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Revision as of 18:57, 15 February 2011 editWhatamIdoing (talk | contribs)Autopatrolled, Extended confirmed users, Pending changes reviewers122,136 edits →WikiProject banner tagging: r← Previous edit Revision as of 19:47, 15 February 2011 edit undoKumioko (renamed) (talk | contribs)318,300 edits →WikiProject banner tagging: Theres no need to dwell on thisNext edit →
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:and the editor will probably look at it and think, "Oh, I bet that the first thing is what makes that tan 'This is the talk page for discussing...' box, and the second thing is what makes the 'This article is within the scope of WikiProject Food and Drink' box." :and the editor will probably look at it and think, "Oh, I bet that the first thing is what makes that tan 'This is the talk page for discussing...' box, and the second thing is what makes the 'This article is within the scope of WikiProject Food and Drink' box."
:Editors don't see these things without first seeing the finished product on the talk page. ] (]) 18:57, 15 February 2011 (UTC) :Editors don't see these things without first seeing the finished product on the talk page. ] (]) 18:57, 15 February 2011 (UTC)
::I can see that regardless of what arguments are presented on either side neither of us is going to agree. I personally think that standardization is good and think we should be working toward that for the many improvements it brings and in your defense you prefer to stay with the status quo because you see no value in standardization. Clearly neither of us are going to change our minds so I see no reason to dwell on it. The bottom line is you can put whatever you want down and the bots will do the tedious work of standardizing it so if its easier and faster for you to put Food rather than WikiProject Food and Drink thats perfectly fine, go ahead. No harm no fowl and no hard feelings. Knowone is telling you otherwise. Thats what the bots are for. --] (]) 19:47, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Revision as of 19:47, 15 February 2011

WikiProject Council
FAQs Overview + talk Council page
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Shortcut

Improvement ideas

I've been thinking of some ways we could clean up the various pages that are part of the Council and generally improve the way the group works at the moment. For ease of commenting, I've split the proposals into several broad areas, below; comments on any (or all) of them would be very appreciated! Kirill  15:50, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Cleaning up the main pages

  1. Rework the layout of the main page (WP:COUNCIL) to be more welcoming to visitors. I'd suggest having a couple of introductory sections ("What we do", "How you can help"), followed by a couple of link sections ("Resources", "Statistics").
  2. Introduce a tabbed format (see, for example, WP:MILHIST) to link across the main Council pages (main page, directory, guide, proposals, etc.)
  3. Enhance the navigation box to link to all the major pages, rather than just a subset.
  4. Clean up the introductory page (WP:PROJ) to present a more concise overview of what WikiProjects are and how editors can participate in them; at the moment, a new editor is likely to be more confused than enlightened when reading the page.
My two cents: I like all of these ideas except #2. I'm apparently blind to tabs, so this change would not be helpful to me.
I particularly like the proposal to add "what we do" and "what these things are" kinds of information. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:01, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
No objections personally to any of the proposals above. I don't pay a great deal of attention to tabs myself, but I think others do, and that's enough for me. John Carter (talk) 18:29, 22 January 2011 (UTC)
Yes, it all sounds good; I'm generally a fan of the tabbed format, and it could be helpful in this case. Mlm42 (talk) 02:38, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Improving the proposal process

  1. Change the listing duration for proposals to two months and archive proposals after that, to create a more concise list; anything not moving forward after two months is really dead in the water anyways.
  2. Modify the proposal structure to have everything visible on a single page, either by transcluding all the listings or by actually having them in sections rather than subpages. This should make it easier for people to keep track of the discussion and increase participation in the proposal process.
  3. Get more publicity for the in-progress proposals by, for example, transcluding a list to the Community Portal and/or the Signpost.
  4. Clean up the boilerplate WikiProject template to better reflect how project pages are set up these days.

Updating the project guide

  1. Update the guide to reflect newer developments in project structures, such as A-Class review schemes, assessment checklists, open task and alert bots, and so forth.
  2. Clean up the various obsolete portions of the guide, particularly as far as references to deprecated technical items are concerned.

By the way, what status do the pages Misplaced Pages:WikiProject_Council/Guide/WikiProject, Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Council/Guide/Task forces, and Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Council/Guide/Technical notes actually have.. are they just {{essay}}s? Mlm42 (talk) 17:52, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

I would assume so; they're not really prescriptive enough to be guidelines. Perhaps something like {{how-to}} would also be applicable to some portions, although others are really just abstract philosophical discussions rather than practical instructions. Kirill  04:07, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

Improving the project directory

  1. Add more columns to indicate the presence of A-Class review processes, etc.
  2. List task forces normally (i.e. in a column format) to make browsing and sorting easier.
  3. Create a "completed" status for projects (primarily university participation ones) which have actually finished, rather than merely being inactive.

I think occasionally about completely blowing up the directory and starting over. It's complicated to maintain and hard to find what you want. I've wondered if not using tables would help. Also, a flatter structure might help. There's no compelling need for a structure that runs as deep as Science, technology, and engineering:Biology:Tree of Life:Animals:Arthropods. Four, or even three, levels ought to be plenty.

Alternatively, I've wondered whether a bot-maintained system is feasible. I'm thinking of something like what the 1.0 bot does with statistics: We'd expand {{Project header}} (already at the top of nearly all WikiProjects) to include activity, assessment participation, collaboration, associated portal, and content category(ies). (Peer review seems to no longer be project-based, so that column should probably be removed.) (Task forces could just point at associated projects.) The bot then auto-assembles this data into directory pages, and we no longer have to update the directory manually. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:43, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

A bot system would be great, if it could work, because a lot of projects seem to get created without prior discussion or much linkage, and that would make it easier to find them. No objections to any of the other ideas. John Carter (talk) 18:29, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

I don't know how to make bots, but one of the things a bot could do is update a "number of articles" column, as well as something like "last updated", to give a measure of how active the project is.
And, Kirill, I'm not clear on your suggestion about listing "task forces normally". Do you mean create a "task force" column, and list all task forces in there? That would certainly make sense to me. Mlm42 (talk) 02:38, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Increasing participation

  1. Bring back some form of a "participant" concept—either as a list or a user category—to encourage advertising participation. We don't need a list of members, per se; but not having people sign up has caused us to lose out on the publicity other projects get through userboxes and the like, and I think we ought to reconsider our approach at this point.
  2. Start some sort of drive to reactivate and/or merge inactive projects, both as a general clean-up activity, and to try and drum up more attention to (and hence participation in) the discussions here.

