Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Core topics/Archive 7

This is the talk page for the CORE TOPICS sub-project of the Version_1.0_Editorial_Team.

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

Added column for GA/FA ratings to core topic table
Based on discussions and points above at the end of the "GA-Class tag -- how to use?" discussion string and based on my experience working with data, I added a new column to distinguish between GA/FA status and 1.0 A/B ect. class. The review processes are quite inconsistent. We don't want to loose information about our A/B ratings when coding GA status. I sorted the data into appropriate columns. Consider:


 * 5 articles are rated GA but also B-class in our table. This might be cleaned up by another 1.0 review; but it might be a problem with GA-review. (Note: there were 6 such conflicts in our table until review of Number today showed it was removed from the GA list. Also, I briefly reviewed the other five GA/B-class articles: Agriculture, Crime, Physics, Sound, Statistics. Most of these articles have few references. A few are short or have short sections. --Vir 23:22, 13 April 2006 (UTC))


 * 3 A-class articles recently failed GA review. (As for 3/13, at least these 3 A-class articles were either failed or were removed from the GA list. Demographics and Natural disaster were failed. Sculpture was removed.) Two of the articles were re-classified as B-class; Natural disaster remains A-class.

We could use tags (formats) for failed GA review and removed from GA list. We may also want tags for failed FA review and dropped from FA list (and candidates for such). If the later, we might need a 3rd column to note FA failed and removed tags as an article could be GA & failed or removed FA. That would actually be helpful to know. As numbers of articles on the GA list goes up (and the list is growing daily) and more start to move over to FA, this info would become more an issue.

Regarding the current table edit (which I proofed 3 times), the new column can be deleted by reverting the page. But, I think the extra column will allow us to easily check for A-class articles which are not GA and B-class that are GA, easing our clean up and evaluation process. Dates on last evaluation are needed too, in the far right column. We'll need this comparison process at least for awhile. Comments? --Vir 20:33, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Ps. In table "update" mode, I added "failed GA" in the new GA/FA column to 3 articles that recently failed. I also added GA-class tag to GA artices Drawing and Film. (These minor edits can be recreated if table is reverted to remove column.) --Vir 21:27, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Pps. Another case in point for for having multiple columns: Just saw that Number was removed from the GA list. We retain our B-class rating by using two columns. With one column, at best, there is the entry of removed from GA list. Now we have both evaluations. --Vir 23:26, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Related projects?
I've been curious for a little while now, about whether there would be any possibility of fruitful cross-pollination between this project and the (lately rather inactive, but a good resource to draw from in many ways nonetheless) Interwiki endeavor List of articles all languages should have, which similarly seeks to craft a list of especially basic and essential topics (though its list tends to be more expansive and specific in certain ways). I've noticed a lot of very strange decisions, in terms of both what's there and what isn't, for the two lists, so lately I've been trying to revitalize that project with some new ideas, but the editor deficiency on Meta and WP:VA has made it impossible to find much productive discussion or interest. This place, on the other hand, seems more active. So, (1) where's the proper place to recommend new articles and to dispute the inclusion or form of certain existing ones (e.g., information science, reference, personal finance, hobbies), and (2) would anyone be interested in providing any suggestions or criticisms for the (very-much-)in-development LAALSH project? -Silence 01:37, 14 April 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm interested in the WP:VA list. I've edited the VA list a bit. It seems the core topics here are rather static for the time being. I suggested additions of some very basic general topics to this core topics list in the last month or two and there wasn't much support for acting on those ideas, at this time. Maybe that will change with ongoing discussion. One can always float ideas. ... Oh, what is the LAALSH project (link)?


