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Reciprocal peer review arrangements

I've just had a very interesting message from Krator. Here is the text in full:

Hey there, writing here to you in your capacity as Military History coordinator.

I'm here from WP:VG (we don't have a coordinator), and recently there has been a bit of a discussion over at WT:FAC on video games featured article candidates. (See here) To save you the effort of reading all that if you haven't already, the basic issue is that many video game articles are only seen by other video game editors before passing FAC, reason for possible bias, because you miss things in articles you've seen often, and tend to be forgiving to people you know.

Going to places like WP:PR usually doesn't achieve much, so I was wondering if we could set up some cooperation here. My (pre-practical phase) idea was to have some kind of reciprocal peer review page where milhist editors review video games pages, and the other way around. I thought milhist and video games is a good pair, because both projects are among the most active, WikiProjects (it wouldn't surprise me if it was #1 and #2). There's little overlap in terms of userbase, too.

What about it? User:Krator (t c) 16:44, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

This seems an outstanding idea. Presumably it will work by cross-posating details of each others peer reviews. The main advantages I see are the injection of fresh perspectives and the addition of a bit of critical distance. I have asked Krator to join in this discussion as appropriate. What is the feeling? --ROGER DAVIES talk 16:56, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Excuse my intrusion. What would the coordinators feel about, at the same time, widening the scope of the Films TF to cover the rest of the video/VG media that falls within our scope? Would it be a good idea? Disagreements welcome. Buckshot06(prof) 21:33, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
I suspect that'd be more trouble than it's worth, simply because the existing department is a joint effort with WP:FILMS. Rescoping it to be the intersection of more projects is going to make it very messy for everyone except us—not all the articles will be relevant to any of them, so the tagging and such will be quite convoluted. If there's interest in those aspects of it, I'd suggest creating some form of separate wargaming-related task force instead, as that's both a more obvious grouping, and will involve significantly fewer projects. Kirill (prof) 01:15, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
That looks like a very good idea, but I'd suggest avoiding an entirely separate page, and trying to work this into the existing structure (so as to minimize the number of places people need to watch). The simplest approach might be to cross-announce reviews (i.e. announce military history PRs at the VG page, and vice versa). A straight cross-transclusion arrangement might be doable as well, but may be too complicated for easy use. Kirill (prof) 01:15, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
Indeed. Initially advertising our PRs etc on WT:VG and VG PRs on WT:MILHIST. If it works, some transclusion might be order in the longer-term. --ROGER DAVIES talk 03:10, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
Perhaps a new task force with a electronic media focus could be established for the purpose of creating the needed infastructure. In any event, I like the idea, and this was one of the reasons I suggested adding our template to the historically accurate video games with a military focus. TomStar81 (Talk) 02:05, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
Did someone propose a new Task Force? Isn't the new rule that the proposer has to buy a case of beer for all the coords, and two cases of beer for all the members? Or did I dream it? :))) --ROGER DAVIES talk 03:10, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
All for one and one for all, take your glass and raise it tall.
Well, I'm not big on booze (upsets my stomache too much oweing to my GRD), but a rule is a rule, so here be the booze :) On a more serious note, I suggested a task force so we could have a point of common ground to work with, rather than do things at the project level. TomStar81 (Talk) 03:23, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
That was awesomely generous, Tom.
Do we really need another specialist talking shop though? Can't any discussions arising be handled initially on WT:MILHIST or WT:VG]? You know, the organic approach ...
--ROGER DAVIES talk 03:42, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
We can. I just thought I would through a TF out there to test the waters is all. 'Nothing ventured, nothing gained' as they say :) TomStar81 (Talk) 03:50, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
In principal it's a good idea. But I don't think that a profusion of under- or no-trafficked TFs reflect well on us as a project. You know, someone joins Milhist and is all fired up, then wanders over to a TF only to find zero worthwhile activity for a year. It makes us look like paper tigers (紙老虎)). --ROGER DAVIES talk 04:00, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
We discuss two seperate issues here.
  1. A joint cooperation with WP:VG over shared content. - OK.
  2. A review for videogames within our infrastructure but not necessarily within our scope. - Not OK. The reason people do join a project is that they want to direct their efforts and in return want the project to filter the information they receive. I may be wrong, but I oppose any crosstagging as long as there isn't a clear vote of the whole project saying else.
  3. The problem for the videogames could be solved by recruiting reviewers from outside, something like a reviewer task force. For this you just need to tell the members of WP:VG to persuade non-gamers whom they think capable to sign up. Hopefully, you have enough editors with other interests such as gaming to set this in motion. Wandalstouring (talk) 09:25, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
A good contribution, thanks. What do others think? Especially of the "intrusion" of VG peer review traffic on Milhist talk pages? --ROGER DAVIES talk 09:33, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
I suspect the project as a whole would be very accepting of at least a cross-notification arrangement, provided that (a) the arrangement itself is announced and (b) the notifications have the proper tone. We are getting more attention to our own reviews from the setup, after all, not merely helping out the VG ones.
But, if there's any doubt, it would be quite trivial to simply put the matter before the membership as a whole. Kirill (prof) 13:24, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
I think overall they'd be very accepting too though if other coordinators echo Wandalstouring's concerns I agree we should put it to the membership. --ROGER DAVIES talk 18:51, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

(od) Input on this important step would be welcomed from other coordinators. --ROGER DAVIES talk 09:17, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm all for encouraging reciprocal peer reviews with all interested Wikiprojects so this seems to be a good idea, especially as WP:VG's peer reviews look a lot like ours. Are there any Wikiprojects with good peer reviews we could approach? I don't see why a new task force is needed though, and am also concerned that it wouldn't receive much traffic. Nick Dowling (talk) 11:33, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
Looks good. I am up for this. We need to make sure it stays reciprocal but VG are aware of this as well. I don't think we need another dept for this. Could we not put it under the scope of special projects until we have finished a trial period. (It is a special project after all). Then we could just integrate it into PR, probably with transclusions or <noinclude> etc. Woody (talk) 15:52, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Trial period

Consensus is in favour I think. I suggest we trial this for a month or so (say, til the end of June?) and so how we get on. After that, we can either discontinue or fine-tune. It will give us an opportunity to gauge member responses. Does this seem reasonable? --ROGER DAVIES talk 13:58, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Yep. Gentlemen, start your engines! TomStar81 (Talk) 16:29, 17 May 2008 (UTC)
Sounds good to me. We should probably put together an alternative version of the peer review announcement boilerplate to use for such cross-project reviews, since the existing one only links to our own subpages. Kirill (prof) 17:03, 17 May 2008 (UTC)
Absolutely. What do you suggest? --ROGER DAVIES talk 18:59, 17 May 2008 (UTC)
From the VG side, I'd spend some time on it, but I'm currently away from home with limited internet connectivity until Wednesday. If you want to go ahead with this right now, I suggest you contact User:Guyinblack25. On the topic itself, my idea was to have a page in the Wikipedia namespace that transcludes milhist reviews on one side (table/column?) and vg on the others. WikiProject Video games is not used to talk page announcements for peer reviews, so I don't know how that will work, it'll have to be discussed, though I doubt there'll be any opposition. The actual peer review pages would remain subpages of the relevant WikiProject. Is this compatibe with how you guys do peer reviews?
On the peer reviews themselves, VG has a few editors, including myself, who frequently do peer reviews. I expect that reciprocity will not be much of a problem because I expect at least these 'regulars' to review a page on the reciprocal page every once in a while. User:Krator (t c) 16:35, 18 May 2008 (UTC)
That sounds about right. I'm away for much of this week so it would be great if, perhaps, Kirill has the time, and would be kind enough, to look after the implementation. --ROGER DAVIES talk 17:22, 18 May 2008 (UTC)
As far as an announcement boilerplate goes, I've put together Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Coordinators/Toolbox/Partner peer review notice as an initial draft; feedback would be very welcome.
The single transclusion page is a bit more complicated from a technical standpoint. I expect what we'll need to do is to break out our raw PR listing into a transcluded subpage, which would then go into both our review department as well as this new page. VG would do the same. This would eliminate the need to manually list peer reviews in two places, since the joint page would be automatically updated; but we'd still be responsible for announcing new reviews there.
(One other aspect here that hasn't been addressed: I see no fundamental reason why we could not allow other highly active projects to join this effort and add their own reviews to the common page under a similar arrangement.) Kirill (prof) 19:01, 18 May 2008 (UTC)
Would just wrapping the non-peer review content of WP:VG/PR (for example) in noinclude tags, then just transcluding the whole page, work? On letting others join, I'm less positive on the issue, and suggest we at least go through the trial first. The idea is that reciprocity and a clear idea of who reviews what increases the quality and number of peer reviews. What would separate such a peer review exchange from WP:PR in the long run? (With the addition that WP:PR doesn't seem to work well in terms of articles receiving good reviews). User:Krator (t c) 22:15, 18 May 2008 (UTC)
Yes, I think noinclude wrapping should work fine, assuming there's no strange sectioning issues. I'll try to put together a prototype shared page tomorrow, and we can play around with the needed markup.
As far as expanding the system goes, a common shared review would, in theory, be driven by the participating projects, each of which would be responsible for motivating its members to participate—and would exclude articles for which there was no such project available. It'd be a larger-scale version of a "review another editor's article when asking for a review" strategy, really. I don't know to what extent this would work in practice, though. Kirill (prof) 03:45, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

(od) This seems to have petered out. Is there still the same enthusiasm for the idea? If so, what do we need to do to get the show back on the road? --ROGER DAVIES talk 06:52, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

I think we are all waiting for someone to say it a go. So lets make it official and post something on our main project page and in the upcoming newletter. Would this work? TomStar81 (Talk) 06:59, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
Oh, I thought that was explicit enough above. Yes, do you want to post on the main page and I'll do something for the newsletter? (I've got a few other things to add to it.) --ROGER DAVIES talk 07:05, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
Will do. TomStar81 (Talk) 07:49, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
I left two meesages: one on the main project talk page and one in the announcements and open tasks. Feel free to edit them as you see fit. TomStar81 (Talk) 08:10, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
Looks good to me. Do we want to pursue having a single page listing both sets of peer reviews, or is it sufficient to just go with the cross-project notifications for our purposes? Kirill (prof) 16:01, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
Lets start with cross posting only, if the project turns out to be succsessful we can consider a single page listing. Hows that sound? TomStar81 (Talk) 22:23, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
I'd have thought simple cross-posting to start, no? --ROGER DAVIES talk 21:43, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
Ok, fair enough. Kirill (prof) 01:27, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
Could you guys do me a favour and leave a note at WT:VG too? We don't announce peer reviews like you do, let alone cross post. We'll need some instructions. User:Krator (t c) 16:03, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
May I ask Kirill to look after this please? He's the most familiar with the system. --ROGER DAVIES talk 17:24, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
Done. Depending on the response, VG might want to look at doing internal notifications as well. Kirill (prof) 00:20, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
The first set of notices is up as well. Kirill (prof) 00:24, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Looking good

I've been looking at the early results and this seems to be working rather well. Any feedback yet? --ROGER DAVIES talk 03:26, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Incidentally, isn't it time we dished out a few more reviewers awards? It's been a couple of months since the last lot ... Pour encourager les autres as Napoleon would have said :) --ROGER DAVIES talk 03:28, 13 June 2008 (UTC)
Lets wait until the end of the month, then we can see if any VG project people contributed enough to earn a reviewer award. It may help make the trial a perment feature. TomStar81 (Talk) 04:37, 13 June 2008 (UTC)
On current figures, they're way behind though no doubt they'll feature next quarter. Instead, I suggest chevrons to top VG people at the end of the month. We can publicise that here and there. --ROGER DAVIES talk 09:09, 15 June 2008 (UTC)
Chevrons for the VG guys sounds good to me. TomStar81 (Talk) 23:28, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Re-launch T&A

