Wikipedia talk:Vital articles/Archive 25

Withdrawing a nomination
I chose the wrong remove in an add remove. I would like to withdraw Wikipedia_talk:Vital_articles/Level/5 and repair them for add/remove. What is proper procedure.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 02:56, 27 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Answered! —  The Blue  Rider  Postal horn icon.svg 10:02, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

Human history peer review
Hello everyone, I have opened a peer review for human history. I have been prepping it for GA for a while and would love your feedback. Cerebellum (talk) 09:39, 25 October 2023 (UTC)
 * That's great, thank you for your initiative. I will take a look when I have the chance. —  The Blue  Rider  Postal horn icon.svg 10:16, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

Remove Video
We are now 1 over quota and I think removing Video makes sense, as we currently also list Film and Television at this level.


 * Support
 * 1) Support as nom. Rreagan007 (talk) 22:50, 28 October 2023 (UTC)
 * 2) Support I think the content of this article is a bit technical for this level and I agree that leaving it at level 4 makes more sense. Sound recording and reproduction is the analogous article for audio (and probably more vital than this article), and that is also at level 4. Cobblet (talk) 19:13, 30 October 2023 (UTC)
 * 3) Support per above. Gizza  (talk) 23:01, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
 * 4) Support Interstellarity (talk) 20:36, 23 November 2023 (UTC)
 * 5) Support. per nom. Aszx5000 (talk) 21:57, 28 November 2023 (UTC)


 * Oppose
 * 1) Oppose If anything can be removed due to redundancy then just the arts or art. Dawid2009 (talk) 07:57, 29 October 2023 (UTC)


 * Discuss
 * Are you seriously proposing that we remove Art from this list? Rreagan007 (talk) 17:53, 2 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes. Per previous discussion, most probably redundand to Visual Arts, Aestetics, etc.. I take issue with State and Country as w do list lsit at this level morality and ethics or ocean and sea. Dawid2009 (talk) 21:53, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

Archiving
Why did so much stuff get archived to level 5 archive 13 today when archive 14 and 15 exist already?-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 04:26, 31 October 2023 (UTC)


 * Could you please post level 5-specific queries to the talk page there? Better yet, take the matter up directly with whoever did the archiving. Thank you, Cobblet (talk) 04:50, 31 October 2023 (UTC)
 * There was both a bot and a user involved. I will post to level 5.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 04:54, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

Sorting the African and European countries by region
I have made changes that sort the African and European countries by region until I was reverted. As a regular member of vital articles, I always try to think of better ways to organize the list better. I sorted the Asian countries by region since Asia is the continent where a lot of countries on our list are. It is also the largest and most populated continent containing the majority of the world's population. I wasn't too keen on sorting the other continents, but I think sorting the African and European countries since they are the second and third most populous continents would help organize things better. I think it would help us regarding the regions of the world are overrepresented and underrepresented for future country nominations. I don't think it is necessary to sort the North American, South American, and Oceanian countries by region, since we don't list that many countries in that region. I hope we can have a civil discussion on whether this change would be beneficial to the vital articles project. Looking forward to your comments. Interstellarity (talk) 13:24, 22 November 2023 (UTC)
 * The more we fuss over sorting the articles on the list, the more potential for controversy there is (e.g., the UK can be considered part of Western or Northern Europe, and Germany and Poland are often both regarded as Central European countries, not Western/Eastern), and the more we distract people from the content of the list, which is our only actual mandate. It has been over two years since we last added a country to the list, and at that time it was clear that there was no consensus to add more countries beyond the ones we now have. I see no evidence whatsoever that the consensus has changed, so the idea that this sort of overclassification will aid future country nominations is farfetched. Please leave well enough alone. You're welcome to use your own userspace to reformat the lists to your heart's content, but this page is highly visible and treating it like your own sandbox is inappropriate and unproductive. Cobblet (talk) 15:12, 22 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Both Europe and Africa have 9 or less articles currently. Under the 7 ± 2 rule, the sublists are of a manageable size and further divisions are not necessary. Also agree with Cobblet. Very different to VA4 because of the 10x higher number of articles on average there. Gizza  (talk) 04:41, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

Where is the discussion what "Wikipedia" has been added to the level 4?
I can not find that.... Was disussion about it? Dawid2009 (talk) 14:50, 23 November 2023 (UTC)
 * There may not have been a discussion on adding Wikipedia, but removing it was discussed and rejected: Wikipedia talk:Vital articles/Level/4/Archive 27. Cobblet (talk) 15:10, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

Other wiki VAs?
Do other languages have Vital article lists?-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 15:46, 24 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Please see d:Q43375360 and d:Q5460604. Cobblet (talk) 17:38, 24 November 2023 (UTC)
 * User:Cobblet, that is kind of helpful, but I don't read some of those languages. It seems some languages have 1000 core articles and others have a level-based system of vital articles like ours. I am really just concerned about how many languages have level based systems that extend to at least level 4 with 10,000.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 18:23, 24 November 2023 (UTC)
 * d:Q6173448 and d:Q50087590. Cobblet (talk) 19:02, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia talk:Vital articles/Level/5 § Split talk page
You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Vital articles/Level/5 § Split talk page. --Grnrchst (talk) 15:13, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

Totally random order of quality rankings
The number of articles by quality ranking is listed as: GA, C, DGA, B, FFA, FA, FGAN, Start, A, FFAC, FFLC. This is completely random. It should be ranked by quality, or otherwise by number at each level. Kk.urban (talk) 22:28, 5 December 2023 (UTC)


 * Which page are you talking about? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:50, 8 December 2023 (UTC)
 * @MSGJ The table in the summary section Kk.urban (talk) 16:33, 8 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I don't even know what FFAC and FFLC mean. That is produced by bot, so will need the attention of @Kanashimi &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 18:47, 8 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I added the order of the icons to the settings page and that should solve the problem. Kanashimi (talk) 00:17, 9 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks for fixing this! Kk.urban (talk) 20:44, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

Rush closes
In my opinion, no proposal voting should be closed until at least 7 days have passed since the last comment. This enables all discussants to react to other discussants and be reacted to by all other discussants. This will ensure that no important comments get swept under the rug. Do I need to bring this to a vote or can we come to a simple agreement on this.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 22:09, 6 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Maybe I should restrict this discussion to level 5, where are closing rules are being re-evaluated along several dimensions. I am going to move this discussion to WT:VA5. Sorry for the bother.-04:58, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

Comparing the vital articles list: 5 years ago, 10 years ago, and 15 years ago, and now
I know the vital articles list has been around for over 15 years, almost 20 years now. I think it would be nice to compare the lists from 5 years ago, 10 years ago, and 15 years ago, and now so we can see how the list has evolved over time. I think comparing these lists with one another will help with whether our current system of getting consensus for new additions and removals is working. Do you think the list has gotten better with time or do you think it has gotten worse with time? I look forward to your feedback. Interstellarity (talk) 12:21, 25 October 2023 (UTC)
 * 2008 list: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Vital_articles&oldid=246731795
 * 2013 list: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Vital_articles&oldid=579410055
 * 2018 list: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Vital_articles&oldid=864860903
 * 2023 list: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Vital_articles&oldid=1181476611

BTW, I think there is mistake at FAQ as name level 4 has been introduced in 2017 meanwhile for ears the level 4 was named colloqiually "expanded list" (or wp:vital articles/expanded).

I would also add more info to th FAQ as wp:VA raised attention in various places. Somone at talk page on level 4 said about gamr called "Regardle" (version of worldle) based on wp:vital. Vital rticles appeared at least once in signpost, (Sdkb said that somewhere, not remember when), same with pantheon.world. In 2017 one user from University of Minosetta (former meta member, and along with operator of Suggest Bot) started projet about automatic importance clarification and in 2022 university of Minosetta created also Paper articl whch was also used in refference here, and which we discuss above. Dawid2009 (talk) 20:37, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia talk:Vital articles/Level/2 § Remove Country, Add State
You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Vital articles/Level/2 § Remove Country, Add State. Interstellarity (talk) 00:50, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

ACM-published paper on the Vital Articles project
I'm not aware of any previous discussion about this paper on this talk page or anywhere else on Wikipedia, but this was just too interesting to not share: there was a 28-page, WMF-sanctioned paper on this Vital Articles project published late last year in the ACM journal Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction. The paper is titled "We Need a Woman in Music": Exploring Wikipedia's Values on Article Priority and is authored by researchers from the University of Minnesota, including Loren Terveen. It can be read on arXiv. I believe this is the first and only academic paper about this project. (I have absolutely no affiliation with this paper; I only stumbled upon it by chance.)

The paper uses the lists of articles produced by this project as well as these very talk page discussions as proxies for what the Wikipedia community in general considers important: Through examination of VA participant demographics, we find that the vast majority of editors who engage in VA talk page discussions are highly experienced, and thus likely to be concerned with the needs of the encyclopedia as a whole. The authors qualitatively classify the criteria that editors use for curating these lists, quantitatively analyze how balanced these lists are in terms of gender and geography, and discuss what biases the authors of these lists may or may not have.

Notably, the paper also anonymously quotes many members of this project, including a choice quote from GuzzyG right in the title.

Although the paper was published in 2022, most of the analysis appears to have been based on this project's status as of July 2020. I've summarized some of the paper's findings as they relate to this project below. (There are some other parts of the paper about recommender systems that I haven't included.)

They find that participants are highly experienced and skew male: While VA is a convenient source of focused discussions between Wikipedians on how articles should be prioritized according to the encyclopedia's values, its participants are not a representative cross-section of all English Wikipedia editors, so it is worth going over their general demographics. Of the 794 editors we identify as ever having participated in VA talk page discussions, 79 have administrator privileges. For reference, only 1,119 accounts total have administrator privileges on English Wikipedia. Even the non-administrators on VA are highly active and involved, however; VA participants have a median edit count of 6,419 on English Wikipedia—significantly higher than the median edit count of 2 for all registered accounts. While this highly-experienced editor population is more likely to espouse the encyclopedia's current values, it is certainly not representative.

...

This more experienced editor population, perhaps unsurprisingly, skews heavily male. Of those who report a gender on their profile, only 7.1% report they are women, compared to the 12.9% who so identify on Wikipedia as a whole. This belies what is likely to be the actual gender distribution on VA, however, as men may be more likely to report gender on Wikipedia than women. 40% of VA participants report their gender as compared with only 2% of Wikipedians overall, so the true difference in editor gender balance between VA and English Wikipedia as a whole is likely to be even more pronounced than our figures suggest.

They categorize criteria that participants use for determining an article's vitality into importance criteria (an article's importance based on its inherent characteristics) and global criteria (an article's ability to promote or impede the encyclopedia's values with regards to the global composition of high-quality content), but find that these criteria sometimes conflict with each other. The below table is copied from Meta-Wiki:

They find a relatively low representation of women, and that prioritizing articles according to this project would lower the percentage of featured articles about women: 16.5% of VA's biographies are about women, which initially seems fairly close to the 18.5% figure on English Wikipedia as a whole. Breaking it down further, however, reveals very low representation of women among biographies at higher levels. At level 3, we find that a mere 8.9% of VA's biographies are about women, and level 4 is only slightly higher at 10.8%.

...

VA, meanwhile, has the strongest negative effect on women's representation, bringing it down to 14.7% of FA biographies. VA’s effect on the representation of women would begin to reverse once editors reached level 5 but, at the current rate, reaching level 5 would take approximately 4 decades. Given that Wikipedia has a constant stream of important new information to document at high quality—e.g., as previously mentioned, 2019-20 coronavirus pandemic was added to level 4 in 2020—we find it unlikely that the higher levels would stay static for long enough to ever necessitate that editors use level 5 to prioritize.

They find that this project does quite well when it comes to geography: VA participants see the inclusion of broader articles at higher VA levels as more consistent with the encyclopedia's values.

...

[A]mong articles that are not region-neutral, VA also far outperforms all our metric-based rankings in representation of the Global South.

They find that the low representation of women may be due to editors' self-focus bias and the effort to create a compelling proposal: We were surprised to find such a sharp drop in the representation of women among VA's higher level biographies, especially given our discovery of gender balance as one of the encyclopedia's values in our qualitative study of VA.

...

[F]or an article to be included in VA, an editor must take the initiative to create a decently compelling proposal for it. This barrier to entry may exacerbate self-focus bias in the context of VA because editors are more likely to go through the trouble of introducing proposals for articles relating to topics they pay closer attention to, despite their ideological support for gender balance in the abstract.

They allow that history may account for the discrepancy between representation of gender and geography: Alternatively, [the discrepancy] could be due to the focus on enduring significance and differences in the degrees to which power has historically varied along geopolitical versus along gender lines. While places in the Global North do currently have more power—and therefore perceived importance—than those in the Global South, the geopolitical landscape has varied substantially throughout history. Egypt, for example, is classified as Global South irrespective of Ancient Egypt's substantial political and cultural power many centuries ago. By contrast, women have consistently been underrepresented among those in power throughout all of history and all or most civilizations. Thus, when looking at long-term/enduring significance, historical power dynamics may create stronger filters along the lines of gender than of geography. While we find this plausible as a partial explanation, however, more specific study of this is necessary to draw any firm conclusions.

They conclude with the following: [W]e demonstrate that the community's gender demographics can prevent it from actualizing the encyclopedia's values, lending further credibility to feminist critiques of Wikipedia.

I'm not sure if I totally agree with the conclusion, but I thought that this paper was intriguing enough to bring up. It's also pretty neat that this project has enough external visibility to be the subject of a whole paper. Malerisch (talk) 22:27, 10 October 2023 (UTC)
 * I think they were on the right track when they were talking about power. For most of human history, men have held a disproportionate number of positions of power. Most political rulers and military leaders have been men. As well as most skilled professionals such as scientists, philosophers, doctors, etc. When you are constructing a list of biographical articles that covers all of human history, then men will be disproportionately represented. Rreagan007 (talk) 23:02, 10 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Careful with the "most skilled professionals" part... the number of women who have been shut out of Nobel Prizes their male counterparts received, for example, suggests that it's less "who did the work and knew things" and more who was recorded as getting credit. Which, still entirely goes to the point of Wikipedia articles skewing male because history has skewed male. But the way we talk about how that happens does shape what we consider important to pay attention to going forward. - Darker Dreams (talk) 01:17, 11 October 2023 (UTC)
 * I was mainly referring to pre-1900. There just weren't very many women in the highly skilled professions back then. Even in the 1950s, female doctors were relatively rare. Rreagan007 (talk) 02:01, 11 October 2023 (UTC)
 * @Malerisch: Thanks for posting this here! I actually recently did a similar analysis of VA women's representation for the Women in Green project and found similar results (only off by a single decimal, really). This actually spurred me to add a number of women (including what I thought were some glaring omissions) to our list of scientists, which helped bring women's representation in the category up from 6.1% to 8.3%. And that category's not even at quota yet!
 * It's fantastic to hear that VA actually does relatively well on geographic distribution. While I have found that the United States places the highest in every single category of VAs, even outweighing entire continents in some sections, I think this is something that can be refined over time.
 * I do agree with its conclusion that community demographics can influence content demographics, so think we should always be attempting to bring more people with different perspectives into this project. Hell, it's part of why I'm here in the first place. While I don't think we'll ever achieve "perfect" representation, to be set by some target or quota (which is hard to judge, per the above comments on historical factors), we should certainly be striving towards better representation. Basically, I think we should see it as a direction to move in, rather than a rigidly-defined end goal. --Grnrchst (talk) 21:24, 21 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks for linking to your analysis! If anything, your percentages are more accurate since they're more recent—their numbers are probably over three years old at this point.
 * I also agree that there's room for improvement on geography, though I'll say that there's less US bias on level 4 than there was years ago. (I can't speak for level 5.) I've nominated a decent share of Americans and supported others for removal in the past.
 * I don't think the authors of this paper have published the lists of articles generated using their own methods (PageRank, page views, and edit count) that they used to compare, but IMO previous attempts at algorithmically creating lists of significant people using Wikipedia data, such as Who's Bigger? and Pantheon, produced lists that were much worse than the vital article lists not just geographically, but also in general. For example, the former has George W. Bush as the 36th most important person of all time, while the latter considers Jimmy Carter as the second most important US president and 93rd most important person overall. It's very possible that the authors came to their conclusion about geography just because their own lists were not very good and not because the vital article lists are particularly balanced. Malerisch (talk) 13:29, 22 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Good to see you around User:Malerisch, and thanks for alerting us to this article. It's interesting that people find this project worthy of academic study. Cobblet (talk) 01:05, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

I found that quote in the article interesing We therefore support Menking and Rosenberg’s revised version of the third pillar—“The integrity of Wikipedia is a function of the size and breadth of its community.”. To compare Wikipedia with something other (start of the article is Wikipedia—like most peer production communities—suffers from a basic problem: the amount of work that needs to be done); Regarding Britannica's perspective; they put in their 2019's top 100 women list: 13 vistioners/religious figures and just 9 performers/musicians and 8 artists (It is also noteworthy regarding their/our "completness as part of global crterias" Channel in the same category what Khalo on Britannica - both are considered artist). It is also ńoteworthy that top 100 Britannica has as many more visionaries women as than women writers (14 vistionaries and respectively 13 writers) what is rigth with original philosophies in the past that balance beetwen writers and religious figures (men or women) should be quite comparable/stable. Dawid2009 (talk) 21:27, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

