Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Council/Assessment working group/Archive 2

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Archive 1 Archive 2 Archive 3

Preliminary discussion on the A-Class system

Goals and objectives

List the desired goals and objective of this discussion
  • That A-Class reflects a WikiProject assessment, a sort of "internal GA"

Proposals

Proposals to achieve the desired goals and meet the objectives of the disussion
  • A voluntary, systematic "demoting" of A-Class articles to B-Class articles. We could coordinate with the WP:BAG so bots respect this voluntary "opting out" of A-Class, and have them demote A-Class articles to B-Class (and build lists of demotions, which would probably be the initial A-class candidates for that Project).
  • Building an "A-class checklist", which WikiProjects could adapt for their particular topic.

A-Class

By the way, I've made a request at Template talk:WPBannerMeta#Good and Featured regarding possible changes to the template based upon the feedback received in the A-Class discussion. -Drilnoth (talk) 03:19, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

I think template changes are somewhat premature, at this point. We don't yet have a methodology for continuing to track these articles via the V1.0 automation tools (which is a necessary prerequisite for making any change to assessment categories and such); nor do we have buy-in from any major WikiProjects for this change. Kirill [pf] 04:38, 23 February 2009 (UTC)
Information about this is included in this week's Signpost, here. -Drilnoth (talk) 16:15, 23 February 2009 (UTC)
Some care is needed not to overstate what we want to do here. The issue arose in the context of using a separate template parameter for GA (and perhaps FA) status. That could be done with backwards compatibility and without even changing the way the template displays. As I cautioned in the IRC, there are numerous objections to taking this forward. I think it will take time to develop consensus that a two dimensional picture like
C- B - A
 \ | / |
   GA-FA
is a better way to think about WikiProject assessment and community review than the one dimensional C-B-A-GA-FA or C-B-GA-A-FA imagery. Baby steps are needed. Further, as Kirill points out, the next step (tracking the two dimensions separately) requires technical support.
The benefit for encouraging A-Class is that it has a clearly secured place at the top of the WikiProject assessments. Geometry guy 20:03, 23 February 2009 (UTC)
If we just trying to create another template to track GA and FA? Doesn't {{ArticleHistory}} already do that? (Or am I thinking of something completely different than what we are doing?) -MBK004 20:08, 23 February 2009 (UTC)
It does, but to a different purpose. ArticleHistory places article talk pages in categories according to their community status: it has no information about the WikiProject. The WikiProject templates place article talk pages into project-dependent categories, which help projects track progress to articles within their reach. Further, there is a bot (part of the V1.0 automation tools mentioned by Kirill) which reads and compiles this information, notifying WikiProjects of changes to article status via logs, and helping Wikipedia 1.0 select articles for offline releases.
If you had to redesign the whole system from scratch, you probably wouldn't do it this way! However, it is almost impossible to obtain consensus for radical redesign that affects multiple interests in multiply different ways. Geometry guy 20:17, 23 February 2009 (UTC)
C->GA is highly improbable. Small project (members wise) will usually do C-B-GA-FA. Small project should do C-B-A-GA-FA for the most difficult to handle article like for example anime. Bigger projects or association of projects should do C-B-A-FA. Content completeness is problematic in small project as the persons working on an article are most likely the most knowledgeable on that article among the project members. --KrebMarkt 21:03, 23 February 2009 (UTC)
I have seen Start-Class articles nominated for GA status and succeed! Not all projects have a grand plan for all the articles within their remit. I agree however, that if a project doesn't think an article is B-Class, then there is not a lot of point in its members nominating it for GA. Geometry guy 21:19, 23 February 2009 (UTC)
Yea, it can happen as people can work those articles in there user spaces and some assessment departments have difficulties to overcome the number of articles to assess, fortunately they will eventually catchup. --KrebMarkt 21:31, 23 February 2009 (UTC)
