This is an archive of past discussions about Wikipedia:Content assessment. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
I am hoping to start a central discussion here about importance ratings for non-article classes. I am having issues with the new WP 1.0 bot and the lack of importance ratings on pages such as Book_talk:1941_Atlantic_hurricane_season. By "lack" I mean that the talk page has no XXX-importance category at all.
The new WP 1.0 bot picks up the book class on this page without trouble (Tropical Cyclones table). But, because there is no importance rating at all, the bot puts these articles into a catchall column labeled "Other". That's not a very nice solution; it's just there to catch articles for which the templates did not manage to assign any importance. You can see that in the Topical Cyclones table, there are 1,200 articles in the "no importance at all" column.
I am thinking (in order):
Assuming that a project uses importance ratings at all, every assessed page should have "some" importance rating, even if that rating only means "no importance will be assigned". Of course if the project doesn't use importance (like Biography) then this is not an issue.
The NA-Class rating seems to be intended for exactly the type of problem with Book-Class. That is, NA-Class means "this page is not an article and we will not be assessing an importance for it"
The underlying meta-template should be able to take care of this, so that fewer pages accidentally end up with no importance rating. So, for example, Book-Class could default to NA-Class, but still allow an importance= parameter to override the default.
Yes indeed. NA-class is intended to be the default importance for all non-articles and all {{WPBM}} banners of projects which use importance ratings currently do this. (It won't display NA-importance on the banner, but it will categorise them as such.) I will have to check that Book-class is working in this way - it certainly should be and will be easy to fix if it is not. The issue on Book talk:1941 Atlantic hurricane season is that Template:Hurricane is one of the few non-WPBM banners left. (The conversion was opposed.) Therefore this will have to changed locally. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:56, 18 January 2010 (UTC)
Thanks for the quick reply. I'm glad to hear that my understanding of NA-class is correct, since I have misunderstood other things before. Do all the other non-article classes (Category-, Disambig-, etc) also default to NA? — Carl (CBM · talk) 21:02, 18 January 2010 (UTC)
Yes, all the non-article classes default to NA importance (if the banner uses the importance scale). There are however 10 project banners that do not use {{WPBM}} so you would need to check the template code for those to see what they do. -- WOSlinker (talk) 21:21, 18 January 2010 (UTC)
That category link will be useful. There are currently 100 projects in a list I made of projects that have at least one importance-assessed page and also have some "Other" importance pages. Some of these are from random errors ([1]). I had assumed that the non-article pages were also a significant contributor, but maybe they aren't. — Carl (CBM · talk) 21:38, 18 January 2010 (UTC)
Actually, I have now run into three pages with MID-importance or LOW-importance ratings (which led to redlinked categories). Would it be easy to make the default banner accept every case variant, using the lc parser function? — Carl (CBM · talk) 21:42, 18 January 2010 (UTC)
So far, I have found examples using the meta-banner templates Template:AncientEgyptBanner and Template:WikiProject Pennsylvania. I would guess there are more. If this can be fixed within the meta template itself, that would be the most robust solution. Otherwise, I will keep note of the ones I find, if I need to fix them one at a time. — Carl (CBM · talk) 22:15, 18 January 2010 (UTC)
Ouch! Sloppy coding indeed. I was confident you were talking about non-WPBM banner templates there and never imagined otherwise! Hopefully Fixed now, thanks WOS. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:24, 18 January 2010 (UTC)
Many of the problems do seem to be related to the Biography and Film templates, which auto-assess for task forces but in an incomplete way. But there are some examples with the meta template; I hope it is one bug that can be solved easily. — Carl (CBM · talk) 22:31, 18 January 2010 (UTC)
I just came upon this discussion. WikiProject Essay CC is in a discussion right now about how to assess importance of essays. It was suggested (by me) that we measure importance through incoming links. Essays that are linked to by 1000 other pages will have higher importance than essays linked to by 10. ɳoɍɑfʈ Talk!10:25, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
I think that project banner needs some attention - I will come over and take a look. How you rate importance is completely up to your WikiProject. There is nothing in this discussion which will affect your project, except for the observation that if you are assessing importance of project space pages, then the default will be NA-importance rather than Unknown-importance. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:04, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
Other examples of odd behavior
Is this page a convenient place for me to continue listing issues? Here is a strange one with Template:StarTrekproject : Talk:Star Trek (Blish) is rated stub-class, has no importance catgegory. This is almost certainly related to the default value for the importance parameter in the star trek template, but why is that like that? And how does it trick the meta template into not including an importance category? — Carl (CBM · talk) 22:28, 18 January 2010 (UTC)
Sure, do continue. That ¬ has been there since the template was converted and it's never been discovered before. Removed — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:30, 18 January 2010 (UTC)
So I can simply remove the ¬ (lnot) character? There seem to be a several other templates with the same problem, for example WikiProject Yugoslavia and WikiProject Croatia. — Carl (CBM · talk) 22:34, 18 January 2010 (UTC)
Yes, the ¬ character is used internally to switch off the importance scale. I've no idea how they got there; I'm fairly sure that syntax was never used. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:38, 18 January 2010 (UTC)
I did a database dump scan this evening, and I think that all of the lnot problem should be fixed now. Of course the job queue may slow down the effect some. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:08, 19 January 2010 (UTC)
I found a second example of this with Template:WikiProject Lutheranism (using the meta banner) and Talk:Germany, which is in Category:FA-Class Christianity articles but not in any importance category for the Christianity project. I will call these "side ratings" because they are rating a second project on the side, in addition to the main project of the banner.
Of course the risk is that an importance added by the side rating might conflict with the importance assigned by the banner for the main project, if both banners are on the talk page – but the quality rating has the same issue. Over the medium term, I think I need to develop a tool to scan the categories for such things (for pages that have more than one rating by the same project).
But in the short term, I think that the conceptually easiest fix would be to have side ratings assign the Unassessed-Importance category unless a specific side importance rating is specified along with the side quality rating. How hard would that be to achieve with the meta template? — Carl (CBM · talk) 11:31, 19 January 2010 (UTC)
I see the problem now. Unfortunately these "side ratings" are quite common and I'm sure you will come across quite a few more. They are not really logical though and the practice perhaps need to be rethought. One option (which would take some time and work) would be to add importance ratings to all of those which are missing. This can either be a new parameter for a separate importance rating (which would result in the majority going into Unknown initially) or the same parameter as the main importance rating. I don't think we could do this automatically from the meta, because how can we know if a particular project is using importance? (Plenty use quality but not importance.) — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:40, 19 January 2010 (UTC)
I don't completely know the system, but it does seem like the individual project templates that add the side ratings are where this would have to be fixed, rather than the internals of the meta template. That is, when a banner adds a hook to insert the side quality rating, it could also add a hook to insert a side importance rating (assuming the side project does use importance ratings). That might involve a second parameter (side-project-quality and side-project-importance). If I'm thinking about this right, that would be a one-time fix for the templates that assign side ratings. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:03, 19 January 2010 (UTC)
P.S. I can make a list of which projects use importance ratings, because the WP 1.0 bot already has to calculate that. For example, in the project index, the projects that have no percentage bar under "importance" are the ones that do not use importance ratings. If a project starts or stops using importance ratings, it makes sense to me that they will have to edit their templates anyway. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:08, 19 January 2010 (UTC)
Okay I agree that importance for "side ratings" should be set whenever that project uses importance. I would be happy to help with this, but don't really know where to start. I could maybe put a tracking category on Template:WPBannerMeta/taskforce and use an ifexist check to see if any of the importance categories exist. Or can you produce a list of problem pages likes Talk:Aldfrith of Northumbria and Talk:Germany, and I can trace them back to the relevant project banners? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 19:44, 19 January 2010 (UTC)
I can easily make a list of problematic pages, and probably filter it down to a list of actual templates to look check. I would like to wait a couple days to let the changes about case insensitivity etc. filter through the job queue. — Carl (CBM · talk) 01:19, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
All these templates make my head spin! Nevertheless, I was asked to comment, so I'll do my best. The India and Australia projects both run quite sophisticated templates that include multiple importance ratings within the same template - see Talk:Adelaide Football Club or Talk:Mumbai_cricket_team for typical examples (there is even a nice "clock" in the latter, indicating an old assessment!). Some, like Canada, only use one assessment (for Canada as a whole) but they put it in multiple multiple categories, as with Talk:Sydney,_Nova_Scotia; I don't like this, since it implies that this small town is mid-Importance in Nova Scotia (I'd expect it to be High or Top for that province).
It looks to me that you have a good handle on the issues, but I'd just like to remind people of a couple of general points that sometimes get lost in the details (I'm sure CBM and Martin are aware of these, though):
Because importance only applies to the project/task force that rated it, we need to ensure that importance ratings never get transferred from (say) a task force to a parent project.
As you know, some projects don't use importance. However, most of those same WikiProjects use the meta template, which does allow importance ratings. Newbies in a project may be unaware that importance is not used, and so they may start rating things. We need to respect the right for projects to "switch off" the importance rating at one or all levels, if that can be done, so that this sort of "rogue" assessing doesn't undermine the project's choice. I'm not sure if how it's set up, since I've only tagged for projects that use importance.
Sorry I can't be more helpful on the technical side. Thanks for your work on fixing this - not very exciting, but it affects thousands of articles and hundreds of editors. Walkerma (talk) 16:58, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
I need someone familiar with the meta banner to confirm that the importance is already simply switched off for certain projects, so that even if someone tries to assign an importance, no category is added to the article. For example, the {{mtgproject}} template cannot assign any importance categories, if I am reading it correctly.
I agree that the importance ratings should not be transferred from child to parent. Here is what I think is a good set of practices:
In a well-designed system, if a project uses importance ratings, every rated article is in some quality category (maybe Unassessed- ) and some importance category (maybe Unknown- ).
If a child template assigns side ratings for a parent project, and the parent project uses importance ratings, the child should accept parameters for both the importance and quality relative to the parent project. If only one of the quality and importance parameters is set, the other should default to Unassessed (quality) and Unknown (importance).
If these practices are not followed, it is not an emergency; the main visible symptom is that a row or column labeled "Other" appears in the project's table. For the purposes of the global table, "Other" counts as Unassessed/Unknown. A secondary symptom is that it is much more difficult to make a list of incompletely-assessed articles for the project in question. — Carl (CBM · talk) 19:56, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
In the code: if the importance parameter is passed to the meta, then importance ratings are ON.
By the display on the template itself: if importance ratings are used, High-importance is usually displayed on the template version, as a demonstration.
I agree with those practices, although I do anticipate quite a few assessment clashes with other banners on the page (e.g. articles will end up being in Top-importance and also Unknown-importance for the same assessment scheme), but those can be sorted out as well if there is a way to highlight these problems. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:08, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
French communes
Here's the opposite problem. Pages such as Talk:Vannes are in an importance category for the French Communes group, but not in any quality category. This should be easier to fix, since we can just copy the quality from the France project. Easier because here it is the parent project's template that is assigning categories for the child project, while above we have a child project template assigning categories for a parent template. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:22, 19 January 2010 (UTC)
Quality is a simpler problem in a case like this, because the quality rating for both task force and parent would likely be the same, whereas with importance they would most likely be rated differently. Walkerma (talk) 16:16, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
Article trajectory
I'm coming from Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics were we use our own idiosyncratic rating system. I would like to make a proposal for WPM to adopt a more standard rating system but first I need to understand how the standard rating system works. I am still unclear on a couple of points and have some concerns however. The project page lists the different ratings as if they formed a single continuous spectrum, but if you read the details there are actually two systems which are not required to be consistent, for example the article Area of a disk is A but not GA. My interpretation, please correct me if I'm wrong, is the first system is ratings (Stub, Start, C, B, A) which are updated by individual editors except for the A rating which is determined by impartial reviewers associated with the relevant project. The rating would be indicated by a banner tag corresponding to the project in the article talk page (e.g. Template:Physics for the Physics project). The second system consists of article milestones GA and FA which are determined by consensus from a wider audience that project level. The milestones are indicated by a different set of tags such as Template:GA. There are no requirements stated that FA article must have an A rating, A articles must be GA, etc. At least there are none stated and the page specifically says that GA is not a requirement for A. To muddy things up a bit, the project related tags allow ratings of GA and FA as if they were all the same system. What happens if, for example, an article has been given GA by non-specialists in the subject, but someone with more expertise finds that an important aspect was missed and the article should really be C class? Individual projects can come up with their own criteria for ratings, or even use a different rating system as in the case of WPM, so it seems to me that the statistics gathered spanning multiple projects only make sense for GA and FA counts. The statistics also don't allow for the possible inconsistency between the two systems. How is 'Area of a disk' counted for example?--RDBury (talk) 00:47, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
Your analysis is correct, and I'm not surprised you have questions and concerns. Including "GA-Class" and "FA-Class" in the WikiProject ratings was an historical mistake which has proven difficult to fix due to inertia. This is not a huge problem for FA, as most featured articles would be rated A-Class by most WikiProjects and hence FA-Class is just a name for A-Class articles which are currently featured articles (however, in my younger wikidays, I did downgrade an FA-Class maths article to B-Class, because it clearly wasn't A-Class as a mathematics article).
In contrast, this is a very serious problem at the GA level for several reasons. The GA criteria are relatively course and simple tests that an article complies with basic standards: "Is it readable, verifiable, broad, stable, neutral and free?" This does not have the refinement of the Stub-Start-C-B-A analysis by WikiProjects, and it addresses different issues. The GA process does not have the expertise or the capacity to address detailed content issues: the "broadness" criterion is the closest it gets. All non-stubs should be verifiable, neutral and free, as a matter of policy (but of course, they aren't), and stability is an issue of pragmatism, not content. WikiProject criteria are not, and never have been, part of the GA criteria.