Category:Wikipedia level-unknown vital articles
What's up with that category? There is some stuff there that should be vital, but is it? Are those artifacts of some improper additions/removal from the lists? Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 08:19, 24 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Every time I have seen it, it has been an artifact of improper remval.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 06:43, 25 October 2023 (UTC)
 * @TonyTheTiger Should we restore all of them? Or vote on them for V5 at least? There were a few items there that I wanted to suggest to add to V5, but I did not as I was puzzled by this category (Freddy Krueger, Popeye, and looking at the list, I certainly see some other stuff that looks V5 to me). Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 06:49, 25 October 2023 (UTC)
 * User:Piotrus, I assumed that they were properly demoted from VA based on vitality although not closed properly. I'll get back to you with a list. The only one I remember was Aquaman. The others were mostly movies that are not vital, IMO.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 02:54, 27 October 2023 (UTC)
 * here are the others.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 03:00, 27 October 2023 (UTC)
 * @TonyTheTiger Thanks, but I am not sure what the link above proves? Where they added improperly (a template was added ot the talkpage with no discussion and nobody editing the Vital list)? If not, shouldn't we link to the removal discussions? Personally I think Ghostbusters, RoboCop and The Thing are likely at V5 level. Where were they discussed (if anywhere)? Constructively, we should have a talk page notice template that an article was added/removed from Vital list, just like for GA/FA. And the Vital list for each entry should link the relevant discussion. Yes, I know, it is a major undertaking to implement this, but we should seriously consider this. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 03:10, 27 October 2023 (UTC)
 * I was just cleaning up. Feel free to initiate any appropriate corrective action.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 05:18, 27 October 2023 (UTC)
 * I concur. Even if something is moved down a level it should have a former designation. I think VA should be included in .-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 05:21, 27 October 2023 (UTC)
 * User:Piotrus, I have done some digging. It seems that when User:Cewbot discovers a talk page that has for an article that is no longer listed, it erases the level rather than erases the template from the talk page. If we could get User:Cewbot to erase the template from such pages, this category might suddenly become vacant or almost so.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 04:12, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
 * E.g. with this edit, Thor (Marvel Comics), Daredevil (Marvel Comics character), Wolverine (character) and Aquaman all were delisted from VA5 on February 13, 2020. Cewbot noticed this on all four pages on March 24, 2020 and removed the level parameter number. I have since removed the template from Aquaman, but the others remain in this category.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 04:20, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
 * @TonyTheTiger Good find. Ping bot operator @User:Kanashimi. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 08:03, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
 * We could just edit the template so it that doesn't appear unless level is specified. But all this will be resolved when we merge the template into the banner shell anyway. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:11, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Maybe the code wasn't good enough at that time. The whole template should be deleted later, like here. Kanashimi (talk) 09:45, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
 * User:Kanashimi can the bot go back around remove the whole template from any article that is not listed at VA.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 15:03, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Of course. But the task is pending approval. Kanashimi (talk) 21:32, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
 * User:Kanashimi, how long do these approvals take?-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 18:51, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
 * It depends on the processing of the BAG. Usually it takes a few months... Kanashimi (talk) 21:38, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

List of vital articles
As part of the merge of Template:Vital article into Template:WikiProject banner shell (discussed here and here) I propose to create a machine-readable list of all vital articles, possibly in JSON format. Module:Banner shell will then be able to read this list and provide the relevant details on the article's talk page. I've started a list at Vital articles/list but if this is to contain all vital articles then it will be a big task. Is there a similar list somewhere else that could be adapted? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:19, 31 October 2023 (UTC)


 * @Kanashimi &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:20, 31 October 2023 (UTC)
 * I think maybe I can do that. But I need a proper JSON template. Kanashimi (talk) 23:30, 31 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Hi Kanashimi:
 * Does your bot use the "topic" parameter at all? What is the purpose of that parameter?
 * Does your bot use the "subpage" parameter at all?
 * What do you mean by a JSON template?
 * &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:02, 1 November 2023 (UTC)
 * These two parameters are the ones that the template originally needed to display the exact link. You can refer to the source code of the template. The robot traverses all pages without using these two parameters.
 * JSON template means for example to use  or   or others. It depends on the lua code. Kanashimi (talk) 22:56, 1 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Is the list I've started at Vital articles/list suitable? We can add the "subpage" too, if it's needed. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:40, 3 November 2023 (UTC)
 * I suggest writing out the lua code first, so that we know how to do it better. Kanashimi (talk) 09:57, 3 November 2023 (UTC)
 * The list that bot is now creating can be seen Vital articles/List of all articles and Vital articles/List of all level 1–4 vital articles. Kanashimi (talk) 00:26, 1 November 2023 (UTC)
 * If the JSON page is updated then we could create all the other lists automatically with Lua &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:02, 1 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Sure. I suggest writing the lua code first. Kanashimi (talk) 22:57, 1 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Please see and Template:WikiProject banner shell/testcases for some examples &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:34, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

Some discussion on technicalities is continuing at User talk:CX Zoom &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:55, 10 November 2023 (UTC)


 * @MSGJ: Got some of it at User:CX Zoom/Vital. Article titles with characters preceding "A" and "A" itself are currently uploaded. Would you like to run any testcase on the jsons/article talk page before I upload the rest? &#8212;CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 20:49, 11 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Great, thanks for your work on this. Do you mind if I move into project space and then I will start some testing? I guess "0" is for any non-alphabetic character. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:53, 11 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Sure, you can move it where you'd like to. I'll upload the rest there. "0" is for characters which comes before "A" in Unicode. For characters after "Z", I'll use, maybe, "Post-Z"? &#8212;CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 21:23, 11 November 2023 (UTC)
 * This would need some bot assistance for maintenance though. Especially when pages are moved around from one location to another. I assume, we can add PageID to the details of each article, so that bots have an easier time tracking the article during swap moves, etc. &#8212;CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 21:32, 11 November 2023 (UTC)
 * I suggest Vital articles/list/A.json, etc. Tests working on Template:WikiProject banner shell/testcases, except for the link to Vital articles/Level/5/Arts/Literature which doesn't exist. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:10, 11 November 2023 (UTC)
 * All level 4 topics and 5 of the level 5 topics (Arts, History, Philosophy and religion, Technology, Mathematics) don't have any subpages. I'll incline towards removing the "subpage" data for these articles if it is not needed. &#8212;CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 22:15, 11 November 2023 (UTC)
 * If there is no subpage then there shouldn't be a subpage parameter - or am I missing something? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:27, 11 November 2023 (UTC)
 * I have moved those first two lists into project space. Are the others ready yet? Can I ask how you compiled the subpage field? For example, on Talk:A Confederacy of Dunces there is no subpage but on Vital articles/list/A.json there is . Is it based on the layout of Vital articles/Level/5/Arts? If so, perhaps   or   would be better? It would be useful to have some comments from  about how the layout is encoded for the bot. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:44, 12 November 2023 (UTC)
 * I have the entire list ready on the laptop, but I don't have access to it right now. I'll upload all of it in 10-12 hours time. For "subpage" field, I used the subpage name for the L5 topics that are split into multiple pages; for other L4/5 articles, I just used the first subtopic name. &#8212;CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 21:49, 12 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Okay, thanks. Maybe use "subtopic" then, unless there actually is a subpage &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:51, 12 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Sure. &#8212;CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 21:52, 12 November 2023 (UTC)
 * I create some test cases, Vital articles/data/A.json, Vital articles/data/Topic hierarchy.json Kanashimi (talk) 13:34, 13 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Why are the level 2 articles also in level 3, level 4 and level 5? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:16, 13 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes, like Ang Lee is listed Vital articles/Level/4/People as well as Vital articles/Level/5/People/Entertainers, directors, producers, and screenwriters. Of course, I could have listed only the highest grades. But listing them all has the advantage of knowing exactly how many levels the article is listed in. Kanashimi (talk) 22:29, 13 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Surely each article should only be listed at one level? If it is listed at level 3, then it is redundant in the extreme to also list it at level 4 ... &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 23:24, 13 November 2023 (UTC)
 * It's not a problem. I can change the program code if necessary. Kanashimi (talk) 23:34, 13 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes please, I think this should be changed. I have been waiting for @CX Zoom to return to the discussion but he/she seems to be AWOL so I will recode the template to use your lists instead. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:21, 20 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Is it possible to combine the non-Roman charcters like Vital articles/data/Ō.json, Vital articles/data/Ğ.json and Vital articles/data/".json? CX Zoom was planning to group them into a "pre-0" and a "post-z" group, or maybe just one "other" group if there are not too many of them. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:27, 20 November 2023 (UTC)
 * 'other' or 'others'? Kanashimi (talk) 23:14, 20 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Temporary use Vital articles/data/others.json. Kanashimi (talk) 23:13, 21 November 2023 (UTC)
 * I think it would be still helpful to have all levels listed, for example, for the new template Vital article link (see discussion below). For example, if the article is of level 3, then one might still want to see its context among level 4 articles, or to see which page/section it belongs over there. I do not think this would affect the Banner shell code that much, since then you would just need to take the first element of the list. This would also not increase the file size significantly, since most articles are only listed on level 5. — Kammerer55 (talk) 13:19, 29 November 2023 (UTC)
 * What are you using detailed_level for? In most cases it matches to LEVEL/TOPIC/SUBPAGE but not always. For Ang Lee, it is  but subpage is   &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:18, 13 November 2023 (UTC)
 * The  parameter is to link to the list page accurately. The way I'm using now is to read the list page and then get the page name and chapter name to categorize it.   and   are actually converted from User:Cewbot/log/20200122/configuration instead of relying on reading the talk page of the article one by one. In fact, I've been wondering why something like   can't be set to , so that there is less conversion process. Kanashimi (talk) 22:46, 13 November 2023 (UTC)
 * I agree - that would be simpler and perhaps slightly more efficient &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 23:25, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

Break
I have coded Module:Banner shell/sandbox to use subpages of Vital articles/data and it seems to be working well. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:43, 23 November 2023 (UTC) topic = { Science = 'Physical sciences', Society = 'Society and social sciences', Biology = 'Biological and health sciences', Philosophy = 'Philosophy and religion' }, subpage = { Sports = 'Sports, games and recreation', Artists = 'Artists, musicians, and composers', Entertainers = 'Entertainers, directors, producers, and screenwriters', ['Military leaders'] = 'Military personnel, revolutionaries, and activists', Activists = 'Military personnel, revolutionaries, and activists', Philosophers = 'Philosophers, historians, political and social scientists', Politicians = 'Politicians and leaders', Scientists = 'Scientists, inventors, and mathematicians', Writers = 'Writers and journalists', Journalists = 'Writers and journalists', Entertainers = 'Entertainers, directors, producers, and screenwriters', Basics = 'Basics and measurement' } topic = { ['Physical sciences'] = 'Physical sciences', ['Society and social sciences'] = 'Society and social sciences', ... }, subpage = { ['Sports, games and recreation'] = 'Sports, games and recreation', ['Artists, musicians, and composers'] = 'Artists, musicians, and composers', ... } If we do a map conversion, we'll have to maintain the conversion table forever. We might as well not convert at all. Kanashimi (talk) 22:54, 23 November 2023 (UTC)
 * The following aliases have been hard-coded into the module. Am I missing any? I think it would be preferable if these could be changed in the data files. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:45, 23 November 2023 (UTC)
 * A lot of articles have level 5, topic="Technology", but no subpage. Is that correct? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:48, 23 November 2023 (UTC)
 * 1 is marked level 4 but there is no topic &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:55, 23 November 2023 (UTC)
 * See Database reports/Vital articles update report Kanashimi (talk) 15:56, 23 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Article 1 is not listed there? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 16:00, 23 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Search "Please set the topic in User:Cewbot/log/20200122/configuration#Topics", they are all missed. Kanashimi (talk) 22:51, 23 November 2023 (UTC)
 * I would suggest to just use the section name of the article in the VA list and eliminate the topic/subpage. Kanashimi (talk) 15:58, 23 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Okay, how would that work exactly? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:59, 23 November 2023 (UTC)
 * e.g.,


 * I agree the above map is totally pointless! So can you change all the subpage parameters in the JSON pages to match the actual pages? Then I can remove the alias map. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:14, 24 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Sure. I reorganized the lists. Kanashimi (talk) 11:10, 24 November 2023 (UTC)
 * You've confused me again.
 * Autonomic nervous system has level 5, topic "Biology" and also sublist "Biology". Shouldn't the topic be "Biological and health sciences"?
 * Agriculture has level 2, but no topic. Is that correct - currently it has topic "Society"?
 * &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:20, 24 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes, there was a problem. I changed it, and now it works like "level/topic/sublist#section". Kanashimi (talk) 15:16, 24 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Looks good. I'll add this new structure to the module code. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:59, 24 November 2023 (UTC)
 * It is great to have the section anchors. However they don't seem to be working. For example Vital articles/Level/5/Arts doesn't take me to the literary fiction section, do you know why? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 23:12, 24 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Okay the reason is that the correct link would be Vital articles/Level/5/Arts. So I think the number of articles could be removed from the heading. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 23:17, 24 November 2023 (UTC)
 * I think `.trimmed_link` will meet your needs. Kanashimi (talk) 00:45, 25 November 2023 (UTC)
 * That's nice but I would prefer a stable link that would be easier to maintain. As soon as the number of articles changes, the link will need updating again. So I would suggest (a) remove the number of articles from the heading - we can display this information somewhere else, or (b) use an anchor as Kammerer55 suggests below. I will start a separate discussion on this to see what people think &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:37, 25 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Basically the title will now be changed by the bot, and the bot will change the json data immediately. So the trimmed_link should be up to date. The bot should also be able to add anchors automatically... Kanashimi (talk) 10:00, 25 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Eventually, when Vital article has been merged into WikiProject banner shell these lists will become the master list, so curated by humans not bot. Therefore we should keep the structure as simple as possible. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:45, 25 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes, it would be great to have more stable anchors in the VA lists, so that we could link to the proper headers from the discussions as well. (Maybe Anchor might also help?) Kammerer55 (talk) 01:47, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

At levels 1 and 2, the  is not needed to make the link, but it is needed to populate categories such as Category:Wikipedia vital articles in Philosophy. So please can you put it back? I will recode the module to only use it for the link when needed &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:43, 25 November 2023 (UTC)


 * Please check to see if the current listing is what you are looking for. Kanashimi (talk) 11:14, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

Break 2
Few final comments from me: &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:18, 28 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Level 1: I think section	"Level 1 vital articles" is superfluous, could easily be removed
 * Level 1: we do need the topic though, for categorisation purposes
 * Level 2: looks good. I think eventually we should synchonise topic and section for simplicity. This would mean moving a few categories.
 * Trimmed link: I still prefer not to use these. My post at has not received any comment yet, so perhaps if no one minds we can remove the number of articles so we can have a stable link? I am also a bit concerned about the size of some of these json pages.
 * Kanashimi (talk) 11:21, 28 November 2023 (UTC)
 * You're quick, thanks! &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:29, 28 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Just to clarify, what's the main purpose of section? Is it just to generate the link, or is it needed for categorization as well? Kammerer55 (talk) 18:43, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
 * The "section" temporarily points to the section of the article in the list of vital articles. Now I'm using trimmed_link to point to the detailed location, but MSGJ has a different plan and is still discussing it. Kanashimi (talk) 20:15, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
 * I see. If we need it just to make a link, then IMHO it would make sense to just use the "trimmed link" instead of sublist and section to avoid duplications. So we would basically have topic for categorization purposes and trimmed link or just link for linking purposes. Kammerer55 (talk) 20:48, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
 * One way to save on json file sizes would be, for example, to use redirect pages for main subtopics, for example "/Level/5/Entertainers" --> "/Level/5/People/Entertainers, directors, producers, and screenwriters" etc. Kammerer55 (talk) 20:57, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
 * If it's really necessary to reduce the size of the json file, we can simply generate a list: link_enum:[...]. plus trimmed_link:123 or something like that. But that would increase the conversion process. Kanashimi (talk) 21:20, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Are there any performance issues related to the current page sizes? What about splitting into several groups by using a second letter as well then? For example, if splitting into 3 groups, then we would have AA.json for "AA-AJ", AK.json for "AK-AR" and AS.json for "AS-AZ". (If the second letter is other, then we can add it to the last group, for example.) Kammerer55 (talk) 21:24, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
 * This is technically not a problem. As for the performance, perhaps larger scale tests are needed. Kanashimi (talk) 21:28, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
 * I believe json pages up to 2MB can be accessed, so not an immediate problem. But I would be interested in seeing some analysis of performance. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:00, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

✅ on Module:Banner shell and first example can be seen at Talk:Al-ʻIjliyyah. Now we need a bot to implement this. Kanashimi: are you interested? It will require edits like this to about 50,000 articles. I will provide more details shortly. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:19, 28 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Maybe User:Qwerfjkl can add this to task 26 to reduce bot edits on the same articles. Is that possible? Gonnym (talk) 21:11, 28 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Gonnym, I probably could without too much difficulty. From what I can tell this would just be adding a single parameter to the WPBS. One problem would be merging quality ratings - if the vital article rating conflicts with the other ratings then it'd be hard to say what to do with it - we can't leave it for editors to manually sort out, because the template is being merged so it seems impractical to leave it there. That said, there seems to be a similar problem regardless - in Martin's edit he moved the class to the WPBS, which creates complications if there are conflicting ratings. — Qwerfjkl  talk  21:19, 28 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Actually looking at the code, @MSGJ, if the only thing we are doing is setting yes (and not any level, or topic) and then at Module:Banner shell checking if the entry does not exist, can we just skip using yes and just check all talk pages if they are on the vital list? Gonnym (talk) 21:27, 28 November 2023 (UTC)
 * If it's not too much trouble to implement, I think this is the simplest option as you would only have to remove the vital template and no further action required, perhaps reducing the chance someone might accidentally tamper with the "vital" parameter. I don't know the code so maybe having the "vital=yes" parameter is more economical.  Wandering  Morpheme   22:43, 28 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Interesting idea, and it did cross my mind. I would be wary about accessing a large json file on every talk page when it is only needed on a small fraction of them. Some analysis of performance might be helpful. Other comments:
 * We would need to fully protect all the subpages of Vital articles/data, which would hinder maintenance.
 * We would temporarily have two templates saying the same thing, until Vital article is removed.
 * We already have to edit the talk page to remove Vital article (and possibly add class so adding yes at the same time doesn't seem difficult.
 * Overall I think task 26 is already complicated enough, and it might be better to let Kanashimi to code his/her bot to do this, as they are familiar with the subtleties of vital articles. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:38, 29 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Since cewbot also maintains the talk pages for vital articles, I am wondering if I could try this out first. Because after this extensive work, future editing of differences will be handled by cewbot. If there is any inappropriate robot editing, we will be able to detect it during the transfer operation, not later. Also, this job requires new code to be written, so it will take some time. Kanashimi (talk) 22:06, 28 November 2023 (UTC)
 * If there's a conflict in the ratings of the templates, I'll keep Vital article first. Kanashimi (talk) 22:10, 28 November 2023 (UTC)
 * If WikiProject banner shell does not have a rating, I will use this rating of Vital article. If the WikiProject banner shell does not exist, I will create one. Kanashimi (talk) 22:14, 28 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Please provide feedback on    Kanashimi (talk) 14:13, 29 November 2023 (UTC)
 * 1, 3, 4: Perfect. (The suppress categories template will not usually be there.)
 * 2: Okay, but the banner shell is supposed to be under the article history.
 * I think this task will need to follow the bot approval process? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:53, 29 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Is ArticleHistory listed in Talk page layout? Kanashimi (talk) 23:13, 29 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Oh yes, I see it. Kanashimi (talk) 23:14, 29 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Kanashimi (talk) 12:50, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
 * @MSGJ I think I'm ready to start this batch merger. May I begin? Kanashimi (talk) 07:38, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
 * As I said earlier, I think you will need authorisation via WP:BRFA. Unless you believe that an existing task covers this? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:27, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Kanashimi (talk) 03:04, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

