Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Amusement Parks

Project overview

Firstly, I propose that we give this project a name, since "the WikiProject Amusement Parks refurb" is a mouthful. I suggest "Project Retrack", since this is a makeover of the project while keeping its strong existing foundations.

The goals of the project include:

• to attract and engage attract new members,
• to make it easier to navigate,
• to add and streamline resources to aid in editing,
• to encourage collaboration,
• to bring together our members,
• and ultimately, to better organize our effort to improve the quality of amusement park-related articles.

Per previous discussions, this process will include elements such as:

• a visual makeover of the project,
• better inviting, welcoming, and helping new editors,
• more effective collaboration projects to engage editors and improve articles,
• systems to recognize outstanding contributions from editors,
• revisiting guidelines,
• and improving resources.

Specific proposals are outlined below, but comments regarding the project's name or overall goals can go here. Plighting Engineerd (talk) 00:06, 23 February 2026 (UTC)

Members census

I think that the first priority should be seeing who is still active and who isn't, and sending out a message to every member could also be a good place to notify people of discussions about the project's future (like this one) and/or ways they can contribute. Of course, the main message that people need to mark themselves as active can't risk getting lost here.

Like the 2020 census, the best way to do this would be to mark everyone (maybe aside from members who have joined in the last couple months) as {{unknown}} and notify users to change their entry to {{active}}.

I think that this would also be a good time to allow people to opt in/out of receiving the newsletter if that is going forward – see below for more detail on this. Plighting Engineerd (talk) 00:06, 23 February 2026 (UTC)

Update from the below discussion: I now believe it would be best to not have the census message contain a notice about the newsletter. See comments under the below newsletter section for more info. Plighting Engineerd (talk) 02:11, 2 March 2026 (UTC)

Thanks. What particularly needs to change from the prior census message then? Besides the Project Retrack info and possibly a link to something around here, should goals such as OPB&M and/or the Visual Makeover tasks be omitted? Sorry for all the questions, I’m probably overthinking this.

Therguy10 (talk) 03:48, 2 March 2026 (UTC)

I'll take lots of questions any day over no discussion. Seriously, feel free to ask as much as you want. I think it's probably best just to keep most things out of it except for incorporating a sentence about Project Retrack in the reasoning for the census. Plighting Engineerd (talk) 04:15, 2 March 2026 (UTC)

A census would be a good idea but, in my opinion, should be separate from the newsletter. It may be the case that some members don't want the newsletter, and some newsletter subscribers may not want to be members of this wikiproject. – Epicgenius (talk) 03:52, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

Newsletter

I love the idea of having a newsletter again! It would act as a way to promote projects within the WikiProject, engage members (in its creation and from promoting collaborations), and recognize editors who have made outstanding contributions to amusement park articles.

I have created a WIP first draft of a newsletter for 2026 quarter 1 here, and I'd love to have feedback on it. I also made a template for future issues here, if this goes forward. (Note that I have put users in nowiki tags to avoid sending notifications).

I think that, like the previous attempts at a newsletter, this should be sent out quarterly as it is frequent enough to be relevant, but infrequent enough that it is not too much work. The key thing to decide, I think, is delivery. I think it would make sense to put a notice box on people's user talk pages linking to the newsletter, like how WikiProject Military History does it (see User talk:Boneyard90 as an example). As far as I can tell, this is typically done by requesting a mass message at Wikipedia talk:Mass message senders.

The key thing to decide is whether members of the WikiProject should receive the newsletter by default and opt out by removing their name, or have to sign up and opt in by adding their name. The benefit of the former is that it would have a greater reach, as many opt-in newsletters for smaller WikiProjects like ours only have a small handful of members. The benefit of the latter is that only interested members will receive the newsletter.

Either way, I think that with the census message, members should be notified that they can add/remove their name from the list to subscribe/unsubscribe from the newsletter.

Alternatively, to solve the problem of low awareness, a column could be added to the participants table to indicate whether a member is interested in receiving the newsletter. This would make opting into and out of the newsletter straightforward and visible. The downside is that someone would have to transfer the data into a bot-readable list of users when the newsletter is sent out.

