[Wikipedia-l] Restructuring, renaming, creating and removing Wikiprojects

Sun Jun 20 11:21:48 UTC 2004

Hello all - 

This may have something to do with the ongoing discussion on categories.

I just did a little restructuring of the Wikiprojects Catalogue today (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject), renaming some of the categories. I don't think any of them should be objectionable, but please let me know if they are. More importantly, I have renamed/ changed the content of two of the Wikiprojects - Authors (empty) and Novels, under the Literature section. They appear not to have been much of a success. There is already a Wikiproject for Books, and I feel this is far too vague, and I have split the Books section further into Classic & Canonical Fiction, Contemporary, Poetry, Mass Market and Genre Fiction, and Miscellaneous Prose. To include really vague sections - "novels" and "authors" under an already very vague section, makes things far too confusing. We should list either Authors or Books, not both (I prefer Books, since one Author might fit in too many categories); I am keeping an Authors LIST to make navigation quick, but that's all (it needs editing
 and lengthening); the link to the "Novels" section has been removed, but the page is still available at [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Novels]] in case someone wishes to retrieve it for some reason. If it's not needed, please delete it.

I would also like to bring together as many people as possible to contribute to the main Literature Wikiproject, under which I hope to incorporate the History of Literature and mention numerous writers from all the world who may or may not be well known in the West, but are not given enough space anyway; similarly for the (new) Painting and Sculpture, Opera, International Cinema and any related projects. All comments, contributions etc welcome. (The above is also posted the Wikiprojects Talk page.)

As for the Categories issue: I have not thought about it as profoundly as some of you have. I only joined about three days back and I posted this at the Village Pump and Help Desk not long after: 

"There is no coherent, rational structure or index for the distribution of articles, and no specified protocol which makes this structure/ index possible; because the current distribution is not rational, access routes to information are not reversible. Though each article has links that lead to other links, it is quite random; to illustrate with an example, a) User A creates article on Famous Scientist. Famous Scientist belongs to Specific Science, and is citizen of Certain Country; however, clicking on link to "Specific Science" does not lead to a COMPREHENSIVE list of famous scientists which will lead back to the Famous Scientist in question; in some cases it does not even lead to a list, or a history, or any such thing; similarly, clicking on "Certain Country" does not lead to a comprehensive list of famous scientists, or even "Contributions to Science" subdivision which will lead back to the Famous Scientist in question. User A may make an effort to rectifying said links and
 lists, but there are too many articles, lists, links and so on to ensure the changes have much impact. It would be much simpler to encourage a protocol among article creators and editors that would give rise to indexing, and will make these "information access routes" smoother and rational. (Additional note) b) I see there are " Wikiprojects" for some subject areas - would it be possible to direct newcomers to existing Wikiprojects, or ask them to create new Wikiprojects, so that groups of related articles can be effectively indexed and linked to each other, and category-wide changes can be requested and/or tracked?"

I believe Wikiprojects are a good way of dealing with or smoothing out categories, and providing context where it may not exist or may not be substantial. A sizeable number of people with similar interests, working together on a large Wikiproject, would easily be able to agree on, create and link necessary categories to each other; errors are also less likely.

Criticism is welcome. Please also join in the effort to write up, modify and expand some of the Wikiprojects I have created.

Thanks!

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