As I mentioned, comments on any or all of these proposals would be appreciated! Kirill  15:50, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

{{WikiProject Footer}} is on some 1200 pages, and that means this page is advertised on 1200 pages. I think that communicating what we do whenever people click that link (about 30 times a day) would be more effective than userboxes.
I think that the inactive projects will be easier to address after the directory is cleaned up.
I have wondered on occasion about spamming notices to all (active) WikiProjects reminding them of the Council's existence and purpose, and encouraging them to make sure that at least one participant is watching this page (a "delegate"), so that if something comes up that interests or affects their group, they can tell the WikiProject. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:15, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
The problem with the footer template is that while it's present on a great many pages, it's treated as part of the boilerplate, and is thus ignored by most readers. (Similarly, most people don't really read the banners at the top of pages; we're linked from {{Project}}, but I doubt that does much for us.)
Having said that, I suppose that all we really need for advertising purposes is the userbox itself; there's no particular need to have that feed a member list/category, so long as people display it regardless (which they seem to do). Kirill  02:55, 6 January 2011 (UTC)
I like the idea of changing to "participants", and if there would be any way to make updating such a listing automatically by bot, think that would be wonderful. John Carter (talk) 18:29, 22 January 2011 (UTC)
Also, as a side note, I am, to a degree, trying to create, eventually, lists of periodicals and other publications which are directly relevant to the topics of individual projects. If anyone knows just how many such publications there are, and how hard it is to sort them, you might have an idea of why it is taking so long. I also think that, maybe, having some sort of separate article for a bibliographic listing of works related to the projects' topics would be very useful as well. Those lists, unfortunately, take even longer to generate than the lists of periodicals do. John Carter (talk) 18:29, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

I'd be interested in a drive to reactivate and/or merge inactive projects. I'm a member of WP:SPACEFLIGHT, and that project has recently benefited in a restructuring which started with about 6 projects and ended up with just one. I think other projects could benefit from similar restructurings; a smaller number of successful projects is clearly preferable to a larger number of disorganized and confusingly related projects. Mlm42 (talk) 02:38, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

New Hot Articles subscription service for WikiProjects

Any WikiProjects with 2000 or fewer articles are welcome to help beta test the new Hot Articles service. This service automatically updates a list of the most edited articles for that project from the last several days. An example can be seen at WikiProject Feminism. If anyone is interested, they can sign up on the subscriptions page. The initial trial is limited to 10 Projects and is for 7 days only, but then will likely be extended indefinitely if the trial is successful. Kaldari (talk) 21:30, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

There is related information at Misplaced Pages:Database reports/WikiProjects by changes.
—Wavelength (talk) 00:24, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

timeline of collaborations

I too am intrigued by the participation discussion above. After looking at scoring in the wikicup, I've been musing on how our more rigorous GA and FA processes lead editors to favour more esoteric than general articles. Hence I have begun reviewing the history of collaborations I've been involved with. I wasn't sure whether to place this here or on the talk page of Misplaced Pages:Collaborations. Collaborations are often (but not always) a good indicator of the activity of a wikiproject as a collaborative group. Thus ones I have been involved with are:

I also came across:

Anyway, I think it'd be interesting if folks listed timelines of active collaborations here - would be interesting to get a sense of what has been tried and when. Casliber (talk · contribs) 12:57, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Maybe it would be better if I put them down here

WikiProject Water?

I noticed that WP:WikiProject Water supply and sanitation was renamed to WP:WikiProject Water without discussion last November. As the project was inactive at the time (and still seems inactive now), this is rather odd. Nothing actually links to WP:Water, everything still seems to go to WP:WaterSuppySanitation.

The movement of the page is for expanding scope, but it doesn't seem to link to any discussion on rescoping, and still does not actually cover "water" (ie. it does not cover WP:Oceans, WP:Lakes, WP:Rivers, the inorganic chemistry of water, etc).

Was the move properly done?


65.93.14.196 (talk) 05:00, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Do you intend to be a participant in the project? Only participants really get any say in what the project's name and scope are. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:03, 21 January 2011 (UTC)
I am not sure that the above statement is correct. I could see how members might be given greater weight in building consensus, but like any other title, it is subject to discussion and consensus.Racepacket (talk) 18:32, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Please Look Over

Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Water supply and sanitation by country is no longer active, so I am gathering consensus to deactivate the wikiproject.

This is of a higher than average importance because Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Water supply and sanitation by country: Manual of Style is a guideline, but because the Wikipoject is inactive, there is no indication that there is wide support for the guideline.

Please supply input.Bernolákovčina (talk) 00:11, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

If it's inactive then just tag the project page with {{inactive}} and the guideline page with {{historical}}. Not much else need to be done besides that. But you really should be posting this on the project's talk page, not here. -- œ 02:51, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Group (official or otherwise) of editors to obtain source material

I think one of the problems some of our editors might have is that they might have an interest in writing articles on a given subject, but do not necessarily have access to reference materials, like for instance databanks or libraries with extensive holdings. I, as an individual, generally do, however, and I think others may as well. Would the rest of you think that there would be a purpose in perhaps getting together a group or, maybe, just a list, of individuals who would be willing and able to obtain material on specific topics for editors who are not able to obtain such materials on their own? John Carter (talk) 16:46, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

WikiProject Resource Exchange already exists. Svick (talk) 18:35, 22 January 2011 (UTC)
Yeah, but I'm not sure how much attention it gets. Maybe if we could add a link to it on the boilerplate project page or elsewhere, we might be able to get more input from editors with limited access to resources. John Carter (talk) 18:48, 22 January 2011 (UTC)
Here is a record of page views for that page. You can edit the date in the address bar to see the records for previous months.
—Wavelength (talk) 19:36, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Scope of WikiProject United States

