Wikipedia talk:Content assessment/Archive 2

Request for rating?
How or where do I go to request a page to be graded? I dont want to do it, because I wrote the article. Chaldean 06:11, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
 * If there is a relevant WikiProject that carries out assessments, that's the best place to go, since they have the expertise in that subject area. If there isn't such an assessment, one of us can do one, though we are generalists who may lack the specialist knowledge - but we can probably give you some ideas.  If you think the article is "finished" and you want other peoples opinions on what needs doing, another choice would be Peer review, or perhaps try for WP:GA.  If you still want one of us to look at a specific article, let us know here.  Walkerma 06:28, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Thank you for the different ideas. I will see where I can go with them. Chaldean 18:27, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Question
Isn't there a list of articles that are FA class A class GA class and so forth? I remember seeing it before.

&quot;THROUGH FIRE, JUSTICE IS SERVED!&quot; 01:34, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
 * For FA class, you can try looking at Featured articles. For GAs, try Good articles, and for As, try Category:A-Class articles. Tito xd (?!?) 05:21, 20 January 2007 (UTC)


 * (edit conflict) We (at present) don't have global lists like "All A-Class articles", etc, unfortunately the lists are separate for each WikiProject. To take a look at that, the best way is to go to Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Index, and click on the relevant part of the statistics table.   If you click on (say) A, you will get to Category:A-Class articles, a list of all the A-Class categories.


 * If global lists are really important for you, it may be possible to use WP:AWB to do this (I'm not sure!) - failing that, one could certainly write a bot that could generate such lists. Walkerma 05:41, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
 * It'd be more effective to plead to the developers for them to finish coding category unions and intersections... they were working on that, but I don't remember what happened with that. Tito xd (?!?) 05:47, 20 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Last I heard was that actually enabling such functions (or at least the available implementations of them) on en: would cause the servers to slag in short order. :-\ Kirill Lokshin 05:49, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Question about FA downgrading
Why most former featured articles automatically go to class B, not class A or good article on that scale if they are downgraded? --195.50.207.164 21:27, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Class rating and unreferenced articles
I have noticed that I am rating a lot of articles as Start class where other projects are rating them at a B. The discrepancy is most likely the fact that I give almost no weight to facts stated that are not referenced. In the eyes of other contributors, I am curious if others feel we should give a higher rating to a well written article that has not been verified. Alan.ca 08:59, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Sorry I missed this at the time - we had a similar discussion recently here. This seems to be a common difference between assessors and between WikiProjects.  I think one problem here is that references were not common in Wikipedia until about two years ago, and inline refs more recently than that. Only last year I read several FAs that had no formal references at all!  if you have an article written from one or two books, it may only have a couple of general refs, yet be perfectly correct and valid.  The modern WP style would be inline cites for every major assertion, but I know that many pages I wrote don't yet comply with that - but it's simply a matter of more detailed citation, the content is essentially the same.  So I'd suggest proposing the change on the WikiProject where you are active, and see what they say. Cheers, Walkerma 05:47, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

Upside-down lists of works
If you spot a list of works, or a list of awards, that is in reverse-chronological order, please either correct it to chronological order as per the manual of style at WP:LOW, or tag it with the template MOSLOW. This PHP script may also be useful: User:Whilding87/ListReverser.

Order of classes
I think it would be better if A-Class articles should come before GAs. A articles are rated on a single user's decision, where GAs require the review of an outside editor. At the moment, when an FA is demoted it isn't simple to give a GA rating, so A-Class is used instead. According to the current table, that article is of better quality than a GA even tough it hasn't been formally reviewed. -- Selmo  (talk) 21:20, 11 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Um, GAs are rated on a single user's decision too (and A-Class aren't necessarily based on a single user's decision, either). Kirill Lokshin 21:31, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
 * (Incidentally, demoted FAs typically go to B-Class or Start-Class, depending on just how bad they are.) Kirill Lokshin 21:31, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
 * I meant that GAs rated by a third party, A article are not. -- Selmo  (talk) 22:16, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Sure they are. I haven't really seen articles being rated as A-Class by their authors; it's almost always a different editor evaluating it. Kirill Lokshin 22:20, 11 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Demoted FAs cannot be A-Class articles, by the definition of A-Class arhticles: articles that have a substantial chance of passing FAC. They're the type of articles suitable for WP:100K, for example. Tito xd (?!?) 21:55, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
 * But a failed FA can be? Weird! SteveBaker 02:06, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Not that weird; it's an artifact of how FAC/FAR work in practice. A FAC can fail narrowly—it's common, for example, for them to fail over issues such as prose style—but once it passes, an FA will generally not lose that status unless it has fairly substantial problems. Kirill Lokshin 02:24, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