So, basically, GA-Class is completely nuts. I would find it perfectly acceptable for a WikiProject to rate an article as Start, C, B or A-Class irrespective of whether it is a good article or not. If a good article were rated Start or C, then it might suggest the broadness criterion has not been met, but not necessarily: that is a matter for GA reviewers to decide, as is the good article status of A-Class articles. Geometry guy22:25, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
I still remember Geometry guy re-reviewing Sailor Moon at Good Article. An example of an article completely not compliant with its project Manual of Style while still qualifying for GA status. Wikiproject have their set of norms and their grid of evaluation. Fortunately most grids are similar save for B class and A class. Those norms are outside FA and GA and getting a good grade from your project just means that it meet your project expectation of good article. Whatever it's situated compared to GA and FA is another story altogether. Some easily meet GA and are encouraged to go for FA. While others barely make it. --KrebMarkt22:46, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
For the record, "a" is used when the next words starts with a vowel or vowel sound, and "an" is used when it starts with a consonant sound. Kevin Baastalk20:21, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
that was at geometry guy, actually. he was using cockney brit slang in saying "an historical". in standard english the "h" on "historical" (and any deviations of the word "history") is not silent. apparently that's not the case in cockney british slang. but then again, that's slang. Kevin Baastalk21:20, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
I'm decidedly non-Cockney and I always say "an historic". It's grating to try to read "a historic" out loud (except as "ahistoric" which is a different matter). Of course "historic" does not start with a consonant sound when preceded by "an". Googling "an historic" shows I am not alone... and it's unlikely we will settle the matter soon. — Carl (CBM · talk) 21:28, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
You drop the h then? But what about when you say "ahistoric"? do you say "aistoric"? and if not, then why drop the h in one case and not the other? i'm genuinely curious. i've never heard it spoken, i've only seen it in writting. (and as i understand it, the etymological origin at least comes from cockney, even though most people who use it are "decidely not cockney") Kevin Baastalk22:34, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
Yes, I drop the h in "historic" when I say "an historic", but pretty much only then. I have to go out of my way if I want to pronounce the h in that phase, and then it sounds stilted and "British" to me. I am an American speaker. The etymological origin I have seen explained for "an historic" is that the word was taken from French, and for a while English also had a silent h to match the French pronunciation. Eventually the h began to be pronounced in English, but recently enough that the older version was somewhat entrenched. But for me the formation "an historic" is more of a special case that "just sounds better that way", probably because that's how I learned it in school. Apparently it's the stress on the second syllable that makes "historic" different than "hospital". You can also find a lot of hits for "an hysterical" and "an habitual" on google (relative to the "a" versions). I can imagine "an hospital" in a cockney accent but I would never say that myself. — Carl (CBM · talk) 00:46, 24 February 2010 (UTC)
The example for a Start-class article differs enormously from the example for a C-class article. IMO (after going over the criteria), the current revision of 'Real analysis' is much more Start-classy than the 2006 revision currently used as the example. Also, the example for a C-class article is pretty lengthy for something that is "useful to a casual reader, but would not provide a complete picture for even a moderately detailed study." Are these really the most accurate examples around? ※ gtw03:51, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
Article trajectory question
It appeared to me when I started the Article trajectory thread last month that projects coming up with their own rating criteria was not uncommon. It now appears that was myopia on my part having been too involved with the Math project since I haven't been able to find any other projects that do that (other than Statistics which uses Math's). Does anyone know of another project that uses their own or is Math the only one?--RDBury (talk) 20:33, 21 March 2010 (UTC)
The Simple English Wikipedia uses an artificially "simplified" version of English, with the result that statements like "He take the two childs to school today" is an acceptable alternative to standard English version, "He takes the two children to school today."
Can I say here the idea from the section title that the auto-assessment is solely based on page size is misleading. This is one step in the assessment process to get the articles of WP:SONGS assessed. I would also add that the process is quite important to everyone that is concerned about having big projects assessed, because without a bot assessment in such a way the feasibility of ever getting close to assessing most articles is remote due to the amount of man-hours of work required to do it manually. Regards, SunCreator(talk)08:07, 3 April 2010 (UTC)
The problem you're describing is a side effect of the way new articles are created. The amount of time it takes to rate an article is small compared to the amount of time it takes to create it, so the huge amount of man-hours required to rate articles is actually small compared to the amount of man-hours it took to create all those articles. Really the problem is one of motivation; people are motivated to create new articles, e.g. they can add them to their user page and there is a Soxred93 tool on the user contributions page that lists them. But adding article ratings is basically thankless so the number of people willing to contribute to that effort is minuscule compared to the number of people adding new articles. Even if you did solve the ratings backlog with a bot, this is minor compared with the backlog of other low prestige tasks, e.g. the backlog for finding sources for unreferenced articles is over three years and growing, and this is more important than article ratings.--RDBury (talk) 10:14, 4 April 2010 (UTC)
If an individual project wants to assess based on page size, that's their prerogative. It seems like the articles are all going to be Stub, Start, or C class, so it doesn't seem too problematic to me. The overall criteria are a suggestion of what the ratings should mean, but individual projects can use the ratings as they please. I empathize with the problem of how to add ratings when many articles have been automatically tagged. I think this will be a growing issue over the next couple years. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:14, 3 April 2010 (UTC)
I would be totally happy for Stubs to be assessed this way - indeed, many have been. Start-Class, perhaps, as long as the WikiProject is happy with that. But I think as you reach C-Class content issues begin to become significant - there are many long Starts and many short C-Class. I wouldn't like to see a lot of articles tagged as C-Class that don't deserve that, because that would undermine the integrity of the assessment scheme, IMHO. Walkerma (talk) 19:20, 3 April 2010 (UTC)
I think there are minimal standards even for stubs, such as notability and not being spam or patent nonsense. In other words there seems to me an assumption here that when someone is rating an article they must add a rating, but another possible outcome is to PROD or AfD it. You can't make a PROD/don't PROD decision based solely on length. As Carl says, individual projects can do whatever they want, but I don't see how they could use a bot to assess articles and still pretend that they're using the rating criteria listed here.--RDBury (talk) 09:36, 4 April 2010 (UTC)
The standard definition allows stubs to be in a candidate for speedy deletion state, it's only starts that push it beyonds CSD. And like Carl and yourself say individual projects can do whatever they want. The point you make about a possible outcome or PROD or AFD is a good one. In fact this is where I bot idea arose, because I started out manually assessing and prod-ing song articles. Soon realizing that I wasn't ever going to get the task done even if I continues doing it for many years, and that to tackle the problem it would have to be split up. Regards, SunCreator(talk)18:26, 4 April 2010 (UTC)
Question: Where can i request the assessment of song articles?
Thanks. I was a bit confused because for albums there is a request list. I've left a message on the project:song talk page.Lil-unique1 (talk) 12:12, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
Semi-dab pages
I need to figure out what to do with disambiguation pages that aren't exactly dab pages.
Normally, WPMED (and probably other projects) wouldn't bother tagging a dab page. Sure, pages like this one mention articles that WPMED supports, but it's mostly unrelated.
But what should we do about Uricosuria? 100% of the contents is within the project's scope. There are no plans to turn it into a proper article. It's not really a stub, because it's 100% complete. But it's not exactly a "Not an Article"/no importance dab page, either.
What is the difference between GA and A-class articles?
I would like to know the difference in quality between these 2 tyoes of articles. Are A-class articles included in GA articles? Are A-class articles in better quality than GA articles? Thanks! --Siva1979Talk to me07:35, 8 May 2010 (UTC)
GA articles are assessed with a community process involving two people, one person who nominates and another that assesses. The A-class articles are done by a WikiProject process involving a team of people. A-class is intended to be FAC quality but with minor styling issues, although a WikProject may choose to adopt its own standard. GA makes no such claim to be near FA class. In theory A-class should be a higher standard. In practice FAC criteria changes rapidly over time and therefore timing of an assesment is important. GA had a GA sweep process applied in the last two years to bring them all up to a similar standard. A-class has had no such sweep so the range of quality in A-class is likely to be more varied. Not a simple answer I know. Regards, SunCreator(talk)12:14, 8 May 2010 (UTC)
This depends of the project. Only a handful of project uses the A-class rating. I don't say it's a good or bad thing just that many projects simply don't have the required & competent manpowers to run an A-class review. Knowing this, it is difficult to compare a GA-Class article from a project that doesn't do A-Class review with an A-Class article from a project from has the resource to conduct such review. --KrebMarkt12:25, 8 May 2010 (UTC)
Of course, for articles that fall under a project without a formal A-class review system, the rating can be given as long as two uninvolved editors review and support it. —Ed(talk • majestic titan)13:00, 8 May 2010 (UTC)
Incomplete but good articles
I'm bothered that there is no category for articles which are incomplete and need to be expanded, but which are not cluttered with irrelevant material and don't lack reliable sources. I'd like to pretend that the two I'm working on are in that category. So how about a D Class for these. Good articles which simply need to be fleshed out more, or expanded, but which are not impermissibly faulty in terms of unrelated material or lack of references. Svanslyck (talk) 20:52, 9 May 2010 (UTC)
Personally, I think there are too many rating levels already. If an article is extremely incomplete, but more than a stub, you should assess it as Start-Class. None of the article ratings is intended to correspond to "faulty". — Carl (CBM · talk) 23:40, 9 May 2010 (UTC)
I would say that the "start" rating is the answer to your problem. Start seems very much like what you described. Gosox(55)(55)22:48, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
Proposal: Indicating article class assessment on articles
Since the perennial proposal to add a GA icon to GA artcles has just come up again, maybe now is a good time to consider a broader issue. In short, Wikipedia could better promote its article assessment process for the general public. Although I will list some ideas I've had for how this can be done, the aim of this proposal is to get a consensus on whether or not Wikipedia should promote such an understanding by taking some initial steps towards meeting that goal.
I'm sure everyone has heard public criticism of the quality of Wikipedia's content. I'm also sure that we're all aware that not all visitors know how to determine an article's quality (reliability, depth, etc.). Consequently, many casual readers may judge Wikipedia on a few random low-class articles without realizing how good the information can be. In other cases, readers may not be able to discern reliable content from unreliable content, despite attempts to flag articles, sections, and statements for missing citations.
On a different note, poor understanding of article assessment may result in less interest in editing by new and returning readers. If readers do not know what to expect from an article, they will not necessarily know what needs to be fixed or expanded upon. Sometimes simply informing people of the inadequacy of what they rely upon can spur them to make constructive contributions.
In order to address these issues, I propose that two steps be taken:
WP:ASSESS should be revamped to be more reader-friendly for non-Wikipedians. It should be informative, concise, and engaging, while also encouraging readers to become involved in the process.
Eventually retire the FA star in order to replace it with some sort of highly visible article assessment scale, which will link to the newly revised WP:ASSESS.
This is not a proposal to simply retire the FA star. This is intended as a first step towards replacing the FA star with something that designates article quality while linking to potentially reader-friendly information about article assessment (such as WP:ASSESS, WP:FA, and WP:GA). Rather than squabbling over the replacement from the start, I want to gather consensus on whether or not such a process would be viewed favorably by the community.
Reasons to support
You feel that Wikipedia should be open to its readers about how it works, particularly regarding article quality assessment and the current state of its articles
It could make the entire class system more visible to our readers—even more so than a tiny star or green plus icon in the top right corner of an article.
Although WP:FA and WP:GA are informative pages by themselves, WP:ASSESS could be far more informative about the entire assessment system to a very broad audience. It currently explains what we look at during article assessments, and could be tweaked to be more readable and engaging for the general public while also providing prominent links to WP:FA and WP:GA.
Understanding the "incompleteness" of one or many articles may inspire readers to become active in the article development process.
Reasons to oppose
You feel that Wikipedia should not bother readers with details about article assessment and quality, instead focusing on strictly keeping all articles as free of as much uncited material and other questionable content as possible.
You feel that any type of assessment, no matter how simplified and well-documented, would only confuse readers and/or might create too much work for existing editors.
The ratings may still be too confusing for non-Wikipedians, even after revamping WP:ASSESS
Few people may actually read WP:ASSESS in enough detail to get a sense of the ratings
Increased awareness of class assessment may result in more vandalism on the discussion pages
A greater demand will be placed on numerous WikiProjects to assess and reassess their articles.
The assessment process itself has already come under fire, and many articles are poorly assessed as it is. This will only cause confusion unless projects undertook major GA sweeps, FA sweeps, and WikiProject article reassessments.
Additional notes
Although I can think of more reasons to oppose than support, I feel that the reasons to support outweigh the reasons to oppose. Wikipedia has made little effort to reach out to its readers and help them understand its processes. By "marketing" its assessment scale, Wiki could not only address concerns about its content, but also encourage both critical review and reader contributions. Furthermore, a strong need for sweeps and general reassessments should not be a reason to oppose promoting the assessment system, in my opinion. As it stands, the class assessment system seems to mostly target editors and WikiProject development plans. Clearly the assessment system could benefit the readers. By leaving it obscure or largely invisible, I feel we waste a valuable public relations tool. No assessment system will ever be perfect, but we could at least start trying to use this fairly developed tool to not only focus our editing efforts, but also to help our readers understand how (and why) we work.