  • I've followed this debate from back at the council pages, and to be honest, I personally am not fully behind all of the proposed changes as I saw them summarised in the signpost recently. I haven't really chipped in because nothing concrete seemed to be evolving and people were already making points I wished to, but it appears this is gathering steam so it's better if I speak up now. Am I correct in stating that there seems to be a general agreement that A-Class is going to be rolled out across all projects? I've also seen a proposal to split GA and FA off from the Project assessment. I'd be wary of doing that, personally. I think a lot of this is being based on how MilHist does things, which I can understand, but I'm not sure there aren't other ways of doing it. But please be aware I don't speak for all members of the comics project, we don't have a co-ordinator and I am generally opposed to the co-ordinator role in principle. I hope other editors at the comics project will chip in and make their opinions known too. Hiding T 12:30, 25 February 2009 (UTC)
    • I think it's fair to say that there is a move to roll A-class out across all subject areas, yes, but the details are yet to be decided given that many projects don't use A-class at the minute. There are plenty of examples: WP:MILHIST is one, but it is not the only way to do things as I'm sure the MILHIST editors would agree. I think it's assumed that each editor only speaks for themselves unless they specifically say otherwise: if you think that other WP:COMICS editors would be interested in this debate, then please report back to that talk page and let them know that their comments are welcome. Physchim62 (talk) 12:46, 25 February 2009 (UTC)
      • I've already let them know. I'm interested in what you propose to do if a project decides it doesn't want to adopt the A-Class standard. Hiding T 14:25, 25 February 2009 (UTC)
        • Hi. A good look at WP:ASSESS reveals that the A review Completeness criteria is a headache for small project. As i'm lazy, i will cite a member of the WP:ANIME project: Part of the problem with A-class is that the content is meant to be "complete" - the people most likely to be able to assess that in terms of the manga and anime project's articles are the ones who are already working on the articles and seeking the assessment. I won't mistake by much the WP:COMICS shares that similarity and so do a lot of others project. If you check the Irc meeting log there are a lot of possible solutions : Merge of projects to get the critical mass to make A reviews work, Related projects regrouping their reviewers just for A reviews, Creation of a pool of reservists editors not active on the project but knowledgeable on the field/scope that could be called for A reviews, Not using A altogether but increasing the B class threshold so going B->GA won't be too steep ... I'm sure there are also more solutions. --KrebMarkt 15:53, 25 February 2009 (UTC)
          • Hi back. We don;t really do much A-Class assessing at WP:COMICS at the minute. We don't do any truth be told. And we're finding that we're pushing our B reviewing so that B->GA isn't too much of a step. I don't actually understand the issue WP:ANIME raises regarding A-Class reviewing. Hiding T 16:05, 25 February 2009 (UTC)
            • To put it simply, we don't have the manpower quantity & quality wise to assess whatever a manga & anime article is complete. Doing A review in those condition would be meaningless as half of the A review criterion can't be assessed. Like WP:Comics, we stick with the higher B threshold solution. --KrebMarkt 16:13, 25 February 2009 (UTC)
              • Hiding, take a look at the IRC summary, and you'll see the system used at WP:COMICS (and WP:ANIME) is in fact option 2 that we discussed. That system will be appropriate for some projects. If there is an influx of "new blood" they may wish to have an A-Class drive, to ensure completeness, especially if completeness becomes checked more rigorously at WP:FAC. Walkerma (talk) 16:35, 25 February 2009 (UTC)
              • Ah, ignore me, I'm being grouchy. I think I got concerned by this line at the summary, that it was well received to have GA/FA separated from WikiProject assessments in project templates. I don't like that idea because of all the cat counting and coding that's already in place. I'm not averse to having A-Class reviews driven out. My personally preferred method would be to look at doing it through the peer review process, save adding yet more processes in. I still don;t get the idea that WP:ANIME aren't the best people to decide when an article is complete, as it were. Hiding T 13:07, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Why A-class is important

