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Archive 1Archive 2Archive 3Archive 4Archive 5

Overhaul

I'm currently in the middle of a major revamping of this project--Phoenix 15 (Talk) 21:06, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Greetings

Welcome to the History WikiProject.

This is where Wikipedians interested in history come together to coordinate their efforts to maintain and improve historical subject matter on Wikipedia.

History is one of Wikipedia's dozen core subjects, and therefore it is prominently placed in the encyclopedia's navigation system. History's portal is listed at the top of the Main page, and also appears in the navigation bar displayed at the top of all portals:

Portal topics
Activities
Culture
Geography
Health
History
Mathematics
Nature
People
Philosophy
Religion
Society
Technology
Random portal

History is also one of the subheadings of all of Wikipedia's subject-based tables of contents which in turn are listed on Wikipedia's main navigation bar:

History has exceptional coverage on Wikipedia, but it has fallen behind other major subjects in certain respects. For instance, there is no History index, and the link to it is just a redirect. See the indices for Mathematics and Psychology as examples.

History also lacks a glossary: Glossary of history terms. For comparisons, see Architectural glossary and Glossary of philosophical isms.

The key pages and subsections for navigating the subject of history on Wikipedia are:

Lists of basic topics#History and events
List of basic history topics
Lists of topics#History and events
List of history topics (this index page is currently redirected to the basic list)
List of academic disciplines#History
List of glossaries#History and events
Glossary of history terms (as of 2007/10/18 hadn't been created yet)
List of overviews#Overview of history and events
History
Portal:History
Wikipedia:Categorical index#History and events
Category:History

The above navigation system for history needs to be maintained and developed as the subject itself progresses. Each time you create a new article, please check the above sections and pages to see if it should be placed on any of them. Watchdogs are also needed, to add the above pages to their watchlists, inorder to monitor them for vandalism and mistakes, and to asure that they remain consistent with the page sets they belong to. The above pages and sections are incomplete (or non-existent). Please help complete them.

Good luck, and have fun.

The Transhumanist    03:53, 19 October 2007 (UTC) Phoenix 15 (Talk) 17:03, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Phoenix-wiki (talk · contribs)

Accolades to Phoenix-wiki for starting this project back up. Woohoo! I can't wait to see what's next... The Transhumanist    04:01, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Er...Gee, thanks--Phoenix 15 (Talk) 19:17, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Image

Considering the image of the open watch is already used by Wikipedia:WikiProject intelligent design, I'm wondering if it might not be a good idea to replace it, perhaps with something not already being used by someone else, to avoid any potential confusion. Maybe one of the images in the time category at wikimedia commons? John Carter 16:57, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Hmm...Maybe it should be replaced...I'll look around for a suitable replacement--Phoenix 15 (Talk) 18:48, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
Image:LindisfarneFol27rIncipitMatt.jpg and Image:Noia 64 apps kworldclock.png seem good but I still prefer the current image--Phoenix 15 (Talk) 19:32, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Further work for the probably already weary

It would really help if someone could adjust the project banner to take into account the various taskforces. I could set up all the categories and whatnot thereafter, but working the banners for task forces is something I've already found is a bit beyond my ability. John Carter 18:51, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

I'll ask Kirill Lokshin to do it, I javen't got a clue how to work those things--Phoenix 15 (Talk) 19:09, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

A-Class review

I've set up an A-Class review system. See Wikipedia:WikiProject History/Review--Phoenix 15 (Talk) 11:54, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

More specialised task forces

The task forced I created when I restarted this project are sorta...not specialised enough. If anyone wishes to create a task force for their particlular country they can request it here. I'd also like to have a task force to work in conjuction with other wikiprojects who don't do much history work. We should start with WikiProject Biography. I'm going to try and absorb some of the smaller history projects and turn them into task forces also.--Phoenix 15 (Talk) 13:46, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

I've absorbed WikiProject European history into our European task force--Phoenix 15 (Talk) 14:08, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

