Wikipedia talk:Content assessment

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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)

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)

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)

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 [ ]

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)

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

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)

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

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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. – ClockworkSoul 14:34, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

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)

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)

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

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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:

1. 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.
2. 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? – ClockworkSoul 16:38, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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:

1. There is definite interest in a new C-Class, though a similar number of people are opposed.
2. There is less obvious support for putting A below GA, and some are strongly opposed to that.
3. There is moderate support for removing GA from the scheme altogether, but some strong opposition to that idea as well.
4. 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:

1. 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)

   Definitely the more the merrier!

2. 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.
3. 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)

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)
• 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)
  • 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)
• 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)
• I believe a final up/down !vote is the way to go as well. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 19:20, 27 May 2008 (UTC)
• 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)

  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)

• 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)

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

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

• 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)
• 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)

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)

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

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)

We intend to do that, and to cross-post to several pumps and noticeboards. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 06:35, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

• Walkerma has asked me to start the vote in case he isn't available, as he's on vacation and has sketchy Internet access. (I'm not comfortable closing it, so let's hope he comes back before that.) In either case, would we be okay starting the vote by Wednesday, June 4, at 0000 UTC? Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 06:35, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

• I'll be back by June 14, so I can close the vote after that. I think we should have a full fortnight (2 weeks) for the vote, is that OK? Tito, can you add a tag at the top of the assessment template to announce the poll? Thanks, Walkerma (2 June about 18:37 UTC).

Evolution of an article - an example

This example of the article "Atom" may help demonstrate the use of a new "C-class":

• The article started as a stub [[1]] on Oct 1, 2001.
• By 8 October, 2001 it received some additions and approached the upper bound of the definition of stub: [[2]]
• On 20 September 2002, the article was enriched with some more information and it moves into start class: [[3]]
• The version as of 3 June 2004 [[4]] is still in start class. There is a meaningful amount of information - but it needs further structuring improvement.
• On 24 June 2004, the article receives another important addition - a useful image. It has reached the upper bound of start class, but still not good enough to get a C-class rating: [[5]].
• On 18 September 2004, the article looks like this: [[6]]. Some of the sections have expanded and now it barely meets the C-class requirements.
• By 31 August 2005 the article has been expanded further and can now be comfortably called a C-class article: [[7]]. The article's major shortcoming is in referencing.
• The version of 12 December 2005 [[8]] has enough content and structure of a respectable article. In spite of its lack of in-line citation, the article is approaching the upper limit of C-Class. If it were properly referenced, we could have considered rating it B-class.
• After addition of several new images and contents from a book (now cited), the article looks like this [[9]] on 19 August 2006. Though some editors would still hesitate to rate it B-Class, due to its lack of in-line citation; content wise it deserves a B-Class.
• By 23 March 2007 [[10]] new contents and references have been added and the article would now safely pass a B-class assessment by any editor.
• The October 17 2007 version of the article: [[11]] is nominated for a Peer Review. Review closes on February 9, 2007 leaving the article like this: [[12]]. The review ensures completeness of the content, addresses many MoS issues and inline citation problems and upgrades the article to A-class.
• Next day [[13]] the article is nominated and listed as GA.
• On February 12, 2008 the article was nominated for FA and this version of the article: [[14]] (as of 17 February 2008) was promoted.

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? If not, what should be done to these ratings? G.A.S 05:51, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Not officially, but it is in use. I have also seen a number of project use a "redirect-class" for exactly the purpose you're inquiring about. There are many such "non-class classes" floating around. – ClockworkSoul 06:27, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

One use of a redirect-class that USRD has been considering adopting is using it to track "redirects with possibilities", such as articles merged to a list which may be split someday or other merges that may need to be resplit in the future. Redirects that are merely alternate names don't really need to be tagged. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 01:10, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

The better thing to do in the case of redirects is to just delete any wikiprojects from the redirected artice's talk page, since there's no article. Adding a 'redirect-class' just adds unnecessary clutter to the wikiproject's assessment system. Dr. Cash (talk) 02:38, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Ratification vote on C-Class

As I said above, Walkerma has asked me to start the {{C-Class}} ratification vote if he wasn't here, so I'm doing that. We'll use the customary support/oppose/neutral format for this poll, which will be closed two weeks from now (0300 UTC June 18, 2008) by Walkerma. The scale being proposed is the same as that for Option C in the previous round of voting. As usual, comments are welcome. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 03:01, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Support

Users who support the addition of {{C-Class}} should sign with # ~~~~ below:

1. As proponent. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 03:01, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
2. Whole-heartedly. Arman ^(Talk) 03:25, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
3. Yes, please. – ClockworkSoul 03:28, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
4. Support. The B rated articles are really unbalanced, some are almost GA and others are crap. This will fix it -- penubag  (talk) 03:46, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
5. Support. After thinking it through and surveying articles on WP:METEO, I am even more convinced that the extra class is useful. -RunningOnBrains 04:41, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
6. Support. OSX (talk • contributions) 04:44, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
7. <3 Tinkleheimer TALK!! 04:54, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
8. Support, will help clarify the current grading system. Judgesurreal777 (talk) 05:10, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
9. Support. There's too much of a difference between the Start class and B class to have an accurate idea of what a B-class article is. This will help clear up that confusion. Harryboyles 05:28, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
10. Support. Would fill a gap and allow for an even progression in the development of articles. Sunray (talk) 06:29, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
11. Support per my comments above: will enable us to easily separate our 50,000 B-Class articles into those that are presentable and those that aren't. Happy‑melon 07:25, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
12. Support. G.A.S 07:59, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
    The current B class rating is too much of a wildcard: Consider that the example of a B class article is Jammu and Kashmir, a article without any article wide cleanup templates whatsoever. Yet, according to the definition: Articles for which cleanup is needed will typically have this designation to start with. On the other side, we have "Start class", which accourding to the example (Real Analysis) is just a few random thoughts. Re: cleanup tags, the guideline reads This article still needs to be completed, so an article cleanup tag is inappropriate at this stage. I would rather that the distinction lies in the type of cleanup required: Those that require a banner would be "C-class" and those that require only minor cleanup, "B-class". G.A.S 14:55, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
13. 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 currently seems to be used as a middle ground between Start and GA, and that really isn't a good thing. --.:Alex:. 08:47, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
14. Support. I'm actually in opposition to the arguments that the current grading system is adequete: I don't find it to be so. Many-a-time I've attempted to grade an article as C-Class, only to find it is replaced by an unfortunate cap in our grading system. Agree with this proposal from the version 1.0 editorical team: there's lots of benefits to be had to our articles, in having an intermediate step–it all promotes growth and development. Anthøny 08:37, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
15. Support The B class alone is too broad in scope and content. D0762 (talk) 08:59, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
16. Support. As a dumping ground for anything in between the distant worlds of Start and GA, the current B-class does a poor job as an indicator of article quality. Adding a C-class should result in more realistic assessment. Gr1st (talk) 12:17, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
17. Support Helpful change. ike9898 (talk) 14:53, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
18. Support; I've been using Start-class as a default rating for articles which have all the content they really need but have significant cleanup or other problems. C-class would fix that. Nifboy (talk) 15:08, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
19. Support the addition of C-class. I like the idea of WikiProjects assessing an article as A, B, C, start, or stub, while FA and GA would be separately based on their respective project-wide process (FAC and GAN). This would really improve the assessment process and make it much more intuitive and manageable. Pyrospirit (talk · contribs) 15:50, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
20. Support - I came here from AN as a skeptic, but it actually sounds like a good idea. Start and B cover too much ground. Guettarda (talk) 18:09, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
21. Support – It gives an intermediate "shade of grey" classification with intuitive meaning, one that editors can choose when articles don't fit well as either Start- or B-class. Those who don't see the need don't have to use it. Trevor Hanson (talk) 19:09, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
22. Support. I've advocated this for a long time.--ragesoss (talk) 19:21, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
23. Support - As someone who assess articles in this area I do find that both Start-class and B-class cover a lot of ground, and a additional grade for articles in between Start and B would be helpful. Camaron | Chris (talk) 19:50, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
24. Strong Support -- Working over at WP:SCH/A I do a lot of assessments and the biggest problem I see is that the group of articles which are considered starts (by most definitions) is way too big. If all this did was to break the Start class in half it would be well-worth the reworking of our categories and templates. Also per compelling reasoning by Happy-Melon below Adam McCormick (talk) 19:54, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
25. Support– Even though I will have to reassess every start and B class in WP:Time. Zginder 2008-06-04T19:57Z (UTC)
26. Support Too much of a gap between good Bclass articles and bad. I'm an Editorofthewiki^{[citation needed]} 20:48, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
27. Support; sounds like a logical idea to me; the gap between "start" and "B" is way too big. GO-PCHS-NJROTC ^(Messages) 23:34, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
28. Support; I agree the gap between "start" and "B" is too big. Matthew Brown (Morven) (T:C) 00:10, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
29. Support on condition that the grading scheme criteria is made more precise with Start, B, and C. §hep • ¡Talk to me! 00:40, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
30. Support - Having reviewed a number of articles, I've always felt that the current system is missing something between start and B.--Danaman5 (talk) 01:47, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
31. Support Agree that the gap is too large. Mangostar (talk) 06:10, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
32. Jitse Niesen (talk) 10:23, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

