Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2013-04-01/WikiProject report

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WikiProject News

• WikiProject Christina Aguilera has been launched and they could use your help
• The broad scope of WikiProject Animals in Media requires the work of many editors like you
• WikiProject U2 needs you

Submit your project's news and announcements for next week's WikiProject Report at the Signpost's WikiProject Desk.

Instead of asking questions, this week's Report is dedicated to answering our readers' questions about WikiProjects. The following Frequently Asked Questions came from feedback at the WikiProject Report's talk page, the WikiProject Council's talk page, and from previous lists of FAQs. Included in today's Report are a variety of questions that might be asked by Wikipedia's newest editors as well as seasoned veterans.

What is a WikiProject?

Per the official definition, a WikiProject is a group of editors that wish to work together as a team to improve Wikipedia. These groups often focus on a topic area (like tropical cyclones) or a specific task (deletion sorting). The WikiProject Council maintains a guide for starting and maintaining a WikiProject as well as a directory of WikiProjects.

What was the first WikiProject?

WikiProject Sports was created by Manning Bartlett in September 2001 to illustrate his proposal for the new entity he called a "WikiProject." However, there are a few modern projects like WikiProject Tree of Life that existed as loose collaborations prior to the invention of the WikiProject concept that were later adapted to serve as WikiProjects.

How many WikiProjects are there?

It is difficult to get an accurate count of WikiProjects since anyone can create a project at any time and the process for merging and deleting obsolete projects varies. Our best estimate comes from the Wikipedia 1.0 assessment system, which currently tracks the banners of 2,112 projects. However, it should be noted that this number may be inflated by projects that have merged into other projects or were reduced to task force status without updating the project's old banner template. On the other hand, this number excludes many WikiProjects that perform important functions but do not tag and assess articles, such as the Guild of Copy Editors.

What's the biggest WikiProject?

The size of a WikiProject depends on how you measure it. Looking at the number of articles tagged with the project's banner, the largest WikiProject is clearly WikiProject Biography with over one million articles under its scope. However, if we want to know which project has the most members, there isn't a clear answer. Membership lists are not standardized and many projects rarely update their membership rolls. As a result, the identity of the WikiProject with the largest membership remains a mystery.

What's the smallest WikiProject?

There are dozens of WikiProjects that have not tagged a single article, despite someone at the project taking the time to set up a banner that tracks articles. There are also project membership pages where none of the listed editors remain active.

Is there a standard definition of a "successful" WikiProject?

A successful WikiProject contributes toward Wikipedia's mission of building an encyclopedia. However, each project achieves success in their own way. Some projects set goals for themselves and track their progress, like WikiProject Military History. Others deal with a continuously changing landscape, responding to the concerns of editors (Teahouse) or trying to keep the growth of backlogs to a minimum (WikiProject Wikify). By tracking changes in a project's relative WikiWork over time, the productivity of projects that assess articles can be measured. Many projects showcase their successful endeavors by using JL-Bot to maintain galleries of their Featured content and Did You Know submissions. Ultimately, the only unsuccessful WikiProjects are those that don't do anything.

How do you know if a project is active?

Determining which projects have been abandoned can be difficult if nobody was left to turn out the lights. A project's automated functions and archiving may still be running, even if nobody is watching. Some projects feature outdated membership lists comprised of people who have left Wikipedia or otherwise disappeared without much fanfare. Activity on a project's talk page may be the clearest sign of life available, assuming this activity isn't simply unanswered questions from editors outside the project. Further complicating matters, the editors of some projects prefer to work independently or communicate through external methods like IRC, resulting in an active project with an inactive talk page. The writers of the WikiProject Report often struggle with deciding which projects to interview since many interesting projects may look active on the surface, hiding a more depressing reality.

Who determines if a WikiProject is active, semi-active or inactive? Under what circumstances are WikiProjects deleted from Wikipedia rather than marked as defunct or historical?

The terse answer: The project does. The real answer: Having a project determine its activity is like asking a corpse to decide when the deceased became deceased. While a few editors are courteous enough to hang a notice on the project's page when they know they're the last one to leave, most projects tagged as inactive or semi-active were tagged when someone outside the project stepped in.

