because wikipedia itself comes pre-organized for editors. I don't mean to be patronizing with these suggestions. I just mean to be direct about what I would do if I were in your shoes. My understanding is that Aleocharinae are a type of beetle.

1. Head to Beetle or to an article about another type of beetle.
2. Click View History and "500". Look for usernames that appear often enough to make it obvious that this person seems to care about beetles.
3. Use the revision history to check out how the article changed because of that user. If you think the article improved because of them then you have someone who might be interested in creating Aleocharinae articles and also someone who you think has made a good contribution to the encyclopedia in the past.
4. Check out their user page and their recent contributions. If you still think they'd enjoy working on Aleocharinae then write on their talk page about what you are doing.
5. Comments from other editors on their talk page might direct you to other editors who could be interested in what you're doing.
6. Ask them to check out your contributions in the sense of them editing your work. If they like what you're doing and they're interested in doing something similar, they will.

If you phrase requests as "I am pretty much by myself. Help me in this area." then you are setting yourself up as a founder, a leader, and a manager instead of as a co-editor. It's a brief fall from there down to the ridiculous managerial pit of running a WikiProject with a to-do list that a tiny number of poor editors pay any attention to. Flying Jazz (talk) 23:31, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

I created WikiProject Women writers in August 2014 while attending an event hosted by Wikimedia Washington DC. I had thought about creating the project for months after the death of Adrianne Wadewitz. But it took another user's in-person encouragement (she had created a WikiProject previously) for me to make it happen. I had been an early member of other projects, such as WP:Teahouse and WP:WikiProject Intertranswiki, but this is the first one where I was the "founder".

• My initial edits, creating the project page, etc., were cut and pastes from other project pages. Slowly but surely, the mainpage has become more streamlined, but it lacks polish. It would be great if someone came along, waved a magic wand, and made it beautiful.
• From the get-go, I felt strongly we needed to brand our project -- my MBA kicking in -- so we voted on a photo to represent it (Marywollstonecraft.jpg) as well as a color (beige) for our templates.
• I created an Invitation template and plastered it on a lot of talkpages.
• As we gained members, the project talkpage became our center of attention... what needs doing, who knows how to do it, etc. I think we're a very collaborative group. No leader, no coordinators.
• There was a lot of discussion regarding Scope. While (a) women writer bios were a given, we debated on and finally included (b) works by women writers. We also included (c) women writer awards.
• We've created a few subpages. The Missing articles and the New articles pages probably get the most traffic.
• The mainpage and every subpage display our navigation tool, so it's easy to figure out where you are, and what you might want to click on next. I've been a member of MILHIST, a truely awesome project, but I get lost on its subpages, ergo why I created our nav tool.
• We've done a lot of category work, creating new ones, coordinating the talkpage bot-tagging or articles within the project scope, etc. There are now 21,000+ articles within our purvue. There's at least one quite encouraging comment on our talkpage regarding an appreciation for our catting process and noting its usefulness to academicians.
• Some of us are into translation work, and we've created a lot of English-language bios by translating articles from other language Wikipedias. I wish I could harness university students to help with this.
• My hopes are that WPWW flourishes, and that in the future, we collaborate with other language Wikipedias who choose to have a WPWW Wikiproject.

Thanks for reading my story and good luck with Project X! Feedback appreciated. --Rosiestep (talk) 03:41, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

Hello Rosiestep! I am glad to see you here, and I am glad that you got WikiProject Women Writers off the ground. I am sure Keilana will be happy to see that as well! Since this is a fairly new project, it sounds like you have a lot of good momentum for starting off. Let's see what we can do to keep that momentum going for as long as possible. I am particularly interested in how you developed your missing articles / new articles / to-do lists. Your translation work also sounds like something for potential interwiki collaboration; I am looking to see if I can get all the WikiProjects indexed on Wikidata, which would better facilitate this. When recruiting people, from where did you recruit? Harej (talk) 21:22, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

Our Missing Articles / To-Do list / redlist is crowd-sourced by the project members. Several members have curated gender gap redlink redlists in their sandboxes, and they added the women writers/works to the project's Missing articles page. Others have scoured other language Wikipedias and added redlinks with bluelinks to the foreign language articles. Others have provided URLs to webpages with lists of women writers.

