Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Core topics/Archive 3

WP1.0 editorial team discussions – Core topics COTW – Wiki sort discussions – FAs first discussions – Work via WikiProjects discussions – Pushing to 1.0 discussions

Meteorology
How about we replace Climate and Weather with Meteorology, which is better developed? Maurreen 04:22, 17 February 2006 (UTC)


 * I don't think so - I think the study of weather is less "core" than weather itself, but if others think differently I don't mind too much. Walkerma 04:00, 2 March 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm interested in joining the editorial team, but I hesitate. My idea of what is "neutral" vs. what is "consensus" might either elevate our level of quality and reliability, or might be seen as a disturbing thorn in the team's side. I refer to Global warming, which has suffered years of edit wars and still seeks to present a "consensus view" rather than to adhere to NPOV policy.


 * If you accept me on the team, I would vote to delete global warming from the approved list, and likewise for articles with a similar slant. --Uncle Ed 12:38, 9 April 2006 (UTC)


 * I didn't even realize or remember that global warming was on the list. If you'd like to delete it, please go ahead. Regardless of any real or perceived slant, I don't think the topic is important enough.
 * If you think any other topics are off, just please list them at the bottom of this page. I almost missed your note. Thanks. Maurreen 17:41, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Information science
There has been some debate here which has led to this page becoming a dab page, with content (I think) now split between informatics and Library and information science. What should we do with this entry? Walkerma 04:01, 2 March 2006 (UTC)


 * I don't think we need Informatics. I'm ambivalent about Library and information science. Maurreen 20:25, 11 March 2006 (UTC)\

Vir pointed out that information looks good, that would seem to be an excellent alternative. Would you agree?


 * Sure. Maurreen 17:41, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

City replaces Municipality
I almost put Municipality in the list of "start" articles needing work (in the comment below), then I thought to check if City is developed. It is a much more developed and general article. I have replaced Municipality with City (which discusses the ambiguity between meanings of town, city, etc.) in the table.
 * Good idea,! Support. Walkerma 02:10, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Core topics "key" articles
I propose it could be helpful to create small Core Topics key articles groups. Key would be most essential core topics (chosen by some voting/ranking process). With this, we could bring focus to groups of, say, 5 or 10 key articles (at a time) for top level editing work. This would allow parallel and interactive editing progress to be made. (And, we could still have a main one article focus in CTOF.)

We all have varying expertise and interest areas. A handful of articles as top priority might encourage increased interaction of energy and interests (and involvement of others -- by doing outreach on groups of 5 and 10 core articles most needing work).

We could 1) rank the article groups that are most important and 2) start working on the articles in the top key group that are still in "start" status (focusing on "start" articles like Community, Country, Health, Society, Tools, Weather, etc.). 3) We can bring small groups of start articles up to B-class (or C-class if we use that). 4) Then, we can add in other groups of key articles (further down our ranking scheme) as groups of key articles are finished... 5) Then, we can iterate this process: Once all core articles are at B-class, we can easily shift to bringing all key articles up to A-class, already having the key article rankings selected.

By grouping articles, this can actually simplify the planning and flow of work in bring core articles along.


 * Sounds sensible to me, though I'm not sure how it would work in practice. This is less important now when our list is short, but if we go to a list of 1000 it may be needed. I've noticed, though, that the COTW is kinda working like that anyway!  Although Toy and Humanities have not "graduated" yet, Gflores (and Maurreen too?) have already done a lot to Toy and I have halfway through reading a book on the Humanities - so I think that the COTF nominations list is almost achieving the same thing.  One problem on WP1.0 generally is that many of the team members are experiences admins who are up-to-their-eyeballs in admin work, I suspect many hardly edit anything any more.  Hopefully as the COTF gets more widely known we'll get people who just think improving core articles is important, rather than hardcore 1.0 folks. One suggestion, once we go to a list of 1000 or so, how about a "Core theme of the month"? I think we probably need to find how much of the 1000 are starts, though &mdash; I suspect we may find that very few are below B-Class, once we get beyond the level of an article like politics and reach the level of specificity of (say) Margaret Thatcher. I'd be interested in any specific ideas on how you think your suggestion would be done. Walkerma 02:31, 13 March 2006 (UTC)