Ideas for consideration
First and foremost, WP:ASSESS would need to be revamped to be both reader-friendly (i.e. less confusing and more engaging). Perhaps editors with backgrounds in marketing might prove to be of greatest assistance here. We need to "sell" our assessment scale while providing enough information to help new editors get started. With a more reader-friendly version of WP:ASSESS in place, the following options could be considered for display on Wikipedia's articles.
(Note: These options are not up for vote at this point. First we need to agree that this form of public outreach is needed/wanted. The options are provided to help give people ideas about how the outreach effort might look to a new or returning reader.)
FA star replacement
Although highlighting featured articles (and potentially good articles) brings attention to an article's quality while also providing links to WP:FA and WP:GA (respectively) so that readers can learn about how we audit our content, the icons are small and can be overlooked. Furthermore, not all readers are likely to encounter GAs and FAs during a brief visit. In such a case, the only reasonable opportunity to learn about our assessment process comes from a link to WP:FA on an already busy main page or a link on a discussion page... assuming the article even has a project banner with an assessment.
By replacing the FA star with a small "article quality scale," readers will more easily see the state of the article. The scale could be linked to a revamped version of WP:ASSESS, which would also provide prominent links to WP:GA and WP:FA while also briefly explaining how they work in terms intended for a non-Wikipedian audience. Such a scale and link to a new-and-improved WP:ASSESS would not only help inform the public of our assessment standards, it would help users look more critically at our content. Most importantly, it may encourage new editors to start making edits. Once people see how many articles are Stubs or Start-classin need of improvement as they explore Wikipedia, they may realize how much their help is needed... and wanted. Again, it all goes back to "selling" our assessment process in a manner that not only informs, but encourages participation.
The following three scales have been created as demonstrations of how a scale could replace the FA star on every article. Again, these sample scales are intended as a general example, using the most commonly used ranking system on Wikipedia. It is not intended to slight the A-class system. Such graphics could easily be added. In fact, the workings of the entire ranking system would need to be fully resolved before any such graphics would be implemented. Alternatively, brand new ideas for handling ratings could be envisioned.
I'm not sure how the technical end of this would work, and whether or not bots could make necessary changes on a regular enough basis without impacting system performance. In other words, the technical details need to be discussed. Also, I forgot to include a graphic to demonstrate that an article has not been assessed. Furthermore, I am not addressing the issue of A-class articles with these examples due to their general lack of use/acceptance. That is not an issue that I wish to address here. But for now, consider the following as a small, narrow sampling of what is possible:
Article assessment scale ideas
Continuous scale
Continuous, clumped scale
Graduated, clumped scale
Graduated, clumped and categorized scale
Note: Samples could be updated to include A-class
Alternative where Stub through C-class are lumped together.
List assessment scale ideas
Continuous scale
Graduated, clumped scale
Set default to see article class
Another option would be to enable by default for all registered and unregistered users the interface gadget "Display an assessment of an article's quality as part of the page header for each article." This would be more visible to the user, given the varying colors of the article titles, the spelled-out article assessment class directly beneath, and the direct link to WP:ASSESS. This may also take a lot less effort to implement.
Clarifications
This proposal in no way aims to steamroll deadlocked issues such as the handling of A-class articles, the recognition of GA articles in the mainspace, etc., etc. Instead, it intends define the purpose of the assessment process. It is either only a writing aid for editors, or it can also be used as an outreach tool for our readers. This proposal supports the latter... nothing more. By starting a gradual revamping of WP:ASSESS, old unresolved issues will need to be tackled, but hopefully in a new light. Possibly new ideas, alternatives, and compromises can be made given the underlying theme of a common purpose.
This proposal promotes a slow, gradual process. Multiple phases will be needed to resolve all lingering issues and ultimately make changes visible on the mainspace. This is more of a conceptualization phase, where WP:ASSESS is given the attention it needs with the understanding of a guiding purpose. Questions like, "Should GA articles be recognized in the mainspace?" will take on completely different meaning, going far beyond a simple "recognition" view. Questions like, "Should articles pass from GA to A-class before being submitted for FAC?" will need to be resolved... but not directly from this proposal. New ideas can be proposed, and issues discussed. However, stalling over these issues will only stall much more important issues, which I'm hoping the majority of people will agree are critically important for Wikipedia.
Does such an effort to communicate better with our readers take us away from content creation? It shouldn't... at least not for everyone. Wiki has various projects and task forces, each focusing on separate, important issues. Some editor are generalists, helping in multiple areas (e.g. content creation, DYK, GAC, FAC, etc.), while others may specialize on specific tasks, such as anti-vandalism or AfD. This proposal should be no different. Are sweeps required? Maybe, maybe not. Arguments listed against the proposal were ones that I could imagine people making the most frequently. It does not necessarily mean that the arguments will remain valid as various issues are worked through.
Again, this is a very general proposal. How should our assessment systems be utilized? Do we hide our processes from the outside world? How does that affect Wikipedia's image? How does it affect new editors who are trying to learn the ropes? Or do we open our doors a bit and try to market how we work, both to encourage understanding and possibly solicit new contributions? I am proposing that we open the doors and market ourselves better. We can start by beginning the slow process of revamping WP:ASSESS, gradually resolving lingering assessment issues, and debating the process by which we make this page assessable to the public once its complete. This was what the vote was supposed to be about.
The graphics and other examples were just ideas to help people conceptualize some of the possible directions we could go. The options are only limited by our creativity and willingness to negotiate in a civil manner.
Vote: Should article assessment and clearer information about the process be more visible to our reader?
Please refrain from further voting until the "clarifications" above have been completed. There have been some misunderstandings which I plan to address this afternoon when I get home from some volunteer work. In the meantime, feel free to discuss the issue below. (Note: If there is a proper way to put a proposal on temporary hold, someone please do so. I'm new to this and have to walk out the door literally at this moment.) – VisionHolder « talk »11:45, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
I don't think there is any way to stop people voting if they want to. However I do feel it would be constructive to move away from the vote now. It has been useful to show there is some initial interest in the proposal, but there are some complicated issues to work through and discussion would seem to be the best way forward. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:12, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
Feel free to stop the vote. (I have no experience in doing this, but will watch and learn.) Meanwhile, I plan to continue the discussion and will attempt to better explain the intent of this proposal. – VisionHolder « talk »16:36, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
Okay, here goes. I have archived the vote section. You've had a good response; even some of the opposing comments have contructive suggestions to work on. It's enough to take the idea to the next stage. I would suggest finding a good place for this discussion to take place (somewhere where ideas can have a chance to form before being shouted down). It could stay on this page, but I think it will need more structure and a thorough airing of the separate issues. If you have time, it will certainly need someone to take a lead and keep the discussion going in a positive direction. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:59, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Support - i've been editing for over 12 months and wasn't aware of article ratings until about 4 months ago when someone suggested i should ask for my own work to be audited for assessment. Lil-unique1 (talk) 01:41, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
Support. This is in fact exactly what i had been intending to propose, to supercede the discussion I had started re the GA symbol. It was great to see this put together by Visionholder. hamiltonstone (talk) 01:56, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
Support. This online encyclopedia is not a standard multi-volume printed encyclopedia of yesteryear; it is indeed a work in progress, and will always be such. Readers should be made aware of this aspect, and should know how many "grains of salt" they should apply to the reading of any particular article. Binksternet (talk) 01:58, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
Strong support. Even from a reader's perspective, this is a good idea: it permits the reader to be aware of how complete the article is, at least from the editors' viewpoint. While readers still should perform their own research, this would allow them to gauge articles that have had some degree of fact-checking, and that may be more trustworthy tertiary sources. Titoxd(?!? - cool stuff)02:03, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
Support I like this better that just FA and GA. I understand where Mike is coming from but why not educate as we go? If a reader comes across a largish article, why not have a small grid/icon which lets them know how we ourselves rate the article? I like the idea of encouraging active participation and moving away from the dogma of a printed page as being 'fact' and seemingly unchangeable (i.e. further promotes the 'anyone can edit' idea). Casliber (talk·contribs) 02:19, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
(edit conflict)Weak support. Before I started editing, I always checked the discussion page to see how well the article was rated, and this is something I recommend to all the non-editors I talk to about Wikipedia's strengths and flaws. What is more, an insight into some of the behind-the-scenes workings involved in article creation and review could encourage more users to make the step from reader to editor. However, I have concerns regarding the actual process of reviewing these articles. One of the objections raised to adding the GA tag to the article is that they are, in the end, only reviewed by one person, and there is no broader consensus regarding the ratings. This problem is only more pronounced when extended to the lower ratings. Overall, though, I feel this is just outweighed by the benefits I've outlined.-- Lear's Fool (talk | contribs) 02:27, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
Support - I like it; I've often wished that non-logged in editors could see at a glance what the rating of the article was. It's not like we don't rate articles anyway, we just hide it on the talk page. I'm a fan of the clumped, graduated scale- makes it obvious which ones are better. --PresN05:01, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
"Support" - Really good idea. Wikipedia has been badly lacking in letting people know about quality of articles. I like the clumped, graduated scale. I would add the A-class also where the GA class is as currently that seems to be missing. Regards, SunCreator(talk)07:12, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
Support - I've been using the interface gadget for ages, it's great for getting an idea of how useful the article is to read without having to read it. TRS-80 (talk) 08:04, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
Strong support - many people dismiss wikipedia as an unreliable source. With this system readers can identify the good articles and are more likely to improve the poorer ones. This will make them more likely to become editors to get the sense of achievement of getting an article to a good standard. I also believe this will encourage more B class articles in wikipedia, rather than start class and stubs. Kitchen roll (talk) 11:00, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
Support as it stands. Strongly oppose including A-class, which will hopelessly confuse readers given that it's WikiProject-specific rather than project-wide and means different things to different projects (sometimes even regarding the same article, such as American Civil War). – iridescent22:09, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
Yes! I have supported this idea for a long time, but have seen it go down in flames more than once. The arguments against this will always be, but any one can put any rating on any article - therefore the assessment is worthless. I wholeheartedly disagree with that position. The average B class is much better than the average Start class - its all about averages. We must put something in place to help readers ascertain the quality of an article, and this is a great start. The chief problem our public image has is people outside being unsure of the qualify or validity of what they are reading. A clear assessment will be a huge help. (I know the gadget that already does this will be pointed out and they will also say if users want it then they can turn it on, but most of our users don't have accounts, and most of those that do don't know the gadget exists.) —Charles Edward(Talk | Contribs)22:47, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
Absolutely. I've often thought that the assessment gadget should be the default setting, with an option to turn it off for readers who find it distracting.--Kubigula(talk)04:11, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
Yes. I already have the gadget which shows me the assessment on the article page, and I find that very useful. As an editor it is useful to see how an article has been assessed - sometimes the assessments are a little generous, or sometimes have not been updated from stub, and it's useful to see that when looking at the article so an editor can be motivated to adjust or update the assessment. And anything which gives some kind of guide to a reader that an article has been quality checked and found in need of development is obviously 100% helpful. SilkTork *YES!11:08, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
Oppose
Oppose What's tempting about this proposal is the implied invitation to readers to become editors. However, editors are a tiny minority here, and the encyclopedia's public face -- article space, in other words -- should be designed to look like an encyclopedia, not like a work in progress. I'm not a fan of clean-up templates in article space, either; I think it would be better to leave such templates on the talk page of the article, or even to move the offending material to the talk page if it's bad enough we don't want readers to see it. The same applies to our assessments of quality: they are part of our working papers, not of our final product. I'd like to see the FA star removed from main space, and I don't think any of the other article assessment levels should be visible to readers either. Readers are not editors-in-waiting; they're just readers. We should treat them like customers -- we should give them good articles where we can, and decent stubs where we can't, and not spend our time telling them what we have or haven't done for them yet. Mike Christie(talk)01:42, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
I'd be happy with either removing the FA star or adding this proposed grid, but marginally happier with adding the grid. I very much agree with your observation on the unsightly tags though. The present system is anomalous, and we ought to try to be consistent. MalleusFatuorum01:52, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
Oppose per Mike Christie, and because the assessments of the majority of articles aren't accurate enough to publicize, and the effort involved in making and keeping them so, even if it can be produced, will damage the process of actually improving articles. Johnbod (talk) 02:14, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
No. Why would that follow? The assessment & maintenance programmes there are still hanging on by their fingernails, unlike those for other classes. Johnbod (talk) 02:30, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
Oppose the omission of A-class is a blatant slap in the face to the primary user of that class: WP:MILHIST and WP:SHIPS. Unless A is included, I will argue for the opt-out of all MILHIST articles to this proposed scale. -MBK00402:38, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
It was not intended as a slap in the face. Many projects do not use it, and I did not want to complicate this issue with the GA vs. A-class debate. It also would've complicate the graphics creation process. I omitted it purely for simplicity. – VisionHolder « talk »02:44, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
Agree with Visionholder. MBK, i think this whole exercise is about providing better information about article assessment to our readers, and that should include all assessment information. My own view is ultimately it could be a different scale altogether - one that is easier to understand than the mix of stub/start/c/b/ga/a/fa letters that won't mean a lot to many readers. But all quality-assurance / assessment information could be in the mix and that should include A-class. hamiltonstone (talk) 04:27, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
Oppose, mostly because greater visibility=greater likelihood of an inexperienced person screwing up the assessments. I already have to weed unauthorized articles out of WPMED's top-importance category on a regular schedule, and we have had problems in the past with people unilaterally declaring articles to be GA status. Making this system more visible means losing reliability -- and, no, I cannot watch all 20,000 WPMED-tagged articles to verify that each and every assessment change is correct. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:53, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
Couldn't it also lead to more eyes seeing incorrect assessments and fixing them sooner? Also, no need to watch 20,000 articles, that's what the WP 1.0 bot log is for. TRS-80 (talk) 08:15, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
In my experience, more inexperienced eyes mean more mistakes, not more corrections of mistakes. Accurate assessment requires at least a small amount of knowledge, which brand-new editors simply do not have. Put another way: If these editors cannot figure out that the highly visible {{unref}} tag should be removed from articles that obviously contain references, or that stub tags should be removed from very long articles—and they apparently can't, because I've been weeding those categories recently—then they really are not capable of figuring out whether an article is "Start class" or "C class". WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:28, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
oppose GA isnt the step before FA, A class is and that been ommitted this just another in a long run of episodes to make something out of GA that it isnt. Gnangarra05:00, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
Oppose for now. Stub-start-C are too inconsistent ratings between projects and may be assessed on a i like it or not way. Things get much coherent from B class but then again there are projects using a more stringent B-Class. Another big hurdle is the GA - A Class issue. All those things said i'm in favor to put forward the GA rating the same way it's done for FA. Both ratings are community given and the GA re-assessment campaign has been completed few months ago so chance to have a lackluster GA article is smaller. --KrebMarkt06:53, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
The graphics I created were just general ideas. This proposal in no way precludes other possibilities. The progression (and appearance) of Stub through B classes could be addressed in future proposals. The same with assessment standards. What if we even managed to find some middle ground, where the public sees a simplified version of our rating system, where Stub through C are clumped (as a sort of supercategory), while B clumps with GA and A... or something like that? (I'm not looking for feedback on the specifics, just the general idea.) There are many possibilities, but that's not what this proposal is specifically targeting. Those issues will be tackled later. For now, we need to know if we even want assessment to be something advertised to the public in any form. – VisionHolder « talk »17:53, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
