Wikipedia talk:Content assessment

Set up

I'm struggling finding a/the page which explains how to set a WikiProject assessment system up. I'm hoping to put one together for the Wikipedia:WikiProject Clans of Scotland. I have a Template:WikiProject Clans of Scotland set up but don't understand how to action the assessment. Anybody able to help? -- Jza84 · (talk) 13:31, 17 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You should find what you need at Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Using the bot. :: Kevinalewis : ^{(Talk Page)}/_(Desk) 13:56, 17 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! I did! Assessment set up! -- Jza84 · (talk) 15:50, 17 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

That's a great topic for a WikiProject but... erm... why do you need a seperate banner when a) not only does WP Scotland already have one, on which you could be a workgroup, b) {{WP Scotland}}'s documentation already lists a clans=yes parameter (although it doesn't seem to be active in the code)?

Since your project is entirely a subset of the Scotland topic, please strongly consider adding your code and blurb to that banner so that double tagging of talk pages can be reduced. --kingboyk (talk) 13:04, 20 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Policy tag

I don't believe this should be tagged as a policy, for two reasons. First, we limit the policy tag to a few particularly important documents expressing core community principles. This is not such a document. Second, we avoid the policy tag for pages that are meant to be purely advisory, such as the manual of style. This page is very similar to a style guide (it gives only suggestions and examples, but no requirements). — Carl (CBM · talk) 19:13, 20 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I don't have any objection to this being classed as only advisory. Walkerma (talk) 19:35, 20 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well then how about this one? --Simpsons fan 66 06:27, 29 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This guideline is a part of the English Wikipedia's Manual of Style.

It is a generally accepted standard that editors should attempt to follow, though occasional exceptions may apply. Any substantive edit to this page should reflect consensus. When in doubt, discuss first on the talk page.

Er, I think that {{guideline}} would be more appropriate in this case. This isn't really a style guideline. Although I'm really not sure that it should have been tagged as policy either. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 06:37, 12 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, that sounds good to me. Can I go ahead and add {{guideline}}? Walkerma (talk) 18:43, 12 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah. I'd say it's widely accepted, as about a million articles use it. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 04:53, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Banners and assessments

I note that the index page shows that the majority of articles that have a WikiProject banner on them are actually assessed. Of course, this doesn't mean that placing a banner on an article makes it more likely to be assessed, but it might. Perhaps we should try to get a banner on almost every page - it might help us speed up the process of getting virtually everything assessed. Of course, it might not, but there's nothing much to lose. It makes it easier for people to assess an article (and makes it clear that it is not assessed), as well as making it easy to find (present in unassessed articles category). And people know which project(s) to go to if they need input.

One problem is that there are sometimes no projects that are very closely related to the article; I find this often myself. Still, I think it would be a good goal for the project to get banners on all applicable pages, even if we can only use the orphan banner for now. Richard001 (talk) 04:35, 12 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This is the type of thing that has to be decided at the level of each wikiproject; some may decide to do it, some may decide not to. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:40, 12 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This is a perennial proposal; maybe an FAQ should be created to address it. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:35, 12 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Featured lists

Does the bot collect data for featured lists? How should the template be coded (I am working on {{WikiProject Dance}}) Paul foord (talk) 13:33, 23 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

In the past we haven't, but I think we may be about to implement the change to allow use of FL-Class. See this discussion, and please add your support for FL-Class if you want to use it! As for the actual coding, that's too hard for me, but I expect early adoption from the Chicago WikiProject, and you may be able to copy things/ask for help from them. Walkerma (talk) 15:13, 23 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

GA/A

I always think it's a bit strange that A is a better grade than GA. It's probably just me but I thought I might-as-well bring it up. George D. Watson (Dendodge).Talk^Help 21:19, 20 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If you actually look at articles, you'll find you are correct that GAs are generally better than A class articles. This is because the GAs have to go through a process to become GAs, whereas A class just requires one person to decide that an article is 'pretty gud' and slap an A on it (I've seen this many times, and usually remove them). In theory, though, an A is supposed to be a little better - the sort that wouldn't take much to become an FA. I can't stand the A-class myself, but there aren't any good suggestions for what to do about it. Richard001 (talk) 22:41, 24 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Delete it, perhaps? There's a definite process that is basically working for GA and FA; there isn't one that I know of for A. - Dan Dank55 (talk) 21:06, 4 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Short article, not stub or start -- please create a new category

Some articles are voluntarily kept short, because they cover a topic closely related to a much larger article. Their purpose is to clarify a concept, then redirect the reader. For example, tumor is kept short to reduce duplication with the huge, encyclopedic cancer article. Tumor will not grow larger. Therefore, it is not a stub nor a start. It is (and will remain) a short article. Please create a new category.

I also noticed you do not have a category for summary articles, as described in the WP:SUMMARY guideline. Emmanuelm (talk) 14:40, 24 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think you're confusing length with quality Emmanuelm. If an article is short but good it should have a higher rating than start. Admittedly it's a bit difficult for short articles though. I've never seen a very short article become an FA, for example. They're harder to assess because they look just like a stub even though they may be almost perfect. It might only be the addition of a couple of sentences that would take them from start class to 'perfection', provided the writing is good. I don't think adding a new class is going to help though; I think they're always going to remain a bit awkward to assess.

I'm not sure what you mean by summary articles. Again, that's got nothing to do with quality. Many articles use (or should use) summary style in at least one section, and many are, or at least should be, summarized in another article. We have the template {{summary in}} for such articles, and obviously the template {{main}} (and, to a lesser extent, {{further}}) are used in the opposite cases. Richard001 (talk) 22:49, 24 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I understand what Emmanuelm is saying - there are certain articles which have limited potential to grow either because they are very specific topics or of low importance. But These articles could also go through stub-start-B-GA life cycle (if not FA). Hence I don't see the need to have a separate class for them. Arman ^(Talk) 10:45, 5 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

WikiProject Banners and assessment templates

Should the general 'editorial team' assessment template be included in the banner shell with other WikiProjects? Richard001 (talk) 20:09, 27 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The template is a banner of the core topics, WVWP, and orphan assessment projects, among others... so it would be wrapping a banner shell inside a banner shell, which I'm not sure if we want... Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 20:11, 27 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think this is something we should discuss. I usually place it inside a shell if there is one, since the fact that "nested=yes" is an option suggests that this is reasonable, and I strongly support the effort to minimise template clutter. But if others feel strongly that it should stand alone, we could definitely consider it. Walkerma (talk) 21:22, 27 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with you, though the problem seems to be in that this isn't technically a WikiProject, hence the need to have some sort of guideline to clear up the uncertainty here. Richard001 (talk) 22:07, 4 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Fewer words?

Discussion moved to Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Assessment rewrite. Please comment there.

Overhaul and rewrite of the assessment scheme

Rewriting the criteria

The early part of this discussion, on rewriting the criteria, has now been moved to Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Assessment rewrite.

There have been two proposals recently relating to assessment, and both seem to be reasonable (IMHO). They would both involve some rewriting and recalibrating, and therefore I think we should consider both proposals at the same time. I'm adding a third proposal, which is in effect how I think the first two would best be implemented together. There's also a fourth, which came up in discussions, and which I'll throw in for good measure. Walkerma (talk) 18:01, 12 April 2008 (UTC). The four proposals:[reply]

Discussion on these has been moved to Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Assessment rewrite. Please comment there, and please sign up to help there also! Another topic (revamping the grading scheme) is described below; this may well be moved to a separate page soon. Walkerma (talk) 17:46, 12 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

A class

A discussion regarding the usefulness of A class can is ongoing here. Just thought it is relevant that I draw your attention to this. Arman ^(Talk) 10:37, 5 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Add A Class between B and GA

The gap between start class and GA is huge and to cover this wide range B class alone is not sufficient. From a Wikiproject's perspective, we need the B class to specifiy the potential candidates for a GA upgrade. We also need the start class to identify articles that have just started but yet need some work to cover the minimum ground. Between these two stages there are lots of articles which are somewhat complete in the sense they don't have much more to add (mostly due to lack of importance of the topic) but are neither good enough to push for a GA drive. We need a class for these articles. In other words, we need 2 classes between GA and start. This can be achieve by either demoting A-class below GA, or by introducing a new class: B+ like what WikiProject:Mathematics did. Arman ^(Talk) 10:36, 5 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I pointed out below that if we do, I think it would be better to name the addition as C-Class, instead of B+ class, as the difference between B and B+ is tenuous in ordinary life. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 20:44, 11 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Eliminate the List class

List is not an article quality class. It is a "Type" of article. A List can grow from Start, gradually move past B-class and eventually become a Featured List. Hence I don't see the justification of retaining a "List-class". Arman ^(Talk) 10:39, 5 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. Besides, lists can be graded, as several WikiProjects have shown. However, there were long discussions about this in the past, and many people were in favor of having List-Class as a quality category, alongside FL-Class. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 20:45, 11 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Erm, question. If List class was removed, wouldn't FL go as well? Steve Crossin (talk) (review) 22:51, 14 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- Not at all. It would just graduate to "FL" instead of "FA". – Clockwork Soul 14:38, 16 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I have to agree... if I had a choice, I would say that 'list' class should be deprecated and allowed to be graded like and other article. – Clockwork Soul 14:39, 16 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

We debated this extensively last year; the projects who use a lot of lists were very vocal in their requests. One problem is that lists are harder to assess for quality. For example, if you have a List of disciples of Jesus it would only amount to (I think) 13 (Judas had to get replaced); so if all thirteen names are there, should that be a perfect quality article? There are no issues of quality of English, inline citations (usually), aesthetics (usually) to worry about, pretty much all that really matters is completeness. As the disciples example shows, one of the main quality issues with a list is "How wide a scope should a list be?" Should it be "List of known followers of Jesus from the Bible" with a subsection for the disciples?

In summary, then, the main thing we need is simply a tag that says, "This is a list and we want to track it for our project". I accept that the proposal to eliminate list-class has some sound logic; however, until someone writes a separate bot for handling lists, the current compromise seems (to me) to be the best way. Walkerma (talk) 16:12, 16 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Action plan

OK, hopefully we have enough people interested that we can get something useful done. (One thing - I personally will be mostly offline from May 22 till June 14, though I will have a lot more time for this initiative after June 14.) What should we do first? I would propose the following order as making the most sense:

Refine the criteria. Once we've got the detail done we can
Write a simplified description (in summary style, with links to the detailed version). After we've gone through all that we should have everything clear in our minds so we can
Write an FAQ page.

Does this sound like a plan? Walkerma (talk) 02:56, 8 May 2008 (UTC) If people are OK with this, we can perhaps by agreeing on a new page or pages for this. Walkerma (talk) 03:02, 8 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds like a plan to me, and logically sequential. How much refinement of criteria do people think is needed? It's a good idea to draw on exemplars when refining criteria, so empirically anchored/based. Keeps checks on the descriptions. I have some comments/suggestions, which I'll make as soon as I can. Holon (talk) 13:56, 8 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

A Proposal

I propose to add a new "who can promote" column to the rating table. My proposal for the new table would be something like this:

Class	Minimum criteria	Who can promote
Stub	A very short article or a rough collection of information that will need much work	Anyone (even a bot)
Start	Any two of the followings: 1) A particularly useful picture or graphic 2) An infobox with useful key information on the topic 3) Multiple links that help explain or illustrate the topic 4) A subheading that fully treats an element of the topic 5) Multiple subheadings with some contents that indicate material that could be added to complete the article.	Any human editor (no bot), a discussion of the assessment on the article talk page is useful but not required.
B	Atleast 4 of the 5 start class criteria. The article may have dispute on factual accuracy or neutrality but is tagged as such if that is the case.	Any user, who is ideally not a major contributor to the article. A discussion of the assessment on article talk page is required if the reviewer is one of the major contributors to the article.
A / B+ (new class)	1) Written in an understandable language, 2) No factual accuracy dispute. At least 60% of the content is verifiable from inline citations. Reference format may need clean-up; 3) Broad in coverage; 4) No neutrality dispute. 5) Stable; 6) Illustrated, where possible. In summary: the article can be Good Aricle candidate with some copyedit and clean-up.	Atleast 2 users - 1 should propose on article's talk page and a second one (who is not a major contributor to the article) should support and upgrade. Request for reasseeement may also be posted on relevant WikiProject Assessment department page.
GA	See GA criteria	GA Nomination process
FA / FL	See FA criteria	FA Nomination process

Very Strongly Object to any effect to have 'a discussion of the assessment on the article talk page' for anything below A Class. 2 million+ articles to assess, just work out the time it takes! Three man years (24 hours and 7 days a week) of assessments at least. I personally assess about 2500 articles. At a rate of 1 a minute that is a weeks solid work. If you have to discuss each one that will invariably mean that a lot less assessments will occur. I thought the objective of the Editorial Team was to get more articles assessed not less. SunCreator (talk) 23:50, 21 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Observations I guess A designation would be good enough, more so if the A criteria is put down for reference. By the design above B+ would not be very necessary. But, it would probably be mighty helpful to have a frame of reference for A criteria (I wouldn't recommend putting down the quantified part, i.e. 60%). Apart from these minor issues the proposal looks quite agreeable. Aditya^{(talk • contribs)} 09:41, 8 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see why discussion should be "required" for Start/B/B+ class articles. Those ratings serve mostly as a guide to help people tell which articles to work on, and anyone else can always change the rating later if they disagree with it.
Also, I think the critera for "Start" above are far too weak. I usually think of start-class as: has some references to print sources and covers at least one aspect of the topic in depth. I don' think that adding just links, images, and infoboxes can turn a stub into a start-class article. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:03, 8 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- Explanation If I understood this correctly, a discussion should not be "required" for start or B class article assessment, though a note/comment to the talk page would be highly useful. Assessing A-class articles may not be as simple (as many of them already has to go through collaborative WikiProject evaluations and discussions). And... well, as start class article should ideally be considered just that — a start, may be a good start too. A lot may not be expected out of one such article.
  - Of course not much can be expected of a start-class article, but it's reasonable to expect it to be more than a stub in terms of the amount of actual text it contains. If links and an infobox were sufficient on their own, many of the bot-generated stubs like PPARG would be 'start-class'. Let's use that article as a starting point - what class should it be? — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:23, 8 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    - I like this suggestion of a "who can promote" column. I agree with Carl that we don't need to mention discussion as part of the definitions - if it happens, it happens. I disagree with Carl that Start must have print sources - that has NEVER been a requirement for Start; Start-Class covers a wide region from "more content than a Stub" to "getting to be quite a decent article, but either lacking refs or lacking several major content areas. In other words, the main difference at the lower levels is usually in terms of content. Many topics (esp. general ones) may have a decent article with zero refs, but members of the WikiProject (who know the topic well) know that it accurately covers the topic - such an article should never be classed as Stub. Walkerma (talk) 14:46, 8 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    - I'm going to move much of this discussion over to a new page, at Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Assessment rewrite. We can put the drafts in the article space, and keep the discussion on the talk page. I'll leave the signup section and pointers here. Walkerma (talk) 14:46, 8 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    - I think PPARG is a stub! (Not much prose content) We see this a lot at WP:Chem, where we have a lot of data in a box but not a lot of prose content. This was a great article for discussion, Carl! Walkerma (talk) 14:51, 8 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
      - Yes - the grading scheme has never required references for start class. I was only saying that I personally include that in my mental checklist when assessing an article. My work is almost always in the context of mathematics articles, but the math 1.0 grading scheme doesn't require refs for start-class either. But if we are talking about changing the criteria, I would propose that even a start-class article should have at least one reference to a source where readers can learn more about the topic.
        I think that if the phrase "Has a meaningful amount of good prose content" was added to the start-class criterion above, it would cover bot articles like PPARG. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:05, 8 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

A few observations:

Explanation of A / B+ (new class): What I meant is, it can be called either "A" or "B+"; certainly not both. We can discuss about this name.
Discussion requirement: I apprehended that some inexperienced editors may have a tendency to over-rate their own poor contributions. A requirement to discuss the rating (above start class) will at least force them to logically evaluate their own rating. Note: I suggested we require discussion for B class - only if the reviewer is one of the major contributors to the article. However, if majority of you think this will create unnecessary bureaucracy, we can drop this.
Start vs. Stub: Note: The current proposal makes the start class more stringent than existing requirement (atleast 2 criteria, instead of just 1). the example article PPARG, in my opinion, is a valid candidate for a start class. Why? This article gives an enthusiastic editor enough material, link and reference to work on the topic and expand it. It also provides the editor a structure of the article, a relevant public domain image. The work on the article has already "started". We need to differentiate this class from articles which leave very little clue on how to expand them, e.g. Coffee table book (as of July 2005). Once we add some useful text materials to PPARG it will become a B-Class article based on proposed definition (note - it will yet not the B-class based on current definition). After further expansion, when the coverage of the article will become reasonably broad only then it will move to A or B+ class (equivalent or slightly better than current B-class), which will be the stepping grade for GA nomination. Arman ^(Talk) 02:04, 9 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

- Some projects (at least math) have both A and B+ classes at the moment. Very roughly, GA is a more bureaucratic equivalent of B/B+, and A has higher standards than GA in projects that have a review process for A-class articles. But there is no assumption that every article will proceed to the GA or FA process; these are completely optional. A lot of very reasonable articles are rated B.
- The proposal above weakens the requirements for start-class, in that it removes the requirement "The article has a meaningful amount of good content". It is true that if that is ignored then articles like PPARG look like start-class. But really, there is almost no text in that article at all - it even has a stub tag at the bottom. A start-class article needs to have enough text (several paragraphs, at least) to be an "article" rather than just a "stub".
- I strongly disagree with the proposed requirement for discussion for Stub, Start, B, and B+. These are not meant to by used externally to judge articles, like FA is. And they are not meant to involve any sort of bureaucratic process. They're only meant to be used within a project to keep track of progress and tell which articles need what sort of work. There's no reason not to just let people assign ratings as they wish, since anyone else can always change the rating later if they disagree. The A/GA/FA ratings have approval processes, for people who want to pursue them. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:21, 9 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

GA doesn't look like a more bureaucratic equivalent of B/B+ nowadays, especially since the new GA reassessment drive. On the contrary a lot of recent GAs look like a less bureaucratic equivalent of older FAs. But, I would agree that "requiring" a discussion for anything lower than a B would be bureaucratic. But, as a lot of inexperienced editors do tend to over-assess their own contribution, I would stand by the proposal that B articles can't be rated so in the absence of an explanatory note on the talk page. That would make over-assessors at least think a bit more. Aditya^{(talk • contribs)} 18:21, 10 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I really dislike the entire "who can promote" idea, as it makes a lot of assumptions about the ability of WikiProjects to assess articles. There's WikiProjects like MILHIST which have completely developed assessment processes, and for which these guidelines make a lot of senese; on the other hand, there there are nascent projects that would face obstacles with these criteria. For example, if a project only has one major editor acting as a reviewer, and that editor writes an article, who grades it?