I thought you might be interested to hear about this development. Typing yes in WPBS on the talk page of a vital article will produce a message and link to the list of vital articles. I'm sure the design could be improved and I would love to see a different icon used dependent on the level of vitality (1-5) &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:33, 28 November 2023 (UTC)


 * +1 That looks pretty good to me. Well done and nice job. Aszx5000 (talk) 21:35, 28 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Looks great, thank you! the wub "?!"  23:23, 28 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Great! 1) Please document that new option on . 2) I tried it on Talk:Language family (I assume I could remove the obsolete? template), but it appears to add numerous redlinked categories (some previously deleted by this vital improvement project I think). Perhaps their names are wrong, or perhaps a lot of new categories need to be created. Dpleibovitz (talk) 01:07, 29 November 2023 (UTC)
 * I will check, thanks for letting me know &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:31, 29 November 2023 (UTC)
 * I have opened a new thread at below &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:14, 29 November 2023 (UTC)
 * +1, maybe this could be helpful. ThatRandomEditor101 (talk) 18:15, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Well done! CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 13:13, 1 December 2023 (UTC)


 * Fantastic work by both you and Kanashimi in implementing this. DFlhb (talk) 20:52, 28 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Beautiful! Props to everyone involved! SWinxy (talk) 21:33, 28 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Looks good to me! Skarmory   (talk •   contribs)  21:36, 28 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Fantastic! Thanks for carrying this through to completion! &#123;{u&#124; Sdkb  }&#125;  talk 22:05, 28 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Looks very clean. Great work! — PerfectSoundWhatever  (t; c) 23:22, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

what is the _3 for in "General _3", the topic for Algorithm?
 * This section originates from duplicated chapter titles. As you can see, there are several occurrences of ‘General’ on this page. This reminds me of something. When we want to directly link to the correct section, perhaps we should consider using something like ‘trimmed_link’? --Kanashimi (talk) 23:09, 29 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Sounds like a great idea! I've also just implemented it in VA link and it seems to work fine:, , (note that all numbers link to the correct sections). This seems like the easiest way to link to the right section rather than making extra-computations with multiple parameters. (Though, it might be still better to add anchors for creating more stable links to sections independent of individual articles.) Kammerer55 (talk) 18:31, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Return info about all levels
I think it would be helpful to have info for all levels on which the article is present, not just the top one. For example, if someone wants to check the article's context among the lower-level articles and to verify that it's really considerably more important than the rest. I also wanted to use this info in the new template VA link (see discussion below). Would it be possible to add this info back to the json-files? I think it would not make that crucial difference, since the size increase would be around 20% (it would have 61110 full data items instead of 50000), and in the WikiProject banner shell code it would cause just a change of one line (take the first element of the list). However, even if this info would be available from some other file(s) instead, that would be also great. --Kammerer55 (talk) 08:01, 30 November 2023 (UTC)


 * This is not a technical problem. However, it was at the request of MSGJ that the format was changed to the current one. If we want to change it back, we have to modify the lua code, maybe we should listen to Martin's opinion. Kanashimi (talk) 08:21, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Got it. I guess it makes sense to signify the top-level as the primary value. But then can we just add links to sublevel pages/sections as additional fields? Like in the following: . I believe this should not break existing banner shell template code.  is that right? Kammerer55 (talk) 21:04, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
 * From my point of view, each level of data has a full data structure. So it's better to make a complete list and just keep the trimmed_link attribute. Kanashimi (talk) 21:25, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
 * I fully agree, I was just trying to provide an alternate solution that does not require any code modifications, but if @MSGJ does not mind, I can help making necessary updates. (I don't have much Lua experience yet, but I have a lot of Python and C++, so minor modifications should be easy to make.) However, for the outside user, it might be indeed confusing why there are multiple levels mentioned, so maybe the level can be kept as a separate field, and the format can be for example: . What do you think? Kammerer55 (talk) 22:03, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
 * There is a problem with this. Some of the articles are listed on several levels 4 and 5, which you can see on Database reports/Vital articles update report. So my approach is to just give a list, where each element has complete information. Kanashimi (talk) 22:42, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Oh, I see, thanks for pointing that out! I am not sure we have to account for a handful of duplicates in json-files right now, since I guess your bot is tracking those entries separately, and we can probably just choose one of the duplicate values at random at each level (which I believe you are already doing right now). However, if you think this data might be useful in the future, then maybe we can just add it as a separate attribute? For example, in the format I suggested, we could just choose one of the duplicate values at random for each level and then put the other one into some other field: . In any case, I would be happy with your original suggestion as well (as the full list, including all duplicates), if we include lower level data. PS. I removed the duplicates from the corresponding lists (Three-dimensional space got duplicated because of redirection, and the other 2 were due to manual addition). Kammerer55 (talk) 23:43, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Well, I don't have any special opinion about the data structure, I have to respect lua code editors like you. You can provide your most convenient data structure and see what everyone thinks about it. Kanashimi (talk) 00:55, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I believe it would be confusing and unnecessary to say that Geometry was in level 2, level 3, level 4 and level 5. And linking Geometry Círculos Concéntricos.svg 2 3 4 5 is too many links to be helpful. The fact is that Geometry is a level 2 vital article. It is not a level 3, level 4 or level 5, even though it may currently be listed on those pages. I understand that having a list of all vital articles in a particular topic would be useful, so perhaps that is a project for the future. Perhaps, the level 5 lists could be repurposed as a list of all vital articles by topic? Then we could have one link to the level page and one link to the topic page. Then the link could look something like Geometry Círculos Concéntricos.svg (2 / mathematics). These are my thoughts anyway &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:56, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Please see my comment in the main template discussion topic. TL;DR. Agree the default should be showing only number 2. Optional functionality might be useful to show 2 3 4 5. Kammerer55 (talk) 19:25, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Interesting idea regarding the topic pages, but it probably deserves a separate discussion. I think many optional functionalities could be added to this particular template, but it's probably better to keep the default version as it is now: only one number and no extra-words (the virtue of simplicity). Kammerer55 (talk) 19:29, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Minor question/suggestion: can we rename trimmed_link into just link (or maybe path)? It should be more or less clear that all links should refer to the WP:VA namespace, since the json-files are already there, and the detailed documentation can be added to the data-page. Kammerer55 (talk) 22:11, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Of course. These attribute names can be changed. Kanashimi (talk) 22:37, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Protocol for auto-archived nominations that had achieved a quorum without closure
If you go back through the VA5 archives (haven't looked at other levels) you will find discussions that achieved a quorum without closure that were archived. Should we effect the voice of these quorums?-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 04:54, 16 November 2023 (UTC)
 * E.g., archive 12 has at least 2.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 04:56, 16 November 2023 (UTC)
 * All proposed changes should really be closed (although the sheer page size of VA5 atm does restrict that to a degree). I'd be fine with backdating closes, both successful and unsuccessful, but they should probably be logged on VA5 so page watchers can see.  J947  † edits 07:34, 16 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes all proposals should be closed. However, there is nothing wrong with a nomination sitting unclosed in an archive if it never achieved quorum. However those that achieved quorum should be closed and enacted. I am not a closer. Are there closure procedures? Should we just make a list of nominations that achieved quorum that are sitting in the archives?-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 13:21, 16 November 2023 (UTC)


 * The following are discussions from archives 9-16 (I'll add others later) that met quorum, yet were archived without action to the best of my understanding. Please add some sort of tick mark next to each one that you have decided to enact.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 04:44, 17 November 2023 (UTC)
 * 1) Wikipedia_talk:Vital_articles/Level/5/Archive_12
 * 2) Wikipedia_talk:Vital_articles/Level/5/Archive_12
 * 3) Wikipedia talk:Vital articles/Level/5/Archive 12
 * 4) Wikipedia_talk:Vital_articles/Level/5/Archive_10
 * 5) Wikipedia_talk:Vital_articles/Level/5/Archive_10
 * 6) Wikipedia_talk:Vital_articles/Level/5/Archive_10
 * 7) Wikipedia_talk:Vital_articles/Level/5/Archive_10
 * 8) Wikipedia_talk:Vital_articles/Level/5/Archive_9
 * 9) Wikipedia_talk:Vital_articles/Level/5/Archive_9
 * 10) Wikipedia_talk:Vital_articles/Level/5/Archive_9
 * I'm also wondering what to do with mine, Wikipedia talk:Vital articles/Archive 23, it was at 4-1 or so but got archived. Should I re-post it? Mathnerd314159 (talk) 04:49, 18 November 2023 (UTC)
 * User:Mathnerd314159, level 4 requires 5 support votes. I don't see five.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 13:48, 20 November 2023 (UTC)


 * I think all of them should be enacted per normal closure procedure. I don't think it should be necessary to renominate them.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 23:21, 18 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Here are the rest of level 5.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 13:17, 20 November 2023 (UTC)
 * 1) Wikipedia_talk:Vital_articles/Level/5/Archive_7 (not sure he would survive a removal in the current climate with current quotas).
 * 2) Wikipedia talk:Vital articles/Level/5/Archive 4 (Espoo still listed despite this 4-2 consensus)
 * 3) Wikipedia talk:Vital articles/Level/5/Archive 3
 * 4) Wikipedia talk:Vital articles/Level/5/Archive 3
 * 5) Wikipedia_talk:Vital_articles/Level/5/Archive_3
 * 6) Wikipedia_talk:Vital_articles/Level/5/Archive_3
 * 7) Wikipedia_talk:Vital_articles/Level/5/Archive_3
 * On to level 4
 * 1) Wikipedia_talk:Vital_articles/Level/4/Archive_72(add was 6-1)


 * Since it turns out that there are 17 cases at level 5, 1 case at level 4 and no level 1-3 instances, I am going to move this discussion to level 5 (and 4).-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 14:37, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

Inconsistencies
Carbohydrate is listed under Science > Chemistry. But its talk page mentions the topic to be "Biology". Which should be regarded as correct in these cases? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:45, 10 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Technically, since it is listed at level 3 there shouldn't be a subpage designation. The template should just say "Science". Rreagan007 (talk) 17:10, 10 November 2023 (UTC)
 * In Carbohydrate's case "Biology" has been marked as topic, not a subpage. Hence the doubt. &#8212;CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 17:13, 10 November 2023 (UTC)
 * All the articles listed in the Level 3 science section should just say "Science". Rreagan007 (talk) 17:14, 10 November 2023 (UTC)


 * I have another doubt. When we enter VIT-5, (let's take an example) People > Writers and journalists > Writers > Ancient > Europe > Aesop. It uses "People" as topic marker, and "Writers" as subpage marker (which is one sub-entry away from the Topic). But this scheme is not always maintained, (for example) Geography > Physical > Basics > General > Geographic Information System. It uses "Geography" as topic marker, and "Physical" as subpage marker (which is the very next sub-entry from the Topic). So, when creating a machine readable list from the master list provided here, how can we understand which one to use as subpage marker for the articles? Thanks! &#8212;CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 17:26, 10 November 2023 (UTC)
 * I believe the subpage should be Writers and journalists (and Writers is an alias for this). I have no idea how the bot categorises into Ancient > Europe though. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 17:37, 10 November 2023 (UTC)
 * If you look at the Level 5 subpage indicators at Template:Vital article, you will see that the subpage indicator "Writers" is actually just a shorthand for the Writers and journalists subpage on Level 5. Rreagan007 (talk) 17:40, 10 November 2023 (UTC)
 * So, can I use the full "Writers and journalists" as the subpage marker in the json, and use the same scheme for all level 4/5 articles? Also, a suggestion. Currently the template reads "Topic, Subpage". It would be read better as "Topic (Subpage)", since comma is more usually used to mean "and". &#8212;CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 17:47, 10 November 2023 (UTC)
 * I think it only works properly if you put in "Writers". Rreagan007 (talk) 21:13, 10 November 2023 (UTC)
 * @MSGJ: Do you think it would cause any issues once the merge is over, considering that all fields will be pulled from the json itself? &#8212;CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 22:14, 10 November 2023 (UTC)
 * We could use the actual page name in the master list, and then we could keep a separate list of aliases &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:20, 10 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Since we're talking about the template subpage indicators, when the Level 5 Society and social sciences list was split into 3 different subpages a while ago, the template was never updated to include an indicator for those 3 sublists. It would be nice if someone with the ability to do it could update the template for these 3 new subpages. Rreagan007 (talk) 17:47, 10 November 2023 (UTC)
 * I did it this morning after your request on my talk page &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 18:11, 10 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks! Rreagan007 (talk) 18:56, 10 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Oh, and one more thing, Level-1 articles don't belong to any topic in the master list. Yet, each of them has a "Topic" mentioned in their talk pages. Do we retain this topic, or remove it entirely? &#8212;CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 18:23, 10 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Every vital article, including the Level 1 articles, should have a topic specified in the talk page template for the maintenance categories to work properly. So please leave the topics in the template. Rreagan007 (talk) 18:59, 10 November 2023 (UTC)
 * I have been trying to clean up the inconsistencies in the talk page templates manually. But at level 5 there are a lot of templates that need to be fixed and doing it manually is going to take a lot of time. If there is anyone that is good with bots maybe a bot can be used to fix these. Some Level 5 templates are tagged as "Art" and others "Arts", some "Life" and others "Everyday life", and some "Philosophy" and others "Religion". See here. At the other levels we just use "Art", "Life", and "Philosophy" tags for everything in those categories. Rreagan007 (talk) 00:26, 11 November 2023 (UTC)
 * I wouldn't spend too much time on this because when the template is merged with the banner shell, all these parameters will be removed. Instead the template will read a master list, which CX Zoom has offered to help with. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:25, 11 November 2023 (UTC)
 * The category parameter is being removed entirely? So the Vital Articles maintenance categories by topic won't work anymore after that is done. That seems unfortunate, as they are helpful for auditing purposes. Is there no way to preserve the category parameter after the merger? Rreagan007 (talk) 18:17, 11 November 2023 (UTC)
 * The parameter will be removed, but categorisation will be preserved. Which category to put it in will be determined by a json list. &#8212;CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 19:34, 11 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Oh, okay. Rreagan007 (talk) 23:48, 11 November 2023 (UTC)
 * So, I have completed an alphabetical json list to the best of my abilities. Then, I found the number of articles in each category upto level-3 is the same as mentioned here. But level-4 onwards the numbers mismatch. So, I tried manually counting, and realised that in some cases the Level 1-3 articles are counted in higher lists, and at other times it doesn't. For example, Level 1+2+3 Arts has 45 articles: 43 of them are listed and counted at L4/Arts, while 2 aren't, leading to a mismatch of numbers with my list. Similarly, "L4/Philosophy and religion" lists 58 articles from L1-3, but the P&R category at L3 only lists 55. While I haven't checked the rest, I assume same is the case with the other categories. &#8212;CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 16:05, 11 November 2023 (UTC)
 * I would suggest if an article is listed at a lower level then it should be removed from any higher levels. Is this on-wiki yet? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:05, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

Proposal for Extended confirmed protection for Levels 1-4
Level 3 is alreay Semi-protected, but Levels 1, 2, and 4 are not. I am proposing that the Vital articles Level 1, 2, 3, and 4 pages (and subpages in the case of Level 4) all be Extended confirmed protected. These pages really don't change that much now, and only a few active Vital Articles editors update them when a proposal gets passed. Every now and then, an IP address or inexperienced user will try to add an article without going through the proper procedures. I just found an article that was added without discussion on Level 4 and removed it yesterday. IP addresses and newly created accounts really shouldn't be updating these pages, as it is somewhat technical to do it correctly. Protecting these pages so that only experienced editors can edit them should help cut down on unauthorized additions or removals from these lists.


