Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Council

I'm new, does anyone have any suggestions for pages that need edited?

I'm really new and I'd like some advice. Also how much should I link, and what, and also how much should I correct grammar and what should I correct? Starrysecton (talk) 00:49, 11 May 2025 (UTC)

Hello, @Starrysecton. I have three suggestions for you:

• Go to Special:Homepage, and look at the suggested tasks. (If the link to the special page doesn't work, then you might have to turn on the new editor features in Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-personal-homepage – remember to click the blue 'Save' button at the bottom of the page; prefs changes aren't auto-saving on Wikipedia.)
• Tell us what kinds of subjects interest you (could be anything we've got an article on: anime? books? computers?), so we can show you how to find a relevant WikiProject (=group of editors). For example, if you tell them that you're interested in video games, we could recommend Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games. That group's page says they have some goals, such as the Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/Stubs goal, which means finding a "stub" (=very short article) and adding more content and sources to it.
• Post a note at the Wikipedia:Teahouse to request advice.

WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:45, 11 May 2025 (UTC)

Thank you!! Starrysecton (talk) 14:51, 8 June 2025 (UTC)

Portal creation

How to create a portal on Wikipedia. OωO Mary Joy 20 Marcial (talk) 15:28, 16 May 2025 (UTC)

@Mary Joy 20 Marcial, you can ask for help at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Portals. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:01, 16 May 2025 (UTC)

Thanks! ^ω^ Mary Joy 20 Marcial (talk) 16:03, 20 May 2025 (UTC)

Requesting revival of a WikiProject for an edit-a-thon

I see that the WikiProject on Adoption, Fostering, Orphan Care, and Displacement at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Adoption,_fostering,_orphan_care_and_displacement is defunct during a Wikipedia edit-a-thon focused on adoption issues. There are currently 12 people participating. Grad0507 (talk]]) — Preceding undated comment added 21:40, 1 June 2025 (UTC)

Hi Grad0507, if people are participating in an edit-a-thon then that's likely working closer together than many WikiProjects do. If those participants want to revive a WikiProject they can, but it won't bring any particular benefits to the edit-a-thon or really affect the edit-a-thon at all. CMD (talk) 02:03, 2 June 2025 (UTC)

You don't have to ask permission to WP:REVIVE an old group. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:03, 2 June 2025 (UTC)

Question about task forces

I want to create a task force under a WikiProject. How would I go about doing this? Element10101 AIW WPI TOLT ~ C 22:16, 2 June 2025 (UTC)

@Element10101, are you asking for technical information or for permission? (Permission is easy: go to their talk page, make friends with whoever is there, and ask them if they think it would be a good idea to create a task force.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:48, 3 June 2025 (UTC)

I was asking for permission; thank you! Element10101 AIW WPI TOLT ~ C 00:48, 3 June 2025 (UTC)

Pinkvilla has an RfC

Pinkvilla has an RfC for possible consensus. A discussion is taking place. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments on the discussion page. Thank you.

(2405:6E00:2228:1E34:84A8:53FF:FE92:4009 (talk) 10:08, 12 June 2025 (UTC))

differing criteria for inactive status

The Guide defines, "Projects are generally considered inactive if the talk page has received nothing other than routine/automated announcements or unanswered queries for a year or more." ([[Category:Defunct WikiProjects]] are also "projects with no activity for a year or more.")

Its inactive projects listing greatly shortens the inactivity period and says: "a project page should have had no directly project-related activity for at least three months. Comments from outside parties left on talk pages without response would not qualify as activity by this definition."

The template's doc not only extends by one month, but it also adds two criteria as follows:

• there are no editors listed as members or
• there have been no significant changes to the main project page for four months or
• there have been no discussions on its talk page for four months.

Minor fiddling with formatting, automatic archiving, and unanswered messages to the WikiProject from outsiders ("Could someone with this project please help me with...") or from bots do not count as signs of project activity.

rootsmusic (talk) 01:02, 14 June 2025 (UTC)

Why are you asking about this? WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:39, 14 June 2025 (UTC)

I'm trying to figure out the criteria to change a project's status from semi-active to inactive. I think the Council should have one criterion or a set of criteria to avoid confusion. rootsmusic (talk) 01:49, 14 June 2025 (UTC)

Are you looking at a single group, or do you want to do this en masse? WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:11, 14 June 2025 (UTC)

someone probably should do it en masse, no one has been maintaining the list of active wikiprojects for a while. this would also be the correct place to discuss doing that. Psychastes (talk) 03:18, 14 June 2025 (UTC)

For example, WikiProject Linux's last update was someone marking it active in October 2022. The last answer to a message posted on its talk page was in 2020, (ironically, debating whether or not to mark the project as inactive) so I've remarked it as inactive. Psychastes (talk) 04:17, 14 June 2025 (UTC)

Perhaps more saliently, the last response to a message posted on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Australian literature was over 16 years ago, yet it was marked as active. Psychastes (talk) 04:26, 14 June 2025 (UTC)

What we still lack is an easy way to wrap up such pages while potentially retaining useful tools. CMD (talk) 07:30, 14 June 2025 (UTC)

Agreed, but i think there's somewhat of a catch-22 that if anyone was particularly motivated to make use of them, there'd likely be at least a handful of editors to keep the project alive. Marking them inactive or defunct fortunately doesn't make those resources disappear, but it would be nice to have a standard process for porting a wikiproject into a lighterweight generic "info" page without all the higher-maintenance dross of assessment and article alerts and such. Psychastes (talk) 16:38, 14 June 2025 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Guide/Merging WikiProjects. We either blank and merge (best for very small, long-dead groups, or "groups" that were only ever one person to begin with) or we convert them to task forces.

I would not be surprised if we could manage well with a quarter of the WikiProjects that we currently have. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:40, 14 June 2025 (UTC)

Just looking at a couple of projects. I mistakenly assumed that the Council's own participants would assess, upon request, a project's recent activity to determine whether its status should be changed. Only a bot can assess en masse. rootsmusic (talk) 20:26, 14 June 2025 (UTC)

If you want to post a link to a specific WikiProject, then I'm sure that someone here would be willing to review it and share an opinion. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:44, 14 June 2025 (UTC)

I think it's reasonable for a Wikiproject's talk page to go without any discussion for a few months and not be "inactive" - i would think those should be "semi-active." A year makes sense to me for "inactive" Psychastes (talk) 03:16, 14 June 2025 (UTC)

and we should probably also have an exception for discussions about whether a project is active or not. I don't think it really counts if the only activity on a project someone asking if a project is active every 9 months and getting a generic "it's active" response from an insistent solo maintainer, with no other evidence of collaborative activity. Psychastes (talk) 16:52, 14 June 2025 (UTC)

I'm not aware of any status criteria that requires "collaborative activity" or multiple participants. The template's doc has the following criteria for semi-active status:

• there have been some, but relatively few, significant changes to the main project page for several months or
• there have been some, but relatively few, discussions on its talk page for several months.

rootsmusic (talk) 17:24, 14 June 2025 (UTC)

"collaborative activity" is the phrase used in the templates themselves, but I'm acting under the implicit assumption that a discussion inherently requires two or more participants, a person responding to themselves on a talk page isn't a discussion in the same way an automated post or a person making a post and getting no response isn't a discussion. Psychastes (talk) 17:28, 14 June 2025 (UTC)

Note that [[Category:Defunct WikiProjects]] are also "projects with no activity for a year or more." rootsmusic (talk) 17:09, 14 June 2025 (UTC)

hmm, that's a good point. It looks like the only meaningful difference between the two is that "Inactive" projects can be reactivated by anyone, but "Defunct" projects shouldn't be re-activated without obtaining consensus from associated wikiprojects first? I suppose a year of no collaborative activity isn't an unreasonable amount of time to expect that. As I understand it we effectively have a pause on new WikiProjects at the moment but maybe that process ought to be used also for renewal of defunct projects, I'm seeing a lot of "active" projects that were marked inactive by someone, then "reactivated" by a drive-by editor, which of course was then followed by no actual activity on the project. Psychastes (talk) 17:22, 14 June 2025 (UTC)

Should be asking yourself what is the best way to promote an inactive projects. Does going around tagging projects as inactive help them or cast them out as useless? Moxy🍁 17:39, 14 June 2025 (UTC)

I'm going to be honest, I don't really think I have any reason to care about promoting inactive projects, no. The vast majority of them were started and abandoned shortly after, or served their purpose and can now be retired. And helping editors find out which wikiprojects are active areas for collaboration with an accurate indication of their status is more important than whether or not some editors would like to continue to pretend that projects that have had no activity for several years are still somehow "active" Psychastes (talk) 17:43, 14 June 2025 (UTC)

In the end, after hanging out with this group (i.e., WikiProject Council) since literally before some of our editors were born, my notion of an active group has condensed into a single criterion: Does anyone answer questions, when you ask them?

I strongly object to people creating new WikiProject pages (especially separate templates and categories) unless they've got at least half a dozen experienced editors on board, but if the infrastructure already exists, then the only thing that matters to me is whether this process is functional:

• Editors need help with Example. At the top of Talk:Example, they find a link to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Example, and they ask their question there.
• Someone sees their question on the WikiProject's talk page and answers it.

I don't care whether the group updates the project page. I don't care if there is a list of participants. I don't really even care if there's just one person active these days. All I really care about is: When you knock on the door, does someone answer?

If there have been no answers at all, the group is either inactive or defunct. A talk page that gets very few replies is probably semi-active. Anything else is active.

In terms of process: Updating the tag with your best guess is a good way to see whether anyone is paying attention. If they revert you, then don't re-revert, even if you firmly believe that your rating is better. Sometimes, marking a group as semi-active or inactive is the spur that the last participant needs to WP:REVIVE the group. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:59, 14 June 2025 (UTC)

That all sounds entirely reasonable to me, thanks for explaining! And if marking a project inactive or semi-active sparks more activity all the better :) Psychastes (talk) 20:43, 14 June 2025 (UTC)

@Psychastes, I don't think that was really an invitation to go and mark active wikiprojects as inactive just to see if it annoys people. -- asilvering (talk) 05:37, 15 June 2025 (UTC)

If there have managed to have been no discussions between editors on a project's talk page for an entire year, regardless of the edits to the main page, can you honestly say that that project itself is still active? A few months here and there is surely reasonable, but after twelve consecutive months of no discussion, there is no collaboration happening there! Even if discussion is happening elsewhere, the wikiproject itself is still inactive.

The vast majority of the projects that I marked as inactive had gone *several* years with only unanswered queries and routine/automated messages like GAR and AfD. I suspect the majority of them will go uncontested, because there probably really is no one watching those pages. Nonetheless, if they're re-marked as active by anyone watching the associated project page, I won't contest them. My goal is not to "annoy" people, please assume good faith. My goal is to accurately gauge which projects are truly active. Psychastes (talk) 05:54, 15 June 2025 (UTC)

Yes, I can honestly say that many such projects are still active. Like, for example, WP:ELIT, which is the one I noticed, and WP:BHUTAN, which another editor has already complained about on your talk page. There's no real reason to talk on the talk page of many wikiprojects, and that doesn't make them inactive. I have no idea when the last time I wrote on WT:BOOKS was, but I'm certainly an active member of that wikiproject, for example. In WP:ELIT's case, you can see that editors in the project are still actively collaborating by looking at the main wikiproject page. Please be more careful before marking wikiprojects as inactive or semi-active. @WhatamIdoing asked a pretty simple question, which I think is a good one: All I really care about is: When you knock on the door, does someone answer? You're not knocking on the door. You're just sticking up a "closed" sign on it and waiting to see if someone comes to the door and takes it off. -- asilvering (talk) 06:39, 15 June 2025 (UTC)

Well, I can't say *I* understand what active is supposed to mean here, but I doubt I'm getting an answer to that other than "some editors say it is active when you ask." Regardless, based on feedback, I will not be modifying the status of any more wikiprojects and I will probably minimize my involvement other than watchlisting a few for subjects I find interesting. I would say that my impression of wikiprojects upon reflection from having reviewed the "active" ones from A-L is that by any metric, wikiprojects are not really much of a thing anymore outside of the hard sciences and transportation. I'm not sure what collaboration between editors can be happening at all without regular discussion. However, since other people feel differently, I fully intend to let them continue to do whatever it is they feel they are doing to contribute to English Wikipedia by participating, which is apparently beyond my ken, without perturbing them any further. Cheers. Psychastes (talk) 17:12, 15 June 2025 (UTC)

You've egregiously missed Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history in your impression of active WikiProjects, one of the most (the most?) effective areas of collaboration. CMD (talk) 17:24, 15 June 2025 (UTC)

milhist is basically a hard science ;). And yes, there are others, WIR and Video games or anime or whatever, I wasn't making an exhaustive list. Previously I've mostly been involved with Philosophy and Classics, neither of which projects are particularly active, I'd probably say they were semi-active, there are really only a few people active in either area and the subject areas are vast. It's mostly jarring to see the definition of "active" is shifted so glacially to the other direction. Psychastes (talk) 17:32, 15 June 2025 (UTC)

@Asilvering, are you working together with other people? Or working solo on articles that happen to fall into the scope of the group? Could you name three other editors that you actually work with? And where is your group coordinating its work, since it's not on the group's talk page? WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:57, 15 June 2025 (UTC)

You mean WP:ELIT? All that info's on the main page. There's even an in-person meetup next month. -- asilvering (talk) 04:00, 16 June 2025 (UTC)

