Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Vital Articles/Archive 3

Trivia sections in Vital articles
I saw that sections such as "Legacy", "Commemorations" and such are actually trivia in disguise (for some context, Wikipedia heavily discourage use of trivia sections, see Manual of Style/Trivia sections). This is especially noticeable in biographies where there's a tendency to list everything that bear the person's name. I think that these sections should all be deleted per WP:TRIVIA and replaced with an overview of contemporary or present reception of these people if applicable. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 14:57, 30 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Unrelated note: User:Sdkb, could you put the Wikiproject template up to where it is supposed to be? I'm not sure what's going on here. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 15:00, 30 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Sorry, that was my bad. Fixed. &mdash;Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 15:17, 30 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Agreed that many of these sections contain trivia. I don't think there could be any sort of automated removal, though, as it would be perfectly feasible to create e.g. a non-problematic "Legacy" section (I'm sure there are FAs with such a section). You're welcome to embark on a manual project cleaning them up if you have the time. Cheers, &#123;{u&#124; Sdkb  }&#125;  talk 18:29, 30 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Not every listing of a cultural depiction or popular culture is trivia, we do cover them here on enwiki (cf. Cultural depictions of English and British monarchs) in the article itself or if too broad in separate articles by WP:FORKing. It would be trivia if any passing mention in popular culture is listed but is not so when the works' major focus is the article subject itself.


 * That you are wholesale "nuking" sections which other users have put their energy into, without any attempt to improve them, is highly discouraged. Either put in the effort or consult on the Talkpage. But WP:SECTION BLANKING solely on the basis of your feeling that it is trivia is clearly not the way to go. Gotitbro (talk) 00:08, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

TfD follow-up: Fate of the vital article talk banner
I recently listed Vital article at templates for discussion, proposing changes to help address the problem of banner bloat. The discussion was just closed by, who found that we should Incorporate this template's information into the WikiProject banner shell area, but that many participants were unclear about whether it should be truly merged into the banner shell template or just placed within it. This discussion seeks to clarify that point.

Here is what merging into the shell template could look like:

   

And here is what placing within the shell could look like (note that here, unlike above, Vital article has been turned into a WikiProject banner within the shell):

Cheers, &#123;{u&#124; Sdkb  }&#125;  talk 19:28, 27 May 2023 (UTC)

Survey
Please !vote "Merge" or "Place within".
 * Merge. Banner bloat is still bloat, even if moved to a less prominent place. As I argued in the TfD nomination, there is only one piece of salient information in the template — the fact that an article has been listed as vital at a given level. Everything else is bloat, and would remain just less-prominent bloat if the vital article tag was converted into a WikiProject banner and placed within the shell. Meanwhile, the salient fact that an article has been listed at a given level would be buried, requiring multiple clicks to access. This would effectively doom WikiProject Vital article's entire goal of helping draw attention to important articles, particularly those that have been neglected by systemic bias (see the Mansa Musa example at the TfD for a practical example).Merging the tag into the banner shell would add only two words to it. That's a great tradeoff for being able to get rid of an entire banner. It presents the salient information while leaving out all the filler, and is overall a simpler, more elegant solution. &#123;{u&#124; Sdkb  }&#125;  talk 19:28, 27 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Treat like any other WikiProject (and add 'Rated Level-3' similar to 'Rated Low-importance').&#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:31, 27 May 2023 (UTC)
 * @Headbomb, to make it easier to parse the discussion, I'd ask that you please follow the instructions about how to format your !vote.
 * Regarding adding "Rated Level-3", I left that out of the example because I'm not sure it's technically feasible given how WPBannerMeta is set up. I'd appreciate further insight on that from anyone active in maintaining WPBannerMeta; I'll leave an invite at that template's talk page. &#123;{u&#124; Sdkb  }&#125;  talk 19:37, 27 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Merge Both these proposals are unfavorable to me, but if I had to choose, I would go with the first one on the basis that the VA status is more visible, and it also readily presents the article's level, which is also good information to have. Unlimitedlead (talk) 19:34, 27 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Place within per Headbomb. AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 19:39, 27 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Merge to reduce bloat. The entire blurb about the WikiProject is unnecessary. No matter how good your information is, if there's too much to read, it won't be read. Frostly (talk) 19:44, 27 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Pass. They both look bad; neither do a great deal to fight bloat; and neither resemble what I thought I was voting for when I supported the original proposal. Gog the Mild (talk) 19:47, 27 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Place within like any other WikiProject. For al these reasons I've given in every other discussion, there is no reason for Vital to be singled out as in the first example.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk)  19:49, 27 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Both. I think it would be useful to incorporate the vital status in the banner shell, and also have the banner inside the shell. SWinxy (talk) 19:50, 27 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Merge:
 * allows us to get rid of one banner
 * lowers vertical height. Important because most banner shells aren't collapsed, so every banner contributes to pushing down the talk page contents.
 * avoids the Vital classification getting lost among WikiProjects. The Vital classification should remain prominent because it's a Wikikpedia-wide importance rating; a self-respecting encyclopedia needs good articles on Philosophy, History of Africa, Prehistory, etc, and if the Vital classification has ever helped incite even a single edit to any of these "core" topics, it's been more than worth it. It's true that the level-5 classification is poorer, but let's not throw away the baby with the bathwater.
 * There's no reason to place within: the only valuable piece of info is the level classification. Not the rating, which will always be redundant with the article rating; not the topic, which is both self-evident and unactionable; not the a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of and If you would like to participate, please visit fluff. Retaining that stuff anywhere, even collapsed, is not minimalistic enough. DFlhb (talk) 19:56, 27 May 2023 (UTC)


