Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Council/Inactive projects

message: John: Again, I have to ask - how are Projects added to the main page?  If I mark a Project  right now, how will it make it on to the main page if I don't add it?  Does it rely on you noticing the addition?--Doug.(talk • contribs) 21:05, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Which main page are we talking about here? If you mean this page, I'm adding all the projects by hand. It might be possible to change the  to automatically add such pages to the :Category:Inactive WikiProjects, but I'm not sure I know enough about such things to do that myself. John Carter 21:34, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, this page.  OK, I just wanted to understand how things are getting here.  I'm wondering if we created subcategories of :Category:Inactive WikiProjects and coordinated them with your sections on this page, would we be able to add them automatically.  It seems to me that if we did anything to make them add automatically at this point there would still have to be a manual action to put them into the sections, since there'd be no way for any automated process to figure out where to put them.  Thoughts?--Doug.(talk • contribs) 00:35, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

text: I know virtually nothing about automation of that kind. I think you're probably right though. John Carter 00:43, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  How are things making the list? 

message: Participants at MfD appear from discussions logged there to often be unaware of the effect of deletion or the overall concerns that are created by project deletion.
Sorry for the igornance, but what is the "effect of deletion" and what are the "overall concerns" that are created by deleting dead wikiprojects?  Thanks!  /Blaxthos 12:02, 15 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The effect of deletion is that the WikiProject or other page concerned, including all discussion, is no longer available for historical reference.  You can't go back and see what someone said.  Although they are archived temporarily in case it is determined that the deletion was in error, they are not maintained long term.  There is no history, no archive, no edit trail, no going back and checking to see what someone said last year.  This is particularly relevant I have noticed with "maintenance projects" where there is often a small group having a rather serious discussion for a while and then things die out.  Just because the editors got bored and decided to work on articles for a while or became involved with a different issue, doesn't mean the discussion isn't important and shouldn't be preserved.  If a project dies, unless it has never had any activity at all, it is much better to archive it in order to preserve discussions between editors there.  In some cases, it can be merged with a likely parent or newer similar project, or made a subpage of such a project.  If a project has never gotten off the ground but still has one or two people trying to get it going, it may be better to userfy it and see if it eventually turns into something, or again, see if a parent project wants it as a task force or other subpage.--Doug.(talk • contribs) 03:52, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The only response I would make would be that, in general, many of the projects which have been nominated for deletion, like Wikipedia:WikiProject Sindh, for example, which has recently been nominated for deletion by me, don't actually contain much beyond a statement of objective. Those really aren't that big a deal. While I agree that the majority of those projects which do have substantive discussion should be tagged as inactive rather than deleted, I think that is primarily what happens anyway. And the individual ruminations of the single editor who creates a project which is basically ignored from them on are generally not so important as to demand that they be kept in wikipedia space. Also, please note that most of these projects which have been deleted are basically cut from the , sometimes with only the most minimal development. Again, there isn't much in those instances which indicate that the project should be saved for that reason. Also, the templates and other things which are sometimes created for projects are generally not very useful without the project itself, and can be removed without much, if any, real loss. After all, another template can be created just as easily, and possibly be done better, later, particularly if the template being used to create it has been improved in the interim. John Carter 15:52, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: John I joined you with respect to Wikipedia:WikiProject Sindh and Wikipedia:WikiProject Pakistan History, and I asked for clarification as to Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Classical Tamil, but had concerns about the Deletion of WikiProject Lake Macquarie.  Yet again, there is a comment that deleted articles can just be undeleted later if needed, which is just plain wrong - also the argument is used there and in the other two that a project should be deleted because it's inactive.  That's my point here, "inactive" is not grounds for deletion, "inactive" is grounds for review which may include nomination for deletion if for no other reason then that is the only review we have when no one responds to merge/rename suggestions and no one is willing to be bold.  I see this as a battle to educate and to some extent adopt procedures.  I could care less whether any of the four projects above live or die.  --Doug.(talk • contribs) 01:26, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Clarification requested 

message: I think one of the most important things to come out all of these discussions, this one and the preceding one on the Council's main talk page plus the one at Wikipedia:WikiProject reform is that MfD is not suited to reviewing Projects for Deletion and properly considering the alternatives, at least not with current participation or lack thereof, by Council members and the like.--Doug.(talk • contribs) 00:41, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Projects for Review/Deletion Page 

message: John, I'm confused, you nominated Wikipedia:WikiProject Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy for deletion and in the text proposed merger.  Was this to bring the matter to someone's attention?  There was no opposition at either Project, you could have just merged and not taken it to MfD, which would seem to be a lot more efficient.  I am doubtful that anyone from either Project is on MfD very often.--Doug.(talk • contribs) 02:29, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why didn't you just merge? 

