Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ireland/Assessment/Archive 1

Copied from User talk:Sarah777
Not aware that I've deleted any Irelandproj tags. Yesterday I added project tags to several Irish related articles (have a glance at my contributions list) and added the project nest to tidy up a bit. This may be the problem - it hides the project banner but just needs a click on the show button. What instances have you found? It would be carelessness and I apologise. BTW, have a look at the discussion on the talk page for Kildare Town - do you have a view? Folks at 137 06:33, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Just checked out Talk:Kildare Town myself. I see you've added a second Irelandproj banner. The original was not deleted: if you click on the "show" buttons, the individual banners are displayed. It's a device to avoid clutter as articles qualify for multiple projects. I'll leave you to tidy up as you see fit, but nests are in fairly common use in Wiki. Folks at 137 06:40, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes, Ww has pointed that out; my fear is that the nested tags are not being read by the statistics compiler, for whatever reason. Time will tell; if James Joyce does not appear as a FA then we have a problem Houston. (Sarah777 11:45, 19 August 2007 (UTC))
 * See here, this is the programme that updates the list about every 3 days and I think it doesn't read nested tags. Of course we must always allow for the fact that I might be wrong - however unlikely! There is a run due tonight I think. The we'll see if James Joyce passes muster with his neat but nested tag. (Sarah777 11:51, 19 August 2007 (UTC))


 * Can the program that builds the list be amended to read nested tags? There are 2 forms of nesting - I've used the one I've used as it's more visible. Do we know who wrote the program? Folks at 137 16:11, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately I don't know anything about the programme; I suspect it was taken from the Australia Project. (Sarah777 17:11, 19 August 2007 (UTC))

Copied from User talk:Ww2censor
Ww, not sure those nested tags work; better to leave the Irelandproj tags as well, like they do in Australia. (Sarah777 01:30, 19 August 2007 (UTC))
 * Depends, they do work but too many tags gets messy at the top of the talk page which is why one uses a banner shell. I'm going to look closer at some other to see if I can figure out how they actually work. Bye ww2censor 01:35, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Look at Arklow now. Cheers ww2censor 01:45, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Yep..see Arklow, I understand what you are doing. But will the updating bot (the one that produces that nice table) pick up on the nested tags??? (Sarah777 01:49, 19 August 2007 (UTC))
 * The bot should only change what is needs, but I am looking around at that stuff later today and maybe tomorrow. ww2censor 02:12, 19 August 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm sorry to have caused bother. IMO multiple projects should be nested, for conciseness(?). Either that or accept that there's a limit to number of projects that an article can be linked to, which would lead to projects being less than comprehensive. I'll stick to the consensus, of course. If "nested tag" means "nested=yes", then it does work (the only exception seems to be the "thoroughbred horse", see Talk:Kildare Town). Folks at 137 07:18, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Continued project assessment tags
From what I read yesterday the bot will find the project assessment class tags whether it is nested or not. We shall have to wait a day or two to see if it is picking up the new and revised tags that we have added to some pages. When the tag is nested editors need to watch out and not add a duplicate as has happened with a few pages, such as, Arklow had. Nested tags can only be used if the original tag is set up for nesting. This is completely separate from the use of a Banner-Shell that allows hiding of several project tags, be they regular tags, assessment tags or whatever. The issue with the "thoroughbred horse" tag seems to be that is is not set-up to allow nesting, but can still be incorporated into a Banner-Shell. ww2censor 23:58, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

New statistics
WP 1.0 bot has done its job and the results are here and here. The updated article talk pages have been recorded, so Sarah777 you should be happy to know that. I don't agree with many of the importance levels for the FAs and GAs. We should really look at the importance ratings more closely. Only 2 of the 17 FAs have an importance rating and 2 of the 7 GAs are rated. The B class articles are rated all over the place; Cork and Galway are not rated, Father Ted is rated Mid while the Ireland national rugby union team is rated Top as is the War of the Grand Alliance. Let's try to decide on a consensus for the top tier articles to start with. What do you think? Cheers ww2censor 03:23, 20 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Well, I've really only rated articles that are "low" like roads and villages; I was using a rule of thumb - if a Town is a county town or has more than 10,000 people then I gave it "mid" and the cities I didn't rate but they'd be "high" or top" I reckon. Most of the rest, like railway stations, I've also rated low importance; avoiding the bigger ones. In fact, I've tended to avoid rating the importance of any topic that might be higher than "mid"; except for a couple of very obvious like Dublin and the Great Irish Famine. I did wonder about the Rugby Team and War of the Grand Alliance mind! Regards (Sarah777 12:18, 21 August 2007 (UTC))