Overall, I think this sort of thing is better for WikiProjects to decide for themselves. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 23:49, 10 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Although I prefer uniformity in these definitions accross Wikipedia, if the decision is to leave the definitions for WikiProjects to decide, I'm fine with that as well. My only request, in that case, would be either to promote GA class above A-class, or create a new B-plus class for auto generation of tables like this. Arman ^(Talk) 02:13, 11 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure the plus-minus scale is such a good idea. I mean, even in academia the difference between a B and a B+ is not that sharp. If there is a need to further discretize the gap between GA and Start-Class articles, I think introducing {{C-Class}} would be more understandable. That would also retain the original meaning of A-Class (articles that are more or less ready for WP:FAC) and give the finer control some projects require. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 03:13, 11 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I would suggest considering the minumum number of categories required for the purposes for which the assessments are used, then work toward having that many. You can get more sharp distinctions but it takes more up-front work and probably more work for people using the scheme. Getting more genuine distinctions doesn't come just from adding categories. In my opinion, based on experience analysing many data sets from marking rubrics, it is highly likely to come from words alone at all -- rather it comes from the exemplars. For this reason, I'd recommend including the suggestion that new users at the very least briefly familiarize themselves with the exemplars. Having said that, it is possible to have multiple compatible versions for different levels of precision as I mentioned somewhere. I will also comment on this somewhere else. Holon (talk) 07:55, 11 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I agree, in fact, one of the main benefits IMO of the scale is its simplicity. However, there have been a lot of calls to increase the granularity of that particular aspect into three ranges: Start-Class, not Start-Class, but not close to GA, and close to GA. The latter one would be the homologue of the "close to FA" relationship that A-Class currently holds. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 08:18, 11 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

A vs GA

This subhead is more or less an arbitrary break, but I do have an "A vs GA" question. Suppose someone writes an article on "Edison and the phonograph", applies for GA, and gets rejected. Then they take it to a wikiproject that deals mostly with biographies, and it's rejected for A-class. Then they rewrite it as a history article, and it gets rejected again. Then finally it gets accepted as an A-class technology article. Do we want to consider this an A-class article for purposes of 1.0? We don't have any way to keep track of text that is rejected in one context but accepted in another. I'm very happy that there are many wikiprojects that do such a good job of assessment that there's no need for their articles to be vetted by anyone else. But can just anyone hang up a sign saying "A-class ratings done here"? If so, doesn't that create a weakest link in the process? - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 23:20, 10 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well, the problem really is in the way articles are counted, rather than in the way they're graded. It is not a problem if two WikiProjects have different opinions on the assessment of different sections of the article, particularly for large multidisciplinary articles like Space or Time. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 23:53, 10 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This tends to be rarer than it should be - it's always tempting for a reviewer to copy over another WikiProject's assessment! The selection bot takes each WikiProject's assessment separately, and if it passes for one project but not another, it will still make it onto the DVD. I'd like to develop a correction parameter for differences between projects, but thankfully it's not so much of a problem with A-Class. I would say that we have a much bigger problem at the Start/B interface, which is likely to be the deciding point for many important topics. Some projects are really quite liberal with Bs, but others are very strict. Hopefully the new exemplars will help us reduce that variation. As for random/unworthy A-Class assignments, hopefully most WikiProjects will rein in such practices. I'd really like to see peer review for all A-Class eventually, but I don't think we're ready for that just yet. We should say that peer review is recommended, though. See the recent discussion (also mentioned below). Walkerma (talk) 05:04, 11 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The problem highlighted by walkerma with B-class once again reinforces the need to split class-B into 2 classes. Currently some projects are considering B-class as "close to GA", while others are interpreting it as "somewhat more than a start class". We do need to have two separate classes and probably the stable version will include the upper class, but not the lower class. Arman ^(Talk) 03:25, 12 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Reading the arguments above (this section and others) I wonder which one is redundant - A or GA? That "near to FA" or "progressing towards FA" thing applies to both. I believe more FAs have evolved directly from GAs than from A-grades, and anyways there are way fewer A-grades than either FAs or GAs, and mighty few WikiProjects can support a proper A-grade evaluation (review, discussion, improvement and all).Why do we have a GA-grade if it's not really important (we already have B-grades and A-grades), or may I ask why do we have A-grades (we already have FAs and GAs)?

One wold expect an article to go through increasingly stringent quality assessments as it goes higher up the ladder: B by individual assessors, GA by a dedicated process, reviewers and criteria, A by a few WikiProjects, and FA by community consensus and dedicated process and criteria. Doesn't the role of A-grades look a bit dubious here?

I'd say the assessment of A-grades higher than GAs represent unfairness and injustice to articles and editors who don't belong to strong WikiProjects like WP:CHEM or WP:MILHIST. Many articles supported by weak or even non-functional WikiProjects have gone on to become FAs, but they never had an opportunity to go through an A-assessment. Aditya^{(talk • contribs)} 05:06, 12 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The thing is, GA/FA and SSBA are in reality two different scales that are juxtaposed together. The A-Class classification, as well as the rest of the SSBA system, is meant to be internal to WikiProjects only, while both GA and FA are public in nature. The reason both GA and A are needed are because they have completely different purposes. A-Class has no real importance by itself (unlike GA and FA), hence it doesn't actually need the project-wide review that GA and FA have. The class's lightweight assignment process is not a bug, it's a feature by design.

Also, the reason A-Class is sandwiched between the two public processes is three-fold: first, GAs tend to be more focused on stylistic concerns, while A-Class is supposed to be an assessment of the article's content by subject experts. Since in reality, WP:1.0 is more worried about wrong content than the wrong type of dash in the article, we decided to put A-Class first. Another reason is that historically, A-Class has been thought of as "ready for FAC, just needs some sprucing up". Furthermore, there have been somewhat-recent suggestions to remove GA from the scale, but having GA was considered helpful in these previous discussions. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 05:19, 12 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well, keep in mind that the converse would be "unfairness and injustice" to said strong WikiProjects which actually try to work with this system. Designing everything around the lowest common denominator isn't really a good idea, in my view, since a vast number of WikiProjects happens to be entirely dysfunctional at the moment. There's no reason why their failures need impact the functioning ones. Kirill ^(prof) 13:17, 12 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Three questions:

Do we really have to juxtapose two different streams of assessment lying parallel that doesn't necessarily compliment each other, or can we build it like individual assessment and small-group (i.e. WikiProject-centered sub-communities) assessment, the SSBA part, leading to Wikipedia (i.e. community process/consensus) assessments (Stub > Start > B > A > GA > FA)?
Is the Wikipedia driving towards an integration of quality and coherence and a convergence of efforts, or is it driving towards a WikiProject dependent fragmentation in quality and coherence and a divergence of small-groups as opposed to individuals contributing to the project and the community?
Is it unfair to believe that the few strong WikiProjects that can generate A-grades (which may or may not be compatible with GAs) can work on the SSBA module without A-grads popping in between FAs and GAs, and also work on other systems (if I remember right, at least one has A coming lower than GA and another has a B+ to come on top of B) as they see fit? Aditya^{(talk • contribs)} 13:59, 12 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The issue is that A-class and GA-class aren't really comparable at all. GA review (and, to a significant but lesser extent, FA review) is dominated by stylistic concerns rather than content review. A-Class review typically focuses heavily on content, and less on style issues. By the time an article has reached A-class, it can probably just have the style issues brushed up and then be moved to FA review. GA is much more like "B-Class with fewer MOS issues" than it is like A-Class. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:04, 12 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

So, based on the explanations given, it now seems to me, for GA-s, it is good enough to have a broad coverage of the topic, not necessarily complete; but for A-class, the coverage needs to be somewhat "complete". If that is the case, I understand A-class being above GA. But this distinction needs to be further clarified in the description of the grading scale. Furthermore, since some wikiprojects already have an A-class assessemnt process, I now recommend to leave it as it is. WikiProjects that don't have a strong A-class assessement framework should just skip it. But to address the need of a separate class between B and GA, I recommend to officially introduce the B-plus class, so that WP 1.0 bot can pick it up. Arman ^(Talk) 02:42, 13 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed on both counts. The only thing I see a problem with is calling the new class as B+; I'd instead prefer to call it C, for the reasons I postulated before. If projects will be debating whether an article in a newer scale is a B or a B+, it is the same amount of work as to whether the article is a C or a B. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 02:50, 13 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

(Reduced indent) Shouldn't WikiProject dependant assesment (i.e. SSBA) come first followed by community processes (i.e. FA and GA) in the structure? Is it necessary to maintain two different systems overlapping each other? As I understand, GA has come to its current status only lately, undertaking a long journey. But it has done so, and it is only prudent to respond to development. Aditya^{(talk • contribs)} 16:01, 13 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

They could, but I don't see why they should. These are two different assessment purposes, not just processes. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 02:18, 14 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. And I believe the proposed option F below to completely separate Good article assessment from the WikiProject scales addresses many of the concerns in this thread by recognising that SSBA and GA-FA have a different nature and purpose. Geometry guy 11:53, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Recent related discussion

FYI:

Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#A_class A proposal to tighten up the A-Class review, which broadened into a discussion of the A/GA order. Some of that discussion has (in effect) spilled over into this discussion, which seems fine to me as we consider how we write things up.
Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)/Archive_46#articles_assessements: My reply includes a complete history of the assessment scheme, with links - which could be very useful background information for those involved in this rewrite.

Walkerma (talk) 05:04, 11 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

What would it take to establish a first-class foundation for Wikipedia standards?

After looking through the discussion here, I think it might be instructive to describe an 'ideal' process, and to work back from there to what's doable. Pretty much every issue that has come up here is fairly common in assessment. I hope it will be easier to see why from the ideal. Please keep in mind that the work put into what I outline to follow overlaps with normal work on articles anyway, and in the long run would likely make that work far easier by helping to identify what needs to be done and when.

It may also turn out something closer to the ideal is achievable with available skills than I realize. With some ingenuity, Wikipedia could be a first for online ratings en mass by developing a top-class process based on solid foundations! OK, not likely, but possible. It's already considerably better than the crude methods normally used, such as ratings of 1-10 plucked out of the air.

Ideal

Given the nature of articles, the following process in the ideal is what I would (and do) recommend.

Compare (pairwise) a set or sets of exemplars and scale them.
List in order from worst to best (by links). This provides an ordered set analogous to a ruler with many points of possible distinction.

This achieves two things:

When the scheme is refined, it can be refined not only based on what 'should' distinguish better from worse, but what is seen to in a carefully calibrated and ordered set of examples.
The set of examples can sit in the background and be used whenever anyone wishes to, for greater precision (you can always go from cm to meters).

The last point is key when articles are near a threshold for going from one "grade" to the next.

Probably more important than all else an ordered set of examples provides a clear picture for editors of what it takes for an article to progress toward the highest standard.

Common reaction

A common reaction to this is that it's too time consuming because most are used to easy, but poor, rating processes (e.g. pluck a number from 1 to 10 out of the air or a grade based on best guess).

I understand but my standard response is that the payoffs outway the up-front time, often by a large factor, and of course anything worth doing takes some effort and coordination. The only reason most of us can buy a thermometer and easily, yet precisely, measure temperature at will is that a lot of work lies behind its development and construction. Like anything else, including articles on Wikipedia themselves, quality products require some work.

Good measurement instruments and procedures are a cornerstone of industry and technology -- without common standards, many things are impossible in industry. The same idea applies to Wikipedia as a whole. If editors can quickly, yet precisely, measure against calibrated standards as they work and assess articles, there are similar payoffs. There is a lot more clarity on standards and how to know where you are and what it takes to progress.

I believe around a million have been assessed, is that right?

However, it's like everything, it does take time and coordination. Hopefully though, this helps in explaining various issues and how they all fit together in the bigger picture even if nobody actually ends up participating.

Small-scale test

I can offer to anyone who wishes to do a small scale test in their own project. I don't think I have yet encountered a case in assessment where people have not found the process informative and useful.

Send me a set of article labels, preferably 15 or more, and I'll send back a spreadsheet with a set of pairwise comparisons to be done: each to be compared with each other and a judgment made about which is better. Do these and send me back the results. I will scale it, put them in order, and tell you how consistent you were overall and tell you which articles were anomalous, if any. Include at least two or three of the articles in the scheme so you will be able to see how the rest scale in between. If you can organize more than one judge to make comparisons, even better, and I can give you feedback on each judge's consistency and the agreement between them.

This should be quite quick for someone who is reasonably familiar with the set of articles, if the assessor only needs to refer to them when it's hard to say which is better. Most judgments should be quick and only a portion take more time. The payoff -- for your project you get a much clearer picture of the way articles progress from worse to better quality, and you have a far more precise basis for judging when an article should move up a grade.

This can be extended across projects. This would simply require choosing a number of articles in your project as well as some from another project also doing a calibration exercise. All articles can be scaled jointly and tests conducted to see how successful the exercise was. It's preferable that the assessors have some knowledge of the other articles, but I doubt it would be necessary for them to be experts on the content to get worthwhile results.

Obviously, this requires coordination if it crosses editors and particularly projects. However, the result could be a nice list across projects of articles from the worst to higher quality that everyone can refer to pluse the benefits to the project mentioned.

So to reiterate, this process is beneficial for

refining the scheme by seeing what actual progression looks like, according to consistent judgments by a methodical process.

provideing a set of examples (behind the scenes) that includes examples in the scheme, and can be used when the call between one grade and the next is getting difficult, avoiding debate the number of classifications (there is more precision if you want it and editors would know more clearly when an article is getting close to progressing to the next grade).

giving a clear summary picture of what it takes to progress articles for editors, which would probably also reveal things not anticipated up front.

founding refinements on the information to make the criteria more accurate, so more efficient to use and more credible.

I know there's a lot, but I hope it gives a clear picture of the ideal, and it might spark ideas even if nobody elects to do a trial.

Don't hesitate to criticize -- believe me it's unlikely you'll raise anything I haven't heard many times, and if you do, I'll be grateful for the challenge.