We have about a month until the end of quarter 1 2026, so it would be nice to figure this out before then so we can send out the newsletter on or around March 31.

Options to vote for:

1) All members receive newsletter by default and can opt out

OR

2) Members only receive newsletter if they sign up

and

YES/NO on 'should a column be added to the participants table'

Plighting Engineerd (talk) 00:06, 23 February 2026 (UTC)

Moving a conversation with Therguy10 over from my talk page. For anyone else reading, context from that conversation isn't required for this post. To Therguy: if you could read the above 2 sections about the census and the newsletter if you haven't already, that would be good context.

The key thing is that, if we follow the model of the previous census, members have 90 days to update their tag to 'active' in the participants list. The end of quarter 1 is in 36 days, so there isn't enough time to get everyone's input before sending it.

Personally, I now think the best course of action is to send out an independent census message first, then on March 31, we can send out an announcement of the newsletter along with the link to the first issue to all members. This would be like a normal newsletter notice, but with a special notice that it is the first issue and describing in detail that editors can unsubscribe from the newsletter, or change where it is delivered, on the mailing list. This would get awareness of the newsletter out while also giving editors an easy option to not get the newsletter. Then, when the census concludes, we'd remove inactive members from the mailing list.

If we take that route, the main question remaining is to do with when new members join. Maybe we could make a welcome template for the WikiProject, which is something I've wanted to do anyway, informing editors of how they can help, giving a general guide to the available resources, and saying they can always ask for help on the talk page, but then this welcome template could also include a note that a newsletter is sent out quarterly and that they can unsubscribe or change where it is delivered on the mailing list page? It could also link to the most recent issue to show them what it is like.

The above method optimizes for reach, which I think is ideal, since I see so many opt-in WikiProject newsletters where only 10 or so people have seen it and signed up. I don't want it to feel too spammy, so I want to make it easy for users to opt out, but I think sharing one issue of the newsletter first could make it more appealing (I feel like people might just see "newsletter" and not sign up unless they see what it's like? I'm not sure if that makes sense).

Those are my thoughts on the matter at the moment. Plighting Engineerd (talk) 03:39, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

After reading the above and the newsletter itself (outstanding work, by the way!) I have a couple notes.

First, I agree with your preferred method of “census first, newsletter second”. I do worry about the newcomer issue. I think it is absolutely vital that we don’t overburden the newcomers whilst also maintaining a welcoming environment. This type of openness even I struggled with when I first joined. But having an up and running newsletter than the newcomers can join once it starts stands out to me the most. But that’s just my opinion.

Secondly, and this is more of a question, do you want to display a sample newsletter (ex: the most recent one) somewhere on the main page so as to preview what it’s like? It may not even have to be the full newsletter. But we could have like a “want to read the rest? then sign up!” type thing implemented. (Less blunt, of course)

Would love some extra feedback here! Therguy10 (talk) 02:24, 25 February 2026 (UTC)

Thank you!

And that sounds geed. Great point about not overburdening the newcomers, you're right that it probably doesn't make sense to include all that info in the welcome message. I suppose we can deal with how we want to have new users interact with it later.

We could definitely put a section for the newsletter somewhere on the main page. It could be a preview like the one I was thinking would go out to talk pages, where it has the list of stories in the most recent newsletter and a link to view it. We can also have instructions to subscribe and unsubscribe there. I can work on that when I get time.

Given this, it seems like the first thing to do is to write the census message. The previous one was quite simple, and I think that's a good guide to follow. Instead of the more general "the project is going through some updates", maybe we could mention Project Retrack or even link to this discussion. We could maybe mention a few of the upcoming things to say why to stay active in the project, like say there will be a newsletter and upcoming collaborations or something? The key thing is not to lose the main message, but I think reminding people of the WikiProject and saying that there are exciting things in the future is a good idea too. Plighting Engineerd (talk) 13:35, 25 February 2026 (UTC)

I think it would be best to have members opt into receiving the newsletter. There may be some members who aren't even aware that they would be signing up for the newsletter as well. Actually, on further thought, we could probably mention the newsletter's existence when we do the census; we don't have to send the newsletter at that time, though. – Epicgenius (talk) 03:56, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