 * I think the major parts of implementation are: first, what you touched on, simply identifying article group(s) that need work. That could be simple: Simply take all or half of the starts/stubs and invite everyone in group (or 1.0 team perhaps) to assign votes to all the articles they might ever want to work on in next year (up to say 20 votes--a bunch tilde sigs by each article in a long "stub/start" list might do). Tally up the votes -- top 5 or 10 articles get listed as those Core Topics most in need of work and most wanting to be worked on. Then, next, there needs to be some sort of outreach and exposure to let folks in different sympathetic groups know that these are high priority articles. (I won't go into outreach because there are probably lots of ways to do that.) In general, the more eyes on the articles, the more likely a wiki critical mass editing effect kicks in. There could be a lot of work to do: A significant portion of top 1000 articles might be below B-class. I count about 50 stubs/starts in the current Core Topics list -- that's a bit over 1/3 core topics in start phase. Two comments below this, I list about 50 possible additions to the top 200 or 1000 list -- of those 50 about 16 are stubs/stars, about a 1/3.  So, if this ratio holds, it could be there are 300-400 stubs out there in the top 1000 list. Perhaps as you say, in getting more specific in article focus, that won't be the case. The situ might be worse though. I briefly surveyed about 700 or 800 article links (if I remember correctly) on the list of Sociology articles a month ago -- only about 40 to 60 were what one might consider close to B class. Whatever the start/B-class/A-class ratio, lots of outreach in WP communities is probably the only way to get top 1000 core topics developed in a few years. And, of course, a team will grow here through outreach and as the whole 1.0 project starts to have more definite plans and deadlines. In summary, I don't guess the details matter as much as having process steps that: Organize and process the articles in batches. Do outreach to groups.

Proposal: a few levels of core topics
Hopefully this isn't covering ground that has already been covered. On a bit of a roll this weekend...

I engaged in the following exercise to consider what core topics most need work now and what needs to be added to the Core Topics list (see next note heading below).

I started by picking out what seemed to me the most important core topics. I ended up with the list of about 90 topics below. This list is very approximate list to aid in choosing 1st articles on which to work (along the lines of the previous comment above). (This list could be cut by a third or half acording to some sort of knowledge plan -- again, perhaps mainly to focus work.) Suggested levels are:


 * 1st level -- 50-100 key core topics, most basic concepts
 * 2nd level -- 50-100 next most key core topics, more basic concepts
 * 3rd level -- possibly 50-100 more core topics, beginning to move down to 2nd level of knowledge tree, but some more basic concepts might be here (yikes, the list will just keep growing...)

Rough list of 1st level Core Topics:
 * 1) Africa
 * 2) Agriculture
 * 3) Aircraft
 * 4) Animal
 * 5) Antarctica
 * 6) Architecture
 * 7) Art
 * 8) Asia
 * 9) Astronomy
 * 10) Australia
 * 11) Automobile
 * 12) Biology
 * 13) Buddhism
 * 14) Business - start
 * 15) Chemistry
 * 16) Christianity
 * 17) City
 * 18) Civilization
 * 19) Climate - start
 * 20) Clothing
 * 21) Communication
 * 22) Community - start
 * 23) Computer science (or computing or computers) - start
 * 24) Country - start
 * 25) Crime
 * 26) Culture
 * 27) Ecology
 * 28) Economics
 * 29) English language
 * 30) Environment - start
 * 31) Ethnic groups - start
 * 32) Europe
 * 33) Family
 * 34) Food
 * 35) Game
 * 36) Gender
 * 37) Geography
 * 38) Government
 * 39) Health - start
 * 40) Hinduism
 * 41) History
 * 42) History of the world
 * 43) Hobbies - start
 * 44) House
 * 45) Human
 * 46) Humanities - start
 * 47) Humour - start
 * 48) Industry - start
 * 49) Internet
 * 50) Islam
 * 51) Judaism
 * 52) Language
 * 53) Law
 * 54) Leisure - start
 * 55) Literature
 * 56) Mass media - start
 * 57) Mathematics
 * 58) Medicine
 * 59) Mind
 * 60) Music
 * 61) Mythology
 * 62) Natural disaster
 * 63) North America
 * 64) Number
 * 65) Oceania
 * 66) Organization
 * 67) Outer space - start
 * 68) Philosophy
 * 69) Physical science - start
 * 70) Plant
 * 71) Politics
 * 72) Psychology
 * 73) Reference - start
 * 74) Religion
 * 75) Science
 * 76) Sex - start
 * 77) Social movements
 * 78) Social sciences
 * 79) Society - start
 * 80) Sociology
 * 81) Sound
 * 82) South America
 * 83) Sports
 * 84) Technology
 * 85) Theatre
 * 86) Time
 * 87) Tradition
 * 88) Weather - start
 * 89) War