The problem comes that if a project such as WP:ANIME can't decide what encyclopedic coverage we are looking for in our anime articles, then who can? I certainly can't, I wouldn't have a clue! I think the encyclopedia needs to politely ask and encourage the various projects to ask themselves the question of "what coverage would we want, if we had the time and resources to create it?" I don't think it mattes too much if the project gets the answer "wrong", or if decides to change its criteria in the light of experience, but if we don't have any idea what we're aiming for then Wikipedia just becomes a self-perpetuating Process instead of an attempt to create an online encyclopedia. Physchim62 (talk) 20:25, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

A-class is not an endorsement of importance or relevance, it's an endorsement of quality. WikiProjects can often be self-absorbed or only have 2-3 active members. I will take the extreme example of Wikipedia:WikiProject Barack Obama to illustrate what I mean, and this is not meant as an insult to the project or their members, it simply illustrate the possible bias that can arise from this.
  • Bias. Sure he's the president of the United States, but an article such as Barack Obama's Health could very well be deemed encyclopedic by the WikiProject while an article on Benazir Bhutto's Health would be deemed unencyclopedic (see Benazir Bhutto if you don't know who she is). This is related very strongly to the systematic bias Wikipedia has towards the West in general. Some projects are less prone to bias than others, but we shouldn't think that WikiProjects are bias-free.
  • Ability to self-criticize. WikiProject Barack Obama covers a topic which is political, and let's not fool ourselves here, Barack Obama has the internet behind him. For all we know, half of the members could be part of Obama's staff. We shouldn't make A-Class to mean anything else than the endorsement of the WikiProject, and not the endorsement of Wikipedia. As sort of "internal GA" if you will. So in order to achieve this, I would propose a voluntarily systematic "demoting" of A-Class articles to B-Class articles. For example WikiProject Physics has no A-Class reviews, and we'd voluntarily demote all A-Class to B-Class. We could coordinate with the WP:BAG so bots respect this voluntary "opting out" of A-Class, and have them demote A-Class articles to B-Class (and build lists of demotions, which would probably be the initial A-class candidates).
Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 21:44, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
I'm not sure why you want a bot assisted demotion drive: if you want the list of the physics articles which would be demoted, you can find it here. I've spent much of today doing preparatory work for a review drive across all A-class and featured articles in both WP:CHEMISTRY and WP:CHEMICALS: some of those will have to be demoted, such if life, but I'm not going to say to WikiChemists that we have to demote them now before we've even done the review! Physchim62 (talk) 22:11, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
Out of curiosity, how are you coordinating these efforts with the smaller sub-projects in your area? Or do you already have unlinked assessment scales? Kirill [pf] 22:29, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
"I'm not sure" is the honest answer to that! I'm not aware of any other projects that link to our assessment scales (apart from WP:ELEMENTS, which has substantial overlapping membership and will need to be onboard for the style issues in chemical element articles). But the number of articles is not huge – just eighteen A-class across the two projects, plus the FAs – so I'm hoping that any teething problems can be sorted out on a case-by-case basis. Physchim62 (talk) 22:43, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
That's probably good enough in practical terms; of your descendant projects, Physical Chemistry, Polymers, Spectroscopy, and Isotopes are pretty much catatonic, and Rocks and minerals doesn't seem to intersect too much in terms of articles.
In the longer term, I would suggest that merging the whole group would make things much easier, since you'd all be using the same assessment & review infrastructure:
  • Chemistry [and chemicals] WikiProject
    • Elements task force
    • Physical chemistry task force
    • Polymers task force
    • ...
but that's kind of a tangent to the A-Class question. Kirill [pf] 22:59, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
Indeed, it's a messy system, but it does useful work for the encyclopedia and nobody has gotten round to cleaning up the project structure – there always seems to be something else more important to do! ;) I'll post a link to the A-class review page once I got a few more comments from the people at the project, just to make sure I'm not promoting something they're not happy with. Physchim62 (talk) 23:29, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
Fair enough. If you guys ever need any help with revamping the infrastructure, let me know; I'd be happy to assist. Kirill [pf] 23:55, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
Well, the problem with taking an extreme example is that it is an extreme example. Sure, Wikipedia:WikiProject Barack Obama may be too small, or too narrow, or too potentially biased to be of immediate value; but what about, say Wikipedia:WikiProject Politics? We may need to have some sort of accreditation system for particular WikiProjects, but I don't see any reason why all projects should be rejected out of hand.
(Conversely, if a project has fundamental problems that would prevent it from running a successful A-Class review, I think it's reasonable to suggest that the project has fundamental problems in general, and should be absorbed into a more suitable project in any case.) Kirill [pf] 21:55, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
(ec) I think you're missing a couple of important points here. Firstly, these small projects may well be serving some use to some editors, which is why they were created in the first place. To say "they must merge because they're too small" is guaranteed to get people's backs up. Secondly, and relatedly, there's no way of ordering the projects around short of taking them to MfD, which is surely a last-step solution. If a project is so bad that it needs to be wound up for the good of the encyclopedia, then it can (and should) be taken to MfD, but for projects that are merely sub-optimal we have to rely on polite persuasion. Physchim62 (talk) 22:17, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
Well, I'm not suggesting that consolidating WikiProjects is a trivial task; but, in my experience, most WikiProjects are either (a) perfectly willing to merge into or become a task force of a bigger, more successful WikiProject, or (b) too inactive to object to a merger proposal. There are doubtless some small projects that will object to consolidation on principle; but if we could reduce the number of projects by even 20–30%, eliminating the smallest and most inactive, the task of coming up with a workable approach for the remaining ones would become much easier. Kirill [pf] 22:29, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
My point is simply that we shouldn't make A-Class mean anything other than the endorsement of quality from that particular Project. Aka A-Class should not be interpreted as "Bias-free" or "Complete in coverage". Our task here, would be to help Projects build their own A-Class review process, as well as a basic "core check list" which can then be modified and adapted by projects (aka universal things that can be equally applied to the majority of projects, and suggestions of specific things for specialized projects). Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 22:14, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
I think you make a fair point that "bias-free" and "complete in coverage" are assessments which are relative to a given project (or review consortium or whatever). That doesn't mean that they're useless, especially when they're all that we've got! Physchim62 (talk) 22:20, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