Until recently, WikiProject United States has been a bit dormant. However, there is now an effort to revitalize it. Unfortunately, this has taken the form of sending out invitations on 3,000 user talk pages, and leaving repeated messages on the talk pages of state-level and subject-specific WikiProjects. I fear this may have a demoralizing and distracting effect on other people who are working to make the state-level and subject-specific WikiProjects vibrant collaborations. Hence, the relationship between all of these groups must be approached with diplomacy and sensitivity. One way of working toward a resolution of these problems is to better define the mission statement on the WikiProject United States page. This is being discussed here, and I welcome all interested persons to join in the discussion to help resolve this amicably. Thanks, Racepacket (talk) 15:42, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Just to clarify. Racepacket doesn't agree with the scope of a WikiProject he is not a member of and after discussing his concerns with the project and not getting the result he wanted he submitted his concerns to:
and you left what I personally feel are inappropriate comments on the talk pages of several of the State projects including:
and others. The last comment by the way doesn't even directly relate to WikiProject United States but was an effort to get users from all US related projects to Collaborate and participate in the improvement and maintenance of Portal:United States and the US Collaboration of the month. Other than the fact that it was members of the WPUS project that got them cleaned up and going again these last 2 should be available and used by 'All US related projects as they pertain to United States topics in general and other than the name implies and that it was members of our project that currently maintain (which is what I am trying to fix by those comments) do not and should not tie directly and specifically to WPUS. Your comments are in fact in direct opposition to getting other users from other US related projects to participate in the US portal, Noticeboard and Topic of the Month so that the members of WPUS will not be the sole proprietors of it. Your own comments are in fact in direct contrast to your concerns that WPUS is growing too big and too powerful, too fast.
In just a couple months we have made huge progress towards our goals and I see the coming months ahead to be just as productive with more focus on improving content, getting the information out there and getting folks interested and feel like they are working together as a team rather than a bunch of individuals trying to fight the world on their own. Now that we have the Project established as a foundation, the portal and the US noticeboard are improved and that will help get the information out there, Collaboration of the month and other pending initiatives future content drives and other initiatives that will have direct influence on US topics (such as the Library of Conrgress, National Archives, Smithsonian Institution collaborations) to improve content and several bots running with more pending to help maintain the project, portal, and the articles we are IMO well on our way and off to a great start.
In fairness to Racepacket, he has brought up some good suggestions and his comments are being considered by the project members so IMO spamming these comment gathering messages in all the WP forums is a bit innappropriate. Whether he likes the result of what the projects members decide or not is yet to be determined. I also admit that I have recently been somewhat abrupt and direct in my comments after attempting to remain calm and level headed for the last several days of unending discussions and trying to drive home the point that the members of the project (we have over 180 now by the way) were going to decide the scope and the mission of the project and not 4 or 5 editors who are not even members of the project. As I explained to Racepacket and others over the last several days. If we decide that we want the scope to be all US related articles (even if thats a million articles) then we could do that. I doubt it will come to that and in fact even counting several thousand files, categories and templates we only have 61000ish. Large projects are not unprecedented as noted by WPBiography and we are becoming more active and after only 4 months (really only the last month or so if you don't count me) we are continuing to build an active and vibrant community of editors interesting in improving content for US related topics (we have members accross all spectrums of interests by the way).--Kumioko (talk) 17:18, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
To clarify, we are discussing the scope of WikiProject United States at one location where there has been active discussion. I notfied the previously involved editors and posted a notice right here and at Misplaced Pages:Requests for comment/WikiProjects and collaborations. The purpose of those notices was to direct interested editors to that discussion, not to start separate discussions in each place. When people arrive at the centralized discussion, they are not supposed to be repeatedly dismissed by User:Kumioko as "non-members of WikiProject United States." (See the above paragraph where he references "what the projects members decide.") I would invite everyone interested in the scope of the WikiProject United States to post at the centralized location and not start a separate thread here. The above comment also raises why I would post comments on a separate topic -- group collaborations at the local WikiProject level in WikiProjects where I have been active. User:Kumioko, without sufficient discussion and consensus, posted an invitation on all state-level and subject area WikiProjects relating to the US, an invitation to join a new collaboration of the month effort sponsored by WikiProject United States. A fair reading of his message was that state-level articles should be nominated for that collaboration rather than trying something within the local WikiProject. I responded to his comments by suggesting that if people were interested, we should try something on a local basis. Clearly, there are WP:OWNnership problems at play here. Again, if Kumioko wants to discuss whether WikiProject Illinois should collaborate on an article locally, the debate belongs on that project's talk page instead of here. Thanks, Racepacket (talk) 18:28, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
Actually my real point in the rather long thread above was your inappropriate use of Forum Shopping, votestacking and campaigning. I did not dismiss you opinions or anyone elses. You tried to tell me we didn't have consnensus and I explained to you and the others that with 180 members joining the project after the scope was established we did. If people are interested to collaborate locally great knowone is stopping you, in fact I encourage that. Hence the reason I left the message on all those project pages so that each could decide if they wanted to do it or not. Some responded, some did not (presumably because they are Inactive) which also means that questions about the project or associated articles would also likely go unansered, thereby not supported.--Kumioko (talk) 18:41, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
Sir, you are incorrect. The idea of centralized discussion is to give adequate notice to all interested editors. The forum is the talk page of WikiProject US. I did not try to start a separate discussion by using RFC or by placing a friendly notice at the top of this section. As to my comments on the local WikiProject talk pages, I was responding to your suggestion that they nominate local-interest articles for WikiProject US's collaboration of the month instead of doing a local collaboration. Most important, any Misplaced Pages editor has a right to participate in the discussion, not just members only. Thanks, Racepacket (talk) 18:46, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
You are absolutely right that any editor does have the right to voice their opinions but the final decision on what the projects scope is going to be must come from the members. There is no point in having a project with members if any random editor can simply come along and tell them to change. Thats not how it works and with 180 members joining after the scope was established 4 or 5 editors disagreeing isn't enough to sway the vote. Regarding your first sentance. If the projects want to start their own collabroation like a few have done like Texas (I don't think that collaboration is active) or Congress thats great and I support that. But we already have one for US going, its supported, we go on a highest vote count wins rule. Why not use it. Why break out and create 50 or more collaborations that all require time, maintenance, resources and support to maintain when one will do? If the projects are inactive though the liklihood that they are going to have the time or resources to now create a noticeboard and Topic of the month of their own is unlikely. So adding comments to talk pages of a topic that has gone unanswered anyway is at best only readvertising the discussion and at worst tainting the result by spamming identical masseages on a simple request for help message. --Kumioko (talk) 19:04, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
I shall reply to your views at the point designated by the centralized RFC, rather than here where most people participating in the discussion will not see it. Racepacket (talk) 14:36, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
I agree and stated so on WPUS a moment ago when you suggested going here intead of continuing the debate there. --Kumioko (talk) 14:41, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
Just to be clear, the centralized discussion location indicated in the RFC notice is there. Thanks, Racepacket (talk) 18:23, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
I'm sorry that you two are having such difficulties resolving this, and sorrier that I didn't notice it earlier. Please go to Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Council/Guide#Inter-WikiProject_coordination and search down until you find the words "exclusive right". The members of WikiProject State cannot tell the members of WikiProject United States which articles they are allowed to work on (or tag), full stop. (And just in case it comes up, WikiProject United States cannot force WikiProject State to use a combined banner.)
WikiProjects are social groups. If two groups of people don't happen to want to work together—even if their scopes are identical, or overlapping, or random, or idiotic—then they are not required to coordinate their work with each other or to get any kind of permission to work on or tag articles. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:51, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
I know you don't particularly care for the scope of the project either but thanks for taking the time to comment and point that out. --Kumioko (talk) 23:56, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
Please centralize you discussion at WT:WPUS so that we can all participate in one place. Thanks, Racepacket (talk) 20:40, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