 * Support
 * 1) Support as nom. Rreagan007 (talk) 19:13, 10 October 2023 (UTC)
 * 2) Support --Thi (talk) 19:32, 10 October 2023 (UTC)
 * 3) Why is level 5 being excluded?  The  Blue  Rider  Postal horn icon.svg 19:37, 10 October 2023 (UTC)
 * 4) Support - Darker Dreams (talk) 04:16, 11 October 2023 (UTC)
 * 5) Support - 1-4 are pretty stable at this point. Level 5 will remain dynamic. I am not sure that means that it does not need to be locked down. Any proposed changes to level 5 take a few weeks to confirm so it is not like anything just changes on a dime. I could support level 5 too.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 05:38, 11 October 2023 (UTC)
 * 6) Support, can’t see, why not, but wonder whether the admins will go for it even so. Hyperbolick (talk) 07:20, 11 October 2023 (UTC)
 * 7) Support-- Laukku  TheGreit (Talk•Contribs) 08:37, 11 October 2023 (UTC)
 * 8) Support - yes, the assumption is that this should be exceptionally stable consensus-based content at this point. Iskandar323 (talk) 07:44, 12 October 2023 (UTC)
 * 9) Support - Either ECP or just semi-prot seems appropriate. --JackFromWisconsin (talk &#124; contribs) 19:58, 20 October 2023 (UTC)
 * 10) Support, and important that any changes have a proper discussion, conducted over an adequate period, which ECP will help with. Aszx5000 (talk) 23:26, 12 December 2023 (UTC)


 * Oppose
 * 1) Oppose – there has not been a threat of vandalism in the other vital pages. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 13:55, 21 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Adding or removing articles to these lists without going through the formal process is vandalism, and it does happen. And it's the worst kind of vandalism because it is not obvious and is hard to spot. And it is an ongoing threat that will always exist. (More detailed response below) Rreagan007 (talk) 03:07, 23 October 2023 (UTC)
 * This is extremely common, especially at VT5. The vast majority of entries have not been discussed.  The Blue  Rider  Postal horn icon.svg 09:31, 23 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I know. Level 5 is a little different as until relatively recently anyone was allowed to just add articles without discussion, and in some sections they still can. That's why I didn't include Level 5 in this proposal. Though perhaps the "full" sections of level 5 should be protected as well. Rreagan007 (talk) 16:18, 23 October 2023 (UTC)
 * 1) Semi-protection is sufficient. ECP is rare and we have regulars who aren't extended confirmed anyway. Oppose any form of protection at VA5, by the way.  J 947  ‡ edits 06:35, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

Level 5 is still somewhat unstable and in flux, so I didn't include it in this proposal. But I would be fine with Level 5 being protected as well. Rreagan007 (talk) 19:50, 10 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Discuss


 * Maybe only EC-protect VA5 pages that are marked as having met quota? Although there was a contentious change to people quotas not long ago, so I'd take their completion statuses with a grain of salt.-- Laukku  TheGreit (Talk•Contribs) 08:37, 11 October 2023 (UTC)
 * The comment about wondering if admins will go for this is a reasonable concern. Generally protection is a response rather than a preventative, which makes me curious what lead to lvl3 being semi-protected. The fact that 1 & 2 weren't further suggests some sort of event rather than a procedural action. - Darker Dreams (talk) 22:28, 11 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Protection is both a response and a preventative. In this case, it is a response to IP addresses and inexperienced editors who have stumbled upon the vital article lists and have just added or removed articles without following the proper procedures. And protecting these pages will prevent at least some of this impropriety in the future. IP addresses and inexperienced users really have no need to edit these lists, and if they do they are very likely to do it incorrectly. This is like widely used templates that are protected, mostly to prevent anyone who doesn't really know what they're doing from editing them incorrectly or without consensus. Protecting these pages will also serve as a signal to more experience users that they probably shouldn't be editing these pages unless they are sure they know what they are doing. Rreagan007 (talk) 00:25, 12 October 2023 (UTC)
 * This is a direct contradiction to what semi-protection should be used. There is no threat of vandalism in Vital articles here, except for the level 3 page where it is readily visible via links. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 13:54, 21 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Adding (or removing) an article to any of these lists without going through the formal process is vandalism. And it is vandalism that is hard to catch, particularly at Level 4, as the Level 4 lists aren't monitored very well. The article I found and removed from Level 4 several weeks ago had been added years ago without discussion and nobody had ever noticed. And I'd be willing to bet there are other articles right now that have been added to or removed from Level 4 over the years without anyone noticing that still haven't been found. Protecting these pages will help cut down on the clandestine vandalism of adding or removing articles without consensus. There's really no good reason not to protect these pages. Rreagan007 (talk) 03:05, 23 October 2023 (UTC)


 * And I just found another article (Mass Rapid Transit (Singapore)) incorrectly added to Level 4 by an IP address user way back in January when it should have been added to Level 5. These lists really need to be locked down more to prevent this sort of thing from happening. Rreagan007 (talk) 20:23, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

This seems like the discussion ran its course with a pretty clear consensus. What needs to be done for this to be actioned one way or another? Darker Dreams (talk) 22:05, 8 December 2023 (UTC)
 * We need the attention of an administrator.  The Blue  Rider  Postal horn icon.svg 22:53, 8 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Admin here. Do you have a list of pages that need protecting? Just one thought before doing this though. We are now maintaining lists of all the vital articles in Vital articles/data in JSON format which were intended to become the "master list". What aout if we protect all these pages, and then the bot can maintain the other lists to keep them in sync? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:50, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
 * ✅ &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 16:43, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
 * @MSGJ: You forgot the main page of the project: WP:Vital articles. Interstellarity (talk) 01:36, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

Merge politicians, military leaders, jurists and rebels/revolutionaries/activists at VA3, VA4 and VA5
There are several reasons I believe this change is necessary


 * 1) The line between these categories of people are blurred.  George Washington was a general and a President; the 1st Duke of Wellington was a general and eventually Prime Minister of Great Britain, William Howard Taft and Charles Evans Hughes held both appointed judicial office and elected political office, some of the activists ran for political office but did not attain it, etc etc etc
 * 2) The vitality of these sections seems to be inconsistent: it seems to be easier to get on the list as a military leader, an activist or a jurist than it is at a politician.
 * 3) I think concerns about geographical distribution would be better informed if these biographies were taken as a whole rather than separately

p b  p  16:50, 30 October 2023 (UTC)


 * Support
 * 1)  p  b  p  16:50, 30 October 2023 (UTC)
 * 2) Dawid2009 (talk) 18:57, 30 October 2023 (UTC)
 * 3) Am generally in favour of consolidation. It might be best to keep the least politiciany activists in a separate section (or in VA5 in Miscellaneous) though.  J  947  ‡ edits 09:25, 23 November 2023 (UTC)
 * 4) Support these lists are hard to distinguish. Heros/martyrs of The Alamo Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie are on different lists, Sitting Bull is on a different list than Crazy Horse, Cochise and Black Hawk (Sauk leader). In order to find people you have to already know all the information you are probably headed to their article to have a look at. Then, you have to hope that a proper placement decision has been made. Just put them all together.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 17:36, 23 November 2023 (UTC)


 * Oppose
 * 1) This combined list would be way too big at VA5, and I believe that these are very different categories in most situations. QuicoleJR (talk) 17:03, 30 October 2023 (UTC)
 * 2) I agree this would make the Level 5 list too large. A quota change would be the best solution. Rreagan007 (talk) 03:25, 31 October 2023 (UTC)
 * 3) Oppose per above. A quota change is a better idea. The geographic and demographic analysis of the articles can be done irrespective of whether they are combined or not. Gizza  (talk) 01:45, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
 * 4) Oppose If there is too many activists or soldiers, they can be removed. --Thi (talk) 11:55, 15 December 2023 (UTC)
 * 5) Oppose.  The lines are blurred in places but merging would create the opposite problem of an overly diverse list. Aszx5000 (talk) 15:53, 30 December 2023 (UTC)


 * Discussion
 * What's your solution to the problems I've posed in points 2 and 3 above? They are a lot harder to fix if the people subcategories are kept separate.  p  b  p  17:07, 30 October 2023 (UTC)
 * I would say that Point 2 could probably be solved with a quota change, since the problem only exists because the section is overfilled. Point 3 could be taken into account without actually merging the categories, and it seems like the geographical issue has been improving lately. QuicoleJR (talk) 17:14, 30 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Whatever the result of this may be, links need to be fixed. I had to jump through hoops to find where Thurgood Marshall was listed after hitting the vital articles link on his talk page.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 05:00, 31 October 2023 (UTC)
 * I think jurists were moved from the Level 5 Miscellaneous people section to the Philosophers, historians, political and social scientists section a while back, and unfortunately the bot does not update the section links when that happens. It would be nice if the bot could be updated to fix the section links in the talk page templates. There are actually a lot of section links that need to be updated, and manually finding and fixing all the incorrect section links in the talk page templates would take a very long time. Rreagan007 (talk) 07:25, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

Nominating a redlink
What would the protocol be for nominating a subject that is currently a redlink?-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 20:50, 9 November 2023 (UTC)
 * There isn't one. You can just nominate it like any other nomination, but I think it's highly unlikely that there is a subject worthy of inclusion in the vital article lists that doesn't already have an article on the English Wikipedia. Rreagan007 (talk) 21:19, 9 November 2023 (UTC)
 * If it's not an article yet then surely it can't be a vital article &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:46, 10 November 2023 (UTC)
 * User:MSGJ, Didn't we have an article get redirected this past month. Modern history went from being an article to being a redirect.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 23:20, 11 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Modern history has been a redirect for over 4 years. Rreagan007 (talk) 09:07, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

There have been redlinks proposed at LevelT 4 which were successful, though a stub was created during the proposal. There may well be articles worthy of Level 5 which haven't been created yet, particularly in fields like sociology where Wikipedia has quite weak coverage. Gizza (talk) 01:41, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
 * It would be interesting to see a table showing page counts by creation year for the different levels (actual content dates not redirect dates).-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 18:20, 13 November 2023 (UTC)
 * User:Rreagan007, I just created a page that may even make level 4: Gig economy. I am going to go for level 5 now.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 04:20, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Here is a true redlink as opposed to a redirect: It seems that glove (sports) could host content found at Glove.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 14:54, 8 December 2023 (UTC)
 * The correct procedure would be to create the article and only after it nominate it.  The Blue  Rider  Postal horn icon.svg 15:05, 8 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Glove is already a vital article. Do we need a separate article for sporting gloves? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:54, 8 December 2023 (UTC)
 * User:MSGJ, The opening paragraph of Glove states "Gloves protect and comfort hands against cold or heat, damage by friction, abrasion or chemicals, and disease; or in turn to provide a guard for what a bare hand should not touch." This does not include gloves that often have padding to protect the hand from injury do to specialized risks associated with specific sports. We have articles for both Baseball glove and Batting glove used on defense and offense respectively in baseball as well as Glove (ice hockey), Boxing glove, Lacrosse glove, Wicket-keeper's gloves, MMA gloves, Weightlifting gloves, Driving glove, Cycling glove as well as several additional sporting gloves with content in broader articles.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 21:52, 8 December 2023 (UTC)


 * Should this be added to the Vital Articles policy/guidelines? Aszx5000 (talk) 15:55, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

Requested move 11 November 2023

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: not moved (non-admin closure). Jenks24 (talk) 05:45, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Vital articles → Essential articles – I saw that there seemed to be very little discussion from the archives that discusses what this list should be called. Given that this change would likely be controversial, I think discussing on the talk page is sensible. I have brainstormed some ideas of what the best title for the list could be. Some of the possible names I came up with would be WP:Essential articles, WP:Essential topics, WP:Important articles, WP:Important topics, WP:Core articles, WP:Core topics. My preference out of all those names would be essential articles or topics since it seems to serve as a gateway of importance of topics. I encourage you to think about other names for this project even if you think the current title of vital articles seems to serve its purpose well. This is the process called improving. I look forward to hearing your comments. Interstellarity (talk) 01:24, 11 November 2023 (UTC) The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
 * Comment: Anything with "topics" in it probably isn't a good idea, as it could be confused with Featured topics. Rreagan007 (talk) 06:50, 11 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Oppose this is the wrong venue as it will affect more than this page, it will affect numerous categories, wikiprojects, and guidelines. Needs an RFC on such a significant move. Personally I think 'Vital' is the correct adjective. The term "if it aint broke" also comes to mind... Polyamorph (talk) 08:59, 11 November 2023 (UTC) Note: WikiProject Vital Articles has been notified of this discussion. Polyamorph (talk) 09:00, 11 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Oppose per Polyamorph. Jusdafax (talk) 09:46, 11 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Oppose. What's the problem with the current naming? I like it.  The Blue  Rider  Postal horn icon.svg 11:02, 11 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Comment I've undone your RFC per WP:RFCNOT. You need to close this WP:RM, consider all the implications of your suggestion, then construct an appropriate RFC per WP:RFCOPEN. Although before you do so, you really should discuss your proposal at WikiProject Vital Articles, per WP:RFCBEFORE.  Polyamorph (talk) 12:37, 11 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Comment I am still trying to understand what vital means in this context. It is very different from notable, and seems to be different from important. I can't opine on the change without understanding the true purpose of the list.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 20:30, 11 November 2023 (UTC)
 * The word "vital" in this context means "of critical importance". So Vital Articles are the articles that should be considered the top priority for improvement. It's no different than the various Wikiprojects whose talk page templates label an article's importance as low, mid, high, or top. So the Vital Articles lists are essentially the same as Wikiproject importance levels, only for the entire English Wikipedia and not just for a single Wikiproject. Rreagan007 (talk) 23:40, 11 November 2023 (UTC)
 * "BOOM"!!!-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 13:50, 12 November 2023 (UTC)
 * So something could be vital for a while and then later no longer be that vital because it is less topical?-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 13:51, 12 November 2023 (UTC)
 * No, something vital is assumed to have had large and lasting repercussion(s). Even if the status quo changes, that doesn't nullify the vitality of the subject, that is, the impacts were already made and nothing can take it back.  The Blue  Rider  Postal horn icon.svg 21:09, 12 November 2023 (UTC)
 * The WP1.0 importance scheme defines top-level importance as "Subject is a must-have for a print encyclopedia." I think we can agree that our notion of vitality corresponds to whatever makes a subject a "must-have", but what that is, and how much it can change with time, is precisely what all of our discussions at every level are trying to grapple with. The article referenced here is a third party's attempt to summarize what factors we look at in determining vitality. Cobblet (talk) 00:22, 13 November 2023 (UTC)
 * I can conceptualize VA as importance levels for the entire English Wikipedia. However, as I watch the voting, what is popular now seems to be favored over what was popular in the past in a way that makes me feel that what is popular in the future will be favored over what is popular now.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 18:16, 13 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Oppose. I think the term "Vital Articles" does a good job of describing what these lists are about. As I describe above, the term "Vital" here is really just a term of art to describe these articles as being the articles that it is most important (i.e. vital) to improve the quality of to a high level. Compare this to how the term "Featured" is used as a term of art for WP:Featured Articles. "Featured" in the context of Wikipedia articles simply means an article that is of high enough quality as to merit being the Today's Featured Article on the Wikipedia main page. Rreagan007 (talk) 03:34, 13 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Oppose in the context of these lists, vital and essential are synonyms and interchangeable. As is the word "crucial" among others. Changing it doesn't add any value but just leads to more unnecessary work. Gizza  (talk) 01:38, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Oppose This would cause a lot of confusion and take quite a bit of work for no benefit. QuicoleJR (talk) 22:14, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

Interstellarity's rearrangement of the geography section
After Interstellarity's recent edits, it's not apparent at all how many countries or cities we list. Is this a good idea? Why were these edits not discussed beforehand? Cobblet (talk) 14:36, 11 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Hi @Cobblet, I thought it would be a good idea to do a hierarchy of continents, countries, and cities so that it would be more organized. I didn’t think the change would be controversial, so I went ahead and did it. We have WP:BRD for a reason and it would be a good process to follow so that constructive changes and consensus can be made. If you have different opinions on how the page is structured, I welcome them with open arms. Thank you. Interstellarity (talk) 17:00, 11 November 2023 (UTC)
 * I'm trying to keep an open mind about this reorganization, but my initial reaction is I don't really like it. I especially don't like the continents, which are physical geography, being combined with cities and countries, which are political geography. There is a current discussion about this type of reorganization at Levels 4 and 5 here. I think the Level 3 geography section reorganization should be discussed there too before this is implemented. Rreagan007 (talk) 18:13, 11 November 2023 (UTC)
 * I'm agnostic as to whether this change should apply to VA3, supporting it for the lower two levels, but the point that country numbers and city numbers are no longer apparent is a good one. I guess that could be resolved by putting those numbers in another spot, but not ideal.  J947  † edits 02:58, 12 November 2023 (UTC)


 * Oppose: And once again,, should've DISCUSSED before a big change p  b  p  07:13, 18 November 2023 (UTC)
 * As noted on V5, that edit also resulted in presumably accidental removal of many entries at V5. Please self-revert or fix. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 07:31, 27 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Where are the diffs for User:Interstellarity's geography offensive? He has also screwed up the history section.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 15:56, 27 November 2023 (UTC)
 * User:Interstellarity what is the current state of these two rearrangements?-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 17:28, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
 * They have been reverted and they are being discussed on the respective talk pages. I welcome your comments there if you have any. That’s how it is in brief. Interstellarity (talk) 17:49, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

Number of articles in headings
Above (see ) we are discussing how to improve the link in the template so it links to the specific section on a page. For example, Arctic Ocean is listed on Vital articles under "Hydrological features". However the current heading is

Hydrological features (19 articles)
However this is not a stable link as it will change if the number of articles changes. I am wondering how people would feel if we remove the number of articles, i.e. use