The New Articles page includes bluelinks from the Missing Articles page, plus project members' new articles which weren't on the redlist page, as well as new articles that members have come across while doing cat work, etc.

Women writers and translation work are tied at the hip. The translation work is extremely important as it is a goal of our work to translate every notable woman writer from every language Wikipedia to the English language Wikipedia. Simultaneously, I'm vehement in my desire to replicate what we're doing at WikiProject Women writers into every other language Wikipedia. Indexing the project and all the bios on Wikidata would be important steps so thank you for your efforts with that.

Recruitment: I was with a cool group of seasoned editors the day I created the project and 3 of those folks immediately jumped in to kickstart the project. A lot has been written about how women like to participate in Wikipedia in an in-person setting; this is a great example of how well that works. During the project's first week, I contacted my editing circle and let them know about it. Then I created an invitation to join the project and pasted it on talkpages of those editors who had created FA and GA articles within the project scope. Then I pasted it on editor talkpages who were participants in other projects, i.e. WikiProject Women's History, and some of Wikipedia's most prolific editors' (WP:MOSTEDITS) talkpages. I've meant to continue the invite process using membership lists of Wikipedia:WikiProject Literature and its related Wikiprojects, but haven't done so yet, partially because I got busy, but also because I hoped someone else might take the ball and run with it. --Rosiestep (talk) 19:17, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

I'm a somewhat new editor and have found WikiProjects to be overwhelming and of questionable value. I have not formally joined any WikiProjects but have tagged a few articles on behalf of WikiProjects. What discourages me is that I rarely see evidence of accomplishment or even action. It's very difficult to determine whether a WikiProject is active, much less effective, and so I am discouraged from joining any for fear that it will be, frankly, a waste of time.

For instance, I will see an article tagged with, "This article is covered under the so-and-so task force." The article itself will be short (often a stub), low-quality, with poor writing, original research, etc. I consider many of these articles to be low-hanging fruit. An experienced editor, even one unfamiliar with the field, should be able to whip this article into shape. And yet, these articles will have, for instance, warning boxes that date back 5 or more years. And I think, what's the point of a "task force" that acts this slowly? Why would I join such a group?

To use some specific examples, I recently did some work on pages related to Joan Didion and Ursula K Le Guin. I understand that obscure topics can languish due to lack of interested editors, but these women are hardly obscure figures. They are major writers who fall under several categories: fiction, journalism, women writers, fantasy/sci-fi literature, etc. Indeed, Joan Didion is listed as high or medium-importance in several WikiProjects. And yet, in November 2014, the page for Blue Nights, a book published in 2011, didn't even exist until I made it. I was interested in collaborating with others on these pages, but I made the decision that it wouldn't be worth the time.

Now, perhaps that was the wrong decision. I believe WikiProjects serve a noble goal and I am sure that some WikiProjects get a lot of work done. But it's very hard for me to identify those projects and determine where and how I can contribute. Most of what I see with WikiProjects are the detritus of abandoned or ineffective projects: stub articles with more warnings and tags than actual content, task force notices from "task forces" that may or may not still exist, etc. I've seen at least one WikiProject that covers a fairly narrow topic, and even then that topic's articles will have widespread and, in my opinion, easy-to-fix problems. So I just think, what's the point, when I could just go ahead and edit by myself? Geethree (talk) 14:59, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Thank you, Geethree. And thank you for your work on Wikipedia! It reflects an unfortunately common problem: WikiProjects operate under the assumption they need to create a lot of infrastructure, and then they do, and then it long outlives its purpose. It's comparable to creating an entire complex to host the Olympics and then letting it decay once the games are over. I would like to see WikiProjects be more lightweight, with structures that adapt according to levels of activity, causing less maintenance problems. Otherwise people run into the problem you do: they see a project, think it's relevant, and then find it to be abandoned, wasting their time. On a related note, making it easier to show recent activity on the part of the project is another thing we would like to work on. Harej (talk) 18:34, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

I'd like to share a story about Wikipedia:WikiProject South Park, which I think both highlights the strengths and weaknesses of WikiProjects. A few years ago, most of the articles about individual South Park episodes were in weak shape, little more than plot summaries with occasional bits of uncited trivia. Back in March 2009, there was a proposal to merge massive amounts of episode articles into their respective season articles, which would effectively mean eliminating the individual episode articles. Some (including me) were strongly opposed to this, others strongly in favor of it, and proponents were arguing that the individual episodes were not notable enough to warrant an article. This discussion essentially led to the revival of WikiProject South Park, which was completely dormant at that point.

