Wikipedia talk:Historical archive/WikiProject proposal

I like this idea, and I think it could work with Magnus's additional namespaces to allow for using the wiki as an organizational tool for WikiTeams to use to structure their activity on the Wikipedia. User:MRC

I'm probably the guy doing the most work on sports at the moment, and my current goal is to have a couple of paragraphs describing the origins, basic outline of play, elite championships, and geographic representation of every sport I can. Obviously, I could apply your organisational tools to my current work, but I'm unconvinced that the overhead is worth the benefits (things tend to coalesce naturally anyway, in my limited experience. However, it's probably worth a shot. Would you be interested in helping me give it a try for sports? User:Robert Merkel

Robert. This is great - sports is an obvious candidate which I hadn't even considered (!). I'd be delighted to test the methodology there. I'll get things underway ASAP. I'll create the framework and you provide the principles.

By the way - "is the additional overhead worth it?" Thats a good question. In the case where a single individual is doing most of the work the answer is no!. The value of this approach only increases with the volume of contributors. For anything less than (say) 5 people the WikiProject idea only adds unnecessary complexity. However once the number of contributors grows that it serves to focus efforts, reduce the workload of integration (ie - where numerous articles get reformatted, etc) and prevent information fragmentation. --Manning

Manning, at this stage it seems that I am doing most of the work, so perhaps that makes it less necessary. However, setting something up might have the side benefit of encouraging more contributions, and ensuring casual contributions conform to the "house style". I'll see what happens :)--User:Robert Merkel

I think its a great idea Manning. As far as comments on what information should be in a particular type of article, I've already done something like that in talk:U.S. States; I like your proposal because it takes organizes that sort of meta-information coherently. The only wonder I have is how are we going to create WikiProjects? We can either create them as an a priori hierarchy, based on how we think human knowledge is organized (kind of like how categories on the HomePage are organized); or we can let them evolve organically (create them whenever one feels the need, do not worry about the relationship of any one topic with any other. Personally I'd favour a middle way -- create one WikiProject for each main category in the HomePage scheme, and then people can create subprojects as they feel fit -- let us worry about how the subprojects fit together within each main category as we feel the need to. -- User:Simon J Kissane

Simon - I agree. have a look at the WikiProject page where I have begun to identify certain projects already. Observe that historical figures is referenced under both Biography and History. All information hierarchies are arbitrary anyway and the Wikiproject idea supports this by being quite fluid -- MB

I'm not sure how I feel about this yet. Basically, I think that at this time efforts at setting more specific content rules is a bit premature. My biggest worry is that it might end up discouraging people from working on Wikipedia. I think that, basically, the thing has so far been successfully organizing itself, and that more formal organization and standardization is better done after we have loads and loads of content to organize and standardize--which, despite our 11,000 articles, we don't actually have, in my opinion. But I'm intrigued by the proposal and I think we should think more about it. --User:Larry Sanger

I agree - it certainly is not appropriate until there is a 'critical mass' of both participants and content. I developed my thinking on it by considering 'Countries of the World' where there has been a good start and the need for administrative and organisational control has become necessary (IMHO). There are numerous other areas where it is completely inappropriate. My goal is to create a framework methodology that can be employed whenever someone 'decides one is needed'. Additionally this eliminates the need to 'reinvent the wheel' and create an information schema from scratch every time one is needed, and it provides guidance for those who are not familiar with the subject. --MB

Well, then, it looks like I have no objections whatsoever. I think it's actually a great idea to have "sample articles" and templates to follow, so long as people aren't taken to task for not following a given template. Not yet, anyway. You know, the countries of the world pages all follow the same format just because they're all based on the same source, the CIA World Factbook. BTW, thanks a lot, Manning, for jumping in with both feet! --LMS

I like your ideas and your input into Wikipedia very much !!!
It is really suprising how different people come to the same conclusions.
We discussed metadata issues some time ago.
I proposed some metadata patterns that are very much like yours.
I proposed teamwork inside English Wikipedia and between International Wikipedias. There was also some discussion on the Wikipedia mailing list.

The general voice was not encouraging and there was a strong opposition from Larry Sanger.

Please see :

User:Kpjas

Larry opposes anything which "forces" people to do things a certain way (see his comments above), and I support his viewpoint. My ideas are more about creating a organisational framework that can be adopted when and if wanted. But yeah - our ideas are similar, but then it seems that we are both familiar with the general concepts of metadata management, so you'd expect them to be similar (my ideas certainly aren't original). I think the best idea I came up with is calling it the "WikiProject" - people can remember it, and it will never conflict with a "real" article name (calling a system 'meta-data management' would have conflicted with an actual content article on that subject. Thanks for the links - Manning

God, it sure is nice to see my little baby all grown up. The contributions of everyone else have really taken things to a new level. I still claim full credit for creating the name "Wikiproject", though :) Manning 06:57, July 13, 2005 (UTC)