Hydrological features
The number of articles could be displayed somewhere else, perhaps in a table. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:54, 25 November 2023 (UTC)
 * The numbers seem to be useful, especially when there are section-specific quotas, and probably it's better to have the numbers close to the headers. Maybe, the bot could put the counts in the next line after the header? However, this does not seem to fully solve the problem of stable links, since there might be duplicate headers within a page. For example, Vital articles/Level/5/History has 9 sections called Europe. So maybe, anchors would be a more reliable way to deal with this. --Kammerer55 (talk) 12:26, 29 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Arghh, good point. What if we linked to the level 2 section header - there wouldn't be any duplication then I suppose &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:29, 29 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Vital articles/Level/5/People/Philosophers, historians, political and social scientists has a few repetitive level 2 headers as well, e.g. two "Ancient" subsections in Philosophers and in Historians, though those can be probably renamed into Ancient philosophers and Ancient historians. However, sometimes level 2 sections are still too big, like WP:Vital articles/Level/5/People/Writers and journalists. Also, I see that the latter page already has something like  in a few top headers which seem to work well as anchors. Maybe, we can just let people add such code to sections whenever needed, and then let the bot extract the id from the nearest subheader with the custom id? Then we could keep the numbers intact. Kammerer55 (talk) 12:43, 29 November 2023 (UTC)
 * I would still prefer all the numbers to go into a separate list/table as they are mainly for the curators of the list, and not relevant for a casual visitor. Regarding sections, I suppose anchors is the way to go. But it would be nice to encode them in a systematic way, for example Historians/Ancient or Philosophers/Late modern/Asia &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 23:04, 29 November 2023 (UTC)
 * I like the "Philosophers/Late modern/Asia" format as the most natural and probably relatively easy to implement by the bot. However, I think the numbers are still important, especially on levels 4 and 5, since they are used by the project participants to gauge relative importance of different sections, and it's good when they are easily accessible. The casual visitors might also benefit from the numbers, since they would know how unique is the article among its kind. Also, on level 5 the current policy is that anyone can add items to under-quota sections, so people should see the numbers for that. Kammerer55 (talk) 06:00, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Pinging some recently active editors from level 5, since the discussion is much more active there nowadays and people could have missed this discussion. What do you think about the article numbers in the headers? --Kammerer55 (talk) 20:32, 30 November 2023 (UTC)


 * I don’t care either way. Interstellarity (talk) 20:34, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
 * I agree that listing this in the heading is a bad idea. Support changing this practice. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 02:26, 1 December 2023 (UTC)


 * Something needs to be done with the numbering. Last week was my first time closing discussions. It was an ordeal. Some articles are nested 4 or 5 levels deep. Some pages have numbers that disagree with each other. A separate table would make nesting clearer.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 02:34, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for all your comments. It seems we have consensus to remove the numbers from the headings. I will look at how these can be replaced with a table, or a line of text underneath, or both. I notice that there are already tables at Vital articles/Level/5, etc. which could probably be expanded further. I asked for advice at WP:VPT and was told that "section headings should be unique within a page, so that section links lead to the right place". This is from the manual of style, so not directly relevant to project space, but probably good advice to follow nonetheless. There was a suggestion to replace "General" with something like "Mathematics: general" or "Technology: general", which seems like a good idea. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:57, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Remove numbers in the headers. They can go in a table or somewhere else.  starship .paint  (RUN) 07:36, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

Analyzing the vital article lists (Levels 1-3)
I think it would be helpful to have a discussion every year or two regarding how we are doing with the vital articles. Some questions we could ponder include: have the lists gotten better or worse with time? What are some ways the lists have improved and ways the list has worsened with time? How is the current process of adding and removing articles? Do you think there should be stricter or more lenient requirements or keep the requirements as is? This list has been around since 2004 which is a long time (almost 20 years) and it has gone through many changes since its inception. Levels 1-3 have been pretty stable and haven't seen a lot of proposals for addition or removal recently. I've seen it more frequently in years past, but the discussion nowadays seems to be about the list itself. Levels 4 and 5 have seen more rapid changes throughout the years due to the large number of articles within it. You can always go back to the history section and see how the list evolved. I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts. What do you think? Interstellarity (talk) 00:29, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

Society vs Society and social sciences
On levels 1-3 we are using  but at level 4-5 we are using. I think these should be unified? @Kanashimi: what do you think?

That might mean that: There might be other topics that need looking at too. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:13, 29 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Category:Wikipedia vital articles in Society is renamed to Category:Wikipedia vital articles in Society and social sciences; or
 * Vital articles/Level/5/Society and social sciences/Culture is renamed to Vital articles/Level/5/Society/Culture.


 * I suggest that we just use the section name as the name of the category so that we don't have to maintain a comparison table. Of course, anyone else is welcome to offer different considerations. Kanashimi (talk) 11:52, 29 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Do you mean the topic name? I think there are too many sections and the granularity is different depending on the level &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:03, 29 November 2023 (UTC)
 * The topic names are roughly the same at all levels, so I thought it would be a good idea to just use the page and section names as the topic names. Kanashimi (talk) 01:02, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
 * FYI. One of the classic definitions of sociology is 'the study of society'. Sociology is just one of the social sciences. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 02:28, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
 * So should we use "social sciences" as the topic for all these? That would mean renaming the lists and the categories &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:30, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
 * We list languages, holidays, among other, within this category, thus the society naming.  The Blue  Rider  Postal horn icon.svg 14:53, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

Topics
All vital articles are given a topic. There are currently 11 topics. For levels 4 and 5, the topic should match the name of the subpage that the article is listed in. Unfortunately this does not always match the categorisation system, as you can see in the table below. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:10, 8 December 2023 (UTC)
 * For the ones marked I would like to know how people would like to resolve the discrepancy, e.g. what should the new name be? We can either rename the topic and subpages, or we can rename the category tree. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:30, 8 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I have code in Template:Vital article/sandbox that will force articles in the categories according to the topics listed above. Is everyone okay with this? Any reason not to do this? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 19:18, 8 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I have started on the renaming/merging process now &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:01, 9 December 2023 (UTC)
 * @Mclay1: perhaps you would like to join the discussion? The categories of the edits you reverted are not in use anymore. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:41, 9 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Also see Village pump (technical) &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 23:04, 9 December 2023 (UTC)
 * @MSGJ Thanks for flagging this. If everyone else is OK with the clean-up, then I guess go ahead. But I think they should be tagged with G6 speedy deletion with an explanation rather than blanked so another admin tags them as empty. MClay1 (talk) 01:23, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I can add db-c1 if that is acceptable. Would you mind reverting your changes to all those categories? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:40, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

Job done: can you please update Vital articles/data subpages so that topic is always one of the 11 topics listed above? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 19:46, 10 December 2023 (UTC)


 * I tried to remove the setting in User:Cewbot/log/20200122/configuration. Kanashimi (talk) 21:51, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

I've just realised that level 5 articles are using the topic Biological and health sciences but level 4 articles are using Biology and health sciences. We need to consolidate these. Is there any preference on which we use? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:41, 11 December 2023 (UTC)


 * I think biology? Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 09:01, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I agree &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:44, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
 * We need to standardize these uses. But I think we should consult experts who are more familiar with these topics. Kanashimi (talk) 09:36, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
 * The level 4 page was created in 2009 and has never been moved. The level 5 subpage was created in 2018 by who also created a redirect to the level 4 subpage. Perhaps they could explain whether the change in name was accidental or the result of a consensus? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:41, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
 * It's probably a typo when I created it, sorry. Feel free to move it to use "Biology". feminist🇭🇰🇺🇦 (talk) 14:24, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks for replying. No bother. It is not such a big mistake if it was only noticed 5 years later! I'll rename them later. Kanashimi, this may confuse the bot. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 17:01, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Pages moved. @Kanashimi: please rename all the "Biological and health sciences" topics to "Biology and health sciences" &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 18:09, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
 * ✅ Kanashimi (talk) 21:46, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

Make a new template to automatically link to article's pages and sections
Thanks to the work of @Kanashimi and @MSGJ we now have a functionality in Module:Banner shell that automatically computes the proper link to the corresponding vital-level page just by using the name of the article. Moreover, they are now trying to make it so that the link would lead to the right section as well! Similar functionality would be very useful in all our nomination discussions as well. I propose creating a new template called for example Vital link using a similar code, which would take one argument like in and would then produce something like Nikola Tesla  3 4 5, where each number would link to the corresponding section containing the item. Kammerer55 (talk) 10:00, 29 November 2023 (UTC)
 * produces &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:54, 29 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Amazing, thanks a lot! Just to confirm, if I want to display the link to the custom level or to all levels (as in the example), do we need to modify json-format as well? Kammerer55 (talk) 12:04, 29 November 2023 (UTC)
 * I think the consensus is that each article should only be listed at one level. So if level 3, then 4 and 5 are removed as redundant &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:06, 29 November 2023 (UTC)
 * If you would like to comment on that is what we are waiting for to produce the section links. Thanks &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:07, 29 November 2023 (UTC)
 * I've also made an abbreviated version:  → . --Kammerer55 (talk) 12:56, 29 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Note: Currently the template is more useful for level 4 and 5 articles, where the VA-list is spread over multiple pages: ; . — Kammerer55 (talk) 13:04, 29 November 2023 (UTC)


 * Is there a way to add a wrinkle to this template so that if you put on an article page Círculos Concéntricos.svg  # would appear next to the Featured star or Good article plus disc or in that spot.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 02:59, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Can you give an example of what page this would be used on? Then I could judge whether a modification to the template or a new template is required. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:29, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
 * At the top of Drowning Girl next to the gold star it would say Círculos Concéntricos.svg 5 (which would link like yours does)
 * At the top of Misty Copeland next to the green plus disk it would say Círculos Concéntricos.svg 5
 * At the top of Campbell's Soup Cans in the upper right it would say Círculos Concéntricos.svg 4
 * These are the three cases.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 13:33, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Maybe like those star and disk icons it should link to the front page for each level to help the reader understand what the icon means via a proper introduction.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 13:41, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Ahh, you're talking about mw:Help:Page status indicators (or "top icons"). These are currently generated by badges stored on Wikidata. Not sure we could jump onto that system, but you would certainly need consensus to start using these icons on articles. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:55, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Oh, I see. The idea behind this particular template was to use it in the inline text (mostly to help in discussions) to quickly indicate an article's status, though what you suggest also sounds like a good use case of a similar functionality (but probably not for this particular template). Kammerer55 (talk) 18:41, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

Displaying multiple numbers
Continuing from discussion in another topic and rethinking my original proposal, I am now convinced that the default behavior should be exactly as it is now: show only one level number and that's all (no extra-words or numbers), and to show a plain link if the article is not vital. In this way, the template can be safely used in nomination headers as well: Example: Add, remove However, I still think that it would be good to have an additional (optional) functionality to display all levels and corresponding links as originally suggested. This would allow to see the article's context on other levels and to verify that it indeed deserves to be on its level. --Kammerer55 (talk) 19:19, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

Possible redesigns would be: Nikola Tesla  3  4 5 or Nikola Tesla  3 4 5 to stress out the main level. --Kammerer55 (talk) 19:55, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

Another alternative to find the article on lower levels would be to link from level-3 sections to corresponding level-4 and level-5 sections respectively, but that might require better synchronization of topics/sections between the levels. --Kammerer55 (talk) 19:55, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

Use in edit summaries
It looks a bit odd in edit summmaries right now. Is there a way to fix that?-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 11:43, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Good catch! Yes, it seems like this is a common problem arising when using templates in the header. In some cases, the editor would generate the right section-link automatically (for example, when you press reply, or when you edit a section on the mobile). In other cases, it would put  into edit descriptions which would not link to the proper discussion section afterwards. In such bad cases the solution would be to copy-paste the generated title from the preview, and then manually paste it into the auto-generated edit summary title. Kammerer55 (talk) 03:44, 5 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Another possible solution might be to slightly adjust the template to produce only static links by using substitutions (like ). This option should eliminate the need for manual editing most of the times, but would have a minor downside that the number's link might break quickly due to automatic count updates in the VA-lists. In any case, let me figure out how to properly implement this approach. Might take a few days. Kammerer55 (talk) 04:01, 5 December 2023 (UTC)
 * User:Kammerer55, I asked about edit summaries and you responded about headers. Are we talking about the same thing?-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 22:43, 6 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I thought it's the same thing, since the edit summaries are usually generated from the headers, right? Kammerer55 (talk) 23:44, 6 December 2023 (UTC)
 * The edit summary and the section header are only the same for the person who intiates a new section. Thereafter, the section header is just the start of the edit summary, but there is room for an additional summary text to be added to the subsequent edit summaries.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 04:13, 7 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I understand the difference in terminology. I just thought the topic is the same, since the problem originates from edit summaries being automatically generated from the header. It does not happen only during section creation, but also when you press the [edit] button. Kammerer55 (talk) 04:22, 7 December 2023 (UTC)
 * It might be best to not use these templates in headers – just place them in the nomination statement. The edit summary linking thing is a bit of a pain.  J 947  ‡ edits 22:48, 6 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Indeed. The "solution" described above is not a solution. The solution is well-established at MOS:SECTIONHEAD: section headings should:... Not contain template transclusions. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:17, 9 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I think a topic list like the one on Bot requests might help? This way we can just browse the status of the topic and don't have to care about the edit summary. Kanashimi (talk) 12:40, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

Proposal for a VA "top icon"
Should Vital Articles display a topicon? RFC tag added 22:05, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

Above, I asked User:MSGJ if could be given functionality to serve as a mw:Help:Page status indicators (or "top icons") in the form of  #. Examples of use would be
 * 1) At the top of Drowning Girl next to the gold star it would say Círculos Concéntricos.svg 5
 * 2) At the top of Misty Copeland next to the green plus disk it would say Círculos Concéntricos.svg 5
 * 3) At the top of Campbell's Soup Cans in the upper right it would say Círculos Concéntricos.svg 4

N.B. some modifications in the proposal. Below, it was clarified that a separate template, named more similarly to the existing mw:Help:Page status indicators (or "top icons") Featured article and Good article, would be developed with the level number superimposed on the sized to be identical with. My reasoning for such a template on an article page is the extreme difficulty that mobile users have determining if an article is a vital article. Currently to determine if an article is a WP:VA on your phone, from the browser mode you must try to hit the tiny talk link and then often hit the tiny show button on the WPBS collapsed template. Please note we are holding this vote on our own page as both WP:FA and WP:GA held their ratification discussions in there own space rather than a central space. Of course the discussion is open to all interested discussants.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 04:29, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

MSGJ stated that we would need consensus for such a functionality, which might need to be coordinated through Wikidata. This is a proposal to seek consensus for such a request.TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 20:42, 1 December 2023 (UTC)


 * To be clear, this topic has been had at least twice previously:
 * September-October 2022
 * Wikipedia talk:Vital articles/Archive 23 April-May 2023 (majority in favor, but settled for a compromise)

Support

 * 1) TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 20:42, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
 * 2) As the initiator of the original template, I support this idea, but with another name for the template (see discussion below). --Kammerer55 (talk) 21:22, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
 * This is a great way to increase attention to vital articles and making this project more productive. It doesn't hurt to try it out. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 14:40, 3 December 2023 (UTC) Struck my support because the Vital project as a whole has not matured enough as pointed out by other editors. We should focus on solving these problems in the project first as they are certainly more important and urgent than a top icon. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 17:08, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
 * 1) This will further integrate the vital articles project into Wikipedia. I think it would be great if we had more participants in the project. I know a lot of people are turned down by the project, but compared to projects like Contents/Overviews, this project does a better job at covering all topics by including biographies. Interstellarity (talk) 15:52, 3 December 2023 (UTC)
 * 2) Support sounds like a good idea. Gizza  (talk) 10:09, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
 * 3) Support - I agree that this is a good idea. Jusdafax (talk) 04:07, 5 December 2023 (UTC)
 * 4) Support but only for level 3 and above, the remaining two levels aren't stable enough.  The  Blue  Rider  Postal horn icon.svg 15:08, 8 December 2023 (UTC)
 * There is no requirement that the articles be totally stable. Level 4 is way more stable than WP:GA was in 2010 when it went live and time will tell, but level 5 is probably as stable as GA was in 2010. I bet a huge percentage of WP:FAs have also become WP:FFA since FA went live as a top icon. We don't need to promise stability any more than those projects were able to do.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 15:20, 8 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Okay, fair. I will support for level 4 and 5 as well.  The Blue  Rider  Postal horn icon.svg 22:54, 8 December 2023 (UTC)
 * 1) Support, sounds good. Cremastra (talk) 14:55, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
 * 2) Support This seems sensible. Topicons are quite discreet and don't take up much space on the page.  They are far better than the glaring banner tags which deface so many articles while doing little for the reader. Andrew🐉(talk) 16:45, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Support - this proposal seems fine to me and would affect a relative small number of articles (albeit our most popular ones). Like Andrew says, the icons are not too intrusive compared with maintenance tags. – Epicgenius (talk) 15:56, 11 December 2023 (UTC) See my comment in "neutral" below. Epicgenius (talk) 23:51, 16 December 2023 (UTC)
 * 1) Support Eh, why not p  b  p  17:24, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
 * 2) I'm of the opinion that it is within our remit as an encyclopaedia to have an overall rank of the importance of topics and communicate this to readers. But I understand this is a minority opinion. In general, I side with the opposers' arguments – readers first and readers only, please. There's a script for editors to use.  J 947  ‡ edits 22:06, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Did you intend to support or oppose adding the top icon, ? No-one is suggesting removing the lists. Espresso Addict (talk) 22:16, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Topicons communicate this to readers, so support.  J 947  ‡ edits 22:21, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Would you happen to have a link to the script? CMD (talk) 05:21, 13 December 2023 (UTC)
 * User:Nardog/VitalTopicon.js. Unfortunately doesn't differentiate between VA levels.  J 947  ‡ edits 09:55, 13 December 2023 (UTC)
 * @J947, @Chipmunkdavis, Nardog's script has the level both in the link target (so mouse over on a computer or click on mobile) and as the title text. I have a not well-designed change at User:Skynxnex/VitalTopicon.js that makes the level visible by doing like L2 and also embeds the level number in the title and alt text for the link and image, respectively. I'd be happy if something like that is seen as an improvement, then @Nardog could incorporate it in someway in their version. Skynxnex (talk) 22:23, 21 December 2023 (UTC)
 * 1) I completely disagree that there is "editor-focused" information that needs to be hidden from "readers". We're a wiki, written by our readers. We desperately need more readers to edit more frequently and seriously. Maintenance tags don't go on the talk page because a reader should be able to address the issue, as well as using it to critically assess the article's reliability. (This largely doesn't happen and most maintenance tag uses are inappropriate.)While the VA system is flawed, it serves some purpose in determining which articles should have increased volunteer attention (both locally and in translation to other language Wikipedias). It is stable (it's 19 years old, and Wikipedia is 23 years old!) and the topicon would be unobtrusive (in contrast to maintenance tags). Issues of geographic and gender bias are worth discussing, but are hardly unique or disproportionate in VA.Each additional script an editor is asked to install increases the already absurd learning curve on the site. In Contents, VA is given high prominence (rightly or wrongly), so one can hardly say we're hiding it from readers at present. — Bilorv ( talk ) 18:21, 17 December 2023 (UTC)
 * 2) Support --Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 15:16, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