I'd like to put new oomph behind this early-mid June to coincide with the end of the exam season. It may be an idea to extend the closure by a few weeks. Thoughts? --ROGER DAVIES talk 06:03, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps in the future split our T&A drive into Phase I and Phase II for just this sort of thing? We could vary the award structure as well so as to inspire participation in both phases. Here, I would suggest noting the progress on all relevent pages, noting the current number of articles that have been tagged/assessed now version the number assessed at this time from the last drive, and encouraging the participants to rally and set a new project record. If you have a date in mind for the added omph then I would be happy to lead by example and start my participation in the drive then; I have signed up to participate but have thus far refrained from doing so, and am anxious to get into the drive for the awards and glory. TomStar81 (Talk) 06:14, 20 May 2008 (UTC)
Sure all these things are possible. We've got a major problem at the moment with coordinator participation (not a criticism, just real life stuff intruding I guess) so they are probably too time-consuming.
Say relaunch activity 8-15 June, with the drive ending 26 July?
--ROGER DAVIES talk 06:28, 20 May 2008 (UTC)
I'm down with it. I'll start tagging and assessing at that point, with a little a luck and a couple of other contributers we may get a little momentum return for the last six weeks or so. TomStar81 (Talk) 06:38, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

(od) Having been looking at the figures, I don't see much point in extending this. Probably best to wrap it as originally planned on 4 July and let everyone enjoy their holidays. Then run a new drive in sptember/October, specifically aimed at clearing the articles with no task forces back log. Any objections? --ROGER DAVIES talk 18:53, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

I think there are a number of things that are distracting at the moment, on-wiki and off. It has gone well I think, with a few notable exceptions, but perhaps now is the time to wrap it up. Woody (talk) 21:23, 1 July 2008 (UTC)
I think thats probably for the best, we seem to be running out of steam as is. When we close this though we should leave a note about the post assessment page, my guess is as this point most people have forgotten about it, and I have a few suggestions for the next T&A drive to include with the evlaution. TomStar81 (Talk) 06:29, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Assessing Stubs

Would it be possible to for our template to auto assess a stub class article if a stub tag is used on the article mainspace? TomStar81 (Talk) 02:37, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Nope. There's no way to for a template to read the content of anything outside its own parameters. Kirill (prof) 04:12, 22 May 2008 (UTC)
Thats too bad. It sure would make our lives easier if the assessment parameter could detect the stub tags and react accordingly. Oh, well; it was a nice thought anyway :) TomStar81 (Talk) 07:38, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Spotlight

I'm critical of the spotlight advertisement on our page. I don't like the style and I doubt that it has any benefits because our collaboration of the month had neither. Behind it is a project spotlight with several self-imposed coordinators who chose for whatever reason articles that deem in need of improvement. The gain so far seems rather limited. While I don't ask to ban them totally from our busy page, I want at least transparency of their article choosing and a less obstrusive template call. Wandalstouring (talk) 06:33, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

I agree that the template is too large and too vauge, but I don't see much harm in this. Nick Dowling (talk) 00:12, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Category restruturing

I would appreciate some more input on how to restructure Category:World War II. It has become apparent that the restructuring carried out by User:Mrg3105 has not been met with universal approval. This has turned into ad-hoc attacks and constant bickering so anyone with high blood pressure should probably stay away ;), but everyone else I would really appreciate input at Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/World War II task force/Category restructuring; A page designed to discuss and implement a new structure. At the moment it is a lot of hot air and few ideas on how to improve it, these would be welcome, especially from you guys. Thanks in advance. Woody (talk) 13:50, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

I've just been catching up on this. Will do, --ROGER DAVIES talk 14:08, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

(od) I've been looking at this. mrg3105's efforts have left it in an unholy mess. It needs sorting out. Any ideas how? --ROGER DAVIES talk 02:54, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Statement of goals on project page

Someone might want to check the recent edits to make sure we're not going off on too much of a wild goose chase there. ;-) Kirill (prof) 04:21, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

The version, as edited by Kirill, is fine :) --ROGER DAVIES talk 06:48, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Disruptive editor

Further to the above post on the WW2 category restructuring, Mrg3105 has recently been engaging in what I can only describe as extensive disruptive behaviour. He has been carrying out an extensive campaign of renaming articles or proposing moves from their common English names to his prefered translation of the Russian name - which are repeated violations of WP:NAME and WP:UE - and the arguments pointing out that this is wrong are sucking a lot of energy out of our project. Moreover, his behaviour has been uncivil at times, as he has insulted some editors who don't agree with him. I'm not at all familiar with the formal dispute resolution process, but I think that we will have to go there as this behaviour has now been ongoing for some time, despite several warnings. Nick Dowling (talk) 10:10, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Count me out (for now). I haven't had any unpleasent experiences with the editer in question, so I think in this case it would be best for me to recuse myself lest I become involved in this unintentionally (though I reserve the right to join in if relations sour to the extent others have experinced) TomStar81 (Talk) 10:24, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
I've also had quite many bad experiences with Mrg's disruptive behaviour, as he's always trying to disrupt Wikipedia in order to illustrate his own point. He is also well known as a fanatic, who never assumes good faith. So, you'll have my full support in any measure we would take to stop this disruptive actions. --Eurocopter (talk) 11:26, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
I have been involved with this for about a week now after an email. If you see that he is violating the civil guidelines or if he makes a personal attack then he can be blocked under Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Digwuren#General restriction. Just leave a note at WP:AE. He is aware of the restrictions after his previous block and this reminder. Woody (talk) 11:34, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

(od) I am concerned that various discussions are becoming over-polarized and increasingly personal. Editors might want to consider working on other areas before sinking time into apparently fruitless debate. For example, to thwart consensus by silence on an unacceptable proposal, it is sufficient to say that you disagree together with brief reasons for your disagreement, rather than attempting to rebut complex arguments point by point. --ROGER DAVIES talk 10:58, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

I agree completely with that. Rebuting arguments in complex detail simply doesn't work and is a waste of time as no-one reads those posts. Nick Dowling (talk) 11:08, 29 May 2008 (UTC)
Some good suggestions are starting appear on Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/World War II task force/Category restructuring. Input would be welcome before it degenerates again. Thanks. Woody (talk) 11:14, 29 May 2008 (UTC)
Nice to know that I'm not the only one thinking that this topic produced too much output. Wandalstouring (talk) 11:49, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

(od) Excuse my intrusion gentlemen. Does this edit still fit within the bounds of WP:Civil? Buckshot06(prof) 12:23, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Frankly, I do not know what category his edits fall into anymore. He just engaged in edit-warring to delete sources, like the US Library of Congress(!), based solely on his personal "appraisal" of their reliability and his reported "years of experience". More likely he just does not like to be contradicted, a trait I'm sure has been noticed earlier. --DIREKTOR (TALK) 13:28, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
I don't think that's at all civil or acceptable as it's rude and demonstrates major ownership issues. Nick Dowling (talk) 23:42, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

(od)There's a discussion of this editor at WP:AN/I Nick Dowling (talk) 23:50, 31 May 2008 (UTC)


I'm sick of listening to this guy's constant insults, I'm starting to lose it myself. Here's yet another breach of WP:CIV by User:Mrg3105 [1]:
"How about this. YOU go and buy Keitel's fucking book in Irving's fucking translation and then YOU write the fucking articles based on that and see how same they look ok. You are so big on talk, but will not spend the money on the books,..."
He appears physically unable to remain civil, he rarely actually engages in discussion with a person that has a differing opinion without insulting that person, and praising the fact that he "owns books" and allegedly has "eons of experience". This was actually said on WP:AN/I, I feel absolutely helpless here, will someone please do something? --DIREKTOR (TALK) 23:51, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
A good starting point would be to gather the clearest examples of uncivil and agressive behaviour in the last few months - which shouldn't be hard - as evidence to justify a block. Nick Dowling (talk) 00:16, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Digwuren#General restriction is unfortunately likely to be quite applicable here. Kirill (prof) 02:52, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Not hard at all, one simply needs to go through the talkpage and Talk:Belgrade Offensive. The very tone of discussion this guy uses is insulting to the other's intelligence. Apart from the obvious insults above, this can be found at first glance:

  • "Forget moving stuff in the article. I will revert eventually anyway when I get a chance."
  • "Listen pal, I don't know where you are from, and how you found your way here, but I suggest before telling me to be civil, you actually go and read that "reference" if you can speak English."
  • "I do not compromise, particularly when presented with such a clear case of an editor not actually knowing what he is editing."
  • "THIS entire sorry issue with these three articles is the sort of bullshit that drives people away from Wikipedia."

...and more, there are apparently other stupid, bookless editors out there daring to contradict him. It is not just the insults, mind you, the whole manner and tone of expression he uses in dealing with others can only be described as "treating people like dirt". He even succeeds in making people who talk to him look stupid, for instance, he benevolently called me "confused" and kindly explained three times that the "Red Army" changed its name into "Soviet Army", while I pointed out immediately after the first time that I was well aware of that before I even heard of him. This is just an example, he benevolently explained to me what a Front is, what a joint operation is... it goes on and on. Its nerve-wracking just reading through his posts, let alone continuing with discussion in a civil manner. --DIREKTOR (TALK) 00:57, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Second Direktor's comments. Additional examples, off our current MILHIST talkpage, include:

  • The suggestion that somehow the wrong common name is more correct then the correct historical name seems quite absurd to me. If in the case of Prague it is less absurd, in the case of articles like Battle of Kursk it is more so, since the article does not refer to either of the two battles of Kursk, or even fighting anywhere near Kursk! It is so titled because on the wartime newspaper maps Soviets simply called it the Kursk Bulge, with the appropriate bow-like line drawn with the Kursk in the middle. In fact the "battle" encompassed no less then six separate German and Soviet ground, and two air operations!

So, the question is - is Wikipedia about providing a quality reference source of information, or about repeating old absurdities? I am not suggesting OR here because the names of these operations are widely used in sources, including more recent, but obviously less numerous English sources because the "battle of Kursk" had been repeated many times in 50 years before someone had learned to read Russian. ([2])

Direktor's not the only one feeling really annoyed - I'm at my wits end too, having suffered this for months. Buckshot06(prof) 02:16, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Just to make myself perfectly clear, I am not writing all this due to my content dispute with the User. Incredible though it may seem, considering the kilometer-long discussions, the actual content dispute is relatively minor: one sentence or two(!) But since Mrg believes he is the boss around here, he refuses to even consider letting down a bit, even a tiny change in his preferred sentence structure, even one that still holds his full meaning, is perceived as an insult to his alleged years of "experience". My point is that the actual dispute is not rooted in content, but in Mrg's inability to reach a consensus, his incivility, and his lack of respect for other editors. Another example:
  • "You, an editor of 1 month, just dove in there "fixing" the article with NO references at all aside for a wholly unsourced online site."
The funny thing is, I was here a year before he arrived and he also did not have any sources, nor does he have them now. --DIREKTOR (TALK) 08:18, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

FYI, Mrg has asked for external advice on "Can anyone prevent me from planning and executing Project wide categorisation" for the WWII categories and whether the matter should be taken to ArbCom at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Categories#Categorisation - planning Nick Dowling (talk) 08:56, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Can I ask what is the opinion of other concerned editors on this matter? --DIREKTOR (TALK) 17:11, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
Is this the right place for such a discussion? I think the stress hotline should be used if you have such edit experiences, but not the coordinators page that is intended for discussing how to run the project's administration. Wandalstouring (talk)
It is not about my stress or his or Buckshot's, its about a User noted by the ArbCom and warned about his incivility swearing and cursing all over WP:AN/I(!) --DIREKTOR (TALK) 22:22, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
You have already very adequately made your point and Wandalstouring is perfectly entitled to make his. The situation is not made better by indignation. --ROGER DAVIES talk 22:40, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

(od) I have spent a very considerable amount of time today reading through the vast amount of stuff on this scattered around Wikipedia and have the following observations to make.

