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Introduction

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The purpose of this discussion page is to manage the Level 1 list of 10 topics for which Wikipedia should have high-quality articles (e.g. at WP:FA and WP:GA status). Since changes to this list affect lower-level lists, discussions regarding its composition are best initiated at Wikipedia talk:Vital articles.

All Level 1 nominations must be of an article already listed at level 2.

All proposals must remain open for !voting for a minimum of 15 days, after which:

  1. After 15 days it may be closed as PASSED if there are (a) 5 or more supports, AND (b) at least two-thirds are in support.
  2. After 30 days it may be closed as FAILED if there are (a) 3 or more opposes, AND (b) it failed to earn two-thirds support.
  3. After 30 days it may be closed as NO CONSENSUS if the proposal hasn't received any !votes for +30 days, regardless of tally.
  4. After 60 days it may be closed as NO CONSENSUS if the proposal has (a) less than 5 supports, AND (b) less than two-thirds support.

Nominations should be left open beyond the minimum if they have a reasonable chance of passing. An informed discussion with more editor participation produces an improved and more stable final list, so be patient with the process.

For reference, the following times apply for today:

  • 15 days ago was: 13:27, 6 November 2024 (UTC) (Purge)
  • 30 days ago was: 13:27, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
  • 60 days ago was: 13:27, 22 September 2024 (UTC)

Remove The arts, replace with Art

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It is out of place. The arts is not equivalent to science, Art is. The equivalent of The arts is branches of science.

Compare the articles. The key aspect is that science and art are primarily discussing the field, while branches of science and The arts are listing types. List of sciences redirects to branches of science (in the outline article). List of arts redirects to The arts.

While the article for Art is weighted towards visual arts, this is a failure of the article giving WP:UNDUE weight, rather than something inherent to what the article should or could be. This is made clear by visual being a qualifier of art.

I chose to compare Art with Science because The arts is so clearly equivalent to branches of science. But comparing the article for Art with Philosophy, Mathematics or Technology, it is clear that The arts is the odd one out. It is not general, it is primarily a list of constituents. A lvl1 Vital Article should be general.

Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 01:53, 31 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Support
Support [nominator]
  1. Support --Thi (talk) 12:37, 31 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  2. I think AirshipJingleman29's comprehension skills were subpar, everything that the nominator said makes total sense, no need to lash out and be passive-agressive. The Blue Rider 00:32, 1 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Support. I skimmed both the art and the arts articles. Along with the op’s arguments for “art” being closer to the precedent set by other articles on the list, I think it also makes more sense for the art article to be prioritized—it asks what are in my view deeper and more important questions about the nature of art and how beauty relates to humanity than “the arts” article. As for the opposition, I skimmed the top of “contents/culture and the arts” and I’m unconvinced by its arguments (e.g. if says the arts is more encompassing as a word for all creative mediums because “art” is often used to describe primarily visual art. Sure, but that’s arguably because the proportion of visual art in culture is larger than that of purely audio art? Like I don’t see how this makes art a *less fundamental* notion than “the arts,” which seems to be the key question). Sorry for typos in advance. On phone. Cerine_Way (talk) 03:18, 4 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Support Art seems to be the broader article, focusing on the question of "What is art?", whereas the other article is more "What is included in art?" and compare the interwikis for the two, 208 for 'Art' vs 54 for 'The arts'. Kevinishere15 (talk) 23:01, 1 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose
  1. Oppose this proposal makes zero sense. "The arts is not equivalent to science" no shit Sherlock. "The equivalent of The arts is branches of science." what does this even mean? "A lvl1 Vital Article should be general" and so you want to replace an extremely general article with an article on a subtopic?? ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 23:05, 31 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Philosophy, Mathematics, Science and Art are all a general outline of the subject, rather than primarily a list of subtopics. Art is not a subtopic of The arts. Every type of art mentioned in The arts is also mentioned in Art. The arts is just a list article for Art. Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 23:30, 31 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    "Theatre, dance, and other performing arts, as well as literature, music, film and other media such as interactive media, are included in a broader definition of the arts" — the fourth sentence of Art. Next time, I would advise reading the articles before making sweeping conclusions about their scope. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 23:54, 31 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    You quote it here. The arts is a definition of art. The arts are forms that art takes. Seeing this, how could art be a subtopic of The arts?
    Your quote is also taken out of context. It's not comparing The arts with Art. It's comparing The arts with the three classical branches of visual art. If what you were saying was true, Art would not discuss forms such as performance art as it would be beyond its scope. Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 01:45, 1 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • "You quote it here. The arts is a definition of art." No.
    • "The arts are forms that art takes." No.
    • "If what you were saying was true, Art would not discuss forms such as performance art as it would be beyond its scope." Yes, and I think you'll find that's the case.
    I doubt you will read it, but anyone else might be interested in Wikipedia:Contents/Culture and the arts and Classificatory disputes about art. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 11:32, 1 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Thanks for dropping the link to Wikipedia:Contents/Culture and the arts. This is the place to discuss before changing anything here, I'm moving to oppose.
    For other editors reading, I'll let the full quote AirshipJungleman29 drew from speak for itself:
    "There is no generally agreed definition of what constitutes art, and its interpretation has varied greatly throughout history and across cultures. In the Western tradition, the three classical branches of visual art are painting, sculpture, and architecture. Theatre, dance, and other performing arts, as well as literature, music, film and other media such as interactive media, are included in a broader definition of the arts."
    Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 12:08, 1 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Oppose --Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 12:08, 1 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Oppose per Wikipedia:Contents/Culture and the arts. starship.paint (RUN) 13:31, 5 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Oppose per above. --ZZZ'S 00:38, 1 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  5. Oppose per above.GeogSage (⚔Chat?⚔) 19:31, 10 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  6. Oppose Idiosincrático (talk) 19:56, 9 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]