message: I notice that in some of your nominations you have notified the creator, in others you have not.  I think we should be always trying to notify creators of nominations for deletion/userfication.  Though not necessarily merger or renaming as a task force.  Thoughts?--Doug.(talk • contribs) 02:33, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Once again, you seem to be trying to set up a set of standards which "must" be followed, which requires the creation of a beareaucracy to enforce it. I notify creators when the creator has been active in the past few months. Otherwise, posting a notice to someone who hasn't edited recently is more or less pointless. John Carter 13:36, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: NOT, I am not suggesting a rule and I didn't even mean to challenge the way you are doing things, I was intending merely to solicit your theory of notification and maybe discuss when notification is and isn't important as a matter of etiquette, fairness, and the need to avoid editors coming back after the fact whining that their project has been axed.--Doug.(talk • contribs) 23:12, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Creator notification 

message: I have noted that at least one participant in this discussion seems to be operating one a misstaken assumption. That party has repeatedly stated that once a page is deleted, it is, in effect, gone forever. This is not true, based on the information which I have received. Any and every edit to wikipedia is always preserved in the memory of the system, including deleted projects. They are simply not available for any editor to see at will. However, any admin can, and probably would, pull up the deleted content on reasonable request. I am aware that the legal profession, particularly regarding intellectual property, abhors loss of records on principle. However, as any editor is told on the edit page, any contribution to wikipedia is the property of wikipedia to at least some degree, and can be edited at will. I believe on that basis the intellectual property rights which might exist elsewhere explicitly do not exist here. On that basis, it is reasonable for us to not be primarily concerned with preserving in the publicly accessible part of wikipedia each and every contribution ever made, but only those which can, in effect, be seen as contributing to the improvement of the encyclopedia. If I am wrong in any of these particulars, of course, I would welcome being informed of as much. John Carter 13:46, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: My point is the idea that it is OK to delete something because it can always be undeleted is not a valid argument for two reasons, one it's patently false and 2) it's an argument to delete anything.  That argument, however, gets used over and over again on MfD right next to the argument that we should delete because the project is "inactive".  If we deleted every "inactive" project we would be subject to losing all of that history AND even if undeletion is available it isn't always a simple task and is accomplished only by admins normally after deletion review.  The arguments on MfD are not for deletion review shortly after the MfD process if there is a mistake, they are for undeletion "some day" which implies "any day", which I do not believe is supportable.  You are correct, it doesn't say they will be deleted. --Doug.(talk • contribs) 18:34, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree: ARGUMENT is the word to use here. I note once again you return to your "argument" without ever directly answering the points made against your position. You have a position which many other people disagree with, including me, and you are trying to persuade them that they are wrong, without providing really a lot of evidence. Personally, I am aware of no-one else who shares your overriding concern that anything in wikipedia space must always be preserved. Again, if you honestly believe that, then you would be best served writing a policy proposal to that effect, rather than effectively taking up the time of other editors with an essentially one-sided, nonresponsive, discussion. I acknowledge that you have an opinion on this matter, and you have every right to have that opinion. Everyone else has the right to have an opinion on the matter as well, as policy does not currently cover the subject. Argumentative attempts at persuasion rarely work. I honestly think you would be best served by actively making a policy proposal, which you have yet to do. Personally, although the discussion is slightly interesting, I am actively engaged in trying to put together an updated list of all the extant projects, including those which were created recently. I personally think that responding to these comments of yours is perhaps not the most effective use of my time right now. I also note that little if any of this discussion actually directly addresses the subject of the page itself, and on that basis think that you might get more responses from a wider variety of editors if in fact, you did what I indicated above, and wrote some policy proposal which directly addresses your concerns. John Carter 18:44, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Re John's comment: "I am aware of no-one else who shares your overriding concern that anything in wikipedia space must always be preserved."  I must have miscommunicated my thoughts.  Please note that I have voted "delete" on several of John's nominations, voted "keep" on one (which I would now change to "userfy") and actually opposed John's suggestion that he withdraw a nomination.  If I have degraded what I saw as a valuable procedural discussion to fighting for my own position, then I was wrong.  John is doing a magnificent job identifying and nominating projects for deletion and I would never want to take his valuable time from that to "argue".  --Doug.(talk • contribs) 20:08, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Fundamentally flawed reasoning 

