User talk:Silence/V1b

NCurse changes

Thanks for the contributions. I don't mind you directly changing the ratings, though you can also feel free to give your own complete list of rankings if you're interested; we could set up a comparative chart of them all. However, I'll justify my original ratings where I disagree with your changes currently:

Australia 5 -> 6. The problem here is that Australia is sometimes considered a continent, but at least as often considered a part of the larger reason of Oceania in listings alongside Europe, Africa, etc. Additionally, Australia is, quite uncontroversially (unlike its controversial continental status), a single country, and as such, including it as the only country on the entire list that merits inclusion is a bit strange, when we're smoothly excluding countries like India, the United States and the People's Republic of China. So, whereas I'd have given Australia a 6 or 7 rating if it was a continent alone, and a 4 or 3 rating if it was a country alone, its ambiguous status as either a small continent or large country made me give it the middling ranking of "5". If we're not even going to consider including any other countries on the list, I don't think Australia deserves dramatically different treatment. However, at least we agree that we can't reasonably give it higher than a 6 while Africa, Asia and the Americas get 7.

I changed it because as far as I can remember, Antarctica got 6. NCurse_work 09:22, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I'd have given both Antarctica and Australia a 6 if they were unambiguous continents. (They don't get a 7 because of Australia's small size and Antarctica's lack of habitation, and because both have the least historical importance of any continents.) But Australia's status as a country (which is actually what the vast majority of the Australia article deals with!) lowers it below even a 6, making it a 5 or 4 to compromise with the fact that it's a country (and not even an especially important one; I'd include it in a list of the top 20 most important countries, but not in the top 8). I think it would be much more neutral and fair to include Oceania on the list than Australia, as well as being more useful (considering that Oceania is a much more inclusive category than Australia, encompassing important places such as New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Micronesia, Polynesia and eastern Indonesia). I'd also consider the very idea of including any specific contents on the top-150 list a matter of debate in itself: even that level of specificity may be overdoing it for such a general list, I'd argue, though clearly Africa, Europe, Asia and the Americas are more noteworthy than Antarctica and Australia/Oceania. -Silence 11:43, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Biology 8 -> 10. This change is a bit strange, considering that you didn't raise Physics, an even more fundamental discipline (biology requires physics, but physics doesn't require biology) up from 8. Same for chemistry. I'd consider Life a 9 or a 10, but biology, the mere study of life, doesn't rank that high, in my view. No subfield of science (itself a 10) does, as I see it.

In my opinion, there is no question about that biology, physics, chemistry (all these fundamental disciplines) should have 10. NCurse_work 09:22, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Alright, I'd object to that less than merely changing one of them to 10 and leaving the others as 8, since at least it's consistent. I think that's overdoing their importance though, personally; any article in the range of 8–10 is pretty much assured a position in the top 150, and having a clear distinction between the importance of science and the importance of biology is a very valuable thing, since obviously science is hugely more significant and basic than biology. :) But, again, I'd rather see articles like life and universe as 10 and articles like biology and physics as 8 because of the clear gap in how "Core" they are, at least to me; if you disagree, I'd like to hear your explanation. Surely you don't consider biology more important than life, or physics more important than universe? Both are fields of study, not the things-in-themselves which they study. -Silence 11:43, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Game 8 -> 6. It baffles me that you lowered Game two points (8 to 6), while raising Sport two points (8 to 10). If anything, I'd have done exactly the opposite: games are much more fundamental than sports, and much more ancient. Games have existed for as long as small human tribal gatherings have, have much more diversity and broadness than sports, and could arguably even encompass every sport in existence by some definitions (consider the Olympic Games, a major sports event), whereas the reverse is clearly not possible.

I thought about what game means now. I thought that game is in sport category. But sport takes a great part of our life, no question it must have 9 or 10. NCurse_work 09:22, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No, game isn't in the sport category, and sport isn't in the game category. Though if we were going to do one or the other, certainly one has more right to call a sport a game than a game a sport: football might be considered an "athletic game", but you'll never hear anyone call battleship (game) or poker or Dungeons & Dragons a "sport". :) (Though I have heard "chess" called a sport once or twice, an appellation that has been a very controversial one, since chess clearly doesn't meet the ordinary requirements for being a sport, whereas it's an obvious game.) -Silence 11:43, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Health 7 -> 9. I'd consider Health an 8, at best. I may partly be biased by the fact that Health is such a small stub at the moment, though.

Ok, agree. NCurse_work 09:22, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

History of the Earth 4 -> 6. This is a daughter article of Earth. Including it in the list isn't really necessary, because the Earth article should cover the basics of the planet's history all on its own. That's the same reason we don't have the history of science article on this list, even though science, like Earth, is level-10: because science itself should cover its history, at least enough for a list of Wikipedia's 150 Core Topics.

