Wikipedia talk:WikiProject California/Archive 4

message: I am posting this as a new section for sake of easy reading.  The following is intended as my summary of the views expressed thus far:
* There are a group of editors who have the good faith, well-intended belief that where there is a larger regional WikiProject and a more local WikiProject, it is appropriate and practical that the tag of the local WikiProject be the only tag that appears on articles of local interest.  Further, they have the good faith, well-intended belief that if the tag of the larger, regional WikiProject is already on a local article, the regional tag may be removed, and the local tag put in its place.
* This group of editors also have the good faith, well-intended belief that articles about cities in Southern California are of sufficiently local interest only, such that the tag of WikiProject California may be removed, and the tag of WikiProject Southern California only be put in its place.
* There are other editors who have different views.  These other editors subscribe to the good faith, well-intended belief that, at least for cities, it is appropriate for both the regional and the local tag to appear.
* Indeed some editors report feelings of resentment and anger (even if inartfully expressed) that the regional tags were removed from the city articles, and the local tags only were put in place .  
* There is a separate, but related, set of questions related to procedural issues about when and how WikiProject tags may be removed at all.  
** In particular, one set of editors undertook a large scale removal of tags of another WikiProject without prior discussion on the pages of the targeted WikiProject.
** There were mitigating circumstances because of history and overlapping editors between the two projects.
* After a call for discussion, a large number of editors affiliated with the local project weighed in (including a significant number of senior-level editors) explaining their points of view.
* One person from the regional project and one person from the local project weighed in to object to the removal of the larger regional project's tags.
* A significant number of outside observers weighed in to express their concerns about the removal of the regional WikiProject's tags, and to express their concerns about some of the procedural issues.
If I may offer the following observations to help move this forward.  
# It is easy to agree that purely local articles may safely have only the local project's tag.  For example, Los Angeles's Griffith Park or San Diego's Gaslamp Quarter can probably have only the local project's tag. (Although curiously, Talk:Griffith Park has only the California tag, and Talk:Gaslamp Quarter has both tags.)
# In my view, the more difficult question is where to draw the line on the spectrum between "local" and "regional" articles.  There is perhaps the perception among at least some of the editors who weighed in that cities properly belong to both projects, and that the line was drawn "too high" on the regional/local spectrum.   
On a going-forward basis, is the following a workable solution?
♦ That California tags not be removed from city articles, but that they may be removed from articles of more local interest.
♦ That, in any event, no more California tags be removed at all, without express discussion and consensus on that project's talk pages.
Obviously, as a proposed solution, it is subject to tweaking and improvement!
I am posting this here and on the Southern California talk page.  May I request that any responses please be placed on the Southern California talk page, so as to condense the discussion.  Having said that, responses please!  Spamreporter1 19:42, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Summary of Discussions about Tag Removal Issues 

message: The reason that I brought this issue (of tag replacement) to the attention of this Project and other Projects is that I think that what is happening here is really a microcosm, perhaps a test case, of what are good relationships between regional and local WikiProjects.  I'm not sure that a consensus has yet developed in the discussions on this page.  
You may be interested to know that there are some innovative approaches being currently discussed on a more general basis on this WikiProject page about this issue. The members of this Project may find this other discussion useful in assisting their thinking here.  (As before, I am requesting that any comments be posted on Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Southern_California in order to condense the conversation.) Spamreporter1 07:40, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tag replacement discussion continued 

message: There has been a suggestion that rather than use the "parent/descendant" model to structure the WikiProject California/Southern California relationship, instead use a "project/sub-project" model - as is currently being used at WikiProject Australia and WikiProject India.  The main difference is that while each sub-project has its own project page, talk page, tasks, COTWs, etc., it does not have a separate tag.  If you are interested in seeing if this project/sub-project model might work for California, you are invited to those project pages for your review. Spamreporter1 18:48, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  WikiProject Australia and India suggested as model 

message: :In reality, subprojects of WikiProject Australia are their own autonomous group with their own sense of community. Sub-projects of WP:AUS generally maintain themselves, however fall under the parent WikiProject Australia for WP:1.0 assessment purposes. Some Australian sub-projects fall outside of the parent project and have decided to assess their own aticles (an example is Wikipedia:WikiProject Football (soccer) in Australia, leading to the situation where a talk page becomes cluttered with many unneccessary templates. We're about to combine assessments for sub-projects into the master  template so that sub-projects need not create their own assessment scheme. The benefit of this is that sub-projects can assess their own articles, and their assessments contribute to provide an overall look at the state of Australia-related articles without fragmenting the results. You may want to look at WP:INDIA which has already adapted what we require. -- Longhair\talk 19:45, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: We're try to change to adapt to editor's needs. Check back often, you never know what we've been up to until you take a look ;) -- —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Longhair (talk • contribs) 04:00, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Your question to [[Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Australia]]