I'm open to support any manageable solution. I'm also leaning to have Stub to C as one sort of supercat. For GA - A class issue, it's up to projects that can have articles GA & A Class at the same time to decide which rating they want to put forward. Assessment is something we should put forward, projects & Wikipedia don't have to hide what they think of their articles just we want to do it in uniform & coherent way with limited risk of edit wars over that. --KrebMarkt18:21, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
For several reasons. First and foremost, I'm against excessively intermingling the encyclopedia with its behind-the-scenes processes. If an uninvolved reader wants to learn about our president, they shouldn't be shown assessment values, article protection statuses, etc. before they even read the first sentence. I'm all for recruiting new editors, and advertising that Wikipedia is a work in progress, but there are better and less intrusive ways to do that. That said, the assessment scale is neither binding nor in any way official like the FA star is. Anybody can assess an article, and while there are editors who do an excellent job keeping their respective WikiProject's assessment scales up-to-date, I'm not convinced the quality ratings are accurate or consistent enough to portray them as official. Do I think we should make our audience more aware of how we audit our content? Sure; I think that would be great. As proposed, though, I don't think this could work well. A well-intentioned proposal to be sure, I just disagree with it as it is. I'm open to being persuaded. Juliancolton | Talk22:53, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
Are you really? Doesn't sound like it. If you were, then you'd also be arguing against that padlock, the FA star, and all the unsightly tagging that goes on. No, you're not open to anything. MalleusFatuorum23:06, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
I would probably be in favor of removing the page-protection templates, actually. As for the FA star, I don't have a strong opinion on it. It doesn't bother me since it's not particularly prominent, but otherwise I wouldn't mind removing it and instead indicating a featured article's status at the bottom of the page, perhaps near the copyright notice. Juliancolton | Talk23:10, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
(edit conflict)I'll bite. If your biggest issues are clutter at the top of the mainspace, then other options can be considered. Again, the sample graphics are based around just one idea I had. If you're mostly concerned about intermingling behind-the-scenes processes with regular viewing, consider that most viewers already know that Wiki can be edited by anyone. Beyond that, understanding of Wiki can vary wildly. Just like any other wikilink in the main space, if people are interested, they'll click. If they're not, they'll move on. If they become disinterested, they'll hit the Back button. I agree that clutter of the mainspace needs to be avoided, and this proposal may start the ball rolling for helping to clean that issue up, too. I'm leaving this proposal open intentionally. If we're going to get anything done, let's first agree on the big picture. From there, let's slowly narrow the topic until we start to brush the truly sensitive issues. Collaboration and compromise will be essential, but if we're all attacking (or defending) these issues individually and coming at them from multiple perspectives, how can we get anywhere? Short story and temporary tangent: I served on a jury recently and was nominated to lead the deliberations. At the start, opinions were all over the place, yet we had to get a unanimous decision. By asking everyone to first agree to some very general points at the outset, and then slowly building on those points, we were able to go from absolute uncertainty to a unanimous verdict in less than 1 hour. Now, I'm not saying that long-standing issues will be blown aside quite that quickly, but unless we start by looking at a broader picture and finding a source of general agreement, verdicts on many of these issues will remain deadlocked indefinitely (IMO). As for the imperfections of class ratings, see my response to the comment immediately below. – VisionHolder « talk »23:29, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
I agree with what you're saying here, just not with the actual proposal. We do need to better incorporate the assessment scale into the encyclopedia, but it's too early to zero in on any particular implementation. Juliancolton | Talk23:41, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
Unfortunately, adding the graphics, which was intended to help visualize some solutions (and steer people away from thinking this was just another "put the GA icon in the mainspace" argument in disguise) may have done irreparable damage to this proposal. I concede that point. But which of the two main points do you disagree with? The need to revamp and rethink how we present assessment on WP:ASSESS, or the need to retire the FA star and find another way to show our readers that we have an assessment process? That's what this proposal is all about. – VisionHolder « talk »00:01, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
I can respect that. Targeting the FA star was probably premature. Once this proposal has had time to play out and more comments have come in, maybe I'll start a discussion that addresses only that first point. However, remodeling the main lobby can only do so much. At some point, we have to decide the placement and appearance of the main door. – VisionHolder « talk »00:13, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
Oppose I don't see the point in indicating the assessments for anything lower than GA, because once you get lower than that, the scale becomes unreliable, chaotic, and at times inconsistent due to lack of sufficient review. --Cybercobra(talk)23:00, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
As Malleus pointed out, that's a detail to be addressed later. As you might have seen, I've even created an option that clumps most things below B-class (for the reader only). These are just ideas. How sub-GA articles are represented would be a future subject for discussion. As for inconsistency, I would argue that the majority of sub-GA articles are generally assessed properly. And, again, if we decided to clump the presentation of sub-GA articles, then the inaccuracies wouldn't matter. – VisionHolder « talk »23:29, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
Oppose: generally these assessment processes do not measure much that is of use to readers, that is not already obvious from glancing at the article. And that's when they are applied reliably and consistently, which, with millions of assessments granted by dozens of projects, we can be quite sure they aren't. I think we should place a higher bar than we do now on dropping project ephemera into the namespace, not add more of it to distract from the product. Christopher Parham(talk)03:51, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
Oppose Some assessment criteria are not standard, it's not fair to some wikiprojects or authors. However, I would most certainly support after standardization, and would be more inclined with the inclusion of A class. NativeForeignerTalk/Contribs05:09, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
Oppose, the foundation of my rationale can be found in the comments section below. Assessment of stub/start/C-class articles would waste the time of potential contributers because the current assessment is not concise and useless since wikipedia is constantly changing. There is no need to highlight this deficiency for others to assess in vain. Only three categories are necessary for assessment: FA, GA, and a step below, which includes all articles that do not meet the minimum GA requirements. All efforts should be focused on making the existing FA and GA requirements more concise to improve the review process. This way all assessments would occur concurrently with content improvement.--William S. Saturn (talk) 06:13, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
Can you explain what you mean by "making the existing FA and GA requirements more concise", and how that would in your mind affect stub/start/C-class articles? MalleusFatuorum11:48, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
General comments and discussion
Perhaps the way of resolving the issue of having poorly assessed articles is to have a dedicated team of assessors. Members of each project e.g. WP:SONGS, WP:ALBUMS etc. could opt. into the review panel after say sixth months of editing and having shown that they are capable of following the relevant policies. Additionally one area where i've seen a mass difference in the auditing has to be songs and albums (a project i'm part of). Current the WP:GA page is backlogged and i'm not sure that under the current system people are aware that any editor can conduct the review. However for things such as albums/songs there is not enough guidance for what makes a good article. Perhaps introduction of skeleton articles (e.g. a framework of what a good song/album article should include) and/or a list of already approved GA's to compare against. Lil-unique1 (talk) 01:48, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
Comment: Stub/Start/C-class articles are not very different. How can this system possibly be precise? Does this mean that every time a stub article is improved, it must undergo a reassessment? Who will have the time to constantly review these articles? It seems like it would be a waste of valuable users' time who could be contributing content rather than assessing existing content.--William S. Saturn (talk) 03:37, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
That already occurs under the current assessment structure, and is often a part of the content creation process. In other situations, there are checklists to follow, so assessments can be done quickly and informally. Titoxd(?!? - cool stuff)03:45, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
Titoxd, I am assuming that if this proposal was implemented, the inadequacy of assessment would be visible and it would defeat the purpose. This visibility would draw individuals away from content improvement and change them from contributors to assessors. Why does it matter if an article is a stub/start/C class? Any reasonable person can tell if an article needs improvement. In fact, some stub, start or C class articles may not need to be expanded, and can be useful and encyclopedic if they are reliably sourced. And lets be honest, when it comes to credibility, reliable sourcing is all that's necessary, right?--William S. Saturn (talk) 04:34, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
Hiding something because it's inadequate hardly seems like the best way to improve it. This proposal would give us more eyes on assessment, which will make it more accurate in general. Assessing an article as stub/start/C only takes a minute - there used to be a gadget that could do it from the article page. As for the lack of difference, perhaps the scale could only have the first three circles combined into one so the stub/start/C logo is shown in the first circle as appropriate, or left empty otherwise. This would make it clear that anything less than B-class isn't "mostly complete and without major issues" (to quote the B-class criteria). TRS-80 (talk) 08:10, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
The contentious point is whatever users are reasonable & informed enough to not toy with article assessment in a i like it basis that is especially true with ratings below GA. --KrebMarkt08:40, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
This is not the right time or place to do this. The "Good article" system is already a WP-wide system, as are FA's, etc. If you want a WP-wide system for a varied level of assessments, consider making it separate from the 1.0 effort. Maurreen (talk) 06:35, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
This proposal should be bundled with the still-undead flagged revisions (anybody home?). Flagged revisions, if I understand it correctly, is a starting point for checking sources, so it intersects with general assessment (and claims screen space). There is, however, a fear that the proposal goes too far in attempting to standardize assessment rankings. Right now each project is free to invent their own rules and evolve on its own. Some are bursting with action, some are dead. Will you trust an A-class issued by a one-man-team? etc. What would you do when different projects issue different ratings? Who will actually do it - where are the volunteers? Too many questions left unanswered. East of Borschov (talk) 09:36, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
(Note:I'm pretty much on wikibreak, but couldn't resist a quick comment here!) Thanks for putting this proposal together- it seems to have been carefully thought out! I'm only a weak supporter of this idea myself - not because I think it's a bad idea, but more because I think it would run into the same battles that the GA icon has had; for some, the FA icon is the only one that counts! I also think that the lower levels of assessment are less useful for the reader who is actually reading the article; it's pretty obvious to any reader if an article is a Stub or a Start (those assessments are more useful for projects reviewing their article collections and judging priorities). If something is labelled as Start when it's a long article with references, how do I know if it's rated as Start because it's poor, or because the assessment is out of date? At the same time, I think the central argument here - making the assessments visible to our users - is a very powerful one. My view would be that this is something we should aim for in a year or two, rather than doing immediately - that way we could work out some better ways to address issues like inconsistencies, out-of-date reviews, A-Class etc. Note: I plan to be back and active from mid-July, and I plan to focus a lot of effort on getting a working A-Class system up and running. Thanks for a great proposal and excellent discussion so far, Walkerma (talk) 10:01, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
In short, your comment about this process taking time is exactly what I intended. We'll work out the wrinkles as we go along. As long as we're making progress rather than stalling over issues that appear to be indefinitely stalled. More will come later today. – VisionHolder « talk »11:38, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
Question: Sorry if this has already been answered, but how would conflicting assessments be handled? MILHIST doesn't have a C rating (and does have a A rating), so assessment conflicts are rather common. RamiR10:17, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
These issues will be addressed in time. The proposal is not about immediately changing the assessment systems, just an attempt to start the ball rolling and give these ideas momentum. If this were to be accepted, more proposals would follow, including ones to work out all the disputed kinks in the various assessment systems. As stated above, I plan to revise the proposal later this afternoon to reflect all of this. – VisionHolder « talk »11:38, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
Comment: There are some interesting ideas in this proposal but some obvious hurdles as well. Who started the voting? This was far too premature before these issues have been explored. The main hurdle is that Stub/Start/C/B/A are currently WikiProject assessments and there is nothing to stop different projects assessing articles differently, or even from using their own criteria to assess articles. This makes it impossible to merge with community-wide processes such as GA/FA. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:13, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
Comment If we do it, we need to keep track of how much time editors spend arguing about the assessments, time that could have been spent improving the articles. - Dank (push to talk) 12:59, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
In principle I think this is an excellent idea... if we can devise a simple and intuitive way of accounting for the discrepancies and illogicalities in our various assessment systems. The scale would need to account for the fact that GA and FA are outside/alongside the project classes Stub-A, and handle differences in different project assessments on a single article. Personally I think we'd probably need two scales, one for project assessment and a second for GA/FA status. I'm also very much in favour of revamping WP:ASSESS to better reflect the status of FA and particularly GA as outside the Stub- to A-Class hierarchy. EyeSerenetalk13:07, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
Comment:File:ExampleFAwithtext.pngExample Some interesting ideas here. I'm actually leaning more towards oppose for this particular proposal. I feel that assesments should remain internal, simply because the whole point of having the system is to internally judge their priority for inclusion for WP 1.0. I've had my own loose idea of a new kind of system though. I think we should retain the FA star, and include a GA symbol in article headers in similar fashion to the star. I personally feel that project quality assessment should remain internal, but perhaps we could find a less obtrusive way of displaying it somewhere. First of all, rather than actually show an image of a scale, as I feel this is confusing and actually somewhat irrelevent. I believe we should merely add text alongside the FA star. This would make it instantaneously clear to the reader what the purpose of the star is. I've added an example image to show what I'm on about. I really support the idea of seperating GA and FA from the rest of the scale, as I honestly think this is the only way A-Class is ever going to see any action ever again. Keep GA and FA for the readers, and the rest behind the scenes. That way, projects can focus on Stub-A, and the very best of the articles within a project's scope can be put foward for community assessment, with GA and FA highlighting to readers the high-quality of the articles they are reading. Otherwise, I feel like we'd be introducing some form of "Bad article" system. --.:Alex:.18:09, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
Comment, you wouldn't need to keep track of the length of time reviews took because the idea would be that potential GA review panels/teams whatever you want to call them would have an agreed minimum standard. that's the main issue at the moment - the guidelines for what constitutes a good article are too flimsy and weak allowing open interpretation. Maybe there should be some criteria for editors who nominate articles e.g. a suggested criteria checklist i.e. if the article meets the suggested criteria it could be ready for GA/FA nomination. Then with example articles etc. it would be easier for assessors to review and agree on an article. I tried assessing other nominated articles and found the process confusing as well as unclear.Lil-unique1 (talk) 23:01, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
Comment: I understand that the purpose of this proposal is to get new users and casual readers involved in this process, but for advanced users that want to see assessment quickly, this script may be helpful. I've used it for a few weeks now (although I've been on a semi-wikibreak and it's been around for a while) and it works reasonably well. I have been paying attention to ratings more and I feel that I have a better understanding of the system in many areas. Gosox(55)(55)23:00, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
Comment — For me it displays an assessment of an article's quality, as part of the page header for each article. I find this extremely useful and inviting to know what the article is assessed as. The article becomes a lot more interesting if it is rated GA or even B-class; however, for whatever reason without that gadget I'd probably not take a second look at the article. AaroncrickTALK07:20, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
Looks like I'm a bit late, but this will happen at some point, just not yet. I've always wondered how we would show the hierarchy, and I like some of those images above. I had thought we'd have to go to a numerical scale, since we don't want to call stubs Fs, but you've worked it out nicely. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) 14:40, 4 June 2010 (UTC)
A lack
I've seen quite a few articles that doesn't fit at all in the current quality grading scheme, namely:
mature crap (BA, such as in Bad Article), long articles with complete covering of the topic, but with recurring confusions, false premisses, fantasy reasoning, WP:OR and WP:SYNTH, the article should be stripped to a skeleton, then rewritten section per section;
bullshit (D, such as in D-class article), confusion of multiple valid topics (Linguistic modality), the article should be subject to an expert discussion to try to distinguish what topics it contains;
elaborate bullshit (E, such as in E-class article) inventing a political topic by making very undue WP:SYNTH and WP:OR, fex Militant atheism, an article with a theme similar to Evil dog, Broken car, Aggressive politicians and other non-terms/non-articles, should be aggressively deleted, but requires the same elaborate deletion scheme that in real life requires a lot of research to delete.