  1. For Eastern Europe-related articles, this editor is subject to the Digwuren restriction and can thus be blocked for fresh clear-cut cases of incivility, edit-warring and disruption.
  2. More generally, he has now also been formally warned for incivility and personal attacks, and can thus easily be blocked for any future incivility.
  3. This, though, has the effect of drawing a line under past misdeanours (as it's unfair to block an editor for something they did before they were warned). As I imagine we've all got more enjoyable things to do then trawl through old talk pages, I suggest we all now look to the future rather than the past.
  4. As regards the categorisation issues, the editor has little or no consensus for his suggested actions and, in the unlikely event that he goes ahead with them, they can thus be reverted. In this scenario, he can also be blocked for disruption.
  5. While this editor has obviously annoyed many people here, is this worth the time and effort being devoted to it? I think not. This editor is intelligent, strong-willed and sometimes combatative: why engage him at his own game?
  6. What happens next seems to me to be entirely in this editor's own hands. His many good contributions are offset, in my view, by his abrasive behaviour. If he continues on that path, his future will be blocks of increasing frequency and duration.

In the meantime, I suggest that all involved editors to move on and engage in more enjoyable activities. --ROGER DAVIES talk 22:33, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for your advice, I shall certainly try to keep as far away from this guy and his spectacular edits as possible. --DIREKTOR (TALK) 23:23, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
In general terms, the danger of responding to red rags is the respondee might find themself facing the same sanctions for incivility, personal attacks, edit-warring, disruption etc, as the rag waver. If a comment irritates me, I usually sleep on it and think very carefully before replying. --ROGER DAVIES talk 08:44, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

wikibreak

until 23.6.2008 I'm on a kind of wikibreak because of university stress. Wandalstouring (talk) 15:38, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Been there, done that. Take care, and good luck :) TomStar81 (Talk) 19:20, 30 May 2008 (UTC)
No worries. Good luck with getting through it! Nick Dowling (talk) 23:42, 30 May 2008 (UTC)
No problems. Come back refreshed :) --ROGER DAVIES talk 21:44, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
I got an additional month time for my work, greatly increasing my wikiactivity again. Not that you didn't notice. Wandalstouring (talk) 14:38, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Reference help

Can I get an informed opinion on the reliability of this website? It would help with the Montana class FAC by settling the issue of whether or not the site is reliable. TomStar81 (Talk) 23:58, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

It seems reliable to me. I think it is safe to use it. Kyriakos (talk) 00:38, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
Thanks. I'll report that should the issue come up again. TomStar81 (Talk) 01:07, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
The test of reliability is contained in the content guideline: Articles should rely on reliable, third-party published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. This means that we only publish the opinions of reliable authors ... Does this website have a reputation for accuracy and fact-checking and, if so, how do you can prove this? Has it, for example, been praised in independent published sources? On a related note, there is currently a hardening of attitudes at FAC both against websites and articles that rely heavily on web material. While some websites are excellent - De Re Militari, for example, or museum ones - many are little more than the unsourced scribblings of hobbyists.--ROGER DAVIES talk 08:35, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

I noticed. I haven't encountered this much resistance in an FAC since MBK and I work on Illinois. I wasn't expecting the response, but I think given the circumstances I have dealt with the issues rather well. Incidentally, I asked this same question here and got an interesting response that seems to be in favor of the site, so I do believe that it will be able to stay in. Also, I can not help but notice that our FAC reviews have gone conservative all of sudden, I have 1 oppose, 1 support and four or so comments on page, which is a far cry from when everyone would vote and then list the things they wanted improved. TomStar81 (Talk) 08:48, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

There's a concerted drive to push up FAC standards with sources and prose being the main areas of focus. FAC now has reviewers who specialise exclusively on these issues. Add to this, an increasing tendency by Raul and Sandy to ignore drive-by supports and the net result is a tougher passage to FA.
To reflect changes at FAC, I think our own A-Class reviews (ACR) should probably focus more closely on sources and prose. I have also been dismayed to see that articles which pass Milhist ACR more or less on condition that they receive a close copy-edit, go straight to FAC. This undermines confidence in our ACR and wastes reviewers' time at FAC. (And, yes, I know thwere's a shortage of copy-editors.)--ROGER DAVIES talk 09:02, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
Actually, I was going to bring that up following the conclusion of the FAC: We have a problem with the class review process now, and it was made clear to me with this FAC. I cleared GA class with literally no compliants or suggestions for improvement (no big suprise there), then got to A-class and had only one mild complaint regarding the sources, then got to FAC and in the space of a week or so have recieved a butload of complaints about things that need reworked for FAC compliance. I didn't immediately bring it up here becuase I felt that would be a WP:POINT situtation under the circumstances (the fac is still open, and in a broad sense complaining before it closes could be considered solicitation for support on the pity card) but I definetly feel we need to do something at the A-class level to adress this before others suffer the same fate. TomStar81 (Talk) 09:11, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
I did warn you about the sources. ;) Woody (talk) 13:13, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
Let's focus A class on sources and content and FAC on style. Wandalstouring (talk) 06:03, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Milhist articles with no task force

This started off as something like a total of 11,648; it's now at 9,603 so a lot of hard work has been done to reduce the total. Might I suggest that the coordinators consider a general atta-boy and thanks? Cheers Buckshot06(prof) 22:33, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

It's the main focus of the current Tag & Assess drive. I've resisted the temptations to do Top Ten T&A editors so far (which is what we did last year) because in numerical terms progress is slow. I'm aiming to get more editors on board and inject a bit more oomph after the second wave of publicity end of next week. Thanks for the thought! --ROGER DAVIES talk 04:56, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
Speaking of which, would there be any interest in having a script run (either before or after the drive concludes) to identify the categories to which these untagged articles belong? This could potentially give us some good indications about which possible new task forces would be helpful in bridging the major gaps there. Kirill (prof) 13:10, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
Good idea! It is possible to get the results in summary form? --ROGER DAVIES talk 20:10, 8 June 2008 (UTC)
Given that the script isn't written yet, I'm open to input regarding what its results should look like. ;-) Kirill (prof) 20:50, 8 June 2008 (UTC)
Goody! Perhaps a straight listing of most used categories? --ROGER DAVIES talk 21:17, 8 June 2008 (UTC)
Sounds good.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 22:10, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

C-class proposal

Wikipedia_talk:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team/Assessment#Ratification_vote_on_C-Class. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 00:57, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Interesting stuff, but it only affects us if we want it to; the assessment scheme was previously changed such that a project could refrain from using newly-introduced classes with no ill effect.
Given that we do the Start/B assessment by checklist now, I'm not sure how C-Class could fit in without having to reinvent the entire set of criteria, in any case. Kirill (prof) 13:12, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
It's a good thing that we have B class as the lowest assessed class because editors pushing for an assessment try to fullfill the strict criteria and thus create articles that can easily be pushed to higher classes. Wandalstouring (talk) 07:32, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
I agree that we should not adopted the C-class such as it were, however we owe it to the community to get a project-wide opinion on the matter if this thing does in fact go. If the community doesn't take to the idea of C-class then we can maintain the status quo ante, but as Kirill notes, if they want us to incorporate the C-class ranking into the project template then we are going to end up going back to the drawing board. For the time being though I would rather not borrow trouble, I think the best thing to do is to take a 'wait and see' aproach. TomStar81 (Talk) 23:54, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
Yes, that seems to be the best approach. If this is optional I don't see the advantage to this project from adopting it, but it's something which would need to be discussed. IMO, assessment drives already take up too much time and effort, and having another huge one to incorporate a new rating wouldn't be very productive. Nick Dowling (talk) 00:17, 8 June 2008 (UTC)
IMO I don't really see the point of adding an extra class. But if the majority of the project want it, then so be it. Kyriakos (talk) 04:44, 8 June 2008 (UTC)
Of course, if the C-class gets implemented we will vote on its implementation and suggest possible criteria. We could establish it within our B-class system. Some criteria of the B-class checklist will be regarded as not essential for C-class and anything that fullfills the remaining criteria is rated C-class. Naturally, that's more work, but we are a democratic anarchy and everyone has a right to vote on the amount of work. Wandalstouring (talk) 10:31, 8 June 2008 (UTC)
I've been thinking about this and don't think it would too difficult to implement C-Class (if we decide to go with it). our B-Class system appears to be the envy of the world so perhaps best to leave that alone. Instead, we could extract all Start-Class articles which fail, say, one or two B-Class criteria, and use a bot to set them to C-Class. A template tweak would then set this up automatically thereafter. As far as I can see, this doesn't involve much work. --ROGER DAVIES talk 20:16, 8 June 2008 (UTC)
This sounds like a good idea. At the moment the main sticking point is referencing. We have some former featured articles that are now start simply because of referencing, (Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson being a prime example). That one is on my list of things to do by the way. Woody (talk) 13:29, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

I'd say we ignore either way. A few of the prominent proponents of this new C-class system spend their time endlessly processing some articles like a banker counting their cash over and over instead of raising the articles (erm networth). Anything which is less than a properly-passed B needs heaps of imporvement anyway and what does it matter if it is a 1k stub or a 8k C-class article. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 03:25, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

I agree with what you are saying, but I recall the warning essay over at Esperenza which states in part that "projects are to be open and accountable to all people at all time" (or something to that effect). A would rather not give the minorty 'anti-coordinator' faction on WIkipedia the chance to pounce on our project becuase the nine of us unilaterally agreed not to participate in the (proposed) C-class rating. FWIW, I seriously doubt the project members will be all that thrilled with the concept of introducing the C-class rating into our articles anyway, in particular after our earlier BCAD op and its result. TomStar81 (Talk) 03:30, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

I do not see this appearing on the watchlist page anymore. May I safely assume this has died for now? TomStar81 (Talk) 04:47, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

Actually, as I believe Kirill will be better able to explain, the proposal has passed and C-class will be official shortly from what I've read in the advanced issue for the next Signpost. -MBK004 05:04, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
The conclusion is here. --ROGER DAVIES talk 05:08, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
Well, it seems as though I've just put my foot in my mouth... -MBK004 05:10, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
[Chuckle] --ROGER DAVIES talk 05:15, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
  • <selected choice words omited>. I suppose that means we should bring this up out on the talk page and ask the rest of the milhist people whether they want this included or not. (I hope the answer is no. I suppose that make me a bad person :) TomStar81 (Talk) 05:25, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
:) Well, let's talk it over a bit here first ... --ROGER DAVIES talk 05:35, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
I think we ought to bring up the review overhaul idea(s) first and handle that before messing with this. "It can wait", as we procrastinators say (: TomStar81 (Talk) 05:40, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
(edit conflict) From a technical standpoint, implementing C-Class as a subset of Start-Class with some minimum number of B-Class criteria met may be feasible; however, until we try, I'm not sure what the processing impact of making that logic more complex will be. There's a chance that the operations will simply be too expensive to implement given the currently available node counts; if that's the case, then I don't see any other obvious way to insert C-Class into the scale without gutting our auto-assessment logic. Kirill (prof) 05:45, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
If (and that's a big if), we implement, I thought we could use a script to identify articles failing on one or two criteria (by listing then relevant categories) and then use a bot to work through the list to reclassify as C-Class. Therefafter, handle it on the template. Is this wishful thinking on my part? --ROGER DAVIES talk 06:18, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
I don't see a need for the script stage; if we change the template, then all the current articles will be reclassified automatically. The potential problem I see is whether we can actually make the necessary checks in the template without exceeding the template limits imposed by the MediaWiki pre-processor. Kirill (prof) 06:41, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for the explanation. This presumably means that after implementing a new template articles would be reclassified the next time their talk pages were saved? --ROGER DAVIES talk 06:46, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
Saving the talk pages would be faster, but they should eventually update even without any user interaction, in the same way that template changes propagate to pages without having to edit them. Kirill (prof) 06:49, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

Taking a view

Now, that C-Class has become a reality, Milhist needs to take a view on whether or not to adopt it. First, let's clarify what C-Class is intended to be: it's for articles which are better than Start but fail B-Class and is intended as a way of bridging what is perceived as a huge gap between the two classes.