message: :Our response will be similar to the Australian one above. I had initially copied their template and improved upon it.
:1) Sub-projects work autonomously and have their own community. They have seperate project pages and discussion pages. See WP:KERALA.  
:2) COTW still works at the parent level since participation is low. 
:3) All sub-projects use the same project banner. For example,  for an article that falls under the scope of India and Kerala.
:4) The project banner creates assessment categories at individual project level as well as at the parent. Class tag is shared across projects. Since Importance could differ between sub-projects, we have separate importance tags for each project. For example,  will put the article under Top importance for Kerala project and High for the India project.
:5) Sub-projects are identified as workgroups on the talk page banner. For a few of our projects (Indian cinema), banner displays the sub-project in a separate box. For example,  will generate two boxes, one for India and one for Cinema. This way, the sub-project gets more ad-space. See Talk:Aishwarya Rai. This is needed for topical projects that loosely integrate into the national project. Indian cinema has both India and Films as parents. 
:6) The parent project's menu bar is displayed on all sub-project pages. This will give visibility and help invite more participants into various sub-projects. In topical projects such as Indian cinema, the menu bar is trimmed down to a small box. The menu bar displays assessment statistics table of the project currently displayed. See WP:KERALA and WP:INCINE.
:7) The automation department at the parent level supports all sub-projects. They help with automated talk page tagging.
:This type of integration avoids redundancy and helps sub-projects concentrate on the article improvement than worry about templates and technical stuff.
:Hope that helps. Regards, Ganeshk (talk) 03:38, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Your question to [[Wikipedia talk:WikiProject India]] 

message: To try to follow all discussions on this issue, you have to look at the talk pages for at least four different WikiProjects (California, SoCal, CITIES, and COUNCIL), as well as the talk page for Wikipedia:WikiProject, because the sockpuppet  Spamreporter1 has been copying different comments to the different pages without telling the different WikiProjects or the authors of those comments, and without identifying where the different comments came from. BlankVerse 14:21, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The views of each of those Projects was solicited because each is affected by the topic.  I have requested that any responses be condensed, and have assisted that process.  People are going to respond where they want, and I'm trying to avoid disputes over where the conversation is going to take place, by performing the clerical act of copying responses.  If anyone has a suggestion of a single place that all interested parties are comfortable watching and responding there, that would be a good solution. Spamreporter1 22:17, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Note

message: I have to wonder if some of the extreme hostility and incivility that has been part of this discussion on this project's talk page, and some other project's talk pages is the result of some editors assuming that the SoCal WikiProject has been 'undoing' some editor's hard work. In reality, the tagging of almost all the article talk pages (on over 10,000 articles!) with the  banner was done by a Bot, User:MetsBot. At the time, the bot's owner received quite a few complaints, and because of that quit doing any bot-tagging for WikiProjects. It really wasn't the bot's fault, but the fact that that some articles had been miscategorized (such as a couple of Oregon cities that probably some waggish vandal had categorized as California cities). BlankVerse 14:21, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: All done by a bot

message: In an effort to keep the conversation condensed, the following suggestion was copied from here:
::There is another option currently employed by WP:GER & its subprojects. Integrated tagging. The subproject is on a switch of the main banner. Agathoclea 08:26, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Another option suggested

message: What WikiProject Tropical cyclones and WikiProject Meteorology do is that there is no dual tagging, but all articles tagged by  are fed automatically into :Category:Meteorology articles by quality, as well as :Category:Tropical cyclone articles by quality. If there is a need for both projects to have different assessments, that can be done by having SoCal or any other narrower project include a wpcal-class parameter in their templates, or something similar. The other template would trigger the same assessment logic in the California WikiProject banner, without the added clutter. Then, SoCal can make a quick note, like "This template was assessed as A-Class by Wikipedia:WikiProject California" like MilHist does for their task forces. Both projects would remain independent. Titoxd(?!?) 06:53, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Even simpler solution 

message: As noted above, the above WP Cal/WP SoCal conversation is really a microcosm of a larger discussion about the best roles for WikiProjects in Wikipedia.  There started out only a modest number of WPs, and there are now a large number of WPs, and more being created every day.  
It makes sense to me to pause and think about a sensible Wikipedia-wide assessment of what is the best relationship between larger-scale and more local-scale WPs.  The WP Cal/WP SoCal conversation is only one example of a number of such conversations going on around Wikipedia.
There is an interesting discussion taking place now at WikiProject Council (a central discussion point for conversations like this).  A draft policy has been proposed there and is being discussed about what are "best practices" regarding the relationships between larger-scale and more local-scale projects.  
If you are interested, you are welcome to offer your thoughts and observations.  Spamreporter1 15:50, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Important Inter-WikiProject discussion going on at WikiProject Council