 * Place within, exactly like any other WikiProject, with some modification of parameters (but not appearance) if necessary. I don't know what the examples shown above are from, but the standard appearance is something like this, with the text "This article is of interest to the following WikiProjects:". The WikiProject Vital Articles project tag should be formatted in a way indistinguishable from the others when collapsed, with some freedom in what's revealed by clicking Show. Just my opinion, of course. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 20:21, 27 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Comment. Does this mean that WikiProject Vital Articles is being effectively shut down because of "banner bloat"? I thought that having a banner on the Talk Page that clarified the most important article topics in Wikipedia (i.e. the Encyclopedia Britannica inside Wikipedia) was an important thing? Aszx5000 (talk) 19:59, 27 May 2023 (UTC)
 * @Aszx5000, there has been a concerted effort to try to consolidate and minimize the number of talk page banners, because right now there are so many of them that no one really reads them. Ideally, the goal is to preserve the important information but just reformat it so that it takes up less space. We're discussing here two possible ways to do that. I'd argue that yes, the placing within option as shown above would effectively remove almost all the value from the vital articles project by hiding the listing level, but that the merging option would allow us to retain it in a form that gives it appropriate due weight. We're going to end up with one of the two — neither the status quo of an uncollapsed separate banner nor my original proposal at the TfD of merging into Talk header have consensus — so I'd encourage you to !vote for whichever you think is better. &#123;{u&#124; Sdkb  }&#125;  talk 20:11, 27 May 2023 (UTC)
 * We seem to have lots of WikiProjects and WikiPortals that haven't been edited on for years but are not rationalized. I would guess that there is more weekly activity on the WikiProject Vital Articles than there is on the majority of WikiProjects on Wikipedia (although this is a guess, and I am a novice here). Outside of busy articles like Donald Trump, there is no obvious problems with TP "banner bloat" that I can see.  +90% of Wikipedia articles have modest Talk Page banners.  I therefore can't really see the benefit in rationalizing away an active WikiProject in such a situation (and one that I though would be important to the building of an Encyclopedia). Aszx5000 (talk) 20:23, 27 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Merging makes the information (usefully) more prominent, significantly reduces banner bloat and is a natural location to expect the information. I think WikiProject banner shell is a much better place to merge to than the TfD's original proposal of Talk header, and this look is much more simple and effective than I was expecting when I supported the TfD. Thanks to for the mockup/pressing on with this change! — Bilorv ( talk ) 20:23, 27 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Merge (but also explain...). I'm not exactly sure how WikiProject Vital Articles differs from other projects. Specific WikiProjects had their own ideas about importance, but Vital Articles somehow represents the entire encyclopedia (and uses levels instead of importance). In the past, that banner was almost always placed above and outside the shell as it was deemed "more important". If that is still true, then merge is the best way reduce bloat. Otherwise, I suspect the entire project could be abandoned. However, Vital Articles also appears similar to which was also encyclopedia-wide but had no special treatment. I guess my question - why the special treatment? How does a level differ from importance?Dpleibovitz (talk) 20:21, 27 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Good question. To me, the fundamental difference is that traditional WikiProjects focus on a specific content area. The importance ratings are therefore only really of relevance to the project participants, since they denote the importance within that content area . A vital article listing, by contrast, lists the importance with regard to the