One reason for the above was to see which key core topics articles are still in start phase. Inspecting the above, there are 20 key articles in "start" status. These are:

Business - Climate - Community - Computer science - Country - Environment - Ethnic groups - Health - Hobbies - Humanities - Humour - Industry - Leisure - Mass media - Outer space - Physical science - Reference - Sex - Society - Weather

I suggest we vote on something like which 5 or 10 of these (or other similar articles chose from a key list) to work on in parallel, per suggestions in note above.

Perhaps the Wikipedia communities, 1.0 community and we can get a group like these 20 articles up to B-class in 3 to 6 months. Then, we can focus on expanding more start-level articles and then bringing all B-class articles up to A-class -- which would be another more intensive and time consuming round of work, all this perhaps taking another year at least to get 200 or so articles to A-level. So, unless there is an influx of effort (which seem possible especially with outreach and recruitment), very roughly and perhaps optimistically, to finish the first batch of 200 articles to A-level could take a year and a half or more.

And: Hey, if you all think the above is not worth pursuing, that's ok. At least this was helpful for me in getting my head around some of what there is to do in this project :) I'm going to post a few more notes, then take a break for awhile, a few days perhaps, and come back to focus on reviewing the 20 "start" level articles above :)

Suggested Core Topic Articles
While reviewing the Core Topics list recently, I noticed that some very basic topics were not included. I suggest we consider including many of these basic entities, qualities, concepts and approaches as top 200 core topics. Quick evaluations of article quality included:


 * Knowledge - start
 * Matter - start
 * Evolution - Featured article, a freebie :)
 * Ocean - start/C-class
 * Sky or Earth's atmosphere (2nd article is more developed)
 * Continents - C-class
 * Planet - B/C-class, few refs
 * Sun - FA - another freebie :)
 * Galaxy - B/C-class, no or few refs
 * Universe - B-class, no or few refs
 * Space (instead or in addition to Outer space) -- space is a more developed article and/or Vacuum B-class, no or few refs
 * Gravity - A/B-class, long, few refs
 * Electromagnetism - C-class or Electricity - B/C-class
 * Subatomic particle - B/C-class, no or few refs
 * Atom - B-class, no or few refs; and/or Chemical element - C-class/start
 * Cell (biology), B-class, well developed but few refs - and/or Microorganism - just a start
 * Disease - start
 * Body - stub
 * Person - "C-class", number of developed sections, no refs
 * Work - disambig page & Manual labour - just a start
 * Energy - well developed, but physics intensive
 * Love start or Compassion start
 * Divinity - good start
 * Spirituality - a start, and/or Mysticism - 1st half well developed; 2nd half are lists of mystics; not referenced.
 * Atheism - well developed; well referenced
 * Theism - a start
 * Empire - a start
 * Agnosticism - an uneven start
 * Altruism - c-class
 * Power disambig and Power (sociology) C-level/start
 * Democracy - B-class, extensively developed
 * Socialism - C/B-class, developed
 * Social equality - just a start - Equality is a disambiguation page
 * Justice - a start, or Social justice, c-class
 * Freedom - a start

These are possible core topics articles, but some are perhaps only top 1000 articles: Aesthetics; Epistemology; Ethics; Metaphysics; Truth; Dialectics; Development; Aid; Social structure; The enlightenment; Industrial revolution; Globalization; Oppression, a stub, or Social inequality, a list; Monism; Dualism - C-class/start; Nondualism - C-class

Note: Information science in the core topics list is only a 2 item disambiguation page. Information, not in the list, is an interesting article. Since compuer science is already in the list, switch these two?

