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.
Welcome to this medicine task force over view page. If you have any questions about articles or are generally seeking advice, you're encouraged to ask at the
Medicine talk page, the centralized point for discussion, thank you.
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.
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).
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)
Converting existing projects to task forces
To convert existing projects, follow the above steps with a few modifications.
Get consensus from the existing project
The participants of the future task force must agree to it. This can be done through two methods:
Demonstration that there are no active participants in the project to be converted. This is generally done for projects that have been tagged as {{
WikiProject status|inactive}} for months. Leave a note on the talk page to invite responses. If there are no responses after a long time, then it may be assumed that there are no active participants (or at least none that object).
Demonstration of consensus by the active participants. This is generally done through a discussion on the group's own talk page.
If the existing project is medicine- or health-related, WPMED will probably agree to the conversion. However, a note should be posted either at
WT:MED or
WT:MEDTF to allow WPMED's members to object. This need not be done unless and until the other group has decided that they would like to become part of WPMED.
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.
The project template used on article talk pages will become obsolete.
Article talk pages with both the project's banner and WPMED's banner need to have the project's banner removed, and the task force's parameters added to {{WPMED}}
Article talk pages with only the project's banner need to have {{WPMED}} added with the task force's parameters