Space Case Again and Again Sighn Post

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WikiProject written report

Stargazing aboard WikiProject Spaceflight

This week, we turn our attention to WikiProject Spaceflight. Started in September 2006 by Mlm42, it has 40 agile members. The project is home to 12 Featured articles, 5 Featured lists, 22 Expert manufactures, and a portal – with a full of v,258 articles under its care.

The Signpost interviewed five projection members, and started by asking what motivated them to join the project. Information technology is clear that all members accept a passion for topics related to infinite. Colds7ream and Mlm42 were both drawn to spaceflight manufactures considering of STS-115 during 2006, then under WikiProject Infinite missions. Mlm42 was inspired past banners similar {{WPMILHIST}}, and was neat to jump on the 1.0 Article Cess bandwagon, hoping to create a project banner that could track spaceflight articles. There was a discussion in 2007 to reorganize all space-related WikiProjects nether a "WikiProject Infinite", and in 2008, WikiProject Space missions and WikiProject Space travelers were merged into WikiProject Human spaceflight equally part of an effort to increment editor activeness. A couple of years later, Mlm42 decided to bring Expedition 1 upwards to GA-status, in fourth dimension for its 10 year anniversary in August 2010. Following a farther discussion, it came to light that WikiProject Astronomy was non using, and had no desire to use, the "WikiProject Infinite" banner that had been created in 2007. And then, it was decided to deliquesce WikiProject Space completely, and simultaneously merge everything under Spaceflight into one project. GW was actively editing in this area prior to joining the project, and became a member when its scope was expanded from exploration-related articles to everything to practise with spaceflight. He is active in both content and organizational areas of the project, and has been involved with most of the reorganization of infinite projects over the concluding iv years. ChiZeroOne realised that collaboration with other editors is a means to improvement, and has been helping in whatsoever mode possible with the revival of WikiProject Spaceflight. N2e has been editing space-related articles since 2004, and is particularly interested in private space ventures, such as the recent new competition for the national-monopoly governmental space initiatives of the early on decades of the space age.

WikiProject Spaceflight has five,258 articles associated with it. How practise yous keep all these up and what are your biggest challenges?

• Colds7ream: I suppose we actually accept two major challenges with our articles. The first is a major trouble with recentism; ongoing spaceflights receive much more attention than past missions despite the fact that they may be less important historically. A perfect case in signal is to compare the articles for STS-115 (which at one point had an actress article defended to the mission'southward timeline) and STS-107, or Salyut 1 and International Infinite Station. We could really do with a few more historians to aid out and make full in the gaps we have in spaceflights' past. The other problem we have is a fairly Western bias; missions conducted by the erstwhile Soviet Matrimony or Russia seem to receive much less action than United states of america missions, the prime examples here can be seen by comparing articles to do with space shuttle missions and those regarding Soyuz flights, and the expeditions they delivered. Some assistance here, especially as more new sources of information are published, would be greatly appreciated.
• GW: There are a lot of articles, and information technology is hard for a pocket-sized group of editors to go along up with it all, as I think the project's cleanup listing reveals. That said, this is an effect faced past many projects. I agree with Colds7ream that systemic bias is a big problem. I am not certain if this is an issue of demographics, or simply that in that location are more English-linguistic communication information nigh US space programs than other countries. Another result is that when the mainstream media covers spaceflight, their manufactures tend to be oversimplified and in some cases poorly researched, which often leads to problems like Buran existence included in the listing of space shuttle missions considering the media seem to consider all space planes to be "space shuttles", every bit well as more than generic issues such every bit defoliation between mass and weight.
• ChiZeroOne: I should probably point out that a good 700 or so of those are fortunately non article-infinite, similar templates or files – useful content in supporting editing. These only require the odd flake of maintenance so it's not equally bad every bit it looks. A problem that had affected the old project was organization, or rather lack of it. With the aid of a number of bot-maintained tools nosotros use, equally well equally our efforts at collaboration, we are starting to get a paw of the situation. For example, with timely restart of Commodity Alerts nosotros can now keep a greater track of problems important to the project. Equally for the Western (specially US) bias in our articles, the reality is that NASA is a large source of public domain data whereas elsewhere, gratis-use material is harder to come up by. In that location's also the language barrier, which technical subjects seem to endure from.
• N2e: There'due south really no fashion to go on up with over 4,000 manufactures in an emergent phenomena of spaceflight-related written knowledge. Rather, as with almost editors, I just work at the margin to make some small-scale difference that helps vector change in a positive management.