Task force images

We need to have an image to act as a logo for each task force. I've done some research and listed some images at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject History/Task force images. The shortlist are the ones I like best. I'd lik to know some mor opinions before I add them to the Project template--Phoenix 15 (Talk) 14:57, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

Why wasn't this a merger

Why wasn't Wikipedia:WikiProject European history merged to Wikipedia:WikiProject History/Task forces/Europe (or better yet, renamed to it) rather than leaving it out there as historical? Suggest an admin be enlisted to merge the pages while keeping the history.--Doug.(talk • contribs) 17:37, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

Well, I was busy doing something else but I intend to put a large part of the project into the new task force rather than a full merge. If you think so I'll get it merged then--Phoenix 15 (Talk) 17:44, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

I was a little surprised to find the other page was deprecated (historicalized) without any discussion. The only way I knew it happened was that I was watching the page and saw the {{historical}} tag posted. Actually I don't think it should be deprecated at all. It may need work, and it may need to come under this Project in the same way that say Project Mammals comes under Project Tree of Life and doesn't design its own templates etc. but I don't think it really should be a task force. I had intended to join the "old" project and I notice there have been several other new members in the past several months. I think this should be more fully discussed at the Wikipedia:WikiProject European history before anything further is done and I think the deprecation tags should be removed until consensus is established. Not to say the idea isn't good in principle but HOW to do it definitely needs to be talked about first.--Doug.(talk • contribs) 17:51, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

I have removed the deprecation tags at Wikipedia:WikiProject European history pending discussion and consensus. One big problem I have is that this move would potentially result in a task force with sub task forces or even sub projects - like if a specific country or region wants a history project or task force. There are already Military history projects for discrete countries and regions and there are projects for a few countries, albeit the European ones seem to be inactive. I think a lot of this is because the country specific work is being done within the geographic projects - the very way it has been coordinated on some of the military history task forces. I haven't looked at the other task forces created here, but I expect I might have similar concerns there. Taking a quick look, do you propose to make Wikipedia:WikiProject Australian history come under Wikipedia:WikiProject History/Task forces/Australia and Oceania? I just don't get the lack of discussion of this whole concept.--Doug.(talk • contribs) 21:24, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

The discussion of merger was split on the merge tags and since this talk page isn't specific to the task force for which merger is proposed with, I coordinated the two tags to link to Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject European history#Merger.--Doug.(talk • contribs) 20:59, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

military taskforce?

Can we create a military taskforce?? ForeverDEAD 19:37, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

You mean something like this, maybe? ;-) Kirill 19:50, 21 October 2007 (UTC)
lol im already a member but i just sujested one for this project becuase all the current task forces are quite vague ForeverDEAD 20:24, 21 October 2007 (UTC)
Well, they're just starting out; presumably the breakdown will become clearer in a little while. (But trying to create task forces that replicate existing active projects generally isn't a good idea.) Kirill 20:36, 21 October 2007 (UTC)
Well, most history is military history so the task force would massive. I think a seperate project is the best way to leave it--Phoenix 15 (Talk) 17:47, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Rather than simply making the current continental task forces, maybe it would be better to ask whether any of the other extant history projects to merge with this one. The projects that immediately come to mind are

One might also try asking the parent projects of these groups whether they would consider turning these subprojects into "joint" task forces

Tha sounds like a good idea. I've asked some of them alredy--Phoenix 15 (Talk) 17:24, 24 October 2007 (UTC)
Oh, I don't know about history of Science though, that's huge and deserves its own project--Phoenix 15 (Talk) 17:29, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

List of history topics

I've started List of history topics. It'll be hard work getting it finished but all contributers are welcome--Phoenix 15 (Talk) 17:22, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Project scope

This project has potentially a scope of over a million articles and growing, and that could be problematic. I think what the project probably needs is a clear indication of exactly what is and is not in its scope. On that basis, I would propose some discussion of the matter take place. My opening thoughts:

  • Almost by definition, every biographical article and article about specific locations could qualify as history. However, actively placing the banner on these articles would be problematic. I would propose we deal only with those biographies and locations which are historical beyond simply the fact of being related in some way to history, such as historians and history museums.
  • Categorization could be problematic here. I personally think that this project would best deal with the basic subject of history itself, including such articles as historiography, historian, and other such topics that clearly and explicitly relate to the subject of history as an independent human endeavor. All that content could be reasonably dealt with by such a project as this. Beyond that, I would think that only those articles which describe the history of a given place, nation, or whatever should be included. Thus the article New York City would not be within the scope of this project, although History of New York City and its various subarticles would be. It is possible that various non-military historical events could be included, although I would limit these to only those which would reasonably covered at length in a history book. So, European colonization of the Americas and Velvet Revolution would probably qualify, although American Revolution and French Revolution, both of which fall within the scope of WikiProject Military history, would not. If this project basically dealt with only this type of content, it would still have more than content to justify its existence. Also, I personally think that having some group of people who might be working to standardize the format of such articles would be useful.
  • Anyway, just a few ideas. John Carter 13:21, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
It might actually be best to tag all MilHist articles as ours also. We don't have to actively improve them or devote task forces to them. I agree that articles with a history section, such as New york, should not be within our scope. I'll add an extra section to our project page. Feel free to add to or modify it--Phoenix 15 (Talk) 12:19, 27 October 2007 (UTC)
I personally think that tagging the military history articles would be an inherently bad idea. There is a very serious question regarding overtagging here. Many articles have already received complaints that they have too many tags on them already. Also, last I checked, they have 44000 articles tagged. They are a very active, stable, project, and there is no good reason to think that they will ever become inactive. If they were to get the impression that this project were, as it were, trying to make a "claim on their turf" it could start a potentially counterproductive conflict between the two projects. The fact that this project has as few members as it has, while it has over 700 active members, makes it real unlikely that we'd emerge on top in such a conflict. The real purpose of any tagging is really to indicate that this project is willing and able to improve those articles. And, yes, according to basic guidelines, we are really supposed to tag only those articles which we can actively improve. That's one of the reasons why so many "parent" projects have decided that articles which fall within the scope of what might be considered their "child" projects will be left to them as long as they remain active. And, as stated before, there is no real reason to think that project will ever become inactive, given its remarkably effective organization and structure. John Carter 14:52, 27 October 2007 (UTC)
Also, looking at our assessment results, it looks like the articles that have been tagged for MilitaryHistory are already included in our assessment results, making adding our own banner to those articles redundant. John Carter 17:06, 27 October 2007 (UTC)
No, what I meant was that military history article ar within our scope. That doesn't mean we have to assess them. I would also be strongly against that--Phoenix (Talk) 17:15, 27 October 2007 (UTC)
Well, the Category:Military history is within the Category:History, so it already technically is. We might want to look into creating some sort of category for "local history" or something similar to place all the separate "History of Foo" articles, though, just to make it easier to keep up with them. John Carter 17:20, 27 October 2007 (UTC)
Sounds good. Should we make the local history or whatever category go with the banner or should it be added seperatly?--Phoenix-wiki (talk · contribs) 18:47, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Mothball current task forces?

These task forces are causing a lot of trouble. I suggest we get rid of them untill this project grows much larger. I don't think task forces by continent are a good idea. We would have to split them into smaller, national task forces later on anyway.--Phoenix-wiki (talk · contribs) 18:19, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

I don't think that there's any pressing need to negate the work that's already been done. All that we really would need to do is just make sure that we don't overtag articles and the project should be fine. And I think there is good reason to create a project which the various inactive history projects like Wikipedia:WikiProject History of Poland and Wikipedia:WikiProject History of Scandinavia could be merged into. Personally, what I'd say right now is that maybe the best thing to do would be to propose the merger of those two, see if they meet with approval, and maybe alter the banner accordingly. I do think that it makes sense to have groups based on larger than national entities in any event, given that much of history deals with events which cross existing borders, and that having some sort of group to try to standardize and improve history articles specifically is a good idea. But none of that is necessarily cause to not implement the work which has already been done. John Carter 18:32, 27 October 2007 (UTC)
Okay, so what you're saying is that we should keep the continental task forces and add national task forces as well. That sounds okay--Phoenix-wiki (talk · contribs) 18:45, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedian historians