WikiProject activity

It would be useful to have some kind of objective measure of how active each WikiProject is. I was considering how this could be done, and realised the activity could be measured in two "dimensions"; one dimension being the number of editors, and the other being how active each editor is within the project. So a project with one extremely active editor might get the same amount done as a project with many mildly active editors.

So I was thinking that a bot could take a list of members from a given project (maybe based on userboxes, or the member list), and then count the number of edits they have made to pages which have the project's banner within the last three months, say. Then the bot could report this information in the WikiProject directory by filling in a column "Number of members who have made over 100 edits to the project's articles in the last three months"; and then the same for "20 - 100 edits", and for "1-20 edits". I think this might give a pretty good idea of the project's activity; and the best part is that it could be completely automated (in theory..). Indeed, this data might bring to light some surprising information.. in particular, it would give a more accurate "member count" than most WikiProject member lists (which are usually long out of the date). Mlm42 (talk) 17:18, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

I think you will find that most projects, aside from tagging articles with their banner arent very active as a collaborative group. The project pages are generally just a centralized place to hold discussions about the subject or articles in its scope and so therefore you would need to base much of your results on how much activity there is on the talk page as well as the project page. I also believe that even once these inactive projects are identified there is little that can be done about it. --Kumioko (talk) 17:30, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
What I meant is not only counting activity on the project page and project talk page, but also counting activity over all the articles under its scope. In particular, all the articles which have been tagged with the project banner. Mlm42 (talk) 17:44, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
@ Mlm42 we have a tool here that will show you the edits of all in a project that will show you edits activity of project members. As for pages under the projects scope that's a bit harder but most will have a page like Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Canada/Popular pages but it does not shown who edited what just the main articles under a projects banner. Moxy (talk) 17:49, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
Moxy, thanks for the link to that tool, I hadn't seen it before; yes, it would be nice if that tool could be modified to only consider edits to a subset of pages - in particular, articles within a given WikiProject. Mlm42 (talk) 18:06, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
Ok That might help a little but since most articles have more than one banner it might misrepersent which projects are editing or not. I do agree that something needs to eb done at a high level (like from the Council) to clean up and refocus the articles of some of these dead projects. Maybe just putting an inactive tag on all the projects and see which ones are removed in 90 days. IF they still have the inactive tag in 90 days then chances are knowone is actively doing anything with that project. --Kumioko (talk) 17:51, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
See Misplaced Pages:Database reports/WikiProjects by changes and Misplaced Pages:Database reports/WikiProject watchers.
—Wavelength (talk) 06:51, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

New Proposal

Can I propose a project that failed a long time ago () as I think that now, it would gain support, and there are wikiprojects for lots of other English Counties ().

Thanks,
Thomas888b (talk) 12:56, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
Yes you're free to re-propose, renew, or revive any inactive wikiproject at any time. -- œ 13:35, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
Thanks OlEnglish. -- Thomas888b (talk) 14:07, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

When can I start the project?

When I get 4 peoples support, can I go ahead and start the project? Thomas888b(Say Hi) 19:26, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

Link please. (unless.. you're just asking ahead of time?) -- œ 19:52, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Council/Proposals/Essex Thomas888b(Say Hi) 20:56, 4 February 2011 (UTC) It has support, and it would be good to set it up, and then add people to it as we go. I really think it is essential to have one. Thomas888b(Say Hi) 20:56, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
Thanks to advice from another member of Misplaced Pages, I'm going to Be Bold and start the project. Thomas888b(Say Hi) 12:28, 5 February 2011 (UTC)
If you have four people interested and active, that'll be a helluva lot more active than many other wikiprojects. Good luck. Casliber (talk · contribs) 14:06, 5 February 2011 (UTC)
And if you have only four people, you're at risk for going the way of most small projects, which is a big burst and then nothing. My advice on avoiding that is to keep up the chatter on the discussion board. Answer comments, even if it seems unnecessary. Post a note about which article you're working on every few weeks, just to let people know that you're still there. An appearance of activity tends to attract new participants; an appearance that the group is dead or uninteresting tends to discourage participation. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:57, 7 February 2011 (UTC)
Agreed. Casliber (talk · contribs) 20:23, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

The Banner

Is there a way that I could put our banner {{WP Essex}} on all of the pages in the category 'Essex' and all of it's subcategories automatically? Thomas888b (Say Hi) 10:43, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

See Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Council/Guide#Use_bots_to_save_work—and the rest of that page, and half its subpages, if you haven't already. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:50, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
Hmm, that doesn't really explain very well.Thomas888b (Say Hi) 17:19, 7 February 2011 (UTC)
Or you can try User:Xenobot Mk V#Instructions. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 17:41, 7 February 2011 (UTC)
Awesome! Does it do all of the catogories within a category? Thomas888b (Say Hi) 21:13, 7 February 2011 (UTC)
This is usually a bad idea, because the categories are recursive. (Cat X contains a sub cat of Y, which includes Cat X as a sub cat, and so forth.) However, they can do multiple cats, and it's easy to copy the list out of your target cat. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:38, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Different "types" of projects