 * I'd be happy to dialog with you at the WP:VA talk page. I'm very interested in seeing a top 1000 (or so) article list which is collectively refined, according to some sort of editorial debate of what are general priorities and principles for core article improvement and organization. So, I'm going to go over to VA and see what's up. Thanks for stopping by, --Vir 02:45, 14 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Your visit is very timely, as I think we are at least considering expanding our list beyond the initial group. It would be great if you (Silence) and Vir + others were to agree on a set for WP:VA, as I think we hope to use a list very much like this before we publish (certainly for the first full version). We have several of these LAALSH type lists in the intro to the Core topics page, though I confess I was not familiar with WP:VA, thank you for showing me that!  (Can I suggest you add in GAs as well?) What we plan to do (I think!) is to have a top level of core topics, then under those come a list of 1000 such as that at WP:VA.  Underneath those will come other important articles that will probably be a combination of FAs and articles nominated by individuals and WikiProjects, leading to perhaps 2-3000 for a trial release.  We will be re-contacting the WikiProjects again soon to get their lists of key articles.


 * Regarding the Core Topics, we chose to stick with the basic list rather than get into endless debate about whether or not some particular article should be delisted. When it comes down to such detail, it really gets very subjective.  However, we often substitute one thing for some closely related thing after discussing it on this page.  For example, we decided (see  above) that Library & Info Science wasn't a good choice, and Vir had suggested Information instead, Maurreen & I both agreed to that.  We just never got around to switching that one!  Many thanks, Walkerma 03:35, 14 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the kind responses! I'm glad you guys are so open to new input despite having so much work done already, and look forward to working together on these distinct but related endeavors.
 * "Oh, what is the LAALSH project (link)?" - Sorry, I got tired of typing List of articles all languages should have. (That's the main reason I renamed English Wikipedia's version of that list to Vital articles (WP:VA) recently.) -Silence 04:45, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
 * "(Can I suggest you add in GAs as well?)" - If you want I can certainly give you a list of which articles at WP:VA are currently marked "Good Articles", but I think that adding GA icons to the page itself at this point would clutter things up a bit too much, and wouldn't provide as clear a distinction as there is between FA and non-FA. Best to keep things relatively simple (and thus much easier to keep updated); plus WP:FA, unlike WP:GA, is a community-approved policy/guideline with numerous mirrors on foreign Wikipedias, which is important for an Interwiki-focused project. I could certainly list the GAs on a separate page, of course, though one problem is that WP:VA and LAALSH aren't yet very stable and have had relatively few editors working on them, so I'd expect a list of GAs to change very rapidly in the next few days.
 * "a top level of core topics, then under those come a list of 1000 such as that at WP:VA." - That sounds very similar to my idea of a 2- or 3-tiered distinction between articles on List of articles all languages should have (reflected in the under-development bolding system). Neat.
 * "Underneath those will come other important articles that will probably be a combination of FAs and articles nominated by individuals and WikiProjects, leading to perhaps 2-3000 for a trial release." - that sounds a tad too subjective. What topics we do or don't have WikiProjects on (and obviously which ones certain editors nominate) is often arbitrary, and reflects Wikipedia's editorial and systemic biases in many areas (e.g. where we have WikiProjects for certain U.S. states, but none for most countries in the world). If you're careful with which articles get in, though, could work.
 * "we chose to stick with the basic list rather than get into endless debate about whether or not some particular article should be delisted" - Yes, I can see that the list is meant to be very basic because it's so short, but what confused me is that many entries on the list aren't at all basic, and there's a clear bias towards certain topics over other topics (e.g., a very large portion of the list is concerned with human recreation, economics, and business, vs. very little on many other areas of encyclopedic topics and fields of knowledge). I'd be fine with helping carve down a very, very short list of truly essential and general topics, but the current one here seems deficient in that respect in a number of ways. For example, y'all list landform and park but not ocean or water or sea, biology but not life, Western civilization but not Eastern civilization, English language but not Chinese language or Alphabet, Personal finance but not Money or Currency, Earth sciences but not Earth, Outer space but not Universe. In other words, the level of detail and "basicness" is extremely inconsistent, in some cases even reflecting unintended bias. -Silence 04:45, 14 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your detailed comments. I agree about the inconsistency of the core topics. In playing around with categories, I made several different category outlines. One of these outlines is a 5-level category tree that includes most of the core topics (and some suggested additions): core topic levels. (Note - this outline is a rough draft.) Some of the core topics in this outline seem to fit 5 levels down, hence they seem not to be very core or general. Some very general topics are not included in core topics table, some that you mention. Other instances of very general topics not in the core topics table are Nature, Experience, Energy, Matter, and Universe (which may or may not be topics for inclusion). Before proposing again modifying the table by additions and deletions, I was going to wait until discussions about a working preliminary categorization scheme had ended, which are taking some time. Revising the content of the core topics list is an important issue if we are wanting to use the core topics list to focus editing work on the most general articles. --Vir 16:22, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

A review of Crime
Here is a general "professional" level review of the GA-listed article Crime, I wrote in discussion over on the Good Articles list. This is a rough draft.

