Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Council/Archive 14

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Archiving of proposals

Is there any process for archiving proposals. I've moved several subpage links to Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals/Archive 5 but it looks like in the past there was either no subpages, or they were substituted onto the page. I was thinking it might be helpful to retain the subpages with archive tags similar to RFA (or something to that effect), but before I run AWB against all those pages there I wanted to get some feedback on the idea. -Optigan13 (talk) 23:27, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure I see any real benefit to more formal archiving—the proposal process is commonly ignored to the point where most of the subpages don't contain anything particularly useful—but I suppose there's no harm in doing it. Kirill [talk] [pf] 11:48, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
I've done a run on them and added . My only concern was someone finding one of those subpages and adding more after the fact without noticing the date. There may be issues with someone wanting to propose a project of the same name as something in the past, but we'll cross that bridge when we get to it. I'm trying to
RfAsubst}} preloads RFAs. I just think the parameters should be named so I'll try to do that today or some point this week, unless someone else wants to do it.-Optigan13 (talk
) 23:07, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
I've created Template:WikiProject Proposalsubst to preload new proposal pages and updated the wording on the instructions. It should simplify the process slightly. -Optigan13 (talk) 04:04, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

Class → class

I have made a proposal to change Class to lowercase, so that an article would be A-class rather than A-Class. This would be more in line with standard capitalisation conventions and make it consistent with the importance/priority ratings which have always been lowercase. To be clear, I am not proposing we rename all the categories (this would be a huge job!) but just to change the text in WikiProject banners. As this change would affect many project's banners and talk pages (albeit in a very trivial way) I am posting here to draw attention to the

discussion here. (Please comment there, not here, thanks.) — Martin (MSGJ · talk
) 11:44, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

New random link tool

I have a new version of the randomlink.js tool that can be configured to pick a random article from a specified WikiProject. This may be useful to some editors who wish to unbiasedly pick a new article to work on. It can be configured to choose based on a set of categories or based on the "What links here" of the WikiProject template. See the examples. —GregU (talk) 17:07, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

Interesting. Does the tool redirect to the article itself if the category contents are talk pages, or does it link to the actual located talk page? Kirill [talk] [pf] 00:22, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
It knows about this special case and takes you to the article itself. —GregU (talk) 05:45, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

WP templates on redirect talk pages

If I re-direct an article (e.g. an unattributed microstub) to another page, should I remove the WikiProject template(s) from the talk page? I had figured I should leave it in order that someone involved in the project might see the redirect (and that it was no longer an article). -- Gyrofrog (talk) 21:14, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

If it were me, I'd add the banner to the new talk page, if appropriate, and keep the banner on the old talk page, maybe changing the class rating to "Redirect" or "NA". That way, in the event the project uses article alerts, they can still keep track of whether the page is up for deletion, merger, or whatever, and that is one of the things a lot of projects use the banners for. John Carter (talk) 21:43, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
When I come across one, because the banner has |importance= rather than |priority= or no value for |listas=, I delete all the banners and redirect the page to the new article's talk page. JimCubb (talk) 04:20, 11 October 2009 (UTC)
I think this is fine for the {{
WPBiography}} template, because they don't keep track of redirects. But quite a few projects do like to keep track of redirects within their scope, so they probably wouldn't thank you for removing their banners from these pages! — Martin (MSGJ · talk
) 17:26, 11 October 2009 (UTC)
Depends on the talk page in question. If the page has any discussion and/or at least on banner supports Redirect-Class, then I'd leave it as it is -- redirects can have talk pages too! But if it was an empty talk page and none of the banner support Redirect-Class, then I think a redirect is appropriate (or even requesting speedy deletion). PC78 (talk) 18:29, 11 October 2009 (UTC)
Thanx! -- Gyrofrog (talk) 20:24, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Discussion on /comments pages on VPR

I have started a discussion with direct relevance for this project on

Fram (talk
) 12:07, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Creating one

The Dams proposals back in March failed because there were no instructions on how to actually create an official wikiproject. Is it legal to just create it, without any special project; i.e. just create Wikipedia:WikiProject Dams and all those templates and banners outright? Shannontalk contribs sign!:) 00:54, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes, that's fine. Kirill [talk] [pf] 03:38, 29 September 2009 (UTC)
The instructions are at Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Guide/WikiProject, which is linked in the navbox on this page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:31, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