I suggest inventing such a negative assessment scale believing it might make blatant crap cleanup easier. Rursus dixit. (mbork3!) 20:39, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
There is a different psychological response when somebody tells you "the article you've been working on is not good yet" versus when you are told "the article you've been working on is unadulterated garbage." I'm not sure a "negative scale" is a direction that should be pursued, simply because of all the unnecessary drama that can be avoided by calling the article a Start-Class or lower. Titoxd(?!? - cool stuff)21:20, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
Just so you know, I supported this only because it is funny. I don't expect anyone else to support it and I hope nobody else does.--William S. Saturn (talk) 23:36, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
OK, the suggestion wasn't too serious - more like a therapeutic yell - but it is reflecting a real trouble. I'm navigating among religious articles and too many of those don't deserve any assessment at all because of being lousy, generally crappy and unreliable like a quicksand. I'm slowly collecting information about pathological cases, cases that are very hard to fix, and that repels the mayhap editor by just being f*ck*d-up beyond all imaginable reason. User:Rursus/Kill contains an embryo of categorization for trash-articles, anyone interested that happen to know unusually lousy articles are welcome to point out them to me, so that I can study in detail the elaborate ways of article confusion. Rursus dixit. (mbork3!) 12:44, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
You have however got a point, particularly with some religious articles. "God spoke to [insert name here] one day and told him to found a church which would follow all of God's goals, as opposed to those satanic heathen scumbucket bastards, all of whom are bound to hell, who disagree with him" is an article I've seen more often than I'd like to admit. Maybe something like a "rewrite" class would be a potentially useful option? John Carter (talk) 16:54, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
Yes! Thanks for the humour! I also like John Carter's suggestion - though really as a general idea rather than as a specific class. In practice, the only way we can currently indicate our frustration with an article of this sort is to list it as Start-Class (when the length would be more typical of a B), than to put in some cleanup tags. (Ordinary users really notice those cleanup tags!) That is how such articles are handled in WP:CHEMS; obviously, the best thing to do is to sit down and rewrite the article from start to finish! Barring that, it would be nice to list such articles at the WikiProject. Cheers, Walkerma (talk) 04:45, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
A rewrite class is maybe justifiable, indicating that an editor won't do anything objectable when starting a grand cleanup scheme. Another easier, and maybe more practical, solution would be to stress it in the description of the Start class, and signal the "crappyness" with the usual templates {{citations needed}}, {{Unclear section}}, {{Essay}}, {{Hoax}} etc.. Anyways, take it easy and happy editing! Rursus dixit. (mbork3!) 06:09, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
Yes, I think I've seen that before. That is an excellent way to highlight problem articles for the WikiProject, achieving the same net result as the rewrite-class would. Maybe we should encourage use of that approach on other projects? Walkerma (talk) 13:46, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
True, there are articles that are beyond repair and need to be completely rewritten. I wouldn't object to a Rewrite-Class myself... Titoxd(?!? - cool stuff)21:35, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
A-class questions
1) "Good article status is not a requirement for A-Class." Why not? 2) "The article [has] been reviewed by impartial reviewers from a WikiProject, like military history" - this needs to be clarified. Mihist has an internal review process; I am not familiar with any other projects which do that. On the other hand, I am familiar with many instances when an editor just gives an article s/he likes A-class, without any visible involvement from a WikiProject. I think that no article should be given A-class without being first listed on a WikiProject discussion page (if a project has no dedicated subpage for A-class reviews, general talk notification will do). Thoughts? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 13:20, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
Because A-class is a WikiProject rating, and theoretically a WikiProject could use any criteria that they want to judge it. Therefore there is not necessarily much in common between GA- and A-class.
I am also not aware on other WikiProjects which have active A-class review processes though there may be a few semi-active ones (e.g. WP:WPM). Yes, I believe the current understanding is that A-class may not be awarded without some kind of WikiProject involvement. You may like to read the discussion on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Council/Assessment working group/Archive 3.
If the concerned project don't use A-Class like the WP:ANIME/ASSESS then revert and trout that editor. Other cases contact the concerned project Assessment department, requiring the article to be re-assessed properly. In the case that there is no Assessment department then drop a line in that project talk page. --KrebMarkt19:55, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
The discussion above about whether or not the assessment system should be more apparent to the reader brings up several issues that the Public Policy Initiative must deal with in order evaluate its impact in improving article quality. We would appreciate input from Wikipedians involved in that discussion to help out on the project. Part of the research directly addresses many of issues that some of you raised with regards to the current assessment system (inconsistency in lower class articles, differences between expert and wikipedian assessment, difficulty for new contributors to assess). The Public Policy Initiative is recruiting Wikipedians to assess article quality improvement. We are testing the metric for consistency and to see if there are differences between Wikipedian scores and subject matter expert scores. We are looking to identify the strengths and weakness of the current assessment system since we are using that system to evaluate article quality improvement through the project. This project will produce quantifiable results evaluating many of the issues you mention above, your insight is needed, so please join the assessment team, if interested check out WikiProject: U.S. Public Policy. Thanks! ARoth (Public Policy Initiative) (talk) 23:42, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
This looks needlessly complicated: six separate criteria, with four different ranges for scores. It sounds like the kind of thing that people could waste a lot of time arguing over. Compared to the current process -- I can reliably identify a page as a stub or start in two seconds -- I'd say that you're doing a lot of unnecessary work for no additional benefit. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:20, 8 September 2010 (UTC)
The standard assessment system is actually quite complicated itself, if you look at the documentation. It's tough for newcomers to learn, because there are detailed definitions of each class of articles. The goal of this system is to unpack that, to make it a little more explicit what the requirements for the different classes are. The extra detail will probably also lead to a little more consistency in assessments, since it reduces some of the "gut feeling" approach to rating articles that is prevalent in the standard system. You're right that it's extra work without much benefit for start and stub articles. Note, however, that's it's compatible with the standard system, so instead of rating a start or stub with the detailed method, one can always just add the standard class directly.--Sage Ross - Online Faciliator, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 19:54, 8 September 2010 (UTC)
Thanks for raising this - I was hoping we could discuss this in detail. The "hardcore" 1.0 team people (and there aren't too many!) are busy with the Version 0.8 preparation at the moment - we should have a list or articles with "safe" revisionIDs by about tomorrow - and this is why I personally haven't promoted discussion on this so far. Regarding the scheme, I agree somewhat with WhatamIdoing that simple is good - the current system became popular for that reason. Also, I think that WP:USPP is an unusual WikiProject, where measuring article improvement is a much higher priority than it is for most WikiProjects. We've had the current system analyzed by a university prof. who studies assessment schemes, and other than us adding some more exemplars (still need to do that!), he concluded that our system is pretty robust and achieves what it is supposed to. HAVING SAID THAT, I am fascinated to see if this will take off; clearly there is one WikiProject that likes it. The new scheme essentially quantifies what we already do but in a more rigorous way. I think a critical feature is the compatibility with the existing system. If it were widely adopted, less active projects could stick with the simple system, and obvious stubs/starts might end up being tagged without a lot of rigmarole; after all, the assessments mainly get important once you get to C and above. I would note, though, that for B and A there is already a more detailed rubric that goes well beyond the "gut feeling" we use for lower classes. Is this new scheme really SO different from what we do already at those higher levels?
You should be aware of an earlier attempt that was similar to this proposal - see Wikipedia:Article assessment. However, the similarity with this new proposal is not as great as it may seem. The old scheme had good intentions, and a rigorous approach to assessment - so why did it fail? Personally, I believe it failed for three reasons - (1) The results of all the work didn't really go anywhere especially useful; (2) WikiProjects weren't involved, so it relied on "drive-by" visitors doing assessments, often on topics they had little interest/knowledge on; (3) the assessment process took some time (perhaps 5-10 minutes per article). Although #3 is still relevant, 1 and 2 can be avoided in this new scenario. Still - it's always good to learn from the mistakes of the past, so we don't repeat them!
My suggestion would be to wait and see how the new system continues to work at WP:USPP. If it falls out of use as people get busy and move onto new things, then clearly it won't scale well to the wider community. If it persists, and grows, and perhaps a "neighbouring" WikiProject copies the idea too, we should have a formal discussion here. We spent six months using the current WP:ASSESS scheme over at WP:CHEMS in mid-2005, and we found the system was popular with many WikiProject members, so when we started to use the same scheme here at WP:1, we already had an idea it would scale. So I'd like to talk to WP:USPP people in January and see how things look then. MANY thanks for raising this. Walkerma (talk) 21:49, 8 September 2010 (UTC)
That should fix it. The bot updates the tables inside its user space; they can be transcluded anywhere else. The bot does look to see if the old-style page under Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team exists, and creates that page if it doesn't exist. But if the page does exist the bot won't change it. — Carl (CBM · talk) 19:56, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
The template should note the number of untagged articles
Very true. I have a list of roughtly 40, 000 relating to US articles alone (and that is likely low) that dont have an assessment template. --Kumioko (talk) 16:57, 9 November 2010 (UTC)
It is conceivable that some articles do not fall within the scope of any project. It is not necessary for every article to be tagged by a WikiProject. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 17:32, 9 November 2010 (UTC)
I recently had added the WPUS banner to the talk page of several redirects with |class= = redirect and then someone reverted them. Which is fine but I wanted to clarify. I was under the impression that redirects should have a banner with class = redirect. Is this not true? I have been working a lot with talk pages lately and it is much easier to identify if the talk page is a redirect rather than an article yet to be assessed if the class = redirect is present. Thanks for the help. --Kumioko (talk) 16:55, 9 November 2010 (UTC)
I would say so—I will usually update redirected articles' assessments to |class=redirect, but if someone removes the template, I will just let it be. I find it more important to classify the redirect itself (see Category:All redirect templates for typical templates). Then again, this would also depend on the article being redirected: At WP:ANIME this was necessary due to the amount of character/episode/other articles being merged into appropriate lists, and properly categorized redirects came in handy to keep track of the old articles, but I doubt it would be necessary for each and every redirect. G.A.Stalk17:50, 9 November 2010 (UTC)
Thank you. I am finding it necessary as well due to the massive amount of articles that fall into the scope of WP US that currently do not have the banner.--Kumioko (talk) 17:53, 9 November 2010 (UTC)
If you take a look at the logic for Template:WikiProject United States you shuold be able to see what needs to be changed but if you need some help let me know. Working with the templates can be abit tricky. I also recommend testing any changes in your projects sandbox prior to implementation so something doesnt accidentally get twisted up. --Kumioko (talk) 20:27, 29 November 2010 (UTC)
Some projects only use it for selected purposes, however. I believe that WPMED could claim about ten thousand redirects for alternate spellings, capitalizations, and plurals, but we don't actually want them. We do sometimes tag redirects from outdated/eponymous names when they are categorized by content (see Aden ulcer as an example).