Cheeers all. Holon (talk) 10:45, 11 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds excellent to me- sign me up! I have a few questions before I collect my list:

By "article labels" do you mean things like "Aesthetic appeal," "Verifiability" or what? Or do you just need a list of actual articles? Or both these things?
If you need a list of actual articles to compare, would you prefer a list of similar topics (with just variation in quality & completeness), or would a broad selection of topics be better? Personally, I'd like to send you two sets - one set that could be all (say) inorganic compounds or cities, and another that could include a wide variety (e.g. Antoine Lavoisier, electrocyclic rearrangement, Claisen condensation, Enthalpy of fusion, stable carbene, HSAB theory, Kraft process). Cheers, Walkerma (talk) 03:17, 13 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I too was confused by what you mean by labels. I can send you 15 hurricane articles easily... ;) Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 03:19, 13 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, no I mean the names of the articles. The only thing that matters is that the names/lables allow whoever judges to know which articles, at what time (if relevant), those names/labels refer to. Certainly, if you can, both sets will give you more information; i.e. a similar set and broad set of articles. So long as you can do N(N-1)/2 comparisons for each set, where N is the number of articles. Comparisons will be faster if you're familiar with some or most so that you only need to refer to them sometimes, of course. However, no matter what you select, some comparisons will be so obvious they only take a moment, because the quality is far apart. Closer ones (quality) should take more deliberation. Once you've done this, future assessments against the ordered set can be made simply by choosing the closest match. This is the payoff related to getting precision when you need it, in addition to having a clearer basis for developing criteria etc. As you noted, it is important the articles represent the range of interest. I'd recommend having something very high quality and something very low (toward extremes) for reference points. If anyone wants to do just one set of articles, best is to select a set not too similar, because the results may be artificially consistent, but also not unsually different articles that are especially difficult to compare for some reason. Exemplars should have relatively little noise, without being contrived in terms of being prototypical in all respects. It is best just to choose a slection of articles that you consider reasonably representative of a larger category or population of articles, and to deliberately select a range. Also, without fussing too much, it is best to have exemplars across the range. Just send the list in a column in Excel, or post here for that matter. Then, I'll send back the pairs to de done and brief instructions. Any more questions, let me know. Holon (talk) 14:39, 13 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

OK, I've created a list covering a broad range of topics, importance and quality in the general area of chemistry. I've emailed you an Excel sheet, and also put the list up at User:Walkerma/Sandbox2. I'll try to prepare a "similar topics but differing quality" selection as well, but right now I really should get on with marking lab reports! Thanks a lot, Walkerma (talk) 17:21, 14 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Here's WP:WPTC's list: User:Titoxd/Sandbox/List. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 01:30, 15 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Titoxd -- can you select a subset of 20 to 30 articles and I'll send you the set of comparisons. Cheers Holon (talk) 05:21, 17 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Will do. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 09:07, 17 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, I updated the sandbox link above with twice the articles. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 09:15, 17 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, have had no time lately, I'll get the list to you soon. Cheers Holon (talk) 11:41, 29 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Council discussion of interest

See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Council#Non-standard banners Richard001 (talk) 09:51, 27 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Proposed reassessments section

I'm not really sure how we ended up with this section of the page, but people keep adding entries. Is anybody actually reviewing these pages, and should we even have that section to begin with? Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 05:46, 30 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I was wondering that myself! Walkerma (talk) 02:45, 8 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I have flagged the section (lamely) for removal. If somebody is actually using these entries, please provide usage instructions on the page and remove the {{off-topic}} template. If somebody can state definitively that the material is being ignored, then please be bold and jettison the section. Trevor Hanson (talk) 05:42, 28 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I cannot state definitely that the section is being ignored, but I'm quite certain that it doesn't belong there. Requests for reassessments should be brought to the assessing project(s), and not here. We don't do that here. – Clockwork Soul 06:01, 28 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for taking action. I was pretty sure this was the right step, but thought there was a small chance this was an informal mechanism being used by...well, by somebody. – Trevor Hanson (talk) 21:54, 28 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

No problem. I've never been accused of not being bold enough. :) Seriously, though, it was added by a new user who probably just wasn't aware of how assessments work, and in no time it started to attract a small amount of attention. It was better to just remove it now rather than let it get too big to easily excise. – Clockwork Soul 23:00, 28 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Assessment of lead sections?

WMF got $3 million in March from the Sloan Foundation to promote stable and written versions. I hope that means that there is money available in support of Version 1.0. There are a variety of organizations that would probably jump at the chance to be hired to help help with vetting, fact-checking and copyediting, because it would increase their own visibility. If we could get some serious help, I'm wondering if we could dramatically increase the number of lead sections, or lead plus first sections, that make it into some version of Version 1.0. (If the only two options for inclusion in 1.0 are "lead" and "the whole article", that will tempt people to cram stuff into the lead that really doesn't belong there; better to offer a third option of "lead plus".) Should there be a separate assessment for "lead" and "lead plus", or should the quality of the lead and the first section simply weigh heavily in the assessment of the entire article? - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 21:06, 10 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not so sure about the lead+first section approach. Many articles are organized chronologically, so taking only the first section would actually remove most of the coverage inherent in them. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 21:51, 11 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, what do you think of the idea that "lead only" (across an entire wikiproject, say) is probably a bad idea, because people will respond by pushing things into the lead that shouldn't be there? Perhaps, if people like the idea of throwing in the lead sections from 100 articles, we could use summary-style in reverse: figure out why we're attracted to that idea, what it is about those 100 articles that makes the leads worth including, and then write an article that incorporates material from those leads, that links to those articles as "main articles". - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 16:25, 12 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It's just that I don't know where we're using lede-only articles for inclusion. I thought that was an idea suggested a while ago, but that never really got off the ground. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 19:55, 12 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm quoting Martin, but I don't know whether the idea has gotten off the ground, either. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 20:58, 12 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

My understanding was that it didn't get off the ground simply because we haven't done it yet, not that we'd abandoned the idea! Sites like Wichempedia (which is a mirror of WP chemicals lead sections + chemical data, see this example) manage to do this very easily (I know the guy running the site, and it was an hour or two for him to add the leads).

I've often heard that many times people use WP just to find a basic definition, or basic piece of info that is in the lead. We could use this "leads only" approach to produce a concise-form encyclopedia, that could have a million text-only leads on a single DVD, flash drive or easy download, or perhaps 40,000 on a CD. I agree with Tito about the "first section" - that section tends to be no more important than later sections IMHO. I think we can worry about people bloating the leads if and when it happens - personally I don't think it would be a major problem. Assessing leads - that's an interesting idea, but it could get complicated!

I'll try and talk to the relevant people to find out how this project could benefit from the financial support. Thanks a lot, Walkerma (talk) 02:35, 13 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I doubt that people would start cramming stuff into the lead, but if anyone does that sort of thing just tell them it's inappropriate. A lead is just a short (but not too short, which most of them are) summary which shouldn't go into too much detail. Richard001 (talk) 01:47, 14 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

List assessment

I can't find any guidelines on assessing the quality of list articles. Are there any? -Freekee (talk) 16:06, 11 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think it's either a list or it's not, and if it is it's either a featured list or it's not! However, now that lists are "official" (they are read by the bot) we should at least mention something in the guidelines/criteria - good idea. Thanks, Walkerma (talk) 17:24, 12 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Printed German Wikipedia

I get a little more worried every month. Other organizations are spending lots of money on article creation, and we're not, and we're getting closer and closer to being toppled from our perch. While we have generated a little over 6000 FAs and GAs, the German Wikipedians are getting ready to publish a 50000-article, 1000-printed-page encyclopedia, with generous financial support for article proof-reading and fact-checking from their publisher, Bertelsmann. Bertelsmann owns Random House, and if our publisher can't come up with similar financial support, I would support approaching Random House for help. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 16:31, 12 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The Germans had their first offline release in 2004, ours was in 2007. They did a lot of things right, particularly in just getting on with the job instead of just talking about it! However, we are on track for a 30,000 article release on DVD by late summer, which will be a big step forward. The Polish WP followed the German model, and although they produced a very nice DVD they found they were at the mercy of the publisher (which had paid for article checking etc). We have several things the German's don't:

Fully open software; the German offline reader can only be used by the publisher, but we have an open source reader written by our publisher, Linterweb. This in turn allows our output to be used for free giveaways like One Laptop Per Child.
A very powerful assessment scheme covering all corners of the project. We can filter out the dross far more effectively - so our selection can be much higher in quality than the German one (assuming equal quality of overall content). We don't need a publisher to control our article selection process.

We would dearly love to produce our first printed materials, but my personal attempts didn't work out. There are all sorts of issues that lie behind these decisions, and the spotlight is on us far more than with the German Wikipedia (so we can NOT screw things up!) With the Sloan money mentioned above, maybe now is the time to consider an initiative. Walkerma (talk) 17:22, 12 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Martin, that was very helpful. I'm still worried that we will eventually lose the race we started, but as long as we're at the top of the Google rankings, there's plenty of time to fix things. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 19:52, 12 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Assessment - Do we need a new page?

Should this redirect here (yes, I created it myself, but I'm asking more if we should create a new page)? We have the shortcut WP:ASSESS, but this isn't actually about assessment in general, just articles really. What about e.g. featured sounds, images etc? Should we create a new page with a slightly broader scope that would basically provide links to all the relevant assessment pages? See commons:Commons:Assessments, which was recently created. Richard001 (talk) 02:00, 14 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I would applaud that idea. I think it would be very useful if you could BE BOLD and write a broader perspective on assessment. This could form part of our rewrite initiative (going on now) - that is, you could get a few people to critique your page and reach a consensus.

FYI: One problem we had when starting this assessment scheme was that there was another system of assessing articles via a system of manual postings, and this "used up" some of the obvious locations - see Wikipedia:Article assessment. Many thanks, Walkerma (talk) 16:43, 16 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I have created a new page, though it's very short and I need some help from others to make it better. I think a Category:Wikipedia Assessment might also be useful. Please post any replies on Wikipedia talk:Assessment (I need to prune my watchlist, and this page will sadly have to go for now). Richard001 (talk) 00:46, 24 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal - adding C-class between GA-Class and Start-Class

While interest on this page is still high, let's try to decide on some substantial changes to the assessment scale. There were two major issues discussed in the #Overhaul and rewrite of the assessment scheme section above: The positioning of A-Class, and whether there is enough granularity in the scale between {{GA-Class}} and {{Start-Class}}. From my reading of the discussion above, while we're still arguing about A-Class, there is enough of a consensus to pursue the second course of action. So, here is my proposal of the revised scale:

**Article progress grading scheme** [
v
t
e
]
Label	Criteria	Reader's experience	Editor's experience	Example
FA {{FA-Class}}	Reserved exclusively for articles that have received "Featured article" status, and meet the current criteria for featured articles.	Definitive. Outstanding, thorough article; a great source for encyclopedic information.	No further additions are necessary unless new published information has come to light, but further improvements to the text are often possible.	Tourette Syndrome (as of July 2007)
FL {{FL-Class}}	Reserved exclusively for articles that have received "Featured lists" status, and meet the current criteria for featured lists.	Definitive. Outstanding, thorough list; a great source for encyclopedic information.	No further additions are necessary unless new published information has come to light, but further improvements to the text are often possible.	FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives (as of January 2008)
A {{A-Class}}	Provides a well-written, reasonably clear and complete description of the topic, as described in How to write a great article. It should be of a length suitable for the subject, with a well-written introduction and an appropriate series of headings to break up the content. It should have sufficient external literature references, preferably from reliable, third-party published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy (peer-reviewed where appropriate). Should be well illustrated, with no copyright problems. At the stage where it could at least be considered for featured article status, corresponds to the "Wikipedia 1.0" standard.	Very useful to readers. A fairly complete treatment of the subject. A non-expert in the subject matter would typically find nothing wanting. May miss a few relevant points.	Minor edits and adjustments would improve the article, particularly if brought to bear by a subject-matter expert. In particular, issues of breadth, completeness, and balance may need work. Peer-review would be helpful at this stage.	Durian (as of March 2007)
GA {{GA-Class}}	The article has passed through the Good article nomination process and been granted GA status, meeting the good article standards. This should be used for articles that still need some work to reach featured article standards, but that are otherwise acceptable. Good articles that may succeed in FAC should be considered A-Class articles, but having completed the Good article designation process is not a requirement for A-Class.	Useful to nearly all readers. A good treatment of the subject. No obvious problems, gaps, or excessive information. Adequate for most purposes, but other encyclopedias could do a better job.	Some editing will clearly be helpful, but not necessary for a good reader experience. If the article is not already fully wikified, now is the time.	International Space Station (as of February 2007)
B {{B-Class}}	Commonly the highest article grade that is assigned outside a more formal review process. The article contains most of the material about the topic, and may be regarded as a complete article. It is broad in its coverage, while staying focused on the topic. This article has engaging, well-presented prose, although it may have a few gaps in style, citations, and clarity. It does not contain copyright, neutrality or original research issues. The article is illustrated where appropriate with images that comply with copyright guidelines. A well written B-class may correspond to the "Wikipedia 0.5" or "usable" standard. Articles that are close to GA status but don't meet the Good article criteria should fall in this category.	Useful to the majority of casual readers, and provides detailed, clear and accessible prose, with a minimum of jargon. Gives a nice explanation to most readers, but technical content may be inadequate for serious students or researchers trying to use the material for derivative purposes.	Some editing is still needed, including filling small gaps or correcting small policy and style errors. May be improved by input from experts to assess where coverage is still missing, and also by illustrations, historical background and further references. Articles in this category may benefit from external review from the Good article nomination process.	Jammu and Kashmir (as of October 2007) has a lot of helpful material but needs more prose content and references.
C {{C-Class}}	Has several of the elements described in "start", usually a majority of the material needed for a comprehensive article. Nonetheless, it has some gaps or missing elements or references, needs editing for language usage or clarity, balance of content, or contains other policy problems such as copyright, Neutral Point Of View (NPOV) or No Original Research (NOR).	Useful to many, but not all, readers. A casual reader flipping through articles would feel that they generally understood the topic, but a serious student or researcher trying to use the material would have trouble doing so, or would risk error in derivative work.	Considerable editing is still needed, including filling in some important gaps or correcting significant policy errors. Articles for which cleanup is needed will typically have this designation to start with.	Jammu and Kashmir (as of October 2007) has a lot of helpful material but needs more prose content and references.
Start {{Start-Class}}	The article has a meaningful amount of good content, but it is still weak in many areas, and may lack a key element. For example an article on Africa might cover the geography well, but be weak on history and culture. Has at least one serious element of gathered materials, including any one of the following: a particularly useful picture or graphic multiple links that help explain or illustrate the topic a subheading that fully treats an element of the topic multiple subheadings that indicate material that could be added to complete the article	Useful to some, provides a moderate amount of information, but many readers will need to find additional sources of information. The article clearly needs to be expanded.	Substantial/major editing is needed, most material for a complete article needs to be added. This article still needs to be completed, so an article cleanup tag is inappropriate at this stage.	Real analysis (as of November 2006)
Stub {{Stub-Class}}	The article is either a very short article or a rough collection of information that will need much work to bring it to A-Class level. It is usually very short, but can be of any length if the material is irrelevant or incomprehensible.	Possibly useful to someone who has no idea what the term meant. May be useless to a reader only passingly familiar with the term. At best a brief, informed dictionary definition.	Any editing or additional material can be helpful.	Coffee table book (as of July 2005)

Discussion start convenience header

The main difference is in the text for {{B-Class}} and the proposed C-Class. We can argue about colors, precise wording and examples later (because I didn't pay that much attention to those things), but in general, B-Class would correspond to what is being proposed as {{B+-Class}} (I actually used part of the WikiProject Mathematics assessment scale for guidance), and C-Class would be equivalent to the less positive aspects of the current B-Class grade. In brief, B-Class articles would be somewhat close to what is currently considered a GA, but they would need some content and polishing to get there, while C-Class would be for articles that while complete, are not even close to either GA or FA status. The revised scale also clarifies that articles that violate copyright, neutrality or original research policies are generally not acceptable for stable releases (which was a complaint of the previous scale), and uses a whole letter to indicate that separation. So, what do you guys think? Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 23:05, 14 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Looks good to me. John Carter (talk) 00:22, 15 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Do we really need another assessment class? What problem is this addressing? I think there's a high risk of making assessment too fine-grained to where contributors start using too much of their time re-assessing (especially if this forces projects to re-comb their articles) when that time could be better spent actually improving the article. Remember, the purpose of the assessment is not so much to have a handle on the individual article, which usually moves to the next level up a while before a re-assessment reflects it, but instead to look at the larger "forest-from-the-trees" view at the project level as an aggreggate of article statistics. Creating another assessment level is not going to substantially help the projects' idea of where they stand, but it will create a great deal of new work for them in order to determine which of their articles should now be populating the new class. Girolamo Savonarola (talk) 00:30, 15 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