So your group doesn't use the talk page consistently (and why would you, if you're at an in-person event?). That's going to make rapid assessment more complicated. Still, in the end, if someone sets an incorrect status, it's easy enough to revert it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:11, 16 June 2025 (UTC)

I suspect it is rare for WikiProjects to be inactive on-wiki but active elsewhere, although I understand activity in places like Discord is increasing. Perhaps we should encourage who at times collaborate elsewhere to post talkpage updates? CMD (talk) 06:51, 16 June 2025 (UTC)

I don't think there's any point in doing that when the activity is obvious on the main page of the wikiproject. This is an invented problem: if someone doesn't come around and mark a wikiproject as inactive simply because there are no recent talk page posts, there is no need for someone to make periodic talk page posts to ward someone off from marking the wikiproject as inactive for no reason other than a lack of recent talk page posts. -- asilvering (talk) 06:59, 16 June 2025 (UTC)

It's not an invented problem, talkpage discussions are the traditional area of activity. What we have is a newly invented aspect of collaboration that is harder to track. CMD (talk) 07:06, 16 June 2025 (UTC)

yeah, WP:OFFWIKI is technically an essay and not WP:PAG but as i understand it, historically there's been pretty strong resistance from the community toward having off-site discussions of content. Personally I would feel intimidated joining a zoom meeting to discuss wiki content with a bunch of people who know each other already in real life, and the lack of any on-wiki documentation of what those conversations were is also a problem for anyone who wants to participate who didn't attend them. And if there are irl meetups where the majority of the discussions take place most editors wouldn't be able to participate at all, which might be fine for a geographical wikiproject but seems concerning for something like WP:ELIT Psychastes (talk) 16:09, 16 June 2025 (UTC)

As someone who has attended zero of those meetups, I do not feel this is a problem. If you find someone who wants to participate in WP:ELIT and is experiencing the problem you describe, please encourage them to say something about it on the talk page of the wikiproject. -- asilvering (talk) 17:03, 16 June 2025 (UTC)

well, but that's the problem isn't it? if the WP:ELIT talk page doesn't have any seemingly-active discussions with responses in the entire past year, (which I've noticed it now does, which is great!), they never do make a discussion on the talk page, because it doesn't look like it's a place where people talk about the project. but if you have regular updates there, ideally with whatever was discussed off-wiki, that encourages people to participate or comment, and they're more likely to use the talk page. Psychastes (talk) 17:25, 16 June 2025 (UTC)

I can tell you what doesn't encourage people to participate or comment - coming to a wikiproject they're interested in and seeing the "inactive" banner. -- asilvering (talk) 17:36, 16 June 2025 (UTC)

That's somewhat part of the point. It's far too common an occurrence for new users to be told to ask a WikiProject, and when they do they receive no help. Inactivity provides a sign that they should look for another WikiProject. CMD (talk) 02:46, 17 June 2025 (UTC)

Yes. That's why we should care about only putting the sign up on projects that are actually inactive, which has been my point this entire time. -- asilvering (talk) 02:52, 17 June 2025 (UTC)

It's a point premised on a possibly unique situation, and others here have been trying to figure that out. There should be some more thinking into how a group operating off-wiki is a WikiProject and how such aspects can be identified amongst the thousands of WikiProjects, rather than assertions of it as a plain fact. CMD (talk) 04:07, 17 June 2025 (UTC)

In re What we have is a newly invented aspect of collaboration that is harder to track:

Remember Wikipedia:Flow (now abandonware)? One of the motivations for it was because Wikipedia:WikiProject Aircraft said that talk pages were too awkward for collaboration in 2004. This isn't "new". Off-wiki discussion was normal until about 2006, even for activities that would shock a newer contributor today, like writing core content policies. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:47, 16 June 2025 (UTC)

Nothing wrong with a project choosing another platform for collaboration. But since actual edits are on Wikipedia, such a project still needs to regularly monitor its Talk page for notifications and announcements related to that project. rootsmusic (talk) 18:34, 16 June 2025 (UTC)

• WP:INACTIVEWP says: "To verify that a project is inactive, post on its talk page asking if anyone minds marking it as such. If there are no objections, you can add inactive to the {{WikiProject status}} template at the top of the WikiProject page." That stage has been ignored in the recent mass addition of "Inactive" templates to WikiProjects. I suggest that these should be removed, and the proper process followed. PamD 08:47, 16 June 2025 (UTC)

  That guideline would benefit from having a time frame added: "If there are no objections..." within a week /month/ when? Not all active editors edit regularly or frequently. PamD 08:49, 16 June 2025 (UTC)

  But if there are no editors working on the project who edit for a month, wouldn't that generally be considered an inactive project? Inactive projects still retain all the assessments and article alerts, it's not like an inactive project goes away! It seems to me from the linked description that a project is "inactive" when it is essentially in maintenance mode, where all the existing articles have been correctly rated, there's not much urgency to improve existing articles, and there's little to be done other than respond to the occasional automated AfD or merge notification. Psychastes (talk) 16:00, 16 June 2025 (UTC)

  It's sort of like wondering when your friend group is inactive: when you haven't met up in a week? a month? a year? or when you try to organize a meeting and it fails to occur? A WikiProject is just a group of editors who have a shared interest in collaborating in a particular area. A lack of new discussion posts doesn't in itself indicate that interest has waned. The main value of an "inactive" indicator is to help editors looking to collaborate in a particular area know that the WikiProject in question might not provide the desired assistance. A courteous inquiry on the WikiProject talk page is a reasonable step to check in with the interested editors. isaacl (talk) 16:17, 16 June 2025 (UTC)

  well yes, it would be courteous to do so, after a few months, maybe close to a year? but i would think a friend group that had found nothing to talk about for a year would be inactive. if one of my group chats or discord servers had no messages at all for a year I would just call that "inactive" and if it had been more than two or three years, it would be completely absurd to assume otherwise. if there were messages already left there, whether they were asking to hang out or asking if anyone was there and no one had responded to them, I would also automatically call that inactive. it would be courteous to do so if I wasn't sure. It flies in the face of common sense to do so in a ghost town. Psychastes (talk) 16:27, 16 June 2025 (UTC)

  The point is that different groups and different people have different standards. It's not necessary to work out frequency of discussion standards to cover all of them. I do agree that lack of responsiveness to new threads is an indicator of inactivity. This may require a check-in message to verify if there is any available assistance. isaacl (talk) 18:24, 16 June 2025 (UTC)

  I follow a few WikiProjects where I would respond, just so someone is there. They are very much dead though, there's no group that can set a standard. CMD (talk) 02:49, 17 June 2025 (UTC)

  Yes, I haven't changed any project's status. When I asked question about a project's scope, it's (apparently) sole participant immediately replied and acknowledged that the project is "somewhat inactive". That reply started my research to understand how the Council defines inactive status. Since there's a participant, I asked on his Talk page about whether the project's status should be changed to "inactive" and he replied that he thinks it should be merged instead. So I didn't change anything. rootsmusic (talk) 15:28, 16 June 2025 (UTC)

  that was me. i changed the status of the wikiprojects Psychastes (talk) 15:46, 16 June 2025 (UTC)

  The guideline says "to verify" that a project is inactive, which I believe implies "if you aren't sure." In the majority of the cases, there were never any non-automated messages ever made on the talk pages at all, and in most of the rest, the last messages or updates were made several years ago. I don't think it would be useful to revert any of these just because a process wasn't followed when common sense would indicate that there would be no response.

