Wikipedia:The Problem with Projects: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 20:56, 24 February 2008

Revision as of 20:59, 24 February 2008

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==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? 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 Texas]] (and all its subprojects) are all in a sense clearly "descendant" projects of [[Wikipedia:WikiProject United States]], considering that the scope of the Texas project and its subprojects clearly falls within the scope of the "larger" project. So, if that project, for whatever extremely unlikely reason, were found to be actively counterproductive for whatever reason, or simply moribund with little if any hope of reviving, it might very reasonably be considered to merge it into the larger United States project, given the benefits to be garnered by doing so, including presumably causing other editors to become at least potentially interested in that content, thereafter. And, of course, if it were found to be explicitly, counterproductively, POV pushing to such a degree that it merited deletion on that basis, the so-called "parent" project could create a separate "subproject" to deal with the relevant content, such ensuring that there were at least some ongoing supervision of that content. Other examples of similar situations could be used as well. Such was proposed at a recent discussion regarding the deletion of a project regarding the Republic of Macedonia, at [[Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:WikiProject ROMacedonia]].

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, as the content with which they work, while important, may already have one or more other active projects which are prepared to work to improve and maintain that content.