Wikipedia talk:Article Collaboration and Improvement Drive/Archive 7

Is this still useful?

There seems to be very little going on on this project any more. Wouldn't it be better to change the concept (and advertise it some), or otherwise just stop it? The amount of articles up for nomination has dropped drastically since July, when I worked on some of them. The same is true for the amount of response. Twerbrou (talk) 10:40, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Maybe merge or replace by Vital Article colaboration

More than with other articles, the length and complexity of many of these articles lend themselves to a collaborative effort to get to Featured Status rather than by a single editor. Maybe it's time to have a Vital Article collaboration of the month? cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 03:40, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

I would support a rethink or retirement of this project. I've only worked with it a couple of times over the years, and found the "collaborations" I've been involved with lacking in direction and participation. --jwanders^Talk 07:26, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

No one is changing the article and I do not want to do it when no one has worked on the last one. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Zginder (talk • contribs) 01:25, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

A long time ago this worked really well. There used to be a Bot that informed people who voted for a article that their choice had won. Think it was User:AzaBot. I think the lack of this has lead to the decline. GameKeeper (talk) 23:07, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Proposal to close

Discussion moved to Wikipedia talk:Article Collaboration and Improvement Drive/Closure discussion

Closure Discussion

I'm wanting to start a discussion on closing ACID, that is, putting a {{Historical}} tag at the top and removing the links from Community Portal and similar pages. I expect this suggestion will garner a fair amount of discussion, so won't actually take any action for at least two weeks.--jwanders^Talk 00:53, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Support

• Support I have discussed this above. Zginder ^{(talk) (Contrib)} 02:57, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
• Support I hate to say it but this once active project has slowly degraded. In fact, I do not think this discussion will even get much attention since nobody goes to this page. Parent5446^{(Murder me for my actions)} 23:28, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
• Support - It was really great in its heyday, but now it seems to do nothing much. Judgesurreal777 (talk) 02:18, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
• Support - Seems to have been replaced by more topic-specific collaboration projects. Kaldari (talk) 21:46, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
• Support A lot of Wikiprojects and Portals are running their own improvement drives. This isn't really needed any more, and the lack of activity confirms that - • The Giant Puffin • 22:49, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
• Support For the last 6 months there has been very little activity with improving the chosen articles, and even on nominating them. Nergaal (talk) 23:36, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
• Support with condition Tag it as historical but if a large amount of interest shows up later (who knows, 5 or 10 years from now) and wants to revive it, then just remove the historical tag and start it again. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 04:31, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
• Support. Seems to be inactive now, but leave the option to revive it later on if any users become interested. --TBC!?! 00:28, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Discussion

Maybe instead of choosing an article every week, we select an article only when X no. of votes are reached. In that way, we can have enough people to actually call it a collaboration.--165.21.154.90 (talk) 12:43, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

If this is closed, I would like a message placed near the top of the page mentioning the other collaborations and that work still needs to be done on many of the articles that were collaborations here. Zginder ^{(talk) (Contrib)} 17:44, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

I think that we should close it right after this week's article since it has already been changed over. Parent5446^{(Murder me for my actions)} 20:50, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Has it been tried to advertise this project and the need to save it? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 18:59, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

This project has its own space on the Community Portal. There has been a request at the Signpost for a report on the project, but it has never gone through. The problem is that editors prefer to stick to their own articles instead of randomly going from article to article. For those who do, though, even they usually stick to one topic by switching from article to article within one WikiProject. There is little hope for the revival of this project. Parent5446^{(Murder me for my actions)} 19:41, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Some of the other collaboration projects are not in much better shape. Topics are getting selected with a consensus of 1-3 editors, so naturally there is little participation. Collaboration may be going out the window.—RJH (talk) 18:41, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

With the closing of ACID the Golden age of Wikipedian Collaboration comes to an end. Zginder ^{(talk) (Contrib)} 19:21, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Amen.--TBC!?! 00:29, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Here here. Who know's what the future will bring as collaborations go. --ZeWrestler ^Talk 05:14, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

The end of the Golden Age, eh? I'm glad to have been part of it. Some day, historians who study Wikipedia will look back to a marvelous time where people took time out of their busy lives and contributed to this project. A time when collaboration was active and vital to Wikipedia. A time when editors were jack-of-all trades, fighting vandals by day and improving Wikipedia by night. While I am sad to see that the time has passed, I look with hope towards the future of this project. --Sharkface217 23:43, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Possible revival

A proposal to potentially revive this page with slightly different parameters can be found at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Possible revival of Article Improvement and Collaboration Drive. Any interested editors should feel free to take part in the discussion there. Thank you. John Carter (talk) 14:47, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Discussion yield no effective results, has been archived into Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 20#Possible revival of Article Improvement and Collaboration Drive. --Kubanczyk (talk) 09:40, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Possible revival part 2

I remembered this page as a good collaborative way to improve articles, and I'm a bit surprised it closed over a year ago. What about a possible revival of this page to fix articles, it's a better way to improve the sense of the community than secret userpages. We need more interested people though. Secret ^account 23:08, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

This is doable - I do see a niche here for articles not really covered by active wikiprojects and some broader ones which are more accessible and maybe quite comprehensive content wise. There has been criticism that many FA candidates are too narrow in scope/ esoteric. I will think of some possibilities. Casliber (talk · contribs) 11:28, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

eg something like Sugar, which us medicos could tweak up the medical side and others chip in (?) Casliber (talk · contribs) 11:30, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Let's start it again and see if we get enough interest to make it an active project. FloNight♥♥♥ 13:17, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

For the record, I note Wikipedia:WikiProject Featured articles/FA-Team which has been active in 2008. This appears to be about assisting editors with some larger articles or series of articles toward FA. Not sure how active this is now, but I am sure editors listed would be happy to review successful collaborations. There was also Wikipedia:WikiProject Featured Article Collaboration Center which was active around October 2008 but appears to have stalled too. Casliber (talk · contribs) 13:22, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

I see this process as an alternative for users who want to collaborate on articles but do not want to narrow their focus to an already existing Wikiproject. I'm not sure that we need this process to make that choice available to users. But if it gives some users a place to work collaboratively toward bringing article to GA or FA status then I will continue to support it. But if this collaboration drive is not being used because it is redundant than we can let it die (again) knowing that it is not needed. FloNight♥♥♥ 14:43, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Update: Just nominate a few and see what happens

OK, i have nominated barley. Maybe just nomiante a few, give it a fortnight and see what happens. I think a fortnight (or a month) is a much better timeframe to work on somethnig than a week. Casliber (talk · contribs) 14:10, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes, for now we need to make the process slower. Later, we can settle on a week or 2 week period. FloNight♥♥♥ 14:32, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Focus on the most important topics?

It might help to pick articles from Wikipedia:Vital articles; surprisingly, there are a number of start-class articles listed on that page. Also, now that page histories have a link to page view statistics, it's possible to set a threshold (say, at least 1000 page views per day in the past month) for article nominations.

I suggest these two things because they would justify wider publicity, each week, when a new article is chosen (because now that article wouldn't simply be a "pet project" of one or two editors), for example at Wikipedia:Community portal#CBB and WP:VPM, and maybe even as a one-line entry in the weekly Signpost. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 14:27, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Good point. I was considering that but I felt something of a more modest circumscribed scope was a good candidate to start off with, hence my choosing of the three articles that I did. I am being cautious. Tell you what, if you have a look at some vital articles and maybe see some which might be possible to get to GA without too much fuss, you are welcome to nominate and see how it goes. I will have a look at what is brought up as I have mused on how to get some of those vital articles in better shape - also feel free to advertise this elsewhere. I don't own this, I am just trying to grease the wheels a bit :) Casliber (talk · contribs) 10:41, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

A history of A.C.I.D, and a new way foward

Just a few months ago, this place was an old wasteland, filled with bit dust and wikicobwebs. It was an esperanzan-era relic, dating back to before that last fateful MFD that ended the group. When Esperanza began in 2005, Wikipedia was a mess, there were foul dealings about and we were just about reaching the end of each others' nerves. The main problem was that there wasn't a strong core community to regulate itself and push out the renegades. Esperanza came to strengthen the core community of Wikipedia. Esperanza is now synonymous with unnecessary and obfuscating bureaucracy, but this structure was created because the group needed to have some stable figures to unite behind. The structure of secret IRC meetings and final decisions were needed to prevent the overall craziness from seeping in. Amidst this backdrop, A.C.I.D (then called "Collaboration of the month") was created to give the group purpose and meaning. It was something for Wikipedians to do together, thereby giving them a reason to like and cooperate with each other. Esperanza was largely successful in its goal in the end, the group helped create a self-regulating core community that varied little but was large enough to do a good deal of the needed work, thereby ending the eternal september. However, the result of this was that the structure that had served Esperanza so well brought its demise. As this core community reached the mass it needed to bear the brunt of the wikiwork, new contributors were slowly driven away by an increasing intolerance of incompetence by this new core community. This therefore slowly deprived Esperanza of its source of new members. This slow decline in membership soon caused Esperanza's structure to become oversized for what was left of its members. By this time, the wiki outside of Esperanza had also changed. By 2006, the atmosphere had calmed down significantly since 2005 and the wider community was now able to run processes without the need for tight structures and bureaucracies. These new non-esperanza processes made esperanza an island in a sea of change. By this stage, A.C.I.D. became almost dead, discredited by a new, eventualist model of slow, un organized improvement, which was only possible because the core community had become large enough to make those long-term improvements. The coup de gras for Esperanza however, was their inability to reform. Wikipedia man not be communism, but Esperanza by then almost certainly was. The few hardcore esperanzans that were left could not even think about reform because the Esperanza model had seeped into their very soul. This inability to change lead to Esperanza's final MFD in December 2009, bringing the project to a close with a sickening snap. A.C.I.D was spun off, but the same forces of looser improvement caused that spinoff to slowly die. It became a relic, much like many Soviet-era factories sprinkled throughout Russia; artifacts of a time past. For this revitalization to succeed, we must interact with the wider article development processes. We must take out-ot-the-way articles, improve them, then send them doen the path of Peer Reviews, GAs and FAs. We must do more than Esperanza did, and we must do it more nimbily with all the tools we have available. We must rethink ourselves, and separate A.C.I.D. from its Esperanza past.--Ipatrol (talk) 01:30, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

The idea that ACID came out of Esperanza is totally false. ACID started about six months before Esperanza. Maurreen (talk) 05:54, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Erm...okay...I had not been aware of the close link with Esperanza and that was no way on my radar when I reactivated this....so...what do you want to see happen here? Casliber (talk · contribs) 02:08, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

I would reject your interpretation of ACID's close affliation to Esperanza. First of all, it has roots predating those of Esperanza's. And while the influx of Esperanzians helped to populate the ACID votes, it was clear to those inside and outside of the organization that ACID was a Wikipedia program. That is why ACID was not disbanded immediately after MFD, and that was why the Collaboration of the Month was formed as an Esperanza program. While Esperanza's disbanding may have had something to do with the dropoff in ACID participation, I do not believe that that was the major impetus behind ACID's slow death.

I believe that the major thing we need to address is a revision of the rules in response to the standards of now. When ACID was created, rules regarding FA were very slack. A week or two was sufficient to get an article up into FA status. However, as standards started to tighten people started to write collaboratively less and less, until ACID became dead. From experience, collaborations are a thing of patience as multiple editors tweak, add, tweak, cite, and add again. It's very hard to make it good under the constraints of a deadline. In the time span that we have, GA would be possible, but certainly not FA. Either we make our goal to make GAs, or we lengthen the timespan to, say, a month. bibliomaniac15 02:13, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

Agree - I wasn't even aware of it. As far as rotation time I totally agree. Given no-one else is really active in this currently I have been tweaking it as I have seen fit compared with other collabs -generally a fortnight (bare minimum) or a month is a better time frame than a week, and the idea of a broader but still somewhat circumscribed article so that there is some hope of getting to GA (even GA with some vital articles would be a tall order), until there is more activity here. I do see there is an increased need for a collaboration such as this as many FAs and GAs are narrow in scope, hence the idea of resurrecting this to see some movement on broader articles. barley has a momentum and a few folks are chipping in, so I decided sticking to the plan and nomming the next one, in this case yellow, was worthwhile to see how it went. Casliber (talk · contribs) 03:18, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

I brought foward the history because I would like to propose some changes to the structure that we use in order to prevent another demise. The first one is that instead of having a specic page per week, any page can become a collaboration for one week as sooun as it gets four support or approve votes. Inversely, a submission will be removed one week after submission or if it recives four oppose, remove, or delist votes (they all mean the same thing). IPs would be allowed to vote, but SPAs or suspected sockpuppets will not. It will also be encouraged for comments to be placed along with votes. Any user or IP who can vote will also be able to approve or delist a submission. If an approval or delisting is disputed by another user/IP, it will be treated as a standard content dispute. Any number of articles can be under collaboration at once. The next proposal is to completly redo the AIDcur template. I placed a configuration based on WPBannerMeta at my workbench. Click "edit" to see the base code used (disregard the work template). This uses a class, an importance, a B class checklist, a note for when a page is very highly viewed, and a parameter to add a {{todo}} template if none exists already. Do you like the ideas?--Ipatrol (talk) 23:34, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

From previous experience, trying to focus on one page is already a challenge for a collaboration. In order for us to succeed, I do not believe we can divide attention like this. bibliomaniac15 23:22, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

I must admit I am cautious - barley has been promising, and the scope of the article means it still has a way to go to even GA. Similarly yellow has seen some, but not a great deal of activity. I do worry that spinning out multiple collabs is premature. I think getting stuck into the two so far, or joining a wikiproject which shares your interests is probably a better idea. If this picks up pace, it may be worth revisiting but not now I think. Casliber (talk · contribs) 23:35, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Memorial and Collaboration

User:Fg2 recently passed away, and several editors are contemplating a collaboration in memorial of him here for announcement in the next Signpost. Once an article is selected (by his friends), do you think there would be any place for this through the ACID also? - Draeco (talk) 02:39, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Not that I can see. This collaboration is supposed to be for mainspace work. It does sound like a few editors are interested and will construct a suitable memorial. Casliber (talk · contribs) 03:48, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

We might be miscommunicating, I mean announcing only the collaboration on ACID to gather more hands on the mainspace work. We wouldn't need to mention his passing or construct any memorial through ACID. - Draeco (talk) 23:17, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Have you considered adding an entry for him at Wikipedia:Deceased Wikipedians? -- œ^™ 19:27, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

Good suggestion. Done. - Draeco (talk) 01:41, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Canvassing

Some of you might be interested in discussing Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#WikiProject:Better Than Britannica. Regards, Paradoctor (talk) 01:50, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Inactive again

I suspect this has become inactive again. In which case it'd be prudent to clear the nominations and mark as such. I will do so if no one answers otherwise in two weeks. Casliber (talk · contribs) 14:01, 13 December 2010 (UTC)