 | This page is part of the Military history WikiProject's online Academy, and contains instructions, recommendations, or suggestions for editors working on military history articles. While it is not one of the project's formal guidelines, editors are encouraged to consider the advice presented here in the course of their editing work. |
Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia that anyone can edit, and while the basics of editing Wikipedia have not changed the size of Wikipedia has. As days go by more and more articles are added to the site, and with this, there has been an increased demand for contributors to assist with the site's back room administration and organization by tagging articles for respective projects, and updating their assessment ratings, and ensuring that they remain compliant with all of our policies and guidelines. These demands can be a major turn off for our editors. Moreover, as projects, task forces, and working groups grow the constant demands placed on our internal process increase.
Most of our members – indeed, most of Wikipedia's anonymous and registered users – are principally interested in article content. They come here not to tag, or assess, or aid with internal processes; instead, they come to add the content to the project that we need to ensure that we grow as a project. Additionally, many users are under the impression that all administrative or organizational tasks like tagging, assessing, and aiding with internal processes are the responsibility of the Military history Project coordinators. This is true only to a point. The project's coordinators represent a small number of our members and are simply unable to handle absolutely everything related to this particular aspect of our project, and many are also rightfully keen to work on content themselves. Nevertheless, the administrative and organizational aspects remain important to maintaining our infrastructure, and if left unaddressed slowly diminish the health of the project. This is rather like a space station over Earth whose orbit slowly but steadily declines due to drag until it crashes back to Earth.
To solve the problem of backlogs or to inspire our contributors to collaborate to improve certain, potentially neglected areas of the project, we at Milhist occasionally hold major contributor-driven events called drives. The thrust of each individual drive varies, but the general focus of a drive is to motivate the project's members to focus on a particular aspect to through editorial weight behind a small aspect of the project to help resolve an issue, or keep a backlog in check. Drives can be administrative or organizational in nature, or sometimes even focused on content, or both.
The following essay will serve as a walk through touching on all aspects of a drive. It will look at various aspects including establishing the drive, setting it up and then maintaining and closing it.