entire encyclopedia, so it's relevant to all talk page visitors, not just the fraction that are participants in WikiProject Vital Articles.Regarding, as kinda indicated by the CD-ROM icon lol, that's effectively a dead project. Its goal was to create a sort of finished offline version of Wikipedia, but that never came to fruition for reasons that should be obvious in hindsight. It hasn't been active in more than a decade, but it has also never been properly retired. I'd support removing it from talk pages entirely (and I think someone proposing that might have success), but until that happens, it's best to minimize it as much as possible. (If it were active, I'd agree that it should be treated similarly to vital articles, but that's moot since it's a hypothetical.)The other difference that's important to note is that, for most projects, the importance rating is given very little thought and not really maintained in any cohesive way. You can check out a random WikiProject and you'll quite often find high-importance articles that are more important than top-importance articles, etc. By contrast, the main activity of the vital article project is assigning levels, so there's a lot more thought and debate put into them (with the notable exception of level 5, which isn't finished yet). &#123;{u&#124; Sdkb  }&#125;  talk 20:39, 27 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Merge: Puts the vital classification at top where it's actually of visible and of use; saves some room; and Vital Articles is really more of a process than a wikiproject anyway. PS: I this discussion swings the other way, I would actually still put the vital classification at the top, even if it also appears way below in a hidden project banner.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:24, 27 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Merge with icon as seen below. Hiding the vital rating way isn't a good idea when it has more weight and is more often viewed, as compared to a WikiProject's importance rating. — PerfectSoundWhatever  (t; c) 20:31, 27 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Merge with icon I think it's a good idea to keep the vital article status as prominent as possible. The icon helps that. &mdash;Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 20:35, 27 May 2023 (UTC)
 * I'd probably say place within because I'm not convinced it deserves special treatment over every other project. But a couple comments: the level could be incorporated in the nested text so it would be visible when nested, and I would like to explore a merge with WP1.0 because that template also tracks vital articles &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:54, 27 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Place within per Headbomb. Ajpolino (talk) 21:09, 27 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Merge, this is what I actually was voting for. It's three words immediately visible compared to an entire banner hidden away that basically says the exact same thing. Adding the icon is a good touch too. Skarmory   (talk •   contribs)  21:46, 27 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Merge per Skarmory and SMcCandlish. JML1148 (talk &#124; contribs) 22:51, 27 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Merge with Tcr25's design I'm a big fan of the mockup done by below and I hold the opinion that its a good balance between reducing bloat and keeping the vital rating prominent. - nathanielcwm (talk) 00:16, 28 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Merge as per below. Although I only consider Vital lvl 1-3 actually useful (4 & 5 are just too broad and unpatrolled), the Vital articles is definitely more of a Wikipedia-wide process (or an attempt at one) than a WikiProject sensu stricto. Many of the reasons given by others also factor into my decision. --SilverTiger12 (talk) 18:12, 28 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Merge per SliverTiger12 and Skarmony. ThatRandomEditor101 (talk) 12:41, 29 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Merge (preferably with icon) as the most effective way of reducing bloat while keeping the vital level visible. the wub "?!"  23:19, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