Just a thought I had while removing some banners from pages in the user talk namespace: since it seems increasingly frequent for articles to be userfied or moved to the article incubator (or similar), and since project banners inevitably get moved along with the article, would there be any benefit or interest in having a new Draft-Class to cover such pages? PC78 (talk) 17:21, 10 November 2010 (UTC)
It seems reasonable to me but we would need to periodically check to make sure that they arent marked that way in the mainspace. --Kumioko (talk) 17:23, 10 November 2010 (UTC)
Although this could easily be tracked by a namespace check in the template code that
if an article in userspace is assessed as |class=Stub/Start/etc, the template will automatically change the rating to draft; or
if an article in mainspace is assessed as |class=Draft, the rating is changed to Unassessed/Stub/Start.
According to the last sentence of the first paragraph, "Once an article reaches the A-Class, it is considered 'complete'.". An article should never be considered "complete", no matter how comprehensive. There is always more information that can be added to an article. --vgmddg (look | talk | do)22:57, 17 November 2010 (UTC)
I imagine the actual meaning is supposed to be "complete by standards of inclusion", although I suppose it could be much better phrased... --DorsalAxe22:19, 29 November 2010 (UTC)
New icons
I just wondered if some enterprising user would care to create some new icons to match the classes with them? For example, the Redirect and Merge icons could be updated to match their class colours (and fix the positioning of the symbols, which should be angled slightly), and new icons could be created for Category-, Current-, File-, Future-, Needed-, Portal- and Project- classes and the various importance levels. I'd do it myself, although I haven't the know-how. I'd love to see someone do this though, as this would essentially "complete the set" and give us some less ugly icons for the Classicon template. --DorsalAxe16:48, 3 December 2010 (UTC)
A-class
I'm just wondering if there is any purpose in this class at all as from my experience I have seen most articles skipping it from GA or B to FA if they have succeeded. How is A-class assessed? Simply south (talk) and their tree22:14, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
A-Class is assessed by a peer review process within the WikiProject itself. In practice, A-Class is used well only by a few (typically larger) projects such as WP:MILHIST, as they have a formal A-Class review system. Smaller WikiProjects usually don't have the resources for a peer review system, so they rely on the wider community to provide non-subject-expert review through GAN and FAC. We had a massive discussion on this a year or two back, and we decided to keep A-Class. Those who don't use it don't see the value, but those who are set up to use A-Class see it as a superior way to develop articles towards FA, since the peer review ensures that the content is complete. If you go B > GA > FA it is possible to reach FA without a thorough review of the content by subject-experts. So in summary - those who like it, should be allowed to use it; those who don't, don't need to worry about it! Walkerma (talk) 15:29, 24 December 2010 (UTC)
To add a bit to Walkerma's thorough statement, Milhist has defined criteria and a full process for A-class – see WP:MH/A and WP:MHR#A-CLASS. The project has a pool of reviewers large enough to make it work, but unfortunately many other projects do not have this luxury. Milhist and WP:SHIPS are the only two active A-class review systems right now (though the latter piggybacks off warships from Milhist). WP:BIOG dropped in in January 2009, and WP:FILM followed in November 2009. Kind regards, Ed[talk][majestic titan]16:07, 24 December 2010 (UTC)
I'm confused by the B-Class rating. According to the Project Page:
The article meets the six B-Class criteria:
1. The article is suitably referenced, with inline citations where necessary. It has reliable sources, and any important or controversial material which is likely to be challenged is cited. The use of citation templates such as { {cite web}} is not required, but the use of < ref></ref> tags is encouraged.
The example given of article KV55 displays this characteristic, but the article on Printmaking at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printmaking doesn't seem to, although it's graded at B-Class, too. In that long article, there are only 4 citations. I freely admit that I'm confused. Clarification is appreciated. Wordreader (talk) 03:54, 11 February 2011 (UTC)
My name is Daniel, I'm researching about Automatic assessing Wikipedia articles.
Collecting some articles, I can see that some of them have multiple quality classes, for example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:American_Civil_War. My question is: Does the wikiproject have an independent point of view of the article? (e.g. one article can be a good article about history but is not so complete to be a good article about american history). Where can I found more information about it?
Thanks in advance --DanielHasan (talk) 14:44, 18 February 2011 (UTC)
Each WikiProject can rate the article independently. If the quality ratings are wildly divergent, that's usually a sign that some WikiProject needs to update their ratings. But for example some project have their own criteria for B-class or A-class, which other projects don't share. — Carl (CBM · talk) 17:04, 18 February 2011 (UTC)
I would like to add though that some WikiProject are very active such as WikiProject Military History. I would say if the MILHIST quality assessment is filled out I would go with that. If you are looking at US related articles US roads is another good one as is WikiProject National Register of Historic Places. Those three are all very active and reliable in my opinion for quality assessments. --Kumioko (talk) 17:36, 18 February 2011 (UTC)
Actually, although Carl is right, we also encourage independent assessments for a very good reason. The WikiProject assessment is supposed to represent people with expertise in a certain area, and assessments beyond Start-Class involve a judgement of completeness in a particular area.
Example: I'm in WikiProject Chemicals, and many of our articles are also tagged by WikiProject Food and Drink (preservatives, food colourings, natural components of flavours, etc.). An article might have very good coverage of its chemistry (synthesis, structure, reactions, etc) but nothing about its relevance in food; such an article might be rated B-Class by WP:CHEMS, but only Start-Class by WP:Food and Drink. From the perspective of the 1.0 project, that means if we are putting together a selection of chemistry articles we may include it (because it's strong in that area), but we might omit it from a selection on Food & Drink articles. (We're not yet producing more specialised releases like this, but we hope to.)
FYI - a couple of other points. A few projects such as WP:CHEMS (for historical reasons) doesn't recognise C-Class (though WP:CHEM does!), and so you see differences because of that. Also, I think it has become accepted practice to allow someone from outside a WikiProject to rate a Stub or Start, and maybe a C, so often these are harmonised (I reassess many Stubs as Starts, and I put all WikiProjects on the same rating, as do many others.) This is seen as a favour to the WikiProject, since there are many articles that have improved from Stub but haven't been reassessed - it saves time. But for B-Class and beyond, you should never assess for another project. Cheers, Walkerma (talk) 21:47, 18 February 2011 (UTC)
Thats a good point about C class. A Class is another that is not recognized by every project and WPMILHIST doesn't usually recognize lists unless they are Featured lists. They just call them start or stub or whatever. This does make me think that perhaps having a table under WikiProject Council with the projects and the classes they support might be beneficial. Creating the table would be rather easy but it would be somewhat time consuming to fill in. --Kumioko (talk) 21:53, 18 February 2011 (UTC)
Firstly, to echo the point made twice above, WikiProject Military History does not accept C-class, either so an article rated C-class by one WP might be rated Start-class by a different WP, such as MILHIST, who does not use C-class. Secondly, articles are also rated by importance and importance ratings may well be different simply because the assessment of the article can change depending on which prespective it is be viewed from: for example an article about a ferry or ship owned by a railway company might have bias towards "shiping" or "railway transportance" and this would affect how important the respective WP might regard the article to be to their WP.Pyrotec (talk) 22:01, 18 February 2011 (UTC)
Good examples for disambiguation and category classes
I think there should be a either a pair of lists or classes to place featured-quality disambiguation and category pages in. Although these types of pages are generally less important than full articles, I believe that such a list or class could be powerful reference to editors, beyond a style page or list of guidelines. Gamemaster0 (talk) 20:11, 26 April 2011 (UTC)
The bot allows a WikiProject to have their own assessment classes. If your WikiProject agrees with this proposal, go ahead and tag some and put them in the appropriate category - then let us know, here. We can make sure that the bot scores them appropriately. If other projects like the idea, it will probably spread. Thanks, Walkerma (talk) 05:26, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
The article is substantial, but is still missing important content or contains a lot of irrelevant material. The article should have a significant number ofreferences to reliable sources - especially secondary sources., butHowever, it may still have significant issues or require substantial cleanup.
The article is better developed in style, structure and quality than Start-Class, but fails one or more of the criteria for B-Class. It may have some gaps or missing elements; need editing for clarity, balance or flow; or contain policy violations such as bias, over reliance on primary or related sources or original research. Articles on fictional topics are likely to be marked as C-Class if they are written from anin-universe perspective.
This reflects the current practice for the WikiProjects I am afiliated with directly and some of them indirectly of requiring secondary sources to not only flesh out material, specifically in reception and impact sections which are generally seen as a requirement to have something there. Also relying too heavily on the primary source material (or press releases and the like) has generally been seen as a sign of lower-quality start-level article.
This is especially the case for fiction related articles. The WikiProjects I work with almost exclusively would not grade an article as C-class if it was mostly just primary sources. Many of the articles will have only plot info and release info and dates (thereby bypassing WP:NOT#PLOT's by detailing non universe info). The info can be quite substantial at this point, and heavily referenced, but generally most of these references come from primary sources, press releases and the like something that I don't think meets the spirit of C-class, but as currently written could be construed to be as "reception" or "impact" and "development" generally are not the majority in most such articles.∞陣内Jinnai23:27, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
Possible changes in "importance" ratings
God knows that I am not really looking forward to seeing any of the changes I propose here being done, because of the amount of work I think it might well give me. However, I do wonder whether we might maybe benefit from adding three, maybe four, "importance' assessment grades.
Right now, the "Top" importance articles are, more or less, those which we think should be included in any encyclopedia. Well, as we now have our own "release version" encyclopedia, maybe it might be a bit better way to bring attention to these most important articles, and related articles, by adding assessment grades for them. The proposals I could see being included might include three or four grades for "core" importance articles, something like the following:
"Central core" - Articles which bear the name of one of the core topics. A rough approximation might be the articles included in the Encyclopedia Britannica macropedia.
"Inner core" - These would include articles which are the most important direct "child" articles of the central core articles. Like History of Christianity, for instance. It might also include articles which are not direct child articles, but are of outstanding importance in a field anyway. One example might be the importance of The Beatles relative to rock music.
"Outer core" - This would include the articles which would be roughly equivalent to those included in the Britannica micropedia.
"Peripheral core" - This grade I myself would have reservations about, but I can see how, in some cases, one of the central articles might have one or two important direct subarticles which do not necessarily direct relate to the main topic except in a limited way. A bad example, but one which might be in some way useful, might be Abortion and some related articles dealing with the abortion debate and broader bioethics.
Anyway, just an idea, but I think doing something of the type might better help get a bit more input in those articles selected for release versions. John Carter (talk) 21:00, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
Additional to the current standards, actually. They would also, I think, only be applied to articles that have already been selected, in some way, to one or more release versions. So, maybe, think of them as the higher grades of "Top" importance. I also think this rating would be, pretty much, standard across those projects relevant to the article. John Carter (talk) 18:05, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
Talk page templates
Would it be possible to add dates to the talk page templates showing the current reviewed quality status? Some articles have milestone dates on them, but in most cases they don't making it a pain to trawl through an article's history to ascertain the date that the status was reached to enable comparison with the current version. If there's a simpler way to do this that I'm missing then I'd be grateful for a pointer. Thanks. danno22:49, 9 March 2012 (UTC)
Why don't more WikiProjects use A-Class?
I believe that A-Class is a fairly good idea; A-Class articles have a better chance of reaching FA-status than GA status, but why are they fairly rare? In fact, it has the fewest members of all the classes; there are more Featured articles than A-Class articles. With its quality, it would be expected that the number of A-Class articles would be somewhere between the numbers of Featured articles and Good articles. Why is this so? I read that it is due to the difficult of finding reviews, but why not have a system of assessments no different from the other classes? And if only a few articles have, why isn't the class just abolished and all the remaining articles be promoted to FAs or become GAs? And I don't understand the reason that there are only a few WikiProjects that have enough members for the use of A-class: There are plenty of WikiProjects which have just as many or more members than WP:MILHIST, WP:SHIPS, WP:ROADS and WP:ELEM. Narutolovehinata5tccsdnew04:35, 23 January 2012 (UTC)
It's not merely a question of having enough members, but of overcoming the intertia of doing nothing. Hadling a review, and the process behind it, takes a lot of time and effort from people willing to go to that trouble. The projects I work on don't see the A-class as worth bothering over. --EncycloPetey (talk) 04:38, 23 January 2012 (UTC)
Between the above response and the discussion currently at the top of this page about the benefits of A-Class andalso why it's not so common, there's probably not much to add. As to why there are fewer A-Class articles than Featured Articles under the auspices of projects that employ the former, such as MilHist, that's because A-Class Review is often used as a stepping stone to FAC, rather than as an end in itself. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 05:34, 23 January 2012 (UTC)
Intertia is related to not having enough active members. Most projects have very few active members, and the list of dozens of those who signed a member page and do nothing is not a useful indicator. Very few projects have enough active members for reviews. At WP:POLAND, which is quite active, we struggle to do B-class reviews, and so are a long way of thinking about A-s at all :( --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me18:28, 24 April 2012 (UTC)
I understand why some people like the A class, but I simply don't see the point for projects that I work with. If I wanted to improve a GA article, I would just make the full leap to FA status. I think that adding another assessment stage to those articles would be a poor use of the reviewer's time. —Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 17:41, 26 April 2012 (UTC)
I think you are correct. Once you get an article to GA, the effort would be better spent on getting it to FA. If you add an A review you could almost double the work from what I have read to get to FA. Is it worth the effort? Vegaswikian (talk) 18:44, 26 April 2012 (UTC)
Is it only me, or is List-class mostly counterproductive?