    Support a 3-class system is a good, solid breakdown by criteria. A 2-class system carries many discrepanies of standards as there may be only a few points separating A from B. Mind you, a D-Class would be excessive. Vishnava _talk 12:17, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

    Reconsidered my opinion. Vishnava _talk 12:21, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

    How dare you. :-D Waltham, The Duke of 22:51, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

33. Support, I also agree, the gap between "start" and "B" is too big. feydey (talk) 20:33, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
34. Support - concur the difference between start and B class is too large. PhilKnight (talk) 21:56, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
35. Support I wondered why there wasn't already a C-class. B-class can be anything from not quite a Good Article to disorganized blather. C-class would better accommodate disorganized blather. Yechiel (Shalom) 01:06, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
36. Support Yes, there is a need for a C class, coz there is a huge gap between the start and B articles. C class would help to organise the articles in a better manner. Amartyabag ^TALK2ME 01:25, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
37. Support - it doesn't take much content to move an article from "stub" class to "start" class - even two full paragraphs and a couple of external links makes something "start" class. Then there is (in my opinion) a huge gap until an article hits "B" class. I think we should at least try out a C-class assessment; if in practice it turns out not to be so useful, then we can drop it. But if we don't try, we'll never know. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 01:36, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
38. Support. C is for quite-good articles that still lack some of the rigor needed for B-classing. "Start" is crap; "B" is good; there is an obvious gap in between.--Father Goose (talk) 01:58, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
39. Support. Adding C-class will create no additional work for project that don't want it. For those projects that do want to better specify the status of articles below GA status, adding C-class is a good route. ♬♩ Hurricanehink (talk) 03:33, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
40. Support. Putting in a C-Class will help to clarify the distinctions between Start and B-class. If there's an issue with higher-up articles including the A-class, that can be done separately from this. For now, we need the C-Class. Red Phoenix ^{flame of life...protector of all...} 03:41, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
41. Support- I have to agree with John Broughton here, the gap between Start and B class is just far too large. Steve Crossin (talk)(email) 04:27, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
42. Support - wholehearted. There's too much vagueness between Start and B class. I also thoroughly support Becksguy's comment below about the arrangement of classes being stub-start-C-B-A-GA-FA. Cricketgirl (talk) 14:03, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
43. Support-I agree with John Broughton. Disorganized and well-written articles are too closely related in this current set-up. Patch1990 (talk) 15:49, 6 June 2008 (UTC)Patch1990 10:45Am, 6 June 2008 (CST)
44. Support – I've found that the gap between start-class and B-class to be a bit too much of a jump. Alternatively, though I wouldn't mind seeing the levels shifted as some have proposed; I personally have little use for A-class, an article is ether good enough for an assessment or it's not. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 16:23, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
45. Support Sounds like a good idea.Fairfieldfencer FFF 17:45, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
46. Support Itfc+canes=me (talk) 16:35, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
47. Weak support - almost neutral Would be useful but I don't think we are in dire need of it. I'm opposed to any bot-assessment drives or massive collaboritve drives to re-assess Start/B to C - just integrate it into normal assessments from here on in. --maclean 19:23, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
48. Support For me, just because an article doesn't meet B class doesn't mean its a start. One of the articles I created would fall under C-class rating. It adds depth to the current assessment scheme, but making a D class would be too much. DA PIE EATER (talk) 02:55, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
49. Support Makes it easier to categorize articles, provides more information, and results in a more balanced distribution, solves the problem of the bloating "B"-class that many feel is too broad. ("B" reads like "not A"). Kevin Baas^talk 14:28, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
50. Support. Though in my opinion the system needs more work in general (i.e. something needs to be done about the GA/A-Class area), the addition of a C-Class is important and a good first step. Jared (t)  16:24, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
51. Opp— sorry, Support (hehe) – I have often encountered articles with much information, with images, with some references, and which left me a general impression of "nice article". They were often rather messy, and certainly needed lots of improvement, but were a long way from stubs; I kept being surprised by seeing them classified as "start", even though I knew that they could not be B-class. This change will instil some intuitiveness and common sense into the grading system. Most people focus on the gap between Start-class and GA; I care more about the deep chasm between B-class and stubs. Waltham, The Duke of 22:51, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
52. Support - Great! Limetolime ^{I want an award! • look what I did!} 23:42, 8 June 2008 (UTC)
53. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 00:36, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
54. Support We need something between Start and B-class. Some articles just aren't one or the other. Ten Pound Hammer and his otters • ^{(Broken clamshells•Otter chirps)} 00:41, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
55. Support if you'll permit me, having put no discussion in before now; there are plenty of community articles for the USA (for example, Brownell, Kansas) that are good in multiple ways (here, we have good demographics and a useful infobox with a good map, with everything sourced), so perhaps better than Start class, but really don't seem good enough for B class. Nyttend (talk) 02:41, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
56. Support as it will be a very useful tool to help sort articles for the various projects. I can see it being a very useful tool for quickly seeing (in general) what needs to be done on an article. No, it's not specific, but it will be useful. ···日本穣^{? · Talk to Nihonjoe} 07:00, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
57. Yes, why not? Stifle (talk) 13:28, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
58. Support It sounds like a good idea. Geeky Malloy 15:26, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
59. Support I've just been looking through a number of articles relating to the 2008 Olympics. Quite a lot are rated as B-class, but I'm rather uncomfortable with their ranking: they're clearly not Start-class, but are too lacking to be B-class. I'd much rather have the option to re-rank these as C-class articles Bluap (talk) 02:15, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
60. Support Will make it a little easier to rate articles.Gears Of War 00:42, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
61. Support There are hundreds of articles out there that are beyond Start class but do not meet the requirements of B class. Adding a C class will make it easier to properly evaluate articles and decide how to best improve them to higher levels of quality. -- Comandante {Talk} 00:58, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
62. Support: I think this will fill a huge gap in the current system. Too many B class articles are nothing of the sort, but can definately be defended as not being Start class. Nburden ^(T) 01:15, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
63. Support. I can't think of a logical reason why this shouldn't be implemented, or why this simply cannot be done without having to reosrt in a poll !vote. But hey, who am I? — _Maggot^Syn 01:33, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
64. Support - This is a good idea, I think it would be useful at the project I'm working at, WP:USRD especially, and then some. CL — 01:52, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
65. Support It always confused me that there was no C rank. I spent an hour or so the other day trying to find out where I could be WP:BOLD and suggest it, then I see this pop up in my watchlist. Touche', whoever started this thread... touche' --Koji†Dude ^(C) 01:59, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
66. Support Any class that can contain Harry Trott and Mundubbera, Queensland is much too broad to be of much use. -- Mattinbgn\^talk 02:32, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
67. Support We have left too big a gap between B and GA. Any article that does not reach GA is literally dumped into B class (and sometimes Start class). Having a middle-ground between B and Start would allow better classification. — Parent5446 ☯ ^{(message email)} 02:51, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
68. Support It just makes sense to have more options when it comes to rating articles. More options makes life easier for those who rate, especially in the ambiguous world of B-class and Start class. Fliry Vorru (talk) 02:53, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
69. Support I strongly support. --SkyWalker (talk) 03:46, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
70. Weak Support Most wikipedians still don't understand or properly implement the existing assessment ratings. The C-class makes sense, but I doubt it will improve the assessment issue on wikipedia any.--Finalnight (talk) 03:53, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
71. Support Something to finally fill in that gap, eh? I like it. -- Ned Scott 04:26, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
72. For all the good reasons stated for the proposal. seresin ( ¡? ) 04:39, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
73. Support Per the arguments above. This will fill a gap. PeterSymonds (talk) 05:52, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
74. Support The C-class will help article assessment definitely. It will provide articles another class onto which evolve. Good idea!⇨ EconomistBR ⇦ Talk 06:18, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Oppose