Masem (talk · contribs), in an attempt to stop the indefinite arguing that was happening on the talk page, made the excellent suggestion that efforts be made to improve a few episode articles, to demonstrate whether they indeed met notability standards or not. A few users took to making these efforts, including myself, Cirt (talk · contribs), Nergaal (talk · contribs), Music2611 (talk · contribs), A7x (talk · contribs), Theleftorium (talk · contribs) and undoubtedly others that I'm forgetting, and the WikiProject began a featured topic drive to attempt to get collections of South Park season articles and their individual episodes to WP:FT or WP:GT status.

As a result of this, ALL of the South Park season 1 and South Park season 13 articles reached either FA or GA status, and both reached GT status (season 1 was originally an FT, but then the standards changed and it was reduced to GT). As for my individual efforts, I worked "Damien", "Mr. Hankey, the Christmas Poo", "Volcano", "Starvin' Marvin", "Weight Gain 4000" and South Park (season 13) to FA status, and helped bring many of the others to GA. In the face of these improvements, the efforts to mass-merge the other episode articles were abandoned, and other articles outside of those two seasons have been improved since.

To me, this reflects how a WikiProject can serve as a positive force on Wikipedia. The merge discussion was getting very heated and emotional, and WikiProject South Park gave those editors interested in improving the articles a central place where they could collaborate and ultimately improve the quality of the articles, resulting in multiple FAs and GAs as a result. It also illustrates a major weakness in WikiProjects, however, because after Seasons 1 and 13 were brought to GT/FT, the project sort of fell apart, and the featured topic drive did not continue into the other articles. Part of this was because many of the contributing editors, myself included, did not have time to dedicate ALL of their efforts toward South Park articles, and since it was a relative handful of editors who were driving it, it fell apart. It seems in my limited experience that many WikiProjects fall on the shoulders of a select few heavily active editors, and when they are unable to continue, the project falls apart.

That being said, I think there is more good than bad when it comes to WikiProjects, and I think this chapter with the WikiProject South Park is a good example because it ultimately improved the quality of the encyclopedia, turning a collection of weak and uncited articles into excellent, featured content. — Hunter Kahn 14:26, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

• Damn, that was a long story. LOL. Thanks for your patience. Hope that helps! — Hunter Kahn 14:26, 13 February 2015 (UTC)
  • Thanks for the kind words, Hunter Kahn, and yes, above is a very good example. :) — Cirt (talk) 16:22, 13 February 2015 (UTC)
• Thank you very much for the story, Hunter Kahn. A narrative of a WikiProject's history: it became active when it had purpose, people were recruited toward a cause, and then it fell apart after the purpose was fulfilled. I am glad to hear that in its brief spurt of activity, it helped add quality content to the encyclopedia. Harej (talk) 18:12, 13 February 2015 (UTC)
• How fun, I barely check in to wikipedia anymore (which reminds me I have to put the 'retired' banner on my talkpage) but every few months or so I log in to see how things are going, and one day after my name is mentioned somewhere I happen to log in. I can only agree with Hunter's story above. He was one of the driving forces behind the project and because of that we managed to get a lot of work done. WikiProjects are helpful in the sense that they give editors with common interest a place to find eachother and to bundle their powers to reach great results. I've always felt that although Wikipedia is a collective effort it often comes down to individuals putting a lot of work into an article and others just dropping by here and there for some minor edits and reviews. WikiProjects enable users to find eachother and as I've said reach bigger goals than they otherwise would have reached. I did not read the entire topic of the discussion here but if some users have the idea that WikiProjects are not useful I'd have to disagree. I do think however there could be better initiatives for uses with common interests to find eachother. I mean about a year ago I suggested a The Prisoner wikiproject, after I'd seen the show again and was eager to make some contributions. Yet my goal was mostly to find other users interested in the show who wanted to collaborate with me on articles related to it. The question than becomes, where am I gonna find them? Currently, WikiProjects are the answer to that question for a large number of topics, and I think that's a good thing. Also Hunter the fact that you're still active (I haven't been for at least 4 years, with the exception of a seinfeld article last summer) deserves nothing but my praise and admiration, keep op the good work ;).--Music26/11 17:00, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