What do you think of the above additional topics? Vir 00:47, 13 March 2006 (UTC)


 * When we got the project going, I felt it was important to stick to Maurreens original list. I judged that it was carefully chosen and well-balanced, and I don't think I could have done any better, probably any list of mine would've been much worse.  I also think that 10 different people would have come up with 10 different lists for the top 100-200.


 * But now we are (IMHO) ready to consider moving beyond the initial list of core topics onto pastures new. My first impression is that there are a lot of "ism"s in your list, and I would only want to read half of them if I were taking a philosophy course or a religion course.  Other than that, I would be happy to include most of the rest.  Any list of mine would come from the perspective of a scientist - so things like matter would get my vote, but I would want to see a lot of basic science terms included before we got into things like nondualism (which seems obscure to me!).  Currently in all of our core topics we only have one chemistry related article, chemistry, yet chemistry always claims to be "the central science" linking all the sciences together! In biology we have subdisciplines like botany included, and I think your cell suggestion is good, but there are many core science concepts missing ike atom, molecule, electricity, thermodynamics, etc.  Someone interested in business could no doubt list articles like profit, a historian Roman Empire and a current-events person might argue for Iraq War - and all have a strong case.  I think we could by all means create another list of 100 or so, but personally I don't want to see us getting bogged down debating & working on a lot of general topics.  I'd like to try moving on to one of the lists of 1000 such as this list, for reasons I will explain below. Such lists cover mainly specific articles and they include many of your & my choices. Walkerma 05:11, 13 March 2006 (UTC)


 * My aim with the list of additional core topic suggestions was three fold: 1) to include a non-exhaustive gesture at the arc of physical objects from very small to large (an essential arc to sketch); 2) to include a few very basic orienting science and social science and social structure/process concepts (also essential); 3) to include some very basic spiritual concepts (completely essential). I think we need to focus on things of this world but also on the mental and social worlds and the universe. Btw, I did include atom and electricity in the list above. The paragraph at the end was more a toss in that I had on hand and half of it could've been saved for the 1000 list (or came from working on that). I've edited a bit that 1000 article list you referenced.  IMHO, it needs more work. This list of basic topics I think needs work. Such a list is knowledge and knowledge organization in its own right -- not just a tool :) That's partly how I approached (though above I noted that sub-dividing the list is a tool.) For the sake of organizing knowledge, I think it is reasonable to aim to come up with a list of the very most basic general aspects of and concepts about the world -- which might be 100 or 200 or 500 items -- the essence of all disciplines. Maybe that is a list in the 1000s.  But maybe not. I guess I'd like to think, at times, of this list in the very broadest terms here -- how do we describe the physical, the social, and the mental worlds most generally? What concepts cut across all disciplines? But, maybe I'm in a small minority: I like that sort of stuff -- my undergrad major was philosophy :)  And a longer core topics list doesn't need to be intimidating--it can be a motivational tool: We can just keep inviting people (all over the place) to write core articles, in batches, as various batches get done. At some point that work may blend into the list of 1000 articles (but I think that list has problems).  Well, I guess what I am saying is it makes sense to work continually on refining (not necessarily) expanding lists at the same time as working on finishing articles. (A Note that it is necessary to make at some point: Some postmodern thinkers would challenge the very possibility of the task of seeking universal or at least general knowledge, or as good as we can approach that for now -- but the paradox of postmodern thought is that it makes universal claims in denying universal knowledge. Lot's of valuable insights though are found in pomo thought -- but it needs to be balanced with modern knowledge projects -- between getting lost in the details and contexts and in seeking the generalities.) Vir 19:09, 13 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks, Vir, for your response. I apologise for saying that atom and electricity were missing, I checked our original list then got carried away! I can also see we'll have to persuade you to help improve humanities - I've been learning about postmodernism in my reading for that article!  I like your approach, and a philosopher can perhaps be more objective than most (just not too many "isms", please!  I really like your phrase "the essence of all disciplines", that sentence could be adapted to define this project!  Could I suggest that you write up a list of some more general core topics then let us take a look?  I don't think we need work too much on putting in specific topics into that list, the list of 1000 will cover those. Thanks again, I really appreciate the chance to brainstorm on this.  Thoughts, Maurreen? Walkerma 06:50, 13 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Just saw this note. Thanks for invite and thoughts. I'd be happy to work on humanities at some point. I continued my interest in philosophy with my professional study of social theory. Negotiating the theoretical conflicts between modern and postmodern thought is a basic challenge in the humanities and social sciences. -Isms can be translated into clear speech but the issues remain profound and complex at times -- though, hey, clear at times -- such as in saying: qualities of existence and nonexistence and form and change are intimately related with one flowing into the other -- this is why in one way of reading modernity (as essentially seeking true forms and ideas) and postmodernity (as seeing all qualities grounded in flux and ambiguity of circumstance) are closely related -- many ideas are universal BUT ideas are also embodied variously :) The essence of all disciplines is a very important thing for knowledge workers/creators to think about -- we don't need *only* to replicate the same idea dozens of times across dozens of disciplines with slightly different phrasing and emphasis (perhaps inevitable given specialization) when we can have a clear article that outlines the idea and mentions different applications. (Wikipedia already is doing this in principle with aiming at multiple POVs -- but in practice sometimes it seems a POV comes to dominate an article because of "knowledge structuring" and lingo and legacy of who set up an article. That is, knowledge outlines carry points of views, sometimes quite limiting ones -- which is why we have to be critical in group dialog about structures and outlines.) No, I don't guess we need to "build" a 1000 article structure -- but if we build good structures for 150-200 articles then the 1000 articles might group up nicely around whatever structures we choose to work with. A start on general core topics is below -- but it is only one start. I think I need to go play in a sandbox for awhile with these knowledge things... Vir 19:09, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