 * Everyone turn their browser to Category:Ireland then and begin? I have been thinking about whether a vertical or horizontal approach would be better: whether to work through subject areas, set importance criteria for each area, or, to start from the top. I think we would have to decide on the top tier first, and then work subject by subject  FlowerpotmaN &middot;(t) 23:03, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
 * The problem is that we have no criteria for importance at this time. I looked around and see that some projects layout some basic criteria as to what should be at what level. Others put forward a list of articles that people then come to a consensus on what class and importance rating should be given. I will put together a post and place it on each members' talk page to see what direction people would like to go.
 * Here are some initial suggestions:
 * Rate all the unrated FAs and GAs by importance - 20 articles
 * Rate all the unrated B-class articles by importance - 49 articles
 * Decide on some basic criteria to rate importance of articles, like - all counties should be rated Top and largest county towns should be rated High - all presidents and Taoiseachs should also be rated Top while members of either house should be rated High and local politicians rated Mid. Well known international figures, such as, writers, film directors, musicians could be Top or High while locally known people would be lower unless there are good reasons to rate higher.
 * Something along those lines would seem fair though any rating system is subjective, which is why the editor rating an article should fill in the comment page with their reasons. When we have a basic rating system, we can place the guidelines on the main assessment page. Of the classified articles 965 are currently unrated and there are many more unclassified, but this is enough work for now I am sure. Any further ideas? ww2censor 00:48, 21 August 2007 (UTC)


 * I think that is a good idea; maybe incorporate some population limits like I suggested above for non-County Towns. (I find that editors tend to rate towns in their own county based on their importance relative to the county, rather than the country. Best have some fairly rigid population rule and if there is a good reason for breaking it in the eyes of an editor refer it to the Community as you suggest above for B-class and above in terms of quality.
 * Regarding roads we can say any individual streets, Local Roads, Regional Roads are "low"; unless a case is made as above. National secondary roads could be "mid" and the National primaries "high" - again with exceptions needing community sanction.
 * Railway stations can be automatically "low" except for the very major ones; and so forth with Rivers, Lakes, Mountains etc. Rules for non-geographical articles will not be so easy and could lead to a lot of argy bargy! (Sarah777 12:30, 21 August 2007 (UTC))


 * Well, just by using the "sub-articles of the main Ireland article" suggestion in the "top" class criteria in WikiProject Ireland/Assessment, there are some fairly obvious articles, which I dumped in my User space here.  FlowerpotmaN &middot;(t) 01:02, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Places still to tag 21 Aug
Some or most 'Towns and villages' in the following counties remain to be done: Donegal, Mayo, Clare, Kerry and Cork - this is straightforward if tedious work. The suburbs of Dublin also need to be tagged - I have avoided that because we'll need some guidelines or else the issue of "importance" will cause heated disputes. (Sarah777 23:44, 21 August 2007 (UTC))


 * Start delayed but on the trail today, and will tackle Dublin, as, having read the guidelines, I think it is reasonable that with Dublin as Top, and a few major buildings as High, other city articles are Mid (Liffey, DART, Luas, other major buildings) and suburbs, as components of the metropolis, are Low (with the possible exceptions of Tallaght, due to scale, and Dun Laoghaire and Swords, as semi-autonomous ~towns and admin. county centres). If someone has a case to make, they can do so, but I strongly suggest one rule for all suburbs (given that we only have a few ranks).
 * And re. the above, I question the idea that Taoisigh should be Top, and members of Dail and Seanad High. If we only have max. 100 Top (for the country, economy, leading cities, key historical events, etc.), I think only some leading politicians meet the criteria, Taoisigh High to Top, but the average TD is surely Mid to Low, given their impact / individual power and status, and all Senators Low, unless especially notable for another reason. SeoR 13:52, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

Will help when I can
(moved from ww2censor's talk page)

I'll do what I can when I can. My main interests are Irish politics (Republic of Ireland) and some related topics. I tend to be a bit sporadic with my time and some of what I contribute to. Rigger30 15:11, 22 August 2007 (UTC)