The first few sections of the Crime article and a few other sections read like a poorly written text book in summarizing some views of crime. Only one definition of crime is presented in summary at the top of the "why criminalize" section, without defining it as a point of view. This is a misleading sort of POV generalization. (For contrast, see the list to the right of the page for different theories of crime.) In the History section, there is attribution, but it deals in a very cursory way with the early modern period (a key period) in a few sentences, before going on to discuss extensively one type (amongst many) of modern theory of crime, not a history of the social development of crime per se in that era, which was the main topic of the section. How modern approaches to crime began to be institutionalized in the 18th century is not discussed. A number of key perspectives are omitted, such as Foucault's poststructuralist analysis of the development of modern disciplinary regimes. And, in the article as a whole, I saw little Marxist or Feminist analysis nor did I see a Frankfurt school perspective nor an environmental criminology perspective. (These are distinct and common notable perspectives on crime and social problems.) I saw little or nothing about white collar crime, corporate crime, war crimes, hate crimes, crimes of passion, or organized crime (though there are links at the bottom to some of these). I didn't see discussions of social processes that shape crime such as patterns of abuse or racial profiling (though links may be there at bottom as there are wikipedia articles on some of these topics). These are serious omissions, which point to the mostly rationalistic, individualistic bias of view of the article -- one perspective among many. The section on "Trial" returns to presenting an unattributed POV generalization. And, I'm not sure that this approach to trials, lifted out of context of the whole criminal justice system, belongs in a Crime article. Next, the outline list that is most of "Reasons" section is unclear and overgeneralized. The closing section on "Classification" is solely U.S.-centric (POV issue again), and seemed to me a poorly presented summary of that. For an overview article, this version has multiple problems. The article has POV issues. It is very uneven and not clearly constructed in general outline and within some sections.

One editing approach: The various key missing topics and extensive POV issues could perhaps could be addressed if Crime were turned into portal article lifting short summaries from other existing articles and pointing to these topics (and to a separate more well developed history article). On this topic, Criminology does serve (perhaps inappropriately) as a general portal function, in part (rather incompletely again and with much less text than crime). (I'll revise this review rough draft and move it over to the crime talk page--later.) I wonder if part of the function of Criminology could be moved to Crime with Crime focusing on being a portal to types and history of crime and Criminology focusing on theories, methods, and history of that discipline.

I would give Crime a C rating (if we had one), because of POV and lack of generalization issues, by the 1.0 core topics rating system.

In general, based on looking over many GA articles, I don't think we can rely on the GA rating system for selecting articles to publish in a final fixed media versions, though for beta versions with disclaimers that is fine. But, we can use that system to be looking at articles for improvemetn and review. If it hasn't been done already, think we eventually need or would benefit from at least the above level of "written up" review (especially when revised beyond rough draft form) for all core topics and eventually vital articles (top 1000 articles). Specialist reviews would be even better, when possible. Comments? --Vir 20:21, 14 April 2006 (UTC)


 * This is excellent work, Vir, I'm glad you took a look at this. I would suggest you do some major rewriting of that page some time.  We will have to include GAs in our beta tests, but maybe things will need to be tightened up a bit before we can rely on them for the "official" 1.0 release.  That's very important to know, thanks a lot! Walkerma 13:17, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Working on...
Other things. I will be taking a break from making regular contributions in this group for a few months or longer. Talk to you later or see you in other Wikipedia spaces. --Vir 03:34, 15 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your energy, and I hope you won't be away too long. I understand about priorities, that's why I haven't been able to do so much here as I would like recently!  All the best, Walkerma 13:19, 15 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks, I'll drop by from time to time. I'm going to focus on WP review processes and issues for now. As 1.0 ramps up, I might be a more frequent visitor. :) --Vir 18:33, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Change to assessment scale
I've done one change to the assessment scale, and to keep discussion at one place, see the main project's talk. Tito xd (?!? - help us) 03:16, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Universe, etc.