(See also my comments at the bottom of the above thread.) Girolamo Savonarola (talk) 00:34, 15 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The problem this proposal addresses is that there are two types of B-Class articles. There's the articles that are very close to GA, but that have something missing; and then there's the articles that while complete, just flat-out suck. The previous B-Class rating allowed articles with copyright problems to be rated as B's, as well as articles with neutrality or NOR issues. In a way, WP:1.0 would get in massive problems with copyvios, so we want to clarify that such is not acceptable anymore, while being realistic that many B-Class articles will form part of our static releases. I too was not 100% convinced about the necessity of this class, but after thinking about it, I see how it is beneficial. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 00:41, 15 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding Girolamo's comments about reassessment, it might be useful if more projects added a "last assessed in" parameter to their banners, so that they can periodically review articles for improvement, etc. I would add it myself to several banners if I had a clue how to set it up. John Carter (talk) 00:45, 15 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Um, I thought that was the point of the assessment tables themselves? I mean, Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Tropical cyclone articles by quality/1 contains the assessed old-id for all the articles in that page. Besides, unless we have the equivalent of Gimmebot going around and filling out those parameters, editors won't fill out that parameter. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 00:48, 15 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You might be right, but depending on how many pages like that an individual project has to go through, it can be a daunting task, particularly as I've never found a way to get them to arrange in sequential order on those pages. John Carter (talk) 01:03, 15 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not really sure what you mean by ordering the articles sequentially, as the pages go in an Quality -> Importance sort automatically. That said, there are current discussions for a major overhaul of User:WP1.0 Bot, so that could be a feature that could be implemented eventually. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 01:08, 15 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I, for one, would love to include a 'C' ranking. Because it's simply adding a level to an existing system, nobody would be required to adopt it. Additionally, it's very true that there is a vast difference between "start" and "GA", which the single label of "B" simply isn't always sufficient to cover, especially in very large projects with thousands of articles of "start" quality . You have my full support. – Clockwork Soul 14:34, 16 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I don't have a strong feeling either way, though if I had to choose I would probably prefer to include an extra C-Class. Girolamo clearly lays out the principal objection - I'd like to see User:Holon's take on that. However, I think we now have enough expertise in the community that we could probably manage C-Class. The other main objection to C is that many projects would need to re-assess all of their B-Class articles, though a few like WP:MILHIST might not need to. Interesting - this proposal is beginning to look suspiciously like the very early days...! On balance I think it would be good to add another level at this critical level in the scheme, and it would resolve differences in how different projects handle B at present. Once people have made their arguments, let's put it to a vote, along with the GA/A vote also - we can use voting patterns as part of the way to judge consensus. Walkerma (talk) 17:25, 16 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Looks reasonable to me... there are a lot of technical issues vis its implementation, but they're all fairly trivial. Happy‑melon 21:11, 16 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Fantastic, I'm 100% in favor of this proposal. Arman ^(Talk) 04:00, 17 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, this is only the drafting stages of the proposal. I intend to submit it to a more general ratification vote when we all agree that the wording and stuff is reasonable. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 08:02, 17 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

We will get a better idea of where extra classes/grades are most justified or needed based on the exercise you've undertaken and further exercises if they're done. I'll worth through that with you once you've had aligned your Chem assessments with the scheme by doing the further comparisons. Still amazed by the near perfect consistency in your ratings of the 27 Chem articles! Holon (talk) 08:59, 17 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I support the creation of a C class. Most projects have a very large number of "start" class articles which vary greatly in quality. The gap in standard between "stub" and B class needs some gradation as well as within B. Excellent idea. Sarah777 (talk) 09:37, 17 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not so sure I like this idea. For one, people are going to focus even more on the exact assessment of the article than the actual quality. The asssessment scale is meant to give a rough estimate of how much work the article needs, not an exact science. In my opinion, there's not going to be that much of a difference either way. It's about the same things as B class. I just think we're better off keeping it simple rather than trying to make a larger, more exact scale which people are going to obsess over. Juliancolton ^Tropical ^Cyclone 12:05, 17 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Keeping it simple is definitely a key requirement, hence the negative reaction to the proposal here. However, as noted above, the assessment scale is used for other purposes, and its original task of selecting articles for static releases is still relevant. The boundary for material which is suitable for inclusion in a static release is currently located somewhere in the middle of the "B" rating, so this proposal is mainly to allow us to more accuratley divide wikipedia's 50,000 B-Class articles into those that are suitable for static release and those that aren't. Happy‑melon 13:05, 17 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I support this proposal. I can think of many articles currently classed as "Start" that seem way beyond that description, yet have to be rated that way because they are clearly not polished enough to be rated "B" class. It would also allow us to have some confidence in "B" class articles as the minimum for V.1.0. The open question for me is whether to merge "GA" and "A". I can see some advantages to doing that. Sunray (talk) 17:35, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I definitely support this proposal. It would help prevent copyright violations from being in WP1.0 and, like Sunray said above, allow for more flexibilty between "Start" and "B"-class articles. -- Imperator3733 (talk) 19:56, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm in full support, because currently "B-Class" is such a wildcard. I've seen articles that are deserving of B-Class, and I've seen articles that are not, but not definitely not Start-Class either which is why I am completely in favour of a new rating to distinguish the good and bad "B" articles. It current seems to be used as a middle ground between Start and GA, and that really isn't a good thing. --.:Alex :. 09:52, 1 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

FA too article-centered?

I apologize if I'm reinventing the wheel, but it has been pointed out here that the designation "FA" is very article-specific. A precedent was set by creating the "FL" class, but I'm thinking we need to take a more decisive action to take into account featured portals, images, and whatever else. My thoughts are that we can take one of two actions:

Create an "F*" category for each resource type in addition to FA (article) and FL (list): FP (portal), FC (category), FI (image), etc. This would, of course, spawn a large number of classes and would necessitate further cluttering teh already bloated project banners.
Combine the "FA" and "FL" classes into a single "Featured" class that can cover any featured content going forward. This would have the potential to significantly reduce clutter in the long run.

A separate issue that can tie into this is as follows: since some projects seem to have a fetish for employing an entire zoo of non-ranking "importance" designations ("List", "Template", "Disambig", "Category", "Image", "Portal", to name the ones I can think of off the top of my head) we may want to consider adding an optional "type" parameter for non-articles. Thoughts? – Clockwork Soul 16:38, 17 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not against dropping most of those designations, with the exception of lists, since they are a normal part of the main namespace and are not part of the site architecture in the way that Dabs are, but are too different in form from articles to realistically need a nuanced grading scale, IMO. Girolamo Savonarola (talk) 21:38, 17 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I wouldn't mind the second option, and I've proposed that myself previously. However, let's worry about one sweeping change at a time, please... :) Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 06:12, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'd oppose dropping them because a lot of WikiProjects find them useful for categorising, organising and tracking. I can understand they are superfluous to your purposes, but that doesn't make then superfluous to everyone's. Since they don't actually cause any interference with your goals, and they segregate out stuff you don;t want, I can't see how they impact. Hiding T 11:55, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I like the second option the best, but my only concern is what would be the short name for the "Featured" class? It should definitely not be "F". -- Imperator3733 (talk) 20:03, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The issue I have with the second option is that the assessment is geared towards printable content. I would offer the idea that Featured Portals and Featured Images aren't likely printable. Do we really have a Featured Category process? For me, it ain't broken. Hiding T 16:54, 20 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Votes on changing the assessment scale

The following discussion is archived. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

See Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Assessment#Conclusions for the results. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 19:18, 27 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This is an attempt to bring closure to the above discussion, and to reach a consensus on changing the assessment levels. Any change would affect thousands of people and articles, so I am proposing a two-stage process:

People involved in the discussion here vote on the changes proposed. It will only involve voting by support, since there are several options open; if you like more than one option, you can support more than one.
If there is a clear consensus for change, then we hold a second round vote (yes or no) on that change. For this we will solicit comments from the WikiProjects, perhaps by adding a link to a project's stats table or via the assessment template.

I will be taking votes and the above comments into consideration when judging consensus. If there is clear support for the change then we will implement it. Note that I will be "on the road" from Wednesday, and my internet access will be patchy, so I may be requesting help with the logistics. I won't vote, as I feel too close to the topic, and I've already expressed my views above anyway. I'd prefer not to discuss other proposals, because we need to keep the debate contained. I selected these two proposals because both of them garnered a lot of support, and they have been proposed more than once before (by others). If you MUST offer up a new proposal, please put it in a new section, and we will consider it only if it also gets lots of supportive comments. Walkerma (talk) 05:31, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Please review the following debates before voting:

Comments or suggestions on the voting process

I'd like to suggest removing the "bundled" options (presently D and F); new ideas are emerging mid-poll, and consensus for each issue that is not dependent on other options can be measured independently.

This is also an example of the advice at WP:POLLS being substantiated; these issues need more in the way of discussion than voting -- and consensus, if it is clear, can be discerned from structured discussion (instead of voting) anyway.--Father Goose (talk) 08:01, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Nevermind, I'm just going to be bold and remove the "bundle" options myself: one has received no votes, and the other introduces a new option not dependent on other options.--Father Goose (talk) 08:09, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

These issues have been debated over the last two years; the voting choices I listed here represent the consensus from those two years of discussion. But I'm OK with letting things evolve as they will. Walkerma (talk) 12:26, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I have posted a note to Wikipedia talk:good article criteria asking editors to come and vote here. 69.140.152.55 (talk) 05:06, 22 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Option A: No change

Support

Kirill ^(prof) 05:43, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
No need to change. I looked at Arman's calls for another class in the range up to GA. I think this is because he is implementing the Start and B-class assessments far too liberally which is why there is a big gap from B to GA. For example, the median size of a Start-class Bangladesh article was about 2k and a lot of articles even smaller than 1kb were being tagged start. The median for a B was also much lower than other WikiProjects (about 10k compared to 20+k). I think that listing anything longer than 2 lines as a start class article is causing the problem. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 05:52, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
--ROGER DAVIES ^talk 07:17, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think the gap between start and B is that significant that a new class is needed. dihydrogen monoxide (H₂O) 08:42, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I've seen a lot of very poor quality articles pass GA standard and don't think it should be higher than A class Nick Dowling (talk) 10:14, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
There is a significantly disproportionate gap between start and B-class, and stub and start-class. However, adding a new grade is not the solution, but rather; the solution is to heighten the criteria of start-class slightly, and to stricten the application of B-class criteria (which is what some WikiProjects do independently anyway). As such, there is no need for any changes currently. Ncmvocalist (talk) 10:53, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think the problems identified elsewhere will be solved by such changes, I think instead they will entrench them further. What is needed is more editors prepared to assess articles across the board. Hiding T 11:58, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Why do you think the problems would become worse? Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 05:28, 20 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The issues identified at the village pump include the fact that a number of WikiProjects don't have enough editors rating and assessing. Adding extra classes is going to exasperate those issues, because those WikiProjects won't implement the new scale, meaning even more disparity between projects and within the scale, the very issues I believe the proposals are looking to solve. Hiding T 16:50, 20 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I'm afraid I don't follow. Currently, the assessment tables have an assessment date, which will tell us which scale these pages are using. Additionally, we want WikiProjects to re-review these articles, as we want to add a clearer demarcation for static releases, and get rid of the copyvio/OR/POV allowance present in the current B-Class criteria. The new scale would allow WP:1.0 to say, "anything lower than a B-Class will not be included, unless in really extreme circumstances." Having more editors reviewing articles is something everybody definitely can agree on, but a vote doesn't really help us get closer to there. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 23:53, 21 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, I'll try again. The position is that assessment varies, the scale is being interpreted differently across Wikipedia and standards vary. The proposed solution is to add another classification, which you seem to indicate will increase variations in assessment. I'm curious as to why B-Class has now become the minimum standard. Last time I checked, A-Class was the minimum. This indicates to me standards are falling. So maybe I'm the one not following. Hiding T 19:17, 25 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Per Ncmvocalist's argument. Implementing a new class won't help to change the system and its efficiency. The only way to achieve this is to increase the gap between any two ratings, and simply not "round up" when assessing. I've seen too many "it's almost there" assessments, or people thinking that because an article is closer to start than stub, it should be graded as stub class. This mentality only helps to add to the confusion in the process. Mastrchf (^t/_c) 12:09, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The assessment categories are already confusing enough to many people; adding additional categories is going to make matters much worse. People need to better familiarize themselves with the existing standards (and if the standards for a particular wikiiproject are too vague, the wikiproject needs to address that). Karanacs (talk) 14:01, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see the need for any changes. Whilst there can be a large gap between start and B, I don't think adding in a C-class will do anything to improve articles or the confusion surrounding their ratings; it will only compund the issue. Woody (talk) 15:38, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I do lots of assessment work, and see no reason to make a change; this seems like a "solution in search of a problem." I skimmed through the earlier discussion, and don't see a compelling case of what problem there is that needs to be solved. Sure, there is some inconsistency, but that's to be expected in a project like ours. I strongly suspect that a change in the assessment system would lead to more inconsistency, as people get confused between the new and old standards, rather than less. (For what it's worth, I am glad to see people are putting thought into this kind of thing, but on the whole I think our energies would be better spent on writing and assessing articles.) -Pete (talk) 16:23, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
No change. It's already confusing enough. Kaldari (talk) 17:51, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
naerii - talk 18:15, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Does it need to be more complicated? I find that the greatest issue needing discussion is more clearer delineation between stub, start, and B class. bibliomaniac 1 5 23:56, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
TomStar81 (Talk) 05:43, 20 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see why change is needed. As someone has already stated, the system is complicated enough - • The Giant Puffin • 12:32, 20 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I am strongly against any changes to the scale. It's already confusing and complicated enough as it is, so why make it more so? To drop or to add an assessment level can only cause problems. For example, if we drop GA, then people are going to start sending articles to FAC even if they are nowhere near ready. The scale has worked fine for years, and to start messing with it now would be a bad choice. Juliancolton ^Tropical ^Cyclone 16:05, 20 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Asdfasdf1231234 (talk) 16:48, 21 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thinking this through, I was attracted to the idea of a C class. But really, the problem isn't the gap between B and start, the problem is that "Start" is positioned too close to stub - in fact, it overlaps significantly. An article with a table of contents and one section that isn't a stub is still a stub. ("multiple subheadings that indicate material that could be added to complete the article") What we should do is upgrade the requirements for start class to approximately those for the proposed C class. With that done, we don't need an additional class. GRBerry 17:42, 21 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
While I understand the desire for a more nuanced rating system, adding more grades won't provide help to other editors -- or users -- in understanding what needs to be done to the article. What is needed is more detailed reviews of articles. (I admit that sometimes I get myopic after working too long on an article, & don't always notice that I have left some important details out.) To be honest, I happen to enjoy working on bringing articles up to about B level -- but no further -- because I feel less pressure in writing them & conforming to trivial standards which I have encountered when trying to push into the higher levels (which require peer review). -- llywrch (talk) 21:24, 21 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
— Rlevse • Talk • 23:04, 21 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
After reading through several of these proposals a couple of times, and supporting some and opposing others, and then re-reading other comments again, I have come to the conclusion that this vote has more or less become one large clusterfark, and not organized very well. While I think there's some interesting comments and ideas, and some of them could eventually be tweaked and ultimately passed, I think we're trying to pass too many changes too quickly here, and we need to seriously take a step back and not make rapid changes to the system that quickly. Wikipedia's overall assessment system really isn't broken, and I don't think that mass changes are needed at this time. Before we look at adding new classes to the system, we might actually want to do a survey and take a look at how wikiprojects are actually using these assessments, and how many wikiprojects have unassessed articles; I'd recommend assessing the unassessed articles under the current system before confusing things further and adding new classes to assess them under. I therefore, cannot in good conscience endorse any changes to the system at this time. Dr. Cash (talk) 04:27, 22 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The current system works well if it is applied properly; making changes to the structure will not solve the problems of poor application. We should look at the examples offered by the strong wikiprojects, such as the oft-mentioned WP:MILHIST, and see how to apply their processes/criteria/assessment strategies to other situations. Perhaps small wikiprojects could be loosely grouped into "Inter-project assessment cooperatives", so that their assessments can be strengthened. Or use the larger projects to mentor and assist smaller ones. Let's not confuse poor application with poor structure. We might have the first; I doubt we have the second. Gwinva (talk) 04:38, 22 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I think that if B-class is being awarded to liberally at the moment a WP:1.0 newsletter should go out to the Wikiprojects or something that clearly says to lift their standards for B-class. I've always thought of A-class as "almost FA" and B-class as "almost GA". C-class would add confusion I think because it would be a blurry patch between Start and B-class. Would cleanup tags be allowed in C, does it need to be fully referenced like B-class? I think the current system is good and that if people aren't using it consistently an effort should be made to change their usage before the system is changed. James086^{Talk | Email} 06:51, 22 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Not convinced any of the nominated changes are an improvement on what we have. Many of the problems actually relate to misapplication rather than deficiency. Orderinchaos 20:40, 23 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose

Please note my comments on Option C. Arman ^(Talk) 11:12, 25 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Option B: Put A below GA only

As proposed here

Support

This is already the de facto standard, and has been for a long time.--Pharos (talk) 05:50, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support - It makes sense that the two highest ratings should be decided by a process and not arbritarily. Most of the time, A-class articles are not as good as GA's anyway, and will bring GA's closer to FA in quality. Judgesurreal777 (talk) 16:25, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support I'm actually going to go ahead and support this idea. Part of the problem with FA, GA, & the assessments system is that they're three independent processes, and in the current system, they don't come together well. While I don't think that pulling GA out of this system, and leaving FA at the top with the assessments below it is the right answer, since I strongly believe that we want to be all-inclusive here, and we need to maintain a sense of the clear progression of articles from start to finish (stub to FA). I do think we need to be more clear of the differences between the three. Part of the problem is a general confusion of whether A is "better than GA" or not. I don't think we can get a clear picture to this problem, simply because A-class doesn't have a uniform set of standards that apply evenly across all articles, while GA does. If A-class was listed below GA, it would make the process clear, such that an article would progress from stub through A-class with individual wikiproject assessments, and then go to the community for a GA & FA review. Of course, not all articles are FA-worthy, and some will undoubtedly stop at the GA level. Of course, one could also make an almost equally compelling argument to keep the status quo; progress through the wikiproject assessments through B-class, then go for a communitywide assessment with GA, then back to the wikiproject for A, then to the community for the final ranking. Dr. Cash (talk) 16:47, 20 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support - Logically it makes sense to have GA higher, it's currently a source of confusion between editors. So this needs sorting out sooner or later, and it would be less work to do it sooner(as in the future there will be just more Ga and A articles). Therefore I fully support doing it now. SunCreator (talk) 23:21, 21 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment

I feel it necessary voice an outright oppose. GA should remain a process outside the normal rating stream. I doubt all 4,000 article already GA are worthy of being considered near FA ready, where as all the A class would be. Gnan garra 13:06, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I feel very stongly about this so I also feel I have to outright oppose this. I don't think it is the de facto standard in any sense. Milhist and Ships see A above GA. A is an article not quite FA yet, but is above the one reviewer standard of GA. Woody (talk) 15:36, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- In most cases, A is actually quite below GA, because there is no A process at all for most subjects. See my proposal below that would make a special place for projects which have an A-class reviewing department.--Pharos (talk) 19:53, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  - I doubt very much that it is in 'most cases' as you suggest. Any cases where it is applied that way are generally because the editors who changed the grade(s) are poorly-informed, inexperienced, biassed and/or the like. Ncmvocalist (talk) 09:44, 20 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    - Maybe the majority of WikiProjects are administered in a "poorly-informed, inexperienced, [etc.]" manner, but the fact remains that less than a handful have a dedicated A-class reviewing department. I do think there is a way to recognize these particular processes, though, hence my proposal with Option G.--Pharos (talk) 20:35, 20 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Some WikiProjects treat it that way, others do not. WikiProject Time and bio care about A-class and is not below GA. Z gin der 2008-05-19T21:18Z (UTC)
Comment: IMHO, GA can be considered as B+, while A=A and FA=A+. miranda 04:14, 20 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- This is not an assessment of school work. Ncmvocalist (talk) 09:44, 20 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  - I don't think you understand the system. Wikipedia's current assessment system is set up like a grading system. With B-articles, GA is over B, which is B+. Stub-class can be compared to lack of information. Okay? miranda 12:31, 20 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    - I'm well aware of the system, thanks, but maybe you've misunderstood it. GA is above B because of stricter criteria, and because it is only then considered as a "good article". Ideally, an encyclopedia is aiming to have feature articles, which is why FA is at the top. We don't have A++ B- and the like because these are not pieces of work assessed for school. Ncmvocalist (talk) 18:25, 20 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Per Woody - Oppose. Ncmvocalist (talk) 09:44, 20 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Option C: Add a new C-Class between Start and B

As proposed here

Support

As the proponent. I've come around to see the need behind this class. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 05:51, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
As one who spends a significant amount of his time working with various projects' ranking systems, I think the addition of this value would provide real benefit with minimum disruption. – Clockwork Soul 06:01, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Assuming that it can be implemented without too much hassle, I'd love a C-class. I believe it would greatly help in keeping track of article-improvement priorities for WikiProjects. -RunningOnBrains 06:26, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I've been in support of a rating to fill the huge gap between Start and B for a long time. If we were starting a new system from scratch, reworking (or removing) A-class would also be an obvious change to make, but some WikiProjects use it so changing that would mean considerable disruption.--ragesoss (talk) 06:28, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
There is indeed a huge gap between Start and B; articles that are solid but have referencing deficiencies should be C.--Father Goose (talk) 06:38, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Necessary to allow a clearer selection of 'acceptable' articles. Happy‑melon 07:38, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
This was brought to me via the IRC hurricanes channel. I feel this would be a good addition and is a good choice to add in front of B. Good thinking Tito.^Mitch32^contribs 10:24, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The gulf between what I expect of a "Start" and a "B" is huge, a "C" class is a good idea in my opinion. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 11:54, 19 May 2008 (UTC).[reply]
I think I could support this, although I would love to see one of those charts where they describe what C-class would be like compared with what the other letters would be. Judgesurreal777 (talk) 16:27, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, the gap between Start and B has long been a problem. Judgesurreal777, there is such a chart as you ask for above: Wikipedia_talk:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team/Assessment#Proposal_-_adding_C-class_between_GA-Class_and_Start-Class.—DCGeist (talk) 17:15, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yes. The addition of a "C" class would solve the problem of many articles being held in "Start" class because they don't meet "B" standards (for e.g., a well-written and relatively complete article that still lacks citations). This is de-motivating for editors who have worked tirelessly on an article, and clearly see it as beyond mere "Start" class. Sunray (talk) 17:46, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Originally I was going to oppose because we're inventing a new class out of thin air and render a lot of scripts like Outriggr's useless. But after seeing the proposal, I quite like it because a lot of B-class articles have "NPOV", "written like an advertisement", or similar tags. They could fall into C-class under this new proposal. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 18:16, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
And GA class should be dropped (combined into A) because it is confusing. Kevin Baas^talk 20:31, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
No way. Most projects don't have a large member base that provides a steady stream of reviewers. Melting GA and A together spells disaster. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 02:28, 20 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yet again you completely misunderstand a comment on GA-Class, Ohana. Kevin Baas is not referring to the Good article designation here, but to GA-Class. Geometry guy 10:02, 20 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
B is way to wide a gambit. Z gin der 2008-05-19T21:16Z (UTC)
Add C to the existing system. As mentioned elsewhere, there are far too many Starts for that category to be handled effectively. ♬♩ Hurricanehink (talk) 01:01, 20 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
If we accept the definition and example of Start class as given in the current grading scale, there is a large gap between that stage and a near-GA B class. A C-class in between B and start will help ensure that only near-good quality articles are assessed as B. Arman ^(Talk) 03:49, 20 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
That would be good. There are some articles which are not quite B class, but are over start class. miranda 04:09, 20 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
"B-class with cleanup tags" is definitely a class of article that is both fairly common (in my experience) and doesn't neatly fit into either B or Start classes. Nifboy (talk) 08:01, 20 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
It just occurred to me, the C is for Cleanup. I am highly amused by this. Nifboy (talk) 12:36, 20 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
per Nifboy, support. Cricketgirl (talk) 08:14, 20 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
There is a wide gap between B and Start Class. I think there is a need to create a C class. C class may be NPOV free, have general references and must be a bit more expanded from Start articles. Amartyabag ^TALK2ME 00:44, 21 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I've long thought that there's a huge gulf between Start and B (if the latter is properly applied), which reduces the motivation to improve the bulk of our non-stub articles. Espresso Addict (talk) 12:08, 21 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I think there is a large need for a class of articles that are more than a start but have major problems with style, neutrality, or reliance on original research. Having a class for problematic articles that are easily sorted out for Wikiprojects would be a great things. It is easy for anyone to fix Start class article that has these problems, but when the problematic article is more mature it really needs attention from people with more subject knowledge than those that normally roam the backlogs.--BirgitteSB 16:02, 21 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
There is far, far too large a gap (now) between "Start" class and "B" class; having a "C" class would be an excellent way to fill that gap. ("Start" class means, in my mind, that an article has gotten beyond the couple of paragraphs that stub class articles have; if "B" class is almost good enough for GA status, then there is a huge, huge range of length and quality that "Start" class articles - now - can have. That's not good.) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 20:55, 21 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support - This is a simple and good idea. SunCreator (talk) 23:30, 21 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support B-class articles range from "board, decently written and referenced" to "long but unreferenced, badly written and poorly organised". With the introduction of the C-class rating, articles in the former category will keep their status while articles in the latter category will be downgraded to C-class. As a result, a B-class rating will be worth more. WikiProjects (especially those focusing on areas which are poorly covered) may thus organise "drives" to bring many articles to B-class status. However, moving A-class to below GA-class may not be a good idea, especially if a C-class rating is introduced. Some WikiProjects only give A-class status to articles which have passed an internal A-class review; such reviews tend to focus on content, while FA and GA focus on non-content issues. We should encourage more WikiProjects to have A-class reviews and lowering the prestige of an A-class rating will not do that. --J.L.W.S. The Special One (talk) 09:23, 22 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support I was and remain amazed that such a class doesn't exist. Loren.wilton (talk) 12:51, 23 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Weak Support. I can see some benefit to this option. Majoreditor (talk) 03:43, 24 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support - This is a simple and good idea as SunCreator says. Tom (talk) 17:30, 24 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support - I think the comments below by Armanaziz sum it up well. Trevor Hanson (talk) 20:33, 25 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support - for the reason I have given above. Sarah777 (talk) 20:40, 25 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support - There really is a big gap between Start and B-class, a C-class would be perfect to fill that gap Cerebellum (talk) 16:57, 26 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

It seems to me that stricter application of B-Class criteria, and drawing a sharper line between stub and start, is the solution. The assessment system is already over-complicated and an extra class will make this worse. We should be aiming at fewer, clearer, classes. --ROGER DAVIES ^talk 07:20, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- My view is that B-level is already quite demanding (as it should be), and stub-class should be limited to articles that really are stubby. That leaves a great many articles that are start-class -- some of which are poor, and some of which are good but need additional improvement (usually in referencing) before they can hit B-level. The gradations we have between all the classes is quite lumpy; nothing between Start and B, and a doubling up on A. There's no clarity in that scheme. A/GA, B, C, D/Start, plus stub and FA seems like a better-balanced and clearer system to me.--Father Goose (talk) 08:28, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
This option is worth considering, although I'm not yet sufficiently convinced to support. I would also point out that renaming GA-Class B+ would give WikiProjects more flexibility to make B-Class a little less demanding, as they would have full control of the criteria for B+-Class. Geometry guy 11:01, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure that a C class is the answer, where simply being more subjective in reviewing articles could resolve many of the issues. Gnan garra 13:09, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Just to discuss - simply being more subjective/strict in reviewing articles solves the problem of B-class not being up to the mark - but the problem of start class being too broad remains. Arman ^(Talk) 03:56, 20 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

In fact, this proposal would considerably tighten B-Class criteria as well. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 23:54, 21 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose per my vote on Option A. Ncmvocalist (talk) 09:48, 20 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Seems horribly redundant. How is this any different from 'start' class? Dr. Cash (talk) 15:07, 20 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
In two ways: It tightens B-Class criteria, which create a larger gap between the new B-Class and Start-Class. Start-Class are articles that while not stubs anymore, cannot be considered complete. C-Class would mean that the article is more or less complete, but still in very bad shape. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 23:57, 21 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I am opposed to this proposal especially. There will be no substantial difference from Start-Class, and it's just going to cause confusion in assessing articles. As I have said, the assessment scale is to give an estimate of how much work it needs to be done, which is reaching A or FA-Class, not to be an exact science. Juliancolton ^Tropical ^Cyclone 16:09, 20 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
This is the only change I think we need. The rest should remain the same. I think this class should only be reserved for articles identified as problamatic rather merely incomplete. (Omission leading to undue weight would not count as "merely incomplete"). Currently there is no way for Wikiprojects to know what articles in their subject area have been tagged with outstanding issues. This could be a way to solve that for the mature articles which are also the most diffcult for people with little subject specific knowledge to resolve.--BirgitteSB 16:12, 21 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps the following theoretical examples will help explain my view of the differences between the new B-class, the proposed C-class and the current Start-class.

B-class: An article about a chess player with good sections covering his career, personal life and contributions to chess theory. It is fairly well-referenced but does not meet GA criterion 2a. Although generally detailed, the article misses a few important points. The prose contains a few errors but is largely readable.
C-class: An article about a country with good History and Geography sections, stubby Politics and Culture sections and an Economy section with little information. There are a couple of fair use images which lack rationales and very few references, while the prose is poor but readable.
Start-class: An article about a movie with a detailed Plot section containing two screenshots, as well as an Analysis section which is full of original research. Entirely written from an in-universe perspective with poor but comprehensible prose, the article has no references.

--J.L.W.S. The Special One (talk) 09:23, 22 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It looks like the result from this polling exercise has come down between two choices - no change and add C-class. I have already expressed my support for the later. Now It seems appropriate to discuss a bit more between these two options. Those who are favoring no change seem to be insisting on 3 points: 1) Addition of a C-class will make the already complicated grading scale even more complex; 2) It will create unnecessary reevaluation task which won't add any value and 3) Current grading scale, if applied cautiously, is enough for a reasonable evaluation. Let me discuss why I disagree to all 3 of these arguments:

Complexity: From whose perspective are we evaluating the complexity? The article rating is not published on article main-space, hence it is fair to assume that it is not intended for any ordinary reader. The entire assessment process is maintained and used by members of various wikiprojects who have already demonstrated their ability to deal with complexity of the assessment process. If they can deal with A-class and B-class, it is an insult to assume that and additional C-class will be "too much for them to handle".
Unnecessary work: This proposal will create virtually NO ADDITIONAL WORK for wikiprojects, which believe their current assessment process is fair and adequate. They can simply ignore the new class. But WikiProjects which are so far using the B-class more leniently will benefit from an exercise of downgrading some of their B-class articles to c-class and thus reserve the B-class only for potential candidates for a GA upgrade. On the other hand, those wikiprojects who are using the start class articles definition too broadly, will benefit by upgrading some of them to C-class so that when prioritizing move to B-class, they can screen down to a much smaller group of articles.
Current scale is adequate: Once again, the wikiprojects which believe the current scale is adequate do not need to do any change what so ever. But there are wikiprojects who can truly benefit from narrower scales. Just take a look at the examples of start class and B-class articles currently given in the grading scale. Can't you just see how huge the gap is between these two? The wikiprojects which believe they could use one more class in between should not be deprived of a tool to further organize their articles by quality. Arman ^(Talk) 11:06, 25 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The above is a good summary. I agree that a C-class rating would be a useful, optional tool. I don't think we should be focusing on how to define precise standards distinguishing Start-, C-, and B-classes – but rather on what a C-class option would mean to an editor trying to classify a particular article. There are times when it is hard to draw the line, either because of the presence or absence of standards within a particular WikiProject, or simply because there aren't enough "shades of grey" in the classification scheme. If I had to rate a bottle of wine, say, and reserved "A" for the very finest, and "Start" for good drinkable plonk, I would be frustrated having only "B" available for everything else. Many of the problem cases cited (conservative Starts and lenient Bs) would comfortably fit as Cs. Yes, I know, we keep saying we're not grading essays; but to an extent, every ranking system really IS grading essays. A "C-class" would seem to be intuitive, would help in many circumstances, and I don't see how it would hurt. Trevor Hanson (talk) 20:33, 25 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I still don't get it. Even the example above gives three articles on three different topics. It looks to me like the scale will be something like, stub, short article; start, it's got body but badly in need of organisation and depth; B, it's got most of the criteria for GA/A but not all. For C, we're saying... what exactly? It's a better start? It's got more issues than you would normally expect in a B class but not as many as you would at start level? It just looks a little confusing to me. Hiding T 19:22, 25 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

For your ease of understanding, here is high-level summary of the proposed scale, with example articles for each class from same WikiProject:

Stub - Doesn't qualify being called an article, at best comparable to a dictionary definition (e.g. Antineutron)
Start - Has some useful materials that can be used to write a good article but is either incomplete, poorly referenced, unorganized, or has other major quality/scope issues. These are articles that have just grown out of the stub-class due to addition of some useful contents. (e.g. Aeolipile)
C-Class - Has a significant amount of useful materials that need further reorganization and quality improvement, or a well written framework that needs additional subject matter detail. (e.g. Acoustics)
B-Class - Broad in coverage, well referenced and have all materials expected by an ordinary (non-expert) reader. No POV / OR concerns. But has language, grammar and MoS issues. (e.g. Bell's theorem)
GA-Class - Has passed as GA. (e.g. Anaerobic digestion) (amended by Walkerma (talk) 21:01, 26 May 2008 (UTC))[reply]
A-Class - ~~Must be a GA that has gone through WikiProject level Peer review to ensure accuracy and completeness of content.~~ (e.g. Black hole) Currently, an A-Class article need not be a GA, and it does not require a peer review. We may well want to strongly suggest the peer review, but the suggestion of a GA prerequisite goes against the purpose of A-Class. The Walkerma (talk) 21:01, 26 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
FA-Class - Meets FA Criteria. (e.g. Atom) - Arman ^(Talk) 02:44, 26 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I fixed a couple of errors in the above description, which is otherwise a good working guide. The errors were in the GA-Class (which MUST have passed as GA) and A-Class (see details above). From a quick glance, the examples look good to me. Walkerma (talk) 21:01, 26 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

...and I inserted some verbiage in the Start- and C-class descriptions, to include cases that I thought were omitted from the original text (viz: "either incomplete..." and "...or a well-written framework..." since such articles aren't necessary poorly-written, unorganized, etc.; a good editor with limited subject matter expertise might write a great introduction and outline, for completion by experts). However I stupidly neglected to leave an explanatory comment here. Trevor Hanson (talk) 21:59, 26 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks to both Trevor and Walkerma for updating the descriptions. In practice when we rewrite the grading scale these descriptions need to be much more elaborate and specific and ideally we should use multiple examples from different wikiprojects. But right now we are trying to decide whether or not to add the C-class, and if that need has been clearly established then let's move forward by closing this poll and proceed towards actual rewrite of the grading scale. Arman ^(Talk) 02:59, 27 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Option D: Combine A and GA into GA/A class

Added by Father Goose.

