User:Johnrobinrt

John Robin is an author of fiction (as shown here on his Amazon author bio). He is also a nonfiction author on the learning platform Highbrow.com (view his courses here). He is senior editor for Story Perfect Editing Services (view his team bio here). He has a personal website, with a blog, where he shares further information about himself. He is a voracious reader and devotes several hours each week to reading Wikipedia articles, using a strategy to comb through articles with a focus on dynasties, mathematics, general topics (using the vital articles as a guide), language, geography, chronology, and literary works. He is extremely passionate about Wikipedia and believes in its vision, and would like to see further rigor in its articles and accuracy. He will consider this vision met when people in a crowd can agree that Wikipedia facts are as accurate as those cited from the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Important Note
Below are some of the personal projects John has made using Wikipedia, based on his systematic reading:

Vital Articles: Category
This is based on the Vital Articles principle of organizing topics on Wikipedia hierarchically, by way of levels. One of John's specific reading strategies is to read through each article in a variety of specific topics, in order of levels on the Vital Articles. Many times, John finds the numerous links distracting, especially in a major category article such as the one for Language or Mathematics. Being aware of the flow of topics across the 5 levels of the Vital Articles is a good way to ignore such links, knowing that these topics will be covered later.

However, he has noticed that some categories are quite rich in content, meriting more than the Level 5 distinction, which has compelled him to do a personal study of what might merit a "Level 6" for these given categories.

John would like to see this principle applied with other topics, such as Geography, Music, Art, People, and History, if other Wikipedians feel so compelled, but for his own research interests, has focused specifically on expanding:


 * Mathematics (1100 articles at Level 5; 300 articles at Level 4; 52 articles at Level 3)
 * Language (590 articles at Level 5; 197 articles at Level 4; 28 articles at Level 3)
 * Literature (1000 articles at Level 5; 214 articles at Level 4; 8 articles at Level 3)

This following lists, for each category (which are in progress as of October 25, 2019), will lay out each level of Vital Articles in that given category, labelled by level, but organized by further subcategories, from which they are expanded beyond the scope of the Vital Articles Level 5.

The goal of this list is to provide the reader of this page with a curriculum for reading in order, starting with the 5 levels of importance as determined by the collaborative Wikipedia community, then continuing by way of John's own analysis (including assistance through possible future collaboration). Because this list is highly subjective, and ultimately is a tool for John's own use to track his research, it is best published on this page, but it is John's hope that at some point members of the Wikipedia community might find interest in creating a category-specific Vital Articles for certain categories rich in topics well beyond the allotment at Level 5.

Future considerations:
One primary obstacle in considering such extended lists in given categories is that, at such a level, many of the articles delve into obscure topics, meaning many of the articles have not been properly edited or verified. John's hope, in compiling this list, is that it might also serve as a priority list for a team of editors and scholars to focus on these articles, once, for example, all Level 5 articles have been finalized, and thoroughly edited and verified and developed.

In light of John's goal to see Wikipedia become as accurate as the Encyclopedia Britannica, and vastly comprehensive and organized, he would be personally motivated in many of these articles to focus on improving them, either by his own means of the means of his team of educational writers working on such a project over years to come.

Especially in the area of mathematics, there is incentive to re-frame one's interpretation of what a given Wikipedia article functions as. For example, to a homeless student who only has access to Wikipedia to learn math, improving critical pages on mathematics to help those students learn better is a high priority. This can be done by way of improving explanations in articles written by specialists who are poor writers, and providing more examples of mathematical principles.

Motivation:
If you visit the Vital Articles Level 5, Mathematics category, you will notice there are 1100 total articles on at at this level. However, mathematics is one of the richest, most complex topics, and has far more than 1100 important topics.

Under the Vital Articles Level 5 incentive to broadly expand the concept of identifying the 50,000 most important articles of Wikipedia's nearly 6,000,000 articles in English (as of October 25, 2019), it makes no sense to add another level, i.e. "Level 6", because 50,000 is already enormous!

But to a specialized researcher wanting to survey several thousand important articles in a category, such as mathematics, the allotted segment of 1100 articles on mathematics is very small. John Robin personally is motivated to expand this since, as part of his practice, he reads articles on mathematics to enhance his skills teaching students of mathematics. He would like to have an exhaustive list to keep him going well past 1100 articles, which would delve into the nuances of sub-topics, while functioning like a textbook that guides the student on to further reading, once certain critical articles are read and internalized.

John's goal is to see Wikipedia become as efficient and central a place for information as any other, providing free, reliable information for anyone, anywhere, and learning mathematics, in John's opinion, is very important for helping readers develop such skills.

Method:
In the same fashion as the Vital Articles, John has a Level 1, Level 2, and Level 3.

Level 1 is a list of the Vital Articles for Mathematics up to Level 4 of the Vital Articles. The principle of Level 1 is this is a starting point if one wishes to conduct a survey of critical topics on Mathematics on Wikipedia.