@Epicgenius: Thanks, that makes sense. I do think though that I would be more in favor of separating the two messages so that the census message stays clear and the newsletter doesn't get buried. Maybe we could send out the census soon, then when March 31 comes, we can send out a different message saying 'WikiProject Amusement Parks has a newsletter!' and describe how people can sign up, while also including an example newsletter (which would be the one for this quarter) so people could see what the newsletter is like? I think that makes it more likely that people will fully grasp what the newsletter is like and be able to make an easier decision. Plighting Engineerd (talk) 13:23, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

@Plighting Engineerd, that could be a good option as well. I proposed combining them only to reduce the number of messages being sent out, since some people may not want that many messages sent to them. – Epicgenius (talk) 14:28, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

@Epicgenius: Fair. After thinking it over more, I am still in favor of having the newsletter as opt-out.

I think this project really needs some constant, widely-received communication to encourage editors to pitch in and collaborate. The project has a substantial number of editors who are still active on Wikipedia but only occasionally contribute to amusement park-related articles, so I think organization and collaboration is very important. I think the newsletter is the perfect place to let editors know about collaborations, news in the project, and how to contribute. However, to do this, it needs to get to as many members as possible.

I certainly don't want to 'spam' people with notices that they don't want, but I believe that asking people to opt into receiving the newsletter may result in many people ignoring the notice or not engaging with it. I predict maybe 5 people will sign up to it, and its impact may be fairly limited. I think this is one of the problems the last two versions of the newsletter have suffered from – if only a few people are reading it, it doesn't make sense to put the effort into writing it. I want the newsletter to be useful and I want it to last, but if no one reads it, it's not worthwhile.

Either way (opt in or out), I think we will be sending out a message introducing the newsletter and linking to its first edition. With the opt out route, this message would still give people a whole 90 days to remove themselves from the list if they don't want to receive the next issue; every newsletter release will have clear instruction on how to unsubscribe before even seeing the content. On the other hand, an opt out method would allow people time to see what the newsletter is about and choose whether or not they want to receive it. This would likely result in the newsletter more being able to accomplish its goals of bringing editors together and creating a community. Plighting Engineerd (talk) 23:41, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

Visual project makeover

To modernize the project, make it easier to navigate, and show the changes made, a makeover of the project's visuals has been proposed. I have made a draft of a remake for the main page, which also includes a new logo. This was discussed in the above thread and feedback was positive, so what I would love is some feedback from Gone, Astros, or Adog for such a major change. Plighting Engineerd (talk) 00:06, 23 February 2026 (UTC)

Love it! Surprised to see it wasn't done already TBH. The look and feel is fantastic! That was badly needed like a decade ago! We can tweak the tabs and content over time. If possible, my only request for now would be to retain a "Spotlight" tab (or named something similar like "Featured") that puts the best of our articles front and center. But nice work! Appreciate all the effort you've put into this. -- GoneIn60 (talk) 04:46, 23 May 2026 (UTC)

Since "Templates" will be tucked under "Resources", that should free up a tab. Just a thought. --GoneIn60 (talk) 04:52, 23 May 2026 (UTC)

Thank you very much! And I've made that tweak to the tabs, thanks for pointing that out. Plighting Engineerd (talk) 00:22, 24 May 2026 (UTC)

Sounds good! CharlieRidesRollerCoasters (talk) 18:14, 23 May 2026 (UTC)

Reorganizing tabs and refreshing resources

This is probably one of the biggest sections of the project, but luckily, I think a good portion of the work has already been done by Adog. There's lots of great content in their sandbox which I think should be implemented. I have found the perennial source list especially useful.

I think removing the "Article standards" and "Templates" tabs from the WikiProject menu and replacing them with a unified "Editor resources" tab that has standards/MOS for our articles, templates, research guide, perennial sources, notability guidelines, etc. in a centralized location would be valuable and could make it easier to access useful things.

I also think that replacing the big "article standards" page with individual manual of style pages for each article type would be useful, as Adog began to draft. Plighting Engineerd (talk) 00:06, 23 February 2026 (UTC)

No objections to this. – Epicgenius (talk) 03:56, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

Revising guidelines (e.g. notability)

Closely linked to the previous, revising guidelines is also a key part of reorganizing the project.