I share the concerns others have raised here about yet another assessment drive though, if adopted, the process could probably be automated. This would mean extracting articles than fail B-Class by, say, one or two criteria and using them to populate the new class: articles failing, say, three or more criteria stay as Start-class. Thereafter, the template would handle it.

Several obvious ways forward here, I think. Any other ideas would be welcomed.

  1. To arrive at coordinator consensus before going to the project and asking to ratify the p[roposal (whatever that proposal is).
  2. To have a general discussion in the project and see where it goes.
  3. To work up a support proposal and an oppose proposal and take both there.

Thoughts? --ROGER DAVIES talk 05:52, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

It seems to me that the coordinators are already leaning against this so we could feasably skip this step and go straight to #2 and see what the project thinks. If they like the idea of C-class then we can discuss the best way to implement it on a project wide scale (thats my take anyway). As for moving to implement this: I suspect that the 1.0 team will need some time get the system up and functional, and clarify some points that need clarifying before throttling up the class system. In light of this educated guess I would propose holding a ratification vote on this matter during the corrdinator elections, which will enter the signup phase in early August (if memory serves), or in about six weeks. By doing this we allow for time to adjust the assessment scales if the community decides to, and we can get across project input on the matter by attracting those who show up to vote for the coordinators. If the ratification vaot on the position of lead is any indicator, we ought to be able to get a good idea on where the project stands on this issue. Any objection to this idea? TomStar81 (Talk) 07:26, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
It will probably be implemented within a few weeks and it is probably better to anticipate discussion here than to wait until questions are asked. For these reasons, it's probably unnecessary to wait until August for a formal vote and we could seek consensus now through discussion. --ROGER DAVIES talk 10:21, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
I agree with Tom: we've already discussed this, and there seems to be a consensus here that this project wouldn't benefit from introducing C-class. I think that we should seek a general discussion, and only formalise things by going to #3 if there appears to be support for introducing this assessment level - as many members of this project voted against it, I suspect that it won't be supported. Nick Dowling (talk) 09:00, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
I can't see much benefit either. I'll draft something for the talk page.--ROGER DAVIES talk 10:22, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

Draft: New C-Class and Milhist

Following a month of discussion, and wide consultation, the Version 1.0 Editorial Team have decided, to add a new C-Class to the existing article assessment scale. The new class is for articles which are better than Start but fail B-Class, and is intended to close what is perceived as a huge gap between the two classes. Adoption of the new scale is not compulsory and each WikiProject will decide whether or not to implement the new class for the articles within its scope. Here are the main arguments for and against the new proposal:

Arguments for C-Class
  • More refined definition of the Start/B area, which is a very large and important stage in article development. Some Bs are close to GA standard, others are very poor.
  • It's a lot of work to turn a Start into a "good" B – this would give editors something to aim for that is more within reach.
  • For the 1.0 project, we need to distinguish between Bs that are OK for publication, and those which aren't. We need to tighten up standards for B, to exclude those lacking sources or with other problem tags (NOR, POV, etc.).
Arguments against C-Class
  • The purpose of assessment is simply to provide WikiProjects with a rough idea of where each article stands, and the current system does this perfectly well.
  • Keep things simple – we don't want people to obsess over the details of assessments instead of improving articles.
  • The system is unclear right now, and this will only make things even worse!
  • This will be a nightmare of work, trying to re-assess thousands of articles that have already been assessed as B or Start!
  • There are enough levels already. Dealing with so many orthogonal parameters (breadth, depth, refs, readibility, etc.) means that many assessments are already haphazard/arbitrary, this makes things worse.
  • More levels means more reassessment as grades change more often.

So we can determine consensus in Milhist, please say whether you support or oppose Milhist adding the new class to its assessment scale, giving your reasons.

Support
Oppose
Comments

Thoughts? --ROGER DAVIES talk 04:00, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

I like it. I would suggest that we link to this from our newsletter so we get everyones attention. One thing though: how long will this stay "active" such as it were? I was thinking something like two weeks, though thats just my opinion. TomStar81 (Talk) 05:08, 20 June 2008 (UTC)
Two weeks seems fine. We can always extend it if needs be. I'll post this shortly (with a few style tweaks). --ROGER DAVIES talk 07:12, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Closing the discussion

The discussion on WT:MILHIST seems to show a pretty clear consensus not to adopt C-Class at the moment. Should we go ahead with closing the discussion (and deleting all of the C-Class categories that have been bot-created for our use)? Kirill (prof) 22:43, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

I say go for it. I actually thought about closing the discussion last night, but thought I should wait and see if anyone else wanted to comment on it. TomStar81 (Talk) 22:56, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
I was going to wait until the newsletter advertised it. I asked Roger, but he is a bit busy at the moment. Woody (talk) 00:00, 5 July 2008 (UTC)
Do you know when the June newsletter will be going out? Or did you mean the July one? Kirill (prof) 00:02, 5 July 2008 (UTC)
I meant the June one, it will go out when we decide on #Re-launch T&A. Woody (talk) 00:04, 5 July 2008 (UTC)
(od) I'm not impressed with the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial Team spamming all of this project's talk pages... Given the voting on the main talk page I think that we should close the discussion and remove the C-class classification where it's beene added. Nick Dowling (talk) 00:15, 5 July 2008 (UTC)
I'm not sure whether everyone has seen it yet, so I would want to wait until the newsletter has gone out to advertise it to all members. They used a bot to go through the index and tag all project pages, the task forces are considered projects so they all got spammed. I wondered about reverting on our task-force pages, but thought it would be more trouble than it is worth. Woody (talk) 00:18, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

(od) I wanted to include the T&A08 results in the June newsletter. I'm doing that now. Then, it can go. I agree that the discussion shows a clear consensus not to adopt C-Class and I'll close the discussion immediately. --ROGER DAVIES talk 12:11, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Compatibility with other projects

As some of our task forces are partnerships with other projects, we have an issue with compatibility. I have deleted all but a couple of the task force "C-Class" categories, but what do we do with Category:C-Class war films articles and Category:C-Class biography (military) articles, particularly the Bio one. Do we need to set our template to automatically categorise class=C as start? Woody (talk) 13:01, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

That step seems sensible. Wandalstouring (talk) 13:12, 5 July 2008 (UTC)
I don't see any need to change our template; the C-Class ratings for those task forces come from the other project's template anyways. As far as we're concerned, nothing needs to change for that to work as the other project intends. Kirill (prof) 13:19, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Protecting articles

Again and again there have been concerns that high class articles detoriate because of newly implemented material that doesn't fullfill the criteria of article quality. I suggest as a measure against this to keep a better watch over our A-class and FA, possibly via a centraly organized list that shows us who keeps an eye on which article and which article is in need of a watchdog. Opinions? Wandalstouring (talk) 10:35, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

I understand the concerns, recently echoed by Mrg3105 in one of his speeches and Pedro on the Hotline page, but I suspect that by the time we have a list or watchlist setup then it will be made obsolete by quality/flagged revisions. The quality revisions interface is more designed around A-Class/FA processes as far as I am aware. As a start we could move the list of A/FA (our showcase) to a subpage and then use the What-links here feature to see any edits to it. This is of little use though for longer term POV pushers and the slow deterioration of time. Woody (talk) 12:21, 8 June 2008 (UTC)
FYI, the latest announcement from Erik is that the flagged revisions extension is available to any project that asks for it. We just need to drum up enough community support to get it turned on. Kirill (prof) 14:25, 8 June 2008 (UTC)
If nobody opposes I suggest to beat the drum. Wandalstouring (talk) 16:43, 8 June 2008 (UTC)
Beat it :) TomStar81 (Talk) 19:39, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

(od) I got very mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I'm keen to see quality work protected and see this as an ideal solution. On the other hand, I can already imagine the arguments about which version becomes the enshrined one. Does anyone else share my misgivings? --ROGER DAVIES talk 20:19, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

I do. I think the best way to handle this would be to let those closest to the article decide which version should be enshrined, such as it were. Thoughts? TomStar81 (Talk) 05:16, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
Here's a link to the flagged revision page. It makes interesting reading. --ROGER DAVIES talk 05:54, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
We enshrine the version that passes A-class review or FAC according to the Quality versions proposal. Changes to these versions must be authorized by a surveyor. The problem is how one becomes a surveyor. Promotion by an admin is the technical solution. We might run this like a small admin vote with people voting support or voicing concerns. Then our admins entrust these users with the surveyor rights and the coordinators keep track who surveys which high quality article, so that all flagged articles are reasonably covered. Anybody can run for surveyorship and we try to convince users who had a substantial share in creating high quality articles to run for that position. Their task is to implement all edits that do keep in notch with the existing quality. So far, that is only an improvement of the existing policy that one user usually tries to keep quality articles up to the standards and only strengthens his position.Wandalstouring (talk) 08:09, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
I'd support protecting FAs and high-traffic-high quality articles like World War II, but not A-class articles as there's generally quite a bit of scope for these articles to be improved to FA class. Nick Dowling (talk) 08:30, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
Keep in mind that this is version selection rather than protection. Everyone would still be quite able to make edits to the article; you'd just need to ask for the flagged version to be updated on occasion. Kirill (prof) 12:48, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
I was going to say, Nick, protecting articles in terms of locking all editors out is a highly contested topic. Given that Raul who is trying to deal with hundreds of sockpuppets on the global warming pages was recently rebuked for protecting those articles, I don't think we will be seeing that approach any time soon. I do though, think that quality revisions is a a good idea. Woody (talk) 13:27, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

I think the flagged revisions is only for stopping fragrant vandalism, spam, polemical commnetary from newbies. Under the rules, it wouldn't stop a long term troublemaker, just short term vandals to spare us the embarrassment of having obscenities on the page for a few hours. I don't think protecting FAs is a good idea. A lot of POV-pushing pages have made FA, it's really only the MOS and copyediting which is relatively foolproof and even then people can find small tweaks. A lot of articles, only the original author cares about or even knows about, so an indefinite lock would just allow the original author the advantage of incumbency. As an example, PHG (talk · contribs) wrote about 8 FAs and recently was barred from writing articles because he was misrepresenting references and so forth. We just have to foster a culture of people being more vigilant and interventionist - although to be honest, I'm rather ignorant and haven't been able to stop any rubbish except the articles I wrote and the usual junk at Vietnam War. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 03:31, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

I do not intend to establish some kind of ownership. Of course, the one who mainly wrote an FA is our most knowledgable editor on the topic and a first adress for keeping the material quality. Ideally a number of editors should be able to have sufficient knowledge to be surveyors for an article, but that's the scope and we will likely start with single persons being responsible. That no system is foolproof is another lesson, but that can be used as an argument against anything. What really matters, do we improve our encyclopedia by banning vandalism, unsourced POV pushing and pseudocitations from high quality material? High quality material is usually in a state that needs little alteration, but consumes constantly lots of energy to keep to the standards because of unqualified edits. I conclude from our discussion that we have reached a state where we can present this new idea to the whole project and see their reactions. Wandalstouring (talk) 12:41, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Reevaluating our peer review and A-class review system

Its becoming increasingly obvious to certain project members that our peer review and our A-class review process are turning out article that are well short of FAC material, and in my opinion it has reached the point at which we can no longer afford to stand by idly and allow the current system to continue. This was mode very clear to me during the updating of the now FA-class article Montana class battleship: absolutely no compliants during the GA review, one minor hicup concerning sources at A-class review, and then nearly 60 kbs worth of objectionable content at FAC. With our projects reputation for being one of the best run projects here we owe it to ourselves to rework the in house reviews to better enable articles heading for FAC to clear the process without objections over things that ought to have been brought up and addressed in reviews leading up to FAC.

