Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Council

A1: A WikiProject is a group of people who want to work together. It is not a subject area, a collection of pages, or a list of articles tagged by the group.

A2: There are 645 WikiProjects tagged as "Active" (see Category:Active WikiProjects), and 291 WikiProjects tagged as "Semi-active" (see Category:Semi-active WikiProjects); many of these have one or more subsidiary task forces or work groups.

A3: Nobody knows, because not all participants add their names to a membership list, and membership lists are almost always out of date. You can find out which projects' main pages are being watched by the most users at Wikipedia:Database reports/WikiProject watchers.

A4: WikiProject Biography has tagged 2,092,277 articles, which is more than three times the size of the second largest number of pages tagged by a WikiProject. About ten groups have tagged more than 100,000 articles. You can see a list of projects and the number of articles they have assessed here.

A5: That is the exclusive right of the participants of the WikiProject. Editors at an article may neither force the group to tag an article nor refuse to permit them to tag an article. See WP:PROJGUIDE#OWN.

A6: You must ask the people who belong to those groups, even if the groups appear to be inactive. It's okay for different groups of people to be working on similar articles. WikiProjects are people, not lists of articles. If you identify and explain clear, practical benefits of a merger to all of the affected groups, they are likely to agree to combining into a larger group. However, if they object, then you may not merge the pages. For less-active groups, you may need to wait a month or more to make sure that no one objects. See Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Guide/Merging WikiProjects for more information.

A7: No, there are no requirements. However, new WikiProjects, especially new groups that are proposed by new editors, rarely remain active for longer than a few months unless there are at least six or eight active editors involved at the time of creation.

A8: Typically, projects are only deleted when they are "false starts" (incomplete projects that never got off the ground), serve as a repository for material that infringes on copyright laws, exist solely as an attack page, or have no other redeeming value. It is more common for semi-active projects to be merged into their parent project, sometimes as a task force. Most inactive and defunct projects are simply left intact with the hope that the materials and discussions collected by the project may become useful at a later date.

A9: The Signpost has written extensively on the subject. Keep in mind that some projects have run their course while others have a scope that is too narrow or too broad to attract a sizable community of editors. If you still want to revive the project, a good way to start is by updating the participants list, inviting new participants, reaching out to active projects for help, and fixing any broken templates and automation. Start discussions on the project's talk page about how to improve the project's organization, goals, and collaborations. Reviving a WikiProject often feels like an uphill battle. Just don't get discouraged.

A10: Anyone can assess articles, although it is wise to read and follow any assessment guidelines unique to a particular project before deciding what "class" and "importance" should be assigned to an article. For instance, WikiProject Biographies has a unique importance structure with 200 "core" articles. Good Articles, Featured Articles, and Featured Lists are determined through processes independent of the WikiProject, so using those assessments inappropriately may have negative repercussions.

A11: No. Each project determines its own scope and can include whatever articles they like. For instance, Elizabeth II is under the scope of 18 projects and task forces while Barack Obama is handled by 22 projects and task forces.

A12: As with all tools available to WikiProjects, not every project has set up a watchlist and some projects may not desire to have one. There are multiple types of watchlists a project can use, from Tim1357's watchlists to new article notifications to article alerts to hot articles. A project can choose whatever watchlists they want to use or even devise their own unique tools.

A13: People tend to use them interchangeably, but the term "related WikiProjects" is broader than "sister WikiProjects." The terms "parent," "sister," and "child" provide a way of categorizing projects. An example of sister projects would be WikiProject Pittsburgh and WikiProject Philadelphia, while related projects would also include their parent projects (WikiProject Cities and WikiProject Pennsylvania in this case), and any child projects or task forces (WikiProject Pittsburgh Steelers and WikiProject University of Pittsburgh come to mind). However, one confusing bit about the term "sister projects" is that it has also been used to compare different wikis or languages of Wikipedia (i.e. Wikisource, Wikinews, Chinese Wikipedia, German Wikipedia, etc.) which is evidenced by the Signpost's defunct sister projects column.

A14: Participating in a WikiProject is easy. Most projects have a participants list to which you can add your name. Next, you'll want to add the project's talk page to your personal watchlist so that you can keep up to date on the latest discussions and help editors in need. Check out the project's Featured and Good Articles for ideas about how to improve articles under the project's scope. Take a look at the project's goals or browse the project's stubs and start-class articles to find areas where you can help today. Projects may offer a userbox you can add to your user page as a sign of pride that also doubles as a way to add yourself to categories listing all users who are interested in a particular topic.

A15: The WikiProject Council is welcome to anyone with ideas for building stronger collaborative links between WikiProjects. Participate in discussions at a variety of projects and try to answer the questions of newcomers. If multiple projects are working on the same article, try to recruit participants from these projects to collaborate. Host meetups for the participants in projects in a particular geographic area. Create contests and backlog drives that anyone can enter. We've interviewed projects that have used social media to recruit participants, partnered with educational institutions, and even manufactured their own games.