Discussion
Notified: WT:Usability, WT:Vital articles, WT:Talk page layout, Template talk:WikiProject banner shell, Template talk:WPBannerMeta. &#123;{u&#124; Sdkb }&#125;  talk 20:01, 27 May 2023 (UTC)

How about something like VA-3 in the bottom-right corner of the banner shell instead? Or maybe inside the class rating box on the left? Aaron Liu (talk) 20:16, 27 May 2023 (UTC)
 * There were several comments (which I would agree with) that collapsing the notice that much and shifting to the right made it too hard to find/notice. &mdash;Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 20:21, 27 May 2023 (UTC)
 * I don't understand, why would it shift to the right? Aaron Liu (talk) 20:41, 27 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Maybe I misunderstood what you meant by suggesting it be in the bottom right corner. &mdash;Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 01:06, 28 May 2023 (UTC)
 * I was thinking about putting it below the "show" button". Aaron Liu (talk) 01:56, 28 May 2023 (UTC)

Is there a reasonable reason not to incorporate the VA icon in the merged box (see below)? &mdash;Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 20:21, 27 May 2023 (UTC)
 * I think if we do, it should be inside the assessment box on the left, since I like keeping the body just text. Aaron Liu (talk) 20:43, 27 May 2023 (UTC)


 * That would be easy to do, and it's probably a good idea. I'm not sure we need to get hung up on design particulars at this stage though.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:26, 27 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I like the icon but I can think of a few different designs to be tested, and it's minor change; can be discussed later. DFlhb (talk) 20:36, 27 May 2023 (UTC)
 * I like that design, ! Feel free to consider it a friendly amendment. As noted by others, the mockups are not intended to be final designs, just to help give clarity on the options we're considering. &#123;{u&#124; Sdkb  }&#125;  talk 20:42, 27 May 2023 (UTC)

Personally I think that the initial resistance to merging the Vital template to the talk banner is because this project is currently in shambles: nothing much other than circlejerk voting about putting/swapping/removing articles is happening with the project. I'm all for merging Vital status with the banner, but I doubt that we would have a consensus for this unless we do significant reform to the article voting process in general. tl;dr: We need to make WP:Vital more productive. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 03:05, 28 May 2023 (UTC)

The Core Contest winners announced
The winners of the 2023 The Core Contest are announced 🎉. We had an amazing set of improvements this year, and the judges (, and ) would like to thank everybody who joined and congratulate the winners.


 * First place goes to for improving  The Holocaust; very core, highly relevant; their work on bringing geographical balance to the article puts the topic in a whole different light. We also commend improvements to sourcing and prose
 * A close second place goes to for improving Education from an unstructured jumble into a well-sourced piece of instruction
 * Third prize goes to for improving  Donatello, a near five-fold expansion with great sourcing and fantastic imagery
 * A tie for fourth place goes to for improving Crime, for a strong improvement in sourcing
 * A tie for fifth place goes to for International law, improved by converting contextless listicles into a proper sourced prose

If you wish to start or stop receiving news about The Core Contest, please add or remove yourself from the delivery list. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 20:07, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

Discussion of interest
A discussion which may be of interest to the members of this group can be found here. Beyond My Ken (talk) 22:54, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
I wanted to invite someone from this project to take a look at Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, which is currently marked as start-class. I think I've improved it significantly. - Jmabel &#124; Talk 00:56, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

Good article reassessment for History of artificial intelligence
History of artificial intelligence has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 18:54, 4 July 2023 (UTC)

Good article reassessment for NATO
NATO has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 12:41, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

Category simplification
There is Category:All Wikipedia level-3 vital articles and also Category:Wikipedia level-3 vital articles. I don't feel that both of these should be necessary and suggest that the latter category would suffice. It is the same with a lot of categories used by this project. Shall we do some simplification? I will make sure the bot operator Kanashimi is kept informed. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:19, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