Whenever an article is rated as being list-class, that basically removes it from the usual process of assessment-driven quality improvements. And I hardly think the Featured List class remedies this dysfunctionality to any significant degree. The problem is furthermore exasperated by many articles being assessed as list-class when they really aren't primarily lists but merely contain one or more lists in addition to prose sections.
I would suggest that we get rid of the List and Featured List classes from the WP 1.0 assessment scheme altogether. Wikipedia:WikiProject Lists should be sufficient as a focus arena to work on lists improvement in particular. __meco (talk) 13:13, 4 April 2012 (UTC)
The problem is that lists don't really have as many stages as regular articles. For articles, every level from stub to FA is fairly distinct. For lists, however, I can only see three levels: (1) incomplete list, (2) complete list, and (3) well-formatted complete list. I think subdividing those three classes into seven classes to match the article system would be difficult; I'm not really sure how a C-List would be different from a B-List, or a Good-List from an FA-List. —Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 19:48, 24 April 2012 (UTC)
I think you don't quite grasp the issue I'm presenting. Would you mind reading it over again and see if you have any other thoughts or ideas? __meco (talk) 19:27, 26 April 2012 (UTC)
After re-reading your comment, I still disagree with your first point for the same reason. As for your second point (which I didn't address in my original reply), I think the solution to articles that are tagged as lists but contain mostly prose is to give those articles a regular article rating and reserve the list rating for actual lists. If there is some third argument that I didn't grasp, could you please point it out to me? —Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 22:56, 26 April 2012 (UTC)
In your first reply you discussed a proposal which you attribute to me, but which is missing from my first post. I have not advocated creating C-list, B-list classes and so on. So this entire discussion on your part focusing on that is moot and I'm not getting into it.
My proposal is that we get rid of the List-class and FL-classes altogether, and I've provided an argument for that. We have maintenance banners that can be used to address the issue of incompleteness. The rest should be left up to WikiProject Lists and the other, topical WikiProjects having their banners on a list-article. And this should be done using the regular quality-classes. Minor additions to the general assessment criteria could be made to make allowance for list assessments more properly. __meco (talk) 07:16, 27 April 2012 (UTC)
I know you didn't mean to create new classes, when I said "C-list", I meant "list that is C-class"; sorry for the confusion. My original point was that I don't think the regular assessment process would work well with lists because lists don't have as much nuance in their quality. I think it would be difficult to tell the difference between a start-class list and a c-class list. When I improve a list, I just take it straight to FL; I don't need incremental steps along the way. —Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 17:23, 27 April 2012 (UTC)
The list-class isn't required by the 1.0 project/scheme, though it is one of the standard tags used by nearly all WikiProjects. It was added pretty early on because some WikiProjects just found it convenient for tracking the lists in their subject area. But if your WikiProject finds it counterproductive, you're very welcome to discuss it and opt out of using it (just like a couple of projects don't use C-Class or GA-Class). All we (the 1.0 team) would ask is that you indicate this on your assessment page so that new members are aware. Walkerma (talk) 18:08, 27 April 2012 (UTC)
I'm actively assessing for a number of WikiProjects. Besides, the issue I am raising ought to be grounds for a general discussion about the list classes, not as an opt-out option but with respect to the basic design of the entire English Wikipedia-wide quality assessment scheme. That's what my argument leads up to. __meco (talk) 23:07, 27 April 2012 (UTC)
B-class question
I wonder about this phrase: " The use of either [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki/Wikipedia:Footnotes <ref> tags] or [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_templates citation templates] such as <tt>{{[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki/Template:Cite_web cite web]}}</tt> is not required.". In particular, the part about the ref tags. How can you reference the article without ref tags? Earlier, the same criteria state "The article is suitably referenced, with inline citations where necessary.". You cannot have inline cites without ref tags. What am I missing? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me18:26, 24 April 2012 (UTC)
Can you explain me this edit? It's a template (in template space), correct, but it is a template for project use only (so not considered for the mainspace). mabdul10:57, 3 May 2012 (UTC)
Essentially I'm following the top-level main guideline for assessment, which states that "Any template falls under [the template] class". Also the WP Cornwall assessment guidelines don't over-rule this and state that the project class is "for project pages" and a template isn't really a page. I was also following an assessment convention that other WP barnstars follow, such as: this, this and this template. Hope this clears things up. Cheers, Zangar (talk) 11:32, 3 May 2012 (UTC)
So now the questions: most barnstars are in the template space, but are clearly not for the article space/main space considered, but used for awarding other contributors for their dedicated work. Why shouldn't these template marked as / within / for the project space? mabdul12:40, 3 May 2012 (UTC)
A grade example problem
For the A grade example, the article is an outdated one.
You should constantly update the link for this and article
examples of all other grades.
--108.35.232.7 (talk) 01:31, 21 May 2012 (UTC)
How do we get 2000–2009 in fashion a better rating? It deserves at least a B (or even A) as it has no obvious biases or inaccuracies, all the main points are covered, every paragraph is referenced, and there are images illustrating the text — Preceding unsigned comment added by Osama57 (talk • contribs) 18:38, 31 July 2012 (UTC)
This may have already been covered elsewhere, but I could not find the previous discussion. Do we really need a separate importance class of "No" just for redirects and disambiguation pages? Most of the projects that I help with assessment, do not use this extra criteria for non-article pages. And the few projects that do have it as an option, do not use it consistently in favor of "NA". Both of these importance criteria apply to non-article pages such as redirects, and if "importance=no" is left off, the importance defaults to "NA" anyway. I think that a lot of time and extra sorting could be eliminated, if we did away with "No-importance", and let all non-article pages fall under "NA-importance". Fortdj33 (talk) 17:54, 4 September 2012 (UTC)
Sorry for posting my question in multiple places, but I wasn't sure where I would get a response. I am a member of {{WikiProject Animation}} and {{WikiProject Comics}}, and I just don't see the need for this criteria anymore. Given that it only affects a portion of non-article pages in those projects, and that those redirects and disambiguation pages could just as easily be covered by "NA-importance", I think that the "No-importance" should be removed. I could be wrong, but simply eliminating that option from the projects, should cause all those non-articles to revert to NA-importance. Fortdj33 (talk) 12:56, 5 September 2012 (UTC)
I'm sorry, but I don't understand how being print-worthy has anything to do with it. Category:Printworthy redirects contains redirects from hundreds of projects, including {{WikiProject Comics}}. What makes the redirects in the comics wikiproject any more or less important than the redirects in all the other Wikiprojects? And for that matter, if a non-article page is not important to the project, then why bother adding it to "Redirect-Class" or "Disambig-Class" to begin with? I'm afraid I still don't see why the extra classification of "No-importance" is necessary. It is not consistent across all the projects that are part of Version 1.0, and IMO it is simply redundant when "NA-importance" already exists for all projects. Fortdj33 (talk) 19:50, 5 September 2012 (UTC)
I am a member of {{WikiProject Animation}}, I've also created the No-Importance category almost around two years ago for redirects and disambiguation pages along with importance ratings for work groups for printworthy possibilities and I've done some assessments myself. JJ98 (Talk / Contribs)21:23, 5 September 2012 (UTC)
When 1.0 assessment started it was a bottom up project rather than a top down one. Each WikiProject was free to develop its own way of doing things. We certainly seem to be talking past each other here. I haven't said the redirects in the comics project are more important than any other redirects. Do I understand you correctly though when you say you think Redirects and Disambig pages are not articles? Because they are in article space so they shouldn't to my mind be classified as non-articles. There's never been a premium on consistency on Wikipedia, if that helps any. I don't know if it would help to ramp down the rhetoric a little either. I'm sure some sort of consensus will develop if we just talk it out simply and slowly. My understanding of your position is that you don't see why these four projects should do anything any different, that disambiguation and redirect pages are not articles, that there's no gain to the 1.0 project or the WikiProjects and there is a time saving benefit in removing it? Is that right? If so, while I respect your opinion, I don't agree on the time saving at all based on my experience and that of the Comics-awb account. I don't agree that redirects and disambig pages are non-articles since they exist in article space. I don't agree with consistency for the sake of it. With regards the utility to the 1.0 project I am happy to bow to consensus, and likewise for each relevant WikiProject. I do think each WikiProject should be allowed to develop their own consensus though. Hope that helps. HidingT08:29, 6 September 2012 (UTC)
With regards "if a non-article page is not important to the project, then why bother adding it to "Redirect-Class" or "Disambig-Class" to begin with?" which project do you mean, the 1.0 project or the WikiProject in question? I found it useful to tag "Redirect-Class" or "Disambig-Class" pages so they appear on clean-up reports and so that periodically you can run through and check whether they are still dab or redirect pages. So they have an importance to the WikiProject. The 1.0 people would have to speak up on the importance to them. It's worth remembering the importance scale grew up alongside a competing value, "Priority", and while "Importance" seems to have carried the day through consensus, it may be that we've lost track slightly of what importance means. It used to mean a top importance article was one that it was important to work on first as much as that it was important that it be included in 1.0. Hope that helps as well. HidingT08:38, 6 September 2012 (UTC)
Jj98 and Hiding, please don't mistake my questions as disrespect. I know that both of you have done some excellent work with assessment and Wikipedia in general. And Hiding, I appreciate you taking the time to answer my questions, so that I might understand why the "No-importance" was created. To clarify, I am not saying that I think "Redirect-Class" or "Disambig-Class" articles aren't important. Quite the opposite, I have updated the classification of many of those pages myself. I just don't see how it is beneficial to separate a portion of all the redirects and disambiguation pages on Wikipedia, only to say that they are of no importance, when the "NA-importance" already covers articles where subject importance is not applicable, such as redirects, categories, templates, etc.
For example, take Andrew Nolan (comics). It currently redirects to Ferro Lad and is included in Category:Printworthy redirects, but is not tagged with a banner as part of {{WikiProject Comics}}. If I added the banner with "class=redirect" but did not specify any importance, it would default to "NA-importance". Are you saying that it should be classified as "No-importance", because the redirects in the comics project are not as print-worthy as the redirects from other projects? If so, I disagree.
I also think that eliminating the "No-importance" would save time for the members of those projects, because it would prevent the extra work of adding that criteria to all the redirects and disambiguation pages in those projects. Right now, it is not being used consistently. And I understand that it could be done easily with a bot, but IMO that bot could just as easily remove the criteria from those pages, if there is a consensus that it is no longer needed.