I've been involved with many WikiProjects on & off since 2006. In my experience they are as different from each other as is imaginable. Some are friendly, helpful, positive places that assist contributors (eg WikiProject Cheshire); others are neutral tagging/assessing machines that offer little or no support, and can be off-putting to new contributors when they drive by and assess an article as a "stub" without offering any assistance to improve it (eg WikiProject Biography); yet others (surprisingly common) are completely toxic, and seem to exist to prevent contributors editing (except those in the cabal) or even to restrict/delete articles that fall within their project scope and meet Wikipedia-wide guidelines (I have e-mailed a couple of examples). Espresso Addict (talk) 17:10, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

Thank you, Espresso Addict. Sounds like you've experienced all the different experiences: helpful WikiProjects, neutral WikiProjects, actively harmful WikiProjects. I was wondering if you had any thoughts as to why some projects are helpful and others are harmful? Harej (talk) 17:36, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

It's a good question! On a rapid reflection & purely in my experience...

• The largest projects are often either neutral or harmful, though there are exceptions; small projects can either be friendly & collaborative or cliquey & excluding.
• Projects that mainly recruit editors that work professionally in the area tend to the harmful end of the spectrum, compared with those that attract mainly enthusiasts.

Interested in other people's experiences/thoughts. Espresso Addict (talk) 18:28, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

When I first came to Wikipedia around 2004 or 2005, I mostly edited video game-related articles and occasionally did work on Latin music. Despite my efforts, I felt I didn't contribute well enough to video game-related articles. One day, I was looking at the Did You Know? section and noticed someone made an article to a Latin song that I recognized. His username is Jaespinoza and when I saw his contributions on his user page, it influenced me to heavily contribute to Latin music-related articles. After getting my first Good Article in 2010 for a Latin album, I realized how underrepresented Latin music was in Wikipedia which compelled me to start a WikiProject for editors who might be interested in Latin music. We initially began as a music task force for Latin America, but have since become our own WikiProject to cover Latin music as a genre rather than simply music from Latin America. Before becoming its own WikiProject in 2012, things started out very slow (which was to be expected given how Latin music is usually performed in Spanish and Portuguese) and there was only three GAs and 1 FA at the beginning. But I persisted and it paid off. Once it became its own WikiProject, that's when it started picking up activity. Within that year, we managed to get over 100 GAs and nearly over 40 FLs related to Latin music as well as the first ever featured article about a Latin album. The biggest accomplishment to me is not simply the number of content that has been contributed but how many editors from around the world that joined the project. We have active members from Mexico, South America, the United States, and Europe as well. Given how expansive the Latin universe is, I have been interested in meeting members from other countries. That was one of my personal wishes when I created the project. In addition, I'm always happy to help out new editors especially if English is not their first language. I have assisted with members of other WikiProjects to articles that overlap with Latin music. Today, I have contact with several of these members outside of Wikipedia where we discuss our interest in Latin music which I believe would not have been possible without the creation of the Latin music project. To me, the project is not only about contributing articles related to Latin music, but also getting to know other people and helping each other out. Erick (talk) 12:26, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

Thank you, Magiciandude! Great to hear that you have built an expansive community around Latin music, dedicated to improving content. Harej (talk) 03:45, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

I searched Internet for study purpose and find articles of Wikipedia more assertive and informative as well as more attractive to be improved. I joined Wikipedia as a member not remembering exact date and time approximately might be in 2014. I have edited articles of geographical,cities,persons,people,tribes and am interested towards contribution in some of technological and computer science,software related articles. I edited some articles but it was hindered by Wikipedians. I have participated in Wikipedia:WikiProject Pakistan and Wikipedia:WikiProject_Sindh.

I started using Wikipedia because I found the informations on it straight and forward. I have joined Wikipedia on many occasions only to get blocked for socket puppetry. I am a better Wikipedian now after reading in details about copyright and editing issues.

I am a member of the WikiProject Nigeria. OluwaCurtis The King : talk to me 12:10, 21 June 2015 (UTC)