A-class and small projects

It's probably worth reproducing Walkerma's summary of the IRC discussion, inparticular the four ideas which were put forward for small projects. Physchim62 (talk) 21:50, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Much of the discussion focused on how to encourage wider use of A-Class, given that it is hard for a small (or even medium) WikiProject to sustain a rigorous A-Class review. There were several solutions suggested, any one of which might be helpful for a particular project:

  1. Consider making small projects into task forces of larger parent projects
  2. Small projects may choose simply to adopt a rigorous B-Class system, and not use A.
  3. A project may work with closely related projects, perhaps in a consortium, to conduct reviews close to its subject area.
  4. A small but active project may work with a "light touch" review, using only 2-3 reviewers.

The consensus was that there was no single solution for all projects. Centralizing the work to a community-wide review was seen as duplicating GA/FA, and ducking the content issue. All participants seemed to value the use of A-Class for allowing a "content first, style issues later" approach to article-writing. One suggestion was well received, to have GA/FA separated from WikiProject assessments in project templates. It was felt that A-Class has to mean something if a project is going to work towards more A-Class articles; clearly a project review would foster that, and be driven by personal/project pride, as well as the desire to get an article's content right before FAC.

Technical problem

Sorry I couldn't be at the IRC meeting, but I have read the transcript and heartily support the conclusions (so long as they don't prove too bureaucratic). It seems to me that the end point of this move is to remove FA-class and GA-class from the current Stub-Start(-C)-B-A system and place them on a separate "dimension", just as article importance is currently a separate "dimension".