  Due to the nature of watchlists, if someone is watching the talk page, they are also watching the main page, and will certainly revert the change (as the inactive template instructs them to do) if they disagree. Of the roughly 250 projects whose status I changed to inactive, approximately 10 of them have done so (all within the first few hours of me doing so), which I know because I watchlisted Category:Active WikiProjects. But about 95% of these edits went uncontested, so mass-reverting them solely for process concerns does not seem appropriate to me.

  However, @PamD, I'd also like to know why you're demanding that these changes be mass-reverted, when it seems like you're not sure if the wikiproject you recently posted on is active either? Since it looks like you've been the only one commenting on that talk page for at least a couple years, you're probably in the best position to determine the level of activity, so I'm certainly alright if you want to revert the status on that project back to active until you see if you get any responses, but this seems like the exception. Psychastes (talk) 15:45, 16 June 2025 (UTC)

  An apparently inactive project still has a value, as being a page which editors interested in the topic can watchlist so that they are alerted to AfDs, RMs, as well as general enquiries in the area of interest. This is going to be particularly the case in geographically-based WPs, where local knowledge, as well as a bookshelf of local sources, can be very helpful. Yes, I've posted Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Lancashire and Cumbria#Is anyone here?, and I will be interested to see who replies - not all editors edit every day, or even every week. PamD 16:05, 16 June 2025 (UTC)

  Yes, this is true, an inactive project still has value. What you are describing with is a page which editors interested in the topic can watchlist so that they are alerted to AfDs, RMs, as well as general enquiries in the area of interest is almost identical to the description of an inactive project. Psychastes (talk) 16:12, 16 June 2025 (UTC)

  As to verifying, I should have quoted two sentences from WP:INACTIVEWP, not just one: "To verify that a project is inactive, post on its talk page asking if anyone minds marking it as such. If there are no objections, you can add inactive to the {{WikiProject status}} template at the top of the WikiProject page." Note the "If there are no objections". I think that makes it crystal clear that a posting on the talk page, and a reasonable delay to allow for response, is expected before you label a WP as "inactive". Please revert your inappropriate labelling of projects without consultation. PamD 16:09, 16 June 2025 (UTC)

  Please don't WP:WikiLawyer. If you don't intend to respond except to cite your interpretation of the rules this will not be a productive discussion. Psychastes (talk) 16:11, 16 June 2025 (UTC)

  I'm not Wikilawyering: I'm suggesting that you should have done what the Guideline tells you to do. What's the problem with that? PamD 16:22, 16 June 2025 (UTC)

  yes, insisting on the letter of the law in order to win an argument on a technicality is Wikilawyering. if you can't explain why over 95% of the projects I marked inactive without consulting them first haven't reverted my edits, or why you think reverting and consulting them will result in a different outcome in the end, I don't see why I should do so either. Psychastes (talk) 16:32, 16 June 2025 (UTC)

  I completely fail to understand how "please follow both the letter and the spirit of the guideline" is an attempt at wikilawyering. -- asilvering (talk) 17:01, 16 June 2025 (UTC)

  i fail to understand how you could read my comment that you responded to and come away with the impression that I thought that the spirit of the guideline was any different than what I followed, or how any of the comments above engaged meaningfully with the spirit of the guideline whatsoever. Common sense would suggest that anyone who disagreed with my edits would revert them. Roughly 10 out of 250 wikiprojects have done so, and only one of them in the past 24 hours. "You didn't follow the correct process and 95% of the outcomes were identical to the outcomes that would have occurred if you had followed the correct process to begin with" is not a very compelling argument for going back and following the process! Psychastes (talk) 17:38, 16 June 2025 (UTC)

  If that process had been followed, none of this discussion would have taken place, and you wouldn't have felt it necessary to close off the discussion on your own talk page, either. I think that's pretty compelling, myself. -- asilvering (talk) 17:41, 16 June 2025 (UTC)

  Yes, my assumption that the vast majority of people wouldn't mind or at most would ask for clarification appears to have been correct, however I distinctly underestimated the amount of back-and-forth discussions that would be pursued by exactly two dedicated editors unwilling to drop the WP:STICK. But I don't find that a compelling reason to mass-revert, it's mostly encouraging me to limit my interactions with those two people in the future. Psychastes (talk) 17:54, 16 June 2025 (UTC)

  Personally, I don't see this as a matter of following rules, but of courtesy. I think the courteous approach is to ask a group if they are continuing to provide assistance in collaborating within a given domain. (I appreciate, though, that the specifics of individual situations can play a role in deciding the best approach.) It isn't the end of the world if an abrupt action is taken, but it uses up some of the community's social capital needed to collaborate effectively. isaacl (talk) 18:14, 16 June 2025 (UTC)

  @Isaacl Yes, thank you, I think courtesy is key here. I may be somewhat over-reacting to having an "inactive" tag suddenly added to a Wikiproject I am involved in. If someone had followed the method mandated in the guideline - an enquiry on the project talk page, with perhaps some information about how an "inactive" project is defined, that its pages won't summarily be deleted, etc - I would not have felt the same way. Editors here are all volunteers and should be treated with courtesy and respect.

  There's another tag I've sometimes seen, to say that a project is "Semi-active" or some such wording. That doesn't seem to have been considered in the current discussion. PamD 07:55, 17 June 2025 (UTC)

  I think marking WikiProject Lancashire and Cumbria as semi-active makes sense. Sadly there seems to be inconsistent documentation on the different statuses and how or when they can be changed (compare the status descriptions on the template and how they can be changed to the ones we've been discussing here from WP:INACTIVEWP), and, as far as I can tell, what I'm about to propose isn't reflected anywhere yet, but I think that "there might not necessarily be any new discussions from the past year, but there is at least one active editor watching the page who can answer any queries" is the type of message that "semi-active" should reasonably communicate. Even without any updates to documentation that seems like a good solution to me, it's close to what I expect when I see the "semi-active" banner on the top of a wikiproject.