 * I will also start on this, from tomorrow. Had previously discussed with Sarah but then noted greater debate, and have been busy and mostly offline. Will focus on Cork and Kerry, and Dublin when the time comes. SeoR 17:28, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Nesting ok or not ok?
Some of the above suggests that my joyously free distribution of project "nests" hasn't caused a problem with the statistical analyses and is ok. Is this correct? If so, are these "nests" accepted as helpful? Or is it preferred that I slung my hook and left well alone? (No offence will be taken.) BTW, has anyone looked at Wikipedia talk:Flagged revisions? Folks at 137 21:22, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Was just trying to wade through Flagged revisions but still not clear or decided.
 * To nest or not to nest, the statistics collection bot works on both. I think the decision to nest or not depends on how populated a talk page is. If there are only one or two project templates then nesting may not be necessary, but when there are many templates, especially in a banner shell, then nesting looks like a good idea. So how do you decide? If Flowerpotman has indeed fixed the templates then nesting can be easily turned on or off depending on the talk page you are placing it on or modifying. When you add the template make sure the code "nested=yes" or "nested=no" in included and that's it. Then you, or someone else, can change the nesting from on to off if there seems to be a need. This page has nesting tuned on as a single template on the page, this one has several unnested templates and here is a page where they are all nested inside a banner shell. Take you pick (said the foreman, so he took a shovel). Cheers. ww2censor 21:56, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, I'm just waiting to see if anyone has any comments on the version of the template I have been fiddling with, but the nesting code is fairly standard, so I didn't as much fix it as just use the nesting code from another template. Common usage seems to suggest including the nesting code on a talk page and turning on nesting in a WP box if there are three or more WikiProject boxes. Just from personal experience (or sheer prejudice), three seems a good number.  FlowerpotmaN &middot;(t) 22:13, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
 * PS And a link would have been helpful. There is a test version to play with at User:Flowerpotman/sandbox/templatesandbox. —The preceding  signed but undated.
 * Folks @ 137; I have no problem with nesting - I thought it was messing up the stats but it appears it no longer is/never was. Regards (Sarah777 22:38, 23 August 2007 (UTC))
 * The nesting was never a problem for the statistics bot, but Flowerpotman's template does have an issue with the intro text. His says: "This article is supported by WikiProject Ireland, an attempt to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to cities, towns, and various other settlements on Wikipedia" but the original ones say: "This article is within the scope of WikiProject Ireland, an attempt to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to Ireland on Wikipedia." I hope he can include the project specific text and not that from the Cities template he has used for the test. BTW, I wonder why the test template shows, class, importance, immediate attention and peer reviews request. Will the last two be turned on or off in the posted one. Thanks ww2censor 22:48, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Fixed the wording and left details of the current syntax supported on the actual template page. As for which options should be supported on the template, that should be decided here. (And should the option that pops a warning up if the template is used on a non-talk page be left on or removed?)   FlowerpotmaN &middot;(t) 23:39, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
 * The only line that might be deletes is the "old-peer review" unless there is some reason to keep it. Otherwise it looks good now that you changed the text. The photo line seems good to keep, so lets go with that for now in both templates.

Active members to work on criteria?
So it looks like for now we have Flowerpotman, Sarah, SeoR, Rigger30 and myself. If we can progress some basic criteria it would be good. Geographical guidelines seem easy enough, historical seem harder as do biographical though there we might tend to follow the Biography Projects decisions if they get there before we do. What other groups should we consider now; maybe organisations and companies.

First, we should decide on the unclassed FAs and GAs. BTW, Cillian Murphy became a GA today and I changed the template to Irelandproj to show the "low" importance rating. ww2censor 02:53, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Importance grading
Here is the Biography Project's importance criteria that we can probably use as a basis for our own guidelines that will need to be rewritten somewhat:


 * The milhist project includes rating (but not importance which was dropped some time ago) criteria in its banner. These are potentially useful as they direct attention towards issues and allow debate. Have a look at Talk:World War II and Talk:Otto von Bismarck. I thought that the biography project canvassed reasons but it doesn't - either an elderly moment or it's been removed. Folks at 137 06:29, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
 * You are right that some projects don't use the importance rating but I think it is a useful addition. For instance where an article has been created for a topic that is important, yet still a Stub or Start class, it can certainly be good to focus editors towards articles that need work. Additionally and perhaps most importantly editors will find it useful to see what the important articles are within a project. I favour keeping it—remember that it does not have to be used for every article. If you are uncomfortable rating an article just ask someone else to do it or look for a consensus. Thanks ww2censor 14:19, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
 * I think that "importance" works best in a project that's tightly focussed, where it's possible to rate from a common viewpoint. Milhist had a problem that, say, how would one rate one battleship against another- for the US, they had loads, USS Massachusetts was just another; for the UK, HMS Hood was iconic, albeit a design failure. Cities is another case: in my opinion, its ratings are done from a US point of view (Cambridge was originally "low"!) - not deliberately, but that's how it comes over. It's just too wide a scope. Objective criteria are a great help. Folks at 137 11:42, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Importance is a subjective opinion and in that respect there may be some differences of opinion but that should not dissuade us from setting some basic criteria for the levels of importance. I am working on a similar style table to the one above showing different groups of articles with sample articles of what we might regard as fitting into each level.