WikiProject District of Columbia

I am looking for advice regarding Wikipedia:WikiProject District of Columbia - Several users there said that they do not wish to have the project's scope cover DC suburbs (using any definition), and one user suggested starting a parallel DC area WikiProject. I argued that having the DC project extend to NOVA and the Maryland burbs would make the project stronger; other US city projects cover suburbs (the exception I can think of is NYC, which covers a city of 8 million). Anyway, would the council recommend having parallel DC only and DC area WikiProjects? Why or why not? WhisperToMe WhisperToMe (talk) 09:41, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject District of Columbia#DC scope for discussion that has already occurred. SchuminWeb (Talk) 16:10, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

How to Create One

I'm thinking about making a WikiProject but the only thing is that i don't know how to Qwertyfish11 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 02:36, 25 October 2009 (UTC).

It's probably best to propose your project on Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals. Regards — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:08, 25 October 2009 (UTC)
Thanks for your help, but i just want to know how i go about making the page at all, when i have finished proposing it. Qwertyfish11 (talk) 14:20, 25 October 2009 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Guide/WikiProject. --B. Wolterding (talk) 21:27, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Project to task force conversion

WikiProject Education in New Jersey to the Education task force. I am unsure of how to update the listings here to reflect the change. Jim Miller See me | Touch me
17:11, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Motto of the day

I think this project falls under hee but could people please take a look at

) 19:15, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Proposals - when to add to proposal page?

The instructions on when to add a proposed project to the proposals page seem unclear - I think this could be overcome by renaming the "Succesful Proposals" section to "Current Proposals" but wanted consensus as this would change the apparent scope to reflect what appears to be current usage. For now, I've added my proposal to the page, but am unsure if I should have done so NullofWest Fill the Void 20:23, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I'm not sure why the section name was changed to "successful" in the first place, given that the entire point of making a proposal there is to see whether it will be successful. I've changed the terminology throughout the page to use "current" instead, and cleaned up the section nesting as well. Kirill [talk] [pf] 22:20, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Tech help on collapsible banners

My work would be greatly facilitated if I could add some code in my monobook.js to enable me to see by default collapsed material as un-collapsed, in particular the Talk page BannerShell. I asked here:

Template talk:WikiProjectBannerShell#Tech help, but haven't got an answer for over a month. I would be very grateful for any assistance. Hoverfish Talk
09:11, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Add the following to your .js file:
function collapseTable( tableIndex )
{
}
That will override the function responsible for automatically collapsing the talk page banners. Kirill [talk] [pf] 15:04, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
Thank you Kirill Lokshin, I appreciate. Hoverfish Talk 15:23, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Help needed with Kingbotk plugin

Hi. Does anyone here know VB and so could help out with the Kingbotk plugin. It's not working to spec in the new builds of AWB per

Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser/Bugs#Kingbotk plugin not assessing in SVN version. Thanks. Hiding T
17:54, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Order of multiple WikiProject banners

When adding a WikiProject banner to a talk page which already has one, I always place my new one beneath those that already exist, but above any other box-type templates (such as DYK, failed deletion, etc). There are, however, bots which insert at the top - see here for example. Is there a preferred order for the banners? --Redrose64 (talk) 18:31, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

The
Kingbotk plugin
(which many bots including Xenobot run on) places them at the top always, but I have some custom code that ensures the WPBio banner gets top billing if living=yes.
Personally I feel the templates should be ordered in order of relevance and hierarchically (so an Xbox exclusive video game that also became an Internet culture phenomen would be WPVG->WP Xbox->WP Internet culture), but it's impossible nigh-on impossible for a bot to do stuff like this. –xenotalk 18:36, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
Question from some one knowing nothing about how some templates operate. Would it be possible to have the two banner shells adjusted in such a way to automatically place the banners in descending order depending on declared importance to the individual project included? John Carter (talk) 18:50, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
Hmmm... Neat idea! Off-the-cuff I don't think it's possible, but perhaps some higher level wizard can prove me wrong! –xenotalk 18:51, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Project to task force conversion guide added