Users who oppose the addition of {{C-Class}} should sign with # ~~~~ below:

1. No need to add more levels to this system. I don't see much need for this. « Gonzo fan2007 (talk ♦ contribs) @ 03:21, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
2. I don't think we've established a good boundary between start and B; adding more classes in between them is not really a solution to this problem. Christopher Parham (talk) 04:08, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
3. Current grading system is adequate. --Gimme danger (talk) 05:26, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
4. I ignore the grading system entirely until I've brought something up to GA or FA, as I have extreme difficulty grading things on my own. Adding C-level would mean that after all the Elements articles are re-evaluated, I would have to re-do the entire Image:Periodic Table by Quality.PNG. More work and no benefit. Sounds like a bad idea to me. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 10:52, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

   I'll do it for you. :P Happy‑melon 10:58, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

   Dude, if you ever thought that an image like this is ever going to be a static image, you have grossly underestimated the dynamic nature of Wikipedia. Arman ^(Talk) 01:51, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

   I never thought that at all. If you look at the image's upload log, you can see we've already gone through at least a dozen revisions to keep it up to date. I was merely using the image as an example of how every wikiproject will suddenly have a massive workload of reevaluation and template work dumped onto their laps. Why suffer the extra burden for what appears to be no real benefit? --Cryptic C62 · Talk 10:51, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

   In the same way I was using it as an example to demonstrate that, no matter how off-the-wall or menial the task might appear, there are people here who are willing, even eager, to do it. It isn't nearly as bad as it looks on paper: it's both simplistic and counterproductive to imagine this reassessment being a top-down, centrally-organised operation; there's no deadline, so we'll mainly be allowing the classes to naturally sort themselves out in the course of the pre-existing reassessment drift. There are people who will be prepared to work systematically through Category:B-Class articles, but even if there weren't, the reassessment would still get done, because, like everything else here, it's built out of the countless trivial contributions of uninvolved editors. I think the benefits of adding C-Class are very well explained in the response to EyeSerene's question a few numbers below - there's no point duplicating them here, but they're certainly compelling to me (as they would be, given that I wrote half of them :D). Happy‑melon 13:10, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

5. The current assessment scheme is complicated enough. (I don't quite understand the difference between a "Good article" and an "A-class" article myself.) Please don't add more complexity. -- Taku (talk) 11:04, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

   I don't think filling the gap between B-class and start-class would make things too complicated. Also, one of the better proposals on this page is to separate FA and GA from WikiProject assessment, which would mean that A-class would be clearly defined as a WikiProject's highest rating while GA would be reserved for the project-wide WP:GAN process. In my opinion, adding C-class and separating FA and GA from the other assessments would simplify things, not make them more complicated. Pyrospirit (talk · contribs) 15:58, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

6. The current system does the job, and is complex enough. No need for another class of article. - Shudde ^talk 12:25, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
7. The scale's been fine, no reason to mess with it; "you can't fix something that ain't broken". Don't need to add confusion to something as simple as assessing an article. Juliancolton ^{Tropical Cyclone} 12:44, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

   (Provisional oppose) (edit) Switch to neutral I think this is too dependent on other factors to be regarded as a single issue !vote; we introduce a C class, and then ... what? We've created another layer of bureaucracy, a need for more reviews (and reviewers, which are in short supply already), and have we really clarified anything? How much further will we subdivide the scale when there are problems with the variations between the top and bottom end of C (or B, A, or any other level)? If the intention was to replace Start with C, and use it as a catch-all for articles that are more than stubs but not really of any quality, then I'd see the sense and support the proposal, but as it stands I fear that, unless we are very careful, this is the top end of a long slide into ever-lengthening lists of increasingly meaningless distinctions. EyeSerene^talk 13:10, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

   I don't think we're at risk of that, because this is the only area of the scale where there is subjectivity. The stub/start boundary is fairly well defined in most people's minds, and naturally the B/GA, GA/A and A/FA boundaries are very clearly delimited. I also think most people have a good idea in their minds of what constitutes a "proper" 'B-Class' article, and what would definitely be 'Start-Class'. The problem is that there are a very large number of articles which fall neatly in the middle of those ideas - again, most editors could easily imagine the sort of article - but there is currently nowhere they clearly belong. In order to be consistent across the project, one of these classes has to be a 'catch-all' for everything that doesn't meet one of the other conditions. Right now there is confusion over whether that should be "B" or "Start". Those who write the articles get a bit of a kick out of grading it as "B-Class" than "Start-Class"; but those who work from the other end and deal only with the finished product would much rather that only the 'best of the rest' made it to "B". With an extended assessment scale the question shifts from being "Start or B?" to "Start or C?", because B-Class becomes a more elevated, and objectively assessed, criterion. And it really doesn't matter whether an article is Start-Class or C-Class except to the editors involved. But having articles which are utterly unsuitable for a printed release, or even of being considered 'reasonable', dumped into the same category as those which are borderline GA, is a problem. That's the main reason why we need one more grade: unless you define brutally objective inclusion criteria like WP:MILHIST has, editors are going to argue over which class these mediocre articles should be, and mistakes will be made and articles miscategorised. Much better for all concerned if those mistakes don't have a negative impact on the work for which the assessment scale was devised: working out which articles are 'acceptable' and which aren't. But with that implemented, the problem is solved; there is no additional incentive to add more grades after that. This proposal isn't about improving the accuracy of our assessments, it's about solving a specific problem: the fact that the bottom end of our B-Class category is so poorly defined as to be virtually nonexistant. Happy‑melon 13:49, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

