Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Film/Coordinators

message: Hello, everyone! It has been a long time since we coordinators have gathered here. I hope everyone is well, and I would like to restart discussion. First, to update everybody about the bot requests, I believe that  is working on the bot. The discussion can be seen here. Feel free to review the bot requests; they should be agreeable and help standardize articles.
I would like to talk about taking the long view. I think that we have a lot of structure and a lot of guidelines in place for articles related to film. We are usually able to point to a set of guidelines or to a place for discussion. On top of all this, I think we should discuss ways to increase content contribution. I do not think WikiProject Film has had a successful history with collaboration, and perhaps we can talk about why that's the case. It may have to do with the number of editors, which brings me to my next point—outreach. If you have reviewed recent changes to film articles and their talk pages, we will see a lot of activity. I created User:Erik/Outreach for myself to follow the activity and to extend invitations to editors who appear to make good edits and have an interest in film. I was thinking that perhaps we could set up a quick way for established editors to engage in outreach when monitoring their watchlist or even the recent changes. Not everyone will join, but I think extending invitations will create opportunities for the community and potentially lead to more. More editors in the community might improve the likelihood of collaboration. In summary, I suggest making the outreach department a focal point and determining how we could reach out to others with ease.
In addition to outreach, I would like to explore the prospect of having school and university projects related to film. I'm not familiar with what classes about film have as coursework, but I was thinking that an ideal project could help improve an article about a film genre or something similarly broad. Perhaps one of the Core-class topics. What we could do here is find out what universities have strong film studies programs and contact their professors to see what they would be willing to consider. I'd like to find out what successful projects are relatively close to film to find out the approach we can take to providing structure.
Finally, I'd like to talk about images. There has been an idea for some time to find a way to get film images freely licensed. Nehrams2020 mentioned it recently to me: "Ideally, I'd like to move away from films for a while to try and contact various museums and maybe film studios for batch images of various topics. I've been putting it off, but would like to try my luck and see what additional images I can help secure under free licenses." Certainly there are archives of film images out there, and it would be great if we could get such archives freely licensed. It would be a boon to film articles on Wikipedia. In addition, we should explore how we can request freely licensed images from specific productions. For example, Dustbin Baby (film) particularly impressed me since its three film images are freely licensed. It may help to have instructions about how to do that, especially for productions that are not as major and are more accessible (like via blog or Facebook).
I'm setting up three sub-sections below so we can have different threads. Please share your thoughts! If you can, suggest a specific structure or a specific idea, and we can build on it. Erik (talk | contribs) 17:53, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I like the idea about article fundamentals. On a high level, I've seen some well-formatted basic outlines. I've wondered if our guidelines are a bit much for a newcomer to take in. It may help to have a kind of "So you want to write a film article" page and explain what an editor can do. Erik (talk | contribs) 13:58, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Right, the long single page on the guidelines is great for referencing, but if you want to read them straight through it becomes quite daunting I'm sure. Breaking up instructions by main areas and the steps it takes to really develop an article (researching and gathering sources, developing a layout, expanding, cleanup, etc.) could really help to develop editors (especially if we want to encourage university projects). I don't think it's going to work for universities if we just direct them to our guidelines (which are still important), but need to have a well-developed framework that provides a kind of broad step-by-step process (students like those for assignments). --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 00:27, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

text: Okay, I have an intro further explaining how this cloud work along with other areas that would need input before starting. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 00:27, 18 March 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Taking the long view 

message: This is definitely an area that would be great to expand. We've made efforts in the past, but definitely could use more concentrated efforts in bringing in new members. For those that join, we (along with the rest of Wikipedia) need to help push them along to join in on the discussions, learn about the guidelines, and assist in article writing. Maybe having a type of learning "film school" would be helpful (I believe WP:MILHIST has an established one) for detailing article fundamentals. This would definitely take a while to develop, but could assist in retaining members and encouraging new editors to join the project. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 03:06, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I like the idea about article fundamentals. On a high level, I've seen some well-formatted basic outlines. I've wondered if our guidelines are a bit much for a newcomer to take in. It may help to have a kind of "So you want to write a film article" page and explain what an editor can do. Erik (talk | contribs) 13:58, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Right, the long single page on the guidelines is great for referencing, but if you want to read them straight through it becomes quite daunting I'm sure. Breaking up instructions by main areas and the steps it takes to really develop an article (researching and gathering sources, developing a layout, expanding, cleanup, etc.) could really help to develop editors (especially if we want to encourage university projects). I don't think it's going to work for universities if we just direct them to our guidelines (which are still important), but need to have a well-developed framework that provides a kind of broad step-by-step process (students like those for assignments). --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 00:27, 18 March 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Outreach