General vs. specific
I think it's very important to distingish between the general and the specific (though I admit that some are in between). A casual visitor looking at our table might be shocked to find that so many core topics have such poor articles, when an obscure topic like gold(III) chloride has an A-Class article (guess which crazy guy spent his time on that...! Even so, there's now a Thai version of that page...!) The fact is, I suspect that gold(III) chloride may well get as many hits as Humanities, because it is a specific topic. Why? In my (limited) experience there are two common reasons people look something up in Wikipedia: With an article like humanities (or equally science!) there are not many facts to look up there beyond the basic definitions, and I suspect that few students have to write papers on such broad topics. As editors, I think we tend to write to meet the need, hence all the starts in our table. Also, as Gflores has pointed out, it's much easier to write about the specific such as Antarctica than about the general like technology, and this exacerbates the situation.
 * To look up a specific piece of information (e.g., What is the melting point of gold(III) chloride?).
 * To provide material for a student paper (e.g., "The chemistry of gold").

Am I arguing that most of the core topics are a waste of time because they're too broad? Absolutely not, or I wouldn't have spent so many hours on this. Reasons to work on broader core topics are IMHO:
 * I think that any publication of WP1.0 has to cover these topics well, because the more specific articles may be incomplete. In other words, say I am writing a paper on the Age of Enlightenment (good choice for our list, btw!), and I read about the changes that occurred in chemistry. Say I find that history of chemistry is absent/redlinked.  If Core Topics has done its job there will be a decent section on this in the chemistry article.
 * These are also major concepts that should be good articles, but aren't, for the reasons mentioned. Core Topics can help to balance out the weakness of Wikipedia in general topics, by trying to focus effort on important but difficult-to-write articles.

To summarise, for any WP1.0 release I think we need:
 * Level 1An umbrella of 100-300 core topic general articles that covers the entirety of knowledge (quite an undertaking!). Example: Technology.
 * Level 2Beneath that umbrella, 1000 or so specific articles that covers all of the major topics users are likely to search on, like Julius Caesar.
 * Levels 3-4Ideally I'd like to go another level or two down and trawl for 10-50,000 specific articles on significant topics, such as acetic acid.