   I understand your point, and accept that the upper article classes are pretty clearly delineated, but if it's the Start/B boundary that's the problem, why not simply rename Start to C and apply B more rigorously? I think the reason for the misapplied standards at the lower end of B is the name of the next class down, not its contents - I strongly suspect 'Start' implies, to many editors, that the article has only just been posted and is a work-in-progress; hence anything that has been more than 'started' should automatically graduate to B. I believe this proposal will result in the same confusion, but with the Start -> C boundary rather than the Start -> B one, and subdividing less-than-acceptable articles (ie those currently at the top of Start/bottom of B) into upper- and lower- less-than-acceptable is an unnecessary distinction. However, renaming Start to C and clearly defining the problematic B lower-boundary would, I think, remove this misconception about which articles belong where. Whilst the new C would necessarily be a large class, with lots of variation in quality, it would still enable B-class to do what it's supposed to do... and without over-complicating the system. EyeSerene^talk 18:08, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

   Both of the above comments make important points. But consider a slightly different perspective. Many of the objections here seem to focus on article acceptability and "grading" relative to a reader, and view everything below B-class as simply "inadequate." But for an editor, there are important distinctions at the low end of the scale as well. Consider the new classification scheme as an editor's tool – a ranking based on the type and amount of editorial work required. A Start-class article needs substantial (re-)writing or (re-)structuring – a big project. A C-class article provides a useful editorial context, but needs significant additions of material or sources. A B-class article needs only incremental editing. These strike me as useful editorial pigeonholes: (re-)write, versus extend, versus enhance. Today, we seem only to have "started" and "nearly finished." As C-class is populated with borderline articles, both Start- and B-classes will become more meaningful and useful, especially for new and active articles. I see less value in a wholesale reclassification of existing articles. The benefit is in tracking what we're doing today. Trevor Hanson (talk) 19:59, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

   I think it's fair to say that the problem we're really trying to solve here is the things-getting-marked-as-B-Class-when-they're-actually-mediocre-at-best issue. At its most banal, I see the assessment scale as a 'cookie crumb trail' for editors: they find a bad article, they improve it, they reassess it, they feel proud for having done so. The issue with just enforcing more rigorous B-Class standards is that it leaves a host - the majority in fact - of articles languishing in the wilderness until someone puts in the lot of work that might be needed to bring it from poor Start to genuine B. For all that time, they get no reward; in the same way, there is no visible sign of improvement on a WikiProject or even project-wide scale, which leads to an overall loss of morale. WikiProjects really do bind together around their assessment scales: it's a good feeling to go to one of "your" wikiprojects and see that 'the team' has improved a few more ratings. By having a C-Class, we get the best of all worlds: editors fighting over ratings do so at the Start/C boundary where a miscategorisation doesn't impede the work of 1.0; we flatten out the scale a little where it's steepest and hence people are less tempted to 'round up' for their own or their project's aggrandisement; and people get to have that little warm glow of having made a quantitative improvement to an article that bit more often. All told, not bad for one day's work :D Happy‑melon 20:35, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

   I've been mulling it over, and I do find the above arguments quite persuasive. I still don't approve of the added bureaucracy this has the potential to introduce, and I'm not convinced it will genuinely lead to an improvement in article quality, but I think there are enough potential benefits that, if everything goes well, it could be worth a try. If it's a complete disaster, it can always be rethought - this is a wiki after all ;) EyeSerene^talk 17:04, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

   That's probably the most insightful point of all: if it all goes pearshaped and it turns out to be counterproductive, we can go back to how it was before simply by redirecting Template:C-Class to Template:Start-Class (and probably still improve the average quality of B-Class articles :D). What have we got to lose? Happy‑melon 13:13, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

8. The problem is not the current scale, its that each Wiki Project has it's own idea of what makes each level of article. One project will say a B class has to have inline citations, another will say it just has to have references...also, anyone can rate the article, I've seen articles where the original author posts the article and then 10 seconds later rates it a B class for whatever project. Adding more layers isn't going to help the underlying problem. LegoTech·(t)·(c) 13:38, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

   On the contrary, I'd say that one more class is exactly what we need to solve the problem, which as you correctly note is very much about the local interpretation of what "B-Class" means. The real definition of B-Class is "something you wouldn't be disappointed to see in a printed encyclopedia, although not something you'd pass for WP:GA". As I said above, down at article level, editors see three possible ratings and think "it's too long to be considered a 'start' but not GA-Class, therefore B". We have such a well-ingrained image of what a stub looks like (ie very short :D) and what a GA looks like (ie it has "GA passed" in its {{ArticleHistory}}) that for stuff in the middle there are only two possible choices. And when the article quality is actually slap bang in the middle of the two definitions, an author's ego is inevitably going to encourage them to 'round up' rather than down. If that rounding caused them to mark it C-Class instead of Start-Class then it's no big deal, because no one's expecting C-Class articles to be anything special; just better than Start-Class ones. But people who view a B-Class article should be able to be confident that what they're reading is factually accurate, well referenced, reasonably well written and all the other things that a B-Class is supposed to be, but which currently only people like WP:MILHIST actually enforce because by relegating everything else to the ignominy of "Start" class, it has a draconian feel to it. If all it was doing was relegating articles to the next letter of the alphabet, it's much less of a stigma. Happy‑melon 13:59, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

9. Oppose per Christopher Parham. It's always been a point of consternation for me what the heck the difference between Start and B class is. I don't think squashing another assessment class is the right way to approach the problem. bibliomaniac15 19:24, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
10. Oppose, I see no compelling reason that another class should be added to the current rating system, and agree that the current setup in place is sufficient. As has been stated, a "B" rating is used to indicate articles of a quality good enough for a print encyclopedia but not the cream of the crop - wedging a new rating that says "Hey, this isn't good enough for a print encyclopedia, but it's better than some of the other stuff" seems to serve no useful purpose. Arkyan 19:36, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

    Except to discourage editors from marking said "not good enough for a print encyclopedia, but better than some of the other stuff" articles into B-Class because they (quite legitimately in some cases) don't like the thought of all their hard work on an article merely being a "Start"?? Happy‑melon 20:22, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

    I am confused - do you want to discourage editors from making articles B-class because they don't like all their hard work being merely a "start" ?? Arkyan 21:31, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

    Whoops - I realized you said marking, not making, which changes the whole sentiment of your statement! Nevertheless, if an editor is going to unscrupulously mark an article as "B" class for fear of being labeled "Start" class, there is nothing to prevent them from illegitimately upgrading articles from "C" to "B". Dishonest assessments are indicative of a problem with those assessing articles, not the assessment scale itself. Arkyan 21:34, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