 * 1) Should we add Universe?
 * 2) If so, should we delete Outer space?
 * 3) Should we add Earth? Maurreen 17:26, 28 April 2006 (UTC)


 * As I mentioned above, Universe and Earth are both essential; Outer space is not because it is a page about a term (and a convention), not about something that physically exists. (Earth exists in space, not out of it, for example, just like all planets do; it is our perspective, not an objective fact, which makes it otherwise.) However, "outer space" might be appropriate if we are planning, for example, to have 1,600 entries, rather than the 160 that the page currently specifies. It's all a matter of relative importance. -Silence 17:30, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Status
I'm going to shift my focus to Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Version 1.0 Qualifying. Is anyone interested in coordinating the core topics project? Maurreen 19:02, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Proposals for changes to the core topics list, and formation of a supplement
I have trawled through all of the (often insightful) comments by others above, reflected on them, added a few thoughts of my own, and I would like to propose the following changes to our core topics list:

Remove from core into a core supplement

 * Demographics (B-Class)
 * Gambling (B-Class)
 * Heuristics (B-Class)
 * Hobby (Start)
 * Museums (Listed as start, perhaps now B)
 * Party (Start)
 * Pet (Start)

Net effect: -7 in core

Replace in core

 * Replace Personal finance (Start) with Money (A or B-Class, and a former FAC)
 * Replace Landform (Start) with Continent (B?) and Ocean (Start/B?)
 * Replace Historiography (B) with History of the Earth (A-Class?)

Net effect: +1 in core

Add into core

 * Energy (B?)
 * Matter (start)
 * Nature (start or B)
 * Earth (A?) (Current GA-COTW)

Net effect: +4

Create a core supplement
This would be one level below the core itself, covering lesser "top level" subjects (mainly fairly general or abstract) and also some important subjects that are very important but less general. The following could be a start, and I have included many that are displaced from the core:
 * Displaced from core
 * Demographics
 * Gambling
 * Heuristics
 * Hobby
 * Museums
 * Party
 * Pet
 * Personal finance
 * Outer space (replaced recently with universe)
 * Historiography


 * New
 * Alphabet
 * Big bang
 * Buddha
 * Chemical element
 * Climate change
 * Democracy
 * Evolution
 * Football (How could I be from Newcastle upon Tyne and not include this, under "religions"!)
 * Free will
 * Gender role
 * Globalization
 * God
 * Industrial revolution
 * Inorganic chemistry
 * Jesus
 * Literacy
 * Muhammad
 * Monarchy
 * Moon
 * Organic chemistry
 * Physical chemistry
 * Planet
 * Race
 * Renaissance
 * Revolution
 * Sea
 * Star
 * Sun
 * Thermodynamics
 * World War I
 * World War II


 * Topical issues
 * Iraq War
 * Global warming
 * Sustainable development or perhaps sustainability or Environmentalism (these are probably seen as more important in Europe than in the US)
 * World Wide Web
 * Petroleum
 * Darfur conflict


 * If we include people besides the religious 3 from above:
 * George W. Bush
 * Tony Blair (if he's still in office??!)
 * William Shakespeare
 * Albert Einstein
 * Isaac Newton
 * George Washington
 * Mahatma Gandhi

General comments on the above
As most of you know, I personally don't have strong view on these issues, but I think the above changes would be useful to WP:1.0. I am trying to put together a core of articles for WP:V0.5, and I'm sure the same will be happening with WP:V1.0. Most of the new articles proposed for the supplement are B-Class or better, many are GA or FA. Beyond the core and core supplement, the next level would be WP:VA and related lists.

The net change to the core would be to reduce the overall number by two articles. There are 53 articles listed as a start for the supplement, I expect this would grow as others add things in.

I'd like to ask people to comment on two things:

Should we make the above changes to the main core topics list? If you disagree with a specific proposal, mention it here, and make suggestions as needed.