I think the problem goes deeper. An A-class article does not have to have passed GAC. But a better-than-B but not-quite-an-A article that nobody bothered to put through GAC yet cannot be 'GA-class'. This means that some B-class articles may actually be as good as - or perhape even better than GA-class articles. Furthermore, An A-class article might actually be FA quality - but because it hasn't been through the formal step, it can't be classed 'FA' here. So we have a wierd situation where going through the formal processes is a requirement to reach two of the grades - but it's possible to skip the GA step and still be A-class. Very, very strange. I think this may explain why we have an enormous 'bulge' of articles down at B-class and a sudden drop-off in their numbers at GA. I strongly suspect that most assessors are ignoring the bit that says that you can be at A-class without going through GAC and artificially holding all non-GAC articles at B-class. That's really bad news because it's causing people to assume that the encyclopedia is totally snowed under with B-class articles that just aren't being made better. The reality is more likely to be that there are a lot of articles that are actually up to the standard of FA's, A's or GA's - but because their author isn't interested in the fame, the fortune (and the *babes*) that comes with GA status - they are essentially doomed to stay in B-class forever.

The 'fix' for this is to add two new classes - B+ and A+. B+ is intended to be precisely the same quality level as GA and A+ is identical to FA. The only difference being that an article can be graded B+ if the assessor believes this article could make it through GAC if it were submitted - and A+ if the belief is that it would likely make it through FAC if submitted. It may be argued that assessors should not be 'second guessing' the formal processes - but in fact we are already doing that by allowing A-class articles that have never passed GAC.

SteveBaker 02:04, 15 February 2007 (UTC)


 * There's a more obvious answer here, actually: GA status should never have been put into the scheme in the first place. (It was added, incidentally, because some people were blindly assigning an A-Class rating to any article that had a GA tag, and the projects responsible for the assessments were getting understandably upset that an outside group was breaking their assessment process.)
 * I would argue that removing GA-Class from the scheme will largely solve the problem you're describing; there will no longer anything (in the default scenario—some projects have stricter standards) preventing an article from moving smoothly up to A-Class (which is meant to be, essentially, around FA level minus the full-blown review). Kirill Lokshin 02:24, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
 * You can completely bypass GA and head to A-Class or FAC directly. Just ask Hurricanehink. Tito xd (?!?) 03:56, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Kirill is correct about the GA situation, which was dissolving and devaluing the value of A-Class articles in some projects. Also, how would adding A+ and B+ solve the issue? Tito xd (?!?) 03:56, 15 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I think Kirill raises a valid issue that GA doesn't really belong here (indeed we still don't use it at WP:Chem). At the same time it's nice to note that an article has passed GA in the tables - and I suspect that is why the GA level was added in. It has also been helpful as an external reference point for projects new to assessments - they could see how their As and Bs measured up against their GAs and failed GAs. But now there is a body - probably well over a thousand - of people who are experienced at assessing articles, so the community now has a general sense of what an A, B or Start looks like (though there are differences in levels, as we noted here).  Although it is external, I think FA is different to GA, because it is (by definition) the highest level, and there is no overlap or ambiguity with A or anything else.


 * Things are about to get quite busy for me, so I'm reluctant to start a big change, but one possibility might be to get the GA folks to use our bot. (They may be amenable - I think Cedars no longer runs his/her bot for GA - and they have the GA tag on talk pages anyway).  That way we could change GA from an "assessment" to a "comment" - which would remove the B/GA/A problem completely.  A couple of ways we might be able to do this (need to check with Oleg):
 * WP1.0Bot can already recognise an article from any project that is listed as being in Version 0.5 (which uses the bot), and it then posts "0.5" into the Version column. If the GA project were using the same bot, then the bot would be able to recognise GAs in the same way.  We could perhaps get the bot to treat GA like a release version, and paste the term "GA" in the "Version" column alongside "0.5" or "0.7" etc.
 * We could get WP1.0Bot to add "GA" into the comment column. This might involve more code than the first solution, though people might prefer the end result if it can be done easily.

I'm reluctant to add yet another change to the bot - now that the system is so widely used I think no one (esp. Oleg) wants to tinker with the code unless necessary. But if people think (a) this idea is very useful and (b) Oleg can make the change easily, it may be worth looking at. Is this a workable solution? Walkerma 05:17, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Agree wholeheartedly. I think that would solve most if not all problems. - Running  On  Brains  16:14, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure it would be that useful; advanced projects bypass GA if they desire already, but new projects, with a new crop of editors and assessors, use GA as a well-known benchmark. Tito xd (?!?) 02:57, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Speaking from the perspective of a recently reborn wikiproject, I've personally disliked the GA class...it didnt seem to fit to have a peer-assessment level, followed by an internal assessment level, followed by another outside assessment. I just used GA because it was there.  For other wikiprojects, this would change little, as the GA process would still exist, however, assessment is still mainly under the control of the wikiproject. Just my $0.02. - Running  On  Brains  04:23, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Quite frankly, I'd abolish the GA system entirely, but essentially it is the assessment class that bothers me the most. I feel as if the entire point of the project is so that editors who don't feel like putting in the legwork to actually pass FAC muster can still get a pat on the back. Ironically, they've upped the standards so close to FAC now that it's almost as much work to get that GA. Which is why it should go - the single reviewer standard is identical to how assessments work. Making the assessment ladder a straight path which anyone can assign any of the values for, aside from the final FA distinction, is the most efficient and effective scale IMHO.