For my part, I would propose a solution in which our peer review process would be retooled to adress issues related to design and layout, spelling and grammar, and MoS compliance copy editting, while A-class review would concern itself with an articles sources (both the sources themselves and the ensurence that all aplicable information is sited within the citation templates), higher level copyeditting, compliance with MoS on issues such as HYPHEN and DASH, and things of this nature. In this manner, I hope that by the time articles here clear A-class they should for all intents and purposes be in a position to clear FAC with few (if any) remaining unresolved issues. In addition, by doing this, we can better the reputation of our A-class assessment scheme when compared with the GA-class system.

Obviously, any such effort to radically restructure these two processes demands concsensus from the other eight of you that this is in fact something we need to address, and would require consensus from the project members to retool the system to allow us to better address the issues our articles are likely to recieve when going through FAC. Does anyone else have any input on this? TomStar81 (Talk) 04:51, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

You've beaten me to it on this. I too identify the major problems as copy (prose) and sources. I'll invite SandyGeorgia to comment here, I think. Having said that, there is much focus on copy at FAC because it is a relatively easy target (ie you don't have to be a specialist in the subject to comment on the text). --ROGER DAVIES talk 05:05, 13 June 2008 (UTC)
Keep in mind that we have only limited manpower available. So we should ask ourselves what kind of review should eliminate what kind of errors for an article to move smoothly to FA. Copyediting is something almost everyone can easily comment on, but it doesn't make any sense to suggest a copyedit for an article that isn't in FAC, except grammar for grammar issues. Sources and MoS issues should be at FAC level for A-class articles, but minor content issues may exist as well as the need for a copyedit. Peer reviews are for Start- and B-class. The intention is to bring them at least to B-class and pave the way for A-class. Sources is again an issue, as well as structure, content, grammar and MoS compliance. I don't know whether anything else is to be added, but I think that gives the general picture of what should be. The problem that our reviews don't comply with that may be helped by introducing a more formalized review like our B-class checklist. Instead of yes or no complete comments get inserted and there should always be a field for additional comments that are not covered by our blueprinted list. Wandalstouring (talk) 08:01, 13 June 2008 (UTC)
I agree that there's now far too much emphasis on MOS issues at FAC and its pretty frustrating - but we can't do anything about it. Our A-class reviews generally do a great job of getting the content up to FA standard, but there isn't a focus on MOS. Personally, I don't have a major problem with this: there are other places where editors can seek advice on MOS issues, but this is by far the best place for comments on the content of military history articles. I would suggest that when editors are congratulated on 'their' article passing an A-class review they be reminded that MOS needs to be spot-on to pass FAC and be given links to the relevant help points. As an aside, Tom's articles may not be the best examples to cite in this context: while their content is generally great, his reliance on other editors to fix his grammar and spelling isn't doing him any favours. Nick Dowling (talk) 10:14, 13 June 2008 (UTC)
I'll echo Wandalstouring here: peer review is meant to be inclusive of lower-class articles, and therefore needs to pay more attention to substantive content and structure than to copyediting. It does us no good to churn out well-written articles with major content holes, after all.
More generally, this is a question of what we want the reviews to select for. The A-Class review was not, originally, intended to be a preliminary FAC (hence all the notes that articles passing it may require further copyediting), and isn't really well-designed to function in that sense. Peer review is even more rudimentary; we basically set up a project-internal way of getting comments on an article, without even considering whether compliance with any particular requirement would be needed.
I'd go so far as to say we oughtn't touch peer review at all—many articles will never be taken to FAC, and not everything we do needs to be centered around that goal—and instead turn the A-Class review into a straightforward preliminary FAC; articles going through it would be examined for full FA criterion compliance, and, once passed (and having received an A-Class rating, perhaps, but only as a side effect of the process), the article would presumably be ready for the "automatic" FAC passage you're looking for. A-Class would then become a truly temporary rating (if it were retained at all), simply marking articles that the project believed to be ready for FAC until they actually passed FA.
The main drawback of this is that, to run a true pre-FAC, we'd need to allow for considerable extension of the reviews' duration, and I'm not sure that would be feasible in practice. Kirill (prof) 12:59, 13 June 2008 (UTC)
An even more radical reform is possible, incidentally: simply combine the two existing review processes into a simple workshop/review that would both (a) allow general comments on any level of article but also (b) when closed, provide an answer to the question of whether the article is ready to be taken to FAC. Such an approach would maximize the available manpower by concentrating attention in a single process, and would avoid the problem of having to determine which level of review something should be handled in.
(If we want to take it to its logical conclusion, we could even get rid of the concept of A-Class as a true assessment level entirely, and simply put "passing" articles into a "ready for FAC" queue instead; they could then simply be nominated for FAC either by the primary editor(s), or by another project member if the primary editor did not wish to do so. Subsequently failing FAC would be treated as a flaw in our review system rather than simply as a case in which to fall back to an A-Class rating. But this is somewhat tangential to the question of re-scoping the reviews.) Kirill (prof) 13:21, 13 June 2008 (UTC)
In my opinion, there are currently many A-class-rated articles which would not be even close to FA status (maybe closer to GA). I would say that only in the past few months (beginning with the last coordinating tranche) the A-class review became more rigorous. About one year ago articles were promoted much easily to A-class and few of them can even be demoted now (see: Tent Pegging, promoted in September 2006 after a loose A-class review, and demoted last week). In conclusion, I support Kirill's idea that we should get rid of the A-class rating. Therefore, existing A-class articles should undergo a GAN/FAC (depending on their current quality level), and would be further demoted/promoted to GA/FA. --Eurocopter (talk) 13:47, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Roger Davies asked me to comment; I'm not sure I'd say I see a decline in MilHist quality or that the MilHist articles have had particularly difficult FACs, but I do have a couple of general comments. I've seen three changes at FAC since about February. The biggest change I've seen has been in terms of "Tony's prose quality footprint". Tony used to be almost alone in reviewing for prose; now there are at least half a dozen reviewers who check prose, and many of them have always believed that prose is the weakest area of FAC and standards need to improve. Since I'm not a prose guru, I've never agreed that it's the weakest area, but most of them do say that. I always believed sourcing was the weakest area, and I was typically (months ago) frustrated to be the only reviewer checking sources; now Ealdgyth is checking sources to a much greater degree than I ever did, so that's another big change; sources really need to be checked before approaching FAC now. The third big change is in image licensing; until recently, almost no one was checking images at FAC, and now we have three editors checking for that. So, I wouldn't focus too much on the MoS issues (although getting an inhouse expert wouldn't hurt); there is nothing new there (IMO), MoS issues are easily fixed at the end of a FAC, and I can assure you all that a FAC is not going to fail over dashes and hyphens (notice how quickly and easily Epbr123 resolve the minor MoS issues on Montana class battleship). The areas of focus should be prose and sourcing. The other change (brought about by the way I process the page) is that articles can stay at FAC longer and receive more scrutiny. By promoting daily, I'm able to keep the list size down, while allowing each nomination to run a bit longer if needed, so that more attention can be given to bringing articles to standard. Hope this helps, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:05, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