What I'd like people to think about is "what happens to the 5000+ articles which are currently classed as GA- or FA-class?" If the proposal is implemented blindly, these articles would end up as "unassessed" on the content scale. On the other hand, if projects are 'asked' to reassess them, there is a fair chance that most of them would be assessed as A-class, maybe without the necessary attention unless the importance of that attention is made clear. I don't have a ready-made solution to this problem, I just point it out in the hope that there are other editors with more inspiration than myself ;) Physchim62 (talk) 12:57, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

You're planning a long way ahead. I suspect many projects would prefer to keep FA-GA and jettison A, rather than keep A and loose FA-GA. DrKiernan (talk) 13:03, 25 February 2009 (UTC)
No project "loses" anything, as far as I can see. Where do you get that from? Physchim62 (talk) 13:18, 25 February 2009 (UTC)
Because some projects have already done that. DrKiernan (talk) 13:41, 25 February 2009 (UTC)
Explain please, I honestly don't understand your argument. Physchim62 (talk) 14:21, 25 February 2009 (UTC)
  • From where I am sitting, you've just said that you are going to remove GA and FA from projects assessments. What happens if they do not want this lost? Hiding T 14:28, 25 February 2009 (UTC)
    • Unless i mistake GA & FA are given by the community that why WP:GA & WP:FA exist so what is already GA or FA won't be lost unless demoted during an re-assessment. The very long term(so long i'm not sure it will happen) objective is to have side by side the project rating & the community rating. What are now GA & FA article would be rated A by project and GA or FA by community. --KrebMarkt 16:07, 25 February 2009 (UTC)
      • We intend to allow projects to have a template showing that an article is assessed (for example) as A by the project, and GA by the community. The only reason GA-Class was adopted into the 1.0 scheme was to help projects track their GAs, and this obviates the need for that. But I can imagine that some smaller WikiProjects may choose to keep the "combined" template like they have now, and we can't very well force them to change from that. We'll have to see how things develop over the next year or so. Walkerma (talk) 16:15, 25 February 2009 (UTC)
        • What Walkerma said. :) Personally, I think that we should hold off on having much more discussion about this until there are more coordinators involved and a full page is set up (something on my to-do list). -Drilnoth (talk) 19:48, 25 February 2009 (UTC)
          • It's possible a potential fault line will develop along those projects who look to be adopting GA as their A-Class, and those that aren't. I mean, GA has tightened to the point that it is almost FA. And I'm a little wary at the idea that the tracks should be separate. I'd be doubtful that if a comics editor turned up at a GA review of a comics article and said it wasn't GA worthy, it'd pass. So I don't see the disconnect. What's the issue with merging GA and A? Hiding T 13:12, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
            • The issue is in the word "if" in your sentence. GA can't really assess completeness unless the reviewer is fully knowledgable on the topic - which I certainly wouldn't be on a comics article. Walkerma (talk) 14:14, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
              • It's not that big an if. We tend to pick up articles which are nominated for GA pretty quickly, thanks to watchlisting and the article alerts box, and besides which, anyone can delist it, if memory serves, so as soon as a rogue one is spotted, as it were, it isn't that big a deal. It's no different to someone sticking A in the class field of a project template, is it? Hiding T 14:58, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
I've looked at all the A-class articles. In practice, I see no discernible difference in quality between A-class and GA-class articles. The only difference is the method of assessment. DrKiernan (talk) 14:52, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

What is the point of A-class?

Speaking from the projects I look at, there seems to be no need for a top end project assessment system when the goal is GA or FA. An article not good enough to attract a GA or FA tag is a B-class article as it stands, so A seems to have trouble justifying its own existence. Orderinchaos 07:15, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

GA & FA don't focus on the everything is here matter. A Class review is/was here to assess that issue as unless you are knowledgeable in the article field you won't notice missing information. Any passerby won't notice the difference between an incomplete GA article and a complete A article. A Class review fail due to the shortage of knowledgeable editors in the respective projects. --KrebMarkt 07:33, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
I agree with Orderinchaos. I'd be interested in seeing just how many projects actually have an A-class review system (beyond the normal, one-editor-looks-at-it-and-makes-a-quick-decision assessments). I don't think any of the Wikiprojects I'm involved in would have more than one or two editors qualified to judge the "content completeness" of any article I write (I like history and biographies); those one or two editors likely worked on the article with me and would thus have a conflict of interest. Karanacs (talk) 21:40, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
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