There has previously been some discussion about retiring unnecessary infobox parameters, and it seems there is a general consensus for removing some parameters; discussion can continue here.

In terms of notability, there are quite a few articles which have no sources other than RCDB (and occasionally a YouTube POV), which do not make them notable. I think going through a list of those and either finding sources for them, or, if that is not possible, turning said articles into redirects would help cut down on this. Plighting Engineerd (talk) 00:06, 23 February 2026 (UTC)

No objections to this as well. In the past, articles sourced solely to YouTube and databases (not just in this wikiproject) have been deleted. – Epicgenius (talk) 03:57, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

I'm going to start looking into redirecting pages as you described. AllegedlyAPhotographer (talk) 11:56, 8 April 2026 (UTC)

That is super helpful, thank you so much! Plighting Engineerd (talk) 15:10, 8 April 2026 (UTC)

• Comment – I would love to see us follow through on the deprecation of brochure-like infobox parameters listed in that 2018 discussion. Not everything in that list needs to be removed in one fell swoop, but quite a few are either rarely used or clearly don't belong on Wikipedia. They made their way in long before I became a regular. It would be best to have that discussion on the template talk page, so that the history of changes can be easily tracked/searched for future reference. Be sure to drop a discussion note on each infobox template talk page that is impacted. Once you feel you have the necessary consensus, which may already be the case, might be a good idea to enlist the help of a template guru to mass remove these from articles.
  As for non-notable articles, yes per WP:BLAR, it is perfectly acceptable to blank-and-redirect articles with problematic notability concerns. Only if you run into a challenge should you then discuss and perhaps escalate to AfD. Before my time, this project once thought (mistakenly) that every coaster needed to have its own article, and there was a project-wide push to do so. Sadly, many still exist that shouldn't due to lack of coverage in RS.
  It would make sense to clean both of these up before attempting to focus WP:APARKS on article expansion. Otherwise, editors (especially newer editors) will waste time filling in bad parameters and expanding non-notable articles. --GoneIn60 (talk) 04:28, 23 May 2026 (UTC)

  Sounds good, I can get a discussion going on those parameters. Thanks for the guidance on doing that!

  Good idea going after non-notable pages before doing lots of expanding. Dealing with non-notable pages is probably a good thing to mention in the next newsletter. Plighting Engineerd (talk) 00:28, 24 May 2026 (UTC)

  I’m still keeping an eye on this project and support all of the above. @Plighting Engineerd when you get the discussion going I’d be happy to take a look, even if I can’t directly input right now.

  One question. What about the creation of new articles? Will we have a way to decide if a new coaster is notable enough for an article? Therguy10 (talk) 03:57, 25 May 2026 (UTC)

  @Therguy10: Thanks so much!

  As for creation of new articles, that should be dictated by the new WikiProject Amusement Parks notability guide, currently in Adog's sandbox, as well as Wikipedia's main notability guideline). Plighting Engineerd (talk) 23:52, 25 May 2026 (UTC)

Attracting new members

There are two pools which we are likely to be able to attract members from: Wikipedians (who aren't really amusement park enthusiasts), or amusement park enthusiasts (who aren't yet frequent Wikipedians). I'm assuming that if you're a Wikipedian and an enthusiast, you're probably already here – though, as always, if someone is making lots of contributions to amusement park articles and isn't part of the project yet, send them an invite!

Other Wikipedians are likely to be attracted by things like drives and (possibly) competitions, so I think that would be a good point of focus too. It would be great if we could appear on The Signpost's WikiProject report too since that would also give us more exposure.

I feel like there are a lot of enthusiasts who would make great Wikipedia editors, but aren't aware it's an option or have never had a reason to edit. This makes me wonder if there is anything we can do off of Wikipedia to spread awareness of the WikiProject and invite more people to edit. I'm just spitballing ideas here, but maybe there are some organizations we could work with to run edit-a-thons or something? Plighting Engineerd (talk) 00:06, 23 February 2026 (UTC)

i am one of them :) CharlieRidesRollerCoasters (talk) 01:13, 1 April 2026 (UTC)

Collaborations: engaging current members

Though the census will help with this, having looked through some of the participants list, it's clear to me that we have a strong team of editors who are active on Wikipedia. However, it's a lot more quiet around here than I think it could be, and I think that with the right drives, collaborations, and other initiatives, we can really built a bit more of a community as well as really see some improvement across amusement park-related articles.