Should we create a core topics supplement at all? If the consensus is "yes" then I will create a list starting with my list from above, and then I will ask people to edit that list, rather than getting into a detailed discussion on a list of 53 articles here. If you have strong views like "No people articles at this level" that's OK here, though. Walkerma 05:27, 11 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm going to answer you in a couple of parts, but it's easier for me to separate them in different sections. Maurreen 04:19, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Core levels
I could go for a various levels of core topics, more or less as Martin has called a "core topics supplement".

I would see the next level as having 200 - 500 entries. (Not sure either way about the biographies at the moment.)

We might want to consider List_of_basic_topic_lists and especially early smaller versions of Vital Articles.

Wikipedia already has a few "core topics" types of lists that mainly differ by the number of articles included. I've been thinking it could make sense for them all to have a naming system and a template to connect them. Maurreen 04:19, 12 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Elaborating -- My choice at the moment would be for further levels to be more exposed to the wider WP, such as WP:VA is, than to just be listed within our project. Maurreen 04:26, 12 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Yes, I agree, though I'm not sure how to actually organise that. VA could organise that, only that project is not very active.  WVWP will be coordinating the still further levels via contact with projects and with the bot, that may be the best place for subject-specific info. Walkerma 03:55, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Possible list changes
It's OK with me to lose:
 * Heuristics,
 * Party,
 * Pet, and
 * Historiography.

I thought I had already added Earth, along with Universe, after brief discussion above. I'd like to think some more about the other suggestions. Maurreen 04:39, 12 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I'd rather see the list shorter than longer. (It'd be nice to have a round 150.) But if we're going to add, I'm leaning toward:
 * History of Earth, among Martin's suggestions, plus
 * Ancient history,
 * Middle Ages, and
 * Modern history.
 * Maurreen 05:11, 12 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm OK with replacing Personal finance with Money. Maurreen 20:34, 13 May 2006 (UTC)


 * If we take out Heuristics, Historiography, and Party, Pet, and replace Personal finance with Money, we will have 152 on the list (see my sandbox. What do you think about a round 150? Maurreen 20:46, 13 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I don't want us to feel constrained by a specific no., though it would be nice to have a round 150. I would love to lose gambling, that's my least favorite core topic, I don't see it as fundamental or important enough for the top 150.  Any thoughts on that and the other changes I mentioned?  I like the history articles you mention, I'd be happy to see any of them in the core, or at least in the core supplement. Walkerma 04:01, 14 May 2006 (UTC)


 * OK, let's get rid of Gambling.
 * Would you prefer Race to Demographics?
 * I lean toward keeping Hobby -- and Soccer branches from there. :)
 * How about Geology and Oceanography instead of Ocean and Continent?


 * If you want to expand, I'm OK with adding your science suggestions and my history suggestions together:
 * Energy (B?)
 * Matter (start)
 * Nature (start or B)
 * History of the Earth
 * Ancient history
 * Middle Ages
 * Modern history


 * How about deleting Nanotechnology? Maurreen 03:39, 16 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks! Sounds like a plan, I can go along with all of these.  Let's keep hobby, that's quite OK, and I do prefer race to demographics.  Cheers, Walkerma 05:06, 16 May 2006 (UTC)


 * ) Maurreen 03:43, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks
Martin, thanks for archiving and for updating the COTF. Maurreen 03:43, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

and reassessments
I've created core topic to serve as a sort of WikiProject "banner" for the purposes of Mathbot assessment logging. I've added the template to several pages, but some of the articles have valid concerns there, so I would recommend they be reassessed. If possible, could someone review the few articles I added (only FAs and A-Classes) to check if they still are at those levels? Tito xd (?!? - help us) 04:56, 18 May 2006 (UTC)


 * That's great! I was going to suggest we did it, but you've already done that!  I think we need to re-assess every article - remember that these assessments are mostly over 6 months old now.  I'll post requests for the other Core Topics team members to help out with this, and to add in the template as they do each article.  Thanks a ton, Walkerma 15:07, 18 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks, a template is a good idea. Maurreen 20:38, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

More changes
After reviewing the current list...