message: Deletion Review is great, but see comments of brion (19 January 2007) at Village pump (technical). --Doug.(talk • contribs) 02:02, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: My point is the idea that it is OK to delete something because it can always be undeleted is not a valid argument for two reasons, one it's patently false and 2) it's an argument to delete anything.  That argument, however, gets used over and over again on MfD right next to the argument that we should delete because the project is "inactive".  If we deleted every "inactive" project we would be subject to losing all of that history AND even if undeletion is available it isn't always a simple task and is accomplished only by admins normally after deletion review.  The arguments on MfD are not for deletion review shortly after the MfD process if there is a mistake, they are for undeletion "some day" which implies "any day", which I do not believe is supportable.  You are correct, it doesn't say they will be deleted. --Doug.(talk • contribs) 18:34, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree: ARGUMENT is the word to use here. I note once again you return to your "argument" without ever directly answering the points made against your position. You have a position which many other people disagree with, including me, and you are trying to persuade them that they are wrong, without providing really a lot of evidence. Personally, I am aware of no-one else who shares your overriding concern that anything in wikipedia space must always be preserved. Again, if you honestly believe that, then you would be best served writing a policy proposal to that effect, rather than effectively taking up the time of other editors with an essentially one-sided, nonresponsive, discussion. I acknowledge that you have an opinion on this matter, and you have every right to have that opinion. Everyone else has the right to have an opinion on the matter as well, as policy does not currently cover the subject. Argumentative attempts at persuasion rarely work. I honestly think you would be best served by actively making a policy proposal, which you have yet to do. Personally, although the discussion is slightly interesting, I am actively engaged in trying to put together an updated list of all the extant projects, including those which were created recently. I personally think that responding to these comments of yours is perhaps not the most effective use of my time right now. I also note that little if any of this discussion actually directly addresses the subject of the page itself, and on that basis think that you might get more responses from a wider variety of editors if in fact, you did what I indicated above, and wrote some policy proposal which directly addresses your concerns. John Carter 18:44, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Re John's comment: "I am aware of no-one else who shares your overriding concern that anything in wikipedia space must always be preserved."  I must have miscommunicated my thoughts.  Please note that I have voted "delete" on several of John's nominations, voted "keep" on one (which I would now change to "userfy") and actually opposed John's suggestion that he withdraw a nomination.  If I have degraded what I saw as a valuable procedural discussion to fighting for my own position, then I was wrong.  John is doing a magnificent job identifying and nominating projects for deletion and I would never want to take his valuable time from that to "argue".  --Doug.(talk • contribs) 20:08, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Deletion means Deletion 

message: Hi, John (and others)!
Just curious - I've noticed several WikiProjects going through the MfD process.  Is that process working for them?  Does MfD seem to be handling merges, etc, well?
My main reason for asking is that I was heavily involved in WikiProject Reform (back several months ago).  I wasn't (and am not currently) convinced that MfD would know what to do with inactive WikiProjects, and that a different process was needed.  If the MfD process is working, then so be it.  If not, maybe I'll find the time (ugh) to work on creating WPfD instead.
Thanks! -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 19:21, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  MfD process - how's it working? 

message: On the 12 Sept 07 two WikiProjects were speedy deleted based on "Creator Request".  I can't see them now but based on the small amount of discussion, they probably deserved it.  However, I think we need to use caution in this area.  WikiProjects don't "belong" to the creator.  Creator requests to get rid of Project may be valid, particularly when the most likely consensus decision would have been userfy (or where under WP:SNOW they get deleted either way); but simply stating "Speedy Delete - Creator request" suggests too much power by the creator to request deletion of projects which may have some history.  Thoughts? --Doug.(talk • contribs) 02:26, 22 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: To my understanding, the only times such can happen is when the project page was created by one person and modified only by that same person, so that in effect the only history those pages have is from that one individual's edits. In such cases, they clearly do belong only to that individual, as, basically, no one else ever modified them. As it were, the community has no right to demand that someone not be allowed to delete a page he created. So far as I remember, it has happened actually occasionally, when, for instance, someone creates a project and then decides to remove it after several months of lack of interest, either because it is badly put together, it duplicates an existing project, or they find that there is no particular interest in it. I think Wikipedia:WikiProject Indiana Jones might have been one such. While I can and to an extent do understand your apparently profound interest in ensuring that no projects that have any viability are ever deleted, I think in this particular case you may well be going a bit overboard in that regard. John Carter 15:43, 22 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: My understanding of WP:SPEEDY is that where the page was essentially a mistake, or the creator started an article and then later decided it wasn't a reasonable start or shouldn't even be an article, a request by the creator to delete would be appropriate.  But that merely because the creator no longer likes what he or she wrote - even if no one else has edited - would constitute Revocation and that isn't allowed, under the GFDL the creator gave up all rights to everything he or she wrote upon saving the page and I believe the community absolutely has a right to demand that it not be deleted.  Of course, many pages may deserve deletion to begin with, and if that's the case then a creator request is in good faith and speedy deletion is fine.  I guess my only concern is that when the admin puts in the edit summary "speedy delete - creator request" there is no way to determine if this was correctly done without requesting undeletion - it would be much better to just give the community a few days to look at it or at least include an edit summary that briefly says why the request is appropriate.--Doug.(talk • contribs) 16:01, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