Support

I can't support swapping A and GA because of semantic problems: "A" is traditionally the top grade, and "good" is something less than "top". More importantly, there are not a whole lot of practical differences that distinguish A and GA articles from each other. As I understand it, the two classes have origins in separate but redundant projects. They overlap -- they always have -- and it's time to just fold them together. The fact that we are considering swapping A and GA in ranking shows they are interchangeable.--Father Goose (talk) 06:53, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support for reasons given by Father Goose. SunCreator (talk) 23:35, 21 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Support for simplification. Tom (talk) 17:39, 24 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

As much as it bugs me that GA has a review process of some kind and A does not, a process as dramatic as a merge would not be particularly easy. If we are to consider this at all, then perhaps the best way of going about it would be to deprecate GA entirely, and convert GA-review into A-quality review. – ClockworkSoul 07:13, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- However it would be handled (merging, deprecating, etc.), it amounts to the same thing. I'd call it "GA/A" because "good articles" has much more history behind it, but does not fit in the "ABC" ranking scheme. Regardless, unless the two classes can be made distinct and non-redundant, they should be folded together.--Father Goose (talk) 07:52, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Milhist has an A-Class review system (based on three editors reviewing) and it works well. Increasingly, it is an essential pre-FAC step. --ROGER DAVIES ^talk 07:22, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- Milhist is probably not the best project to point to when discussing generalities: it is as close to the "ideal" wikiproject as I've ever seen and most projects are far, far less well-staffed and organized – Clockwork Soul 07:25, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I can see the attractions of this option. As I understand it, GA was originally an 'adequate' rating (ie an article was judged as being of a minimum acceptable standard for WP), and A is a project-specific rating that exists alongside, but separate from, GA. With the steady rise in GA standards though (the odd unsafe pass aside!), I wonder how much differentiation there really is between the two. EyeSerene^talk 10:23, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The fact that we are considering swapping the order of GA and A (which I don't support) does not mean they are interchangeable: instead it reflects the fact that there isn't an answer to the question, "Which is better, chalk or cheese?" Combining chalk and cheese is not a particularly palatable option :-) Instead, I recommend separating the Good article process entirely from WikiProject ratings. Geometry guy 10:54, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
No way. It will have a collateral damage to all projects which have an A-class reviewing department. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 18:11, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- See my proposal below that would make a special place for projects which have an A-class reviewing department.--Pharos (talk) 19:49, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, if you mean what I think you mean. MILHIST's "A" rating gives us the best of all worlds; we can rate the process instead of the articles, and as long as we continue to have confidence in the process, we don't have to look over their shoulders at the articles. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 00:18, 20 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- I'm not sure what you think I mean. But let me put it this way: are there any "A" articles that wouldn't pass GA? Should there be any A articles that couldn't pass GA? Separately, is there enough separation between GA and FA standards that a separate intermediate rating (A) should exist? If not, then I think A and GA should be synonymous.--Father Goose (talk) 01:15, 20 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  - I think there are probably a fair number of A-Class that wouldn't pass as GA (I've tagged a couple myself that way), and that is quite appropriate - that's why we have two separate tags. They indicate very different things. For example, a complete article which just needs the citation format cleaning up to make it into an FA - this could never pass GA but is perfectly good as an A. I suspect that there are some GAs that wouldn't pass muster as A, because of lack of comprehensiveness. Walkerma (talk) 01:55, 20 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose per my vote on Option A and B. Ncmvocalist (talk) 09:48, 20 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Comment I could see doing this, but I don't think it's particularly realistic. While GA already does have certain standards for comprehensiveness and verifiability, this could be expanded a bit to include some of the more subject-specific options fairly easy. But I don't think that some wikiprojects would want to give up their own control over the A-class rating. Although, in the view of all wikiprojects, what I don't like about A-class is that lack of common and clear criteria that all A-class articles should adhere to. This makes it a rather poor process wiki-wide, and an argument for just dumping A-class ratings entirely. Dr. Cash (talk) 15:11, 20 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. This would make it more difficult to continue project-specific A-class rating reviews such as the one at Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/A-class rating, and instead subject this level of article only to the review of the GA editors, who have historically been less focused on content and more on commas. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:26, 21 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- David, this is exactly the thinking behind Option G. Check it out!--Pharos (talk) 17:29, 21 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. apples and oranges. Majoreditor (talk) 03:40, 24 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Option E: Replace Start-class with C-Class

Support

In my opinion the start-class should renamed (or replaced with) C-Class. The word start is misleading, because it implies that every article that just has been starded deserves this rating. This is the reason why the quality of start-class articles is so poor. Ruslik (talk) 06:53, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
This would seem to be a sensible extension of the current naming system, without introducing another layer of bureaucracy and the need for more reviews. EyeSerene^talk 10:06, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Why implement more bureaucracy when we can simply do a renaming?--Pharos (talk) 19:40, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I strongly support this proposal, because the term "start" is overly specific, and renaming it to the more general "C" would increase consistency in our grading scheme. Adding "C" without removing "start" would mean too many levels. "Stub-class" already describes an article that was just started and isn't yet long enough. -- Rmrfstar (talk) 00:40, 20 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with the above statements, especially Pharos. Chris M. (talk) 00:48, 20 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I really don't see much of a different between 'start' and 'C' as it is, and I strongly oppose adding a new C class without other changes (see above). Personally, I don't care whether you call it 'start' or 'C', but there already is a 'stub' class, which is where articles 'start', so from this perspective, I guess it makes sense. Dr. Cash (talk) 15:13, 20 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support Agree Start is misleading. Would prefer start to be made D-Class and we have C-Class also. But still with or without C-Class then remove Start class, hence support. SunCreator (talk) 23:27, 21 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

I always figured that the reason that the quality of start quality articles was poor was because they are start quality articles. After all, if they were higher quality, wouldn't they most likely be B quality? ;) – Clockwork Soul 07:06, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Alternatively, start-class could be renamed D-class, with C created as proposed above. "D" may sound harsh, but start-class articles (that don't qualify as "C") need a tremendous amount of work.--Father Goose (talk) 07:41, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- I would be opposed to adding a "D-class" for two specific reasons.
  First, this approaches the old grammar school rating system and it is too easy to then add an "F" (for "Fail") class.
  Second, forgive my use of a theoretical crystal ball but I think "D-class" would have a tendency to become known as the "Delete-class". -- Low Sea (talk) 17:08, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  - "F" might as well be synonymous with deletion, so there's no point to an "F" class (AfD/prod/speedy are the "rating" process in those cases). D-class would be anything that is not bad enough to delete, and not a stub, but needs very serious work. There are plenty of articles that meet that description. Then there are ones that are actually pretty good, but need a bit more work before meeting B standards; those are Cs.--Father Goose (talk) 00:55, 20 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - unnecessary and arguments in support are meritless. Ncmvocalist (talk) 09:54, 20 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - there are articles which are above start class and are barely below B class. C is middle ground. miranda 03:11, 21 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - "Start" class simply means "Not a stub anymore". Whether you call this "Start" class or "C" class, it spans way, way too much of a variety of articles - from those that are only six paragraphs (that's not a stub) to those that have a couple of images and a number of footnotes and external links, but aren't quite good enough for "B" class. We absolutely need to split what is now "Start" class into two different classes, so we can measure progress (or the lack thereof). -- John Broughton (♫♫) 20:59, 21 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Option F: Rename or remove GA-Class to separate the GA designation from WikiProject ratings

This is not specifically the option F discussed below: the proposal is to separate the Good article designation from WikiProject ratings (hence it covers part (1) of option H as well). How this is done depends partly on what other options are supported. This is not a proposal to merge, downgrade, upgrade, or do anything to change the GA process and the Good article designation itself.

Support

See my comments here. Geometry guy 10:14, 20 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
For the record, my own preference is to rename GA-Class as B+-Class. Most GA's would then be either B+-Class or A-Class. Geometry guy 09:51, 22 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong support EyeSerene^talk 10:56, 20 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Well thought out plan. This is a separate designation away from the assessment scale and as such, should be separated. Woody (talk) 11:22, 20 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Removes confusion and simplifies assessment scale. Kevin Baas^talk 22:41, 20 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yes. GA = B + manual of style compliance. That really isn't a significant quality difference. GRBerry 17:45, 21 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment How is this related to manual of style compliance? The MOS doesn't cover this. Dr. Cash (talk) 17:47, 22 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

Multiple editors have referred to this issue, and I don't believe this poll will make any sense unless we gauge consensus for an option of this form as well. Geometry guy 10:14, 20 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Whether renaming/removing the WikiProject GA-class, or anything else that would decouple it from Good Article assessment, this would be extremely helpful. EyeSerene^talk 10:56, 20 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Oppose The solution is not to decouple any assessments or projects from the assessment scale. There needs to be a clear and visible path in taking articles from stub-class all the way through FA, and GA is a part of that process. It would make far more sense to move GA up one step above A-class, so that that path would go from the wikiproject assessments (stub-->start-->B-->A), and once it completed that, it would go through the larger and more community-wide assessment projects of GA and ultimately FA. Dr. Cash (talk) 15:18, 20 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- I think this is more in the nature of removing the current confusion (by whatever means) between the Good Article WikiProject and individual WikiProject-awarded GA-classes. EyeSerene^talk 17:46, 20 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

There shouldn't be any confusion there. The GA "class" should not be awarded by wikiprojects, ever, period. It is there as a class in the same sense that FA is, to designate where in the rating scale that the article falls; GA & FA require outside review processes, and adding either one of those needs to go through either WP:FAC or WP:GAN. Any wikiproject adding a 'GA' class on their own needs to discontinue that practice immediately. Dr. Cash (talk) 18:31, 20 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

A WikiProject can award GA-Class: if it has an A-Class article which is also a Good article, and the project decides that it is no longer A-Class, then they can make it GA-Class. The system is so confusing that it even confuses the experts.

A WikiProject is just a bunch of editors of varying experience. No matter how much we jump up and down saying "desist", there will still be editors who assess articles as GA-Class without realising that there is a requirement to use the Good article process. It crops up regularly at GAR.

Furthermore, many WikiProjects have their own version of the assessment scheme on this page. If a WikiProject decides it no longer wants the Good article process to be a requirement for GA-Class in its template, and amends its scheme, who are we to stop them? The WikiProject assessments are there to help WikiProjects track article quality after all.

There seems to be some illusion here that there exists a universal Stub->Start->B->GA->A->FA scheme for recognising article quality. A look at e.g. Talk:John von Neumann demonstrates how untrue this is. Geometry guy 19:21, 20 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If only... EyeSerene^talk 20:18, 20 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Please elaborate on specific wikiprojects that actually assign a GA-class without going through WP:GAN. I have yet to see this in my experience. Dr. Cash (talk) 03:49, 21 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Here is an example of a WikiProject member rating an article as GA-Class without using WP:GAN. This persisted until January this year. I am not aware of any WikiProjects which routinely assign GA-Class (apart from downgrading A-Class) without using the Good article process (this part of my comment was hypothetical), although Aryaman has indicated a belief that there are some, and may wish to comment here. Geometry guy 17:14, 21 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose Confusing, and it makes GA irrelevant, which is absurd considering how many thousands of articles this project has reviewed, improved, and assessed. VanTucky ^{Vote in my weird poll!} 02:58, 21 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Scraping GA is another step backward in internationalisation. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 04:15, 21 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Very strongly oppose abolishing GA. Merging GA with A might be acceptable though. 69.140.152.55 (talk) 05:01, 22 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
There is very little point in contributing to a poll if you are not going to read what other editors have written. There is no plan here to abolish GA. Contributions made in write-only mode do not help to form consensus. Several editors did not even read far enough to realise that this poll is using approval voting. Geometry guy 09:49, 22 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

While there is no direct plan to abolish GA, removing it from the assessments scale will ultimately lead to the project's demise. Dr. Cash (talk) 15:30, 22 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Glad that the abolition of GA is not being considered. And thanks for the constructive feedback. I oppose renaming "GA" to "B+." At this time, however, I think that the most important thing to change is to get articles with copyright infringement or severe policy problems out of the B-class. There's no need to establish a new class for these; just move them to the start-class or, for particularly serious problems such as copyright infringement, delete or stubify them. Right now, I decline to cast a vote for any of the options. 69.140.152.55 (talk) 09:51, 23 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. De-coupling GA from the assessment scale is risky. Majoreditor (talk) 03:49, 24 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Option G: Community-granted A and WikiProject-granted A

As proposed here

Support

Pharos (talk) 20:42, 20 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

At the moment, the "WikiProject A" granted by, eg, WP:MILHIST is considerably higher in requirements (content, breadth, MOS, citations, and so forth) than the current Community-granted GA. Do you envisage raising the GA standard to make the "community granted A" equivalent? Or lowering the A standard to match the current GA? (In fact the mil hist quality scale offers a good analysis of stub/start/B class articles as well. We could adapt their checklists and criteria for general use.) Gwinva (talk) 21:48, 20 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- I would envision keeping the standards about where they are (though I would have no problem with raising GA a degree). "WikiProject A" could perhaps be considered a higher standard, but not explicitly. Under this system it would not be meaningful to rank the two, because one would be for certain subject areas assessed by WikiProjects which have dedicated review departments, and the other would be a catchall for all other subjects. It would not actually be possible to assess "other" subjects to the same extent as those with dedicated review departments, when one is outside the context of a WikiProject which has content experts. There would be no overlapping jurisdiction.--Pharos (talk) 22:56, 20 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Unnecessarily confusing, and provides no tangible benefit that I can see. VanTucky ^{Vote in my weird poll!} 03:01, 21 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- Benefits:
- Strongly encourages MilHist-like review departments at WikiProjects, which can provide better reviews than the GA community process.
- Ends "A" being granted without process in many WikiProjects.
- There is a clear place where every article should be assessed, and no overlapping jurisdictions.
- Eliminates confusion over relative "rank" of "A" and "GA".
Agree with VT. Some members in WPs and the community might have unnecessary standards for assessing an article. miranda 03:08, 21 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- Um, please explain further. This sounds like a general criticism of assessing anything.--Pharos (talk) 03:33, 21 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Whiskey? Tango? Foxtrot? Is this a joke? Dr. Cash (talk) 03:37, 21 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- OK, did you read the proposal?--Pharos (talk) 03:58, 21 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Umm,... YES. It really is that stupid. Far too complicated and bureaucratic. Dr. Cash (talk) 04:02, 21 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You're entitled to your opinions, but please try to keep your replies civil. – Clockwork Soul 13:50, 21 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I take offense to those remarks. I don't find anything "uncivil" about them. All I was doing was making my point that this is a dumb idea. 'Nuf said. Dr. Cash (talk) 13:51, 21 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Be as offended as you like, but calling somebody's ideas "stupid", doesn't exactly fit the definition of civility. Let's just leave that there and not thread-jack this discussion. – Clockwork Soul 13:55, 21 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, whatever. I still disagree strongly with this proposal. Dr. Cash (talk) 14:21, 21 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, this is a nice option. All A articles must be accessed by a Wikiproject. Every Wikiproject must employ a person to review the A articles. Amartyabag ^TALK2ME 00:49, 21 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I hope you don't mean "employ" as in "employee". Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 00:01, 22 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Further comments

I propose that we finish this first round at midnight UTC May 25-26. Walkerma (talk) 05:31, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

OK. I'll leave comments about this on the Signpost's talk page, as well as the Village Pump, et al. We should try to advertise this as much as possible. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 05:49, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I've done the village pump, as well as the 1.0 page and the community portal notice board. Please do mention it on the Signpost, though. Thanks, Walkerma (talk) 06:01, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think we have two distinct issues here, in terms of the high end (GA/A), and the low end (Start/B), of the assessment scale. It appears at this point we might come to a clearer consensus on these issues if they were addressed separately.--Pharos (talk) 03:39, 20 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Kevin Baas has suggested in a recent edit that this poll be converted from approval voting to a support/oppose vote on each option. I reverted his edit, as it is not good practice to change procedures in the middle of a vote, and also because such a change should be discussed first. However, I notice that many editors are phrasing their "comments" in the form of an "oppose", so it may be worth having a discussion about this. I am personally against changing Walkerma's approach, but it isn't my call. I would say, however, that if there is any change, then the deadline needs to be extended considerably. Geometry guy 20:09, 21 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I saw all the oppose votes and thought that that was what was intended, and the lack of an oppose section was just a historical artifact. I'm fine w/approval voting, although there are some proposals that are orthogonal to each other. (Such as add C and remove GA.) Kevin Baas^talk 20:32, 21 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

We seem to have at this point:

low-end:

Do nothing
Add C
Replace start w/C

high-end:

A is above GA. (i.e. do nothing)
merge GA w/A (and/or B+/B). (i.e. eliminate or rename GA-class)
GA is above A.

and some yes/no questions.