It was never about a decline in our article quality, it was more along the lines of FAC got tougher all of a sudden, in particular with things that never used to be issues. Its a constant here, change is, and all us need to adopt to the changes; its just that in this case I think the changes there somewhat underscore what we look for here. Our reviews are more for checking that everything is in order, but I raised the point because I perceive a shortfall in what we do to improve articles here and whats being checked for over at FAC. I grant that Montana class battleship is a somewhat bad example since I do rely on others to mopup my sp&g related problem in articles I write, but it seemed to me that more could have been done with the article at the lower levels in advance of the articles FAC.
Also, I'd like to here more about Kirill's idea to combine the review process, that sounds interesting and may have some potential, but I am not sure I like the idea of getting rid of A-class. If we wish to tighten up the class reviews to make more of a pre-FAC run then perhaps we could copy the FAC criteria and ask A-class reviewers to evaluate on it, but allow for one or two shortcomings in promotion (like closing an article as A-class even though it may need a few more reliable sources or better NPOV compliance or issues such as this). We could also propose a time limit on A-class articles (say 90-days or so) to get to and pass an FAC before automatically being reclassified as GA-class. I have no idea how hard that might be, but its something to think about. TomStar81 (Talk) 19:31, 13 June 2008 (UTC)
In a sense, it may have gotten tougher all of a sudden because the three factors happened at about the same time: Ealdgyth began reviewing Every Single Source, more editors began reviewing prose, and three editors began reviewing images. I guess my point is to not make the mistake of thinking it's about MoS issues, since I've not seen any change on that front. Also, in another way, MilHist took a hit on minor ref formatting and MoS issues when I became FAC delegate, because I used to regularly do any minor cleanup needed on MilHist articles myself, since I knew there were going to make it and were worth the effort. I suggest tapping in to Maralia or Epbr123 or Karanacs :-) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:19, 14 June 2008 (UTC)
Unwatching now; please ping me if further feedback is needed. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:25, 14 June 2008 (UTC)
As far as my suggestion for the combined reviews goes, I'd combine several reforms:
  1. Discontinue the separate A-Class review in favor of concentrating all attention on a comprehensive peer review.
  2. Discontinue the use of per-editor comment sections in the peer reviews.
  3. Instead, set up the {{WPMILHIST}} template such that new peer review subpages are pre-loaded with a checklist-like section structure that covers all of the FA criteria in a suitable level of detail. This would allow reviewers to comment on each criterion individually, and ideally to reach agreement through the review on whether each criterion was met.
  4. The archiving of peer reviews would now involve not only moving them to an archive page, but also making a notation regarding which criteria had been passed and which had not been.
  5. An article with all criteria met after a review would be flagged—explicitly or otherwise—as a desired FAC candidate. We could, potentially, use the "A-Class" label for this; but I think it'd be somewhat simpler to just not use that, and keep the run-up to FA more informal.
Parts of this could be implemented in isolation, of course; there's no need, per se, to do this within the peer review as opposed to just having it in an A-Class review. But I think that, given the level of effort doing such a review properly will entail, that it'd be in our interest to concentrate the project's attention on it rather than spreading it out over multiple review stages. Kirill (prof) 00:31, 14 June 2008 (UTC)
  1. A-class review is our best review with the most activity. Discountinuing it is like shooting into our own leg. Please keep in mind that it is no FAC review, so naturally there should be issues if an A-class wants to make it to FAC.
  2. Reasonable suggestion.
  3. Whether or not a checklist like structure should include all FAC criteria is another question. First we have to answer what our scope is before we set standards and procedures. An article taking a peer review is unlikely to make a successful FAC review anytime soon, rather it is going to make it to GA- and A-class. So we have to concentrate on giving advice how to bring articles to that level with the peer review.
  4. We already have a B-class checklist that will be in use for most articles that passed peer reviews. Another checklist makes things messy and difficult to understand. It is enough if a structured peer review gets archived. Implemeting a new structure with a chapter dedicated to each criteria (we need still to establish), instead of a chapter for every reviewer, is easily readable and sufficiently open for discussions.
  5. I agree that an article that gets a good peer reviw should simply run to the next review. We could make a formal suggestion at the end of the peer review for what type of next review step an article is fit.
I strongly disagree that our A-class review should be held to the FAC standards, making it a FAC review before the FAC review and o wonder the A-classes pass FAC with little trouble. We don't have the manpower dedicated to prose issues(look at the backlog for copyedits at our logistics) and it is a good thing someone does that at FAC. What we do have and what FAC does not have is someone more or less familiar with the topic. That's our strength and that's the issue we must enforce in A-class. Next thing is the use of sources, we are able to take a look at that and so we should. Image licensing on the other hand is an issue we are not familiar with, so leave it at FAC as well as the prose that can be much better done by a specialist on that who has no clue about the content. Wandalstouring (talk) 09:59, 14 June 2008 (UTC)
I'm not sure if I was clear about what I meant by "checklists"; I was referring to something like this. Kirill (prof) 14:18, 14 June 2008 (UTC)
Now we are talking about the same structure, but the content aims too high for a peer review. Make it fewer and essential points. If the structure is too long, it won't be fully employed, leaving us with as much results as without. Wandalstouring (talk) 15:15, 14 June 2008 (UTC)
Well, this was based on my point about combining the two reviews. If we don't want to do that, then the FA-criterion structure would be better off in the A-Class review; the peer review could just use a simpler structure based on the B-Class criteria instead.
The key question, in my mind, is whether we want one review process or two (or even some form of multi-stage process, like what FAR/FARC uses). The changes to how each process is set up are going to be dependent on how many we wind up with, and what the relationship between them needs to be. Kirill (prof) 15:43, 14 June 2008 (UTC)
I suggest to discuss this key question on a projectwide basis. Wandalstouring (talk) 17:40, 14 June 2008 (UTC)
For the peer review, I suggest the Wikipedia:Good article criteria and for A class we may use part of the FAC criteria, but with minor emphasize on image licensing and style that should be at least at GA level. If there are no objections, I will present our discussion on the main talk page. Wandalstouring (talk) 10:13, 15 June 2008 (UTC)
I don't think working towards the GA criteria is useful unless we're going to push articles to GA status. We should pick our goal and work towards it consistently, rather than trying to cover everything; it's my opinion that the best results for us will be obtained by focusing on the FA criteria, or a subset of them, at every stage in the review process. Kirill (prof) 14:17, 15 June 2008 (UTC)
I'd be happy if we can take a much firmer proposal there. For instance, with examples of how this would actually work in practice. --ROGER DAVIES talk 11:01, 15 June 2008 (UTC)
Well, I don't know how we can come up with a concrete proposal before we've actually decided the basic issues:
  1. How many review processes should there be?
  2. Should they be single-part or multi-part reviews?
  3. What criterion set should each review focus on?
A draft implementation isn't going to be meaningful until these are answered, in my opinion. Kirill (prof) 14:24, 15 June 2008 (UTC)
That's exactly my view too: that there's still a way to go before we present anything to the project at large. --ROGER DAVIES talk 15:33, 15 June 2008 (UTC)
My question is this: do we want to discuss the basic issues here until we can come up with a single proposal and then present it to the project, or ask the project for feedback on the basic issues and then work from that towards an implementation plan? I think at least the matter of one comprehensive FA-oriented review versus multiple differently-oriented reviews is something we could easily sound out the membership on; and that would give us a starting point for more detailed planning. Kirill (prof) 16:07, 15 June 2008 (UTC)
I have been reading several article milestones and changed my mind. Our problem is not that our review system is insufficient, but that we exclude the GA reviews. Because of that it isn't always certain whether or not our A-class ranks above or below GA. If we run both reviews via our infrastructure we are likely to get more consistent GA reviews and sharpen the awareness of editors for the difference between A and GA. Now, an A-class is just better than a B-class, but not yet FA material.
My proposal for the A-class review is to use the FA standards with a slight change on
1. It is (a) well-written: its prose is engaging, even brilliant, and of a professional standard;
We don't have the resources to enforce that, so let's make it clear prose in professional style and idiomatic English.
The peer review seems to be useable for high and low quality articles. I suggest to keep it in the existing structure, but make it a content oriented review only. The other fields are covered by B, GA, A and FA sufficiently for all article levels. Wandalstouring (talk) 16:54, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

(od) I have been following the discussion with considerable interest, especially some of the radical proposals put forward. Perhaps it might be helpful to focus briefly on various review components and see where that leads us.

B-Class

This seems to be fine. We have robust quality-based criteria in place, which broadly are implemented consistently, and the recent BCAD drive cleared out much of the dead wood. In short, if it's not bust, don't fix it.

GA Class

We could consider revisiting the debate about this, and review whether we wish to participate more actively in it. I'll declare now my general opposition which is based on (1) the difficulty of evaluating specialist material by non-specialists; and (2) huge variations in the quality of reviewers, from grossly incompetent to utterly superb.

Peer review

At last, this seems to be working and the panel of reviewers is broadening. (By the way, please comment in at #Review awards above.) I think it's a mistake to change this much now. However, I think we should make a Milhist peer review mandatory for all ACR articles and the PR should be closed before the ACR starts. Failed ACR articles should be peer reviewed once again prior to resubmission.

A-Class

FAC reviewers are setting higher standards. The two main areas of concern are sources and prose. We need to build in procedures to address these specific issues. A simple approach is for each reviewer to comment on the article overall and then additionally specifically pass or fail on sources and prose. (This would probably need a header template for each ACR.) An alternative approach is to significantly raise the bar on A-Class, push the standards very close to FA, and for the project to certify the article as FAC-ready once it has passed the ACR. If we can ensure quality control, I see this as significantly easing the path at FAC. This will probably, in time, reduce the number of borderline or frivolous opposes at FAC (they're not all well-founded) and thus reduce the stress/burden of candidacy. Broadly, though, I'm against anything too taxing or too complicated as this will surely reduce the number of reviewers participating.

FA Class

Too often, articles go from ACR to FAC in a matter of hours, with ACR advice – usually about prose quality or MoS requirements – ignored. I don't think is fair either on the ACR reviewers or the FAC reviewers and, frankly, Milhist editors should withhold support.

Reactions? --ROGER DAVIES talk 17:49, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

The GA has just the same problems as the B-class review. One reviewer has a checklist and tries to evaluate an article about a topic he often has no clue about. I faced that during BCAD and we encounter this constantly with the tag&assess drive. For this reason I see GA just as an enhaced version of our B-class assessment with a longer and more detailed checklist. You can not support one of these processes and condemn the other. Wandalstouring (talk) 18:43, 15 June 2008 (UTC)
On a conceptual level, yes; but the question, in my mind, is not so much whether GA review is a good thing in and of itself, but whether it has a necessary role to play in the gap between our B-Class and A-Class reviews. Personally, I don't think there's much to be gained by having yet another review step that's basically a more complex version of the B-Class one; as you point out, we already do the one-reviewer-with-a-checklist thing once, and I don't think doing it a second time will be particularly useful. Kirill (prof) 21:00, 15 June 2008 (UTC)
We could perhaps simply give a bit more internal structure to the A-Class reviews, then? If the review has pre-defined sections for commenting on specific issues, I would expect that reviewers will comment on them without the need for further prodding; depending on what issues we define, we can control how close to FAC the review becomes.
This has the benefit of being a fairly minimal change to the overall process; everything will work more or less as it has before, except that the A-Class review will be less free-form and more oriented towards the concrete criteria that we need to be working to. Kirill (prof) 21:00, 15 June 2008 (UTC)
I think this makes sense; specific sections for sources and possibly prose should be added to the ACR. The main issue I see at FAC at the moment is prose, usually Tony amongst others, who have very high and exacting standards. I am also dismayed, as I believe Roger is, at editors who simply ignore the comments in A-Class about prose and MOS. I think it should made clear that editors will oppose at FAC if they take it towards that process. Woody (talk) 21:12, 15 June 2008 (UTC)
Concur with Sandy that it's not MOS, but rather prose and sources, that are making reviews 'harder' lately. This is a good thing - MOS tweaks don't really make better articles, but better prose and sources do.
I'm generally in favor of The One Review. I have reservations about 'and then anyone could nominate it for FAC', but that's a detail. I have a hard time making myself wade through the current Review page; will think about why that is. Maralia (talk) 21:34, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Sorry for my long absence here, I've been doing catch-up reading and haven't had much time for official business. I apogize for any inconvience this may have caused. From reading through the above posts it seems to me that we all seem seem to in favor of a change, though the extent of that change remains somewhat hazy. Given that we have several different ideas on the table for change at the moment, I think now might be a good time to add this to our announcement template and bring this up on the main project talk page and see what everyone else thinks. We can through out our observations and suggestions on the matter and see if anyone agrees with them, or if anyone else has a better idea as to how best to address this issue. Any objections to going public with this now? TomStar81 (Talk) 23:26, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