Do you collaborate with other WikiProjects?

• Colds7ream: At the moment, not really. The main collaborations the project had in the past were with the projects it absorbed. Nosotros would, still, very much similar to fix some associations with other WikiProjects, for instance the Aerospace biography task forcefulness of WP:AVIATION for our astronaut biographies and WikiProject Rocketry for launch vehicles. Plus, we also nevertheless maintain a cordial relationships with astronomy-related WikiProjects that we'd like to make more of in the future. Of course, if there are whatever other projects out there that would similar to become involved in a collaboration with u.s., we'd love to hear from them!
• GW: I think we have yet to address the outcome of how collaboration should be achieved and how the projects should interact. I remember at that place is a lot of mutual ground with some of the aviation WikiProjects; the Military History, Rocketry, Astronomy and Solar System WikiProjects. There was recently some talk of a joint task force with Astronomy and Solar System, however, naught seems to have come of information technology.

WikiProject Spaceflight has Task Forces likewise as Working Groups. What are the differences between the two?

• Colds7ream: They tin can pretty much be thought of as an experiment in collaboration. The Task Forces are what remains of WikiProject Human spaceflight and WikiProject Unmanned spaceflight, and their model is to operate a big editor base responsible for a range of articles with full general aims. The Working Groups on the other paw, we run into as task-dependent. Their model is to take a modest group of editors and a small grouping of articles, and behave out a specific task.
• GW: When this structure was decided upon, the Chore Forces were intended to expect after large numbers of articles, taking care of general tasks and breaking the project'south content into more manageable sections, as well equally maintaining a construction similar to what had existed prior to the reorganization. In practice, the project has go more than centralized than expected, so perchance this element of the structure needs to exist reviewed. The Working Groups are intended to exist modest groups of editors collaborating on an area of mutual interest, and in some cases with a particular goal or terminate outcome. We currently have 2 such groups with very different aims. The Timeline of Spaceflight Grouping is attempting to produce a comprehensive timeline of spaceflight, listing every spaceflight since 1943, while the Infinite Stations Working Group works to develop a series of Featured topics on space stations. The working groups are intended to be ad-hoc collaborations, which can be created for any purpose equally long every bit several editors want to collaborate in that area.

What are the most pressing needs for WikiProject Spaceflight, and how tin a new contributor help?

• Colds7ream: What we'd actually like to achieve in the near future are some more than Good articles or Featured topics, with our current focus being on space stations. We call back that having such featured content would give the project some expert printing and attract some new editors to join, which is ever a good thing. In a like vein, we'd really similar to get Portal:Spaceflight upwardly to Featured portal status for the same reasons. Then, if anyone out in that location is good with topics or portals, we'd be very much appreciative of their aid.
• Mlm42: If an editor wants to start small, they could try chipping abroad at the Spaceflight cleanup listing, where about one-half of all spaceflight articles are tagged with some kind of trouble. I've establish this tool useful, because it groups together manufactures that have similar bug.
• GW: I agree with Colds7ream and Mlm. Increasing the levels of Featured content, especially Featured topics, is a priority, and we do have quite a backlog of cleanup tasks. Aside from that, there are a lot of manufactures which take non yet been created, and many more which could benefit from a great deal of expansion. A multilingual correspondent could too help past expanding articles with data from non-English sources, which may help to eliminate some of the systemic bias.
• N2e: I would add that a new editor with a history focus could bring together u.s. to await at the many articles that document older/by missions and projects but are poorly referenced, and thus may not stand the Wikipedia sands of time, where unverified fabric volition, quite naturally, be gradually culled out.

Whatever final words?

• Colds7ream: We'd dear to point out to the community at big the benefits of merging small, inactive projects into larger editor groups. Before the big WikiProject Space reorganization in December 2010, at that place were v spaceflight-related WikiProjects, each with small editor bases and largely inactive. By merging these projects together, nosotros've re-energized the editor base and got much more of a community spirit going, which we hope volition be able to achieve better things than the split projects could. We'd urge pocket-size projects to get in contact with related projects and consider merges, and reiterate to editors starting new projects to start join an already-existing one to encounter if that project can help, rather than splitting upwardly editors. For instance, during the reorganization, we "discovered" a WikiProject Eclipses, which had 1 member and was completely unknown to any other editors who might take been interested.

Next week, nosotros'll come across the genesis of new articles authored by anonymous users. Until then, read all the articles created by Signpost regulars in the archive.

In this effect

Information technology'south your Signpost. You can help us.

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Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2011-02-07/WikiProject_report