    It's just human nature. Somewhere above a user proposes that just changing the name of Start to C would keep some from moving up to B, and I think that's accurate. The kind of editors who are apt to place an incorrect "B" assessment (And not go for the gusto and place an FA) are probably those that just don't want their article to be second to last. For those, giving an extra "Well it's better than just a start" category will prevent those from placing bad pages in the B Class. We're not talking about those who actively defy the system through "dishonest assessments" (Read edit in bad faith), just those who aren't familiar enough with it. Let's assume that The vast majority of misassessments are made in good faith shall we? Adam McCormick (talk) 21:43, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

    I can appreciate what you are saying. All the same, I feel that regardless of how many gradations are introduced into the assessment scale, there is always going to be a certain amount of misjudged articles that exist right at the dividing line. For as many "B" articles that should be "Start" articles, we'll see "B" articles that should be "C", and "C" that should be "Start". Will the introduction of a "C" class reduce the number of false-positives among "B" rated articles? Probably. Are false "B" ratings that egregious of a problem on Wikipedia? I don't know. Is reducing the number of false "B" ratings worth the trouble of re-assessing the existing "B" and "Start" class articles to determine which would fall under a "C" rating? I don't think so. Arkyan 21:53, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

    Ideally they are all going to have to be reassessed periodically anyway, so the better the criteria are now, the less extra work we generate by assessing on the current scale. And as I argue above, misassessments aren't the only problem. I have personally assessed many thousand schools articles and there is just too much variability between a bad start and a good start. When editor can put in hours of research and rewrite into a start and not improve the article (at least as far as the assessment is concerned) it's disheartening, but under the current system often all we can say is "It's just not good enough to be a B." At least with an extra level we can split up this over-sized category and be able to give an intermediate level of feedback. Adam McCormick (talk) 22:51, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

    In addition to all these - check this: assume your WikiProject's new year resolution is to upgrade as many "Mid" important articles to (atleast) B-class as possible. I'm assuming the WikiProject currently maintains a strict B-class standard. If that is the case, the chance is you'll find 100s of Mid important start class articles. How do you prioritize then? On the other hand, if you have an extra C-class, your 100 start class article will be divided into two groups - 30 odd C-class articles which can be upgraded to B-Class with some effort and 70 odd truly start class articles which still need a long way to go. Isn't this a big help in prioritizing your work? Arman ^(Talk) 10:28, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

    You make some excellent points, and I have no doubt that an additional rating will help prioritize that kind of work. However, the same argument could be made down the line when someone wants to add a "D" class, and so on. It will always be possible to make the argument that additional ratings mean a more finely classified system which is easier to prioritize - choosing the point at which there are sufficient ratings is arbitrary at best. I feel that point has already been reached. For what it's worth, my oppose is more of a "passive do not support", as in I really see no reason why the current system is inadequate and ought to be changed, rather than an "actively oppose", as in, I think this proposal is bad and implementing it would cause trouble. Arkyan 15:18, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

    Well there is a "neutral" section below :D. For me, the big difference between adding a C-Class and adding a D-Class is that the C-Class will help us solve, probably almost completely, the problem of having mediocre articles in B-Class. If there's any more gradation below B-Class, then there won't be much opposition to enforcing tighter standards for B-Class articles, as an editor's work won't have to be incorrectly considered "almost GA" just so it's not considered "a start". If/when we have the debate on D-Class, that benefit simply won't be there, because we don't need to 'protect' C-Class from incorrect inclusions. Then the legitimate criticisms of having additional grades become more prominent, and there would be few or no benefits to counter them. So I don't think that this proposal opens a 'gateway' to D/E/F/etc-Class. Happy‑melon 13:34, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

11. Oppose - I've made my thoughts on the matter clear before, so I see no need to rehash when one can scroll up, but I would like to vocally object to the immediate re-polling of the issue on the basis that 1) it occurred far too quickly and seemed mainly to have the objective of ramming ideas through over clear lack of sufficient support levels, and 2) no large-scale community notification regarding a further poll (that I noticed) that will greatly impact the site should it pass, much less any courtesy notices on the talk pages of all of the editors who just participated in the previous poll. Girolamo Savonarola (talk) 03:50, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

    About the first two points: When the previous poll was closed, Walkerma said that the support behind this proposal and the "no change" proposal was large enough in both cases, so the best way to go forward was to get an up-or-down poll on whether to add this assessment class or not. He also asked whether other users agreed, and nobody voiced any objection to doing things this way. Eight days passed since the previous round of voting was closed, and waiting further would have caused users to lose interest in the proposal, and it ending up in limbo like the 27th Amendment. As for community notification: This was posted on WP:VPP, WP:VPR, WP:AN, WT:COUNCIL, WP:CBB, WP:CENT, and I'm trying to get this on {{Watchlist-notice}}. I'm not sure where else this could have been put. As for notification on talk pages: I wasn't sure whether that would be WP:CANVASSing or not (as I did make the original proposal), so I didn't do it, but I wouldn't object to it being done. We're not trying to hide anything here. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 04:04, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

    I stand greatly corrected. My forthright apologies. Girolamo Savonarola (talk) 04:47, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

12. Strongly oppose Unnecessary hair-splitting that will be a nightmare to implement. --ROGER DAVIES ^talk 04:35, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
13. Oppose The system is complicated enough. We don't need yet another article class to make it even more confusing. I don't see how a C-class would be beneficial. - • The Giant Puffin • 08:38, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
14. Oppose Sorry, but no. Just not enough difference. I've done some assessment before, and B and Start class are just fine, thank you. Maybe if we just renamed Start to C... Noble Story (talk • contributions) 11:37, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
15. Oppose I've had a nagging discomfort with WP:GA anyway, so unless you combine A-class and GA, this is just a waste of energy and potentially confusing. How much energy, time and edits will you need to reclassify thousands of present and future articles? It also makes people go the extra mile in their effort to improve, rather than considering a move from C to B as enough for the time being. Vishnava _talk 12:23, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

    Why is it potentially confusing only if GA and A remain separate? I'm not sure I understand. As for the need to reclassify, let's not that all articles should be being reassessed on a constant basis anyway, at grassroots editor level if nothing else: there's neither any rush to organise a massive high-speed reassessment of all 400,000-some Starts and B-Class articles. Like everything else on-wiki, it will sort itself out over time. The only thing I would think useful after implementing this would be to help go through Category:B-Class Foo articles for the projects I'm involved with (WP:HP, WP:DISK and WP:MUSICALS in my case) looking for things to downgrade. Individual editors, of whom we have hundreds of thousands, can certainly be trusted to upgrade articles of their own accord as and when they find/improve them. As for downgrading, well, we only have 50,000 B-Class articles; how many editors do you think would be willing to do a hundred reassessments? More than the 500 that would be needed. Like everything else on-wiki, it sounds like a lot of effort, but with division of labour and some technical assistance like bot scripts and Kingboyk's AWB plugin, it's actually very doable. Plus, of course, it's something we should be doing on a rolling basis anyway. Happy‑melon 13:08, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

    Well I can assure you that you don't have an army that works with discipline and produces results on orders. In an all-volunteer project, nobody can assume/take for granted how many editors you'll actually have doing the work or how many are needed or how much time it won't take. My personal opinion is that a "GA" is a waste, because with a little more effort, you can make it an FA. All this classification breakdown seems to me like grading a book report or a test. Being an all-volunteer project with talented people lacking time, classify things as clearly and simply as you can, with the focus being on the work to achieving peak quality. How much better it would be if you apply those 500 editors working to convert references/ELs into inline citations for those 50,000 articles? How much better would the encyclopedia be if a 1,000 stubs were expanded by a few hundred characters and reliable sources to meet DYK criteria and appear on the main page? Those are the real achievements, the kind of work you should be doing. Those "A", "B", "C", "F", "Z" class tagging don't make the article no better - looking at DYK criteria and moving up a stub to it would be an achievement. I just think that we're focusing on the problems instead of looking at the goal, the solution. Vishnava _talk 20:42, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