... I recommend adding many of the following: Adolf Hitler, Adult, Albert Einstein, Alphabet, Amphibian, Aristotle, Atom, Bacteria, Big Bang, Biological reproduction, Bird, Book, Calendar, Capital punishment, Cell, Charles Darwin, Chemical element, Child, Cold War, Color, Dante Alighieri, Day, Death, Deity, Desert, Disease, Electricity, Emotion, Evolution, Fire, Fish, Flower, Force, Fossil fuel, Fruit, Fungus, Galaxy, Genetics, George W. Bush, Glass, Grass, Homer, India, Industrial Revolution, Infant, Infinity, Insect, Isaac Newton, Jerusalem, Karl Marx, Life, Light, London, Ludwig van Beethoven, Mammal, Marriage, Mass, Meat, Metabolism, Metal, Michelangelo, Military, Molecule, Month, Moon, Mountain, Nervous system, New York City, Ocean, Organism, Pablo Picasso, Paper, Paris, Peace, People's Republic of China, Phase (matter), Planet, Plastic, Plato, Renaissance, Reptile, River, Rock, Rome, Russia, Sigmund Freud, Slavery, Sleep, Soul, Speed, Star, State, Sun, Tokyo, Transport, Tree, United Kingdom, United Nations, United States, Vegetable, Vincent van Gogh, Virus, Water, Weapon, Weight Wheel, William Shakespeare, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Wood, World War I, World War II, Writing, Year

... and I recommend removing most or all of the following: Biotechnology, Botany, Crafts, Employment, Ethnic groups, Festival, Finance, History of the Earth, Hobbies, Industry, Leisure, Linguistics, Manufacturing, Map, Mathematical proof, Modern history, Museums, Natural disaster, Oceanography, Optics, Personal life, Publishing, Recreation, Soccer, Theorems, Trigonometry, Western civilization


 * I think what I would like to do is put these into a supplement to core topics.


 * I spent a long time reviewing your earlier comments, and on the basis of your comments and those of Vir, I made the (more modest) proposal listed above a week or two back. I think you raised some important things, and many have now been incorporated after a period of discussion and negotiation.  At this point, I don't think it would be fruitful to hold a long discussion on this new (long!) list which would end in the conclusion, "We have to agree to disagree."  I also think that once these topics are incorporated into WP:V0.5, something I hope to do in the next few days, it won't matter whether they are classed as "core" or "core supplement" or "vital articles" except for listing purposes.


 * We had been trying to limit the no. of articles to the 150-160 range, right since 2004, so the changes you propose would change the whole scope of this project. I notice too that many of your articles are more "specific" than our current listing - our general approach has been to have very broad topics at the top of the tree, that gradually get more specific as we fo down.  Therefore we can have Industry, Manufacturing and Finance in place, and below that in the organisational tree we can have articles like General Motors or Barclays Bank.  As you can see from my comments of a few days ago, I had listed many of the articles you mention for the supplement.  Your listing here is an excellent list of articles we "must have" on the CD.  I think I would support virtually all of them going into that supplement, which will almost guarantee their inclusion in WP:V0.5.  Anything other than incremental changes to our list would open Pandora's Box.  Would it be OK with all of the team members to use this new list as the starting point for the supplement?  That would allow us to get V0.5 open for nominations next week. Walkerma 21:07, 18 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Here are just a handful of changes I would propose for folks to comment on:


 * 1) I had suggested ocean, but we adopted oceanography instead - I notice Silence prefers ocean, should we go back to that?
 * 2) I would prefer God to Deity in the supplement, the former is a much stronger article (GA, former FAC).  Maybe Deity should be in VAs? Walkerma 21:07, 18 May 2006 (UTC)