Oppose

 * 1) Oppose. As far as I understand it, being designated a vital article says nothing at all about the article's quality or reliability. Espresso Addict (talk) 02:01, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
 * An article being designated as vital says that it is of uttermost important to the comprehension of our society and as so it should be improved.  The Blue  Rider  Postal horn icon.svg 10:28, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia is for the reader; marks that designate properties aimed at editors should not be prominent. Espresso Addict (talk) 11:04, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Then by that logic you would also oppose the GA and FA icon, I suppose (?).  The Blue  Rider  Postal horn icon.svg 11:24, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Er, no? Both GA and FA indicate article quality, and thus are appropriate reader-facing icons, as is the spoken-word-available icon, which is the only other one I can think of offhand. ETA: I suppose there's also the lock symbol indicating that the average reader cannot edit the page. Espresso Addict (talk) 11:30, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
 * There's nothing that dictates that the top icon must indicate article quality or protection status. WP:Ignore all rules apply here. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 11:55, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Most readers don't really know about the GA and FA top icons either —they're more for editors. An editor can more easily spot a vital article in poor state through the top icon, it improves the visibility of the project, it might gauge readers to became editors, etc.  The Blue  Rider  Postal horn icon.svg 11:57, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
 * 1) Oppose as I understand it the purpose of the vital articles lists are to focus editors' attention on articles about broad/important topics. As pointed out at the previous discussion, I don't imagine we're doing readers any service by pointing out that they are currently reading an article on a broad/important topic – they'll probably have a decent sense of that on their own. I'm happy having the VA project banners prominently displayed at talk pages, but I think we should continue to limit icons at the top of articles as much as possible. Ajpolino (talk) 06:32, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
 * This is not true. There are certainly vital subjects of broadly accepted importance:, , and . However, I don't think a reader would on their own have a sense that , or  are of similar cross-cultural, broadly accepted import or vitality. Most wikiprojects are like political interest groups, which is how I describe a project to civilians (non-editors). However, like WP:GA and WP:FA, WP:VA is a project that cuts across interest groups and attempts to assess articles based on qualities that pertain to the entire encyclopedia.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 13:13, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Many WikiProjects focus on editor-facing goals that pertain to the entire encyclopedia. WP Accessibility, WP Stub sorting, WP AfC, WP Guild of Copyeditors off the top of my head. Re: I don't think... broadly accepted import or vitality I'm not sure I agree, but even if readers don't know that this project assesses Potato and Mozart to be of roughly similar import, I'm not convinced it's information that benefits the reader to learn. Ajpolino (talk) 17:15, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Some people are living the life where they may actually die of starvation if the potato crop is too small and some people are living the life where they feel they might die if you make distracting noise while they are listening to Mozart.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 01:33, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
 * 1) I am not sure that the talk page of a project is the correct space to establish consensus for a top icon to be put on many article pages, but I must oppose per Ajpolino and Espresso Addict. Moreover, I think this project works under the assumption that the articles on broad topics are the most important ones. I actually think (per ) that the more obscure ones where it's hard to find other sources of information are the most important topics. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 07:53, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
 * User:Jo-Jo Eumerus, I am not sure this belongs on Template:Centralized discussion, but project talk pages are how FA and GA became top icons: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Good articles/Archive 4 and Wikipedia talk:Featured articles/Archive 4.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 09:12, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
 * An RFC can be held on any page. The main point of the RFC system is that editors will find out about the discussion no matter where the discussion is being held. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:35, 13 December 2023 (UTC)
 * 1) As stated previously, I don't support this proposal. It's not clear to me that the importance ranking of one WikiProject should be prioritized over the rankings of other WikiProjects. Additionally for the flagged vital articles, as stated by others, I'm not sure there's added value for readers. There would be more value for specialized domains where it is harder for a non-expert to figure out the importance of the topic from context. isaacl (talk) 07:54, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
 * User:Isaacl, see my answer (time-stamped 13:13, 11 December 2023) to User:Ajpolino (oppose #2) above.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 13:13, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
 * By definition, subjects vital to society have broad influence, and thus readers are highly likely to be able to identify them as such. They may not be able to predict if it passed an arbitrary numerical cutoff determined by this WikiProject, but that's not really an essential aspect of the reading experience. isaacl (talk) 17:21, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
 * User:Isaacl, Well a reader probably knows if they are reading high quality prose and research, but that doesn't mean top icons are not worthwhile.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 20:14, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
 * 1) The GA and FA icons tell readers that they can trust a given article's contents more than that of others. Telling the 99% of readers who don't edit that Wikipedians have found a specific topic to be important gives no useful information whatsoever. Mach61 (talk) 13:44, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
 * It seems that there are a broad array for page protection, which don't seem to be for the reader, since no reader will understand the nuances between a dozen such templates. Why does this top icon need to be for the reader when most existing ones are not?-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 20:11, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
 * 1) Lean oppose on this, similar to above. The Vital article categorisation is an editor-focused initiative, and I'm not sure what it provides a reader. CMD (talk) 14:01, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
 * See answer to Mach61 just above.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 20:14, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
 * ...Because it'd be a massive nuisance not to have a visible indication of page protection, and a lot of people would complain if it wasn't there? Big difference in audience between a topicon which appeals to editors looking to triage their work, vs one that delivers crucial information to literally anyone who wishes to edit, including the millions of low-volume IPs and new accounts. Mach61 (talk) 13:53, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
 * 1) Oppose - Two reasons. First, vital articles are not intended to communicate something to readers; they're a tool for editors to identify articles worth improving. Second, by displaying a topicon, we are communicating something to readers -- a ranking of what subjects are "vital" and what subjects are not vital, with no basis in WP:V, WP:RS, or WP:NPOV. &mdash;  Rhododendrites  talk \\ 15:14, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
 * 2) Oppose Firstly, I simply do not see the "extreme difficulty" for mobile users that the nominator claims. From my end it actually seems more difficult to find the FA/GA top icons on mobile than it is to open the WPBS banner shell on the talk page. Moreover, as many others have pointed out, the two existing top icons indicate article quality; adding a third top icon which has nothing to do with article quality will mislead readers and is terrible UI design. I second Rhododendrites's comments. Cobblet (talk) 16:35, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
 * User:Cobblet, Navigate to any article on a mobile device. To see FA/GA top icons takes one click (view as desktop mode in a browser). To see if an article is VA you have to do that first click to get to desktop mode. Then you have to click a very tiny button to get to a talk page. Then you have to click a very tiny button to show in the WPBS banner. That is two additional clicks. How is two additional tiny button clicks easier?TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 22:59, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
 * User:Cobblet, Still waiting for the Android view.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 08:26, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Fair enough, I never noticed until now that you could one-click to get to desktop mode by scrolling to the bottom of the page. I apologize for my lack of familiarity with the mobile version – I almost always edit on a laptop. But clicking Talk -> Read as wiki page -> Show (in WPBS banner) is hardly onerous, and calling it "extreme difficulty" is absurd. Cobblet (talk) 00:00, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I have one of the bigger cellphone screens (iPhone 15 Pro max) and once in desktop, the talk button is very tiny. What mobile device are you on that it is not? Are you on a tablet? This complaint is about cellphone difficulties.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 01:29, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Pixel 6. Pressing the talk button has never been a problem for me, and for me I honestly think it's less hassle than scrolling to the bottom of the page. Maybe you have bigger fingers? To each their own. Cobblet (talk) 02:07, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Since your Pixel 6 screen is skinnier than mine (3.02" vs. 2.9"), it must be an Android formatting thing. I just emailed you a request for a screenshot of what a WP page looks like so I can see how your talk button text link is formatted. It is non-sensical that your button could not be tiny like mine. Maybe WP presents differently on Android and iPhone in a significant manner in this regard.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 04:50, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
 * You know, I've been busy starting a new job this week. One of the things I appreciate about my new work colleagues is that they respect me as a person, and trust me to respond to them when I have a chance. What they don't do is pester me for a response, and then get their colleagues to also pester me if I still haven't responded. Forgive me if I choose to spend more time building relationships with colleagues on whom my livelihood depends, and less time with... whatever this is. I'm sorry that you paid twice as much for a phone as I did, yet still have to contend with the indignity of tiny buttons. I hate to say it, but you might have to find someone else who uses Android, or go to a phone store yourself, just to see how Wikipedia behaves in a different OS. Life is just so extremely difficult sometimes. I'm really sorry. Cobblet (talk) 04:02, 15 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I think they do have a point about the difficulty of a mobile user having trouble finding the VA designation. When you go to a talk page on mobile, you don't see the WikiProject designations or the top wrapper or whatever it's called that you see at the top of a desktop browser talk page  p  b  p  17:53, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
 * It's two or three clicks (depending on whether the WPBS banner is autocollapsed) versus one click. See the discussion with Folly Mox below. Yawn. Cobblet (talk) 04:17, 15 December 2023 (UTC)
 * 1) Oppose - as I said below: this proposal is too broad (it should be kept to level 3) and the choice of icon is questionable. The Urantia Bookis decidedly niche and not vital, global, representative, nor any other aspiration VA has. Ed [talk] [OMT] 17:05, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
 * 2) I agree that the topicons should be limited to information that is useful to readers, the vital ranking is instead something that is useful to editors. Instead readers will decide how vital something is for themselves and this won't be uniform. Barkeep49 (talk) 20:02, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Is there any policy or guideline that top icons have to serve the readers? This seems to be a made up arguement given that we have a dozen for page protection. No reader understands the difference between them. They are obviously for editors.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 23:02, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
 * That's a fair point. So let me revise and say "I think topicons should be limited to situations where the icon provides valuable context to the end user". So GA/FA tells readers about the review process the article has gone through. The protection icons tells editors if they can/can't edit that page (and when it expires). The vital icon doesn't serve that same purpose. Barkeep49 (talk) 22:31, 13 December 2023 (UTC)
 * User:Barkeep49, I spent several weeks hanging around in WP:VA space without really understanding what vital meant. I have been told that as individual Wikiprojects tag articles for importance to them, VA tags articles in terms of what topics are important to the Encyclopedia. Neither project is attempting to serve the reader. Both are attempting to guide editorial prioritization of effort. Thus, a top icon of VA would tell editors, if you see any issues with this article please address it with highest priority. E.g., if you are a page patroller for a certain type of banner issue, if you ever come across an article with a VA top icon, you would know this is a high priority issue to resolve.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 07:36, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Project importance tags live on the article talk page which is also where I think vital ratings should live. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 12:08, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
 * 1) Oppose per Ajpolino. Nikkimaria (talk) 23:59, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
 * 2) Oppose per . I don't think this is helpful as a reader-facing template, but I might be willing to give it some more thought if the scope of the proposal was narrowed (below level five). Graham (talk) 05:37, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
 * 3) Oppose A Vital Article top icon indicating the subject's broadness and prominence is already obvious to most readers, unlike FA and GA top icons explaining article quality. Whereas FA/GA criteria align with MOS, Vital Article criteria like anti-recentism have been determined by a sliver of editors BluePenguin18 🐧  ( 💬 ) 07:21, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
 * 4) Oppose as per WP:GOVP "administration pages should be in the background and not visible to the reader." — Preceding unsigned comment added by Moxy (talk • contribs) 12:54, December 12, 2023 (UTC) -TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 14:11, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Kudos to User:Moxy for citing something although it is not a policy or a guideline. However, it seems to be a statement against all the current top icons used in article space.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 14:11, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Correct..... FA and GA icons can be very misleading considering most FA and GA articles no longer meet their criteria. Each wikiproject have there own idea of what constitutes a vital article like WikiProject Canada/Vital Canadian articles....thus not seeing why this project.....or any behind the scenes project should be highlighted in this manner. Moxy -Maple Leaf (Pantone).svg 02:32, 13 December 2023 (UTC)
 * User:Moxy, kudos again for also being consistent. Would you care to comment on the pertinence of top icon for page protection? As you state, each project clearly has importance designations, the point of VA is to attempt to determine what is important to the collective of all wikiprojects. I.e., VA attempts to determine importance of various subjects for the encyclopedia rather than a project. Certainly, there are imperfections in the process. Each participant in the project disagrees with other participant at times. We even disagree on the priorities and guidelines of the project at times. However, things listed a VAs are generally more vital than things that are not in pretty much any field. The purpose of VA designation is to help editors understand what subjects are most worthy of prioritization. There many who don't see such a designation as important and there are other editors willing to pay other editors cash from their own pocket to motivate this type of prioritization. A top icon would allow editors (especially page patroller types) to know when an article is more in need of prioritized attention if they happen upon a page with an issue. Some pages you just stick a banner on and move on. Maybe you might take a second to be corective more promptly with a VA article.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 08:41, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
 * 1) Strong oppose - there are two ways of looking at WikiProject Vital Articles: The first one is useful. The second one is arrogant nonsense. Editors are qualified to set up a WikiProject and tag articles within its scope; they are not qualified to tell the rest of the world what is and what is not vital, and if Wikipedia tried to do this, it would be spreading misinformation. Remember: vital articles are chosen by an online poll that anyone on the internet can vote in. "Vital Articles" means vital to editors, not vital to everyone.  If Wikipedia tried to do #2, there would only be two possible outcomes:  No good or useful outcome is possible in trying to do #2, and there is a serious risk of a bad, harmful outcome. Editors who want a VA topicon can get one via a user script. But putting a topicon on every VA article would be doing #2 instead of #1. (I was pinged here but would have voted when I saw it on CENT anyway.) Levivich (talk) 17:07, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
 * This oppose is non-sensincal on so many levels. It demonstrates a gigantic lack of understanding of the project that puts into question the whole validity of the oppose.
 * The aim of this project is to improve a number of essential articles important to the comprehension of our society, not to just watchlist the articles. If subjectivity was a problem, then nothing would get done since this argument can be applied to endless things, example: Wikipedia is not valid because they are written by an online poll that anyone on the internet can edit in; FA and GA are not valid because they are reviewed by an online poll that anyone on the internet can review in... Just like in Wikipedia, GA, FA, in the VA project there are also rules and procedures to follow that provide a reliability to the process.
 * There's little disagreement that, or  are vital subjects and before you say that since it's so obvious there's no need for an top icon, there are plenty of topics that are vital that most people never heard of ,  or.
 * The proposal now isn't going to pass because it was posted on centralised discussion and a bunch of ignorant people are opposing with half-baked arguments.  The Blue  Rider  Postal horn icon.svg 20:30, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
 * If this hadn't been listed at CENT, it'd be nothing more than WP:LOCALCONSENSUS. Can't add a topicon to mainspace articles based on local consensus on a project page. Now that I look, I realize this also doesn't have an RFC tag on it; I've added it. Proposals to add topicons should have global, not local, consensus, as they would affect tens of thousands of articles if not more. Levivich (talk) 22:05, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Editors who want a VA topicon can get one via a user script. - Do you know the name of the script? I'd love to install it. Epicgenius (talk) 21:26, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
 * it's listed at WP:USL: User:Nardog/VitalTopicon.js. (Thanks be to for writing and maintaining it.) Levivich (talk) 21:41, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
 * 1) Vital articles are an editorial "behind the scenes" focus, it's not something that's relevant for readers and I think that "Wikipedia editors think this article is important" isn't something to be given any on-article prominence as that fact doesn't provide any useful information to a reader. If anything, it may give readers the wrong idea about what that means as they may assume a vital article is in some way more thorough or informed or better written or sourced, which as the introduction to WikiProject Vital Articles points out, is by no means the case. - Aoidh (talk) 01:51, 13 December 2023 (UTC)
 * 2) Oppose. I do not see how readers benefit from having the inside baseball scoop on what wins a Wikiproject's popularity contest for "importance". Will almost be certainly plagued by RECENTISM anyhow. Levivich's rationale is pretty good, and while I don't think we'd suffer the severe negative consequences they foresee, I do think this is utterly silly. -Indy beetle (talk) 07:35, 13 December 2023 (UTC)
 * The list not recentist – it is very very not recentist. There are 112 people listed at level 3, none living; there are 501 politicians and leaders listed at level 4 and no Biden.  J 947  ‡ edits 03:50, 15 December 2023 (UTC)
 * 1) Oppose A vital articles topicon would be a net negative. They're not useful for readers (and editors already know where they can find such information) and they suggest that Wikipedia editors can determine what subjects matter more than others—something we should stay far away from doing. Levivich is correct in arguing that a vital articles topicon would be an arrogant move. ~ F4U (talk • they/it) 22:28, 13 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Honestly, User:Levivich's use of the word arrogant, shows his/her/their lack of understanding of Wikipedia in general. The true arrogance is his/her/their own in that he/she/they feels he/she/they has the powers to classify a project in his/her/their own limited binary vision. There are things that confer a manner of importance upon an article: quantity of interwikis, pageviews, incoming links, edits and project tags are all metrics which are generally positively correlated with subject importance. WP:VA does, in fact and based on its own accepted guidelines, classify articles in terms of what it calls vitality (meaning pan-wikipedia importance rather than project level importance). At no point have I ever proposed to create a top icon for the education of the reader as to what VA claims is vital. I know he/she/they was pinged here and probably voted against it without reading what it was about, but my point was that a top icon enables me as an editor who is trying to figure out what has preexisting vital status and what doesn't while working on this project. Although I am waiting for User:Cobblet (if anyone has seen him/her/they let him/her/they know I sent him/her/they an email request for a screenshot) to send me a screenshot of the Android view, in my iPhone world, I am unable to efficiently use my phone to determine vitality. If I were an active page patroller, briefly scanning problematic pages, it might be nice to have an icon saying which pages are the most important and have the most pressing need for prioritized action. There is certainly not 100% agreement between any two people what the most important pages are let alone across all wikipedians. I would dare to say that most people believe the things currently listed as Vital articles are more important than the average article on wikipedia. No superlative listing is ever correct. There has never been an All-star team that everyone agreed was perfect. There is no Hall of Fame with out controversial inclusions and exclusions. There are no award shows in which people are in complete agreement. VA is never going to satisfy everyone. However, it does in fact point toward something relating to general importance. By existing, it is saying to anyone who is looking (readers, editors, donors, haters, and vandals alike) which articles are included and which are not. If you have ever been a page patroller, you realize how efficiently you are trying to determine how to determine how to address each article you come in contact with. A tag saying "Hey this is in the fraction of 1% of all articles that by consensus are deemed -most in need of prioritized attention" it might be useful. VA does not need to be limited to watchlists to be useful to editors as Levivich suggests. It is not arrogant to say an unofficially declared consensus of VA editors is worth noting to other editors.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 08:26, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