It seems to me, personally, anyway, that there are basically at least two variant "types" of projects: those which deal with a subject which has had a good deal of academic and other attention over years, basically the projects related to sciences, geography, and other disciplines, and the "pop culture" projects, primarily dealing with television programs, performers, pop music, etc. Based on what I can see, the latter tend to get more attention in the short run than the former, but they also tend to become inactive when the project's main topic does. Depending on the scope of the "academic" projects, I tend to think, personally, that they are probably the ones which we should most work to maintain; Lady Gaga and other related topics of pop culture tend to have fewer reference and other sources, but also tend to get more attention, and can thus generally live without them. The academic projects tend to be, so far as I can tell, generally less receiving of attention, but have more resources which would make development of content sometimes easier. Any opinions? John Carter (talk) 19:07, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Council/Directory includes Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Council/Directory/Wikipedia, "a directory of WikiProjects that deal with Misplaced Pages contents systems and general maintenance". This is the first thing that came to my mind when I saw the heading of this section in my watchlist.
—Wavelength (talk) 20:29, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
I do tend to agree with you John, and also we need an element of realism/pragmatism. It is hard to maintain a project with no interest, but easy if there is some nexus of interested parties, and I think much more successful if we are flexible rather than rigid. So for instance, there are a few editors interested in Essex-related articles as we can see by recent posts here and elsewhere. In an ideal world, a broader scope such as an East Anglia project might be more sensible, but risks losing input of some editors who really only want to focus on their local area - hence my apporach is to foster interest rather than make a top-down proscriptive approach. To me also, the collaborations are a key indicator of the activity of a project, and I have been looking at timelines of the activity of collaborations over wikiprojects - again, the key here is to foster interest (not make it from nothing). My suggestion is to keep an eye out for groups of two or more keen editors in an area and try and give them a boost. I also think looking into the hisotries and recording activity levels somewhere is very helpful. Casliber (talk · contribs) 00:36, 7 February 2011 (UTC)
I had the same initial thought as Wavelength, and also that we have a third type, which is WikiProjects that aren't called WikiProjects (WP:NPP, for example).
On the actual point: WikiProjects are social groups. They are people who choose to work with each other and happen to be interested in something. We can't magic people interested in academic subjects into being; we can only encourage the interests that already exist.
One thing that we can do, and have successfully done for academic subjects, is to encourage a broader focus. WP:WikiProject Psychology isn't a hotbed of activity, but it is sustainable and functional. Individually, WikiProject Primal Therapy or WikiProject Dream Interpretation would be doomed, but when you add up all of these narrow psychology/alt-psych people, they make a sustainable group. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:04, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

I guess my primary point is that we should probably try to do a better job of what might be "sustainer" projects. So, for instance, although it is perfectly possible that Lady Gaga may be active and thus generate additional content for forty years or more, it is also I guess potentially possible that she might retire or become inactive by the end of the month. In that event, if the interest in the related content swiftly dies down, maybe merging the dedicated project for her into a broader project which might have more sustained interest, or at least ongoing content development, would be a good idea. I tend to think that the main "problems" tend to be more in the possibly transient "pop culture" projects, be they music, television, movies, or whatever, which have a pronounced tendency to become inactive when nothing new relative to them is being done (The Beatles and some others being a bit of an exception). John Carter (talk) 17:23, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

Advice for creating a WikiProject vs. Task force

It seems to me that pretty much all articles on Misplaced Pages are within the scope of at least one WikiProject. In light of this, I was wondering what exactly the advice should be for creating a new WikiProject versus making a Task force of an existing project. The main difference between a separate project and a task force appears to be that task forces don't have their own banner. Is that a fair assessment?

I have noticed that some of the recent proposals (e.g. Sweden task force of WP:Football and Tokyo Subway task force) would like to create task forces. Yet it appears that the Proposal page is for new WikiProjects, and new Task forces should be proposed at the relevant project. On the other hand, the relevant project may be somewhat inactive, and proposing it here would get more attention. So to boost visibility, maybe new task force discussions on WikiProject talk pages should be linked to from the Proposal page. Thoughts? Mlm42 (talk) 03:25, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes, you may post task force proposals here. You may also publish a brief advertisement at WP:VPM, and/or at the talk pages of a small (one to three?) number of major articles.
In the event that the 'parent' project is half-dead, I recommend a "friendly takeover", skipping the task force and proposal work altogether, and going straight to announcements of the project being revived and seeking new members. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:37, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Measuring success

I wonder if we could figure out what the odds of success for a WikiProject is, based on the evidence at the proposal. It would be interesting to see whether a given number of participants indicated a significant likelihood of success. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:40, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

