Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Guide/Task forces

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A task force is, essentially, a non-independent subgroup of a larger WikiProject that covers some defined part of the WikiProject's scope. For example, the United States military history task force of the Military history WikiProject deals with the military history of a specific country; and the Warcraft task force of the Video games WikiProject covers a single game series.

The major distinction between a task force and a fully independent WikiProject—and, indeed, the reason why the task force model was developed—is that the task force minimizes the bureaucratic overhead of its activities by relying on the parent project to provide as much of the procedural and technical infrastructure as possible. Thus, for example, a task force will use the core project's peer review and assessment processes rather than creating its own. This allows the task force to focus primarily on direct article-writing activity, without the need to devote extensive resources to maintaining its own internal structure.

A task force is generally set up on a subpage of the parent project page. In cases where the task force is a child of two projects (in other words, where its scope is the intersection of that of its two parents), the subpage can be arbitrarily placed under either of the projects, and a redirect can be created from the equivalent subpage in the other; see, for example, the Korean military history task force, run jointly by the Military history and Korea WikiProjects. The task force page can take any form, but should be initially constructed with minimal bureaucratic fluff. Projects with large numbers of task forces will often adopt a more-or-less standard layout for all of them, perhaps including common technical features; for example, each of the task forces of the Military history WikiProject has a standardized template for listing open tasks.

Task forces will generally not have their own talk page banners; instead, they are integrated directly into the parent project's banner via an optional parameter. For example, {{WPMILHIST}} includes a large number of task force parameters. It is possible to use this integration to automatically generate assessment data for a task force based on the assessments entered for the main project; this ensures that task forces don't need to conduct assessments independently.

Contents

[edit] Task force content

Task forces are primarily a social construct, but each usually has the following items associated with it.

[edit] Its own subpage

A task force is generally set up on a subpage of the parent project page. In cases where the task force is a child of two projects (in other words, where its scope is the intersection of that of its two parents), the subpage can be arbitrarily placed under either of the projects, and a redirect can be created from the equivalent subpage in the other; see, for example, the Korean military history task force, run jointly by the Military history and Korea WikiProjects. The task force page can take any form, but should be initially constructed with minimal bureaucratic fluff. Projects with large numbers of task forces will often adopt a more-or-less standard layout for all of them, perhaps including common technical features; for example, each of the task forces of the Military history WikiProject has a standardized template for listing open tasks.

[edit] Page sections

Each task force usually has the following sections on its page:

  • A scope
  • A list of participants
  • A to do list

Additionally, it may have these:

  • Task force specific guidelines (not always called guidelines, but that's what they'd be called if they were in a WikiProject)
  • Lists of Featured/Good content
  • List of resources that will be useful to that task force

[edit] Misc

The other items a task force usually has are:

[edit] Parent Project Infrastructure

A task force will usually rely on its parent project for some of the administrative and bureaucratic structure. More detail is below, in the section "Setting up a task force structure", but some of the items are:

  • Assessment: This includes the Talk page banner (which usually belongs to the parent project, but has a marker for the task force). This does mean that task forces don't need to do their own separate assessment; they can rely on the parent project for that.
  • Project Navigation templates (ie. Internal navigation templates)
  • Initial page setup and integration with rest of project
  • Other bureaucratic overheads

[edit] Task forces in action

Sometimes it helps to see actual task forces in action. The projects that currently have the most task forces are (counts as of 15 March 2009):

[edit] Misc tips

Sub-task forces

Some task forces have sub-task forces. These cover a section of the parent task force's scope, but the infrastructure is also provided by the parent project.

Centralize your task force conversations

Often, a task force starts as a group of editors that are already working together and already have communication patterns in place. Small task forces need to make a particular effort to centralize their discussions on the task force's pages. When no one posts to the task force's talk page, some editors will assume that no one is doing anything. This makes it hard for new editors to join your group. You can create a critical mass of conversation by sharing information and ideas that might interest members of the task force on the group's talk page. If nothing else, report on your progress, or announce the article that you want to work on next.

Keep your "parent" informed

Whenever your group achieves a milestone or has good news to share, post a note at the parent WikiProject's talk page, and invite others to join you in the next project.

This section requires expansion.

[edit] Setting up a task force structure

If you're wanting to create a task force for an existing project, you should gather consensus from the other project members before bothering to read the next sections; they're designed for an existing WikiProject that wants to create task forces, especially the first one.

The first question to ask is whether your project is of sufficient size to warrant having task forces. The advice given by Kirill Lokshin of WikiProject Military history is that task forces are something to get serious about when there are 50-100 members in your WikiProject. Additionally, a good number to start a task force with is five people; it may not be effective until it reaches 10 or so people, but having the task force there enables them to recruit. An additional thought is that creating task forces encourages people to join rather than creating their own WikiProject which again incurs a lot of bureaucratic overhead.

Since this section is quite incomplete, it may be useful to read Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject Military history/Coordinators#Instructions (you'll need to expand the "Creating a new task force" section).

It may also be useful to have a "New task force proposals page" attached to your project.

[edit] Creating a subpage for your task force

  1. Open up the new subpage in your browser
  2. Use Template:Task force to fill in the content (preview it with the parameters, and when you want to finalise it, use subst, eg {{subst:Task force}} )
  3. Fill in some content, especially the scope

[edit] Adding Task Forces to the Talk page banner

Task forces will generally not have their own talk page banners; instead, they are integrated directly into the parent project's banner via an optional parameter. For example, {{WPMILHIST}} includes a large number of task force parameters. It is possible to use this integration to automatically generate assessment data for a task force based on the assessments entered for the main project; this ensures that task forces don't need to conduct assessments independently.

As to how to actually implement this, you'll need to investigate the examples of {{WPMILHIST}} and {{WPBiography}}, although it may also help to review Advanced project banners; this doesn't cover that topic, but does cover a number of others.

This section requires expansion.

[edit] Setting up a todo list with sub-templates

One way to help keep a task force co-ordinated with the main project is to set up a method of incorporating all the todo lists into one master todo list. More information can be found on this at Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Guide/Technical notes#Task list templates. Note also that Template:Task force (probably used to create the initial page) also links to a todo list; this would be a good name to use in conjunction with this.

This section requires expansion.

[edit] Creating an internal navigation bar

If you're adding task forces to your project, it's probably time to add an internal navigation bar if you don't have one already. How to do so is really outside the scope of this document, but more information on doing this is at Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Guide/Technical notes#Internal navigation templates

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Council/Guide/Task_forces"
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