 * In the case of HMS Hood I would have though that its iconic status would give it a High rating while the USS Massachusetts would be Mid or Low depending on the projects general opinion for these types of vessels. Flowerpotman suggested these criteria for cities and towns and I will work them into a geographical table over the weekend too:
 * Cities and counties should be rated as high.
 * Working from the List of towns in the Republic of Ireland by population, towns on the list should be rated as high or mid, with a suggestion that towns with a population above 10,000 be automatically be rated as high.
 * Towns and villages not on the list should be rated, initially as low.
 * One last thing for now. I hope we can agree that the importance level "Top" should only be given where the assessment team agree to that rating by consensus and not just given at random by individual editors. We can work on a current suggested short list of top articles. TTFN ww2censor 14:41, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Yup, that seems reasonable. I did indulge in one bit of naughtiness by rating the Ireland article as top, but I think we might all agree on that one :O)  FlowerpotmaN &middot;(t) 19:39, 25 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Having looked at that list, it has some peculiarities. Notably around Fingal (on which name it looks like a separate discussion is needed). While "Dublin and suburbs" is a group, and the authorities of South Dublin and Dun-Laoghaire appear to have agreed that their main settlements (80-100,000 person Tallaght, Dun Laoghaire, etc.) form part of the "Dublin and suburbs" heading, the list contains Swords (no problem), but also, e.g., Skerries and Portmarnock, as "towns", along with the delightful "92 - Kinsealy-Drinan, County Dublin". Whether they are towns or not, they are Dublin suburbs, and should rate Low.  And for the rest, I would not give High except in genuinely priority cases, most look Mid by the description. SeoR 13:14, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Geographical importance
Here is a shot at an importance guide for various geographical categories:

(Sarah777 17:36, 25 August 2007 (UTC))


 * Not bad at all Sarah. I would add a limiter for Top similar to the one I put in the biographical criteria, say "Top rating is limited to no more than 5-10 articles without assessment team's consensus." We likely need an "Architectural" group criteria too and this could be integrated into the table Sarah made. Looking good folks. ww2censor 19:48, 25 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks Ww; though I do a few articles about castles and dolmens etc I wouldn't have the faintest idea re their relative importance except for some very obvious ones; Tara is "top" and the Stepaside cross is "low". In between I'd be guessing - for example if it is a National Monument it must be at least "mid" - we must have some Irish Wikipedians with some background in this who could set some guidelines? Re architecture; I'm even more clueless; the stuff I like never wins any prizes! (Sarah777 20:54, 25 August 2007 (UTC))
 * I suppose some of this will be SOP, seat of pants, decisions unless we have more specialised people join this project and do some work. Some people seem to take more time bickering than contributing. I was trying to get someone involved in the FAR of President of Ireland but no one has stepped in to help and I don;t have the time or sources. On a geographical note but OT - did you see that someone is changing the heights of Lugnaquilla and some other mountains? I think the page at the OSI they are using is wrong. Do you have any recent OS maps? We can discuss this elsewhere. Cheers ww2censor 21:09, 25 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Excellent, thanks. For the suburb question, I have commented elsewhere. Unless otherwise special, such as Tallaght (80-110k pop, depending how and what you count), or Dun Laoghaire / Swords (admin. county towns), I suggest all start as Low. SeoR 13:59, 26 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Yep, Seo. Agree with that. Tallaght/Swords/DL would be "mid" in this system as county towns; putting all the others as "low" would eliminate endless rows! If the rest agree, maybe you tag a few hundred suburbs??! (Sarah777 17:18, 26 August 2007 (UTC))


 * Making a start. One small thing, I would consider making any working airport a "mid", as they are rather rare resources. But Low for small rail stations, etc., indeed. SeoR 13:05, 27 August 2007 (UTC)