The difficult question seems to be: how does one measure the success of a WikiProject? Mlm42 (talk) 02:54, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
Indeed. I'd say that having a good method to do so would be more valuable in and of itself then the application of that method to proposals would be. The typical metrics that seem to be used tend to produce results that disproportionately favor very large projects (number of FAs/GAs/etc.) or very small projects (proportion of FAs/GAs/etc. relative to article count); we don't really have a good measure of "success" that can be used across the board. Kirill  03:11, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
Ultimately it'd have to do with content review presumably - GA and FA content are clear benchmarks to aim for, and raw numbers can be used to compare a group of related articles before and after the existence of a given wikiproject (i.e. measuring against itself really). GA and FA numbers are probably more applicable now than previously - some early collaborations seem to be more about getting articles to some semblance of comprehensiveness, whereas now the focus is much more on quality (referencing and Audited status, for lack of a better term). But if editors engage in banter and this helps morale, then that is good too. I guess adoption and upskilling of new editors is another benefit too. Casliber (talk · contribs) 03:43, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
For the application of WhatamIdoing suggested, it seems a project's success could be measured simply by its "activity" - a concept I was trying to nail down a few sections above. That is, if it's consistently "active", then it could be called successful. The question of exactly how successful is a more subtle issue.. as Casliber alluded to, it's not really the number of FAs/GAs a project has under its scope that is important, but rather the rate at which they are producing new FAs/GAs. Mlm42 (talk) 05:20, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
Activity is what I have in mind. Specifically, what interests me is whether or not the WikiProject (the group of editors, not the page) actually exists after the initial burst of enthusiasm. (Background: I firmly believe that a WikiProject is a social group, not a backup system for proper categorization of pages.)
So, for example, Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Adoption, fostering, orphan care and displacement is probably a failure. It was proposed here about 18 months ago. It had an initial burst of enthusiasm and fun creating templates and categories. However, during the last 12 months, exactly one notice on the talk page was replied to. The others were (apparently) ignored. No members posted any messages about what they're working on. The "active members" probably amounts to one. The project pages are well-constructed, and I think the scope is appropriate for a small WikiProject (neither too expansive nor too narrow, neither too vague nor too rigid, and not overlapping significantly with any others), but there's no group of editors—no actual WikiProject—there. It should probably be tagged as semi-active.
To be clear, I don't think that the outcome for this project is anyone's fault: I use it solely as an example of a perfectly good effort in which doing everything right just didn't achieve the critical mass necessary for an ongoing, sustainable conversation among editors. There are many much more obviously failed projects out there. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:08, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
I don't know that activity on the project pages is in any way useful as a measurement. A proper measurement of project activity would actually require cross-tabulating the editors listed as members of a project, their edits, and articles within the scope of the project. Discussions about the project may be minimal on the project pages when very little of controversy goes on within a project. Such activity may come in short bursts, or take place between editors at other talk pages. One could even take the opposite point of view - that massive amounts of activity on a project talk page indicates a problem within the project and could indicate a lack of success. Jim Miller 19:19, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
Earlier on this page, at #WikiProject activity, I provided links to Misplaced Pages:Database reports/WikiProjects by changes and Misplaced Pages:Database reports/WikiProject watchers.
—Wavelength (talk) 19:36, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
As an aside, is there a way to see more detail from some of those reports? My main reason for asking is that it could be very useful for a project to see who is editing its articles. A non-member making a large number of edits to articles within a project's scope would be a natural target to invite to the project. This could be useful to both active projects and those that may need to be nudged a bit into more activity. Jim Miller 22:52, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
But the only definition of 'membership' is if someone signs the wikiproject page bit which lists members or has a userbox. I dunno, I reckon folks either feel involved or they don't...not sure that pushing/reminding etc. someone to list themselves as a member is particularly useful. I guess I have some reservations about reifying the wikiprojects too much in some way....even though I am a member of a few and see the good output. Casliber (talk · contribs) 23:03, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
Jim, this is exactly what I suggested above; in particular it would be great if the UserActivity tool could be modified so that it only counts edits to articles within a given WikiProject. Unfortunately I don't have any knowledge of how to make or modify tools. Mlm42 (talk) 23:45, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
See Category:Lists of popular pages by WikiProject.
—Wavelength (talk) 23:51, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
Jim, I hope you won't mind me picking on you for a minute.
If the project page isn't being actively used by editors (for discussion, organizing collaborations, getting help, asking questions, etc.), then just what was the point of creating it?
Setting up an official WikiProject page involves a lot of work. Even simple pages take a couple of hours (not counting time spent tagging articles). If the only way that we're going to work together is by chatting on user pages or article talk pages—or if we're not going to work together at all—then IMO those hours creating a page at WP:WikiProject You and Me were a complete waste of time and energy that could have been much better spent improving the articles.
I'll give you a live example: WP:WikiProject Azeri football has (apparently) one member. It looks like he spent five or six hours in March 2009 creating the project page. It looks very nice. There has been zero discussion (ever). What's the community's return on investment for those five hours? Has the creation of that page advanced the project in any meaningful, reasonably direct fashion? Was any article improved by those hours? Or, if you were a real-world manager, who was trying to get the encyclopedia written (and given the benefit of hindsight, or perhaps of a pattern in the data), might you have been inclined to encourage that person to put those hours into something that is more likely to produce results, like improving an article?
For that matter, if you were you, right now, and someone said, "I'm interested in working on X: am I better off just getting to work, or am I better off spending five hours setting up a project page and then getting to work?", what would you say?
If we deleted the whole project now, would anything be harmed (other than the pride of the person who went to so much trouble: NB that I do not recommend taking this to MFD)? Would the non-existent collaboration between the editor and, well, nobody else, somehow be even less existent? (The sole member is still active and seems to be doing good things, just not as a WikiProject.) Would the encyclopedia be any worse if, in some alternate reality, it had never been created?
I do not think that any silent project, or any project of apparently zero active members, is actually fulfilling its primary purpose. WikiProjects are social groups. They are not reading material.
In general, rate of GA/FA promotions seem messy. Not everyone thinks these are the pinnacle of writing the encyclopedia (e.g., I rarely bother submit anything for GA and never for FA, even though my most recent new article, Breast cancer awareness, meets the GA criteria), and not every promotion of an article within a project's scope has anything to do with the project. Also, identifying participants and non-participants is awkward. Membership lists are notoriously incomplete. Public participation is a poor indicator (for example, I do not consider myself a member of WikiProject Christianity, but it's on my watchlist and I reply occasionally; I regularly leave notes at all sorts of projects).
But communication—if you're not talking to each other, you're not working together. If you're not working together, you're not a WikiProject. The project is the people, not the page. (People who spent their childhood at church will recognize the sentiment behind "The church is not a building: The church is the people.") That's why I think that project page activity is the simplest metric for whether creating the project was worth our time. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:45, 10 February 2011 (UTC)
Okay, but what if the bulk of the discussion takes place on the article talk page? e.g . an editor requests feedback on a particular article in hte scope of a particular wikiproject and discussion moves to the talk page there. All trinkets and chest-puffing aside, GA and FA represent the nearest thing we have to Stable/Agreed Versions that we can refer back to in cases of subsequent vandalism or article erosion. Agree about inaccuracy of pages, many member lists contain editors long since departed or inactive. Casliber (talk · contribs) 01:15, 10 February 2011 (UTC)
PS: I have no problem with the creation of Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Azeri football - all it needs is for one day a few editors to be interested and there is a ready-made template for discussion right there. I think having the material there to build upon is better than starting from scratch. Casliber (talk · contribs) 01:18, 10 February 2011 (UTC)
I generally agree with WhatamIdoing that the project's talk page is a quick, easy place to look if you are deciding whether a projects is "active" or "inactive". I think the disagreement here is that the talk page might not be as good for deciding between "active" and "very active". That is, just because project A's talk page has more activity that project B's talk page, doesn't mean that project A as a whole is more "active" than project B. Hence the desire for a more precise measurement. Mlm42 (talk) 01:50, 10 February 2011 (UTC)
True. I think for this purpose, I'm more interested in distinguishing between "active" (ranging from 'barely active' through 'extremely active') and "dead, or nearly dead". WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:54, 10 February 2011 (UTC)
Maybe, for these purposes, one of the possible baseline points might be whether the group is about a very popular aspect of pop culture, in which event it likely would be successful for the length of the popularity of the subject. Otherwise, I would tend to think that one of the relevant points might be the number and accessability of dedicated works, be they encyclopedias, journals/magazines, or whatever, which specifically deal with the subject. With the exception of pop culture projects, I tend to think that availability of clearly relevant sources might be a primary concern. John Carter (talk) 17:27, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

WikiProject banner tagging

Hi there.