That articles is so good, that's why I changed it. And it is an important topic. NCurse_work 09:22, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ideally, determining an article's "Coreness" (i.e. the 1-10 scale) and determining its quality (FA, GA, etc.) should be 100% distinct endeavors. We should, ideally, never let the quality impact what numerical rating we give, and never let the numerical rating impact the quality rating. For example, just because Society is important doesn't mean we should act like it's a better article than it is. Likewise, Spoo may be a fantastic article, but that should in no way influence whether such a trivial topic merits inclusion on this list. If we forget to keep notability/basicness and quality completely distinct, this entire project will become useless. What we should be working on is improving the Earth#History so it's an effective summary, not bending over backwards to accomodate already-decent articles that aren't as important. If we were discussing a list of 300 articles, you'd have good reason to try to get History of Earth included, but it's quite clear that a list of only 150 articles simply cannot fairly include it. -Silence 11:43, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

History of the world 6 -> 8. I don't really agree, though I can see where you're coming from. And I don't think it should be included on the list at all until it is correctly named: it needs to be moved at some point to human history or history of humanity or similar, "the world" in this context is an unencyclopedic and extremely ambiguous colloquialism.

The article should be better, but anyway this topic is important. NCurse_work 09:22, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I suppose. This is a tricky one to accurately rate. I still think it's a 6, but I'd be more willing to compromise on a "7" rating than going all the way to 8 with such a borderline article. (Also, remember, how high- or low-quality the article is should have little, if any, influence on how we rate it.)

Medicine 7 -> 10. This change seems dramatically strange to me. I'm not even sure "medicine" is a more integral topic than "health", and to elevate biology and medicine above food and the like just doesn't make sense to me. I could see an argument for raising it, but not for raising it this high.

I think medicine is a fundamental discipline now. Everybody's life depend on medicine to exagarrate a bit. NCurse_work 09:22, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Something can be "fundamental" without being level-10. You didn't bother to raise food from 9 to 10, even though food is much more fundamental than medicine. I think this is an exaggerated rating. -Silence 11:43, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Modern history 3 -> 5. This is an article about a term, not so much about a period in time, making it of marginal relevance at best.

Soccer 2 -> 4. No. I'm more inclined to lower it to 1 than raise it anywhere. What possible justification is there for including this random sport, and nothing else remotely as specific?

If it refers to football, then it should have more then 5. Extremely popular sport all over the world. :) NCurse_work 09:22, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

And Chess is an important game, yet we don't have it listed. Your argument is very, very weak. Meat is a thousand times more basic and important than football (soccer), yet we've never even considered including it on the list. If meat is a 5 or 6, then soccer is a 2 at best, and someone could make a strong argument for it being a 1 in the context of a list of the 150 most important encyclopedic topics in existence. I could conceivably see soccer in a list of the 1,500 or 2,000 most important topics, but in a list of only 150? Not even close to not even being close. -Silence 11:43, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sports 8 -> 10. I don't see it... Even 8 is being generous: sports are important, but not exactly "top-level" important. You've elevated sports to an even higher level than music and religion!

Agree. NCurse_work 09:22, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Western civilization 5 -> 6. Like "modern history", this is more about a specific sociological typology than about the concept itself, which is a rather biased and limited one. Also, it's clearly unacceptably skewed to include an article on Western world without one on Eastern world.

Agree. NCurse_work 09:22, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

~~Weather 8 -> 7. Why'd you lower Weather from 8 to 7, while leaving its sister-article, Climate, an 8? If anything I'd have done the opposite, weather seems a bit more "basic" to me than climate.~~

I think climate includes weather. That's why I changed it. NCurse_work 09:22, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You're right. I'll strike this objection entirely, I was just mistaken. There is good reason to rate "climate" higher than "weather" if climate is just generalized weather. I think I was confused because I'd recently seen the articles and categories on climatology (which studies climate) and meteorology (which studies weather) and had noticed that neither one was a subcategory of the other. Very strange stuff. -Silence 11:43, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Your other changes (raising Biotechnology and Nature, lowering Community and Festival) I more or less agree with. -Silence 18:51, 3 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Goal of this project

What do we want now?

to show and rate the most important disciplines, topics detachedly?
or to let us see what are the most important parts of wikipedia that we can put into V0.5?

Because in the first way, sport is 6 or 5, but in the second at least 8 or 9. And so on... NCurse_work 09:25, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure why you'd consider sport a 6 or 5 in the first goal. Could you clarify what you mean by the first potential goal, exactly? Regardless, I think we should use this list for very practical purposes, though I don't think we need to only put it to use in V0.5: If this rating system becomes successful enough, we could come to use it for other projects, such as later versions of Core Topics which have larger numbers of articles included. The main value of a system like this one, that's more complicated than just "include / don't include", is that we can reuse the ratings we assign to articles when we get around to choosing 500, or even 1,000, core articles. So while we may, perhaps, require an 8 or higher (though I'm sure a fair number of 7s, and even some 6s, will make the list) for the list of the "top 150" articles, we may lower our numerical standard when we get to a list of a larger number of articles, when the noteworthiness of topics will get much more difficult to consistently and fairly judge. -Silence 11:43, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]