 * 1) Oppose Vital articles are not a good measure of which articles are actually important. Rather they reflect the beliefs of the relatively few editors who contribute to the ratings. (t &#183; c)  buidhe  07:34, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
 * GA reviews don't reflect a good measure of which articles are of good quality, rather they reflect the belief of the single editor who contributed to the review.  The Blue  Rider  Postal horn icon.svg 08:17, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
 * User:buidhe, Welcome from on high. As a WP:FA cognoscenti, you might be able to help me come up with a number. Of the articles that were featured when FA got top icon, what percentage are still FA. It seems to me that FA is a somewhat fleeting designation. I would love to get your opinion on why VA is not a good measure of importance. Let's pick a random field. For example VA3 has 112 biographies. When you say VA is not good at assessing what is important, do you mean it is no better than a random list? Would you say the People at Vital_articles are not really any more important than any other 112 biographies. Would you say, a group of people could choose another group of 112 that are more important than these 112. In any field of those biographies, as I casually look at the list, I feel that they are the most important people in that field. If you were to pick 6 musicians as the most important is Johann Sebastian Bach, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven, Louis Armstrong, The Beatles, and Michael Jackson not a well-measured list of the most important musicians? Could you name 6 who are more important? In 15 years, do you think this list will change as much as FA has since top icon? Is Dance, Opera, Orchestra, and Theatre not a list of the most important performing arts? Could you name 4 performing arts that are more important? What say you in regard for the prospect of these 4 in 15 years? Did VA editors do a terrible job in designating vitality? There are certainly arguements that you could make in the field in which VAs are distributed, but in any field, the list are fairly well-measured in fact. Surely, you must agree with this.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 09:24, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Your list of the most important musicians are all white European men (and two African-American men). Levivich (talk) 15:36, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
 * User:Levivich see 16:47, 14 December 2023 response to RunningTiger's query a bit below yours.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 16:50, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes . And you can see how arbitrary it is from the discussion below about race and racism. It doesn't make sense that the parent concept is deemed less important.
 * Also, most readers don't recognize ga/fa topicons and many recognized articles do not meet the criteria. So, I entirely agree that these icons have limited value. (t &#183; c)  buidhe  16:10, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Didn't realize the extent of the bias in article selections until now, especially in culture. For instance, there are 33 articles under Level 4 specific musical works and all of them are from the Western world. VA is certainly not the only place where a Western bias is present on Wikipedia, but it's still worth noting. RunningTiger123 (talk) 16:38, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
 * User:RunningTiger123, VA is often guided by interwikis, pageviews and incoming links as places where subjects for editorial efforts are in demand and should be highlighted. On English Wikipedia, this does bias the designation.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 16:47, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Except Vital articles/Frequently Asked Questions specifically says articles are chosen based on "No (Western) bias" and warns against using views alone (and doesn't even mention links directly). This could lead to some confusion over what the meaning of the icon is. RunningTiger123 (talk) 18:14, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Eh, out of all the criticisms one can level at VA I don't think this is one. One of the strengths of the list is its globalness in comparison to the en.wp readership. With regard to music, what you can see from this list is the degree to which art music (and music in general) is largely a Western thing. Looking at the level 4 lists, we only list 7 non-Western art musicians: the Trinity of Carnatic music, Ali Akbar Khan, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, and Ravi Shankar (who was on this list until 2015). There is an effort made to include women but it's a sad truth that many in history simply didn't have the chance to shine as they might have in a better society. There is implicit consensus that to list Madonna or Clara Schumann in place of one of the musicians currently listed compromises quality for diversity on this list too much. It's a complicated balancing act (and unfortunately white men have dominated history).  J 947  ‡ edits 23:38, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
 * No, white men haven't dominated history, they've dominated white man history aka Western history. Look there are over a billion Indian people and over a billion Chinese people ... surely, the most important musicians to them are not all European or American. Ling Lun, the legendary founder of music in China, isn't even a vital topic. Look at WP:VA3 artists: of the 6, it's 4 Europeans, a Mexican, and a Japanese artist. I do not think that the most important artist, for the 3 billion Indian and Chinese, are Europeans, a Mexican, and a Japanese artist. Look at WP:VA3 explorers: one Chinese person, the other 6 are Europeans. Seriously, of the 7 most "vital" explorers in history, six are European? I don't think so. WP:VA3 writers: of the 11, it's 1 Chinese, 1 Japanese, 1 Iranian, 1 Indian, 7 Europeans. You mean to tell me that Europe has produce more vital writers than China, Japan, Iran, and India, and the rest of the world combined? YGTBFKM. WP:VA3 religious figures: 1 Buddhist, 1 Muslim, 1 Hindu, 2 Jews (granted also significant to Christians and Muslims), and 3 Christians. Why 3 Christians? Judeo-Christian religions are like only like 50% of the world but 75% of the VA3 religious figures (6 of 8). There are zero Africans, zero indigenous North or South Americans, 6 figures from the Middle East. The reason Western men dominate VA isn't because Western men dominate history, it's because more VA voters are Western men. WPVA as an editor tool is fine, but it definitely concentrates and amplifies systemic bias, because WPVA measures "vital" based on what white men do. Edits, interwiki articles, incoming links, and tags are put there by mostly white men... these "demand metrics" measure the demand of predominantly white male editors. Page views is also definitely mostly white, mostly American, and probably mostly male. Measure what white Western men are interested in and you'll get a list of mostly white Western men. Levivich (talk) 02:30, 15 December 2023 (UTC)
 * User:Levivich, Bravo! I think Ling Lun is a very intriguing subject. You are free to nominate him at VA5 or I can to do so on your behalf. His metrics are unconventional: 23 incoming links, 5 interwikis, and his 90-day average pageviews is below 30 per day. His importance as a person probably outweighs his strict vitality on ENWP. His vitality might be much higher on Cantonese or Mandarin WP where his pageviews and incoming links would better represent his importance. However, he is definitely a worthy nominee. I don't think the issue of balance is purely Western voters, I think it is that Western voters are attempting to serve the demands of Western readers.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 03:13, 15 December 2023 (UTC)
 * History, in terms of recorded evidence, is dominated (not overwhelmingly, I hasten to add) by the west; the concept of specific people dominating history is also surprisingly western. Ling Lun's zh.wp article is very minimal; his importance is doubtful. There are certainly some weaknesses in this list, but I haven't seen any list of important people anywhere near as good. BTW, pageviews/interwikis are generally only used at the 50,000 list, and even then only between people of the same class (i.e., two white men).  J 947  ‡ edits 03:50, 15 December 2023 (UTC)
 * User:Levivich, I'll probably nominate Ling Lun in 7 days if I don't hear back. Also, do you the flaws and biases that you present about VA are related to the VA project or to enWP in general? Do you think the bias at VA is greater than at GA or FA?-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 12:40, 18 December 2023 (UTC)
 * 1) Oppose As Indy beetle says, utterly silly. Yes, I'm sure both readers and editors would appreciate being told that Philosophy, Algeria or Ryan Gosling are very important subjects, in some parallel universe where they can't read the article and use their own brain. I cannot think of a single occasion where knowing the vital status of an article from a topicon would be useful—and can you imagine the disputes when it is actively advertised that Wikipedia "thinks" Christianity is more important Islam because it has more level-3 articles, or that Iraq is less important than Iran, or that the most important mythology is that of the Greeks, etc. People really need to think this through. AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 15:12, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
 * User:AirshipJungleman29 thanks for opining. As I have said, any attempt at a subjective list is subjective. On an All-star team some guys will be starters and others won't. There are always debates about who is a higher level all-star (starter vs. non-starter) or who should or shouldn't be an All-star. The point is that the list is certainly directionally correct. Again you emphasize the reader for some reason as if readers are the only people with access to articles. Readers, editors, donors, haters, and vandals alike all have access to the articles. However, as I have pointed out a page patroller (This is a type of editor in case you missed it above) might be prioritizing his time and appreciate a bit of advice on prioritizing his time alloted to corrective actions. If you have ever been an editorial page patroller, you might know that often times you are wading through lengthy lists of articles and don't always have time to glean the importance of remote topics. No doubt having another list of trusted WPians who have done a decent job at identifying the important topics might be useful.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 15:29, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Notwithstanding that all editors, donors, haters, and vandals are also readers, what is stopping this hypothetical page patroller from a) looking at the article's talk page or b) using their own brain to adjudge which articles they feel are most in need of working on? AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 15:40, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
 * User:AirshipJungleman29, if you require page patrollers to jump to the talk page of every page and then jump back to the article page, maybe they only get half as much page patrolling done. Furthermore, page patrollers often find themselves acting on pages outside of their expertise. Requiring them to assess importance of every page, also would slow them down. Putting a VA top icon, on a page would tell them which articles have been highlighted by trusted editors as those that should be attended to with editorial priority. A page patroller might spend time going through a category produced by a problem banner. They might be spending time taking quick corrective action in regard to this banner alert. A top icon would tell a page patroller if you are ever on a VA-top icon page please give it a little more TLC.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 15:51, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
 * So the entire purpose of putting a topicon at the top of the page is so hypothetical editors can identify important articles so they can make superficial edits to them, because they're so unfamiliar with the subject they can't assess its importance, and because the one second action of clicking on the talk page is apparently half the time they were going to spend on the article anyway.
 * Yes, I'm even more convinced now that this is utterly silly, . AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 15:58, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
 * User:AirshipJungleman29 As the rate of creation of new pages continues to decline, the role of page patrollers may change. I haven't been one for 10 or 15 years. I assure you that page patrollers are not a hypothetical. A page patroller might administer 50-100 pages/hr. So yes they may make seemingly superficial edits. Suppose they are on a task that takes 45 seconds per page (80 pages/hr). What if we asked them to take 12-15 seconds to navigate to and from a talk page and assess it for every such interaction. They suddenly are doing as much as 33% less page patrolling. The average person (even a page patroller) might be surprised to know that is regarded as one of the 1000 VA3 subjects (of the 6.75+ million articles) on wikipedia. They may be familiar with potato, but not really understand that there are whole villages whose subsistence depends on them and that other elements of society consider them a staple food or favorite indulgence. There are even more esoteric topics that a page patroller might not catch during his 45 second visit to do his worker bee stuff. He is there to be a worker bee. However, if you informed a worker bee he was adjacent to the queen and to really pay attention to what he is doing that might result in a different effort.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 16:12, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
 * If you are talking about WP:NPP, you are definitely barking up the wrong tree, seeing as they handle new pages, not the most important ones on Wikipedia. And what "different effort" do you think it is possible to do? As someone who has rewritten one VA3, is currently rewriting another and is preparing to rewrite a third, I can quite confidently say that the only thing I'd want to say to that worker bee is "buzz off". AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 16:15, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
 * User:AirshipJungleman29 We don't need to get into a pissing contest. I am the author of 7 VAs. I created 5 of them from the scratch as the very first editor and 4 of the 5 are current GAs or FAs (restoration efforts are ongoing for Campbell's Soup Cans). As the page creator of several VAs, I do know about NPP and its relation to VA. I mean page patroller in the more generic sense. There are people in the background who task themselves with various sorts of tasks that amount to page patrolling where they are performing what might seem to be cursory corrective actions based on things like categories and banners. People like that would be well-served by a quick beacon of vitality as they work.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 16:43, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Excellent, I believe I see what you're saying: that wikignomes who go around fixing minor errors don't typically try their hardest, but upon seeing a small topicon they will immediately produce higher quality corrections. That about right? AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 17:39, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Operationally, it would be more like this. Say I decide that for the next 2 hours I am going to address articles in a category because banner x has been plastered atop them (or in a section of them as would be more likely for VA subjects). If I chanced upon a page that had banner x as well as banners y & z that I knew how to address and said article was of noted vitality per a top icon, I might address those too although I am only attending to banner x right now.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 18:04, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
 * 1) Oppose, vital article list doesn't reflect actual importance, can be outdated, and is maintained by a couple of people while many other editors don't even know what it is. And as Airship said above, there is no need for a competition - nobody should perceive that wikipedia states that e.g. Iraq is more important than Iran, that's not what encyclopedia is for. Artem.G (talk) 15:23, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
 * See answer to Airship above.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 15:29, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
 * P.S. the value of the list is not in picking singular items like and  and saying whether each is individually correct (personally in Asia I would swap  for ), but that nomination might or might not be challenged by the collective at VA. The true question facing VA is whether in Western Asia a list of, , , , and  is approximately a list of the 5 countries that should be most highly prioritized for editorial effort based on interwikis, incoming links, pageviews, and similar reader demand metrics.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 15:39, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
 * inclusion to some list does not corresponds to better quality or more "editorial effort"; people edit article based on their own interests, not because the articles they work on are "vital". and though I can agree that level 3 is not that bad, levels 4 and - especially! - 5 are not really "vital" for an encyclopedia. Artem.G (talk) 18:28, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
 * 1) Strong Oppose per comments on the 2022 discussion. This is conceptually wrong.  As an *editor* facing "best guess", the vital articles project is fine.  It's a basically harmless internal tool that, if it isn't perfect in exactly distinguishing VA3s vs. VA4s, who cares.  As a *reader* facing icon, this is indeed "arrogant nonsense" where a very tiny subset of Wikipedia editors deigns to tell readers what is important and what isn't.  This is flamebait and asking for awkward questions from the media for why there are X Vital Articles on topic A, but only Y Vital Articles on Topic B.  If we upgrade the VA project to something reader-facing, it needs to be based on objective criteria, or at least something very, very rock solid that isn't "opinions of random editors."  (Say, maybe some sort of "hot page" icon for pages that are in the top 25 articles by page views, although even that is manipulatable.)  But yeah, as is, highlighting VAs would only serve to spread bad feelings and anger about Wikipedia.  This would be true even for stupid, petty stuff ("Why is my favorite video game not a VA5, but this reality star is a VA5?") and it'd be even *more* true for topics with strong feelings like nationalism or religion.  SnowFire (talk) 16:58, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
 * 2) * Side comment: I don't want to sidetrack, but I feel like there's a disconnect here on the fundamental purpose of the VA project. It should not be some sort of group-volunteer ranking of the Greatest And Most Important Things In Life.  It is rather a boring, utilitarian tool that provides early-warning if a key topic is only ranked C or Start and probably needs some love.  The second use-case - the intended one - doesn't need to be displayed as a reader-facing icon.  SnowFire (talk) 17:02, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
 * 3) Oppose this should remain in talk space as a "behind the scenes" system that supports editing and article improvement. Polyamorph (talk) 07:12, 15 December 2023 (UTC)
 * 4) Oppose per this and previous discussions. --Thi (talk) 11:58, 15 December 2023 (UTC)
 * 5) Oppose - even disregarding the criticisms of vital article rankings, I struggle to see what purpose it serves for readers. Especially since I would wager than most don't know what the little GA + means (though the FA star is somewhat intuitive); adding more icons would just add visual clutter, making them less likely to grasp the meaning of the stuff we already have (some of which is more important than the GA/FA icons). ― novov</b> (t   c)  03:41, 16 December 2023 (UTC)
 * 6) Oppose GA and FA topicons are useful because they indicate that an article has gone through a rigorous internal check. Vital articles are meaningless. They're so meaningless that I ignore them as an experienced editor. My eyes gloss over VA sections on talkpages because they tell me absolutely nothing. In fact, they're so useless that I've at times considered suggesting we remove them from talkpages altogether as a pointless sort of clutter, but my hand has been stayed by sheer apathy. Instead, we should focus our energies on convincing the tech folks at the foundation to finally make the GA/FA topicons actually show up on mobile, which is a major oversight. <b style="color:#6a1f7f">CaptainEek</b> <i style="font-size:82%; color:#a479e5">Edits Ho Cap'n!</i>⚓ 20:22, 16 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Sorry CaptainEek, but as much as I respect you, I have to disagree with your statement that VA banners on talk pages are a pointless sort of clutter. To me, the vital article label is probably about as useful as the article ratings system - it can be off the mark sometimes, and people can add either of those unilaterally under some circumstances, but they help with the internal organization of the project. I know some editors, who specifically target poor-quality vital articles to work on, do find the vital icon banners on talk pages to be useful. While I do understand your opposition to a topicon, I don't quite think they should be removed from talk pages either. – Epicgenius (talk) 23:47, 16 December 2023 (UTC)
 * @Epicgenius I appreciate your feedback. I agree that some editors might find them useful, which is why you'll note I haven't actually proposed removing them. You won't see me contributing to them either though :) Its part of the live and let live of Wikipedia: I don't like what VA is doing, but I'm not going to disestablish it. But I'm also not going to support its expansion. <b style="color:#6a1f7f">CaptainEek</b> <i style="font-size:82%; color:#a479e5">Edits Ho Cap'n!</i>⚓ 00:51, 17 December 2023 (UTC)
 * 1) Oppose. I don't have the same negative reactions I see above, but I think readers are likely to misunderstand what a Vital Article icon would mean. - Dank (push to talk) 06:01, 17 December 2023 (UTC)
 * 2) Oppose. This is an editor-facing criterion (articles that an internal wikiproject claims should be the highest-priority to work on), not a reader-facing one. Honestly, I don't even support including GA and FA icons in the articles (versus on their talk pages), because those are mostly editor-facing, too, as the reader has no idea what the distinction is or what processes are used to determine these ratings, nor are they reliable indicators of anything, anyway. GA is a one-editor decision and sometimes poorly decided, while FA is a politicized good ol' boys' club that bestows the award on work by friends of the participants and by those who play kiss-ass. (I've even seen someone quite literally hounded out of FAC, despite being one of its most active reviewers, simply for trying to ensure that an article complies with WP:FACR criterion 2.) Given the dubiousness of GA and FA markers, adding a third even less reader-helpful one is just decorative claptrap and we don't need it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:25, 18 December 2023 (UTC)
 * 3) Oppose. This is quite inappropriate, telling the reader nothing about the article at all - whether it is long, or cited, or reviewed, or even focused on the subject. It just says that it's a topic that, um, a lot of people want to know about, and er, we um sort of thought that was, you know, like, important. Or something. Chiswick Chap (talk) 16:02, 23 December 2023 (UTC)
 * 4) Oppose per CaptainEek. Mz7 (talk) 10:19, 24 December 2023 (UTC)
 * 5) Oppose per everyone above, editors who want to know what articles they're skimming are VA can just use the script. AryKun (talk) 14:24, 26 December 2023 (UTC)
 * 6) Oppose per several above: VA is an editor-focused thing and thus not something that should be visible to readers. Happy editing, SilverTiger12 (talk) 19:58, 26 December 2023 (UTC)