    I know I don't, and this proposal would be doomed if such a force were vital to its implementation. Fortunately, that's just not the case: although some editors (those who like doing that sort of thing... and another thing that you can guarrantee on an all-volunteer project like this, is that you can find people who like doing just about anything :D) will work systematically through Category:B-Class articles, and I take my hat off to them. But even if no one did that, the reassessment would still take place, because like everything else here the whole grading system builds on the countless incremental contributions of editors who are in the main entirely unconnected to WP:1.0, and in many cases aren't even involved with the WikiProjects. In principle, you're quite right to say that more overall good would come to the project if any edit which changed |class=Start to |class=C was instead adding a reliable source to the article itself. But by exactly the same 'all-volunteer' principle, no one can or should therefore mandate that they should or shouldn't do anything. I personally just don't agree that assessments do no good to the article, but that's another issue, and is only tangentially relevant to this particular proposal. I think it's obvious, though, that they can't do any harm. And isn't that the whole point of the free, open project? That you can do whatever takes your fancy, as long as it does no harm? Happy‑melon 13:46, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

    Although we fundamentally disagree, I do agree with several things - fishes are free to swim wherever they please in a pond - but the point is why create more stratification and tasks that aren't really necessary nor directly beneficial to developing content here. Vishnava _talk 00:47, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

16. Oppose I believe the current assessment scale is sufficient, and don't believe adding a new class is necessary. Each WikiProject who uses the scale can work to better broadcast the differences between the Start and B classes to help prevent confusion. I'd think if we're trying to go with an "ABC" format, then replace Start with "C", but I see no need to add a whole new class in between the two. --Nehrams2020 (talk) 23:42, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
17. I think we need to agree on the criteria for the grading classes we have now before we go adding any new ones. As others have said, if you want a C-class, replace Start-class. shoy 12:52, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

    I don't think that the problem is just in the naming of levels; there is a fairly large gap between start-class and B-class, so even with a rename the levels would have to be adjusted. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 16:19, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

18. Oppose the more difficult it is to achieve an assessed class other than Start or Stub the more encouraged are editors to be ambitous and create material of higher quality. Wandalstouring (talk) 07:36, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
19. Oppose while well intentioned and possibly useful, this seems to be an example of guideline creep and I don't think that it's needed as the difference between start class and B class is fairly linear at present. Nick Dowling (talk) 08:43, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
20. Oppose I'm another who'd be happy to support the replacement of Start-Class with C-Class, but not the introduction of C-Class as yet a further assessment level. We have enough as is, methinks. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 13:32, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
21. Oppose Unnecessary, current system is sufficient. KISS --Patar knight - ^chat/_{contributions} 20:09, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
22. Oppose Not sure I can add anything that someone hasn't already said. -- llywrch (talk) 21:36, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
23. I'm not opposed in principle to the idea, but it would create far too much work and bureaucracy with virtually no benefit. There is some borderline start and b articles that I've wondered about, but I don't need to be deciding between start and c, and c and b, now too. Wizardman 23:58, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
24. Strong Oppose Just thinking about the hell this is going to unleash is enough to give me an ulcer. All the added whining and complaining that will follow with a new rating tab coupled with the fallout across the various projects here as the members debate the merits of implementing such a system does not, in my opinion, justify adding anoth notch to the rating system. KISS. TomStar81 (Talk) 00:01, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

    Hell?? Fallout?? Are you sure you're at the right discussion? Armageddon is that way :D. In seriousness though, I think you're significantly overestimating the amount of disruption this will cause. Why would having an alternative such that an editor's hard work didn't have to be called a "start" lead to more "whining and complaining"? Surely editors would be delighted to be able to mark an article of theirs as more than a start, without it incorrectly being labeled a B-class. The 1.0 scale is not a legal requirement for WikiProjects; projects have created a host of classes which are not part of the 'official' 1.0 scale, and many do not use classes which are on the official scale (see Category:Classification templates). There is absolutely no requirement for existing projects to adopt the C-Class if they think that the moderate effort required to reassess their Start- and B-Class articles does not yield sufficient benefits. This proposal is simply to give them the ability to use a C-Class within the 'official' 1.0 scale if they want to. The biggest change this proposal implements is to make using C-Class the default position for new WikiProjects, and there, none of these "extra effort/work/hassle" arguments apply. A new wikiproject will have to assess all of its articles anyway. Why shouldn't they have the opportunity to assess them that much more effectively? Happy‑melon 12:21, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

    In my professional opinion, offering editers the choice to upgrade from the gheotto to the slums as opposed to the suburbs does not constitute a brilliant idea. Moreover, I think some of the supporters may lack the apreciation to see how this could backfire: if you move the goal post you have to consider that those who worked hard to get the article up the rating chart and now find that they have "another damn bar to overcome" my quit in disgust rather than edit toward a better rating. Turning editers off the concept of upgrading by flooding the assessment scale with unissicary ratings designed to essentially to keep articles in perment suspense does not, in my opinion, justify implementing any lower classes. On the issue of projects: I apreciate what you are saying with regards to the old and the new, but I think you haven't read the warning essay at Esperanza. The essay there explicitly notes that all projects need to be open and transparent to thier users, and from where I sit that means inviting project memebers to discuss implementing this proposal within any given project, since failure to do so could arguably be construed as making a binding descion in the absence of external input. I don't think our contributers will go for C-class (as a MILHIST coordinator, we have been monitering this closely to see what happens), but other projects may choose to implement the system. Have you thought about that at all? TomStar81 (Talk) 03:44, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

    I would argue not from the ghetto to the slums, but from the ghetto to RDP housing. But to be honest, the gap between start class and B class is extremely wide: Would you rather that there is no "reward" for dividing a start class article into sections, adding a proper lead and inline citations[15] (Note that the example was written before the days of inline citations)? This does not constitute moving the goalpost, merely adding one between the second and the fourth mile. G.A.S 05:19, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

    I don't think that analogy helps the situation: I think of it more like treking to Timbuktu. It's a hard journey across an unrewarding desert: yes, the ultimate goal is the gold-paved streets, but every oasis in the desert along the way is a welcome relief in itself; and the more oases there are, the more likely one is to survive the journey. If a significant number of editors worked on an "I'll improve this article by one grade, and then move on" method, then there would be validity in your concern, but I really don't think that that's the case: I think most editors work on topics that interest them, and work to get the best improvement they can from one or a few articles. I know I personally try to take individual articles from Start to GA, or from GA to FA, one at a time. Which means there is a much greater chance of an editor giving up on an article when they reach the level where C-Class should kick in and it doesn't, than if it did.

