Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Drafts/WikiProject report/Rudget 2008-08-11

For the second August edition, I decided to interview TonyTheTiger (talk · contribs), the lead member of the WikiProject which has strived to cover all Chicago topics since 2005. The project's membership puts it among the largest North American City WikiProjects on Wikipedia, in terms of contributors; it has tagged articles representing a broad representation of its topic of interest with 40 featured articles and lists, 140 good articles and slightly more than 15,000 other pages, which are in some way related, tagged.

Questions

• What is the project's history? How did you become involved?
  • The project was started on July 6, 2005 by
    WP:FAC
    three more times and the project was semi-active when I became involved.
  • I began visiting the project page and I signed up as a member on December 9, 2006. I realized the the COTW was inactive and reactivated it two days later. Then, I assessed what I like to work on and what the project needed. This was in late 2006 around the time of my first failed
    Chicago Project Featured Topic Drive
    .
  • As a result of this interview, we have taken a
    WP:LOTM) 13:34, 18 August 2008 (UTC)[reply
    ]
• The project has many members; do you think this has increased the quality of articles, or should that be put down to extra work by others?
  • Several things have contributed to the increased quality of articles. Accurate accounting for the project was a start. Nobody knew what we had done and what needed to be done.
    WP:LOTM) 13:36, 18 August 2008 (UTC)[reply
    ]
• What could the possible reasons for the inactivity of the collaboration of the week?
  • There were two incarnations of
    WP:GA status in a week every week is quite challenging and I was unable to find anyone to pass the responsibility to when I attempted to focus my efforts elsewhere. Of course, a COTW could undertake any other goal such as cleaning up more developed articles as it had before. However, no one has wanted to take over the effort. One of the things we hope to do on September 1 is get the CHICOTW going again (possibly focussing on Top-importance Chicago articles
    and the Featured Topic Drive).
  • I speculate that most people who are affiliated with the project are also affiliated with other projects. For example, IvoShandor was a very productive editor who is currently on another sabbatical from WP. He lists three projects as interests. I had hoped he would take over the COTW because he did a lot of work on articles that benefited our project because one of his projects is WP:ILLINOIS. I suspect many Chicago project members consider other projects including Illinois important to them. People have limited time.
• I'm new, how do I get involved in the project, what can I do?
  • The current focus is on our featured topic drive. Thus, I would love to see new people contribute to helping
    WP:CHIR to help the project make decisions. We are also trying to get an A-Class review set up. As this gets going, the project has many GA-Class Chicago articles
    that will need nominators to shepherd them up the quality scale as well as reviewers to guide the process. Also, we can use help with our assessments in general because we have many unassessed articles.
• You are noted as the 'manager/director' of the project; what responsibilities does this give you?
  • I currently oversee the election of our Top-importance Chicago articles, maintain our
    WP:BOLD
    and start making changes to the project. I have assumed overall responsibility for all tasks undertaken by the Project, for other Coordinators are assigned to specific areas, for members assisting the project, and for bots performing tasks on behalf of the project. On September 1, I hope to be able to depend on others to share many of these responsibilities.
• It appears you are the leading contributor to the project, have you at any time felt that you needed more help?
  • Yes, that is why we have the new September 1 initiative. Stepping outside my role as director and into my role as WP contributor, I would say that I am like everyone else. I would like it if everyone would drop any non-essential tasks they are doing and help make my favorite topics into
    List of Registered Historic Places in Chicago
    style format.
• Could you summarize what sets the project apart from other North American WikiProjects?*Could you summarise what sets the project apart from other North American WikiProjects?
  • I don't think our project is or should be much different from most other projects that operate under
    Haymarket Riot, Daniel Burnham, Chicago River, Lake Shore Drive, Museum of Science and Industry (Chicago), and Chicago Tribune
    as the project grows. Otherwise, I don't think that there is much different about our project and those of other cities.