wikipedia-wikiprojects

name	wikipedia-wikiprojects
description	Understand and work with English Wikipedia's WikiProject system — finding relevant projects, interpreting assessment tables, using Popular pages and work lists, and navigating project directories
license	MIT
compatibility	opencode
depends_on	["wikimedia-api-access","wikipedia-page-anatomy"]
skill_discovery_hints	[{"keywords":["WikiProject","WikiProject directory","WikiProject assessment","Popular pages"]},{"keywords":["WikiProject banner","project template","task force","work group"]},{"keywords":["article alerts","cleanup listing","WikiProject Council"]}]
last_verified	"2026-06-22T00:00:00.000Z"

⚠️ User-Agent required: The API examples below use the Action API. All requests must include a descriptive User-Agent header. See the wikimedia-api-access skill for the correct format.

📖 This skill covers the English Wikipedia WikiProject system. English Wikipedia has the largest WikiProject infrastructure (2,000+ projects, ~1,000 active). German Wikipedia (WikiProjekte/Redaktionen) and French Wikipedia (Projets) have active systems with their own conventions. Other language editions use WikiProjects to varying degrees. The concepts covered here (assessment tables, project directories, banner templates) are applicable across languages, but specific URLs, template names, and conventions are enwiki-specific.

---

SOP: What WikiProjects Are

WikiProjects are volunteer communities that organize work around a specific topic area. They assess article quality, track improvements, coordinate clean-up drives, and maintain topic-specific guidelines. Every WikiProject is itself a wiki page (or set of pages) in the Wikipedia: namespace.

WikiProjects serve three main functions:

1. Assessment — rate articles by quality (Stub→Start→C→B→GA→FA) and importance (Low→Mid→High→Top) within their topic area
2. Coordination — maintain work lists, article alerts, and cleanup listings
3. Standards — define style guides, reliable sources, and notability criteria specific to their topic

---

SOP: Finding WikiProjects

The Curated Directory

The primary entry point is the manually maintained directory:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Council/Directory

This organizes projects by broad topic area (Culture, Geography, History, Science, Technology, etc.) with active/inactive status indicators.

The Bot-Maintained Directory

A complementary list, auto-generated from on-wiki data:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Directory

This is updated by bot and includes subproject/task-force information that may not appear in the manual directory.

Category-Based Discovery

All WikiProjects are categorized under Category:WikiProjects:

# List all WikiProjects (paginated, up to 500 pages)
curl -s -H "User-Agent: MyBot/1.0 ([e-mail])" \
  "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&list=categorymembers&\
cmtitle=Category:WikiProjects&cmtype=page&cmlimit=max&format=json"

Subcategories include:

• Category:Active WikiProjects — actively maintained
• Category:Inactive WikiProjects — dormant or defunct
• Category:WikiProject Council — meta-project about WikiProjects

Searching by Topic

To find the WikiProject for a specific topic, search the Wikipedia: namespace:

# Search for WikiProjects about "Chemistry"
curl -s -H "User-Agent: MyBot/1.0 ([e-mail])" \
  "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&list=search&\
srsearch=WikiProject Chemistry&srnamespace=4&format=json"

The naming convention is typically Wikipedia:WikiProject <Topic> or Wikipedia:WikiProject <Parent>/<Sub-topic>.

---

SOP: Understanding WikiProject Pages

Every active WikiProject has a main page (the project home) and may have several important subpages:

Common Subpages

Subpage	Purpose	Example URL
/Assessment	Quality × importance matrix, statistics	Wikipedia:WikiProject_Physics/Assessment
/Popular_pages	Most-viewed articles in scope (bot-generated)	Wikipedia:WikiProject_Physics/Popular_pages
/Article_alerts	Automated notices: AfDs, PRODs, GANs, etc.	Wikipedia:WikiProject_Physics/Article_alerts
/Cleanup_listing	Articles needing cleanup, by type	Wikipedia:WikiProject_Physics/Cleanup_listing
/Members	List of project participants	Wikipedia:WikiProject_Physics/Members
/To_do	Manual task list maintained by members	Wikipedia:WikiProject_Physics/To_do

Not all projects have all subpages — some are optional or require opt-in to bot generation.