    I fully agree with your comment vis discussion at project-level; as you can see from my post in the "comments" section below, I don't think this vote is a very good, or even a tenable, way of making this decision. I really don't care whether Milhist goes for C-Class or not: your articles aren't the ones causing the problem. As I've said above, I applaud that project for enforcing proper B-Class standards without any prompting from WP:1.0. I'm not concerned about this proposal being "forced" upon unwilling projects if it passes, because that's quite clearly not the way we do things on-wiki. I'm concerned about this proposal "failing" and thereby being denied to those projects that do want it. We easily lose track of the scope of this proposal: it is essentially a question of whether C-Class should be built into the infrastructure of the assessment system - Template:Grading scheme, WP 1.0 bot, {{WPBannerMeta}}, etc - not whether it should be forcibly implemented wiki-wide; because of course the latter is impossible. If the proposal passes, C-Class will become like List-Class or FL-Class: they're built into the infrastructure, but not every project uses them. If it does not, it will just become like Redirect-Class, Portal-Class, etc - grades that aren't supported by 1.0 bot etc, but are still widely used. So I don't think you need worry about how this will impact Milhist or any other projects you are personally involved in; the worst effects that this proposal can have on a project is no effect at all. Happy‑melon 14:30, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

    Just to stick in my two cents' about whether editors always try to take articles from Start to GA: An important exception is when an editor lacks subject matter depth. An experienced editor might transform a rough Start-class article into a well-written, well-structured, Wikified C-class article that still requires attention by experts, who can then provide good in-line citations, technical exegesis, etc. In fact, this may be the most valuable contribution that an experienced Wikian can make: Structuring an article so that hit-and-run edits can steadily improve its quality. (To use a programming analogy: Think of a systems programmer who sets up a device driver class, with which hardware experts can easily craft interfaces for individual devices. The original driver framework contains much of the system's true value – despite the fact that it does little without the experts' table entries and detailed additions for individual applications.) Trevor Hanson (talk) 19:42, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

25. Oppose Unnecessary, current system is sufficient. Much ado about nothing. - Canglesea (talk) 00:26, 8 June 2008 (UTC)
26. Oppose. While I do see the niche which C-Class will fill, I really don't think that the 'problem' can't be solved by possibly renaming Start class or educating the community to the purpose of it. The scale is working admirably as it is; a new class won't really help things enough to justify the amount of re-assessment and reviewing its inclusion would necessitate. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 09:21, 8 June 2008 (UTC)
27. This does not seem necessary. –thedemonhog talk • edits 20:15, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

    Question - Are there any actual arguments other than "It's not necessary"? Adoption of such a class would be entirely up to a project's discretion. I'd like to hear some arguments against this based on possible effects of such an inclusion, instead of merely whether such an inclusion is necessary or not. --.:Alex:. 21:11, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

    This is an excellent point, and one I've been arguing above. This proposal is not going to 'force' C-Class on any existing project, and it would be silly to think that it would. If a project doesn't want to use C-class (and there are several projects, WP:MILHIST in particular, which definitely don't need it) then they can make that decision at a project level and no one is going to argue with that. Are there any real arguments other than "not necessary" and "too much work"? Happy‑melon 21:26, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

28. Strong oppose. The current system is more than adequate, and easy for assessors to understand. Introducing new levels, with unclear boundaries will make it much harder for people to assess articles and will only cause confusion. There are very few of us doing the assessments as it is. Why make things more difficult? Dahliarose (talk) 23:25, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

    Do you claim, then, that the borders between Start- and B-class are clear as they stand? They are only well-defined in a small number of well-organised projects, and even in these cases the distinction results in a broad spectrum of article qualities sorted as being a short way from stub—which is what "start-class" implies—frustrating many of the editors working on them. This lack of sensibility in the system might as well deter valuable contributors from engaging in article classification. I am sure that many editors are quite unwilling to work on a system which they deem unsatisfactory in so evident a fashion; making it more intuitive and moving it closer to common sense will encourage many of them to participate, more or less regularly. Waltham, The Duke of 01:40, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

29. Oppose. I don't think this will accomplish anything useful. The system is already convoluted enough. Kaldari (talk) 14:54, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
30. Oppose. Adding an additional class will make the assessment process even more confusing/complicated. If the distinctions between Start and B-class are not clear now, it seems to me that they would be even less so with an additional class. And I agree with Wandalstouring that a large gap at the bottom of the scale motivates editors to push extra-hard towards the upper end of the scale instead of staying at a B-level and lower. --Jh12 (talk) 18:06, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

    I'd say the distinctions between Start and B-class are quite clear, but reviewers encountering articles that are in the wide chasm between the two classes either push up to B or down to Start when neither is appropriate. As for a large gap being a motivating factor, I believe this is unrealistic. All work in the world is done in increments, and Wikipedia is no exception. A ladder missing four rungs from the middle, is, if anything, a disincentive toward reaching the upper rungs.--Father Goose (talk) 21:21, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

    That's a valid point, but I just don't see it as being unrealistic. Unlike prominent tags that appear on the article page itself, these are internal assessments made by Wikipedia editors about the quality of the article. We can afford to be critical. Having a goal of achieving a high quality article seems much more attractive and satisfying than going from Start to C-class. My own analogy is a bit of a reach, but this is how I see it: It's like saying you're going to improve your term paper from D to C. While C may be considered passing in most cases, neither grade would be considered good enough for entry into the best graduate programs. And to me, assessments help push editors towards the upper rungs without intruding on the article itself. --Jh12 (talk) 20:42, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

    If we had 40,000 GAs instead of 4,000, I would agree with you, because then we'd be in the position to 'write off' all our B-Class articles as "not there yet". The problem is that, in their quest to improve the article, editors 'jump the gun' and promote to B-Class when they reach the limit of their improvement endurance, not when the article actually merits B-Class status. If there were no qualitative difference between B-Class and the rest, that wouldn't be a problem, but because we have to put the divide between "presentable" articles and "not-yet-presentable" articles at the Start/B boundary in order to catch a reasonable number of "presentable" articles, things are getting promoted over that boundary when they shouldn't be. Having a C-Class puts another stepping stone on the "not-yet-presentable" side, which means the arduous journey from single sentence to near-GA doesn't have to be made in just two stages. If the "upper end of the scale" you mention consisted only of GA/A/FA, then I would be opposed to C-Class. But in fact, we have four grades in the "upper" end, and just two in the lower end. That's the inequality that really needs addressing, or articles are going to be floating into the upper levels when they don't merit it, until the end of time. Happy‑melon 21:12, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

    You're going to have to forgive me, because I am a simple man, but isn't the obvious solution, then, simply to do what MilHist has already done - which is to codify the requirements for B-class across the board? Meet the requirements? Wonderful - you're B-class. Don't? Well, I guess you'll have to remain Start. There's nothing ambiguous about it. As the classes move further up the hierarchy, the criteria become more stringent and therefore the range of article quality allowable within the class presumably narrows. It is only natural that the Start and Stub classes have the widest quality ranges within their classes. The WikiProject I'm most involved with - Films - actually goes so far as to include class-specific advice in the banner as to what needs to be done to move the article up to the next class. All that we need are clear instructions here, not another class with no specific prescriptive function which only exists to further differentiate articles that all agree are sub-par. If you don't like that your article remains in Start-class, then the answer is to work at meeting B-criteria (and have those made clearer), not create another level of assessment to give yourself a pat on the back for having gotten a promotion. Girolamo Savonarola (talk) 22:03, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

    While that would normally be true, I would argue that by the time an article is "B Class", most cleanup banners are redundant (Except maybe {{Expand-section}} and {{Copy-edit}}), and by the time they are "A Class" or higher, this should have been addressed already. Adding cleanup banners to start class articles are useless, they are obviously incomplete. This is where I argue the C class assessment should come in: This is the stage where it becomes helpful to add cleanup templates such as {{Articleissues}}. G.A.S 05:30, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