The job of this project should be to knock into shape the first two levels, while FAs first and WVWikiProjects (and WikiSort?) as well as GAs will help with the third level on down. If we try to get 500 general articles up to par it will (IMHO) simply be so much work it will prevent us from publishing. I think we need to decide when we have enough of the (time-consuming) general material and then move on to the (much easier) specific material. We have to remember that there are many ways to "cut the cake" of knowledge (different core topic trees?), and we probably can't cover them all just yet. My proposed plan of action: Thanks a lot for getting the discussion started, and for coming up with specific suggestions, Vir. I apologise for taking up so much bandwidth, I hope others will pitch in! Walkerma 05:11, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Level 1: Look for the significant gaps in general coverage in our first list, and perhaps create a "Further Core Topics" list. Let's set up a page for your (Vir's) new core topics so we can debate them.
 * Level 2: Then let's move on to the more specific topics, such as this list.
 * Level 3: Meanwhile Work via WikiProjects is soon (probably) going to be asking every project for their suggestions on "subject-specific core topics". Also see Category:Lists of basic topics).

Some most basic concepts
Can't sleep. Another take... Here is an exercise -- Starting over from zero.

What are the most basic concepts or aspects of our physical, social and mental worlds?

These are common to many disciplines and much of life. Here is a rough draft or one take...

Sixteen most basic subjects, things or concepts:


 * Time
 * Space
 * Matter
 * Energy
 * Earth (planet)
 * Life
 * Love
 * Mind
 * Humans
 * Art
 * Culture
 * Society
 * Religion
 * Knowledge
 * Technology
 * History

Sixteen more most basic subjects:


 * Universe
 * Sun (or star)
 * Atom
 * Animals
 * Plants
 * Sex
 * Nature
 * Death
 * Medicine
 * Family
 * Language
 * Experience
 * Theory (or philosophy)
 * Town (and/or city)
 * Science
 * Spirituality (or mysticism)

Sixteen more most basic concepts:


 * Galaxy
 * Molecule
 * Electromagnetism
 * Land
 * Environment (and/or ecology)
 * Parenting
 * Gender
 * Ethnicity
 * Country
 * War
 * Empire
 * Humanities
 * Social Science
 * Natural Science
 * Mathematics
 * Consciousness (or personality, whatever)

Two more basic concepts:
 * Pleasure
 * Pain

So, fifty concepts, qualities or things.

There is a slight progression in specificity (and civilization creeping in) in the above groups but not too much. I wonder at what point we start to run out of general concepts that do not go across multiple aspects of life and multiple knowledge disciplines?

Consider: Is our basic topic list missing any of the above? Some. Not an issue if we are just getting started on working on the 1000 articles. (But that 1000 list misses some of the above.) Including most basic concepts (and relations of concepts) is an issue if we are building a knowledge tree or organization system, along with working on articles. Vir 19:57, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Multiple knowledge systems and POVs
In this note is another basic knowledge structure and some more reasons why I think working with basic structures of knowledge is important:

Knowledge systems and collections of concepts have points of view. Even collecting the most common concepts from a few dozen fields may well have some bias to a few points of view.

It is an important basic editorial effort to iteratively construct inclusive, multi-perspective, wholistic knowledge trees.

The first level of concepts made yesterday, just above, was a tweaking of Propedia's basic categories (see [|Encyclopedia_Subject_Categories).

Here is another such start, that came to me this morning, based somewhat on Wilber's all quadrants/all levels integral models and theories of the universe (see Ken Wilber and Integral theory (philosophy), which are subject to much debate):

An integral model of some of the basic aspects of reality:

--(and/or evolution and entropy) (and/or creation and destruction) (and/or life/living and death) --(or objectivity, intersubjectivity and subjectivity) --(and/or society, interaction, and culture) (and/or ecologies and their most basic qualities)
 * existence and nonexistence
 * universe (and/or reality and fantasy)
 * structure and process (or form and change)
 * development and dissolution
 * body, movement and action
 * nervous system, senses/sensation and sense data
 * personality, feelings, and values
 * mind, consciousness, and knowledge
 * physical laws, theory patterns and experience
 * large systems, interactions and information

Another reason to work on basic knowledge structures is these can be offered, when refined, to the public for ease in understanding, navigating and learning (in) an encyclopedia. If the knowledge structure (or tree or outline) is effective, it will work across many disciplines and POVs. So, basic knowledge structures can make knowledge organization and editing easier and more inclusive, useful, fun and inviting, hopefully. Vir 19:57, 13