Finally, I realize that the importance classes are arbitrary, and may have lost some of their meaning. But with all due respect, I do think that Wikipedia should be consistent with its assessment criteria, and I still fail to see the advantage of creating a separate criteria for a handful of projects, just so they can say that their redirects and disambiguation pages are more or less important than all the other projects. Fortdj33 (talk) 15:13, 6 September 2012 (UTC)
I think the idea was that all redirects and dab pages would be tagged as No-importance rather than NA, not just the few WikiProjects that do it now. See, categories and templates are not articles, but redirects and dab pages are. I'm not saying "redirects in the comics project are not as print-worthy as the redirects from other projects", I'm saying that way back when the idea was that redirects and dab pages in general may have been of some value to a print encyclopedia, but we knew for sure that with templates, categories and so on the importance was non-applicable. I'm not one for consistency, as I've said before, and I've always thought if we were aiming for consistency it would be best to focus that sort of energy on getting articles up to FA status. But if can build a consensus across 1.0 and the relevant WikiProjects then that's the Wikipedia way. HidingT16:32, 6 September 2012 (UTC)
Well, I think it's about time to make a decision about whether to use "No-importance" or not. I am fine either way, as long as there is a consensus, and it is applied consistently. Personally, I think it would be much easier to eliminate a criteria that seems to be redundant, and is inconsistently used by only a few projects, rather than creating more work by applying that criteria to thousands of redirects and dab pages. But I placed a request at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Council for other to join in this discussion, so that hopefully we can come to some sort of consensus. Fortdj33 (talk) 18:17, 6 September 2012 (UTC)
I would oppose the use of 'no' for importance since it makes it sound like the article in question has no importance. I think the risk of that implication being taken incorrectly is simply to high to justify its use anywhere! It is simply better to say that an importance rating does not apply to the article. Even if this is about redirects and such, they are still important to the project and the readers, even if the readers don't know this. Vegaswikian (talk) 19:12, 6 September 2012 (UTC)
I'd agree with renaming it "priority", it makes more sense. I might actually propose changing the Comics one over to "Priority". HidingT08:21, 7 September 2012 (UTC)
I've thought about it for WPMED, but I believe that it's not possible to use both, so I think that the switch would require us to send a bot through 28,000+ pages. That's not really a way to win friends among people whose watchlists get slammed by the bot. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:24, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
Wouldn't it just take edits to a handful of templates rather than the 28,000 pages though? Or am I missing something? Oh, the fields would need to change, wouldn't they? Although I suppose it could be set up to deprecate so that the current field would display Priority and then perhaps ask for it to be added to the guts of AWB as a general fix, and have an army of AWB users change it over time? HidingT08:50, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
That would probably work. It might be possible to at least start that way (noting that the project's stats would be in poor shape during the transition) and then run through the less-trafficked pages later. I know that there are a few thousand talk pages in the list that don't see a single edit from one year to the next. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:39, 20 October 2012 (UTC)
Hiding, I don't think I agree with your assertion that everything in the mainspace is an article. Dabs and redirects are almost entirely exempt from the core content policies, which suggests to me that they're not articles. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:46, 6 September 2012 (UTC)
I disagree with you WhatamIdoing, core content policies still apply to dabs and redirects, I am not sure I understand on what basis you would say they are exempt from WP:V, WP:NPOV, WP:OR and WP:BLP. Could I create a redirect from James the Lion King to James II of England? Not without verification and ensuring I wasn't synthesising. The same too for adding any content to a Dab page, information there must also be verifiable. And a number of redirects are articles waiting to happen. I'm not going to object if there is a consensus to remove No-importance, but I think it's important that points are raised and challenged for future reference. HidingT07:52, 7 September 2012 (UTC)
In the interests of fairness I've added notices to the two WikiProjects which use this class and hadn't yet been notified of the discussion. HidingT08:16, 7 September 2012 (UTC)
Hiding, thank you for notifying the related projects, so that we could get additional input regarding the usefulness of "No-importance" in article assessment. The points that you've raised are valid, but if we reach a consensus that the "No-importance" is no longer needed, what is the next step? Can it simply be removed from the importance mask, and all the redirects and dab pages will automatically revert to "NA-importance"? Or is there a better way to remove it, so that we are not faced with this problem again in the future? Fortdj33 (talk) 01:12, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
I'd give it until Thursday and if no-one else chips in to disagree then you've got a strong enough consensus here with just me in the dissent. I'm not sure how you'd attack the importance mask, it's been years since I played around with templates. If you get the consensus to deprecate no-importance, then the relevant categories can be listed for speedy deletion once they are empty. Any templates can be listed for deletion with the rationale of deprecation. And all the relevant assessment pages will need changing. Like I say, though, if we leave it until Thursday we've given ourselves time to work out all the wrinkles and see what needs to be done, and we've given those WikiProjects just notified a week to respond if they desire. I doubt you'll be faced with this exact problem again, the assessment scales are a lot more stable than a few years back. D-Class looks to have died a death, which means no-one is going to suggest E-Class any time soon. Either the pages will revert to NA, or they will sit in unknown importance and a bot will need to run through as discreet as possible and tag them. The guts of the templates will need to be examined by an expert. Who template codes for 1.0 these days? HidingT08:50, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
Closure
Nobody else has joined the conversation so would anyone dispute a closure of consensus to deprecate with myself the only voice of dissent? HidingT08:27, 12 September 2012 (UTC)
I'm undecided about the categories themselves, but given that 26 projects have no-importance categories, I would oppose immediate deprecation in favour of holding a more publicised discussion, preferably an RFC. The current discussion only shows consensus among a very small group of editors, and I think this is an issue that should be more widely discussed. --W.D.Graham14:20, 13 September 2012 (UTC)
I was under the impression only 4 projects were using No-Importance based on JJ98 and Fortdj33's comments above. I wonder how they categorise into the categories, manually or automatically? HidingT14:29, 13 September 2012 (UTC)
Looking at it, it's just two projects, animation and comics. Animation just has theirs broken down by work-group. JJ98 looks to be the main voice for the animation project and has voiced an opinion above that using No for importance is unhelpful. A message was posted at the animation WikiProject so they have been made aware of the discussion, I think that should cover your concerns? HidingT14:37, 13 September 2012 (UTC)
I've changed that template so that |importance=no will be interpreted as |importance=NA if it is not used. So now it is just a case of switching it off for each project that is using it. This is achieved by removing |no=yes from the custom importance mask of the project banner template. For example, I have just done this for the rocketry project by editing Template:WikiProject Rocketry/importance, see [3]. Let me know if this makes any sense. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:48, 12 September 2012 (UTC)
Why is FL near the bottom of the table of grade-codes? The other designations seem to be in prioritized order. Am I wrong that FL is the highest designation?JWorkman 13:55, 2 October 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by James K. Workman (talk • contribs)
I think the point is to keep Lists and Featured Lists together. Most projects (except MILHIST) rate a list as either one or the other. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:42, 20 October 2012 (UTC)
Stubs and sources
Hello, I'm looking for clarification on stub articles vs. non-stub articles and the requirement of sources. Can an article without any reliable sources be considered anything but stub class? (Start or above)? The reason I believe they need at least one source is that the Start class description states "article should satisfy fundamental content policies such as notability and BLP, and provide sources to establish verifiability." But I have been told by another editor that start class articles don't need sources, and I am confused. Where does it say this, and if this is the case, should the assessment scale for start be changed accordingly to be a little more clear? I've asked at WP:STUB and the wikiproject I've been working on, WP:SOAPS, but haven't gotten a lot of feedback and am looking to find the definite answer. Thanks for your help. Kelly Marie 0812 (talk) 03:40, 20 October 2012 (UTC)
Thank you. I've gotten two responses there, of differing opinions, and am looking for clarification and the best place to ask this question that will receive a response. Thanks Kelly Marie 0812 (talk) 13:35, 21 October 2012 (UTC)
A-Class is a Wikiproject-based assessment; not all projects employ it. As an example, here's a link to the Military History Project's A-Class Review page. The review process is along the same lines as FAC. When a project official determines that consensus to promote an article has been reached, they'll upgrade the assessment on the article talk page. In some cases, sister projects have agreed that an A-Class assessment by one project counts as A-Class for others, for instance a military aircraft or ship article that passes a MilHist A-Class Review is assessed as A-Class for the Aviation and Ships wikiprojects. Hope this helps! Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 00:19, 30 December 2012 (UTC)
A smaller WikiProject may have a more informal system than Milhist, but we at WP1.0 recommend always represent some kind of project consensus. Walkerma (talk) 04:14, 30 December 2012 (UTC)
The start-class extended description says "the article should satisfy fundamental content policies, such as notability..."
WP:Notability is neither a content page nor a policy; it's an inclusion guideline. All pages are supposed to comply with this guideline, even stubs. If you encounter one that doesn't, you're supposed to go directly to WP:DEL, and no rating is necessary. I think that it would be better to simply remove this erroneous reference to notability as a content policy. What do you think? WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:46, 23 May 2013 (UTC)
The subject of an article can have 'easily verifiable' notability (via Google, for example) without the article actually 'evidencing' notability....i.e. being too 'stubby' to have adequate references for it's 'claims of notability. In that case it shouldn't be deleted, it should be a stub (as it fails this particular start-class criteria). Many of the 'missing encyclopedia articles' biographies are like this, because they just have 'attributions' instead of 'references'. One of these articles can be several thousand words long and still be a stub.
Part of the reason this isn't 'silly' is that the Dictionary of National Biography, for instance, has over 24,000 entries for 'presumably' notable people. :) Revent (talk) 08:49, 2 June 2013 (UTC)
To be particularly clear, these old encyclopedias aren't really 'reliable sources' in the normal sense...they are full of errors and have to be checked against each other, and the 'wikisource' versions introduce even more potential errors. In particular, there is at least one 'personal' in the 'old' DNB that is described in the 'newer' ODNB as 'fictional'. Most are 'highly' notable, it's just that the work hasn't been done yet. (shrugs) Anyhow, point is the 'caveat' is useful. Revent (talk) 09:09, 2 June 2013 (UTC)
Draft-Class
I'm looking at implementing a Draft-Class for some WikiProjects' banners to allow them to track draft articles in the new Draft: namespace. Any thoughts on creating an icon and setting a color assignment for this? Imzadi 1979→21:12, 28 December 2013 (UTC)
Does anyone know if there's a lag between tagging an article C-Class and it showing up in the Article List Tool. I've tagged a few articles today and while they disappear from the Start class list right away they're not simultaneously showing up as C-Class. Dontreadalone (talk) 18:38, 5 February 2014 (UTC)
A graph showing the development of the quality and importance assessment over time would be a nice addition to the progress bar which only shows the current status. Unlike wiki articles the assessment table does not offer a 'view history' option and this could address that shortcoming.--Wolbo (talk) 09:53, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
Rating system coherence
The rating system seems very odd to me. It's like 3 rating systems smooshed together: Stub->Start, C->B->A and GA->FA. And to combine they aren't even appended, instead A pops out of sequence to nestle between GA and FA. That destroys both the C->B->A progression and the GA->FA one. And then GA and FA require reviews but A doesn't. Isn't that like saying you need to have a drug test to win a bronze or gold, but anyone can win the silver we don't care? I just don't get that at all. Do people think it makes sense like it is, or did it just accrete this way and so people accept it? Silas Ropac (talk) 05:09, 21 March 2013 (UTC)
As far as I can tell A-class definitely does not require a review, not at the WP level, only GA and FA require a review. A-class assessment procedure is decided per project. Clearly the Military History Project requires a review, but how about the other hundreds of projects? If they really all do, then we should say "GA and above require a review" or "GA, A, and FA require a review" and that oddness would be resolved. But review or not, imagine if you were in school and they said your grades will be Nothing Something C B Good A and Great in that order, wouldn't you ask what they were smoking? Silas Ropac (talk) 15:37, 21 March 2013 (UTC)
Let me quote what WP:ACLASS actually states: "Assessing an article as A-Class requires more than one reviewer." We then have two situations. One states "To be granted, the proposal should supported by two uninvolved editors, with no significant opposes. The review should also be noted on the project's discussion page." The other states "A more formal review may be useful for some WikiProjects". Both require some form of review, and it should be by more than one person, although the procedure differs. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:54, 21 March 2013 (UTC)
That's good if a review is required for A-class, thanks for pointing that out. However that review is a pale shadow of the GA and FA reviews, there is no submission process or queue or anything, it just says you need 2 editors to support the assessment. So the asymmetry remains. Also this "review is required" fact is hidden behind this quote which appears widely, it says "In general, anyone can add or change an article's rating. However, the "GA" and "FA" labels should only be used on articles that have been reviewed and are currently designated as good articles or featured articles, respectively." That strongly implies anyone can set an "A" rating. So maybe that is more a doc issue.
Also many projects don't even use "A" which is an even bigger lack of consistency than having different review styles. And regardless of the review issue, the overall quirkyness of the scale remains, for example why 3 difference styles of naming (Stub->Start, C->B->A, and GA->FA)? To an outsider it seems like bond ratings, a jumble. Once you get used to it I guess it's fine, anything is learnable. To close with something the positive, the Importance Scheme makes perfect sense: clean, logical, consistent, I approve. Let's just not add a new importantance between Top and High called "Really Important" that would mess it up. Silas Ropac (talk) 19:20, 21 March 2013 (UTC)
Sort of an aside, but stemming from the proposal over that VPP to restrict usage of the A classification, I was thinking that it might be time to redefine the relationship between GA/FA and A class. I had two ideas: GA and FA should be subdivisions of A, or A should be repurposed as a "super-FA". I mean, I get that the current rarity of A-class articles is something like why the triple is so rare in baseball; it's almost like you have to aim for A-class and deliberately avoid getting the article to FA/FL. My other thought is that perhaps GA/FA should lie outside the article ranking system entirely; that projects should care about ABCStartStub, and GAFAFL should just be badges for the article and those who participated in getting it to that state (sort of like DYK and TFA). —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 17:46, 2 March 2014 (UTC)
FA is the top of the scale in all practical terms, so trying to put A-Class ahead of it won't work. At times, I've wondered if we shouldn't switch to a letter grade-based system, where A was the top, and so therefore Featured Articles are A-Class, whatever level would be considered between GAs and FAs (there there is clearly a gap there to be filled) would be a B-Class, Good Articles would be C-Class, with steps on down to F- or G-Class for what is Stub-Class article now. (We'd have to go to G to maintain the current 7 steps on the scale.) Imzadi 1979→18:42, 2 March 2014 (UTC)
I recently had someone change the grading from B to C on an article I wrote, with an edit summary saying that it had not been checked against the B criteria. My understanding was that anyone can assign any grade from stub to B without any kind of written assessment, so long as the article meets the criteria. I did in fact check the article against the criteria; I just didn't say so on the talk page. Has the practice changed? The article in question is Out of This World Adventures; the editor who changed the grade to C was Fortdj33; I'll leave a note on their talk page about this discussion. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:30, 9 October 2014 (UTC)
Fixed now, thanks WOS. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:24, 18 January 2010 (UTC)
Removed — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:30, 18 January 2010 (UTC)
could be updated to match their class colours (and fix the positioning of the symbols, which should be angled slightly), and new icons could be created for Category-, Current-, File-, Future-, Needed-, Portal- and Project- classes and the various importance levels. I'd do it myself, although I haven't the know-how. I'd love to see someone do this though, as this would essentially "complete the set" and give us some less ugly icons for the Classicon template. --Dorsal Axe 16:48, 3 December 2010 (UTC)
Relevant discussion at
Moved from User talk:Zangar § Cornwall barnstar