Can someone point me into the right direction for archived discussions or specific diffs on using full WikiProject banners for tagging rather than the short names or other alternatives. Two good faith editors have raised issues with me about tagging in relation to WPCHINA. I understand discussions took place several months ago in several places but I haven't seen the actual diffs or specific discussions. If someone can provide me with the specific diff, I'm very interested in reading the discussion and understanding how it all works. I have no problem with using the full WikiProject China banner in assessing articles but would like to see hard evidence or solid discussion in writing or the consensus reached in those discussions so I know I got something to back me up or refer to when I or some other editors raise a issue in assessing banner tags . Thanks in advance. --Visik (talk) 05:37, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Do I correctly understand that you have two people fussing at you for typing {{WPCHINA}} rather than {{WikiProject China}} on relevant talk pages?
It is completely inappropriate for anyone to tell a WikiProject what their template ought to be named, or which redirect the members must prefer. Even WP:STANDARDIZE—an essay I believe seriously inflates the truly trivial benefits of a consistent naming convention—admits that redirects are cheap and can be freely used. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:04, 10 February 2011 (UTC)
Indeed. I have even seen bot operators that remove shortcuts to WikiProject banners and expand them. There is no issue with you using the short name of the template, and people who insist otherwise are misrepresenting consensus. Titoxd 01:18, 11 February 2011 (UTC)
We really shouldn't be using bots to bypass redirects like this. Does anyone know which bots are doing this? I haven't seen it happening myself, but several people seem to think that it is (or was?) happening. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:26, 11 February 2011 (UTC)
for an example that came to mind immediately. Titoxd 01:28, 11 February 2011 (UTC)
WPArkansas Bot was doing the rounds in late 2009 for changing short tags to full tags for WPCHINA , think its inactive now.--Visik (talk) 02:01, 11 February 2011 (UTC)
Thanks guys for your comments. I agree with your comments WhatamIdoing. But for the spirit of collegiality with others who disagree, I'll use the full WikiProject banner tags for existing articles already tagged and just update the assessment. Everything else I'll tag it as WPCHINA. --Visik (talk) 01:53, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Just to give some background, the WikiProject Banner standardization has been going on for several months and is an effort to simplify the thousands of variations of WikiProject naming. The projects and the members are free to use whatever they want but the bots and other editors doing cleanup should be allowed to standardize the naming (normally while performing other things at the same time) as it passes through. I also disagree that this is innapropriate. We have bots fixing all sorts of things and IMO there is nothing wrong with standardizing the WikiProject naming in general. It would be different if we were targeting a certain WikiProject but this is a general cleanup designed to make things easier for everyone. To clarify yes redirects are free and usually work fine however with a couple thousand projects each with multiple redirect possibilities it is unnecessarily complicated. As an I do admit thought that we shouldn't be standardizing the banners unless we are doing something else at the same time (such as adding WikiProject bannershell). If you want to see just how many Projects and variations there are take a look here. Here are a couple of reasons why it is good to standardize the banners:

  1. It is easier for editors and people leaving discussions on the talk pages if they don't have to try and decipher what is what.
  2. It is less messy when you have all the banners that say WikiProject Foo.
  3. It is easier to program scripts, bots and Apps like AWB if you can just look for WikiProject Foo rather than try and anticipate every conceivable possibility of a WikiProject banner.--Kumioko (talk) 01:58, 11 February 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for the rationale and I think its reasonable to assume newcomers or people unfamiliar with project names should be able to see the full name. I can understand having too many short banner tags can add to the complexity. But as you mentioned, bots will do the cleanup and I don't have a issue with it.--Visik (talk) 02:04, 11 February 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for the quick reply and understanding. I also forgot to mention that there are a couple of projects that adamantly objected to their banner being changed (but only 3 that I know of; WPMILHIST, USRoads and one other that I cannot remember). This does mean however and it was made clear to them that the functionality being built into some of the tools like AWB to do things like add wikiprojectbannershell would not work with them because the logic was only being written to support WikiProject X because to add thousands of lines of code to account for all the possibilities is not reasonable and not efficient for the program to run or to maintain. --Kumioko (talk) 02:09, 11 February 2011 (UTC)
Kumioko, I know the background: I've long objected to it. From where I sit, pushing a mistake for two and a half years does not make it any less of a mistake.
Suggesting that a group of people follow a desirable pattern is one thing. Telling them that they must follow the pattern, or forcing that pattern on them by bot—especially on such flimsy grounds as "People leaving discussions will be confused" (as if the purpose of {{Chemistry}} couldn't be guessed at just as easily as the purpose of {{Talkheader}}, and much more easily than the instructions to the archiving bots)—is inappropriate.
There are real consequences for forcing volunteers to do what they don't want: They quit. For example, I've dramatically reduced the amount of time I spend assessing articles for WPMED since Xeno pushed through a change to the template name last year. Category:Unassessed medicine articles and Category:Unknown-importance medicine articles used to be empty—because I emptied them, nearly every day—and kept that way. I have assessed more than articles for WPMED than everyone else put together, since the day the assessment program was started.
Now—well, if you prefer the bot's opinion to mine, then you can have the bot do that work. I do a bit here and there, because no one else does it systematically and the 1.0 team needs it done, but candidly, when I get irritated by the reminders that a bot was considered more valuable more than me, I stop again.
This gets back to the discussion above: WikiProjects are social groups. They are volunteers working together. If you don't treat them well, they'll stop. If you prefer standardization to people, then you're on the right track. I don't, and I think we're on the wrong track with this plan. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:35, 11 February 2011 (UTC)
Well the issue of it being a mistake is an opinion that you are welcome to have just as I disagreed with delinking dates and several other changes that have affected WP over the last few years. I have even thrown my hands up in frustration a couple times and walked away (sometimes for months) but I always come back eventually. I also find it unfortunate that you chose to stop assessing articles but that also is your decision. You are correct that we are all volunteers but I would hope that few are so concerned about WikiProject Banners that they would give up and leave in frustrations because a bot expanded the name of a banner. I also understand that you see little value in making things clear and understandable for folks who aren't familiar with the thousands of policies (many of which contradict each other), naming conventions and secret squirrel handshake situations that exist on WP. I for one think that standardizing things like the banners is extremely useful for the longterm health of WP and that we need to try and trim down and eliminate some of the unnecessary ambiguities. As for valuing a bot over an editor. To make such an assessment quite frankly is just being dramatic IMO. If you really think that its too bad but I believe I speak for nearly everyone when i say that your (or any editor for that matter) edits are actually more valuable than the bot edits. Bots can be programmed to do many things but to accurately assess and gauge an article is something that cannot be easily done with more than a marginal degree of accuracy. They cannot write articles, discuss issues about them or any number of other things. So no you are not less important than a bot. --Kumioko (talk) 03:59, 11 February 2011 (UTC)
No, I'm not being dramatic, and I'm not deliberately on strike. I just realized a while ago that I wasn't doing that tedious work any more. I stopped because it was no longer fun. It became no longer fun at the moment when Xeno (inadvertently) arranged for the community to tell me that they appreciated it so little that they thought my preferences about how to do this work were unimportant.
I understand the bot-programming problem: I do assessments with a very limited, rather elderly script. It does not understand the concept of redirects. If a bot changes the template name (or if someone types in one of the many valid redirects), the script adds a duplicate template under the hard-coded (most commonly used) template name, which requires manual clean up. I can't (physically) do this for hundreds of articles. Having a bot gratuitously substitute the less common name simply because somebody else wants a mindless consistently, regardless of the needs of the people who are actually doing the work, is enough of a problem to tip the task from "a backlog I regularly handled for two years" to "a task I regularly avoid". WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:26, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