I don't get it- aren't you supposed to write on the Talk page why you REMOVE something first? Is there a specific reason why someone should be AGAINST bringing historians into a category? If it is the wrong place, at least it should be on the Portal page somewhere. It took me 5 minutes just to find out there was a category and what it was called- and it is sparse. We should be welcoming a community in every way, and by not promoting it in the portal is a big mistake. Historians who may not have the time to join the Wikiproject History will still be identified somehow. Monsieurdl 18:23, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Um, I'm not really sure what you're talking about here. Maybe you could be a bit more precise about what your complaint is? John Carter 18:27, 27 October 2007 (UTC)
See the page Portal:History/intro and the history there. I added a sentence asking all historians- i.e. those who love reading/writing history and who appreciate well-written, referenced works to join the Wikipedian historians category. If it is in the wrong place on the page, fine- but not to include it somewhere makes no sense. Monsieurdl 18:31, 27 October 2007 (UTC)
OK, that's a different matter. One of the things which is required for a portal to ever have the chance of reaching Featured Portal status is that the text of the introduction section would have to match the text of the extant "base" article, generally the introduction of that article. I do think that we might be at least trying to get the History Portal up to FP status. I've found that out elsewhere. What you're talking about would probably fit better into the Portal:History/Things you can do subpage. Sorry that the editor doing that didn't make his reasons clear when he reverted the addition, but we all make mistakes like that sometimes. John Carter 18:37, 27 October 2007 (UTC)
What I meant was for you to add the category here. It shouldn't be added to the Portal because
  1. No such text is on any other major portal, or minor one for that matter.
  2. The purpose of a portal is to serve as a main page for specific topics not placess for adding userboxes and advertisements to join user categories, which many would see as clubs.
  3. It ruins the proffessional look of the portal
  4. Readers of Wikipedia wish to find out more on a specific topic. They do not wish to see large notices telling them to add themselves to various categories
  5. There is no point adding the notice there as we would prefer contributers, rather than readers, to join that category
If you still wish to have some kind of notice I would recommend adding it to this project's page, where editors are likely to find it but readers aren't. Of course, dding it to the things you can do section may work--Phoenix-wiki (talk · contribs) 18:41, 27 October 2007 (UTC)
Now that makes sense, and I would have completely understood if it had been explained. It has been frustrating trying to find third-party comments on articles, others to consult on references, etc. By promoting the category, I thought it would be much easier for consultation. Thank you so much for the clarification guys. Monsieurdl 18:44, 27 October 2007 (UTC)
Also, I'd like to apologise for being snappy--Phoenix-wiki (talk · contribs) 18:48, 27 October 2007 (UTC)
We're going to at least try to make the project a bit more active from this point on. I hope that at least shortly we'll have more people observing this page, so that you could probably leave any such comments and requests here. We may not be necessarily the best people to contact regarding any specific subjects, but I think most of those who do (I hope) wind up watching this page will have at least some familiarity with some of the topics and be able to help at least a little. John Carter 18:52, 27 October 2007 (UTC)
All's well that ends well, I say. As long as we can talk it all out, that's what matters. Veni, vidi, cessi. Monsieurdl 18:58, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

