Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Lakes/Assessment

Adding examples to Importance Scale

Hi Lakes Project,

I have been taking some time to assess Importance to those not yet assigned and would appreciate some input particularly for the 'Mid' importance category. Examples would be useful to add to the table as it is a bit ambiguous whether lakes should be assessed based on physical characteristics alone, or also considering cultural importance, e.g. higher importance for lakes located in large cities. Cheers, Uninspired Username (talk) 05:15, 12 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Assessment of importance is pretty subjective but should use both physical characteristics and cultural importance to move it up the importance scale. I agree examples are helpful, but knowledge of the particular subject might be more important so not all assessments might be able to be made by a single person, but when unsure noting on the talk page is helpful for others wondering why the assessment was made. Yes we could have add a physical characteristic matrix as a first pass for higher importance, but I think it would be scaled per region. Something like largest 10 in an area are top, next 10 mid etc, but then the 10 depend on the scope of the region being focused on at that point in time. To avoid geographic bias there should be a minimum from each country or region in each category. We could use popularity of references of the subject in books and other sources as a means to help create a threshold of when to bump to a higher importance and help guide on popular knowledge, but this is also why the articles are co-tagged with a geo WikiProject so it could be that posting a question on that project could help clarify an ambiguous importance. Finally a regional or subject knowledge of significance to push a lake up the scale. The physical characteristics would be the simplest filter to start with and working through a country and region at a time. I really don't have a good solution that is why I haven't rated the importances of Articles much. Mid importance on lists and other types of articles is a bit more clear with regional hierarchies. Wolfgang8741 says: If not you, then who? (talk) 19:07, 19 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]