  As far as I can tell, there is no functional difference between "active" and "semi-active" projects in how they're treated by assessments or how they display in Rater or any other way, other than the banner displayed at the top and the category they're in (though someone else please correct me if I'm wrong) Psychastes (talk) 15:47, 17 June 2025 (UTC)

  Thanks, Pam, for reminding me of this. This should solve the "en masse" automation problem:

  • We can make a list of WikiProjects with no replies to comments on their talk pages during the last year. (Pinging @Cryptic for advance warning about what I'm likely to post at Wikipedia:Request a query)
  • We can post a WP:MassMessage to all groups on the list. The basic message will be "If you are an active participant, you must reply to this message within ____ days, or the bot will mark this group as inactive".
  • We can send a bot around to check for replies, and mark the group as inactive if nobody replied. (This should probably also post a second message, saying that it's okay to revert the bot if you are actively watching the talk page and commit to answering future questions. Also, pinging @Gonnym, who knows about template-editing bots, for advance warning.)

  As with all bot-related tasks, my assumption is that we should start with very generous parameters, to minimize the risk of false positives. So: No replies to anything at all for more than a year (13 months? 18 months?)? I wonder if it would be possible to check archived discussions, too. And ideally, for the third step, it would check for any replies to anything, not just to the status question. What do you think? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:58, 16 June 2025 (UTC)

  Support - This solution decreases overhead and guarantees that the process will be followed instead of relying on someone proactively maintaining the list of active wikiprojects. I think we likely will want to check the archives; from my experience reviewing the talk pages, there are many wikiprojects with a talk-page archive rate of 3-6 months where the most recent discussion was more than a few months but less than a year ago, where the last active discussion is in the archive, but many other talk pages with the same archive rate where the last discussion was several years ago, so we can't just ignore pages with quick archive rates. I think 18 months will probably be ideal; while I didn't run into many projects in the 12-18 month range, there were many projects that had gone 10-11 months without activity and I'd worry about pestering people on a regular basis. Psychastes (talk) 18:26, 16 June 2025 (UTC)

  I agree that pestering people frequently would be a highly undesirable result. I'd be happy with 18 months for the initial bot-based process. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:25, 16 June 2025 (UTC)

  Task forces too? The Guide is most generous, because it says "Projects are generally considered inactive if the talk page has received nothing other than routine/automated announcements or unanswered queries for a year or more." I assume that changing to inactive status wouldn't prevent a sole participant from merging the inactive project with another one. rootsmusic (talk) 18:27, 16 June 2025 (UTC)

  i'm not sure if this is feasible, because most task forces I've seen redirect their talk page to the main project talk page. i think many task forces don't really function as a separate entity from the main group other than for assessment tracking Psychastes (talk) 18:32, 16 June 2025 (UTC)

  I don't know about other task forces, but I believe that Regional and national music task force is inactive based on its own Talk page. rootsmusic (talk) 18:37, 16 June 2025 (UTC)

  My impression is that the trend of redirecting taskforce talkpages to the main WikiProject talkpages is because of this inactivity. Redirecting solves the problem of a lack of presence (assuming the parent WikiProject is active) while maintaining the tools. CMD (talk) 02:51, 17 June 2025 (UTC)

  I thought that WP:TF shouldn't redirect to this Talk page, because task forces operate differently from projects. rootsmusic (talk) 03:21, 17 June 2025 (UTC)

  The operation of both is much the same, TFs mainly provide an additional bit of depth into the organizational structure of what is otherwise quite a flat system of putting huge topics into one WikiProject. CMD (talk) 04:09, 17 June 2025 (UTC)

  A task force's talk page can be redirected to the main group's page – or not – depending on what those editors want to do. The group may even change its mind periodically. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:13, 17 June 2025 (UTC)

  I would not bother with task forces. Individual WikiProjects have control over their task forces.

  Even if we wanted to do this for task forces eventually, I would definitely not do that on the first round. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:24, 16 June 2025 (UTC)

  Should link Wikipedia:Robotic editing somewhere. Moxy🍁 23:27, 16 June 2025 (UTC)

  If someone replies to acknowledge that a project is semi-active or to ask about merging, the bot wouldn't have the capability to understand and respond. rootsmusic (talk) 15:46, 17 June 2025 (UTC)

  i expect most editors will know it's a bot; but we can write the text it posts in a way that makes that clear and refers them here if they have questions. programmatically handling "is there someone who replies to the message at all" and leaving the rest to human judgment seems like the right way forward to me Psychastes (talk) 16:41, 17 June 2025 (UTC)

  MassMessages should normally be signed by the individual who sends the message, not by bots. The messages should provide sufficient information for most cases, and point people to other ways to get help. This is not difficult. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:03, 17 June 2025 (UTC)

  If projects must have multiple participants, then the bot should wait for more than one participant to reply? By the way, the FAQ's Q7 hasn't been edited. rootsmusic (talk) 19:23, 20 June 2025 (UTC)

  No, I think we want to take the barest sign of life as sufficient. It'd be bad if someone answers the question completely, and then we said "Nobody posted a pointless and redundant reply like 'What he said', so that proves nobody's here". Changes made en masse should be as conservative as possible. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:00, 20 June 2025 (UTC)

WikiProject Men in Music

Hello! I want to create a WikiProject called "Men in music" (just like to WikiProject Women in Music). I am currently building the WikiProject for this and this scope for this WikiProject is for all mens composers, singers, mens works related to music and their biographies. I believe this is helpful too since there's a Women in Music, there's for men too to help men's music articles and build it collaboratively like a stub articles, missing sources etc.

I hope you can help me to build this or if you want more to clarify, just ping me. Thanks. ROY is WAR Talk! 08:31, 18 June 2025 (UTC)

Why not join Wikipedia:WikiProject Music. What is the advantage of separating by gender? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:56, 18 June 2025 (UTC)

Hi, Martin!

I already participating in WikiProject Music. This is not because I just want to, because I want to help editors to easily collaboration to the men's music. This WikiProject was to intended to help coordinate specific cleanup, organization, and quality improvements (especially to BLP) across the numerous of articles about Male musicians.

The goal of Men in Music:

• Numerous articles on male artists (especially new and existing groups or songs created by male musician) are poorly sourced, not in neutral point of view or fan point of view, over promotional or the article are not maintained to updated especially on GA and FA.
• Biographies of Male musicians are more crucial and sometimes sees on Article of Deletion (AfD), so to prevent on AfD, why not to save the article on deletion, right?

This proposal are not intended to mirror or duplicate of Women in Music just because of gender. If you are not confident on my proposal, I should proceed this WikiProject proposal as a task force? I hope you can consider this.