Typically, projects are only deleted when they are "false starts" (incomplete projects that never got off the ground), serve as a repository for material that infringes on copyright laws, exist solely as an attack page, or have no other redeeming value. It is more common for semi-active projects to be merged into their parent project, sometimes as a task force. Most inactive and defunct projects are simply left intact with the hope that the materials and discussions collected by the project may become useful at a later date.

Who can add articles to a WikiProject? Who can assess articles?

Anyone can add articles to a project by attaching the project's banner to an article's talk page. Likewise, anyone can remove banners, so don't be surprised if the members of a project determine that the article you tagged is not within their scope. Further discussion may be necessary at the project's talk page.

Anyone can assess articles, although it is wise to read and follow any assessment guidelines unique to a particular project before deciding what "class" and "importance" should be assigned to an article. For instance, WikiProject Biographies has a unique importance structure with 200 "core" articles. Good Articles, Featured Articles, and Featured Lists are determined through processes independent of the WikiProject, so using those assessments inappropriately may have negative repercussions.

Is there a limit to the number of projects that can add their banner to an article?

No. Each project determines its own scope and can include whatever articles they like. For instance, Elizabeth II is under the scope of 18 projects and task forces while Barack Obama is handled by 22 projects and task forces.

Some WikiProjects provide a WikiProject Watchlist and some do not. Why?

As with all tools available to WikiProjects, not every project has set up a watchlist and some projects may not desire to have one. There are multiple types of watchlists a project can use, from Tim1357's watchlists to new article notifications to article alerts to hot articles.

What's the difference between a sister WikiProject and a related WikiProject?

People tend to use them interchangeably, but the term "related WikiProjects" is broader than "sister WikiProjects." Sister projects would be like grouping WikiProject Pittsburgh and WikiProject Philadelphia, while related projects would also include their parent projects (WikiProject Cities and WikiProject Pennsylvania in this case), and any subprojects or task forces (WikiProject Pittsburgh Steelers and WikiProject University of Pittsburgh come to mind). Sister WikiProjects provide a way of categorizing projects along with the terms "parent" and "child" WikiProjects. However, one confusing bit about the term "sister projects" is that it has also been used to compare different wikis or languages of Wikipedia (i.e. Wikisource, Wikinews, Chinese Wikipedia, German Wikipedia, etc.) which is evidenced by the Signpost's defunct sister projects column.

Next week's interview will be earth-shattering. Until then, shake it up in the archive.

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In this issue

1 April 2013

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WikiProject report

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It would be a lot more helpful to link to a list of projects. I am trying to find the women writer project, and it is very difficult to get a list of active projects. You also can not search for a project page. LoveElectronicLiterature (talk) 14:16, 29 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

This page is disturbingly interesting. I recommend publishing it as a subpage of Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Guide or at least making sure it is linked from there. --Elitre (talk) 13:22, 5 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Disturbingly interesting? I've never heard that before. :) –Mabeenot (talk) 23:35, 5 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I know, right? Not so sure it conveys the meaning I want, but pretty sure everyone still gets it :-) Elitre (talk) 06:49, 6 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Can an article's WikiProject assessment be reviewed (i.e. re-assessed)? If so, how? Headhitter (talk) 23:10, 18 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Headhitter: It depends on what class the article is. Many of the "lower tier" ones (List, Stub, Start, C, B) are usually assigned by one editor and therefor can be changed by another if the article improves or decreases in quality. However, some of the other ones (GA, FA, FL) require formal review both to promote and demote the articles (read more on the linked pages). A-class isn't widely used, and criteria for this class vary from project to project.

tl;dr: Yes, they can be reassessed. You can do it yourself, except for when you want the article to be promoted/demoted from the "official" class-markers (i.e GA, FA, FL etc.) where formal review is required. If it concerns A-class status you need to consult the relevant WikiProject's guidelines. Sincerely, InsaneHacker (💬) 23:29, 7 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]