I also also oppose any attempts to create any new classes. Stub, Start, B, A, and FA are more than enough - people have forgotten the purpose of the assessment - to get a broad, coarsely-grained idea of where a large number of articles collectively stand. While individual articles' assessments give an idea of the overall progress the article will need to make (if any), editors should not take them too closely to heart, as a peer review will be a better indicator of where the article needs to go. Please let's not get too attached to these "grades" as if this were a measure of academic accomplishment. Assessment classification is primarily a method of statistical analysis of groups, not nuanced reviews of individual articles. Girolamo Savonarola 01:07, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

list-Class?
Hi, can someone give me some examples of how the list-Class is intended to be used? Thanks. --ChrisRuvolo (t) 19:28, 16 February 2007 (UTC)


 * It's not, except by the purview of individual WikiProjects; it's not one of the standard assessment levels. Kirill Lokshin 19:34, 16 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Right.. but is it typically used as one of the level qualifiers (in place of the A/B/GA/etc. class), or is it used as another thing entirely, more like the way some project banners have "attention=yes" and it adds a third level of classification? Thanks.  --ChrisRuvolo (t) 20:55, 16 February 2007 (UTC)


 * As I said: it's not standard, so you have to ask the specific project using it what their policy is. Kirill Lokshin 20:59, 16 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Okay, thanks. --ChrisRuvolo (t) 21:09, 16 February 2007 (UTC)


 * We, use it much the same as "Cat-class" and "Template-Class" are also used to indicate a project article, with a clearly defined purpose that is not to be considered in the normal "assessment levels" for grading. Sort of like "NA-class" but with more definitional information contained. :: Kevinalewis  : (Talk Page) /(Desk)  08:41, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

javascript tool to display an article's rating on the article page
Hello, I've developed a proof-of-concept javascript tool that will display an article's assessed rating on the article page itself. It currently does so by prepending the rating to the phrase "From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia"—so it becomes, for example, "A B-class article from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia." It also changes the color of the article title to roughly match the color scheme of the grades.

To try it, you would add the following text to your User:YourUserName/monobook.js file (cut and paste from display page, not edit page):

// Script from User:Outriggr/metadata.js document.write(''); Purposes:
 * increase visibility of article ratings; users can more easily determine that an article's rating is no longer accurate, for example.
 * gives the user an overall sense of how many articles are rated, and need rating.
 * sets a user's expectation for the article's quality.

I welcome any feedback or ideas. Thanks, – Outriggr § 00:20, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Hey, this is great! Simple but very effective!  It can even report on unassessed!  I'll be using it from now on, I'll let you know of any bugs I find. Thanks, Walkerma 05:22, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Oh, I already found bugs... ;) The color for featured article should be bluish (although I see why the gold color is there), but sometimes, the bot doesn't pick A-Class articles, and thinks they're GAs. An example is Tropical cyclone and 1997 Pacific hurricane season. Also, what does it do when there's more than one assessment? When they're different? Tito xd (?!?) 05:28, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks both for the feedback. I also just discovered the A/GA problem earlier tonight. I'll get that fixed soon. For the FA color, I was "going for gold"—but as yellow (B) and orange (stub) are darkened to make suitable text colors, they come too close to gold, so I'll look at making FA blue. In general I still have some color tweaking to do.


 * I'm not going to go down the road of making complicated solutions to the one-article-different-ratings road (frankly, I don't believe that those situations should exist in principle). What I'll do is select the highest of the assessments. I'll communicate back here when I have an update for ya. – Outriggr § 05:42, 25 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I've now changed the script to give precedence to A class over GA - and changed the FA color to blue. ;) Additionally, the script will also notify if the article is a current FA or GA candidate, with a link to the specific FAC or the general GAC page. Let me know if these fixes didn't fix. – Outriggr § 06:46, 25 February 2007 (UTC)


 * This is excellent, makes it significantly easier to view the quality of article and whether it has been assessed, without having to open another talk page, presumably reducing server load as well as making it less annoying to rate. I've let them know over at Category:Unassessed biography articles, because I think it will assist in clearing the backlog. Good job, RHB Talk - Edits 18:25, 26 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the comments. Server load is only reduced if the user doesn't open the talk page; javascript downloads a condensed version of the talk page (wiki markup only), but if the assessment info prevents the user from opening the talk page, there is a net savings. On the whole, though, since it loads the talk page for every article, it is not bandwidth-neutral. I trust this is OK; after all, every time I hover over a diff or link with the "popups" tool it's impacting the server plenty!