Neutral
Discussion
  • The nominator's rationale is fundamentally flawed, as they are viewing the current, poorly written article on "the arts" as a starting point for their justifications. In reality, that article is a huge mess, and a better-expanded version would be a more general, clearly broad scope, which would suggest against a swap of this kind. – Aza24 (talk) 22:26, 28 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Aza24 Thanks, I don't think I disagree, although I do think a "List of the arts/Types of art" article would be good to have. I haven't brought this to Wikipedia:Contents/Culture and the arts yet. What do you think of the second point, that "the arts" being a definition of art makes it a subtopic? Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 11:23, 29 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It's still not clear what the distinction between the "art" and "the arts" articles are. At the moment, "Art" claims to be about solely visual arts, but continues to freely use musical examples, and define art as a universal craft. "The arts" only defines itself as musical, literary and visual arts and also discusses them all.
As I tried to work on a draft last year, see User:Aza24/The arts, it became clear that sources do not value the two as meaningfully different, and the distinction is weak and largely unhelpful; the articles should probably be merged. Aza24 (talk) 17:53, 29 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That tracks with my understanding. If we were to commit to the claim that "Art" refers purely to visual arts, then visual art and art should be merged. Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 18:02, 29 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Swap Human history with Geography

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In Level 1, we have Human listed, so I don't think including Human history is necessary. I believe swapping Human history with Geography makes sense given the importance of geography in organizing subsequent sections, and the broadness of the discipline. Geography is a major discipline alongside Mathematics, Philosophy, and is a way we organize spatial information relevant to not just humans, but the natural environment as a whole. While Human History is an important article, I believe it is the least among those in level 1 now, and is the most redundant. Therefore, I believe it could be moved to level 2 to make room for Geography.

Support
  1. As Nom.GeogSage (⚔Chat?⚔) 20:36, 29 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose
  1. The history of the world is certainly one of the ten most vital topics, and I would not consider it any more redundant to humanity than Technology  1 would be. QuicoleJR (talk) 20:19, 31 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Human history is not the history of the world. The world doesn't really have a "history", as history is specific to humans. Anything that predates our writing system is pre-history, as history relies on written records and documentation. Trying to piece together an idea of prehistory is a major area of study, but it is still limited to only humans, not really the world at large. GeogSage (⚔Chat?⚔) 21:24, 31 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Still, the history of humanity and the modern world is certainly more important than geography. QuicoleJR (talk) 13:34, 1 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Disagree. All of the history of humanity happened on the planet and did not occur in a vacuum. Geography has more coverage then history as it covers more topics is broader scope. Geography is essential to other Wikipedia articles in that we organize a massive number of them by Geography as a high level category for things outside of just humans and our history. Humans are one species on the planet. We can use geography to map history by placing events on a map, and geographers do use the same methods as historians all the time. GeogSage (⚔Chat?⚔) 16:47, 1 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Strong oppose removing human history, If we absolutely had to swap something for geography, it would be Earth, but I oppose that too. Kevinishere15 (talk) 23:25, 1 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Oppose per discussion below. Phlsph7 (talk) 09:00, 2 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Idiosincrático (talk) 19:59, 9 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Neutral
Discuss

Geography is the study and recording of Earth, we already list Earth. Loosely, especially in the higher levels there has been an attempt to list the article about the thing being studied itself not the article about the study of the thing, eg life is higher than biology, Earth is higher than geography. But it is not always the case, science is higher than universe, if those are a fair comparison. Many of the vital 10 articles are pretty much human-centric. Technology, Society, Philosophy, the arts and science are almost universally from a human POV, they could touch briefly on chimpanzee tool use or making art, or how meerkats have a society, but those are small parts in what are primarily articles about human art, human technology etc. The only difference I feel is this article is named "Human history" and arts are not named human arts. Human history is so named I would imagine to differentiate it from prehuman hominin history, or prehistory, history of life on Earth before human history, history of the Earth, Galaxy and Universe before humans, perhaps before life on Earth. A discussion could be had about what is better between human history or just history. In the past I believe we listed History, but changed it for History of the world, probably because one is the article about the study, and one is the article about what is being studied, which is what people care about, history of the world perhaps renamed or swapped for human history. But in short I think geography is covered by Earth, human history is no more obsolete from human compared to arts, technology, philosophy, society, and possibly science, only real reason is one has human in the title and the others don't.  Carlwev  08:46, 30 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