Thanks! ROY is WAR Talk! 14:42, 18 June 2025 (UTC)

@Royiswariii, a WP:WikiProject is a group of editors. Where are the other editors in your group? WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:36, 18 June 2025 (UTC)

Please recall the advice you were given at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Council/Archive 26 § Creating a WikiProject and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Council/Archive 26 § WikiProject Reviving and Changing the name. Your attempt then to create a new WikiProject appears to have been premature, since you've moved on to a broader topic area. As suggested last time, I feel it would be better to collaborate within an existing wikiProject and re-evaluate after some time to see how well it's working. isaacl (talk) 16:35, 18 June 2025 (UTC)

isaacl Where can I gather a member for my proposal? ROY is WAR Talk! 05:28, 20 June 2025 (UTC)

Please see the discussions to which I linked for advice regarding finding collaborators. isaacl (talk) 17:16, 20 June 2025 (UTC)

WP:REVIVE also has some advice on this subject. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:28, 20 June 2025 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing if a abandoned WikiProject and if we revive it, can we proceed to Renaming a WikiProject? ROY is WAR Talk! 17:37, 20 June 2025 (UTC)

Once again, it doesn't really feel like you're taking into consideration the advice you've already been given. I'm uncertain, though, on how to reword this advice. Perhaps your mentor (who you can see at Special:Homepage), or some other experienced editor involved with one of the WikiProjects that you've collaborated with might help help explain matters in a different way. isaacl (talk) 18:08, 20 June 2025 (UTC)

@Royiswariii, who is "we"? About a hundred thousand editors have made 1+ edits this month. Do any of them want to work with you? I am literally asking whether you can ping one (1) single editor who has told you that they'd like to work on articles about male musicians. Have you ever talked to anyone at all about this idea, and had them express positive interest?

If the answer is yes, then please ping that person now.

If the answer is no, then please stop posting here until you have already done enough recruiting work to make the answer yes.

If/when the answer ever becomes yes, ask that other editor to post on this page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:58, 20 June 2025 (UTC)

This editor is now engaged in creating a new task force called Tambayan Philippines/Pinoy Big Brother. I'm sure it will lead to great activity and collaborative editing. Or not ... — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:51, 25 June 2025 (UTC)

And didn't discuss it with the WikiProject. We can take the lot to MFD+CFD+TFD, but having to clean up a mess like this is exactly what we were trying to avoid by creating these rules.

I'll go ask Wikipedia talk:Tambayan Philippines if they're willing to host this group. If we don't get a positive response, then here's the pages to deal with:

• Category:List-Class Pinoy Big Brother task force articles
• Category:Stub-Class Pinoy Big Brother task force articles
• Category:Start-Class Pinoy Big Brother task force articles
• Category:C-Class Pinoy Big Brother task force articles
• Category:B-Class Pinoy Big Brother task force articles
• Category:GA-Class Pinoy Big Brother task force articles
• Category:A-Class Pinoy Big Brother task force articles
• Category:FL-Class Pinoy Big Brother task force articles
• Category:FA-Class Pinoy Big Brother task force articles
• Category:Pinoy Big Brother task force articles by quality
• Category:Unknown-importance Pinoy Big Brother task force articles
• Category:Top-importance Pinoy Big Brother task force articles
• Category:NA-importance Pinoy Big Brother task force articles
• Category:Mid-importance Pinoy Big Brother task force articles
• Category:Low-importance Pinoy Big Brother task force articles
• Category:High-importance Pinoy Big Brother task force articles
• Category:Pinoy Big Brother task force articles by importance
• Category:Pinoy Big Brother task force articles
• Category:Pinoy Big Brother task force
• Wikipedia:PBB
• Wikipedia talk:Tambayan Philippines/Pinoy Big Brother
• Wikipedia:Tambayan Philippines/Pinoy Big Brother

WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:54, 25 June 2025 (UTC)

See Wikipedia talk:Tambayan Philippines#Task force. It appears that this was first proposed to be part of a different WikiProject, but Wikipedia:WikiProject Big Brother rejected it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:01, 25 June 2025 (UTC)

Please see Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Tambayan Philippines/Pinoy Big Brother. This is the first step in unwinding this mess. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:56, 7 July 2025 (UTC)

See also Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2025 July 12#Template:WikiProject Big Brother. This is the second step in unwinding this mess. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:21, 12 July 2025 (UTC)

Proposals update

The consistent theme from recent attempts to start WikiProjects is that editors are operating in a "build it first, and people will join later" mode. This has been proven ineffective hundreds of times over the years, and left the rest of us with hundreds of defunct and doomed collections of templates and categories to clean up.

I have made some small changes yesterday, mostly to put "You must recruit multiple participants before writing a proposal" higher on the page, and highlighted as shown here.

I think this will help, but if it's not, we could move to a more procedure-focused model, in which proposals must ping X number of editors when made, and that Y of them must respond affirmatively within a set length of time, or the proposal will be rejected.

As always, I'm interested in learning what you think about the new process and our iterations on it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:28, 20 June 2025 (UTC)

As you've often said, editors don't read the instructions, so I'm not optimistic that those who weren't reading the bolded text for item #4 before will read the new highlighted text and the bolded text for the repositioned item #4 (now item #2).

Unless the approval process is made mandatory, I don't know how to enforce the principles of having a group of interested participants at hand immediately, and to prefer using a broader scope WikiProject if feasible. Even it were mandatory, there's no skin in the game to prevent editors from saying they're interested, and then discontinuing participation after a week or two. (Which is a very common pattern on English Wikipedia, and given that most editors are volunteers, not one that is likely to change.)

I suggest for those who do read the instructions to emphasize that the participants should ideally be ones who have already been active in the topic area for several months, and that they should have already been collaborating on the talk page of a broader scope WikiProject for that time. But I don't think it's feasible to make this a hard rule as it would prevent new broad scope WikiProjects from establishing themselves immediately, without any gain (I'm thinking of WikiProject AI Cleanup as an example). isaacl (talk) 18:00, 20 June 2025 (UTC)

Or Wikipedia:WikiProject COVID-19, which spun up pretty quickly. That will hopefully be a once-in-a-lifetime experience, but we need to leave a path for it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:49, 20 June 2025 (UTC)

There's an interesting example at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Former countries#Discussion on the fate of WP:PRUSSIA if you weren't aware. I mostly wish everything was easier to spin down, which would make it much easier to spin things up, but success on that front has not proved easy either. CMD (talk) 20:09, 20 June 2025 (UTC)

I have been hoping that pushing informal user groups, which don't have templates and categories, would help with the clean up problems.

If we have a reasonable path towards 'full' WikiProjects, I suspect that we could get an official rule that new uses of Module:WikiProject banner are prohibited without formal approval. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:48, 20 June 2025 (UTC)

Maintenance categories by WikiProject

This query: https://quarry.wmcloud.org/query/94925 looks at articles in specific categories, and makes a list of WikiProjects that have tagged those articles. I'm using the resulting list to check for active groups and then manually post a request, with the list of articles, on the group's talk page.

It should theoretically be possible to have a message-delivery bot assemble the message, but there are only 178 groups in this list, and some of them are inactive anyway.