 * Actually, what I envision now is making it possible to rank the article from the article page, such that the talk page automatically opens with the updated ranking in edit mode, leaving the user to check the edit and save. That will be a while. – Outriggr § 20:14, 26 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I would like to invite users to help test my recent update to this script: you can select a Wikiproject template and an assessment on the article page, and the talk page will be updated accordingly, in preview mode. Details at User talk:Outriggr/metadatatest.js. – Outriggr § 05:29, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

List class?
Why does "List class" not appear here? There seem to be a bunch of them: Category:List-Class articles. Is it an oversight or should "List class" not exist? Thanks. jhawkinson 23:45, 28 March 2007 (UTC)


 * It's not part of the standard scale; projects that use it do so by their own discretion. Kirill Lokshin 00:33, 29 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Yeah, I was drawing that conclusion. I guess the bug is that projects that do use it should adjust their templates so they do not link back here? For instance, produces List: This article has been rated as List-Class on the assessment scale. and instead it should be careful to link somewhere else? It seems like it might help people trying to figure out exactly what List class was if it (and other non-standard classes? Are there a lot?) were mentioned briefly in this page... jhawkinson 00:53, 29 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Does the project have a place where its own assessment system is explained (e.g. as in Category:WikiProject assessments? That's usually the best link target for this sort of thing. Kirill Lokshin 00:55, 29 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Curiously, it does (WikiProject_Filmmaking/Assessment) but it's not part of Cateory:WikiProject assessments. And more curiously, that list omits List class. *sigh*. Where to begin? Strangely, the template Template:WikiProject Filmmaking knows about it... But I think maybe the larger point was being lost in the specifics of this case; shouldn't 'this page' mention thes e other classes, so that users trying to find out what they mean (in cases like mine, where the links are absent or misdirected) have a chance? jhawkinson 01:08, 29 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Well, that's possible; but, since those extra classes aren't supported by all (or even most) projects, we'd then be dealing with questions of "why doesn't project X's template work with this" all the time. Kirill Lokshin 04:23, 29 March 2007 (UTC)


 * OK, well, I took a stab at what I meant. Feel free to revert, etc. jhawkinson 06:19, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Assessing articles not associated with a project
Let's say I just want to assess any old article - how do I do that? I've only in my experience ever seen and used project banners to assess articles. Often there is no appropriate banner or project, and if there is it may not allow for a rating field. Is there some way to just assess it as in 'This article has been rated as X on the assessment scale'? Richard001 08:52, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Sorry I missed this post coming in. Normally assessments are indeed done by people within a WikiProject, because the idea is that subject-experts are doing the assessments.  However, some subjects don't have an active project doing assessments, or the project doesn't have enough people to handle the workload.  To help with those you can join WP:WVWP, where we try to help out in those areas.  Please help! Walkerma 01:24, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
 * So, you're saying articles can't and won't be assessed unless they have a project, right? Richard001 07:07, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, I guess the real work here lies in matching the article with a WikiProject and handing that article to them. If no WikiProject exists for the article, then you can create your own. It really isn't that hard. Diez2 14:52, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
 * What I mean is, for those articles that are "orphan" articles (no parent project), the WVWP project takes care of their assessment.  We definitely DO want to assess articles!  The information gathered from that can then be collected by us at WVWP.  We're at the stage of needing to write protocols for how we do that, your help would be appreciated if you're interested.  Warlordjohncarter has done quite a bit already, assessing these orphan articles. Walkerma 16:23, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure that I follow - is there an existing process for assessing such articles, or one in development? Surely it wouldn't be that hard - we just need a general template that shows the rating and places it in some sort of 'orphan' category. WikiProjects can then move them into their domain as they wish. Richard001 21:54, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I realise this is a bit late, but I had trouble working out what all this meant as well, and it seems that what you are meant to use is . Carcharoth 15:04, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Contrarian position
The ratings are a bit silly. The concept that featured articles don't need any work unless new information were to come to light is absurd. --User At Work 21:48, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Why is it absurd? If they need work, they should be given FA status. Richard001 00:40, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