While geography is generally focused on the Earth, the techniques are applied to other celestial bodies as well. While we may use areography to discuss the "geography of Mars," it is much more common for people to use geography instead. Geography is generally how we will handle spatial information. Regardless, the argument you make about the Earth applies to human and human history as well, and we could probably stand to drop human history for something else, as "human history" is literally a subsection on the human page. Geography is a bit broader then history is to humans, and the article on the Earth is extensive enough to cover our studies of it in the same way that technology is not extensive enough to cover art. GeogSage (⚔Chat?⚔) 14:46, 30 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I understand your reasoning. What is it about the article Human History you do not like? You mention that human history is a subsection of the human article. Looking at the human article, out of the remaining 9 level 1 vital articles after human, 6 out of the 9 or two thirds are subsections of the human article. Arts, Human History, Philosophy, Science, Society and Technology are all subsections in the Human article, only Earth, Life and Maths are not. The article on human has an exceptionally wide scope, being as it's everything that we are, and where we came from and what we do and have done. Part of the reason why myself and others in this group pushed to get it added years ago. Why pick out Human History to remove when Philosophy, Science, Society and Technology are all subsections in the Human article as well?  Carlwev  09:23, 31 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think from a direct comparison between Human history and Geography, Human history is the more important one. For example, Human history may be as important as Science, another level 1 article. However is Geography, as one of the sciences, as important as Science? Is it more important than the level 2 article Physics?
It is correct that there are some overlaps between the level 1 articles Human and Human history. But Human overlaps with various other level 1 articles as well. Human history could also be called "World history" or just "History" if we didn't have to differentiate these topics in different articles. Additionally, there are also significant overlaps between Geography and Earth, another level 1 article. Considering the arguments based on importance and overlaps with other level 1 articles, I agree with Carlwev that the case for the swap so far is not particularly convincing. Phlsph7 (talk) 10:09, 31 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Carlwev, this is of course a matter of perspective and importance. Humans are writing Wikipedia, so humans will think our history is the most important. I view the Earth as more important then human on the list, and therefore value geography which studies the Earth and the things on it wholistically. Human History is as important to me as Human geography, one looking at our species temporally and the other spatially. Geography itself is an odd, old, discipline in that it combines both quantitative and qualitative mythology. It alludes easy classification and categorization because it is itself a high level category with a lot of overlap with other disciplines. Geographers can employ the scientific method and statistics, or rely on the Historical method (we are specifically looking for place names and coordinates in this case, more then dates), and the other methods of social science. When it comes to measuring and mapping the world, geography is often viewed as an applied case of pure mathematics, at least in the Geographia Generalis that set the context for what we view as "modern" geography. If an alien were to show up today, philosophy, science, society, and technology could all feasibly be expanded to incorporate them and their tools. Technology isn't limited to humans as it is, as other species make and use tools. The methods of geography can be applied to other rocky planets, just like the prefix in front of "geology" doesn't limit our use of the word to describe Geology of Mars, the "geo" at the start of geography is a hold over from when we only had one planet to study. If we wanted to map and understand the alien plant, we would use geography. If we want to focus on the temporal instead of the spatial, we could swap human history for Chronology, the study of time and placing events in sequence, and more important then human history in my opinion. While history is in its most pure interpretation limited to only humans, and using the historical method to interpret the written record, chronology would be only constrained by the Big Bang. The fact chronology is a level 4 article is a bit disappointing.
@Phlsph7 Geography as a whole looks at more then just humans, and can be applied to more then just the Earth. Human history and human geography are equivalent. GeogSage (⚔Chat?⚔) 21:18, 31 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think you are overestimating the importance of geography. There are many sciences and geography is just one of them. It's probably less important than physics, chemistry, and biology, all of which are level 2 vital articles.
Geography is primarily interested in the earth, but I agree with you that the scope of its concepts is not limited to the earth. My point was about overlap, not about a limitation of scope. Also: human history and human geography are not the same. Phlsph7 (talk) 08:59, 2 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That's an interesting opinion, I do disagree with it though. I think we over estimate the importance of history. Geography isn't a pure science, it predates the formalization of the scientific method and has a focus on description and creation of regions. It is not fully encapsulated by science, and uses other qualitative methods including analysis of historical writing, like historians. Fundamentally, historians place events on timelines, geographers on maps. In Historical geography we approach the timeline from a spatial perspective first, and in the tradition of Carl O. Sauer, believe we can only understand the landscape and historical events by understanding the physical, cultural, economic, political, environmental phenomena where they happened. Historical geography is generally considered a sub-branch of human geography. I didn't say they were the same, just the same level of "importance." Regardless, human history and human are highly redundant, if not geography I suggest something replace it, possibly chronology if you wanted to really get general and focus on time. GeogSage (⚔Chat?⚔) 06:01, 4 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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