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User:Sims2aholic8/sandbox/1

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Proposal for rescoping WikiProject Eurovision

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I have been thinking for quite a while now about this WikiProject, and what I believe to be considerable scope creep over the past decade or so. What started as a project devoted mainly to the Eurovision Song Contest, and by extension other EBU contests, has since exploded not just EBU events, but also a large number of other events, and by extension many articles that are very much only tangentially related to any of these articles. We now have almost 9,000 articles under the remit of the WikiProject, many of which I think are of no interest to the majority of editors within this project, and our popular pages list each month is almost invariably filled by various broadcasters, a group of articles which also have only a tangential relationship to the majority of articles which are of actual interest to the editors of this project.

With this in mind, and considering that I believe WikiProjects work best when they focus on the articles that people are actually interested in improving, I'm proposing that the WikiProject be rescoped to become WikiProject Song Contests. Given that there are several contests out there where we are actively contributing, and not all of which are led by the EBU, or are even entitled "Eurovision" or related to ESC, I believe that this rebranding makes better sense going forwards. As part of this rebrand, I envisage that we will create several task forces, focussed specifically on high-profile contests. Right now I see one or two task forces in particular being created, specifically focussing on the Eurovision Song Contest and, depending on interest, the Junior Eurovision Song Contest.

I do not believe that the current sub-categorisation of high-profile contests which serve as national selections for ESC should be maintained, and these should therefore be categorised in the same way as the "main" contests. Depending on editor interest, new task forces could potentially also be created focussing on some of these, e.g. Melodifestivalen, Benidorm Fest, Festivali i Këngës, Sanremo, etc.

Should agreement be reached following this discussion, I believe that Stage 1 of implementing the new WikiProject structure would be to create a new page and related sub-pages for WikiProject Song Contests and to move the current WikiProject Eurovision pages to become sub-pages within the new WikiProject structure (e.g. Wikipedia:WikiProject Eurovision would become Wikipedia:WikiProject Song Contest/Eurovision task force). Further stages would then be to consider which articles we should include within the scope of our new project and reassessing importance.

Eager to hear thoughts, opinions, suggestions, concerns, musings, etc. on the above! I'm proposing that this discussion continue until 31 January 2025 to try and get the widest input possible from all editors concerned as we move into the 2025 national selection season.

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I also believe that linking the project more closely with WikiProject Music, potentially asking to be listed as a sub-project, may be helpful in attracting new editors and highlighting the work we do.

I've outlined below what I believe the importance ratings for articles within the scope of the new WikiProject Song Contests should be.

  • ...articles that describe a contest for each year
  • ...articles that describe a country's participation in an international contest
  • ...articles that describe a country's participation in an international contest for one year only
  • ...articles on songs which competed in one of the events covered by the project
  • ...other articles and lists about a particular event covered by the project
  • ...biographical articles on artists and songwriters which competed in an event covered by the project

Things that I believe should not be included within the scope of the project:

  • Broadcasters which participate in/organise an event
  • Contest venues
  • Biographical articles for people who did not compete in an event, e.g.:
  • contest presenters
  • production staff
  • performers (singers/dancers etc.) that were involved in performances outside of a contest's participating entries (e.g. opening/interval acts)
  • other individuals related to a contest entry but which did not perform or contribute to the song, e.g. choreographers
  • Articles for events which do not fall under the definition of a "song contest", including:
  • Any other articles currently listed as under the remit of WikiProject Eurovision which do not fall under the new criteria above, including:

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This looks GREAT! I'm very pleased with how this came together. Thanks so much! I'll bullet my random thoughts:
  • I think WP:ESC is already a WP:MUSIC sub project, or at least it's in this navbox: {{WikiProject_Music/Related_WikiProjects}}
  • I do think that we will inherit a large number of articles, especially with songs that were part of national finals that are currently not included (Mello songs, etc.). I think that's fine though because our editors DO have an interest in them.
  • For next steps, I wonder if it makes sense to bring in a couple more active project editors to review the scope or if we should just move on to an WP:RFC on the project talk page? Would the project be renamed, or would we start a new WikiProject and transition the other into the task force?
  • There are a lot of editors in the project that edit sporadically and many come out during song selection season. I'd recommend at least a 60 day discussion period. Perhaps finish by January 31, 2025 and then begin implementing shortly after. We definitely don't want to be making big changes in March-May time frame, but also don't want to do this when few may be paying attention. I'm not saying that the editors who don't actively participate should be getting a larger say than those here 365, but it will be hard to change or enforce the 'rules' when so many articles begin to be edited daily.
  • I don't want this process to get bogged down by some of the implementation technicalities, so it would be nice to frame this as Step 1, and then once we gauge whether folks are interested and 'approve' the change, we can have a follow up discussion on how it would be implemented. Grk1011 (talk) 13:35, 17 November 2024 (UTC)
@Grk1011: Thanks! I'm really happy with it too. Taking the time to put it on paper has been super helpful with crystallising my thoughts on this!
  • On WP:MUSIC, I was looking at the Wikipedia:WikiProject Music page and it's not listed there, but if we were to rebrand I would say that we would move from "Geographical" to "Sub-projects" in the navbox (since song contests are definitely not limited to a particular geography) and could probably end up on there.
  • Completely agree on the discussion period, and I think you make a good point about making sure we get the widest possible number of people engaging. As you say, there are gonna be more sporadic editors that come up during NF season, and for sure implementing this would be a massive pain between March and May, so a 31 January deadline and then implementing sounds reasonable to me.
  • You're probably right that we can leave the technicalities for another discussion, if and when the changes are approved.
  • I've been reading through Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Guide/Task forces to get a sense of what the process would be. I think the simplest thing, which retains the history of the project in the best way, would be to create a new page for WP Song Contests and move the existing WP Eurovision pages to become sub-pages.
I've tweaked the wording above to separate out my musings on rejigging the importance from the majority of the text. I think we should go with the above for now. I'm happy to loop some more editors in if you think it would be beneficial before publishing as an RfD on the WikiProject talk page, but also happy to jump right ahead to that. If you wanna go for the former, feel free to loop in whoever you think would have some good ideas! Sims2aholic8 (talk) 14:34, 17 November 2024 (UTC)
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