New coordinator

Wandalstouring (talk · contribs) has volunteered to help me get this project back on track. He will probably remain a coordiator untill this project gets enough members to have some sort of election, when he can put his name forward for re-election--Phoenix-wiki (talk · contribs) 13:34, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

remodelling the collaboration

I suggest to remodel the collaboration with the aim not to improve single articles, but to get small, but sourced, stubs for as many articles as possible. There will be project awards for creating a quantity of articles that contain a small sourced nucleus about the topic. Wandalstouring 14:25, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Sounds good--Phoenix-wiki (talk · contribs) 14:51, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
Presumably, we'd be looking at something like the articles on the Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles lists? John Carter 13:50, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
I've done something to it. One can request help with article improvements now--Phoenix-wiki (talk · contribs) 15:41, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

reorganize task forces

I suggest to mothball the current task forces and to create appropriate forces if required. We may use a geography based system to keep an overview about voluntary task forces, however, we need members. Wandalstouring 14:36, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Might work. A few questions, though. I personally think the regional work groups would probably be most useful, as they would let individuals be able to concentrate on parts of the world they're interested in. Also, I think that tagging them for the task forces might be the best way to get interested editors to work on the most important articles relative to their field of specific regional interest, which most editors will have anyway. I can however see that it might be possible to just not use the existing specs in the banner until we've developed a bit further. Also, I note that we seem to have all of WP:MILHIST's articles already included in our assessment table. If you can find out any way to change that, so that only the articles we really deal with show up, that'd help a lot. And I think that right now probably the best way to draw in new members is by tagging articles, as that's the best way to let most editors know the project exists. Just a few thoughts, anyway. John Carter 15:59, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
It's not just MILHIST's that show up; every history project with a good template does :-O--Phoenix-wiki (talk · contribs) 16:45, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
I think that's almost all MILHIST actually. Our total numbers in the stats box is only about 200 articles higher than theirs. John Carter 17:07, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
I wouldn't mind military history showing up if we are the mother project like for European history. Wandalstouring 13:37, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
I wouldn't necessarily myself, provided we were recognized by eveyone else as their parent project. I'm not sure that's the case right now, however. John Carter 13:46, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
I've seen a few project's pages saying this is the parent project--Phoenix-wiki (talk · contribs) 14:23, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
So have I. Whether they actually they would agree to what they might think is a meddling parent's involvement in the articles they deal with is another matter entirely. John Carter 14:26, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
Well, we wouldn't have to involve ourselves in their articles because they're there. The reason we have links on our page is so we can help them...Well, I suppose that is meddling, but we wouldn't be helping as parts of our roject, but as members of theirs--Phoenix-wiki (talk · contribs) 14:47, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
If we had the knowledge to be able to help, yeah. But in at least the case of Military history, and a few editors there in particular, I think that probably all of us are less able to offer help to them than they are to us. And the purpose of the stats box is at least in part to help the editors in this particular project know which articles to work on. I do think that listing all 45000 or so articles that are already covered by MILHIST would at least potentially make it harder for us to concentrate on the articles we more directly deal with. And, considering that they do seem to work fairly well, I'm not sure that we would necessarily be able to help much anyway. Maybe changing the History sidebar to add it to the "related projects" section would be different, but the sheer numbers of articles added by doing so I think would probably make getting our members to collaborate on the articles that fall explicitly within our scope that much harder to collaborate on, and maybe even find. John Carter 15:54, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
Let me put it bluntly. We don't have enough personnel to man more than one task force in sufficient numbers. There is not much interest in small projects to merge with this project, so we don't get many new members. The existing projects happily cover their fields and whether we call them sheep or cow, task force or project, really doesn't change a thing. The parent approach initiated by the European history project is the most workable approach for now. If cooperation improves and sufficient need for more sophisticated structures arises there is still the posibility to merge and develop task forces or find different solution. Military history is part of history and has been listed as one of our branches, so it is only legit that we do include their material as well. If we do it by cotagging articles or simply cocounting their template should be the least problem we have to face. More interesting is what does this project actually do to improve wikipedia. Wandalstouring 16:48, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
No one disputes the "legitimacy" of cotagging. What is being questioned is whether any utility is achieved by doing so. To the best of my knowledge, that is an entirely separate discussion, and one which I have yet to notice any direct reply to. John Carter 17:14, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
The advantage of including thier stats in our template is that we don't have to co-tag--Phoenix-wiki (talk · contribs) 18:15, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
But why would we co-tag them in any event? I can't see how this project, with its currently small size, would have any reason to want to tag all the military history articles in the first place. And it's not like we're abandoning those articles or anything. Also, as stated before, including 45000 articles which this project has already more or less stated in its scope it won't directly deal with, at least as long as MILHIST is functional, makes it that much harder to find the comparatively smaller number of articles we have tagged. Basically, the only advantage I see to having them included is that it makes our numbers look bigger than they are. But the disadvantages of trying to find non-military history articles among that lot probably outweighs the minimal advantages of having them included. John Carter 18:27, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
They've been rmvd so let's just forget it--Phoenix-wiki (talk · contribs) 21:53, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
I approve of the move to a Parent/Child relationship with existing projects and I'm rejoining the project. I think the idea of task forces on the model of WP:MILHIST has merit but I also think that where existing projects are out there and dual parentage is obvious (such as geographical areas), the WP:TOL model may make more sense. Still, I have no objections to discussing closer relationships between this project and geographical area child projects should that be of interest in the future. Just so long as it evolves through discussion and consensus. In the mean time, I'm trying to reinvigorate some of the Euro history subprojects and work towards greater cooperation with the relevant geographical projects. Superparents like this can offer a lot in the way of organization, resources, guidelines (like the WP:TOL does with the {{taxobox}}), and publicity.--Doug.(talk • contribs) 05:11, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