One short-term proposal that I would like feedback on (and have now just covered up with this giant wall of text) is the "50 years of Great America" collaboration project to work together and celebrate 50 years of the Great America parks by improving related articles. I think more frequent, shorter drives is probably the way to go. These can be promoted each quarter using the newsletter.

Two other ideas for drives are one for de-stubifying articles, or also for either finding sources for or deleting articles which are currently only sourced by RCDB. The latter is discussed more in the Revising guidelines (e.g. notability) section below.

I also wonder if we could periodically hold some kind of competition. I'm not sure how, or what the format would be, but I think it could be effective. Plighting Engineerd (talk) 00:06, 23 February 2026 (UTC)

I think we should start looking at perma stub articles, I feel like a lot of ride articles are perma stubs. AllegedlyAPhotographer (talk) 15:04, 4 April 2026 (UTC)

For sure. Doing a stub drive was proposed a while ago and I think that would help a lot. Especially if it is made clear and easy how to improve them! Also, quite a few perma-stubs have no reliable source coverage, so are very difficult to expand, and also are not notable and likely qualify for deletion. That's something that we could look at. Plighting Engineerd (talk) 02:07, 8 April 2026 (UTC)

Agreed. Probably soon I'll start researching the AfD policy and help clear out the perma stubs because there are a lot. AllegedlyAPhotographer (talk) 02:32, 8 April 2026 (UTC)

That would be super helpful. Some of the tricky ones are those from other countries (e.g. there are a lot in China) where I don't know how to find sources in those languages since I'm only used to finding English sources, so it's hard to see if it's notable. Plighting Engineerd (talk) 03:01, 8 April 2026 (UTC)

Recognizing achievements

I think it should be a focus to make sure that members who make outstanding contributions to the project and to amusement park-related articles should be recognized. Shouting out people in the newsletter is one great way I can think of of doing this. Members could be nominated on the talk page and appear in the next quarter's newsletter.

Additionally, as was discussed in a previous discussion, the better use of barnstars would go a long way, and I think the creation of a more general "you made some great contributions to amusement parks" barnstar would be nice to be able to give out to people who have made miscellaneous contributions that have been of very high quality. Plighting Engineerd (talk) 00:06, 23 February 2026 (UTC)

The role of task forces

I feel like the project isn't big enough to have separate drives in each task force, and I feel like their pages don't get much traffic or discussion. For example, the Six Flags task force page has received 17 pageviews in the last month – not that there's really much to see. Task forces are useful to calculate what percentage of a chain's articles are of a certain class, but I feel they have not seen much use recently (or really ever?). I don't know what the right course of action is, but I think consolidating their to-do lists onto a page with subsections could help. I'd love to have feedback from some other editors. Plighting Engineerd (talk) 00:06, 23 February 2026 (UTC)

General comments

Just dropping a quick note here to apologize for not being very responsive over the past year or so. Life got super busy! When I get time, I may try to catch up and respond to some of the comments above, but don't wait around for me. Seems like the project is in good hands and getting a much needed makeover! Felt like it was on life support for nearly a decade, so I'm just glad to see it alive and kicking again.

Best advice I can give without reading everything is to act quickly while you have some engagement. We've had flash-in-the-pan spurts of activity over the years that quickly died out. Don't wait for a massive amount of approval. 5-10 editors giving the thumbs up might be all you get (and should be good enough). Good luck! --GoneIn60 (talk) 03:52, 23 May 2026 (UTC)

@GoneIn60: Hi! Thanks so much for responding to this, and no worries for being busy – it happens to all of us! I really appreciate your support, it means a lot! I'm super happy to see so much more activity, even in comparison to when I joined two years ago (it's been two years already?!).

I'll definitely take your advice to act quickly. The members census and the main page overhaul are my next two priorities, followed by more collaborations!

Once again, I'm really grateful for your response and encouragement :) Plighting Engineerd (talk) 00:21, 24 May 2026 (UTC)