I have no problems with mentioning it in announcements but it may be a bit premature to do anything else just yet.
It seems there are two main schools of thought here. The first favours the beefed-up ACR, with specific additions on prose and sources. The second prefers a new One Review system. As the first is crystallised, may I suggest that we firm up the second a little more? We could then take both to the project for reactions.
--ROGER DAVIES talk 16:23, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
It's more the fact that a lot of articles can get away with A-class without formatting their citations (if the author can't be bothered), sometimes even with just a url that isn't filled out, which is worse than GA frankly. But I guess I should patrol it more and educate people on how to get these things done. The prose isn't worth fixing unless the other stuff is in order, frankly. The other thing is liberal attitudes towards dubious sources like on that tank Heuschrecke 10 article. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 02:03, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
I have cooked an example that includes B-class and GA (the minimum for A-class criteria that need to be established) criteria under respective chapters. It is possible to include the FA criteria (but not on a workstation without copy&paste) into the same structure. The problem is that printing all these criteria before each review may seem disturbing to the reader. I suggest to have the different criteria for each chapter listed in a collapseable template. Wandalstouring (talk) 13:40, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
The criteria are basically proper subsets, no? In other words, if we just list the FA criteria, then the B & GA criteria would automatically be covered. I think that if we do go with a single-review model, we should focus exclusively on the path to FA, without going off on tangents for every subsidiary level the article might achieve. (From the perspective of usefulness to the authors, a FA-oriented review seems like it would provide more feedback, and minimize the need for multiple review sessions.)
I'm not convinced it's worth including the B-Class criteria in a formal review in any case, since that level is mostly dealt with by routine assessment. Kirill (prof) 13:46, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
I think you missed the essence of the single review process(I don't support, but still). Any level of article must be assessed and FA criteria are only a workable approach for FA and A-class, but not for the lower classes. Wandalstouring (talk) 13:49, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
I don't agree. It's possible to comment on even a stub with reference to the FA criteria. Granted, the comments might be somewhat general (e.g. "Comprehensive - not met, needs to not be a stub"); but I think it's more valuable for an editor to have a clear and complete picture of what they need to do going forward than it is to get a partial review and then discover that the goal posts get moved every time they improve the article. Kirill (prof) 13:53, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
So we are basically stuck with two single review systems. One is FA reviews for everything and the other is different review levels in one process. That's also a presentable result. Wandalstouring (talk) 13:57, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
Fair enough.
If we want to make things a bit more complicated, incidentally, there's another way to implement your model as well: have the review start out with the B-Class criteria, and then transition to the later ones as needed, similarly to how a FAR transitions to a FARC. But, admittedly, that might be too complex to work in practice. Kirill (prof) 14:03, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
Not if we list all criteria for a certain article levels and let the reviewer choose which level is fulfilled. The lowest level the reviewers agree upon is the article level. Wandalstouring (talk) 14:16, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
Just a comment from a non-coordinator: In part, I think the issue becomes adaptation. Seeing as all three changes were implemented a relatively short time ago (four months), it's become a case of our project adapting to the changes. I've noticed that, gradually, the ACRs have become significantly harder over the last three months that I've been back (you look at some of the ACRs from, say, February, and they weren't half as rigorous as some of the ones going on right now). For example, I learned tons from undergoing my first FAC this month, and it is my intention to be significantly more prepared for the next one. It simply becomes "can we learn from issues that have sprung up in the past?" IMHO, to scrap ACR wouldn't be in our best interests (for many of the reasons Wandalstouring mentioned above), and yet it can't remain stagnant and in the form that it currently is. In short, we need to learn from the issues that have appeared, and we need to increase the standards for the ACRs accordingly, but scrapping them entirely is not the method to do so. Respectfully, Cam (Chat) 03:26, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
I would have some slight modifications of the A-class review. When we suggest to comment on sources and style as a prerequisite in A-class reviews, we should also emphasize constructive criticsm. Thus we are providing ideas how the issues could best be solved. For this purpose I suggest to empty the backlog of our logistics departement's section on copyediting of any material without processing it. New entries should be limited to material that didn't make A-class or passed A-class, but not FAC because of style or passed A-class with a note on style issues. Currently we have a large backlog and the system just doesn't work. I hope to change this by limiting it to promising material only and thus encouraging our copyeditors to participate in bringing articles to high standards (ain't there shiny medals for this?). Wandalstouring (talk) 14:53, 21 June 2008 (UTC)
Given that the League of Copyeditors apparently just went the way of the dodo, I suspect this may be a matter worthy of separate attention. Kirill (prof) 22:07, 22 June 2008 (UTC)
Agree with Wandalstouring and Kirill on both counts. This may also be an opportunity to enlist ex-LOCE copy-editors.--ROGER DAVIES talk 22:15, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Arbitrary section break (I)

Comment: I don't know if someone has mentioned this, but in my (admittedly short) experience I've found two out of three times that the A-class review is more productive, in terms of improving the quality of the article, than the peer review. This is why with Leopard 2E I started the peer review to see if any editors were interested (I've also found that if there are no 'immediate' responses (well, over a span of two or three days) then the chance of an in depth review is actually fairly low. So, what's the difference between the peer review and the A-class review? The same comments made in both apply to both, and I can change issues quickly. The A-class review actually seems to get more responses, because it seems as if people are more interested in maintaining the quality of the WikiProject, as opposed to just helping editors out by peer reviewing their work - whether this is good or bad, in my opinion, is not relevant, but the fact that I get more out of an A-class review is. JonCatalan (talk) 10:08, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Thats one of the reason we have coordinators, and thats something that I do try to get active in when I can (though I admit that there are a number of articles that I do not check, mostly do to RL concerns). Do you think that combining the two processes (PR and ACR) to for One United Review would help at all? Something like initiating a Peer review and having it evolve into an A-class review like FAR/FARC does? TomStar81 (Talk) 01:07, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
Except keep in mind that many people use Peer Reviews for lower-grade articles that are, quite frankly, a long ways off from being of A-Class quality (suggestions for Start-Class articles, improvements to get from B to GA, etc). Jon, I will agree with you entirely on that. I've gotten significantly more out of the two ACRs I've been part of (BoVR & Operation Varsity) than I have out of the peer-reviews I've initiated. The problem is that you're not always guaranteed a significant response in a peer-review. You are in an ACR. Cam (Chat) 03:26, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
Thats one of the reasons we have the article reviewer award, its an attempt to get people out there to help the PR process. And I know all about the difference between ACR and PR, I put my project related articles on the PR system on a yearly basis to ensure they still meet the standardsa and routinely all I get back are one or two comments in areas I already new needed help. Thats why I do make an effort to provide PR feedback, to the best of my ability. And just so we understand each other, I am aware that the PR process is largely used for articles that have a long way to go before the achieve any signifigant rating on the assessment scale, so I am not in favor of combining the two processes, but for the sake of exploration on the point I am trying to entertain the notion to see what others may or may not have to say about the idea. TomStar81 (Talk) 23:54, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
Thats true, we would have to figure some way to make the thing "evolve" so to speak, like if at meets all B-class reviews by the end of the peer review it becomes am A-class review (or something along those lines). We could, if we combine the two, require the people filing for peer reviews to state whether they want the peer review to evlove into an A-class review or not. At the moment we are just throwing out ideas, and to point out an earlier comment above we are not even sure if the community will take to the idea of messing with the review system; it may be that we are simply not seeing the improvement in our in house reviews that others are. That said, I still think we could do better, otherwise I wouldn't have brough tthis point up in the first place. TomStar81 (Talk) 04:38, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
Combing them is far too complicated. Just make a suggestion for the next review step to take or not to take after each peer review. Wandalstouring (talk) 05:58, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
Rightly or wrongly, I see PR and ACR as completely different animals.
  • PR is for longer-term in-depth review, usually focused mostly on content (The best results seem to come when the nominator actively seeks out major contributors to closely related articles and asks them to weigh in, rather relying on passing reviewers.)
  • ACR is focused on awarding an accolade, with tighter criticism, and an eye on FAC. However, ACR is not at its best if reviewers simply post "Support - looks good" etc.
Perhaps we might highlight this in the relevant instructions? --ROGER DAVIES talk 06:15, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

That would be a good place to start. If we hold the ACR to be above GA but below FA then perhaps we could inform people that they should consult both assessment scales to determine whether or not they wish to support. Even more radically, we could try out a project similar to the one we currently have running with VG and see about sharing review assets with league of copyediters or other independent groups that could judge the material to high standards and maybe catch things we are more prone to miss. I'm not sure how successful the latter effort would be though; my hunch is not very. TomStar81 (Talk) 07:33, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

What I like the most out of peer review is the copyediting that may come from it, which is crucial in my opinion (for example, the Verdeja (tank) and Lince (tank) articles would not be the same without the extensive copy editing so many people put into it. My main concern is that this copy editing could come from an A-class review, as well. But, I agree that peer review is necessary for articles that do not cut it for A-class. Perhaps there could be instructions (as suggested above) that tell users what each is for. Peer review could be for articles that do not make, or barely make, B-class and A-class can be for articles that are clearly B-class. On the other hand, we could unite the two (as also suggested above); it would begin as a peer review, and if one of the coordinators (or another selected group of editors) believe it can be put up for A-class it can be suggested and a vote could be held? As for GA and A-class, I honestly tend to put articles for both reviews simultaneously, because I've found that the GA reviews actually help improve the prose and article content as much as a peer review. I should mention that what I look for more in these three reviews is for improvement of the prose and article content. MoS issues mentioned in the FAC are easy to fix, even if sometimes tedious. JonCatalan (talk) 15:59, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
How should a unification of the peer review with the A-class review be technically implemented? I have serious doubts about the feasability and stay at my point of view that A-class reviews or else can be suggested in peer review, but, to keep it short and simple, as a seperate process. Wandalstouring (talk) 14:36, 21 June 2008 (UTC)
I went through the eyestrain of rerereading this whole thing and took a few notes on where exactly we stand on the matter at the moment. I have placed them here so as to see if what I got out of the rereread is infact correct.
  • The major problems with articles FAC bound are copy and prose issues, source issues, and copyeditting issues
  • We should keep the peer review because it is benifical to articles in all of the currently active assessment classes within our project. This point has support from other editers in the above section
  • Turn our A class review into a preliminary FAC.
  • Combine ACR and PR into One Big Review. There is mixed support for this idea, most seem to combine the PR and the ACR since ACRs provide needed feedback for article improvement.
  • Get rid of ACR altogather. This has some support and some oppose, in the case of the former it appears to be from those who want One Big Review, in the case of the latter it appears to be from those who feel the ACR does a better job of getting community input.
  • Reintroduce the GAC into our lineup, allowing for more GA class articles in the scope to provide a more clearly defined line between B and A class. This doesn't have much support since the GA reviews are not usually familar with the material and becuase the quality of the GA reviews fluxuates on a case by case basis.
  • Restructure the ACR to some extent to better handle FAC issues. The restructuring appears to be built around the concept of a checklist.
  • Require downtime between the end of an ACR and the start of an FAC so as to address any remaining issues from the ACR. How exactly we could implement, much less enforce, this idea is beyond me, but it warrents a look into since it may alow for a better handling on current FAC based issues.
Of the above option the best one to me appears to be the proposed restrucutring of the ACR to some extent. This would allow the PR system to remain intact, allowing articles of all class standing to benifit from the PR process. It would also allow our ACR to adopt to the changing tides at FAC and do so independently of the general review process. It was noted above that this is already happening to a certain extent, as those participating in ACRs have started tightening up their input on the points raised at FAC.
Outside of the above suggestion, I think the other option that has the most support are the idea to combine the two review process to create One Big Review. Given that these seem to be the options with the most support, we could concievably present both to the project now and see what the others think about the issues, but I would like to here back from the rest of you before making any move to put something of this nature out on the main project talk page. TomStar81 (Talk) 00:20, 24 June 2008 (UTC)
Thanks a lot for doing the same thing twice. Wandalstouring (talk) 08:10, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Moving forward

  • Just want to make sure you're aware of the new "C-class" (WP:FCDW/June 16, 2008) which effectively raises the standard for B-class to closer to GA. Also, there does seem to be a recurring issue of nominators bringing articles to FAC after a less than thorough A-class review (or at least, not as thorough as they used to be from MilHist), or without having corrected the deficiencies, and I am seeing a rather noticeable lack of awareness of MoS issues. Just an FYI as you all move forward. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:49, 22 June 2008 (UTC)
Can we structure this a bit more first to get a focussed discussion? At the moment, it's wide-ranging (brainstorming really).--ROGER DAVIES talk 22:11, 22 June 2008 (UTC)
  1. Scraping the A-class review instead of a GAN/FAC or a general review is an option.
  2. Generally supporting GAN is an option.
  3. There seems to be an agreement that peer reviews should be structured via a checklist and that they are for lower level articles.
  4. The one review process based on FAC criteria has the article level concluded from the lowest level reached for a criteria in the review.
  5. There is an agreement to establish criteria for A-class articles that do focus on sources and possibly prose besides the existing content review.
So all in all, we do support checklists like we introduced with the B-class criteria. The problem is, what should be the content of these checklists and for what review processes should they be used. We have reached a level of conclusion where the project can kick in and voice their opinions. Wandalstouring (talk) 08:48, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
Thanks very much indeed for that. I've just posted a summary to get feedback from the project. --ROGER DAVIES talk 18:50, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Long-running dispute at the World War II article

Over the last few weeks there's been considerable, and suprisingly heated, discussion of how to potray the start date of World War II in its article and this discussion has derailed the efforts to improve the quality of the article. As this is one of our 'flagship' articles, it may be something all coordinators wish to look in on. An attempt to mediate the dispute is now underway at Wikipedia:Mediation Cabal/Cases/2008-06-13 World War II. Nick Dowling (talk) 00:20, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Member category

Category:WikiProject Military history participants seems to have reappeared. I seem to recall that there was a consensus not to have a member category, since it could not be maintained in the same way as an active/inactive list, and since people "joining" the project through it would not be visible via the various watchlists, and would be ignored by any automation that examined the canonical list. Is that still the case?

