Wikipedia:The Problem with Projects: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 17:22, 24 February 2008

Revision as of 17:54, 24 February 2008

Line 7:

WikiProjects, and for that matter, "topical" articles in wikipedia, share one thing in common with your average [[tribble]]: they're seemingly born pregnant. As soon as a project is created for any individual major subject, be it a nation, an academic field of study, or even a form of recreation, shortly thereafter at least one subproject is proposed. Similarly, as soon as any major significant article is made, be it [[Kosovo]], [[happiness]], or [[Satanic ritual abuse]], shortly thereafter the first subarticle will be created as well. And then the second. And so on, and so on, and so on, .... And, like tribbles, they will comparatively quickly consume all the energy of their editors, multiplying exponentially, eating up anything in sight that doesn't try to eat them back, and comparatively soon dying of overexertion and inactivity. And, by wikipedia policies and guidelines, there's not a bloody thing any of us can do about it. Probably. That's where the proposal below may become useful. It, like the characters in ''Star Trek'', faces square in the face the unlovely appearance of those dear little entities that look like something the cat coughed up, and is willing to, at least potentially, watch some of them die without trying to prevent it.

==Types and Grades of projects==

It is proposed that there be at least three different "types" of WikiProjects recognized. These would include the "national/subnational", the "academic discipline", and the "cultural phenomenon" projects. Miserable names, I know, and if anyone has any better ones, lemme know. Why these in particular? TheAlso, mostprojects centralcould be broken up into "core" and "ancillary" projects. A "Core" project would be one which directly relates to a standard academic discipline, has no obvious parent project which could take over its function, and/or has such a parent, but turning the smaller project into a subproject of thesethe "parent" project would be countedless asthan productive. As an example of the latter, for instance, while [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Christianity]] (and all its subprojects) are all clearly "coredescendant" projects of [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Religion]], the logistics of such a merger, and the benefits thereafter, are such that there would be no reason to accomplish such a merger unless there were extremely serious, seemingly unsolvable, problems with the child project. The majority of the other projects, which, as it were, don't have recognition as being either nations or general academic fields, or are projects dealing only with a comparatively small area within one or more cultural phenomena, would be considered "ancillary" projects, or any other similar name.

Like it or not, much of the content we have relates to individual nation states, most specifically existing nations. There is an "Economy of" article for I think every individual nation on the planet. There are also countless articles about politicians from individual nations, the history, including military history, of individual nations, the physical and political geography of individual nations, and so on. Also, in all honesty, if we want photos of articles related to any number of individual articles, many of which can only or best be found by editors involved with certain states, it helps to have a central gathering place where they can converge. Similarly, if not perhaps as obviously, it would make some degree of sense that separate overseas territories of individual nations have separate articles. Despite his best intentions, for instance, a citizen of Liverpool isn't really likely to be hopping a bus to take photographs of [[Saint Helena]], nor is a citizen of Paris going to get one of [[Miquelon]]. Thus, although they might never be particularly active projects or subprojects, it makes sense to a degree to have individual subprojects for most of these major overseas territories as well.