Forum:Reforming wiki projects

I would like to start a discussion about the possibility of restarting wiki projects.

As decided in another forum thread, The Sims Wiki's administrative projects have been retired. Administrative Projects were intended to take the place of normal projects, which have been completely abandoned for several years now. However, APs never took of in their own right, and as a result we now have no active or feasible project system on the wiki.

"Is this such a bad thing?" you may ask. We've seemingly gotten by for several years without an active projects system. I believe that our success in this is largely due to many of our regular editors being jacks-(and jills)-of-all-trades when it comes to editing; many users are proficient in editing Sim biographies, object pages, game tutorials, and wiki templates and categories. I believe it's no accident that so many of our regular editors become administrators; the ability to work across the board in many areas shows just how skilled the regular contributors are on this wiki and how able they are to be good admins. At the same time, however, I think it's worth noting that the wiki isn't as good as it could be. There are a number of improvements that could be facilitated through the introduction of projects.

Right now, there really is no place on the wiki to converse about issues relevant to a group of related articles. Say, for instance, you wanted to set a standard by which all pages about games or expansion packs are written. Right now, you'd pretty much have to start a Community Discussions thread to discuss the pros and cons of taking that action. This has the effect of increasing the number of concurrent threads in the CDF, and tends to drown out other threads in the forum. On top of that, the outcome of that discussion should not have a profound impact on the wiki as a whole, yet treating it as a community discussion subjects it to the principle of community consensus, meaning any decision reached in Community Discussions about a particular local issue would need to be followed as per consensus, and could only be overridden or changed with another community-wide discussion or vote. We see this in discussions right now or in the past, such as deciding how to organize Sim articles with the release of TS4, the creation of new templates for highlighting typos, deciding what to call towns in The Sims 3, or deciding the color to use for TS4 in infobox templates. Often discussions like this are only seeking input or guidance, not looking for a formal decision on the matter. Creating a project page thus would allow these and other topics to be discussed more informally, allow discussions to be held, decisions made and decisions changed without the necessity to get community-wide consensus.

As mentioned above, there is no place at present, aside from CDF, to discuss or coordinate with others. The issue of doing this on the CDF is that CDF articles are high-profile and administrators actively attempt to keep the list of active threads there from getting too long (in order to focus conversation on those threads which are important enough for community-wide input), so threads about small issues tend to be archived before a decision is made. There is really no room in the current system for leaving a thread open to allow ongoing discussion and feedback. For instance, if there were a project page for The Sims 4-era, the discussion page could be used to coordinate creation of relevant articles for the game, identify new sources of information for use on individual pages and determine the colors used in infobox templates.

Additionally, this is a wiki about a game that is still in active development, so information on our articles must be kept up-to-date with new game releases, patches, and other changes over time. When a new game or pack is released, new pages are often created for features or content unique to that game/pack, but other articles are almost always relevant to a new game and also need to be updated. Projects could help coordinate this activity by identifying pages that are part of the project's scope, and keeping tabs on whether information in those articles is up-to-date.

Editors who are part of a wiki project can also help improve the articles that fall under the umbrella of the project using guidelines decided by the project itself. This would allow groups of editors to collaboratively improve articles to meet an established set of criteria, ensuring that articles about a particular subject are at the same level of quality. It's worth noting that the projects themselves wouldn't "own" the articles within their particular umbrella, and indeed one article may be covered by multiple projects, as needed. So, the guidelines established by those particular projects wouldn't be binding or enforceable as community standards. This means that the decisions undertaken in these cases wouldn't require strict consensus and could be altered much more freely and on-the-fly.

Wikipedia WikiProjects often undertake the task of reviewing articles within their project scope, and grading those articles based on their level of detail, adherence to overall style guidelines, and general effectiveness. This activity would at present be very difficult to facilitate on The Sims Wiki, but if we created individual projects, those project members could take on the task of reviewing articles. This has the benefit of making it easier to determine which articles are the most well-written (and thus also a good go-to list for Featured Article nominees), and also identifying those articles in need of help, so that editors with the time and knowledge to improve them can more easily find them.

Ultimately, what I'm proposing is not the creation of shell pages with tons of lists and tons of bureaucracy. I am proposing the creation of a system through which editors can collaborate, communicate, and facilitate improvements across the wiki. The projects would, first and foremost, be a tool of the individual editors. It would be essential for these projects to have active and engaged participants. It would be equally vital for our established members to join and to use these projects, because the projects will not be effective unless they are used. This, admittedly, is the major hurdle of the whole idea. In order for this idea to work, we - the wiki editors who edit here regularly - have to put faith in the idea. That's why I've written out such a long explanation of what I'm suggesting. That's why I've proposed it at all instead of just boldly implementing it. There is a potential for projects to be very positive, constructive places, but only if we embrace the idea. Projects will only work if the project members think of themselves as a team and steadfastly work together towards the common goals of the project.

This idea may seem like a pipe dream, but I think it's totally achievable so long as we as a community put the effort into making it happen. --  LostInRiverview talk ~ blog 07:22, August 26, 2014 (UTC)