The Assessment Table

The /Assessment subpage (when present) is the most information-dense page:

┌──────────┬───────┬──────┬────┬─────┬──────┬──────┬───────┐
│          │  Top  │ High │Mid │ Low │ None │Total │       │
├──────────┼───────┼──────┼────┼─────┼──────┼──────┼───────┤
│ FA       │   12  │  45  │ 89 │ 134 │   0  │  280 │       │
│ GA       │   23  │  67  │156 │ 289 │   0  │  535 │       │
│ B        │   45  │ 234  │567 │1234 │   0  │ 2080 │       │
│ C        │   34  │ 456  │890 │2345 │   0  │ 3725 │       │
│ Start    │   12  │ 345  │678 │4567 │   0  │ 5602 │       │
│ Stub     │    3  │  89  │234 │1890 │   0  │ 2216 │       │
│ List     │    5  │  23  │ 45 │ 123 │   0  │  196 │       │
│ Unassess │    0  │   0  │  0 │   0 │ 450  │  450 │       │
│ Total    │  134  │1259  │2659│10582│ 450  │15084 │       │
└──────────┴───────┴──────┴────┴─────┴──────┴──────┴───────┘

How to read it:

• Top/High importance + Stub/Start quality = highest-priority improvement targets
• High importance + B/C quality = good articles that could be improved to GA
• Unassessed articles haven't been rated yet — evaluate them first

The Popular Pages Table

The /Popular_pages subpage is bot-generated from pageview data and shows the most-read articles within the project's scope:

Rank	Page	Views	Quality	Importance
1	Physics	1,234,567	B	Top
2	Albert Einstein	987,654	FA	Top
3	Quantum mechanics	876,543	B	Top
...	...	...	...	...

The data is pre-sorted by pageviews descending. The bot (Community_Tech_bot) updates these ~monthly.

Master index of all Popular_pages reports:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Community_Tech_bot/Popular_pages

This page indexes every WikiProject that has opted into the bot, organized by topic category. Browse it to discover which projects have traffic data.

---

SOP: Interpreting WikiProject Banners on Talk Pages

WikiProjects add banner templates to article talk pages. A single article can be tagged by multiple WikiProjects. Example:

{{WikiProject Physics|class=B|importance=Top}}
{{WikiProject Biography|class=B|importance=Mid|s&a-work-group=yes}}
{{WikiProject Chemistry|class=C|importance=Low}}

What the Banner Tells You

Parameter	Meaning	Values
class	Quality rating	FA, GA, B, C, Start, Stub, List, NA
importance	Priority within project	Top, High, Mid, Low, NA
Work group flags	Task force membership	Varies by project (e.g., s&a-work-group)

Checking Programmatically

import requests

def get_wikiproject_banners(title):
    """Fetch WikiProject banner templates from a talk page."""
    headers = {'User-Agent': 'MyBot/1.0 ([e-mail])'}
    # Get the talk page wikitext
    params = {
        'action': 'parse', 'page': f'Talk:{title}',
        'prop': 'wikitext', 'format': 'json',
    }
    resp = requests.get(
        'https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php',
        params=params, headers=headers, timeout=30
    )
    resp.raise_for_status()
    wikitext = resp.json()['parse']['wikitext']['*']
    
    # Extract WikiProject templates
    import re
    projects = []
    for match in re.finditer(r'\{\{(WikiProject[^}|]+)\}\}', wikitext):
        banner = match.group(1)
        # Parse class and importance
        class_match = re.search(r'\|class=(\w+)', banner)
        imp_match = re.search(r'\|importance=(\w+)', banner)
        name_match = re.match(r'WikiProject[_ ](\w+)', banner)
        if name_match:
            projects.append({
                'project': name_match.group(1),
                'class': class_match.group(1) if class_match else None,
                'importance': imp_match.group(1) if imp_match else None,
            })
    return projects


# Example
for p in get_wikiproject_banners('Albert Einstein'):
    print(f"{p['project']}: {p['class']} / {p['importance']}")

Check if a Project Exists

def has_project(project_name):
    """Check if a WikiProject page exists."""
    headers = {'User-Agent': 'MyBot/1.0 ([e-mail])'}
    params = {
        'action': 'query',
        'titles': f'Wikipedia:WikiProject_{project_name}',
        'format': 'json',
    }
    resp = requests.get(
        'https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php',
        params=params, headers=headers, timeout=10
    )
    pages = resp.json()['query']['pages']
    return '-1' not in pages  # '-1' means page doesn't exist