This might be a useful model for some backlog drives to adapt. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:35, 25 June 2025 (UTC)

Project Content Gaps (Wenard Institute)

An editor @Ally at Wenard had created Wikipedia:Project Content Gaps (Wenard Institute) aiming to convert it into a WikiProject, without any prior discussion. Unfortunately, it did not gain much traction, and Ally remains the only editor who have worked in that space, and even they have been inactive since March 2021. I considered userfying the project page into their userspace, but realised that this page has many incoming links from article via {{Wenard attribution}}. I think there should be a page for Wenard Institution in the projectspace due to their invaluable contributions to Wikipedia, but not a WikiProject. What do others think about it? —CX Zoom[he/him] ^{(let's talk • {C•X})} 14:16, 28 June 2025 (UTC)

Here are a few ideas:

We could remove the link from the template.

Is the Wenard Institute notable under Wikipedia:Notability (organizations and companies) rules? If so, we could create an article and change the link to point to that.

We could move the page to a title such as Wikipedia:Wenard Institute donations. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:11, 28 June 2025 (UTC)

I don't think that they are notable enough for an article. Regarding the latter move suggestion, I support it. —CX Zoom[he/him] ^{(let's talk • {C•X})} 18:54, 28 June 2025 (UTC)

See Wikipedia talk:Project Content Gaps (Wenard Institute)#Requested move 7 July 2025. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:00, 7 July 2025 (UTC)

Proposing a new project Wikipedia:WikiProject_Sustainable_Development

Hello, I know that I've acted a bit too fast for this, but I did it because I know that there is interest in this subject, because of my involvement with the WMSDG User Group. Can anyone help me get this going? Thanks. Egezort (talk) 12:34, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

@Egezort. please ping the other editors who intend to participate in this group. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:21, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

Why a wikiproject sustainable development not a WikiProject:Development with a sustainability task force or something like that? It just seems overly specific and more a buzzword/cliche term than a discrete project area. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:26, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

It could be a WP:TASKFORCE of Wikipedia:WikiProject United Nations. Or they could just take over and WP:REVIVE the UN project. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:29, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

@Horse Eye's Back, It's based on the UN's 17 Sustainable Development Goals, so it's very broad in scope. There are many other Wikiprojects with similar scopes, but none are explicitly based around this.

There's a user group, meta:Wikimedians for Sustainable Development that I have been active in for quite some time. And I'm trying to get this wikiproject going in parallel with my work in that group. For example, meta:Wikimedians_for_Sustainable_Development/Annual_plan_2025/Progress is directly relevant to what I want to do here. I considered reviving another relevant Wikiproject, but this seemed like the cleanest approach. Egezort (talk) 18:29, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

That doesn't seem like a discrete wikiproject area. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:47, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

Discrete and/or sensible scopes are not required for WikiProjects; the WP:PROJSCOPE is any articles they volunteer to support.

The requirement is a group of editors who say they want to work together. Waving at the existence of an affiliate is not enough, since those members might not be interested in editing the English Wikipedia. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:53, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing That's fair, I'll send the link of the current page to the WMSDG Telegram group, and if I get some interest there, I'll ping you here and let you know. Thanks! Egezort (talk) 19:44, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

That isn't what the link says... It says that scope will be formalized and publicized, which means that it must be a discrete area of some kind (there is no way that something can be "tangentially related to the scope of a WikiProject" otherwise). Now of course that discrete area can and does change as members join or leave a wikiproject, but it never doesn't exist. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 13:58, 12 July 2025 (UTC)

It says: "A WikiProject's participants define the scope of their project (the articles that they volunteer to track and support)". There is nothing in there that says it must be "formalized", "publicized", "discrete", or anything else. The group's scope is what the group volunteers to support, full stop. It is allowed to be seemingly random articles (e.g., Wikipedia:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors). WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:47, 12 July 2025 (UTC)

And how do you define a non-discrete scope? That seems like an impossibility, if a scope can be defined it is discrete. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:54, 12 July 2025 (UTC)

@Horse Eye's Back, @WhatamIdoing, I think that even if the policy doesn't allow for a non-discrete scope, the Sustainable Development is very clear and discrete in its scope. It's just that there are a lot of different subjects involved at the same time. Otherwise, the 17 Goals of the UN are very clear.

I'm still trying to get new editors involved and will notify you when that happens. Egezort (talk) 16:58, 12 July 2025 (UTC)

I think if you mean to go with the UN goals specifically and not sustainable development in general Sustainable Development Goals would be a better name. I for example am very interested in sustainable development and would participate in such a project but have very little interest in the UN Goals specifically and no real interest in participating in a project about them. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:06, 12 July 2025 (UTC)

Anything related to Sustainable Development is probably in the scope of the 17 goals to begin with. I didn't want to do the latter because there are other similar wikiprojects with this name, and also because it's not an academic work on the goals themselves. I would assume a Wikiproject about "Sustainable Development Goals" would be about maintaining the UN documents and efforts, and not the subjects involved. Egezort (talk) 17:09, 12 July 2025 (UTC)

Then what is the point of making the 17 goals the scope and not just sustainable development? Its its about the subjects involved and not the UN documents and efforts why make it explicitly about the UN documents and efforts and not the subjects involved? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:12, 12 July 2025 (UTC)

The UN documents provide a framework to approach things with. So, for example, if I contributed a bit about women's rights in a specific country, I would put that under "Goal 5" in the Wikiproject documentation. The documents create a sort of backbone that allows for people to work together on, like I might say "We're doing an edit-a-thon on Goal 6 tomorrow", and the scope would be much more well defined than if I had said "Clean Water and Sanitation". Egezort (talk) 17:50, 12 July 2025 (UTC)

But isn't the development goal gender equality not women's rights? If you're being that broad wouldn't goal 14 and goal 15 together mean the wikiproject covers all living things on the planet? As for goal 6 we already have a WikiProject Sanitation and a WikiProject Water. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:42, 12 July 2025 (UTC)

Women's rights are part of gender equality. You cannot have gender equality without women's rights. The apparently intended scope is not "17 articles, each of which align exactly and precisely with the 17 UN goals, and nothing else". The apparently intended scope is "any article, or part of an article, that relates in some way or another with the 17 UN goals".

@Egezort, these UN goals are meant to run until 2030. Then the UN will create a new set of (very similar) goals. What's your group going to do in 2031? WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:48, 12 July 2025 (UTC)

As the user group, we don't yet have a solid plan as the WMSDG for after 2030, we do have a strategy document for what our approach will be until 2030, and also we have an annual plan there. I assume that the UN will have a new set of goals (like the Millennium Development Goals before this one), and then we can continue that effort. I don't know if we'll have to change the name for it, either for the Affiliate, or for the Wikiproject.

You're right about the intended scope here. And also, as @Horse Eye's Back said, there are many WikiProjects for most, if not all of the goals. But this one aims to be a central hub for those too. That's why I also included a related Wikiprojects section.