message: I've thought about this in the past, and I think I have some notes/ideas I recorded a while back floating around somewhere. We could probably pull from the university project page the basics and then tailor it for WP:FILM. We would need to work to develop a type of form letter for approaching these professors with maybe a PowerPoint that could provide a basic overview of Wikipedia and WP:FILM. In addition, we're going to need stable volunteers willing to assist any student editors when the class starts. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 03:06, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: University projects

message: *I was able (with the much appreciated help from Moonriddengirl!) get a freely licensed image from the documentary I Am Comic of Roseanne Barr.  I found the image on Flickr, I contacted the uploader and didn't know it was a film distributor. The companies publicity coordinator emailed me back.  I explained the Creative Commons details, and she got permission from the director, Jordan Brady.  Although there was a misunderstanding with this guideline on Commons (the wording was confusing); she thought if they released that image per CC-BY-SA, that the whole film would have to be released per that license. I knew that wasn't so, since it had been successfully done with Dustbin Baby.  After that was taken care of, she uploaded the image her self to Commons.  The whole process took two weeks, back and forth emails.  I don't think we would have any luck trying to do this with.. say Universal, Paramount, Disney, etc. :P —Mike Allen  22:43, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Images

message: I've been working on a side project to help encourage further film GA growth. Looking through GAN, we have some GANs in excellent shape and others that have many issues that should have been resolved prior to nominating. I did a brief mockup in my sandbox (and page 2) of a possible department/collaboration that could work to pinpoint the articles that could be prepared for nominating at GAN. Articles would be checked for a few criteria including images, a developed lead, citations, a limited plot, etc. Reviewers could point out where articles need to be improved first and then once the criteria are completed, two reviewers could indicate they think a GA is ready. This could assist in ensuring quicker reviews as many issues would be resolved prior to the nomination. I have some introduction on how the collaboration could be set up, but it's currently on my other computer, so I'll detail that tomorrow. This could be an interesting collaboration among established and newer editors while further expanding our number of GAs. For my sandbox I just selected a few current B-class articles that have potential to reach GA and left some mock comments. This could encourage more editors to take on the GAs who may not know how to fully bring an article up to that level. Like I said, more details will be later (other projects came up), but I'm interested to hear if this could work. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 03:06, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Okay, I have an intro further explaining how this cloud work along with other areas that would need input before starting. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 00:27, 18 March 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Other

message: It looks like  (set up by ) received approval for a trial of 100 50 articles: Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/CinemaBot‎ (see end). Stay tuned! Erik (talk | contribs) 20:04, 1 September 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Looks like a step in the right direction. Lugnuts (talk) 14:20, 2 September 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: The bot has now edited its 50 pages, you can check the contributions and make comments on the BRFA. I hope some part of this passes or it can be worked on so it can pass. I put some effort into it and I think it would be really nice to have. --Peppagetlk 17:54, 2 September 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Glad to see this finally in the trial phase. I reviewed 20 articles or so, and didn't see any issues. I see in the bot request that the section header of "Awards" will change to "Accolades". Is there also a parameter for changing "Awards and nominations" if the bot encounters that wording? --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 17:54, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

text: Yes, can't see anything too amiss with those edits. Are the primary cats (year, country, language) being added if they are missing? Lugnuts (talk) 08:15, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  CinemaBot 

message: We are past due for an election since the last one was September 2010. The term is for a year, so we should kick off a new election ASAP. I would recommend starting the new election by the beginning of October and have it run for two weeks. The election page should be started at Wikipedia:WikiProject Films/Coordinators/Election 7 and use the same format as the previous election page. I recommend announcing the election in the October 2011 newsletter to be distributed in a few days. Erik (talk | contribs) 13:57, 27 September 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, we need a two-week leeway for the nominations process. How about we kick off the nominations process on October 1, then have the election from October 15 to October 29? I went ahead and created the election page. Erik (talk | contribs) 14:13, 27 September 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Sounds good, Erik. BOVINEBOY2008 10:31, 28 September 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  2011 election 

message: has been inactive for nearly 5 months now. Girolamo is not around either. Any new lead coordinator for the project?--Dwaipayan (talk) 18:23, 7 April 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: We don't need any co-ordinators, full stop. Lugnuts (talk) 08:13, 8 April 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: So no reply from ANY of the co-ordinators on this....? Lugnuts (talk) 13:25, 17 April 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Need for new lead coordinator