Wikipedia:WikiProject Viruses

[edit] News

• Virus was improved greatly during its peer review in June 2006, and will soon be listed as a candidate for a Featured Article. The archived changed can be found at Wikipedia:Peer review/Virus.
• Currently looking to increase our exposure around Wikipedia - if you know an editor with an interest in viruses please consider dropping them a friendly message about our work here.
• Virus has been included in the Wikipedia:Version 0.5 release! This means that it has reached a point where it may be considered in the future for the Wikipedia CD.
• International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses is now complete and provides a solid companion to viral classification.

[edit] Aims

This WikiProject aims to help organise and contribute to the growing collection of articles about biological viruses. This can be achieved by:

• Using consistent nomenclature and orthography in naming viruses
• Including taxoboxes on all virus articles
• Adding information to existing articles
• Validating information and seeking references
• Placing articles in correct categories
• Identifying articles in need of work
• Organising information as clear and easy to read as possible

[edit] Parentage

This WikiProject is an offshoot of WikiProject Tree of Life

WikiProject Science.

WikiProject Tree of Life

WikiProject Viruses

Although viruses are not typically considered to be living, we believe that virus articles could benefit from having a project like the tree of life descendants to represent the taxonomy and relationships of different viruses.

[edit] Important pages

[edit] Root articles

• International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses
• List of viruses
• Virus
  • Virusoid
  • Viroid
  • Phage
  • Satellite (biology)
• Virology
• Virus classification

[edit] Root categories

• Category:Virus stubs
• Category:Virology
• Category:Viruses
• Category:Viroids
• Category:WikiProject Viruses

[edit] Root templates

• Template:Virus-stub

[edit] External links

• It is recommended that the Universal Viral Database of the Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTVdb) be used in conjunction with writing up articles. The database contains up-to-date information from the leading source of viral taxonomy.

[edit] FAQ

1) I'm not a scientist, can I help?

Most definitely. If you have an artistic flair, you could clean up a messy page or create a new template. You could also help to proof-read edits to give scientists feedback on how easy their writing is to understand from a layman's point of view. You could tag messy articles for the project, identify new stubs or even just spread the word about this WikiProject!

2) How can I get involved?

If you feel like participating in this WikiProject, please sign your name over at the members page and check out the Open Tasks to be completed.

3) At what level is it worth having a separate Wikipedia article for a particular virus?

Simply put, any level you like. If we write individual articles for all the viruses known to man, it may take a while; However, if you feel like writing an article about some particularly obscure virus that most people have never even heard of, go for it! The more the merrier :-) As a general guideline though, combine several species or subspecies into a single article when there isn't enough text to make more than short, unsatisfying stubs otherwise. If the article grows large enough to deserve splitting, that can always be done later. It's always a good idea to avoid creating articles that are doomed to be stubs.

4) What about eradicated viruses?

Like smallpox? Sure, why not! There seems to be no reason to exclude any viruses as long as somebody's willing to write an article for it.

[edit] Related

• Prion
• Transposon
• Viroid
• Virusoid

[edit] Participants

Here is a list of Molecular and Cellular Biology Wikiproject members, together with some of their interests. To join the group simply add yourself to the list of participants, being sure to maintain alphabetical order.