The A-class
Should we require articles to, in order to aquire A-class status, to undergo an A-class review? I know some WikiProjects do this, but the vast majority of articles receive the A-class sticker arbitrarily, usually the day before an FAC is filed. Also, we do require that the articles for GA-class and FA go through their respective processes, so why can't we do the same with A? Diez2 14:50, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
 * With WikiProjects that have used assessment for a long time, the project establishes a system for people to achieve a consensus on each article achieving A-Class. For many, though, they are just getting started, and for them I think it's fine for them simply to tag them as A based on a single person's review.  As the project matures, people will naturally begin to say, "That's not A-Class" - that's how things seem to naturally evolve.  We should certainly recommend a WikiProject-based review process, though, and give some good examples for the newer projects to follow.  Walkerma 16:27, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I don't see any benefit in creating yet another review process - working on the backlog for GA requests would be a higher priority. Richard001 21:51, 15 May 2007 (UTC)


 * The biggest problem I see with leaving it to a WikiProject is that most articles have multiple WikiProjects. So who gets to decide if it is A, which is above GA. At least with GA, even though it is a single reviewer, it has a safety valve in a review of the GA review if a nominator disagrees with the GA reviewer and a de-listing review process too. Leaving it to WP to battle out could lead to an edit war over the the rating. What is A to one WP is only Start to another if there is a difference in opinion in content. I think a good solution (and someone above may have mentioned this) would be that no article could be A without going through a formal peer review by at least two people (more than GA, less than FA). That peer review must be a formalized process to prevent arbitrary, subjective decisions based on someone's gut feeling. That or we could change the order and make it go Stub-Start-B-A-GA-FA and just flip the criteria between GA and A so what is now GA criteria becomes A criteria and vice versa. I speak from expiernce on the confussion about GA-A as I always assumed you had to go through GA to get to A as that is what is logical and makes sense. But then again why would we want logic? Aboutmovies 19:10, 25 May 2007 (UTC)


 * The real problem is that the GA process is tied to the assessment at all. They should be completely divorced from one another - this would clear most of the problems up. Girolamo Savonarola 19:26, 25 May 2007 (UTC)


 * It is strange that we need a review to get GA, but not for A. An author could assign their own article an A status, which is basically a higher level than GA. I guess you could also argue that one reviewer's 'A' may be another's 'Start', but one of those reviewers must really lack any ability to judge an article. The assessment process, simply, cannot become too complicated. Having a third review process is too much, just keeping up with GAs and FAs is a big enough problem, and getting the maintained to help fight edit rot is a much larger concern. It may however be an idea to consider switching GA and A around, such that the two highest ranked levels are the one's requiring some sort of review process. This however would require redefining what A and GA is. Alternatively A and GA could be merged into a single category, perhaps still called 'A' but also synonymous with GA - the criteria could be a mix of the two. This would require significant restructuring, but if current GAs we allowed to be gradually reassessed without worrying too much that they might not fit the new criteria, it is possible. It does seem a little 'top heavy' that we have four different grades for articles that are 'print worthy' and only two for those that aren't. Then again, I'm sure others feel all four grades are necessary, and other projects even employ extra levels (e.g. B+ in maths) so I doubt there will be consensus for a change. Richard001 02:22, 26 May 2007 (UTC)


 * This is turning into a repeat of this earlier discussion. The consensus then seemed to be:
 * Although many (including myself) wanted to remove GA from the assessment scheme, several strongly objected, so things were left as they were.
 * We did, however, set up the GA project with WP1.0 Bot, so that now we can track GAs easily.
 * As for reviews, some of the more active projects already do formal reviews, see this example. With smaller or less active projects, they don't have a formal review, but in such cases the review is in effect done as project members look at their A-Class articles (which they will, believe me!) and say either, "Yeah, we could make that FA!" or "That's never A-Class, not even close!"  In the latter case, they should demote it to B.  At WP:Chem, where we have had reviewing for more than two years now, I have seen both situations, and the selection of A-Class is (I think) something most of us are happy with. So I think the A-Class does work well overall.  Walkerma 02:46, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Another point - it doesn't matter too much if one project tags an article as A and another tags it as Start, the "grades" are principally for the projects to use. Of course, a page isn't likely to stay that way for long before someone reassesses! We will have to make sure our bot looks at all the assessments when picking for Version 0.7, though. Walkerma 02:53, 26 May 2007 (UTC)


 * New discussion of A-class reviews and merging with GA taking place here. Richard001 21:59, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

FA Class
If I wanted to, (as a joke more of) can i put the tab most articles have on their discussion pages saying it's start class, a class, FA class, or whatever and say it's FA Class high importance? --LtWinters 00:30, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
 * In principle, yes. The checks are (a) if the article is on someone's watchlist, they will see what you've done and revert you, and (b) there is a log that tracks all of the changes for each WikiProject.    I monitor logs for projects I'm connected with, and that's a great way to catch such mischief (which is usually more basic).  If that doesn't catch it, at some point someone will see the problem and fix it.  Walkerma 00:37, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Oh my bad, I did not even finish my entree. I meant on my talk page, could I put that on so it looks cool?(it seems as though up there I gave the impression I would vandalize, my bad)