 * OK Seo, promote Weston Airport, we'll need to find a different example for the "Guideline box" above...(Sarah777 07:35, 28 August 2007 (UTC))


 * Will do then. Northside suburbs of Dublin finished, exercise has emphasised much to do :-)  For bottom class of airport, I'm sure I can find one of the old "farmer Pat's field" aerodromes about.  I remember Farranfore (or Kerry International!) when it was exactly that! SeoR 18:56, 28 August 2007 (UTC)


 * I think I found the ideal replacement! (Sarah777 21:18, 28 August 2007 (UTC))


 * Excellent! Well done indeed :-)  And for the suburbs, over half the Southside done too.  I have made one change to above - still all Low, except Dun Laoghaire, Swords and Tallaght, but having considered the facts, DL and Swords are Mid, and Tallaght High (as it is nearly 10% of all Dublin, and at least the 4th largest urban area in Ireland by pop.).  For the other suburbs, I think we can review later and consider, if we want to open that can of worms, whether scale, contents or history of a few suburbs justifies a higher rating. Relative to the rest of the country, this might be (e.g. for Blanchardstown, Rathfarnham, Howth) but... SeoR 11:41, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

(deindent) I've did the counties last night and I have been using the full wikiproject template code, not the irelandproj one even when I am just adding am importance rating. It is just easier to have one template in my clipboard prefilled and then change any parameter that is needed. I've been following oddball categories and doing those as you guys seem to be lokiing at more mainstream categories. Perhaps wecould choose a variety of articles instead of all rivers in the rivers, mountains, lakes group. Well done. ww2censor 13:36, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

"image-needed" in template
I was assessing some article yesterday evening and using the "image-needed" code adding yes where there were no photos. This results in a category page showing the pages needing images, but did not find it linked anywhere. I also assessed some pages a "dab" but I cannot find any link to this page in the assessment page links or linked lists of categories. Maybe Flowerpotman can fix this. Cheers ww2censor 20:03, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, they appearing in Category:Ireland articles needing images and Category:Dab-Class Ireland articles respectively, and these two categories are sub-categories of Category:Ireland articles by quality at present. I'll update the links above with all the categories . FlowerpotmaN &middot;(t) 20:38, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Well done again. I assessed some lists last night but they do not appear in the Category:List-Class Ireland articles page. Any ideas – I have confidence in you! TIA ww2censor 21:03, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Actually there is a bit of duplication in the categories from an older system. Easily sorted, when I get a chance tonight, but in the meantime, try Category:List-Class Ireland pages .  FlowerpotmaN &middot;(t) 21:06, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Now in Category:List-Class Ireland articles.  FlowerpotmaN &middot;(t) 00:13, 26 August 2007 (UTC)


 * PS, definitely some duplication on a few of the categories; mostly my fault. I'll fix them tonight. It doesn't affect any of the major categories; I might need to alter the WikiProject Ireland template, and delete the superfluous categories. I'll change the assessment page links after I have finished, so you will know where they are. FlowerpotmaN &middot;(t) 22:12, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
 * What a star Flowerpotman! Well done. This is real progress. Thanks ww2censor 00:50, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

New stats are in
The new stats were created today, August 25, 2007, and it look like we assesses about 200 article in 3 days with most of them being given an importance rating. Looking good, but one question. How is it possible for Republic of Ireland to be rated A when it does not ever seem to have been a GA. It should of course be a GA or an FA with a "Top" importance. What do others think? ww2censor 01:52, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
 * The rating got changed here, but I'm not sure why it took so long to be found by the bot. At a guess, he rated it to match the O.5 assessment rating from way back when. I'll have a look to see when they rated it.  FlowerpotmaN &middot;(t) 02:36, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
 * New stats should be in later this evening. Let's see how we are doing. ww2censor 05:02, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Should, but I lied. Maybe later today. It looks like the stats are collected every 3 days but sometimes the interval is longer. ww2censor 13:36, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
 * They are in now and we have assessed 500+ Irish articles in the 6 days now that we have some agreed criteria to work with. Overall the unassessed articles and the articles with no importance rating are both down about 10%—let's keep working on those. Because the main statistics page does not retain the old stats, I have the last 5 bot runs saved here if you want to make some comparisons for yourself. Well done, though we could still use some more participants. ww2censor 20:42, 1 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Progress report - Towns and Suburbs of Dublin completed, will now look to subsidiary articles, other counties and other categories (going for writers). SeoR 07:33, 3 September 2007 (UTC)