My point of view in brief:

  • It's OK that everyone adds wikiproject banners the way they like. Shortcuts are faster to type than long names anyway. So, I also may type WPE instead of WikiProject England.
  • We should expect that the final result is readable for future editors. When I read wikicode I like to be able to understand what a template does without having to click on the list of transcluded templates at the bottom. It's not always obvious were shortcuts redirect to. That's why we have bots for.
  • There is always this conflict between easy to add, easy to read. It's much easier to remember that {{WikiProject Foo}} corresponds to WikiProject Foo but it's much easier to write WPF.
  • I initiated a month ago a discussion in RfD about non-standard names for wikiproject banners like CHINA (not WPCHINA).
  • Small detail: The reason Yobot did this edit above is because of the missing |1= which causes AWB bots to froze. I'm working on it but until then I usually run the bot once per month to add the missing parameter. -- Magioladitis (talk) 09:44, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

I too disagreed with the standardization. It would seem that quite a few people disagreed with the standardization as it failed to get past its being an essay. It is not a policy and it is not a guideline.

It is no more confusing to the average editor to see {{Composers}} than it is to seen |blp= or |blpo=. However, it confuses the bots. Therefore, according to Kumioko, we must standardize.

{{WPBS}} displays just fine with or without the |1= so long as |blp= is not used. However, if |1= is not there AWB bots freeze. Therefore, according to Magioladitis, we must insert the |1=.

Who says bots are not considered more important than humans? JimCubb (talk) 02:05, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

That is not exactly what I said. Yes it does help the bots there is no denying that but it helps the people too. The bots are there to do stuff that are routine and bore typical people. In the very basic example you gave there is no way to know if {{Composers}} is for a wikiProject banner or a template or something else entirely. Maybe its a template listing composers? And what about {{Composers1}}, {{WP Composers}}, {{WPCOMPOSERS}} and {{WikiProject Composers}}? I can't tell by looking at it. But if all the WikiProject banners start with WikiProject then there is absolutely no misunderstanding what it is for and anyone can tell at the slightest glance without having to dig around and start clicking links. I personally hate having to click a link and hunt for what the name is only to find out that the redirect leads me to another redirect because 2 banners merged 2 years ago and knowone cleaned it up. That is why bots are good, people can only do so much and they forget to do things. The way things are now there are well over 1000 banners and almost all have at least 1 redirect and many have multiple redirects. Are you really trying to convince me that its easier for people and bots to look at the thousands of variations and somehow know that what we are looking at is a WikiProject banner? I'm sorry but I'm not buying that argument. There are just too many variations. Standardization is a good thing and it will make things much much easier in the long run for bots and for people. For the sake of understanding though could you provide some examples and or rational of how not standardizing the banners would be better?

Heres another example. Below is a listing of all the redirects to WikiProject Food and Drink. If you were looking at these redirects and weren't familiar with the project would you Know that {{F&D}},{{Wpf}} or {{WP Ice Cream}} would all lead you to WikiProject Food and drink or would you be inclined to think that there was a separate project for WikiProject Ice Cream. Or maybe that F&D stood for something else like Fire and Disaster? How about Friendship and Dating? But if we standardize it then WikiProject Food and Drink is pretty hard to misunderstand.

--Kumioko (talk) 04:27, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

If we're assuming an average talk page, I don't see any problems with any of these. The top of the talk page will probably say something like:
{{talkheader}}
{{Food}}
and the editor will probably look at it and think, "Oh, I bet that the first thing is what makes that tan 'This is the talk page for discussing...' box, and the second thing is what makes the 'This article is within the scope of WikiProject Food and Drink' box."
Editors don't see these things without first seeing the finished product on the talk page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:57, 15 February 2011 (UTC)
I can see that regardless of what arguments are presented on either side neither of us is going to agree. I personally think that standardization is good and think we should be working toward that for the many improvements it brings and in your defense you prefer to stay with the status quo because you see no value in standardization. Clearly neither of us are going to change our minds so I see no reason to dwell on it. The bottom line is you can put whatever you want down and the bots will do the tedious work of standardizing it so if its easier and faster for you to put Food rather than WikiProject Food and Drink thats perfectly fine, go ahead. No harm no fowl and no hard feelings. Knowone is telling you otherwise. Thats what the bots are for. --Kumioko (talk) 19:47, 15 February 2011 (UTC)