Task force proposal

There is a proposal for a historiography task force being discussed at Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals#Historiography--Phoenix-wiki (talk · contribs) 14:45, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

Our ad was just created!! Thanks to Persian Poet Gal (talk · contribs)!!--Phoenix-wiki (talk · contribs) 22:55, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

Mothball Cooperation?

We don't really need that dept. now that we've got a "Parentage" section. Suggest deleting--Phoenix-wiki (talk · contribs) 22:02, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

OK Wandalstouring 11:37, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

Coordinator elections

I know it's a bit early but we need to start planning for these now. I'd let them last a week in early December (They should end at least 2 days before Christmas) and have those willing to be a coordinator should hand their noms in in the week beforehand. Any other suggstions? We could use this as a recruitment drive as well, due to the extra attention we'd get--Phoenix-wiki (talk · contribs) 22:11, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

I have one suggestion: try as best as you can to get at least one user from each of the subprojects to run for a spot as coordinator here as well; in this way, you can better integrate the subprojects into the parent one by having all projects represented here equally. In an ideal world, the lead coordinator(s) from the subprojects would serve as assistant coordinators here, but I am not sure that this would be a good idea since it would by-pass the election process altogather. Also, put togather a list of things the coordinators would be dealing with after the election; as a newly reactived project, I suspect you proabably have a lot of unique things that need to be done this time around that likely will not need to be done next time you have a coordinator election. TomStar81 (Talk) 06:38, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the advise--Phoenix-wiki (talk · contribs) 16:32, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
One question at this point is whether this project really needs a coordinator. We've got a total of 15 members, so there isn't that much need to have a separate coordinator. MILHIST has coordinators, yes, but with 470 members they need them. Personally, I'd ensure that the project go through and tag all the articles that we will directly deal with first, and then wait at least a month or so and see how big the project gets before we create coordinators. John Carter 16:40, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
I thinks its important to have member elexted coridantots first and formost. Once the project gets big we can hold reelections. Jack The Pumpkin King 16:43, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

Importance rating

We need to develop an importance rating. Something like this maybe:

  1. Top: History of nations, major wars, continents, capital cities, major companies/coorparations, notable people and other highly notable things
  2. High: History of other notable cities and towns, conflicts, people, large companies/coorparations and other notable things
  3. Mid: History of other not-so-notable cities, people and smaller companies
  4. Low Hitory of sports teams and others that don't fit above

Most of the rating would be just down to common sense rather than following guidelines though. If we can agree on some kind of system I can get it set up on the template--Phoenix-wiki (talk · contribs) 21:54, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

