Task forces are groups of Wikipedians gathered for collaborative work on a particular topic within a WikiProject.
The medicine project is organized into task forces to deal with smaller chunks of medicine as it is a huge topic. All are encouraged to participate in any task forces that interest them.
[edit] List of WikiProject Medicine task forces
To propose a new task force, please visit Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine/Task forces.
[edit] Why task forces?
The major reasons for using task forces are convenience and lifespan:
- Maintaining an independent WikiProject entails some administrative hassle: You have to keep a current entry for the WikiProject in the WikiProject Council's directory. You have to decide whether or not to be involved in article assessment, and if you are, then you have to create project-specific standards for assessment. You have to create project-specific templates. You have to find a source of new members. In short, it can be a bureaucratic hassle that significantly distracts a small group from the major point, which is to improve articles.
- Small WikiProjects often have short lifespans. When one or two active editors change their focus, or become inactive, the projects die. Task forces, however, are meant to be smaller groups and can wax and wane as needed, without needing to worry about the task force itself disappearing.
[edit] Task force creation guidelines
Once a proposed task force has been discussed at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine/Task forces, follow the steps below. Replace name with the name of the task force (usually the name of the specialty).
- Categories
- Pages
- Templates
- Announce
- Announce the creation of the task force at the doctors' mess.
- Consider announcing its creation at a very small number of key articles within the task force's scope (such as Cardiology for the cardiology task force).
[edit] Converting existing projects to task forces
To convert existing projects, follow the above steps with a few modifications.
- Categories
- If the project performed article assessments, some categories may already exist. These should be modified to fit the new category structure as mentioned above.
- Pages
- Instead of creating a new task force page, move the project and its talk page to "Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/name task force"
- Check for subpages and move them as well. Be sure to update links that point to those pages.
- Check for pre-existing auto-archiving on talk pages, and update those links as well.
- Remove link to old WikiProject at Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine#Related WikiProjects
- Templates