# Check common projects
for project in ['Physics', 'Medicine', 'Chemistry', 'Mathematics']:
    exists = has_project(project)
    print(f"WikiProject {project}: {'✓ exists' if exists else '✗ not found'}")

---

SOP: Finding High-Impact Work

Most Active WikiProjects

Projects with large assessment tables and frequent edits signal active communities. To gauge activity:

1. Check the Assessment table — a large table with recent updates indicates active assessment
2. Check the Popular_pages page — if it exists and is current, the project opted into automated tooling
3. Check Recent Changes — search for recent edits tagged with the project's banner template

Finding Top-Priority Work

The highest-ROI improvement targets for any project:

1. Top/High importance + Stub/Start quality — these are the most-read articles in the worst shape. Prioritize them.
2. Popular pages with low quality — cross-reference the Popular_pages table with the Assessment table to find widely-read articles that need improvement
3. Unassessed articles — pages that haven't been rated at all. Assess them first before any other action.

Using the Database for Bulk Analysis

For deep analysis, the page_assessments table provides programmatic access. See the wikimedia-page-assessment skill for SQL queries, schema documentation, and pre-built reports.

---

SOP: Task Forces and Work Groups

Large WikiProjects often have task forces (or work groups) — sub-projects focused on a narrower topic within the parent project.

Examples:

• WikiProject Physics → Task Force: Biographies, Task Force: Relativity
• WikiProject Medicine → Task Force: Cardiology, Task Force: Pharmacology

Task forces are listed on the parent project's main page, typically in a sidebar or infobox. The naming convention is:

Wikipedia:WikiProject <Parent>/<Task Force>

---

Guardrails

❌ Don't Assume All Projects Are Active

Many WikiProjects are dormant. Check the /Assessment subpage — if it exists and has recent data, the project is likely active. If not, the project may be defunct.

❌ Don't Create New WikiProjects Lightly

Creating a new WikiProject requires significant community buy-in. Propose at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Council/Proposals first. Most topic areas are already covered by existing projects or task forces.

❌ Don't Edit Assessment Tables Manually

Assessment data is generated by bots from talk page banners. Don't edit the /Assessment subpage directly — update the banner on the article's talk page instead.

❌ Don't Confuse WikiProjects with Portals

WikiProjects are workspaces for editors. Portals (Portal:) are reader-facing entry points to a topic. They are different namespaces with different purposes.

---

Cross-References

Related Skill	Why
wikimedia-api-access	User-Agent and API patterns for WikiProject queries
wikipedia-page-anatomy	Article structure — where WikiProject banners appear on talk pages
wikipedia-talk-page	Talk pages — WikiProject banners are placed here
wikimedia-page-assessment	SQL queries for page_assessments table — bulk analysis of project data
wikimedia-pageviews	Pageview data — Popular_pages combines views with assessments
wikipedia-categories	Category system — WikiProjects often maintain topic-specific categories

---

Tooling

🔧 List WikiProjects (scripts/list-wikiprojects.sh)

List active WikiProjects by category:

./scripts/list-wikiprojects.sh          # All WikiProjects
./scripts/list-wikiprojects.sh active   # Active only
./scripts/list-wikiprojects.sh science  # Science category

🔧 Check Project (scripts/check-project.sh)

Check whether a WikiProject exists and show its metadata:

./scripts/check-project.sh Physics
./scripts/check-project.sh "United States History"

🐍 WikiProject Discovery (assets/discover-wikiprojects.py)

Python tool for discovering WikiProjects by topic:

from assets.discover_wikiprojects import find_project, list_active

# Find the most relevant project for a topic
project = find_project("quantum physics")
print(project)  # → WikiProject Physics

# List all active projects
active = list_active()
print(f"{len(active)} active WikiProjects")

🐍 Banner Parser (assets/banner-parser.py)

Parse WikiProject banners from talk pages:

from assets.banner_parser import parse_banners

banners = parse_banners("Albert Einstein")
# → [{'project': 'Physics', 'class': 'B', 'importance': 'Top'}, ...]

📚 WikiProject Reference (references/wikiproject-directory.md)

Reference guide covering:

• Complete list of major active WikiProjects by topic area
• Common banner parameters and their meanings
• Subpage naming conventions
• Task force and work group patterns
• Bot-maintained pages and their update schedules