The standard variation would be "Top," "High", "Mid", and "Low". Saying "None" might really annoy anyone seeing that on the article talk page. Also, I've seen elsewhere that others are in the process of trying to set up some sort of "objective" importance rating, and I think the articles we deal with are probably going to include several of the ones that the new bot might try to rank. That should help determine the Top and High, or whatever, importance articles. John Carter 22:01, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
adjusted accordingly. The main question is do we all agree with it?--Phoenix-wiki (talk · contribs) 22:48, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
I can't see any real objections, considering that it's standard form. John Carter 22:54, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

{{ |small= |nested= |class=stub |importance=high |Attention= |A-Class= |peer-review= |old-peer-review= |B-Class-1=no |B-Class-2=no |B-Class-3=yes |B-Class-4=yes |B-Class-5=yes |B-Class-6=yes }}

I've put one together in my sandbox. It looks okay I think but someone needs to go through it to find out what's causing the "{{#ifeq:stub|NA||" to appear there out in the middle of nowhere--Phoenix-wiki (talk · contribs) 11:10, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
I'm thinking about a function to assess whether an article is sufficiently sourced or not since this is the central problem with article quality. Wandalstouring 11:47, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
That's already on the checklist, isn't it? Do you know how to fix the "{{#ifeq:stub|NA||"--Phoenix-wiki (talk · contribs) 12:45, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
Fixed; you had an unclosed #ifeq block on the category generation. Kirill 13:00, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
Okay, thanks a ton--Phoenix-wiki (talk · contribs) 13:33, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
You understood what that means? I don't. John Carter 14:02, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
I didn't untill this week, which is why I didn't ask Kirill to do the importance ratings. I've been learning from looking over the template and reading this and this. You sould too--Phoenix-wiki (talk · contribs) 15:10, 2 November 2007 (UTC)


History articles by quality and importance
Quality Importance
Top High Mid Low NA Other ??? Total
FA 5 14 25 39 263 2 348
FL 3 5 5 4 2 19
A 2 6 19 1 28
GA 10 36 94 171 1 720 41 1,073
B 65 232 308 808 1,957 423 3,793
C 102 311 602 2,155 3,890 971 8,031
Start 31 187 576 4,319 1 10,545 2,201 17,860
Stub 1 32 151 3,056 1 6,038 2,077 11,356
List 6 73 210 7,285 10 1,486 449 9,519
Category 4 2 29,005 4,499 33,510
Disambig 1 61 30 92
File 48 39 87
Portal 8,362 11 8,373
Project 65 13 78
Redirect 25 69 161 1,262 287 1,804
Template 2 1 1,212 151 1,366
NA 19 406 1 426
Other 671 671
Assessed 220 917 2,046 18,007 40,718 30,358 6,168 98,434
Unassessed 1 11 13 437 462
Total 220 917 2,047 18,018 40,718 30,371 6,605 98,896
WikiWork factors (?) ω = 203,152 Ω = 4.78 
That's how we stand with the importance rating--Phoenix-wiki (talk · contribs) 15:25, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
That seems to me to be a very, very small number of total articles- are we going to have something set up in the near future to do a sweep and to tag relevant articles within the scope of the project? Monsieurdl 17:13, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
It is a small number. I'm going to try to do a lot of tagging in the next few days. John Carter 17:15, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
I'm going to take a particular subject and go down its list, article by article, in that way. Of course, the next two days I'll be on and off (Sat/Sun), but it will be the most efficient way. I'll start with Category:History of Africa I think. Monsieurdl 17:34, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
That'd be great! Just make sure that the articles clearly fall within this project's scope, which is to say that they are explicitly about history per se, and try not to tag articles that are already tagged with any of our designated "sub" or "daughter" projects. Overtagging of talk pages has already generated a lot of complaints in general, and I don't think it'd be a good idea if we were to alienate others from the start. John Carter 17:39, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
I'm gonna work through Category:History stubs over the next few days. I hope you learned something about parser functions, John Carter!--Phoenix-wiki (talk · contribs) 18:28, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
More specifically, Category:European history stubs--Phoenix-wiki (talk · contribs) 18:30, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
That's a confusing aspect of the whole framework of the Wikiproject- what is the consideration for a sub or daughter project, just so I know? References to other pages would be sufficient also if you don't know them all. Thanks! Monsieurdl 18:50, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
Well, basically, the following projects are described as being our subprojects:

