Wikipedia:The Problem with Projects: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 17:54, 24 February 2008

Revision as of 17:56, 24 February 2008

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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? Also, projects could 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 the "parent" project would be less than productive. As an example of the latter, for instance, while [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Christianity]] (and all its subprojects) are all clearly "descendant" 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, in terms of history, locations, people associated with them, etc., 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.

The academic discipline projects should be obvious. In fact, many of the projects related to these major disciplines already have some style guidelines to ensure that articles related to their subjects are as inclusive and accurate as possible. I also think that it makes a degree of sense to include in this group subjects which have most of the characteristics of major academic disciplines, even if not recognized as separate disciplines per se, considering the "scope" similarity. Thus, there is probably as good a reason for there to be a [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Scientology]] as there is a [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Hinduism]], despite the potential differences in amount of relevant content, based on the general similarity of the subject matter. That is, of course, provided there are individuals interested enough in working such a project. For purposes of organization, even if their names probably don't indicate as much, most of the various WikiProjects on the various kinds of lifeforms would probably be included here as well.