Try-ing to become informed – WikiProject Rugby League

WikiProject Rugby league has a plethora of participants, many of which are active or semi-active. There are 5 Featured Articles, 11 Good Articles and 1 Featured List. We discussed the WikiProject with some of its most active members, RugbyXIII, Casliber and Mattlore.

Why did you join WikiProject Rugby League? Do you support a club team and/or representative team, and if so who?

• RugbyXIII: I felt the project needed another fairly active member as a few of the rugby league pages needed more updating/tidying up and other RL topics needed articles creating. I follow Wigan Warriors home and away and also give my support to the England national rugby league team.
• Casliber: I love reading history of sports articles and wikipedia (especially with early newspaper digitization and books etc.) offers a great opportunity to make some really good pages. I support Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs.
• Mattlore: I'm a rugby league nut and a wikipedian, if there was only one project I'd be involved in on Wikipedia - it would be this one! I am from New Zealand and so support the New Zealand Warriors club side and the New Zealand representative team.

Have you significantly contributed to the WikiProject's articles, or even helped to promote articles to Did You Know, Good Article or Featured Article status?

• RugbyXIII: I like to think I've made an impact on the rugby league articles in my short time as a Wikipedian. I have yet to achieve a DYK, GA or FA article yet, however.
• Casliber: I have expanded a few and I think have a DYK or two but not buffed anything to GA or FA yet.
• Mattlore: I don't actively seek to work articles up to GA or HA but have got facts onto DYK. Including ones about Frédéric Banquet, Ellerslie Eagles, 1907–1908 New Zealand rugby tour of Great Britain, Paul Matete and Riki Papakura.

The French Wikipedia also has an active Rugby league wikiproject. Have you ever made contact with members of the wikiproject? If not, do you plan to in the future?

• RugbyXIII: To be honest, no. I do not speak or understand French and my knowledge of the game in France beyond the Catalan Dragons is limited.
• Casliber: Sounds interesting but no
• Mattlore: I wasn't aware there was a French wikiproject TBH.

Are there any areas of rugby league that are not well represented on the English Wikipedia? I noticed that the French Wikipedia has a page for the Elite One Championship whilst the English Wikipedia does not.

• RugbyXIII: The amateur game in Britain and Europe definitely needs more coverage on the English Wikipedia.
• Casliber: Aussie player coverage is patchy and real lack of audited content (GA/FA) compared with other areas of wikipedia.
• Mattlore: I think coverage is fairly broad, in terms on quantity, but the quality of articles could be improved. And, like I imagine most sport projects, we suffer from 'recentisim' and could use more effort in historical articles - especially biographies.

What are the long-term aims of the WikiProject? How could a new editor help the WikiProject?

• RugbyXIII: The standard of the Association Football articles on Wikipedia tend to be very high, so I think achieving similar levels should be a main goal. A new editors goal, like mine, should simply be the improvement of the rugby league Wikipedia articles and in the long run, GA's & FA's should be targets.
• Casliber: what he said :)
• Mattlore: One of the constant challenges to the project is the number of "fans" who come in and make biased edits or ones that don't meet Wikipedia guidelines, especially at the start of a season. The way to combat this is to have an active wikiproject that can be there to wikify edits and guide, and hopefully keep, these new contributors. The project is not as active as it has been in the past, so needs some help to rebuild.

Feel free to make a suggestion for a future WikiProject report at the WikiProject desk. Thanks for reading!

Editor's note: We welcome Leeds United FC fan as our new WikiProject report author. He is a member of the project he profiled this week, but in the future will profile projects in which he is not involved. In fact, feel free to suggest a project for profiling in the comments! Go Phightins!