text: Feel free to email or talkpage the details to me, I can look at them and see what the go is on them. If they were deleted as creator request it's probably OK, but just want to ensure it's not something malicious that's accidentally got through the system. Orderinchaos 00:32, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Not sure about some speedy deletion  

message: After seeing the result of Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:WikiProject Health (2nd nomination), I'd like some suggestions as to how to frame a discussion to assuage deletion fears. We sort of have a framework higher on this page discussing when to userfy vs deletion. I wonder if MfD is the appropriate place to discuss userfication of a WikiProject.
I wonder if the WikiProject council should just be a bit more "forceful" enforcing the WikiProject request page? Something to the effect of boldly userfying any WikiProject that hasn't had more than one or a few users active, and now has been inactive for some length of time. (There have now been several examples of WikiProjects where the creator said something about starting but not finishing due to being distracted.)
And for now, only proposing for deletion those projects which are obvious vanity projects, malformed projects, or even lack of completion (such as a non-completed WikiProject page).
What do you think? - jc37 04:48, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I understand the concern regarding deletions.  I think we're looking for the same thing.  User:SatyrTN has set it us as "for Discussion" rather than "for Deletion" and I think that is significant.  You don't need to be an admin to userfy, merge, rename as a task force, or tag as  - all dispositions we have discussed here.  At such a site we could discuss in an organized form what to do about individual projects as has been done on a couple of example bases above.  I think MfD is getting crowded with a lot of discussions that turn into merge or userfy.  This could be similar to Project deletion sorting discussing closing deletion sorting pages before they get nominated for deletion.--Doug.(talk • contribs) 02:49, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  "voting" 

message: I've made two sets of experimental revisions for your consideration.  The first one I began implementing a week or so ago; this was the addition of a User-page reference with the title "tagged by" aside the "listing date".  The reason why I did this is that it appears that a some WikiProjects have been tagged as inactive by bots.  The second revision I just completed, the expansion of the two top tables to include the Parent WikiProject reference (if available) and an indicator of whether the inactive-tagged WikiProject has any Child WikiProjects.  My gut feeling is that >90% of the time, an inactive WikiProject will have no child WikiProjects ... but I'm not sure of that; so this column might be found to be superfluous pretty quickly.  I also revised the "merger" column name from "Proposed merger projects" to "Proposed merge to" as well as revising the "Date of listing" column name to "Tag date".  The "merger" name change was meant to change the implication of merger to one where the default anticipation is for an inactive WikiProject to be merged to a single other Project (my gut feeling).  The "date" column name change was done because the relevant date is that of when a WikiProject was tagged as Inactive, not when it was listed on this page ... the implication might have been "listing as inactive" in the inactive category, but the typical American English interpretation of the former name implies listing on this page.
If the revisions are seen as too disruptive, please revert them -- the permalink for the page as it stands with the revision = relevant permalink.
:--User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 01:00, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I like this John, I did question somewhere above though the column for "merger" without any other options to place there.  What if the proposed disposition is something other than merger or deletion (in which case I suppose you're sending it straight to MfD rather than putting the proposal here?), such as userfication or "task forcization".--Doug.(talk • contribs) 01:55, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Merger and making something a task force are substantively identical for these purposes. Userification on the initiative of the project creator is something which is beyond our control, so I didn't see any need to include it as an option. We would have no say in such a process anyway. Tagging as historical, "suggested" userification, and deletion all seem to be primarily handled at MfD anyway, and it didn't seem necessary to me to indicate that nominating a project for deletion necessarily implied that that would be the only potential outcome. John Carter 14:36, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree entirely that MfD doesn't preclude other options besides deletion.  It just seems that we should have the option of other choices here.  Maybe I don't understand the purpose of that column in the table or how you plan for it to be used.--Doug.(talk • contribs) 14:24, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Experimental table revisions for discussion 

