Wikipedia:The Problem with Projects: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 21:16, 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 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, wouldcould 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. This is in no way indicating that such projects as [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Elvis Presley]], [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Star Wars]], [[Wikipedia:WikiProject 24]], [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Halo]], or any other projects which deal with such comparatively "limited" scope are in any way counterproductive to Wikipedia, or less than useful in improving their content, so long as they are in fact doing so. However, if, as has been the case with some projects, their activity level drops to the point where it might even be better for the encyclopedia as a whole if they were to have the additional "parent" (for lack of a better word), become more actively involved in the content, it might be a reasonable idea for the smaller scope project to "formalize" a relationship

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.