Neutral

 * 1) Neutral - Originally, I supported this proposal, saying it "seems fine to me and would affect a relative small number of articles (albeit our most popular ones)". Like Andrew Davidson says, the icons are not too intrusive compared with maintenance tags. However, I do think this should be provided as an opt-in option, not as default. Right now, VA is not a reader-facing indicator of the article's quality (as GA and FA are), but, rather, a measure of its importance. Opponents of this proposal make points that are compelling enough that I cannot fully support a vital topicon that is displayed to everyone. The user script User:Nardog/VitalTopicon.js provides topicons for users who want it, like me, but we should not be displaying this to non-editors at this juncture. Epicgenius (talk) 23:51, 16 December 2023 (UTC)
 * 2) Perhaps support in the future. As someone involved in the process that led to the GA top-icon, I commented here, but perhaps these comments have some value in advancing the general discussion. I agree with general oppose views that top-icons should have value for readers, not just editors, potential or otherwise. I also agree with support views that there is already some benefit to readers in identifying vital/core articles. We tend to use "importance" as something internal to the encyclopedia, as a motivation to improve certain articles (e.g. in WikiProjects). However, it can be also useful for self-study or home-schooling. The Propaedia is an example of such an encyclopedic guide. In principle WP:VA can have such a dual role, but this discussion shows that it is not ready yet. If WP:VA demonstrated that it had an important reader-facing role, with processes respected by the community, then a top-icon, linking to hierarchy of core articles, could be valuable to readers and editors alike. Geometry guy 23:47, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

Discussion
For reference, see last year's discussion on this topic:. isaacl (talk) 21:30, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
 * User:Isaacl, thanks for this link, but it seems to have been made (or at least opposed) by a bunch of outsiders. I don't recognize most of the discussants other than you. I don't think this is a matter to decided at a venue like WP:VPP (see links below for past precedent).-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 22:25, 2 December 2023 (UTC)
 * To be clear, when I say I don't recognize the objectors as regs at WP:VA I don't see them on any of these top 20 lists
 * https://xtools.wmcloud.org/articleinfo/en.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia_talk:Vital_articles
 * https://xtools.wmcloud.org/articleinfo/en.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia_talk:Vital_articles/Level/4
 * https://xtools.wmcloud.org/articleinfo/en.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia_talk:Vital_articles/Level/5 -TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 22:32, 2 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Were the decisions to have the Cscr-featured.svg Symbol_support_vote.svg symbols as top icons made by those projects or were they made by the community at large?-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 06:57, 2 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Good articles/Archive 4 GA decided on their own on 02:52, 28 May 2010 (UTC).-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 21:51, 2 December 2023 (UTC)
 * It is hard to say when Wikipedia talk:Featured articles/Archive 4 was evaluated as a consensus because it was never capped. FA also decided on their own. The proposal was started 12:47, 26 January 2006 (UTC). On January 31, articles got tagged.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 22:11, 2 December 2023 (UTC)
 * This feels overly broad. I'd consider supporting a proposal that removed the numerals (which no reader will understand!), and placed icons only on the relatively stable, well-watched, and highly discussed level three and above. But we could also use an icon that better communicates what it means—a star is clear, a blue target(?) is not. (Edit: it's actually drawn from The Urantia Book, which is decidedly niche and not vital, global, representative, or any other aspiration VA has.) Ed [talk] [OMT] 07:34, 2 December 2023 (UTC)
 * User:The ed17 I think level 4 is pretty stable. Almost anything there will retain at least a level 5 for some time. Level 5 is probably about where WP:GA was when it gained top icon status.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 21:38, 2 December 2023 (UTC)
 * There were three components to my thinking there, of which stability was one. Beyond that, with some further thought it does feel like fifty thousand articles stretches the definition of "vital". Ed [talk] [OMT] 22:12, 2 December 2023 (UTC)
 * User:The ed17, I have seen you in a lot of places, but I don't recall engaging with you at VA. Are you active here? When GA went live with top icon, they were stretching the definition of good. In fact the definition of Good is still someone thinks this article is good, which can be a less than rigorous standard.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 22:35, 2 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I've commented on several nominations in the past, but that's immaterial. This proposal, which will affect all of Wikipedia, is open to anyone to comment on, not just those who are already active here. (You might consider deliberately seeking outside opinions lest this be seen as a local consensus.) Ed [talk] [OMT] 22:41, 2 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Both the FA and GA top icons were decided within the project, so I think this is the proper venue for a discussion. I do agree that 1-3 are very stable. I feel that 4 is pretty stable. 5 is a work in progress. However in 2010, GA was still in need of a lot of reassessments. For me the value of the top icon is to save time when I am on my phone trying to figure out if an article is a VA already. Right now, I have to view in browser. Then I have to try to hit the tiny talk link and then I often have to hit the tiny show button on the WPBS collapsed template. This will save a lot of editorial work.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 22:56, 2 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Try those few steps and think about how annoying it is to have to do. For me it would need to be all 5 levels to serve the purpose I need.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 23:07, 2 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I reciprocate Tony, but non-regular VA users will (rightfully) participate in this discussion since it will have an impact on the readers and for ease of the proposal passing, I do think it's for the best if the VA template icon is only for level 3.  The Blue  Rider  Postal horn icon.svg 23:15, 2 December 2023 (UTC)
 * As with any discussion, it is open. The discussion is housed here, which will mean more VA regs and less VPP regs than the Sept 22 discussion. 1-3 still does not serve my needs, but it is progress. I will still have to jump through hoops as described above.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 23:55, 2 December 2023 (UTC)
 * User:MSGJ, I am not sure I understand your role in VA link, but feel free to give advice on the proposal for Vital article above.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 04:46, 3 December 2023 (UTC)


 * I've just stumbled upon another previous discussion on the same topic from April-May 2023: Wikipedia talk:Vital articles/Archive 23. Interestingly, it had a completely different pool of participants than the current discussion(s). It seems they have also made a user script which provides such functionality (though I haven't tested it). On a side note, we probably should reorganize the talk-pages so that the technical/procedural discussions are not mixed with article nominations. --Kammerer55 (talk) 02:37, 7 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Advertised on Template:Centralized discussion. Espresso Addict (talk) 05:00, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
 * This discussion so far reeks of editor-centric bias. The stated goal is to help mobile users [determine] if an article is a vital article. 99% of readers don't know what a vital article even is, let alone have a desire to figure out whether an article is one or not. So that's not a valid rationale. Several other supporters seem to base their support on the desire to draw more editor attention to VAs, which is a valid goal, but something we could do in ways that don't impact the reader experience. To earn my support, this proposal would need to articulate clearly a reason why non-editing readers would be interested to know that a particular article has been designated as vital, and how the topicon would communicate that to them. (Nb. I do think that the VA lists are correctly designated as reader-facing, despite their current content including things like article ratings that are not, since readers might be curious to e.g. browse the most significant biographies on the site. But that's a different situation than the one at an individual article.) &#123;{u&#124; Sdkb  }&#125;  talk 05:50, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
 * User:Sdkb, Is there a rule somewhere that a top icon has to be reader friendly. As I look at, I see a lot of page protection top icons. Those seem to be of service to editors because readers won't really understand all the nuanced protection types. If we were doing that for the readers, there would probably just be one or two protection types. So explain to me why this top icon has to be of service to the reader when many are not.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 07:09, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
 * @TonyTheTiger, we're writing Wikipedia for our readers. That's fundamental. The page protection icons are WP:OTHERSTUFF, but since you ask, they are visible to readers in large part because they give them significant information about e.g. the likelihood they might encounter vandalism on the page. &#123;{u&#124; Sdkb  }&#125;  talk 07:18, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I don't really believe that could be the reason or they would not exist. No reader can distinguish between the dozen different page protection templates to assess the likelihood that there is vandalism on the page. I have been here since 2006 and don't understand those top icons well enough for that.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 09:19, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I think the overall lock icon is a standard symbol that readers will understand, even if the individual levels are not, also the star for featured articles. The target-like symbol for VA is not used in wider contexts, as far as I'm aware, and so will not mean anything to the reader. (If someone were to propose rationalising all protected articles to the same lock icon on grounds that nearly all readers are logged out, I might well support.) Espresso Addict (talk) 21:55, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
 * You do know that neither FA nor GA topicons are visible on mobile, right? Folly Mox (talk) 06:44, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
 * User:Folly Mox, with a VA top icon I personally will only have to switch to desktop version (view article in browser) rather than switch to desktop version then try to hit the tiny talk button and then try to hit the tiny show button on the talk page if it is in the WPBS banner shell.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 07:16, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
 * For viewing article information on mobile, you can select the Talk page from the top of the article, then click "Learn more about this page" to view the talk page banners. Formatting can be a little wonky, but it's not much harder than switching to a desktop view to check the icons at the top of the page. RunningTiger123 (talk) 15:36, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
 * User:RunningTiger123, this sounds promising, but I can't seem to follow your instructions. Are you starting from a mobile article? Are you on iPhone or Android. I don't see talk option at the top of the page I am at, so I must be misunderstanding your instructions.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 18:40, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
 * The feature is supposed to be part of Reading/Web/Advanced mobile contributions as a setting editors can enable, but it appears even when I'm logged out on my phone (via Safari) or via the mobile site on desktop (via Firefox, Chrome, and Edge). The images on the linked page should show where the tab is. RunningTiger123 (talk) 01:05, 13 December 2023 (UTC)
 * User:RunningTiger123, I still have no clue. Where is the settings page that the page refers to. I have tried the gear icon, which seems to be some type of settings page, but I don't see any advanced mode option.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 08:54, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I think it's only available for logged-in editors. Otherwise, I don't know why it would be invisible. RunningTiger123 (talk) 14:09, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
 * User:RunningTiger123 I am logged in. I navigated to an article in the app. Across the top I see (l to r) <back.... W....magnifying glass.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 05:02, 20 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I think I see the confusion – I thought you were reading in the browser but it seems you're starting in the app and using the browser for desktop only. In that case, I don't believe advanced mobile contributions will work; it's a feature on the mobile website, not the mobile app. RunningTiger123 (talk) 02:51, 22 December 2023 (UTC)
 * User:The ed17 and User:Graham11 are at least two discussants who feel the problem is that not all levels of WP:VA should be included if a VA icon is introduced. How many discussants would switch if this were introduced for VA1-VA4 only? How many would switch if this were introduced for VA1-VA3 only? Can we discuss the logic of this potentially reduced scope?-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 06:58, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Note that above User:The Blue Rider had qualms with all level based on the stability of the lower levels. I pointed out that GA and FA have been proven to be unstable. What percentage of GA and FA articles when their top icons were introduced are now WP:FFA and WP:FGA? I would think WP:VA is something that is more stable a designation than either FA or GA. I am not sure what the logic is for The ED17 or Graham11.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 07:04, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
 * From the !votes above, I think there are larger problems with this proposal than just that... Ed [talk] [OMT] 15:28, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I didn't mean to unfairly challenge User:buidhe by himself. The challenge is open to all 19 opponents above who feel VA is essentially a misleading list of nothingness. For some reason the VA folk seem to attach a special significance to WP:VA3 as if that is the true WP:VA. So let's look at this list. Each of you has a specialty, area of expertise, or favorite subject. VA3 has 112 biographies. Is your disdain because VA is not good at assessing what is important? do you mean it is no better than a random list? Would you say the People at Vital_articles in your area are not really any more important than any other similarly sized list of biographies. Could you choose another group that is more important than these in your field of those biographies? I.e., if your field is music, pick 6 musicians as the most important Johann Sebastian Bach, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven, Louis Armstrong, The Beatles, and Michael Jackson? Could you name 6 others who are more important? Teach me about why we have done such a bad job with your list. This challenge is definitely open to User:Ajpolino. He/she/they is also free to tell me why the greatest musicians are more important the most basic foods and why he can live without food but not musicians.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 13:24, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
 * In fact I invite User:Ajpolino or any of you to explain to me why is more important than not just, but any of the basic  subjects we have listed at VA3 , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Or to present a list of 14 other food subject that is more important than these.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 13:32, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I think I'm misunderstood here. I'm not trying to cancel the VA project, nor am I challenging this project's judgment in tiering the importance of these topics. I'm just of the opinion that the results of this project's assessment ought not be displayed as topicons on the relevant articles. They remain on those articles' talk pages, and I've no problem with that. Ajpolino (talk) 15:17, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
 * , I find it interesting that you assume that your opposers are arguing that the musicians are more important than the foods. Why not the other way around? Perhaps you see yourself as fighting against the "cognoscenti from on high", as you described in a previous comment, as the champion of the lowly common editor? AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 19:23, 15 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Could you stop the personal attacks please? It's not helpful at all to the discussion. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 04:38, 16 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I’m surprised to see no global guideline for when a top icon may or may not be appropriate in various spaces. The implication of the navbox Top icon templates is that enwiki mainspace only uses top icons (page status indicators) for article quality and article protection. (Project space and especially user space seem to have almost no restriction.) These are very different purposes, but extending the indicators to include a third use—“importance”—does feel like it would be opening a new door. I would like to see a more global discussion for what this tool can and cannot (should and should not) be used for. <span style="font-family:Avenir, sans-serif">— HTGS (talk) 00:11, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

Template name
I propose using for the suggested purpose, similarly to existing Featured article and Good article which post respective marks on the article. The original idea behind Vital article link / VA link was to use it for inline text only, so it probably would make more sense to use a separate template for different functionality (though the same Lua module can be used with a different function). The existing Vital article is currently being merged with WikiProject banner shell, so the name will soon become available for repurposing. --Kammerer55 (talk) 21:22, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

Visual design
The current default size for featured and good article marks in the top-right corner is 20px, which is larger than inline text. Probably it would look nice if the number is inside the circle for vital articles, so that a single symbol encodes a status. Otherwise, it would be less clear for casual viewers that the number is associated with the circle. So we would have 5 different pictures for 5 levels. Here are all current symbols at 20px for comparison:. --Kammerer55 (talk) 21:39, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

An end-run around the emerging consensus here
I'm sure it was done in good faith, but despite the fact that this conversation seems very unlikely to close in favor of the proposal, Portal:Vital articles was just created and is being added to mainspace. This would essentially be the same exact thing as proposed above, where there'll be a reader-facing marker of the Official Wikipedia Vital Ranking, with all of the problems described above where only one of two similar topics is marked Vital leading to bad feelings. This is a terrible idea. Things like Wikiproject importance rankings are correctly on the talk pages, not displayed on the article itself. IMO, when a closer closes the topicon proposal, it should include a consensus to delete that Portal as well for all of the reasons described above, along with any other reader-facing end-run. Hopefully should not need a separate MFD, as the MFD would be the exact same discussion all over again.

Pinging for transparency, the Portal's creator. SnowFire (talk) 20:07, 22 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Please elaborate on the portal?-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 22:38, 22 December 2023 (UTC)
 * What is being voted on is the topicon, not the portal so any consensus for the former doesn't implicate the latter. Not sure I follow your reasoning that the two are practically the same thing...  The Blue  Rider  Postal horn icon.svg 15:08, 23 December 2023 (UTC)
 * But the reason people are opposing is because vital articles shouldn't be a reader-facing project. I don't think it's an end-run around consensus, but I do think anyone investing time in the portal would be wise to read the discussion here first, because the same arguments would apply and the portal won't likely survive MfD should someone nominate it. &mdash; Rhododendrites  <sup style="font-size:80%;">talk \\ 16:11, 23 December 2023 (UTC)
 * +1. The issue is that "tagging" mainspace articles as "vital," in any form, whether topicon, portal, nav template, hatnote, special infobox or infobox parameter, mainspace category (as opposed to talk page category), etc., doesn't have consensus. There just isn't consensus for Wikipedia to declare certain topics as "vital," "important," "core," etc. Levivich (talk) 22:20, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

Swap: remove Rhineuridae, add Rhineura floridana
🌺 Cremastra (talk) 15:50, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Use in Template:WPBS
It seems that there have been changes to Template:WPBS to accommodate vital articles. In the case where the VA is a WP:GA like Talk:Campbell's Soup Cans or WP:FA like Talk:Drowning Girl it seems to be working. However, at recent additions Talk:Microsoft PowerPoint, Talk:Microsoft Excel, Talk:Microsoft Word, Talk:Gig economy, Talk:I Love New York, and Talk:Oceanian art it is not.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 14:22, 7 January 2024 (UTC)
 * It is working now.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 02:08, 8 January 2024 (UTC)