message: It appears that there is a disconnect in listings between Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Inactive projects and the colorations indicating inactivity in the tables found on child pages of Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory (at least by my casual inspection).  Any thoughts on this?  Manual synchronization is difficult, of course, but useful.  Perhaps there would be some way to merge the two information sets so that only a single page set need be maintained.  I am bringing up the question without offering a solution yet. Apologies to those that such behavior disturbs. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 01:06, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: There's probably a big disconnect, probably because this page is being created as I'm creating an updated version of the directory in userspace. The updated version when completed will conform to the existing main categories used elsewhere in wikipedia, like by WP:1.0 and WP:GA. The projects are being added by me to this page as I find them to be inactive while preparing the new directory. If you want to look at the work in progress (and it's not pretty yet - be warned) the new directory is at User:Warlordjohncarter/Directory. John Carter 16:09, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Disconnect between related page sets 

message: What exactly are we discussing here? The main point seems to be how to organise inactive projects etc, but is there anything else?--Phoenix-wiki (talk · contribs) 23:58, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Just what are we trying to achieve here? 

message: Is the page updated manually or by bot? I want to add Wikipedia:WikiProject Narnia and I have tagged it with the template. Cheers! Wassupwestcoast (talk) 17:58, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Manual of bot updated

message: A proposal on the village pump to hide or nearly hide the project banners of inactive WikiProjects is currently underway. Any comments are welcome over there. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:32, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Project banners of inactive WikiProjects 

message: Elvis Presley is back open !!Wikipedia:WikiProject Elvis Presley....... Buzzzsherman (talk) 00:57, 10 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Elvis Presley

message: Wikipedia:WikiProject Water supply and sanitation by country is no longer active.
This is important because Wikipedia:WikiProject Water supply and sanitation by country: Manual of Style is a guideline, but because the Wikipoject is inactive, there is no indication that there is wide support for the guideline.Bernolákovčina (talk) 00:35, 16 January 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Council#Please_Look_Over]] 

message: I'm not sure if this page is still in use, it's been years since I last posted here, but does anyone know why we have two inactive project categories:   and ?  (there are two other unrelated categories of similar names:  (which is for project namespace pages tagged  - most WikiProjects are not) and  for WikiProjects that are not completely inactive.  I'm not talking about either of these).--Doug.(talk • contribs) 12:16, 8 July 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Good research! How can we rationalize the cats? I think we need to keep historical, defunct, inactive and semi-active separate and in a meaningful hierarchy. --Kleinzach 13:03, 8 July 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree in principle but what exactly is defunct as distinguished from the others, it doesn't seem to be much used.  More to my original issue though, why those two different cats I first mentioned:  and ?  A project tagged as  will categorize to the former unless you set "|wp=yes", in which case it will categorize to the latter which is a subcat of the former.  This doesn't seem to be any reason for this.--Doug.(talk • contribs) 13:11, 8 July 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, defunct is probably superfluous. On your second point I agree, but where can we take this to get it fixed? Take  to Cfd for deletion? --Kleinzach 13:30, 8 July 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: (ec)I think that we just need to determine whether there was ever any reason for it (probably) and if that still exists (I doubt it).  If not, we can simply change the code in  and remove the parameter altogether.  Then of course, since the template may be substituted in many cases, we'll need to empty the cat, probably a bot would be best for that but we can worry about that afterwards.  Afterwards we should nominate both  and  for deletion first.  We could do that first, but I'm not very familiar with CfD and we might get a lot of difficulty with a category that is full of stuff, better to recat first and then delete in my opinion.--Doug.(talk • contribs) 13:37, 8 July 2011 (UTC)
replies: text:  I'm happy to go along with that. --Kleinzach 15:03, 8 July 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Categorization of inactive projects 

message: WikiProject Sri Lanka Reconciliation has become defunct as it served its stated purpose. I tagged it in January, but today I realized that there still are 162 transclusions of the project banner  on article talk pages. Should those be removed? — Sebastian 04:53, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  How to properly decommision a wikiproject? 

message: Hi all, while there are still occasional updates to this list, it seems like it has largely fallen out of use and is likely now out-dated. Perhaps we could consider marking this page as historical and merging the information in it (whether a project was merged and where to) to the manual WikiProject directory? That page also categorizes projects by topic and has a "notes" section so it seems like an easy merge. Plus it would give us a fighting chance to maintain this info (since sorting inactive projects by topic on two separate pages seems to be asking for trouble). Thoughts/objections? Ajpolino (talk) 23:58, 20 October 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree. (I was tempted to tag this project as "inactive" but a merge and "historical" seems more appropriate.) --mikeu talk 15:32, 7 November 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merge information into manual WikiProject directory? 

message: I have tried to reactivate WikiProject Greenland as I have recently seen it included on the talk pages of a number of significant articles. My attempt has apparently not been successful. (cc )--Ipigott (talk) 09:41, 22 May 2021 (UTC)
thread_title: WP Greenland