Using WP:MED's project to task force conversion guide as a starting point, I've added a more general stepwise entry to

WP:Inland Empire coming up, so it match up. -Optigan13 (talk
) 02:29, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

That looks pretty good, overall. A few minor things, based on my experiences with turning projects into task forces:
  • In (1), the discussion may be better off being held on the future parent project's talk page, particularly if the project to be merged is inactive. Generally speaking, pointing people to a discussion on a different page gets a significantly lower number of participants than holding the discussion on a page they're already visiting.
  • In (4), the moved project page will likely require significant rearrangement, particularly if the new parent project has a standard layout for task force pages.
  • In (5), many of the pages will need to be redirected to the new parent project's corresponding pages, since part of becoming a task force is adopting the parent project's assessment/review/etc. processes rather than running one's own.
  • In (12), I've always just redirected the banner rather than tagging it as deprecated.
Kirill [talk] [prof] 05:30, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
Thanks,
  • I've tweaked the discussion instructions (1) to be agnostic as to which page the discussion should be on as long as it is centralized. I've been using the project being considered for conversion's talk because I'd prefer to avoid someone coming back a month after the fact and raising a stink about not enough notice.
  • I've been using some boilerplate text I found to the top of the proposed task force's main page, but I can't find what if any template it is on to recommend. diff of the boilerplate text
  • I've added steps about layout changes and redirecting redundant pages.
  • Redirect works fine, I'm just more of a stickler for keeping a consistent template call (for no real strong reason). I've changed the wording on that.
-Optigan13 (talk) 08:27, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

"Challenge" contests

For those who don't know, there are currently the User:ChildofMidnight/Bacon Challenge 2010 and the earlier User:Grundle2600/Doughnut Days 2009. I am disgustedly envious of both of these concepts, because, of course, they aren't my ideas. It's horrible! :) Having said that, I wonder if maybe settting up short-term "micro-projects" like these might not be an effective way of stimulating article development, particularly in areas needing a lot of help. The one problem I can foresee, of course, is the possibility that, eventually, we might get to the point of having (all examples made up on the spot, don't expect any gems here) the "Football playoffs" fighting for temporary help against "the sex line" (three guesses where I sign up here) and maybe the "Easter Parade" and "Oscar's 'And the Winner Is...'". And, of course, despite their comparative importance, "Detroit Days", "Emergency Room" (Medicine) and maybe "Brazilian Carnival" are probably going to get a lot less interest if they go head-to-head with any of the above.

Despite that, they are really good ideas, particularly if they wind up being effective. I note tht the latter is tied to the WikiCup in terms of points and the like. Would there be any other projects that would like to give something like this a chance, and, if yes, any ideas on how we don't have them fighting for involvement against each other? John Carter (talk) 19:51, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

The doughnut thing was not my idea. I was asked for permission to allow it to be posted in my userspace, and I happily said yes. Grundle2600 (talk) 21:29, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Past discussions about WikiProject templates and banners in article space, cross-namespace redirects?

Have there been any past discussion about placing WikiProject banners and other material in the article space on the Council? I've recently placed {{

WP:SELFREF, and a discussion in the archives here which addresses COTW templates, but I'm looking for specific discussion about banners and WikiProject specific precedence. -Optigan13 (talk
) 23:14, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Glaring holes in doc (copied from
Template_talk:WPBannerMeta/doc
)

Having begun to use project templates recently, I read the doc page of WpBannerMeta to familiarize myself with its usage (as opposed to writing a banner with it). There are unfortunately many holes in that documentation, for example, what's a listas? For that matter what's a small? What values can they take? What's a category optout? No idea. I searched Wikipedia for such information, with no luck, not even in

here, and I would encourage you guys to integrate some of it for us, poor ordinary users...
--  Alain  R 3 4 5 
Techno-Wiki-Geek
00:08, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

What's a "listas"? Good question. It is a "sortkey for the article talk page (for example, for Elvis Presley, |listas=Presley, Elvis, so that the talk page will show up in the P's and not the E's of the various assessment and administrative categories)." I had to hunt around for that definition. You might be semi-interested in this colloquy:
talk
) 18:00, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Is there a project anywhere that aims to tackle all the articles with "Recentism" tags, like this one: