Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2010-02-22

WikiProject Mammals

WikiProject Mammals, started in February 2004 but not fully realized until December 2006, is a middle-aged project with 33 FA's and 22 GA's. Task forces dedicated to weasels and pocket pets exist, as well as a variety of child projects. The project maintains a list of their most popular pages with cat, bear, and human taking the top spots. We interviewed co-coordinators ZooPro (talk · contribs) and The Arbiter (talk · contribs) in this WikiProject report.

First, tell us a bit about yourself and your role as coordinators of WikiProject Mammals.

• ZooPro: Well i have been an editor for sometime on Wikipedia and took on the challenge as coordinator for WikiProject Mammals mid 2009. When i first started, the project had fallen into a somewhat semi-active stage with little to no turnover of the project. The featured article from 2007 was still listed as the most up to date features article of the project. The biggest influences i had was Ucucha who showed me many new things and supported me greatly.

• The Arbiter: As a co-coordinator of WP:MAMMAL, I have taken a more maintenance type role in the project. While I do work on expanding stubs, I have been more involved with assessment and page maintnance than anything else. I have worked heavily with ZooPro to organize and work on the project.

When did you first join WikiProject Mammals? What are some of the challenges that the project has met since you joined, and how were they dealt with?

• ZooPro: Mid 2009, The biggest challange i faced was bringing the project inline with other animal projects, i created the Navbox that is used on all the mammals pages and cleaned up the old articles. I made some changes here and there to assist in the projects flow and renovation. I created a number of templates that are now used Wikipedia wide in relation to Mammals. The unrated articles list was a nightmare with some 500+ unrated articles, it took me sometime however i managed to rate almost every single one.

• The Arbiter: Hmmm, I joined WP:MAMMAL late 2009. One of the greatest challenges I have met is...well, I haven't really had any great challenges. I guess the greatest challenge was deciding what color scheme to use in the userbox.

What aspects of the project do you consider to be particularly successful? Has the project developed any unusual innovations, or uniquely adopted any common approaches?

• ZooPro: I think the project in itself is a success, and valued among all its members, the project itself is very similiar to the other Animal related projects wich i think is fantastic as it proved consistency among Projects.

• The Arbiter: Any project which has ZooPro leading it is bound to be a success. :) I think it's great that this project looks similar aesthetically to the others. ZooPro and I developed a bulletin board for members to watchlist, which we hope will create some kind of communication breakthrough that we can alert members to new developments.

Have any major initiatives by the project ended unsuccessfully? What lessons have you learned from them?

• ZooPro: Well the merge between WikiProject Mammals and WikiProject Monotremes and Marsupials has been as yet rather disappointing in response. I hope this changes in the near future.

• The Arbiter: I suppose what ZooPro says is correct. I think part of the problem is high membership, but low actual participation. I, ZooPro, Calisber, Innotata, Ucucha, and some others that I can't quite recall at the moment are the most common people I see on the project. We hoping for higher actual participation.

What experiences have you had with the WikiProjects whose scopes overlap with yours? Has your project developed particularly close relationships with any other projects?

• ZooPro: Well i have alot of interaction with the other projects, I am a Coordinator for WikiProject Animals, and WikiProject Zoo also. I like to involve myself in as many animal related projects as possible to assist in our ultimate goal of bettering Animal related articles. WikiProject Rodents is another project i have enjoyed working with, I recently inacted a request for the other projects to help me update our council listing and the response was overwhelming and fantastic.

• The Arbiter: I don't know much about relationships developed with other projects. The main Projects I work on are Zoo and Mammals (as Co-coordinator), Animals (as a regular member), and Userboxes (which is completely unrelated).

What is your vision for the project? How do you see the project itself, as well as the articles within its scope, developing over the next years and future mammal discoveries?

• ZooPro: To become bigger and better, i hope to this year sometime develop a collaberation department (members willing) to develop stubs and the like into GA or FA articles. I would love to see more enthusiasm from members be put into actual article development and less into procedures and red tape rubbish.

• The Arbiter: I would like to see the same. :)

Anything else you'd like to add?

• ZooPro: Come and Join us for a great time, and if your not interested in Mammals take a look at some of the other animal related projects and consider joining one of them.

• The Arbiter: Yes, please join, we can always use new members, and there is always something that needs doing.

Well, on behalf of everybody at the Signpost, thank you ZooPro and The Arbiter. You'll want to hold onto your hats for the next WikiProject, and stay firmly in your computer chair, even belt yourself down if needed. Until then, breeze through our previous reports in the archive.

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