But I think we're too far through the process to start over - so i'd suggest waiting till the vote closes, implementing the results, and then resolving any remaining questions/issues, perhaps w/another, more organized, poll. Kevin Baas^talk 20:50, 21 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

On further thought, the proposals can well be organized into a number of yes/no votes:

Should a class, "C", be introduced, either replacing "start" or inserted between start and "B"?
- If so, should it replace start or be a new class inserted between start and "B"?
Should "GA" class be renamed (for instance, to "A" or "B+")?
- If so, should it be merged w/A or renamed to B+?
- If not, should "GA" class be moved to above "A" class?
Should there be two "A"'s: a community-granted and a wikiproject-granted, distinguished on the talk page?

Kevin Baas^talk 18:15, 22 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

Proposed addition of option F: rename GA-Class as B+ Class

With apologies to Walkerma, I'm afraid I really must propose the addition of an option F. I'm proposing it in a new section per request. The purpose of this option is to clear up a long-standing headache in the assessment system, which is the widespread confusion between GA-Class and Good article. The Good article process and the WikiProject assessment systems are totally different content review processes with different goals and different methodologies. The current scale attempts to shoe-horn a community-wide assessment process which focuses on style and policy-compliance issues into an assessment scale that varies from project to project and is managed by content experts. This doesn't wash and causes problem after problem. That this is an issue can already be seen in the fact that an article can be A-Class without being a Good article, and of course a Good article need not be GA-Class (with this again varying from WikiProject to WikiProject). Thus the current scale looks something like:

Stub - Start - B - A
               |   |
              GA -FA

Further, the current system leads to Good article reviewers adjusting ratings without any sort of WikiProject consent. When I delist a Good article which is A-Class, do I drop it to B? Good article reviewers also often do not have the content expertise to judge the place of an article on a WikiProject assessment scale.

What I am proposing is that we remove the Good article issue entirely from WikiProject assessment scales by renaming GA-Class as B+ Class. This recognises the fact that Good article is a community-wide (or at least, project independent) seal of approval that the article meets basic standards, and allows Good article status to be awarded to articles of any class except FA-Class. The green dot could be added as a symbol to the rating if desired. For the most part, this would mean B+ and A articles have a green dot. Good article reviewers could add and remove the dot without affecting WikiProject ratings.

If we could sort out this headache, it would make my day. Geometry guy 10:42, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I support this proposal--or indeed, any variant; for instance the projects could work according to an A/B/C/D scale, while FA and GA would remain community-wide assessments. I note that the above discussion seems mainly to come from people involved in the projects. It would be good to drop a note with those involved in GA and FA, to make them aware. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 10:50, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I support this change, but not the renaming part. We don't want to get a green dot in mainspace at the expense of further demoting ourselves (Or the FA crowd will have one more reason to oppose the green dot proposal: they will say "it was a GA class but now it's only a B+ class, not even reaching A." OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 17:44, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure how this separates GA from the project assessment scale - renaming GA to B+ seems to me to be wedging it firmly into the scale:

Stub - Start - B - B+ - A
                        |
                       FA

Have I misunderstood? For the record, like jb I'm all for anything that will help to make things clearer ;) EyeSerene^talk 16:59, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, you both have. Here is a better diagram, which might help clarify these misunderstandings

Stub -> Start -> B -> B+ -> A -> FA Class (WikiProject class assessments)
                                 ||
                           GA -> FA       (Community wide/independent content review and FA-Class = Featured article)

The purpose is not to rename Good articles as B+ !! It is to separate completely the Good article designation from the WikiProject assessment scheme. Your misunderstanding demonstrates the huge problem with referring to articles as GA-Class.

I would also note that this issue has received some attention on this page recently: see Wikipedia_talk:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team/Assessment#A vs GA. Geometry guy 19:11, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the clarification - the similar nomenclature is a recipe for confusion, and I'm still not sure I understand the difference between a Good Article and a GA-class article. However, could your diagram be incorporated with the Stub > Start > C > B > A scheme that's been proposed above? It may result in exisiting 'B' class articles being reclassified as 'C' class, but it would avoid 'B+' as a somewhat awkward designation. EyeSerene^talk 19:31, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If both this proposal and C-Class were accepted, the diagram would become

Stub -> Start -> C -> B -> B+ -> A -> FA Class (WikiProject class assessments)
                                      ||
                                GA -> FA       (Community wide/independent content review and FA-Class = Featured article)

for reasons of independence. I agree there is an opportunity to eliminate B+ by using the new B for the best current B-Class articles, and the new C for the rest. This is why I haven't yet supported the C-Class proposal. Geometry guy 19:56, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with most of what you say, but for simplicitys sake I think we should go with A B C instead of A B- B+.. I do support the separation of community evaluations: GA FA from wikiproject evaluations: A B and hopefully C Acer (talk) 20:01, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Okay. In view of these remarks, option H below, and remarks made by editors in the other options above, I've added a more generic option F to separate the community GA evaluation from the WikiProject assessment scheme. Geometry guy 10:17, 20 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Strong oppose The solution should not be to remove GA from the assessment scale. The solution should be a tighter integration of all review & assessment options across all levels (FA, GA, PR, and the wikiproject assessment scales). We need to work together here; don't isolate one group and leave them out. Dr. Cash (talk) 14:59, 20 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Strong Oppose Absolutely not. This proposed rename would be totally confusing, and it would be a watering down of what GA means. Dr. Cash hits it on the head, leaving out GA is big mistake, considering we have assessed thousands of quality articles. Quite a few more than FA, actually. VanTucky ^{Vote in my weird poll!} 02:55, 21 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think this is a further illustration of the confusion created by having two assessment schemes with similar names, and proof of the need for Gguy's proposal to be implemented. WikiProject GA-class is not the same as Good Article status, as awarded by WP:WPGA. EyeSerene^talk 07:42, 21 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Umm, actually GA-class IS the same thing as Good Article Status. When articles are promoted to GA, they are assigned GA-class in the assessments. I am still waiting to hear from someone regarding my request for an actual wikiproject that assigns a 'GA-class' assessment without going through WP:GAN. All that's been offered so far is one instance of one user assigning it to a wikiproject, which was later reverted, with an actual nomination and review taking place several weeks later. Dr. Cash (talk) 04:06, 22 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I apologise for my lack of clarity ;) Let's see if I can explain myself better: I agree, the guidelines on the V1.0 grading scheme currently state that WikiProject GA-class should be awarded by taking an article through the Good Article assessment process; thus a Good Article award also translates into a GA-class award. However, this leads to contradictions later on - for example, if a WikiProject then reassesses the article as A-class... Clearly it cannot be A-class and GA-class at the same time, and the A replaces the GA in the WikiProject template, but the article is not removed from WP:GA - it retains its Good Article status, despite no longer being a GA-class article. This seems completely illogical to me, and suggests that we should either:

fully integrate Good Article status into the hierarchy, so an A-class award would automatically replace GA status (can't see this happening for all sorts of reasons!)

or

remove the GA-class from the WikiProject hierarchy, so GA status is completely separated and no longer translates into an equivalent class on the hierarchy (which is, I think, what Gguy's proposing)

I hope that's clearer! EyeSerene^talk 11:47, 22 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I don't really see the issue here. The way I see it, A-class articles being above GA means that they should adhere to the GA criteria, and then go beyond. I read that as A-class being a subset of GA, sort of like a GA+. And I have, and will continue to, delist A-class articles that are not GA, especially if there is no A-class review appearing anywhere in article talk or archives. If you are going to remove GA from the assessments scale, then we should remove FA as well. Let the wikiprojects do their own thing from stub-->start-->B-->A, and then let the community assign a Featured or Good status to it. The same arguments for having A below GA, also apply to FA -- how can an A-class article be "below" FA, if A is supposed to be the top? But removing GA from assessments scale on its own is only devaluing the project, which is something that I simply cannot agree to. Dr. Cash (talk) 15:20, 22 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, I think that suggestion ("Let the wikiprojects do their own thing from stub-->start-->B-->A, and then let the community assign a Featured or Good status to it.) has a lot to recommend it. GA and FA have to serve the entire community, not just those articles that also happen to come under a WikiProject, so why not make the distinction clear? As you say, A-class articles exist that would not qualify as Good Articles, and although according to the V1.0 assessment scale that shouldn't really be the case, barring FA and GA WikiProjects are ultimately free to classify their articles in whatever way they see fit. The assessment scale is not, despite appearances, unified or even consistent. I do understand your objections and see the sense behind them (and it should go without saying that I certainly don't want to devalue WPGA!), but from other comments on this page the way you regard A-class (as a subset of GA) clearly isn't the way some others regard it. Doesn't this indicate, if we're not even all on the same page, that the whole thing needs deconstructing? EyeSerene^talk 17:00, 22 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I could support decoupling BOTH GA AND FA from the assessment scale, since they are separate processes and not tied to the wikiprojects. This might actually make sense; so that we could essentially read it like, "This article is a 'A-class Featured Article', or a 'A-class Good Article', or a 'B-class Good article'. It might even strengthen the system a bit by creating somewhat of an unwritten rule of requiring wikiproject A-class prior to FA nomination, or wikiproject B-class prior to GA nomination. Although I don't think this should be a written rule, since an article could certainly be reassessed on the fly during FA or GA reviewing. Although theoretically, all FAs should be A-class upon initial listing at FA, separating FA as well as GA out of the assessment scheme would give the wikiprojects another avenue to review older FAs themselves prior to listing at WP:FAR, which would make it possible to have a 'B-class Featured Article'. It might also help to alert Raul & Sandy (or whoever runs WP:FAR) about the quality of the older FAs, if a wikiproject reassessed the article at a lower class for some reason; they could then take appropriate action if necessary.

However, I still think that decoupling GA alone without taking action regarding FA is the wrong approach, and will continue to oppose that avenue. Dr. Cash (talk) 18:03, 22 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Proposed addition of option G: Combine A and GA into GA/A class, process delegated by commmunity in cases of mature WikiProjects

I think that this can address the problem of variability of quality and maturity among WikiProjects. The community-wide GA process would have the role of giving "A"s to articles, except in selected topic areas where a mature WikiProject supersedes this role.

So, we have a vote, say, that establishes that WikiProject Military history is mature enough, and has a thorough enough process, to handle "A"-granting in its military history topic area. The designation of "A-granting WikiProject" can also be removed by community decision, if standards fall in the future. This would be like educational accreditation.

And maybe an immature WikiProject could mark articles "B+" (which would have the same rank as "B") in preparation for future "A" accreditation.

So, the default would be the community-wide GA process, with the participation of maybe three or four "A-granting WikiProjects" in selected topic areas to start.--Pharos (talk) 17:09, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Again, this seems to be a tacit recognition that (whatever the original intention) there is no longer any meaningful distinction between GA- and A-class articles. I'm not entirely sure this is actually the case though - certainly for MilHist, who are blessed with knowledgable and prolific editors, expert content reviews are no problem (and beyond the current remit of GA). Are you suggesting that GA take on content reviews in addition to the current criteria for articles that belong to less-'professional' projects (or no project at all)? EyeSerene^talk 19:15, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

There are quite significant distinctions at present. For the great majority of WikiProjects, A-class has no meaningful review process, and no real enforceable standards at all (and so quite below GA). For WikiProjects like MilHist there is a great review process, and A-class may be considered equivalent or even better than GA. I am essentially proposing that we take away "A-granting powers" from immature WikiProjects, so that "A" is more meaningful. Possibly we should still distinguish between "Community-granted A" and "WikiProject-granted A", but these should still be relatively similar standards (with "WikiProject-granted A" perhaps considered a higher standard, but not explicitly).--Pharos (talk) 19:26, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I think that unless GA criteria are expanded and the GA WikiProject can find subject experts able to take on content reviews (and so assess to the same standard as the MilHist A-class, which I believe is generally regarded as above GA) there should still be distinctions between community and project A-class. This would be a significant quality-control wake-up call for many WikiProjects though - not necessarily a bad thing IMO ;) EyeSerene^talk 19:53, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed, not only would this provide a wake-up call to the WikiProjects, it would also set a clear boundary between "Community-granted A" as a catchall for uncovered subjects, and "WikiProject-granted A" for specific covered subject areas. There would be no more conflicting jurisdiction, and as more WikiProjects adopt MilHist-like practices, new subject areas would one by one come under this more rigorous scrutiny.--Pharos (talk) 23:09, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I would name it "A" class, though, essentially droping "GA-class", thus simplifying:

Stub - Start - C - B - A - FA

Kevin Baas^talk 20:29, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, the idea would be to name it "A" class, but we would still distinguish between "Community-granted A" and "WikiProject-granted A" on the talk page box.--Pharos (talk) 22:17, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Strong Oppose Again, too similar to be anything but confusing and detrimental to the good work that GA does. VanTucky ^{Vote in my weird poll!} 02:56, 21 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- Perhaps my wording has not been clear. This proposal would leave the GA process to the exact same "good work that [it] does" now, except that for certain subject areas where highly mature WikiProjects (like MilHist) have developed alternate processes.--Pharos (talk) 04:37, 21 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I hate to point this out, but I think wikiproject military history is in the serious minority here -- most wikiprojects don't have very clear and developed processes for reviews. Plus, specific projects aside, the criteria for 'A-class' varies quite widely among all wikiprojects. Dr. Cash (talk) 13:42, 21 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

That's the whole point of this proposal. MilHist is in the minority now, but it shouldn't be. The proposal would strongly encourage MilHist-like review departments at other WikiProjects, and only those with clear and developed processes would get "A-granting authority" at all. In the beginning, there might only be three or four WikiProjects that fit these criteria, but I think eventually most WikiProjects that have a decent-sized membership will develop in this direction.--Pharos (talk) 17:04, 21 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Question: What if an article is part of more than one WikiProject? More interestingly, what if there are fundamental philosophical differences between the WikiProjects? And finally, can article editors "forum shop" by changing the WikiProject templates on an article's talk page? 69.140.152.55 (talk) 08:28, 23 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Proposed addition of option H: Separate DA/GA/FA (Wikipedia Quality Rating) from A/B/C/D (WikiProject Assessment Rating)

I think that these two systems need to be separated from one another entirely. WikiProject Assessment should be carried out within the projects which treat a particular article, granting a 'grade' A/B/C/D. An article should reach A-Grade according to that project's assessment standard prior to becoming eligible for a Wikipedia Quality Rating. If it belongs to more than one WikiProject, it needs to satisfy the A-Grade requirements of all those projects. (This should be intuitive: an article that brings together knowledge from two or more fields needs to be A-Grade in respect to both of those fields before it can be considered 'Good' from Wikipedia's 'global' perspective.) Wikipedia Quality Rating, on the other hand, looks at the article from the perspective of the encyclopaedia as a whole, and therefore cannot possibly use the same kinds of standards as a WikiProject Assessment. An article that is still undergoing development (i.e. D/C/B) should receive a Wikipedia Quality Rating of DA for 'Developing Article'. A WikiProject is responsible for ensuring that an article is detailed and accurate regarding its area of expertise. Its members, due to the nature of the work they do here, often lack the broad vision that is needed to rate articles for the encyclopaedia. Experienced reviewers, however, while they probably lack expertise in the particular field, are capable of viewing the project as a whole and rating the article accordingly. Thus:

(1) Separate the two systems entirely.

(2) Make it incumbent upon all WikiProjects to develop detailed Assessment guidelines for articles within their scope.

(3) Make A-Grade WikiProject Assessment required for nomination to Wikipedia Quality Rating.

—Aryaman (talk) 20:12, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The problem with that is that it introduces a lot of unnecessary red tape as a requirement for GA and FA, which is not necessarily a good idea. Currently, there is no requirement for an article to be a GA before an FA; there's not even a requirement that the article be peer reviewed before it can be submitted at FAC. Additionally, many WikProjects are not capable of producing the assessment guidelines you propose, be it because they're nascent, or just not very active. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 22:50, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, this system has its benefits but it relies on active and interested WikiProjects. That is simply not the reality at the moment. Most projects simply haven't the interest in creating comprehensive assessment departments. Woody (talk) 22:54, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with (1) (at least in part), but not with the rest, for the reasons mentioned by Titoxd and Woody. Geometry guy 10:26, 20 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

'Developing article' is a horrible idea, probably far worse than the "Jump to Conclusions" mat. Seems like it's adding more bureaucracy and process, and in the end it won't be much different than a 'start' class article. Dr. Cash (talk) 15:02, 20 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I read this proposal very differently. Sorry for the long comment, but I think this idea deserves more attention. Throughout these discussions, I see two separate recurring issues:
1. Defining a useful taxonomy for articles, incorporating the distinct perspectives of:
Subject matter expertise, and

Encyclopaedic integration.

2. Creating a useful family of processes for classifying articles within that taxonomy, processes that accommodate both:
Mature WikiProjects, and

Nascent projects that sometimes can produce FA articles, despite a lack of broad editorial resources and consensus.

I of course agree that a more-bureaucratic process is doomed to failure. However, I don't see that creating intuitively meaningful taxonomic pigeonholes must require red tape. Thus:

I think the proposed DA/GA/FA and A/B/C/D schemes do a very good job at addressing the first issue, by recognizing that subject matter coverage and encyclopaedic quality are orthogonal issues (to an extent). The problem remains of whether such a system could be practical.