Major assessment process reform proposal
See Assessment overhaul (Discuss). The idea is to take the focus off of grade letter advancement and move it towards a system that encourages and recognizes real article improvement. Noclip 19:09, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

'B' grade and sources
At the 'B' grade stage, does it not matter at all if the information in an article is sourced? To put it another way can an article gain a 'B' grade even if it contains no sources? EvilRedEye 16:00, 12 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I would normally give an article a start class until it had at least one or two references. Richard001 22:57, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Normally, no. Tito xd (?!? - cool stuff) 23:37, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I would say in principle, it does not need any references; in practice it would. An article would have to be almost perfect in every other way, IMHO, to be a B without refs.  Often (in practice) we will have a well-written article that might have passed for FA three years ago, but the references are few in number (perhaps because they are books, and were used extensively) and not inline.  I would give such an article a B, because it really just needs someone to reformat the refs section.  A few projects such as WP:MILHIST require thorough sourcing before B is awarded, but that is not what B was originally intended to represent - though that was at a time when good inline sourcing was rare (compare this from just one year ago with this!).  In short, Richard is right - usually expect at least one or two key refs, which are not just on trivia. Walkerma 02:44, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
 * OK, thanks for your speedy replies, you've been very helpful. The articles I've been thinking of assessing typically have no references whatsoever so I'll bear that in mind - though they have enough information to be 'B' grade which is why I wanted to ask before going ahead. EvilRedEye 11:37, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Hmm. What you say makes sense, but I wasn't talking about inline citations; I was talking about a completely unsourced article. Tito xd (?!? - cool stuff) 23:06, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
 * For my purposes it doesn't really matter, the articles have no inline citations and are completely unsourced. EvilRedEye 10:25, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Question about non-standard grades
I'm a little confused over non-standard grades such as List-Class, Category-Class etc. Do they serve any purpose beyond individual WikiProjects? How do they fall into the overall assessment - are they counted as "Unassessed" or are they not counted at all? And would it be preferable for a WikiProject to assess lists in the article namespace as you would any other article? Thanks in advance if anyone can clear things up for me! PC78 03:27, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Importance
What and where are the criteria for importance in assessments? Hyacinth 04:11, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Each WikiProject defines the criteria for itself, since clearly (say) WikiProject Television has a much broader scope than the Dad's Army WikiProject. The general guidelines are here.  I am in the process (very slow and long) of writing detailed descriptions here.  Everything will also change (soon?) when we get MartinBotII up and running; that will use a Google-type algorithm to provide (hopefully) a fairly objective assessment of importance based on four independent variables. Feel free to ask for more help if you still need it. Cheers, Walkerma 08:53, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Why no 'C-class'?
I am surprised that we have nothing between Start-class and B-class. There are some articles that are just plain bad. I was just about to downgrade a B-class article but discovered that its grade is already at the bottom. It seems inappropriate to change it to 'Start' since it's not a new article (and 'Start' implies that its in the process of being developed). What do we do about an article that used to be good, or that was a promising 'Start', but that later simply deteriorated?

Since B-class is considered the "highest article grade that is assigned outside a more formal review process" it seems strange to me that the worst non-Start article would get the same grade as the best article prior to formal review. However I am sure this topic has been discussed; I am probably missing some vital factoid that will make it all seem logical. Trevor Hanson 09:03, 20 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Start is just the next class below B - if the article is not good enough for B it gets a start rating, even if it's fairly detailed but lacking in much needed references throughout, for example. Only stub articles are necessarily lacking in content. We could add another rating, but that would make the start class itself fairly trivial, so I doubt it would be worth the extra effort and complexity. Richard001 09:23, 20 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I was feeling that an article flagged with a shouldn't remain at B-class; but moving it back to Start would seem strange. Perhaps I am misunderstanding the intent of the Start designation. Presumably the reason for ratings is to make it easier for Wikians to spot articles that need work. I'd think that an article moving up from Stub to Start needs a fundamentally different kind of editing and collaboration than one that has deteriorated from a 'good' B-class. Well, thanks for the explanation. I guess I need to do more observing of how ratings are used. Trevor Hanson 09:33, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Articles proposed for deletion
It would be most helpful if the bot would list changes to an article being listed in a proposed deletion category, be it a prod, speedy or regular deletion discussion. I would propose this being done to a separate subpage which then could be transcluded onto the automated assessment changes page or if the project wanted, even to the main project page itself. __meco 08:50, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Two types of stubs
There are currently two types of stubs on Wikipedia, those assessed as Stubs and those under WP:Stub sorting, causing an odd double-standard. Please help reach a solution at the Village pump. ~ JohnnyMrNinja  05:26, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm too late now but with respect issues like that are better discussed here where the folks who deal with this on a daily basis can see it. Anyway, to my mind, a stub is a stub is a stub. It doesn't matter if an article is deficient or horribly deficient, it's not anywhere near release quality and that's all we know. I and others have sent out bots to auto-assess stubbed articles as class=Stub and it hasn't proved controversial at all. --kingboyk (talk) 13:07, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Other classes
I know this prolly has been asked a lot, but I was wondering that with a project, is there a way to add our other classes such as List, Image, etc to our assessment. I work with the Illinois Project, and on our Assessment Page we have that list off to the right. Is there a way currently for us to add the other classes to this list so that we can keep track of them better and know what we have. If there isn't, is this something that could be created? I am sure there are other projects that would be interested in knowing this, so any help in this matter would be much appreciated. Thank you!--Kranar drogin 02:01, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
 * There is a new bot (User:Erwin85Bot) that counts any category you wish, with the right codes. I use it to create the following page:

. I also use it to create a multitude of maintenance pages, see:WikiProject Aviation/Maintenance. - Trevor MacInnis (Contribs) 02:25, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

A Class symbol
Hello, I'm not sure if this has been brought up before or not, or if this is the place to suggest this. But I was wondering if there has been any discussion as to using a symbol to distinguish the A Class, much like GA has the and FA has the. I think because those two have a symbol and the B, Start, and Stub, use text, people confuse the A class, which also uses text, as being something less than what it is. Perhaps assigning a symbol to it will help people better understand it and in turn generate more use of the A Class process. The symbol I had in mind would be modeled after the GA star, but would be blue with the letter "A" on it rather than a cross. I think this would help people associate it closer to the higher classes, specifically GA Class, but still show it to be different than the two. To better illustrate the symbol, I could upload something as an example. Any thoughts? (Guyinblack25 talk 20:29, 21 September 2007 (UTC))
 * Here is the example I was talking about. Any thoughts, or a dead end? (Guyinblack25 talk 18:48, 2 October 2007 (UTC))
 * Good idea. Perhaps is should appear at the top of the article page like the FA symbol. Snowman 19:48, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

There is an A-class symbol and it looks like this: --Krm500 21:27, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
 * I wasn't aware of that. Is there a reason why it isn't widely used? Because I think simply using one would be a good idea, regardless of what it is. (Guyinblack25 talk 21:44, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Perhaps the would be better. I do not recall seeing one, but I have seen lots of FA symbols. Can anyone put it on a A-class page?  Is is in current use?  Snowman 21:59, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Maybe another talk page would be a better place to bring this up. To be honest, I wasn't sure where to ask about this and picked this one because a better talk page didn't spring to mind. (Guyinblack25 talk 22:07, 2 October 2007 (UTC))
 * I don't have strong views on this, but I should mention a couple of things.
 * One major problem we have had is that people often confuse WikiProject assessments (Stub/Start/B/A) with external assessments (GA/FA). This symbol might add to that confusion.
 * The FA star on FA pages is an anomaly; it involves a tricky technical issue, and that's at least part of the reason GAs don't have the symbol showing. I think it'd be unlikely that we'd get the A symbol on the page itself unless (a) GAs achieve the same things and (b) we require a formal WikiProject review for ALL A-Class articles.  Maybe eventually, but not for a long time yet.
 * Having said that, I agree that symbols and icons can be very helpful if implemented well. Walkerma 04:34, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Well that being said, what would we need to do to try and implement something like this? And what would be the best way to implement it? (Guyinblack25 talk 13:47, 6 October 2007 (UTC))


 * Would it cause problems in the assessment tables, where hundreds of these templates are included? I'm talking about reaching the template transclusion limit as described on Special:Expandtemplates. Tito xd (?!? - cool stuff) 02:43, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure what your question is, but I believe you're referring to the various Class templates that are used in assessment scales and on project banners. If so, I don't think it would be a big problem. It would only entail adding the icon to the A-Class template. Though I'm no expert on the matter, so someone else may want to chime in on this. Is that what you're asking about? (Guyinblack25 talk 20:32, 8 October 2007 (UTC))
 * Perhaps, it would be confusing as the difference between external assessment and wikiproject assessment will not be clear from just a symbol. In addition, all the wikiprojects might not work with exactly the same standards. Snowman 20:47, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Hmm, maybe you're right. The more I think about the A-Class, the more it makes my head hurt. Perhaps this is something to bring up further down the line when things are more standardized. (Guyinblack25 talk 21:01, 8 October 2007 (UTC))
 * My question is that for every single page, there is a maximum of 2 MB of wikitext that can be included via templates. Currently, only FAs and GAs have icons, corresponding to the Wikipedia-wide quality assurance mechanisms. A-Class articles are handled solely by WikiProjects. Adding an icon to the WikiProject-based assessments opens the door to adding icons to the rest of the classes (B-Class, Start-Class and Stub-Class), which are placed in significantly more articles. As a result, we could run into technical problems with the assessment tables themselves, as AFAIK, they are already close to the 2 MB limit (someone more skilled than me in this subject should probably check this), and including more wikitext in the form of image markup may push some of them over the edge. That's essentially my question/concern. Tito xd (?!? - cool stuff) 04:21, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Ok, I understand your question now. To be honest, I don't know. I assume that because of the small number of A-Class articles and if the template is created with efficient coding then it may not be an issue. Either way, it doesn't really matter right because the idea doesn't seem to be taking off the ground. (Guyinblack25 talk 14:34, 9 October 2007 (UTC))