As for being too broad, "Life on land" technically would include all humans, and therefore one could argue that even biographies are in the scope of this project. But we shouldn't take "Life on land" that literally here. What we would deem within our scope is stuff that you can see here: https://sdgs.un.org/goals/goal15 Egezort (talk) 18:56, 12 July 2025 (UTC)

And what I see there is "Biodiversity and ecosystems" "Forests" "Mountains" "National strategies and SDG integration" "Desertification, land degradation and drought" so goal 15 its actually broader than all non-human life on land. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 20:10, 12 July 2025 (UTC)

"any article, or part of an article, that relates in some way or another with the 17 UN goals" would mean that 70-80% of articles on wikipedia are in-scope. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 20:06, 12 July 2025 (UTC)

If a group volunteers for 70–80% of articles on Wikipedia, then that's okay. The group decides which articles they support, exactly like individual editors decide which articles they support.

• You cannot force an individual WP:VOLUNTEER to support any article just because you think it makes sense for their interests; in an exactly similar way, you cannot force a group of WP:VOLUNTEERS to support any article just because you think it makes sense for their interests.
• The converse is also true: You cannot stop an individual volunteer from caring about an article just because you think they shouldn't care about it, and you cannot stop a group of volunteers from caring about an article just because you think they shouldn't care about it.

WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:37, 12 July 2025 (UTC)

But I will be a member of any WikiProject Sustainable Development. What you can not do is give a wikiproject a false or misleading name, such as naming a wikiproject Sustainable Development when its actually about something else. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 20:55, 12 July 2025 (UTC)

There are no rules restricting the names of WikiProjects (aside from the technical rules imposed by the software). They do not even have to include the word "WikiProject". WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:08, 13 July 2025 (UTC)

If you want to be technical we have a principle not a rule... The principle of least astonishment. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 01:18, 13 July 2025 (UTC)

I don't think there is a least astonishment difference between SDGs and the concepts they are meant to make less diffuse. Diffuseness might harm focus, but if the people involved can overcome that, the group might work. I'm currently working on an article for Wikipedia:WikiProject SDG13. CMD (talk) 01:20, 13 July 2025 (UTC)

I'm not seeing a Wikipedia:WikiProject SDG13, that link goes to Wikipedia:WikiProject Climate change. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 01:36, 13 July 2025 (UTC)

The "principle of least astonishment" is about what readers see. It has nothing to do with how groups of editors self-identify their group. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:53, 13 July 2025 (UTC)

It also applies to the talk page. Are you saying that wikiproject tags don't go on talk pages? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 15:00, 13 July 2025 (UTC)

What makes you think that the principle of least astonishment, which is imposed on us by foundation:Resolution:Controversial content, applies to talk pages? WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:44, 13 July 2025 (UTC)

The readers also read our talk pages. I would imagine that the principle of least astonishment has common consensus, so imposition or otherwise why not follow it? Its best practice regardless. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:54, 13 July 2025 (UTC)

• Readers rarely stumble across talk pages or other back-end pages.
• There's nothing astonishing about different groups of editors wanting to improve Wikipedia.
• It is a well-established principle, supported by consensus since before you created your previous account, that WikiProjects can tag any article they want. (See, e.g., fights over WP:LGBT in 2008, WP:WPUSA in 2011...), even if this might irritate or surprise readers or editors.

WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:16, 13 July 2025 (UTC)

Readers are not as ignorant as you think they are... I've met a lot of non-editors who tell me that reading the talk pages are their favorite part. I never said or suggested that "different groups of editors wanting to improve Wikipedia." would be astonishing, you appear to be mocking me or casting aspersions. We are not talking about whether or not they can tag articles and I don't appreciate the personal attack based on how long I've edited. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 19:23, 13 July 2025 (UTC)

I believe that if you look at the conversation above, you will find that you brought up the subject of WikiProject tags on talk pages, and whether those might astonish readers.

Noting that your previous accounts first edits were in 2018, in the context of decisions made a decade before then, is not a personal attack. If you would like it to be spelled out more concretely, you should interpret my previous sentence as meaning something similar to "I believe it would be unreasonable to assume that anyone to be aware of discussions that happened many years before their first edit." WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:51, 13 July 2025 (UTC)

Michelin Guide task force

See also: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Food_and_drink/Michelin_Guide_task_force § Should_this_task_force_become_a_WikiProject_on_its_own?

Over at the Michelin Guide task force, we are considering converting the task force into a WikiProject because the scope of the Michelin Guide spans restaurants (WikiProject food and drink) and hotels (WikiProject Hotels, WikiProject Travel and tourism). We are an active project that's been generating a lot of quality content in recent months, including Good articles and Featured lists. If we decide to become a WikiProject, can we be bold and move the page or do we need to go through some sort of process here? Guidance welcome. ---Another Believer _(Talk) 19:01, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

@Another Believer, How many editors regularly participate in the group? WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:23, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

Based on the task force project and its talk page, I'd say five: me, Expandinglight5, History6042, Dtmich24, and Tbhotch. ---Another Believer _(Talk) 19:25, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

That's a little thin, but you're all experienced editors.

Why not WP:REVIVE WikiProject Travel and tourism instead? That would cover restaurants and hotels. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:20, 12 July 2025 (UTC)

I won't speak for others, but I think there's probably interest in keeping the scope limited to the Michelin Guide and not covering the industry as a whole. ---Another Believer _(Talk) 02:38, 12 July 2025 (UTC)

I agree with this, all travel and tourism seems like a very big expansion. History6042😊 (Contact me) 18:08, 12 July 2025 (UTC)

Is there anything inside the scope of that group, that's outside the scope of your group? If not, then you could WP:MOVE your existing task force under that group. This would be a "least effort" way to organize the group. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:45, 12 July 2025 (UTC)

Anything not covered by the Michelin Guides and Keys is outside the scope. History6042😊 (Contact me) 21:40, 12 July 2025 (UTC)

I don't know if I've explained this clearly.

You're thinking about a separate WikiProject because:

• your group is currently organized under WP:FOOD
• but your scope only partly overlaps with WP:FOOD and partly does not (i.e., the hotel-related content), which is awkward for tagging articles (e.g., Wikipedia:Article alerts would list Michelin-related hotel content for the whole group, which isn't interested in it).

The first solution you have thought of is:

• just be a separate WikiProject.

I'm suggesting that you consider the alternative of:

• continuing to be a task force, but placing your task force under WP:TRAVEL

The identified problem with being part of WP:FOOD is that your group wants to support articles that FOOD doesn't want to support. No such objection can be made to TRAVEL, as TRAVEL's scope already encompasses 100% of the articles your group supports. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:05, 13 July 2025 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2025 July 2 § Template:WikiProject Disambiguation

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2025 July 2 § Template:WikiProject Disambiguation. —CX Zoom[he/him] ^{(let's talk • {C•X})} 21:33, 11 July 2025 (UTC)