Clearly, the requirement for a WikiProject A-Grade before a GA rating won't work in today's environment, unless we wanted to restrict GA/FA ratings to mature WikiProjects. But the obvious solution is to allow individual WikiProjects to establish their own GA threshold (A-grade, B-grade, or some magic internal classification – essentially an automatic "no consensus" for promoting certain articles). For nascent WikiProjects, such thresholds would not apply. Red tape would be an internal WikiProject decision.

I don't find the idea of a DA-rating as a horrible idea per se. This rating would simply define an explicit default stratum for non-rated articles – classifying them by using a named placeholder, rather than by the absence of a GA/FA rating. Isn't "DA" more meaningful than "non-GA/non-FA"? This separate rating scale makes it clear that Stub>Start>C>... are not intrinsically part of the progression to GA/FA, but an independent quality axis.
Trying to bronze-plate the diverse rating schemata already in use guarantees that the system can never make sense. Trevor Hanson (talk) 02:17, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Option I - Proposal of C-class usage, with other special usages

Eh, never mind - since it seems that no one agrees - just ignore this.^Mitch32^contribs 23:06, 19 May 2008 (UTC) ~~Since it seems this discussion is going nowhere I have a new proposal:~~ [reply]

Add C-class - C-class would benefit those B-class articles not ready for GA. I know that's what B+ is for, but adding a + sign does not define much. I do feel C-class then B-class would do much better.

Use Developing article and redefine Stub - I feel this could be shoved between Start and Stub. A definition of a stub, at least in my eyes would be something like. A developing article to me would be like K-232 (Kansas highway) - which has prose and the right templates included. A stub would be something like K-9 (Kansas highway) which is not complete with the infobox and has minor prose. Start would be something like New York State Route 443, which has a certain amount of prose and is detailed, but not complete.

GAN becoming a little more strict - Per discussions on WT:GAN, I feel GAN should be a little stricter on what it accepts. However, I do not believe what was proposed about turning it into FAC-type is a good idea. Instead, I feel a full review of the review by an experinced editor, such as User:Derek.cashman, would help benefit what's added. If the article doesn't have a real full review, the article can go either to GAN, or be failed by the 2nd reviewer. Something like at Talk:New York State Route 9L would be in my eyes, a good review.

Merge A-class into GA under certain conditions - As I see this is a highly good idea, I feel there are some drawbacks and there are some advantages. One major drawback is that without A-class, FAC would be loaded with people saying they are ready when they are clearly not. If it were to go through, I'd say make peer review given more attention and make sure its ready for FAC, not just GAN passed straight to FAC. This'll cause stress on reviewers and the nominators as well.

Redefine the B-class - To see that an article is ready for GAN, I suggest that redifining the B-class would be in order. This is sort of like FAC and the A-class thing above, it would as well help the backlog at GAN with less articles that are really ready. Such example would be New York State Route 343, which I have in nomination. I will regret that I have 11 GANs at the moment, and is causing a backlog, but I can slow down and this may help. No B+ class in this case.

~~I am not saying that all will go through, but this is, in my opinion, a twice better option then some I've seen.^Mitch32^contribs 22:47, 19 May 2008 (UTC)~~[reply]

Comment

Frankly, I oppose all of this. It seems to be orientating the assessment scale towards GA, something which I wholeheartedly disagree with. Woody (talk) 22:52, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I'm afraid I must agree. I think GAN is better than it ever was, and I believe it should be free to stay its own entity. For various reasons, I am also somewhat opposed to your other proposals, as well. While good ideas, I feel the risks outweigh the benefits. Juliancolton ^Tropical ^Cyclone 22:58, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Conclusions

I'm posting comments now, as I need to head to bed soon, and I may not have internet access for the next day or two. The voting will close fairly soon, but - barring any last-minute surges, it looks pretty clear that:

There is definite interest in a new C-Class, though a similar number of people are opposed.
There is less obvious support for putting A below GA, and some are strongly opposed to that.
There is moderate support for removing GA from the scheme altogether, but some strong opposition to that idea as well.
Other options do not seem to have gathered "traction".

Regarding #2, I don't think there is a strong consensus for change, so I would judge that we should leave things the same. Regarding #3, I actually made made such a proposal in December 2006; although many supported the idea then, those opposed were much stronger in their views, and there certainly wasn't a strong consensus for change. The arguments made now seem similar to then, and despite my personal support for #3 I don't think the consensus for change is there now. If the bot is amended to indicate GAs in the table automatically (like we do for Version 0.5 content) then perhaps we could initiate another discussion on that topic.

Several of the "no change" voting people indicated clarifying the current system - we are in fact doing that very thing. Please help out with this!

That leaves #1. I think we do need a second round to get a wider set of opinions before we decide either way. My own thought is to gather further opinions by spamming the WikiProjects. After all, that is where the assessments are coordinated. But I'd like to get people's thoughts on what to do next. I'm proposing:

Titoxd and Holon (if they're willing!) and any other volunteers should get a few good examples of articles indicating how things work (at least supposedly!) now, and how those same examples might be evaluated under the proposed S/S/C/B/A &(GA/FA) assessment system.
Just us two? The more the merrier... ;) Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 19:20, 27 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Definitely the more the merrier!
Work out how best to gather consensus - voting? If so, using approval only, or yes/no? I actually like how the things worked above - you can count approval votes, but also read support and oppose comments to gather people's views. If we do go for a simple "To add C or not to add C" poll, that should be simpler to judge than the above discussion.
Then ask WikiProject members to vote/comment/whatever on the add C/don't add C question.

Please give suggestions below. Walkerma (talk) 22:54, 25 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

Thank you for calling this poll, for presiding over it, and commenting on it so eloquently. A new vote on C or not-C is the obvious way forward. My own interest is of course in the GA separation issue. I was really surprised by the fact that very few editors commented on this issue. There was some support from editors here, but also objections from significant GA regulars. This poll, unfortunately, occurred just after a poll about the introduction of the GA green dot into the mainspace. Consequently, I believe, insecurity about GA fed into the opposition. I hope a clearer case for separation can be made in the future. Geometry guy 21:44, 26 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
When we reach a consensus on this, could someone post the final decision at User talk:Pyrospirit/metadata? That way I can adjust the assessment script/gadget to reflect the new scale. I'll be rather busy with final exams over the next couple weeks, so I might not have time to check this page. Pyrospirit (talk · contribs) 00:13, 27 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- Definitely, and Happy Melon as well - these scripts are invaluable for people doing assessments. Thanks a lot for your support with this work. Walkerma (talk) 23:11, 28 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Aye, thanks Walkerma, it's good to revisit these things now and then ;) Perhaps next time if we propose to separate both FA and GA from the scale... EyeSerene^talk 09:26, 27 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I believe a final up/down !vote is the way to go as well. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 19:20, 27 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I agree that we will probably need to revisit the GA separation issue at some point. That wasn't on the original agenda for this vote (I didn't want to be seen as a "bad loser" by pushing it a second time!), but on balance it is something we should probably debate again. What I'd like to do is to see about getting the bot to display GA (and maybe FA) status in the tables automatically - which should be easy - and then perhaps it would be appropriate for us to debate this topic. Thankfully we don't need to worry about that issue while rewriting the details of the criteria. As for the current debate, it looks as if people are OK with a simple (but wider) yes/no vote on C-Class, but I'd like to see some good examples before we open the polls. Walkerma (talk) 23:07, 28 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I'll get working on those tonight. I'd really prefer we open them soon, though, because that way, we still have the inertia of the previous discussion with us, which will hopefully help us gain more consensus. I'll also spam {{Watchlist-notice}} with this vote when it starts, as nobody objected to me doing so when I asked about it. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 05:54, 29 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I didn't have that much time to be able to make a fully-fleshed out example comparison, but here's what I would consider examples of Start-Class, C-Class and B-Class, using articles I'm familiar with:

Start	Hurricane Diana (1984)	Short article on an important storm. Completely unreferenced, and lacks a lot of content, particularly in the impact section. There's an inclusion of a trivia section, which violate Wikipedia guidelines. Some issues with the prose itself. Very weak and short lede section for a major hurricane that made landfall. Poorly illustrated. A lot of the content in the external links meets WP:RS, but is not in the article.
C	Tropical Storm Tammy (2005)	Has an okay amount of content, but lacks information and organization in areas. The Preparations section of the article is stubbish, and could contain more information that is relevant to a tropical cyclone article (e.g. Was a state of emergency in those states? Who gave the tropical storm warnings? Were there any other government mobilizations? Evacuations?) The impact section is weak on references, and gives an impression that the article was half-researched. (Was the NCDC consulted for the article?) There is too much emphasis on the storm history and meteorological trivia. Better than Diana above, but still not close to GA status.
B	Tropical Storm Erin (2007)	Better article than both Tammy and Diana. It could have a better lede, but it is adequate. Complete preparations, and impact sections, although the retirement stub should be reworded somehow. Excellent storm history section. Has some weird formatting issues in the image in the preparations section. Needs updating and revision, as a fairly significant document (the official Tropical Cyclone Report, or TCR) was just released. Might be ready for GA status, and is mostly ready for stable releases with a copyedit or two.

These examples may suck, as they're as usual about hurricanes, but since the articles are similar, we can compare and contrast more easily, I think. Any other examples? Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 10:02, 29 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

C=Terracotta Army; B= Burr-Hamilton duel; A=Freyja? Ling.Nut (talk) 11:43, 29 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Here's examples from what I'm used to:

Start	Pennsylvania Route 663	Missing a section (history), needs references, etc. Certainly not B or C.
C	Pennsylvania Route 739	Needs some work to be B-class and is about ready, work is missing like cite web and some typos/rewrites. Definately a C-class
B	Pennsylvania Route 402	Well-written, detailed in every section. Has pictures to describe the route, enough where it is close to GAN.

These are good examples IMO, and I feel that USRD will be having a field day with C-class.^Mitch32^contribs 12:00, 29 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Let me make a comment here about how we describe these classes and cite examples. Most of the descriptions I've seen of Start- and C-classes are rather negative – they focus on faults, deficiencies, and problems, such as (from above) "completely unreferenced...lacks a lot of content...issues with the prose...weak and short lead section...poorly illustrated." All of this is no doubt true. Yet let's think about the "preferred" progression of an ideal article from Stub- to A-class. It would be possible for a thoughtful editor to husband an article through Stub-, Start-, C-, and B-class statuses over the course of weeks, as it evolves in public through a series of carefully written versions. The Start version might thus consist of an introduction and a good outline. The C-class might fill in major details and supply key references, and might begin to draw on a pool of other editors with subject matter expertise. In the later versions, in-line references and topic depth would increase. This process might in fact be an ideal model for article development, rather than expecting them to burst on us "from the brow of Zeus" in complete A-class glory. My point here is that we have tended to describe the lower classes in a pejorative way, despite the fact that every good article will usually go through these stages. A good Start-class outline might even be more useful than a prosaic B-class treatise. In other words, I think there's such a thing as a good Stub, a good Start-class article, and a good C-class article, and I think we should be offering guidance on how to create these in a way that will their facilitate later expansion into B- and A-class articles. Trevor Hanson (talk) 18:59, 29 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Or to put it another way, a good series of class examples might show the same article in a progression of stages, showing how it improves, rather than a series of different articles each with problems needing correction. I haven't found a good one to cite, but perhaps somebody can suggest one. Trevor Hanson (talk) 19:02, 29 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Trevor, this is an excellent point! Start-Class articles are frequently perfectly adequate for most purposes, and many print encyclopedia articles are just stubs. I think we could do this "article timeline" using article history. If you could find a suitable set of article versions, we could include it in the poll description, and also afterwards in the assessment scheme (which we're rewriting this spring).

I will look. Here is one sequence, based on the evolution of Mobile Bay jubilee: as stub, as Start-class, as C- or B-class. However, I think we can find examples showing a more dramatic progression. Active editors reading this can probably think of articles that have evolved well and smoothly under their stewardship; I encourage you to spotlight your own examples. Trevor Hanson (talk) 20:21, 30 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Dr Cash (see "another option" below), I happen to agree with you; but at this point I’d like to get the C/notC vote done first. After that is sorted out, I’ll initiate a discussion on the GA/FA topic, with three options – no change, remove only GA, remove GA/FA. But I’d like to find out how the bot can be set up first (I don’t think we’ll even need a separate template parameter, actually).

Regarding the examples, thanks for a lot for these! I'm a little concerned that the standards may be set a bit too high; I think they probably represent the standards in use on a few active projects, rather than on an average WikiProject. I clicked “random article” a few times and this is what I found as current assessments, and I think these represent more typical examples:

’’’Start’’’: Charles-François Bailly de Messein, 501st Legion, Moirae, Douglass High School (Georgia), Lewis Wade Jones, Spartacist League, Lake Pontchartrain Causeway, Nicolai Gedda, Ba F.C., Fruitcake.

’’’B-Class’’’: Prevention of dementia, Vibraphone, Sonic the Hedgehog (video game), Alexander Woollcott, Elaine Belloc.

This selection is made up of the first ten Starts and the first five B-Class I found. Please don’t “tut tut” if you disagree with some assessments, as this will only prove my point – this represents a cross-section of assessments as done now You’ll see that some Starts are very basic, whereas others fit well with the C-Class definition. The new proposal does involve raising the standards for B considerably, as WP:MILHIST has already done for some time (see this and this), and this change will mean that some of those Bs will become Cs. I’d like to invite people to do one of Holon’s assessments on this random set. If you’re interested, please email me (my username AT potsdam DOT edu), and I will try (I’m on vacation) to send you an excel spreadsheet promptly to use for the analysis. We can put this information together to get a random selection across the topics. Walkerma (talk) 00:21, 30 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Another option

I still remain quite strongly opposed to any proposal to decouple the GA process alone from the wikiproject assessment system. GA is as much a part of the wikipedia-wide assessment system as FA (and PR, for that matter). Despite whatever negative feelings that Raul, Sandy, or any other FA regulars have towards GA, it isn't going away, and shouldn't be discounted as the 'odd man out' in the assessment scheme. That would do nothing more than to just demote the whole process and ultimately lead to its demise. Furthermore, wikiprojects are interested not only in which articles are A, B, start, stub class, but also which of their articles are both FA and GA (e.g. those neat little, bot-generated tables listing the number of articles by class and importance for each project). So I think we want to keep GA in this system somehow, since it's still involved.

However, I think a better solution would be to decouple both GA AND FA from the wikiproject assessment scheme together. Let's let the wikiprojects assess their articles on a simple grading scale on their own (e.g. A, B, C, start, stub). Yes, let's add C to this system, since we're removing GA & FA from the class= parameter. Since GA & FA are both independent projects from the wikiprojects, they should both be separated from the immediate assessment system. I think they should still be included somehow, though. Maybe have a status= parameter for each wikiproject tag, for either a 'GA' or an 'FA'. Ideally, articles should achieve the A-class rating across all relevant wikiprojects prior to being nominated for FA. However, FAs may not remain at A-class; if the article degrades after a year or so of being FA, a wikiproject could reassess it as B-class, and this might ultimately aid WP:FAR in reassessing the FA status. Similarly, I would expect all GA nominees to be at least B-class; but having this separate would give WP:GAR another metric to help gauge the article's current status. So, we would have A-class featured articles, B-class featured articles, A-class good articles, or B-class good articles. We'd also, of course, have regular A-class and regular B-class articles, without being FA or GA. Likewise, the bot that keeps track of the number of articles for each assessment type should still be able to easily keep track of all of the assessment grades, as well as GA & FA status together. Dr. Cash (talk) 22:47, 29 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments: In the examples given in both cases (cyclone and route), the start class and C-class articles seem too close in quality. The current description and example of Start class in the "official" grading scale seems much more lenient than the new examples. One more suggestion: We may consider locating two examples for each class one for the lower limit and the other for the upper limit. Arman ^(Talk) 02:30, 30 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Procedural comment – Please replace the plain links with permanent ones, or the examples are likely to soon slide out of their current classes due to their potential improvement. There is a reason why this is the case with the master table on the main page. Waltham, The Duke of 17:22, 30 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The next poll

(Most of my new comments are above.) Should we start the new poll (C or not C) on Sunday/Monday at midnight or so, or do we need longer? How should we contact WikiProjects? Is there anyone who can use AWB to spam the project talk pages, or should we just add a message bar on the top of the assessment template? Walkerma (talk) 00:21, 30 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Could you not attempt to get a site-wide message put up? --.:Alex :. 09:50, 1 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I suggest lodging a notice at the WikiProject Council; many people from various projects watch this page, which serves as a centre of co-ordination. Waltham, The Duke of 11:03, 1 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Redirect class?

I have noticed that during some article mergers, the original article assessments have stayed the same (e.g. Start class). Does the Editorial Team make allowance for "NA" (see {{NA-Class}}—"NA This page is a Redirect and does not require a rating on the quality scale."), for use on the redirects' discussion pages? Should it? G.A.S 05:51, 2 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]