Level 2 is a list of all topics for Level 5 (including Level 4), organized by categories John has devised. John's goal is to have 2,000 articles in this category.

Level 3 is a proposed expansion of Level 2, which would have 5,000 topics. John will not begin this list until Level 2 is nearly complete. He may begin it as a dumping ground for topics that could fit in Level 2 or 3 but haven't been assigned a priority yet.

If a Level 4 is merited, he may add it once level 3 is complete, possible extending to 10,000 articles.

List:
This list is in progress (the above description is written for the sake of sharing with possible collaborators, while John fleshes out this project).

Motivation:
You can find The Vital Articles Level 5, Language category under the Society and Social Sciences division for Vital Articles Level 5. There are 590 allotted articles for literature at this level, of which there are 270 for specific languages. However, there are far more than 7000 languages.

Under the Vital Articles Level 5 incentive to broadly expand the concept of identifying the 50,000 most important articles of Wikipedia's nearly 6,000,000 articles in English (as of October 25, 2019), it makes no sense to add another level, i.e. "Level 6", because 50,000 is already enormous!

But to a specialized researcher wanting to survey several thousand important articles in a category, such as language, the allotted segment of 590 articles on language is very small. John Robin personally is motivated to expand this since, as part of his practice, he reads articles on language to improve his fantasy world-building. He would like to have an exhaustive list to keep him going well past 590 articles, which would delve into the fuller diversity of language, but also further depth on given languages themselves. While one might say this is ludicrous (traditionally, one who wishes to learn language should study that language through a proper organization or institution, or a specialized website), John's goal is to see Wikipedia become as efficient and central a place for information as any other, providing free, reliable information for anyone, anywhere, and learning languages, in John's opinion, is quite important.

Method:
In the same fashion as the Vital Articles, John has a Level 1, Level 2, and Level 3.

Level 1 is a list of the Vital Articles for Language up to Level 4. The principle of Level 1 is this is a starting point if one wishes to conduct a survey of critical topics on Language on Wikipedia.

Level 2 is a list of all topics for Level 5 (including Level 4), organized by categories John has devised. John's goal is to have 2,000 articles in this category.

Level 3 is a proposed expansion of Level 2, which would have 5,000 topics. John will not begin this list until Level 2 is nearly complete. He may begin it as a dumping ground for topics that could fit in Level 2 or 3 but haven't been assigned a priority yet.

If a Level 4 is merited, he may add it once level 3 is complete, possible extending to 10,000 articles.

List:
This list is in progress (the above description is written for the sake of sharing with possible collaborators, while John fleshes out this project).

Motivation:
You can find The Vital Articles Level 5, Literature category under the Art division for Vital Articles Level 5. There are 1000 allotted articles for literature at this level, of which there are 830 for specific works of literature. However, there are far more than 830 works of literature vital to knowledge.

Under the Vital Articles Level 5 incentive to broadly expand the concept of identifying the 50,000 most important articles of Wikipedia's nearly 6,000,000 articles in English (as of October 25, 2019), it makes no sense to add another level, i.e. "Level 6", because 50,000 is already enormous!

But to a specialized researcher wanting to survey several thousand important articles in a category, such as literature, the allotted segment of 1000 articles on literature is very small. John Robin personally is motivated to expand this since, as part of his practice, he conducts surveys of important books and finds many times, a given work is important but is not found even at level 5 of the Vital Articles. In future, he would like to be able to send students to this list and say, "Read all these articles to help you build your to-read list."

Method:
In the same fashion as the Vital Articles, John has a Level 1, Level 2, and Level 3.

Level 1 is a list of the Vital Articles for Literature up to Level 4. The principle of Level 1 is this is a starting point if one wishes to conduct a survey of critical topics on Literature on Wikipedia.

Level 2 is a list of all topics for Level 5 (including Level 4), organized by categories John has devised. John's goal is to have 2,000 articles in this category.

Level 3 is a proposed expansion of Level 2, which would have 5,000 topics. John will not begin this list until Level 2 is nearly complete. He may begin it as a dumping ground for topics that could fit in Level 2 or 3 but haven't been assigned a priority yet. (Given that there are more than 100,000,000 estimated works of literature published, 5,000 topics is quite a narrow selection. Given also that a fast reader can get through 5,000 books in a lifetime, the logic of having a list of the topmost 5,000 articles on literature is also practical, since it can allow one to access a list of recommended books without marketing bias, i.e. there are many such lists, but they are often published by publishers or personal bloggers recommending their favorite reads, whereas John intends to be systematic, and will hopefully have the assistance of fellow Wikipedians to help him refine this list.)

If a Level 4 is merited, he may add it once level 3 is complete, possible extending to 10,000 articles.

List:
This list is in progress (the above description is written for the sake of sharing with possible collaborators, while John fleshes out this project).