First of all I’m gonna quote what I said on another thread as it basically hits the nail in the head of what I’m thinking:
So basically I am concerned on the number of projects being created these days because there seems to be *a lot*. I remember when I first joined there was a decent number of projects and they all seemed to go somewhere and had done a lot. Skip ahead nine months. Almost every regular user (well mainly the newer member) seem to have a project, the projects may have a clear goal but they get their priorities wrong and don’t seem to be making as many helpful edits. There appears to be some projects with no specific goal, for example they will have a goal but it won’t be related to wiki or it won’t be that clear on how the goal is going to be met. I hope Cap_pop doesn’t mind me using this as an example but the newbie club (found here https://www.wikihow.com/wikiHow:Newbie-Club
) didn’t have a proper goal and therefore needed to be marked as inactive. There seems to be a few reasons why projects these days aren’t getting far: ★A lot of users make them. I mean it is good that they are willing to help but loads of new members make them and then they might then just forget about them or not know how to improve them. ★Users seem to be joining a lot of projects. People are getting invited to a tonne of projects and as I said in the thingy above, a lot of the time it isn’t necessarily in their area of interest or expertise and they simply join because they got invited. I have been guilty of joining a lot of projects but I have learnt that more is less and I lowered it down to my favourite three, so to focus on less. If users join too many projects then they will not have a specific thing to focus on as they will feel overwhelmed by them (or maybe it’s just me). I think it is best to just focus on 1-3 projects you enjoy as opposed to 10. ★Projects are getting their priorities wrong. Okay, okay, I might be one of the causes for that, I am sorry. But basically instead of focusing on the actual goal, they seem to be focusing on making, templates, making signs and inviting other users. I know they are all really cool and fun tasks but they aren’t really helping achieve the goal. I think that it is just the icing on the cake. It might be nice to have a few templates relating to the project, maybe a sign or two and inviting users who you think might be interestedin joining, but it is not vital. I don’t think they should be mentioned as particular tasks to the project, although they can be dome, they distract people of the real goal. I was browsing through the CPP (Central Project Page) here: https://www.wikihow.com/wikiHow:Central-Project-Page
and I saw how some of the older projects have flourished a lot but then the newer projects usually get a bit done but not as much as projects used to do. Also, I have noticed that for older projects the done section is longer than the candidates section while right now it’s the other way round. The reasons for that I have just mentioned above. I don’t really think that having a lot of projects is a good thing if they aren’t going to go anywhere. I an estimating that an average of fourprojects are made per month(I haven’t actually done any maths, this is just a rough guess regarding the amount made this month, if anybody would be willing to actually do the maths and find out that would be awesome) which means forty eightper year, which mean *a lot* and looking back at the projects in the past year I’d say that only two or three of them are currently active. That means out of forty eight only two survive which is about four percent and as a fraction is 1/24 so not much. In fact barely any. I think that a project should have some deep thought put into it such as, what is it about?, what is the goal?, how can you help achieve the goal?, how will wikiHow benefit from it?, will other users be interested in it?, if so who? You get the picture. Some people tend to create projects just because everyone else is and I mean *everyone* (well, not quite literally everyone but you know what I mean). In the discussion pages you always see those little voices of wisdom asking questions on how the project will work and they usually get answered but I’m not so sure they have put the question into clear consideration, because those questions could mean a lot and some people just answer the question instantly so not to get their project stopped or put on hold. So I was thinking about all this and I was thinking how the problem could be dealt with. Here are my thoughts so far: ★The article Start a Project at wikiHow ( https://www.wikihow.com/Start-a-Project-at-wikiHow
) might benefit with a few tips on, well, what I just mentioned, about focusing on the goal and stuff. People usually go there first when they are looking for how to create a project so they might just as well have a bit more detail on things to consider before making a project. ★All feedback should be taken into account and thought about. ★Invites should be cut down to only those who you might think are interested. Give people a choice to join and if they don’t want to join, don’t make them, it’s their decision after all. People can find projects on their own and evaluate it and see if they want to join or not. They don’t need an invite to every project ever created. Sometimes the invites can a a bit overwhelming too. I think that people will be more motivated if they actually enjoy the project. ★Cut down on templates and signs. They are just an optional extra and although they can make the project look ace, not so many of them are needed. They shouldn’t go down as a “task”, more just an additional, the cherry on top. ★Mini projects should be encouraged ( https://www.wikihow.com/Create-Your-Own-Mini-Project-on-wikiHow
) because not everyone needs to collaborate for all projects, as great as it is, a lot of projects might have just been meant for the one person. Mini projects are a cool thing to use. Not saying that all projects should be mini project, but some might not need collaboration and might only need the one person. ★Some projects might need to be marked as inactive. I do notmean just tagging loads of projects inactive just “because”. I am also not saying making all projects inactive, some projects are actually quite good. But projects that appear to be a duplicate, don’t have a clear goal, ha a vague goal, don’t have a reasonable goal, don’t relate to wiki or won’t benefit wikiHow in anyway might need to be considering being marked as inactive. I’m not gonna give any specifics, so not to single any people out or offend anyone, but you might have a idea in your head of the type I am thinking about. ★ A community consensus. Just like templates, I think that all projects should get a consensus before being created. So possibly just an introduction in the forums of what the goal of your project is and possibly make draft in a user space. Then users can discuss it and decide if it should be made a thing or not. I think wikiHow would benefit from having a system where all new projects get consensus beforebeing created. It would be quite useful to have this as a rule, if it’s not already. I think that’s all I have to say for now. To round up, I don’t think projects should be stopped, that’s not it at all, I just think the amount being made should be reduced and they should all focus on their goal so they can reach their potential. One of the main rules of wikiHow is Quality over quantity
that sums it up well. Sorry that this is really long, I’ve been thinking about this for a while and I thought I would share my thoughts about this. I hope you read it all. Do any of you have anything to add or any suggestions on how this could work better or anything? I would be interested to know what you all think as a community and if you agree or disagree with me about the excessive amount of projects. That’s all I have to say for right now.
