Wikipedia:WikiProject Molecular Biology/Molecular and Cell Biology/Votes/2007 director vote

Since I'm the only nominee for this position, I thought it sensible to assess if people still feel this is worthwhile.

OK, I'll accept the position. Thank you all for your confidence, I'll try to be useful. Tim Vickers 03:59, 27 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, let's have Tim as the director

No, a director is unnecessary

General discussion

Some feedback on things people think I should try to get done would be useful. Ideas, suggestions? Tim Vickers 04:43, 8 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hi all, I'm sorry for not writing earlier, I only just noticed that we were electing a director/coordinatrix/herder-of-cats!

What should we/Tim do in the next year? I feel as though we should make a roadmap for ourselves: decide among ourselves what our priorities are, and make a concerted effort to accomplish them.

For example, we might identify a few fields that are really lame, and work to bring articles in those fields up to respectability. But I worry about asking people to contribute to unfamiliar fields; I know keenly how taxing it is to write about things you're not an expert on, no matter how enthusiastic and interested you might be. So instead we could start a general Stub Drive to bring all of our "Stubs" up to "Start" or "B" level — or at least maybe the Stubs that are most likely to be read, e.g., those of the typical high-school and/or undergraduate curriculum.

Conversely, we might identify a few articles that are nearly Featured Articles and then work to bring them up to FA status quickly. They would be "low-hanging fruit" and my sense is that FA's are respected far beyond articles of lower ranks; so 1 FA might be worth 50 Start articles. More generally, I feel that one thing done well is better than many things done halfway. But this approach again might have the drawback of asking people to work on subjects foreign to them. :(

As an aside, I'd like to put in a plea for help with X-ray crystallography, which I started working on in May because it was the Science Collaboration of the Month but which has been really lonely and exhausting. :(

We seem to have lost several people over the past year, but I'm not sure why. Probably it's due to factors outside WP, but I mourn the lost and wonder how we might foster enthusiasm and community spirit, both in newcomers and in "old salts". ;) A "buddy system" might be good, if we whimsical cats could tolerate that. ;) I've found myself drifting away into other fields, just looking for a change or responding to what people asked me to work on.

Oh, one more thing. We should strive to help out the RNA WikiProject. I think it would reflect really well on us if we could dash off a decent article for each of the families, or at least the major ones. Improving general articles on RNA molecular biology would be great, too; we could maybe become one of the best places on the Web for learning about RNA! :) Willow 12:36, 8 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm a newbie and still don't have a good feel for how things run or how to most effectively interact on the MCB Project. From the perspective of a not-so-bold newbie, here are some of my problems:

1. I don't have a good idea what it takes to get an article to the next level. Sometimes I wonder if I'm boldly digging my articles into a hole.

2. Maybe I've become too specialized to appreciate the wider realm of biology, but I have trouble contributing to articles on biochemistry and cell biology for the Collaboration of the Month. I get timid if the topic involves something outside the mammalian nucleus. For cell wall I made a half-hearted attempt to look in my 8 year-old undergrad microbiology book and found that everything was already in the Wikipedia article.

3. I wouldn't mind critiquing articles outside my domain of knowledge for readability, but I don't know if the authors want that or what kind of feedback would be most useful to them. As for the Collaboration, I always figure someone with more domain knowledge is already working on it.

I was coming up with all kinds of distributed collaboration schemes (a term I just made up), but I realize that it's probably better to make the existing system work. I should just ask for more help. But for the Collaboration of the Month, maybe the director could make it more organized. Make sure someone takes charge and keeps the To Do list up to date. Make sure there are suggestions about what kind of critiques the article is ready for, requests for images, etc. Stuff that "people who didn't vote for the article" could do. Forluvoft 01:24, 9 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Forluvoft, and welcome to the MCB WikiProject! :)

I don't think there's any set pattern for making an article into a Featured Article; it seems to be more of an musical art form. Tim is our Master Harper, but if you'd like a sounding board before you invoke his intercession, I'll be very happy to help you, if I can. :) (Tim's really nice and obliging, too, I don't want to leave you with the wrong impression!) I'm not very expert, but I make up for it with — ummm, enthusiasm? What are you interested in working on? I was thinking of doing the alpha helix next, but there's still a long way to go on Acetabularia (maybe your thing?), X-ray crystallography and sundry others. Speaking for myself, I'm always happy when people give me advice on how to make my articles more correct or more intelligible to lay-people, and I think others are the same way; so you should be bold and pitch in however it seems good to you. :) Willow 02:42, 9 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

PS. I like your name; is it Scandinavian perhaps?

Actually, I think I agree with both the statements above, that Tim should be director *and* that a director is unnecessary. For example, if Tim decided next week that he really didn't want to be director, I don't know that we'd need to go recruit one. But having said that, if the title enables Tim to better rally the troops for coordinated good, then two thumbs up from me... AndrewGNF 22:59, 17 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]