My guess would be, if you were to see any of those banners already on the page, don't place the banner there. Also, except for historians and other people directly related to the discipline, I'd leave biographies alone as well. John Carter 19:05, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

I dunno, some biographies are clearly within our scope ([[Hitler], Neville Chamberlain, Scipio Africanus etc). Anyway, the statistics will be updated every three days by the bot. If you want to see our progress early you can follow this link and type "History".--Phoenix-wiki (talk · contribs) 19:34, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
Unfortunately, all biographies of deceased persons could be said to be in our scope. While we may well tag some historical figure biographies later, I'd want to make sure that we first tagged the articles we can be sure of, and later figure out the terms of inclusion for those which might be dubious. John Carter 19:39, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
Good, and thanks you all. I just wanted to make sure I wasn't embarassing myself by stepping on other people's toes just in case I misunderstood! That's what I wanted to hear... and just the other day I stumbled upon List of the Kings of Georgia, and it is badly in need of work. Talk about a lack of references and material on the subject! Just thought I'd add that while I thought of it :) Monsieurdl 19:36, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
Monsieurdl, if you see an article that's really crap during your work add Attention=yes to the history banner. You can add articles to our open tasks list also--Phoenix-wiki (talk · contribs) 19:50, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
I can most certainly do that- most of the problems I see are a lack of references whether by failure to care or the subject just isn't covered enough, mostly the former. A lot of articles only refer to the 1911 Encyclopedia- the ones that I have run across, anyways. Monsieurdl 19:55, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
That's a big problem many projects have. Hopefully we'll find a way around it--Phoenix-wiki (talk · contribs) 20:09, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
Is the template ready to use now? If so I'll go and tag some articles. Also from looking at the importance scale am I right in thinking that history of regions (states, counties, provinces etc) would be of high importance on the scale? --Kaly99 20:56, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
See Template:WikiPProject History--Phoenix-wiki (talk · contribs) 22:16, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
Some project have a subpage where they try to determine which articles have which importance level places. Wikipedia:WikiProject Novels/Assessment/Top-important is one example. Personally, I might leave at lot of the importance tags off, with exceptions of maybe articles like History of 19th Century congressional redistricting in Ohio which would I'm guessing be a "Low", and, except for the articles leading directly off the History article, leave a lot of the importance ratings unfilled for the moment. After we see all of what we have, then we can have a better idea which importance level each article has. Generally, though, all articles which lead off the main article of the subject are counted as Top importance, and I've just tagged those few articles. John Carter 21:03, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

Top-class importance

Here's the deal; History of countries and contients are all top-class. WWI, WWII, Korean war, Vietnam war and both Gulf wars are also top-class. All other articles will have to go through a review by the project. It sounds like it'll be slow but all that's needed is for a few people to say that it's important enough for version 1.0 and it's done. Alternatively, we could ask on this talk page. We also need to develop an importance scale--Phoenix-wiki (talk · contribs) 19:40, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

What we need to do is develop a list by which to go from, so we know exactly what has been done with respect to pages that need review. That way it will be readily available and there is no backtracking or holes. I suggest some sort of a category such as List of History articles to be reviewed after they are marked. Monsieurdl 19:44, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
Never mind- I saw the unassessed articles link at the bottom of the page! ugh. Monsieurdl 19:46, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
You can thank Kirill Lokshin (talk · contribs) for that; he made our template; good on him! :-)--Phoenix-wiki (talk · contribs) 19:58, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
Actually, the proper Category is Unknown-importance history articles, which lists all tagged articles that have no importance. BINGO!! Monsieurdl 20:07, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
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