Thanks to everyone who voted for me as Wookieepedian of the Month. I'll use that publicity now to help put forth an idea that has sat in my mind over the past year as wiki/forum relations have improved. I was inspired by Master Fredcerique's Project Stardust and want to start a new editing initiative to complement it. Since the philosophy of the in-universe Project Stardust prioritizes massive projects from the top down—just like the wiki project focuses on essential pages—I'm looking to parallel Thrawn's philosophy behind the TIE Defender, which stresses perfection on the smallest scales, from the bottom up. This is Project Defender.
What is the goal?
The project targets articles with the {{Stub}} or {{Update}} templates, particularly for niche, non-mainstream subjects that might only appear in reference books or comics. While the project isn't dedicated to nominating Comprehensive articles, that can still a byproduct.
Use of the Discussions forum
The material I'm after seems perfect for entry-level editors, so I want to operate this project on Discussions, where tons of users exist with accounts and without edits. You can also imagine how important it is for us moderators to keep the forum culture closer to source information, and away from too many opinionated posts. This project can serve that end as well.
I wrote a post some time ago as a template of sorts for what that would look like. Forum regular IronStain98 has also done some work in this department, and I plan on reaching out to him about joining the project and incorporating his editing posts too.
This is the outline for the project I have planned.
- I've written this very thread and posted an announcement about it on Discussions, which will later serve as the forum-side project archive.
- We'll suggest and vote on pages here to select for the project.
- Once about five clear winners are chosen, I'll write a project page, then a subpage for the first batch of articles.
- Users can sign up to commit to any of the articles listed on the subpage.
- Users can also sign up to post a Discussions thread (whoever signs up first can post it), which would announce the batch of articles for the project to the forum, explain what sorts of new information is needed for each, then discuss source material and relevant wiki resources that forum regulars could go find and reference for themselves to update the articles.
- I'll then link the Discussions thread back on the project subpage and on the original Discussions announcement; users can follow Discussions posts to receive notifications on new replies related to the project.
- Users can suggest articles to review for the next project round on that Discussions thread, and then we'll repeat steps 3–7.
Suggest/Vote for pages
How we'll decide which pages will be featured on the first post can come down to votes here. Please add as many suggestions as you want, and sign your username with three tildes (#~~~). Jedi Sarith LeKit (talk) 05:23, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
Imperial gas canister
Jyn's kyber pendant
Orb Torch
Ylesian Senate
Ki-Adi-Mundi's lightsaber
Discussion
- Discussions post created. Jedi Sarith LeKit (talk) 05:24, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
- Just want to say that I really like this idea! The large and popular articles can be intimidating for new users, plus we're quick to revert problems on them (like lack of sourcing) which can be discouraging to some people. Small articles and ones that get less attention may remain in need of help for a long, long time. So... I like this! Immi Thrax
(talk) 06:32, 25 July 2021 (UTC)