(Even if it's not, I suspect we ought to rename it to Category:WikiProject Military history members for consistency with our normal usage, incidentally.) Kirill (prof) 03:48, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

I agree that we shouldn't have these for all the reasons you state. Perhaps a little word to Serviam (talk · contribs) (the sole user in the category) about it should suffice. Woody (talk) 12:13, 14 June 2008 (UTC)
I've asked him if he'd be willing to get rid of it. Kirill (prof) 17:23, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Review awards

The busiest reviewers (ACR and PR) for the last quarter were:

Content Review Medals all round? --ROGER DAVIES talk 09:16, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Incidentally, something like this:
Reviewers Jun–Aug 2008
Editor's name Jun PR Jun ACR Jul PR Jul ACR Aug PR Aug ACR Total
[[User: | ]] ([[User talk: |t]] c)
[[User: | ]] ([[User talk: |t]] c)
[[User: | ]] ([[User talk: |t]] c)
would make tallying up a good deal more transparent in future. It could be on a sub-page of the Review Dept. --ROGER DAVIES talk 12:00, 15 June 2008 (UTC)
I'm not a fan of medals (possibly a German complex since 1945), but if it helps to get more people doing reviews, why not. Wandalstouring (talk) 18:35, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

All duly awarded, --ROGER DAVIES talk 02:35, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

The FA-team

Apparently, we have a group of people that can help with FA related material (to a point): the FA-team. Should we add a link to there page from our logistics page/FA-advice essay page? TomStar81 (Talk) 08:11, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

I was under the impression that they only worked on specific "missions", not as a general source for FA help; is that not the case? Kirill (prof) 13:15, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
Not Sure. I got that impression, but wanted a second opinion on the matter before openly adding this to any pages. TomStar81 (Talk) 19:27, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
Just a note from a member of the FAT, FA-Team works on specific missions, you are correct there. However, keep in mind that, in the FA-Team, you've got a list of editors who are capable of being recruited/pressganged to assist with FA-Stuff. If it becomes necessary, there's a few of us from MilHist (notably EyeSerene and myself) who can probably lodge a proposal for assistance on WPMILHIST FA's with little to no opposition. Cam (Chat) 02:00, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

List-class proposal

I was thinking that it would be a good thing if we establish a List-class, in order to properly assess our over 1,400 lists currently rated Stub or Start class. Considering the fact that lists are not articles, we should have a different rating on the quality scale for them. We may also take the List-class rating within WP:Aviation as a model. Thoughts? --Eurocopter (talk) 08:58, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Well, I don't know. Personally, I've never seen the fundamental distinction between lists and other types of articles; aside from the difference in format (i.e. prose), they're fundamentally governed by the same principles; so while the final products (FA v. FL) look somewhat different, they largely meet identical criteria.
If we take that stance, then having a separate class for lists becomes counterproductive, since we can easily track lists up the normal scale, which gives us the various added information it was designed to cover. Kirill (prof) 13:09, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
Let's have the same classes, but slightly different criteria. Wandalstouring (talk) 13:26, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
Do the subsidiary (e.g. B-Class) criteria need to change? I would guess that the current ones are broadly applicable to lists as written; is there something in them that doesn't work across the board? Kirill (prof) 13:29, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
I think it would be much clear and simple for us to have only two quality ratings for lists (L & FL). In my opinion, B-class criteria 3,4 and 5 do not apply in the case of lists. --Eurocopter (talk) 13:43, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
Only 5 is really problematic. Wandalstouring (talk) 13:45, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
5? I could see 3 being somewhat of an issue, since some lists are single-section; but certainly there's nothing preventing a list from having accompanying images (and it's a de-facto requirement for FL status, if I recall correctly). Kirill (prof) 13:47, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
That's doable, I suppose, although it'll be a major departure from how we've traditionally dealt with lists. Moving to this system would involve creating about a hundred new categories, incidentally, so it's not something to be done on a whim.
(Presumably lists wouldn't be eligible for A-Class under this model? We have at least one A-Class list at the moment, if I recall correctly.) Kirill (prof) 13:51, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
Of course i'm conscious that moving to the new system won't be very easy, but it'll be much easier in the future to deal with lists' assessment. Regarding that sole A-class list (an exception), we should leave it as it is (although i'm pretty sure it would successfully undergo an FAC), as i'm convinced that not many lists would be promoted to A-class in the near future. -Eurocopter (talk) 14:31, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
I tend to agree with Kirill: given that the quality of lists varies dramatically, lumping them together into a single category goes against the grain of the quality assessment process. Nick Dowling (talk) 10:15, 18 June 2008 (UTC)
As someone who works on lists, I have to say I don't see the benefit of having a separate assessment category for lists nor for having one, over-arching "list" category. This does not allow us to review these lists outside of FLC, which in my view, would be wrong. Lists should have their quality assessed just the same as all other articles. I see nothing wrong with the current system and frankly, I don't see it taking. It just adds another layer of bureaucracy, and to me as a list writer, seems to come from a top-down viewpoint. Woody (talk) 11:30, 18 June 2008 (UTC)
I see little point in creating an all-in class. I'd personally prefer to see lists and articles follow the same quality path (albeit slightly modified for their differing needs), up to and including FAC. --ROGER DAVIES talk 06:33, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

Non-English sources

Closed: Proposal made at here. --ROGER DAVIES talk 04:51, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

The applicable policy is that, unless a reliable external translation exists, the key stuff from non-English sources is footnooted in the original language with the editor's translation. I'm seeing an increasing number of articles that simply ignore this. Do we think that the policy is unrealistic and should be changed? Or do we need to enforce it more rigorously (by removing sources than don't comply)? Or do we continue to turn a blind eye to policy? --ROGER DAVIES talk 06:25, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

You mentioned this for the Verdeja's A-class review, and I think that it's unrealistic. The books I use go into depth and would make the footnotes as long as the article itself. Besides, if you cannot read the language then it means that you can't verify if what the footnote says is the actual translations (besides, this doesn't have to be malicious on part of the relevant editor, since he can translate it with different words that can have different connotations). JonCatalan (talk) 16:02, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
I mentioned that you should be prepared for the possibility of opposition on grounds of non-English sources. Sources are coming under ever closer scrutiny at FAC and it's only really a matter of time. Whereas, Raul and Sandy do overlook MoS stuff (because MoS is a guideline) they may find it difficult to do so with policy breaches.--ROGER DAVIES talk 17:08, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
I don't overlook this policy, but the one time it came up on a FAC, consensus significantly overruled, so I let it go. Personally, I look at the text being cited; for example, if it's controversial, a direct quote or if it's a BLP issue, I'm not going to let it go without at least putting up a fuss :-) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:13, 22 June 2008 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Mario Vargas Llosa, capped by Ottava Rima, who encountered resistance, but direct quotes and BLP issues were addressed. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:18, 22 June 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for that, Sandy. --ROGER DAVIES talk 23:06, 22 June 2008 (UTC)
The policy is unrealistic and it doesn't make sense to provide translations that can't be verified. Who is able to verify does understand the original source, so there is no need for a translation. The content can also be roughly translated by one of the freely available online translation machines. That is quite often done in scientific research, so why not here. Wandalstouring (talk) 16:12, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
What do you suggest the policy should be replaced with? And are you interested in investing the time to get policy changed? --ROGER DAVIES talk 17:08, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
I agree with Wandalstouring. I know it was just a suggestion, but I used it as an example. The issue in FAC is veriefiability - a translation won't make it more veriefiable. JonCatalan (talk) 17:32, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

Here's the existing text. --ROGER DAVIES talk 07:14, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Existing WP:RSUE text
Because this is the English Wikipedia, for the convenience of our readers, editors should use English-language sources in preference to sources in other languages, assuming the availability of an English-language source of equal quality, so that readers can easily verify that the source material has been used correctly. Where editors use a non-English source to support material that others might challenge, or translate any direct quote, they need to quote the relevant portion of the original text in a footnote or in the article, so readers can check that it agrees with the article content. Translations published by reliable sources are preferred over translations made by Wikipedia editors.

We could suggest a new policy. Wandalstouring (talk) 06:09, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Wandalstouring's draft
Because this is the English Wikipedia, for the convenience of our readers, editors should use English-language sources in preference to sources in other languages, assuming the availability of an English-language source of equal quality, so that readers can easily verify that the source material has been used correctly. Where editors translate a direct quote from a non-English source, they need to quote the relevant portion of the original text in a footnote or in the article, so readers can check that it agrees with the article content. Translations published by reliable sources are preferred over translations made by Wikipedia editors. For other uses of non-English sources indiscriminately apply the same rules of verifiability as for English-language sources.
I made an exception for direct quotes because they may carry nuances in the original language that get lost in translations, so the best is to provide them in the original language. Also, different translations for direct quotes are possible. Providing content from a non-English source is less prone to nuances of translation and unwieldly as a policy because of the reasons above. Wandalstouring (talk) 06:14, 20 June 2008 (UTC)
Else came to my mind to suggest commented translations in a footnote, so the reader is provided with knowledge about all nuances or all recognized translations of a quote. Wandalstouring (talk) 06:27, 20 June 2008 (UTC)
Roger Davies's radical re-write
As this is the English Wikipedia, for the convenience of readers and editors, where published sources of equal quality exist in both English and non-English languages, the English-language version should be used. However there will be occasions when the material exists only in languages other than English. In these circumstances:
* Only reliable sources should be used;
* Content which is subsequently disputed should be supported by direct quotes from the source;
* Direct quotes should be in the original language and in English translation (either in the main article or as a footnote).
I've accommodated the thrust of Wandalsouring's revision in this while trying to prune the original text. Thoughts? --ROGER DAVIES talk 21:51, 22 June 2008 (UTC)
The last (Roger Davies's) version seems appropriate, clear and workable. Nihil novi (talk) 22:16, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

As an editor who commonly uses non-English (Polish) sources, I have several comments. 1) Non-English academic sources should still be preferred to English non-academic sources. The latter can be used in addition, but should not be preferred. 2) Certainly, adding original text and translations is a good idea, but it is, in the end, more work. I tend to ignore this, unless it is a controversial claim that requires extra-ordinary attribution and proof. 3) Sometimes, when equal (or even better) sources exist in English, sure, English would be preferable, but if non-English area (for the particular editor) easier to access, they are acceptable. Overall, I think you guys are going in a good direction.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 22:16, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

I agree. I would not insist on giving direct quotes in the original language, unless their accuracy is questioned. Nihil novi (talk) 22:21, 22 June 2008 (UTC)
Um, if it's not in the original language, it's not a direct quote :) --ROGER DAVIES talk 23:06, 22 June 2008 (UTC)
In that case, it's a moot point. One just cites the source in translation, without giving the text in the original language—unless the content is disputed. Nihil novi (talk) 00:04, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

(od) I've posted a slightly briefer version of the latest revision here as a proposal. All further comments there please, --ROGER DAVIES talk 04:50, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Piotr, you guys are going in a good direction. Although the way it is applied by experienced editors, or at RS/N is consistent and sensible, the present wording is confusing, has parts which are (rightfully) ignored, and is often misunderstood by inexperienced editors (e.g. to mean no translations are legitimate, only English sources.) Will reply at WP:V eventually.John Z (talk) 08:35, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
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