 * "I notice too that many of your articles are more "specific" than our current listing" - Some are, some aren't. You don't seem to have analyzed my listing very carefully, since you didn't notice how broad a large number of them are: alphabet, atom, Big Bang, color, death, emotion, fire, force, infinity, life, metal, speed, sun, transport, water, weapon, weight, and wheel, for example, surely belong as top 150 articles, or very close to it.
 * "our general approach has been to have very broad topics at the top of the tree, that gradually get more specific as we fo down." - Then you have failed magnificently in your goals. I just provided nearly 30 examples of clearly not-top-level entries that are still on the list. How can you justify listing Soccer as the only game, sport or physical activity on the list, Western civilization and not Eastern civilization, trivial topics like recreation and hobbies and leisure but not entertainment, and ridiculously large numbers of society- and economics-related articles (clearly showing a massive systemic bias in the current list), compared to relatively very few articles related to the natural world? The current list is so warped that it is nearly useless, and its criteria are clearly arbitrary and inconsistently applied, as demonstrated by the fact that we are OK with including biotechnology and museums and mathematical proof but not with including fire, wheel, metal or life. You call that "basic"? Yowza. I really don't mean to be harsh, and I apologize if I offend with any of my comments, but the list needs a major overhaul before it can be considered a reliable guide to the "core topics" of Wikipedia; the only realistic justification for not committing to such an overhaul is the arbitrary assumption that old additions are more likely to be good "core topics" than new additions, which experience has demonstrated (and is demonstrating again now) is often an unreliable assumption.
 * "I would prefer God to Deity in the supplement, the former is a much stronger article (GA, former FAC)." - God is a type of deity, ergo deity is a higher-level entry than deity, and thus more important from an unbiased perspective. Arguing otherwise is like arguing that Bible is more important than Islam, or that we should have mercantilism on the list because it's an FA and exclude trade because it's not. Furthermore, the God article is actually pretty mediocre, though I agree that it's better than the deity one right now (which shouldn't matter). A list like this should determine what articles we improve to FA quality; what articles we already have at FA quality shouldn't determine what articles we list here! This list should help correct Wikipedia's systemic biases, not indulge and succumb to them. -Silence 22:28, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Then I think we will have to agree to disagree. I really like your list, though, and I would like to enlist your help in assessing a supplement based on them.  :To me, it doesn't matter if we call them "List X" and "List Y", I don't think any list can really be both fundamental and yet usable, general yet relevant, and any such list can be regarded as biased.  This is based on my experience of looking at many lists, assessing "core" articles and discussing list changes with many others over the last nine months.  I would have come up with a very different list if I had written the core list myself, but I don't think it would have been any better, and it's rather refreshing to work on a project with a different perspective than my own.


 * I'm going to be bold and create a new supplementary list. I would like to propose that we limit the size of this to 200 articles, giving 350 articles including the original list. Anything more than that should be covered at WP:VA.  This supplementary list can include a lot more of the specific topics you mention - I agree we can't have an encyclopedia without Shakespeare, for example! However, we can't have Shakespeare without assessing the article first, would you help us out with assessments? Let's get to work and make a CD! Thanks, Walkerma 09:26, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Supplement

 * I've created this page, and started assessing Silence's list. Please help out when you can! Walkerma 20:40, 19 May 2006 (UTC)


 * The table makes it hard for me to review the supplement suggestions. Only a few can be seen at a time, so it is hard to consider context and relativity. Maurreen 20:48, 21 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I'd prefer not to include George Bush and especially Tony Blair at this level. Maurreen 21:04, 21 May 2006 (UTC)


 * The list suggestions are more than 200. I'm working on categorizing the items. Maurreen 22:57, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I'd question the inclusion of Blair, but if you are going to include not only people but people from such recent history, it would seem to be a bit serious-minded to exclude The Beatles (considered by most to be the iconic entertainers of the 20th century). --kingboyk 08:22, 24 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Yes, I simply copied over all of the suggestions from various talk pages and pasted them into the page. I started assessing the first few, so that Silence could understand better what I was doing (and could maybe help out?).  I also wanted to set it up in the style that the bot can read.  Once we agree on what's in and what's not, we can get the bot to handle the table.   I think Tito has started getting the automation started for the main core topics table.  Obviously the supplement table needs a LOT more work. By the way, my exams are over, just marking to do then I'll have a bit more time. Walkerma 01:01, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Sounds good. I've consolidated them and have now suggested deletions. Maurreen 03:14, 22 May 2006 (UTC)