== What is Around the World? == 

 It's a collaboration using advanced wiki-tools.  It is sponsored jointly by WikiProject Lists of basic topics and WikiProject Geography. 

 Using these advanced tools, we are building a profile for every country of the world.  These drafts are listed at Wikipedia:WikiProject Lists of basic topics. 

 These profiles summarize essential information on each country.  They are "topic outlines", but at the same time they are so much more, because Wikipedia is a hypertextual environment.  Most of the topics presented are linkified, which turns these pages into a sort of site map to material about each country on Wikipedia. 

 The profiles share a standard format.  So rather than tediously working on a single country to complete it, each participant works on all 200+ political entities, completing a single data item or detail across all of the pages.  For this they use advanced tools like WP:AWB, Linky, etc.  It goes fast, and since others are doing this at the same time, it  makes "the World" (the set of country profiles) feel like a beehive, and the participants are its bees.  )  The energy is contagious. 

 And since you are moving from country to country, the tasks make it feel like you are traveling all around the world, and you get to learn a little about every country as you do so.  This approach also allows for greater efficiency, because by the time you've done 30 or so of a particular item, you've figured out how to finish it faster and more effectively (such as where to find the data or how to make adjustments), and this specialization speeds up development - but more importantly it reduces errors. 

 The tasks are varied, which adds even more variety to the project.  Some tasks are look-ups-and-fill-ins, some are copy and paste, some are image hunts, some are maintenance adjustments, some are link fixing, some are blue-linking (creating an underlying redirect so a link turns blue), some are fact checking, etc. 

 Standing by to help are co-coordinators, who can lend a helping hand to participants, provide instruction and tips on how to use the tools, and help them find what they are looking for.  Co-coordinators also use advanced tools to inspect the work of participants, and touch it up as needed, or if a task was done wrong throughout, point this out to the participant so he or she can make the necessary corrections. 

 Co-coordinators are working on the set of pages right now, to familiarize themselves with "the World" so they can help more effectively by the time the main event starts.  But there's still lots of preparation left to be done, and we are looking for editors experienced in advanced wikitools who would like to become co-coordinators. 

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