[Wikipedia-l] Re: WikiProject

[tarquin]

Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:

>On Wednesday 19 June 2002 12:01 pm, tarquin wrote:
>  
>
>>alternatively, should "naming conventions" be absorbed into
>>WikiProjects? the original proposal is about naming schemes as well as
>>consistent content presentation.
>>    
>>
>
>No I don't think this would be desirable. [[Wikipedia:naming conventions]] is 
>(more or less at least) a policy article and the WikiProject idea has never 
>been much more than a way for wikipedians to collaborate on a certain set of 
>related articles (which hasn't been used much BTW). Only part of what is 
>determined in a WikiProject is what to name articles -- but those names also 
>should conform to standard(ish) naming conventions. 
>
>In other words the WikiProject is really more informal and only enforceable 
>through bold editing and peer pressure while naming conventions are more or 
>less part of policy and are enforced in this light.  Of course in a wiki the 
>line between the two types of enforcement is blurred -- but a distinction 
>should still be made. 
>
I agree that presentation templates shouldn't be enforced on new and 
casual writers; partly they're too much to take on, they make newcomers 
feel constricted; also because (unlike page naming), it's very easy to 
tidy up articles later.
However, they're of interest to more than the group that chooses to work 
on a specific project: the many players of WikiRoulette aka Random 
Weeding, for instance.

As I said on Talk:WikiProject, it seems to me that we currently have 4 
rough meta- areas which overlap somewhat:
* naming conventions
* WikiProjects: presentation guidelines for types
* basic topic pages, eg "[[Music basic topics]]"
* WikiProjects: gathering wikipedians to work on a subject area

ManningBartlett's OO-style hierarchy of pages is clean and neat, and I 
think it could be used for naming and style conventions. Whether that's 
by seperating presentation guidelines from WikiProjects or somehow 
integrating it all together, I don't know. We don't want to make 
newcomers feel they're being herded, but when they want to look things 
up to ensure they're being as constructive as possible, the information 
should be clear and easy to find.

tarquin