I must say that stumbling onto this page has been a great help! I know that the WikiProject Military history uses the A-class a lot. With Illinois I would like to see us use it also more often, and I like that +symbol for the A-Class.--Kranar drogin 02:53, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm not so certain that it's a good idea to use the GA icon with the A color filling it in - for one, A-Class articles are not required to pass GA or vice versa, so it creates a correlation that isn't necessarily true. Second, the status of GA-class within the assessment hierarchy, both in regards to rank and its actual existence as a class, has been a contentious issue since its last-minute shoehorning into the grading scheme. Girolamo Savonarola 04:06, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
 * That's a good point. Something that's bugging me now is if A-Class is not that standardized, then why is it listed above GA-Class on the assessment table? Not that big of a deal, but something I find kinda odd after learning more about the A-Class. (Guyinblack25 talk 14:34, 9 October 2007 (UTC))
 * Most assessment classes aren't standardized as rigorously as GA or FA, but that doesn't mean they're not standardized. There is a grading schemata in effect with guides as to what particular classes should and shouldn't have. It's just that GA and FA are the only ones subject to a Wikipedia-wide process as opposed to WikiProject assessment. (Although the concept is more theoretical than practical - anyone can assess an article regardless of project affiliation, and all non-involved editors may confer a GA. So really only FA is a lengthy confirmation process.) You have to remember the historical background - the original concept was Stub, Start, B, A, and then topped by the confirmation-needed FA class. Adding GA was not the original intention, and it is arguable that perhaps, given its standards-creep towards FA, it more or less is functionally identical to A-Class in all but conferral mechanism. Girolamo Savonarola 14:58, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
 * True, each class does have its own standards. I guess I should be saying more regulation rather than standardization. My personal perception and observations have formed the image in my mind that the standards for Stub, Start, B, and A are not as regulated as the GA and FA, and as such I feel the standards and quality of the non-GA and FA articles suffers. Put simply, I've seen some A-Class articles that I feel would not pass GA as they are. Not that I'm unhappy with the current system, it works well enough and is simply going through growing pains as it evolves. I think it'll be interesting to see what it'll be like in a 3-5 years. (Guyinblack25 talk 15:40, 9 October 2007 (UTC))

Examples - use the same article
Is there a reason why the examples use different articles? Surely it would be better if one article was highlighted at different points in its history to show how it went all the way from stub to FA class? Carcharoth 14:12, 11 October 2007 (UTC)


 * I know this is a late response, but for the record. In a marking/grading scheme, categories partly define themselves but are also partly defined relative to other categories. The main risk associated with using a single example is potential over-emphasis in the scheme as a whole on features specific to the particular example (e.g. it may not be appropriate to use a lot of illustrations or it may be appropriate to have a few key references but not a lot). Using different examples helps to avoid this.


 * That said, as a different exercise, you are quite right that it would be very informative to have examples of articles progressing if someone could be bothered doing this. It would be helpful for those aiming to improve articles as well as for those trying to decide on grades -- perhaps in a specific project. However, for the reasons above I think the generic scheme itself is better with different examples, as it stands. Holon (talk) 10:25, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Changes in assessment statistics over time
Although it's easy to see current assessment details (Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Index), how would one go about gathering data on how this has changed over time? For example, how has the average assessed article's quality changed? How has the total number of assessments made changed? Richard001 01:39, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject Fire Service
I just wanted to let everyone know that I performed a basic assessment of all articles listed under WikiProject Fire Service, which is about 790 articles. I actually assessed around 650 of those, the rest being assessed by other editors. I will continue to monitor those articles classified as unassessed and will classify them as appropriate. Thanks, Daysleeper47 18:50, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Help with a MediaWiki site...
I was jsut wondering if anyone would be able to implement a similar but simpler system of article rating to Train Spotting World. All we would really need is basic quality: Stub, Start, D, C, A ,B and the WP importance stuff.

Any takers?

 Bluegoblin  7   01:36, 27 November 2007 (UTC)