I love WikiProjects; one of the first things I did when I started regularly editing in ~September 2023 was attempt to revive WikiProject Artsakh. Unfortunately, a combination of my own inexperience & naivete, issues with the name of the WikiProject,[a] and a simple lack of broad interest in this niche area of the Caucasus plaguedbyconflict[b] resulted in only a few editors joining. Were I to undertake this task again, which I don't think I would, I'd definitely do things differently; admittedly, I'm somewhat embarrassed. I hope to return to the topic area (by God is it stressful), but the editing environment for the Armenia-Azerbaijan topic is thoroughly miserable and I've realized I do not want to even interact with the relevant talk pages, let alone lead a project.
Systemic bias on Wikipedia will be fought by writing high-quality articles on obscure topics, not by creating as many stubs as we can on Central Asian villages and African moths. Mass creation of stubs, regardless of the diversity of the subject, does nothing but make Special:Random a worse experience and create more long-term maintenance for other editors.
Many, many Experienced Editors™ get away with being dicks because of their edit count. While the "unblockable" problem has been lessened in recent years with the removal of high-profile problematic editors, there are still many non-admin editors who largely slip under the radar.
In the news should be launched into the sun. While useful in theory, I've found that the insular community has little interest in how the rest of Wikipedia works; nowhere do the policies and guidelines[c] apply less than at ITN. When do we decide enough is enough and start enforcing rules for the group of editors that decides what gets to the top of the main page? Or better yet, just get rid of ITN entirely?
Slow chipping away at our project by civil POV-pushers & long-term "constructive" editors with attitude problems will be the death of us, before anything else.
^It was already named "Artsakh" when I found it, but this, even though it is a common name for the region, reflects a somewhat non-neutral "side" - as such, I think I would rename it to "WikiProject Nagorno-Karabakh" if I ever felt like touching it again.
^See the essay on systemic bias on Wikipedia; many of these conflict-prone regions far outside the Anglosphere attract little attention, even if they're designated Contentious Topics, from the broader Wikipedia community. Unlike the Arab-Israeli conflict, or American Politics, which both receive widespread English press coverage and have large bases of dedicated, good-faith, and competent editors working on them, the Armenia-Azerbaijan topic area is ridden with trolls, POV-pushing, sophisticated sockpuppeting, and with a far, far smaller number of the former group. I imagine the situation is similar with the Horn of Africa, Kurds/Kurdistan, and India-Pakistan-Afghanistan topics.