Manhattan has an RFC
Manhattan has an RFC for possible consensus. A discussion is taking place. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments on the discussion page. Thank you. 01:39, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

Possible Expansion of VA5
There is a proposal here on expanding VA5 here. 115.188.126.180 (talk) 21:27, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

Galley up for FAC
I've been working on galley on and off for over ten years and finally decided it was time to go for a barnstar. Assessments and input would be greatly appreciated. Here is the FAC page: Featured article candidates/Galley/archive1

Peter Isotalo 13:28, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

Category for all vital articles
was changed to no longer populate Category:All Wikipedia vital articles (now deleted due to being empty). I've just noticed that category was being used by the Article Alerts bot on this WikiProject's main page; @MSGJ, any opposition to bringing it back in some form? I'm not attached to any particular name for the cat. DFlhb (talk) 18:06, 14 October 2023 (UTC)


 * Absolutely. I have restored this category now &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 19:51, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

Renaming categories
It was brought up here that the project banner is not correctly inheriting the class parameter when placed inside WikiProject banner shell. I can fix this but it will involve moving a bunch of categories to a more standard naming schema. For example, Category:Wikipedia B-Class level-4 vital articles will move to Category:B-Class level-4 vital articles and Category:Wikipedia GA-Class vital articles in Geography will move to Category:GA-Class vital articles in Geography. Would this be a problem for anyone?&mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 06:55, 11 October 2023 (UTC)


 * @Kanashimi would this be okay in respect of the bot's activities? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:49, 12 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes, changing the category may affect the bot, as mentioned here. Anyway, right now the bot is using `Wikipedia level-${i} vital articles`, e.g. Category:Wikipedia level-4 vital articles. Please remind me before you change the name of the category, thank you. Kanashimi (talk) 11:29, 12 October 2023 (UTC)
 * These are now nominated at CfD &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:12, 18 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) 09:40, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

== Please see my latest post at Wikipedia_talk:Vital_articles/Level/5 ==

I will need help with updating the list. Please see my latest post for more details. Interstellarity (talk) 11:39, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

Possible hoax on Lucretius (Level 4 vital article)
Your help may be needed on Talk:Lucretius, regarding part of the article that may be falsified information. Renerpho (talk) 19:51, 29 October 2023 (UTC)

RfC about the popular culture section at Sisyphus
An article which may be of interest to members of this project—Sisyphus—is discussing whether to retain its "In Popular Culture" section or not. If you are interested, please participate in the discussion. Sariel Xilo (talk) 15:48, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

Requested move at Wikipedia talk:Vital articles
There is a requested move discussion at Wikipedia talk:Vital articles that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. Polyamorph (talk) 09:00, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

Good article reassessment for Pleiades
Pleiades has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 19:45, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

Kurds "Iranian ethnic group" RFC
Editors are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Kurds. Levivich (talk) 00:05, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

Good article reassessment for International System of Units
International System of Units has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 22:28, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

Good article reassessment for Bipolar disorder
Bipolar disorder has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 19:20, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Good article reassessment for Plymouth, Massachusetts
Plymouth, Massachusetts has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 19:57, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Good article reassessment for Liquid crystal
Liquid crystal has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 20:23, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

Good article reassessment for Derivative
Derivative has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 00:37, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

Good article reassessment for Norfolk, Virginia
Norfolk, Virginia has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 02:58, 17 December 2023 (UTC)

Good article reassessment for Mercury (element)
Mercury (element) has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 20:21, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

Is this a bad idea?
I recently created Portal:Vital articles based on an idea. The most successful portal is Portal:Current events (see Massviews), the only portal that is not content-based. Per WP:PORT - "Portals are meant primarily for readers, while encouraging them to become editors of Wikipedia by providing links to project spaces" then why not create others portals about Wikiprojects that provide a different focus for readers rather than subsets of specific themes?

This idea was not well received by some editors, so I would like to know the opinion of this Wikiproject in Portal talk:Vital articles. Guilherme Burn (talk) 19:35, 22 December 2023 (UTC)