    It comes back to the "volunteer project" point again: in a community like this, you just can't take such an aggressive approach to solving the problem. The "stick" of tighter B-Class standards (which are an absolute necessity if this proposal passes) must be balanced by a "carrot"; in this case, the "pat on the back" you mention. We can't just drop a note on all wikiproject talk pages saying "oh, by the way, WP:1.0 wants you to enforce WP:MILHIST's B-Class standards from this point forth; any projects that don't comply will be firebombed". Of course I'm exaggerating for comic effect, but you can see the point: enforcing proper entry criteria for B-Class is something that primarily benefits WP:1.0, not individual projects and certainly not individual editors. C-Class provides the counterbalance of a benefit for wikiprojects (a clearer picture of the state of their 'domain') and for editors (the "pat on the back" that they rightly deserve after working hard on an article). Happy‑melon 13:55, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

    (reset indent) Although encouraging editors ("a pat on the back") is certainly a good thing, I feel the most useful aspect of the proposed C class is in identifying articles that are near the 1.0 standard (i.e., print-worthy). Distinguishing between "not printworthy" and "just needs a little more work" is, I would say, more useful to the goals of the Version 1.0 project than the distinctions between B, A, GA, and FA. Improving C-class articles (whether we adopt the class formally or not) is exactly where the 1.0 project can recognize the greatest return on its efforts; identifying such articles (and reducing the incidence of "false Bs") seems to me the single best thing the project could do to further its goals.--Father Goose (talk) 06:17, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

    potential content for the 1.0 project in the entire encyclopedia.--Father Goose (talk) 06:17, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

31. The current system has enough "ranks", we don't need it to be any more complicated then it already is. NanohaA'sYuri^{Talk, My master} 23:38, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
32. Oppose. The ranking system as it currently exists is applied rather inconsistently, and adding a class will only complicate matters. --Blanchardb-^{Me•MyEars•MyMouth}-timed 01:18, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

    On the contrary, adding a C-class will result in the system being applied more consistently if anything. The point at which the system is most often applied inconsistently is in the B/start range. The reason for this is that B-class and start-class are far enough apart that the significant number of articles in this large gap must be assessed as one or the other, resulting in inconsistency as editors must roughly estimate what category these articles fall into. With a new class in the middle, the majority of such articles can simply be assessed as C-class; they will clearly fall into one category rather than floating around in between two. Pyrospirit (talk · contribs) 01:30, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

    To second what you said, I think it's not just that articles are "floating" in between the two, but truly in limbo: clearly not belonging in either class. Thus, the problems of misclassification between these two classes could easily be solved by inserting the missing rank.--Father Goose (talk) 06:47, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

33. Strong oppose I think it is quite unnecessary. Our current system is sufficient. Masterpiece2000 (talk) 14:24, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

    Could you elaborate on why you believe it's sufficient? I really would like to see a comment that isn't just "not necessary" or "current system is sufficient". I'd like more information on why you think that,and reasons based on issues possibly caused by the inclusion of such an assessment level. --.:Alex:. 15:04, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

34. Strong oppose I don't believe this is necessary. I think using the B class criteria checklist in combination with the Start Class designation should be enough to indicate what needs to be done to improve an article. --dashiellx (talk) 15:19, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

    The problem is that a significant number of reviewers do not use such a checklist, and most WikiProjects are not very organised as far as B-class evaluation is concerned, anyway. And even when the system does work, it relegates many articles to an arguably low class (just above "Stub"), despite many of these being much better than what "Start" implies. Generally speaking, most of the opposes here are focusing on one of the problems "C-class" is planned to solve; this will not do, however, because there are several such problems. Waltham, The Duke of 18:21, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

35. Strong Oppose I don't believe that adding a C-class will solve anything, and will most likely confuse editors more then help them. I believe a better solution would be to clarify exactly what makes an article a Start or B class, not to add another poorly-defined class. This solution seems to skirt the real issue at hand and I predict it will only make matters exponentially worse. Drewcifer (talk) 01:03, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
36. Oppose. 1) The current system is already too confusing, and adding another class will make it worse. I see lots of article assessments while crediting DYK articles, and WikiProject's assessments are all over the place. Many contributors incorrectly assess 3000 character start class articles as stubs even though they are start class with decent references. 2) Implementing this change will take up too much time. Most WikiProjects are strapped for time and contributors have better things to do with their time than reassessing many articles. The articles in some inactive WikiProjects will never get done. Royalbroil 01:35, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

    The population of C-class does not have to be massive or organised; it will occur gradually, naturally. Plus, the problem which you state is actually an indication of why we need C-class: editors see the extent of Start-class and assume that it starts from higher-quality articles than it really does, thus tagging the lowest Start articles as stubs. I find it very reasonable; it's hard to explain that, while Start-class is just above stubs—the very lowest-quality articles that we have—it extends all the way to B-class. Apart from that, the scale (with the exception of GA) progresses step by step, and should not be hard for editors to use. Mistakes happen when the system is not sensible and intuitive; if it makes sense, it will be easier to learn and apply. Waltham, The Duke of 02:26, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

37. Strong Oppose Is completely unnecessary. We don't a C-Class on top of a start-class, for the following reasons:

    1) It gets rid of the relatively clear line between Start & B-Class articles, allowing even further for non B-Class articles to slip under the radar.

    2) It creates more confusion within the assessment departments of multiple wikiprojects.

    3) An absolute nightmare to re-assess every start & B-Class article as to whether it's a start, C, or B-Class.

    Because of this, I see absolutely no reason to support this proposal. Cheers! Cam (Chat) 01:45, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

    1) The line of what is B-class and what not remains as clear as ever; the proposal a) divides the over-large field of Start-class into two, and b) enforces B-class standards more effectively by giving editors an additional class where to place articles better than what "Start" indicates, but still not B-class level.

    2) Confusion? How? C-class essentially covers a gap, and remains below B-class, the standards for which do not change.

    3) As has been mentioned multiple times, there absolutely no need for any re-assessment drive; the re-classification will occur naturally and in time. Ever heard of eventualism? Waltham, The Duke of 02:26, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

38. Oppose This poorly-defined additional article class needlessly complicates the system. tgies (talk) 02:11, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

    This is far from needless; the reasons have been explained in depth above. Waltham, The Duke of 02:26, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

39. Oppose. While it would be nice to recognize small increments of improvement, I think having too many levels is counterproductive. Time spent evaluating an article to determine if it's really a "B" or just a "C" would be better spent making positive contributions. -- Tcncv (talk) 02:16, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
40. Oppose Stub, Start, and B class are already pretty arbitrary, no need to add yet another arbitrary level. Mr.Z-man 02:36, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

    See my reply below. G.A.S 05:22, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

41. Oppose No compelling reason or need for anything between Start and B. Jclemens (talk) 02:52, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

    See my reply below. G.A.S 05:22, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

42. Oppose Having been a part of several WikiProjects, I think that even the current system might be more complicated than it should be, especially for newbies who are so unsure about how to classify an article that they just don't do it. Also, an article can change so significantly over a short period of time and the class that it has been given not change accordingly, that the class eventually does not reflect the article's status anymore. I think that the system should actually just be Featured Article, Good Article, and Regular Article—at least, something along those lines. Of course, it would require a lot of push and shove to get that far, I have no doubt. Also, the more classes we have, the more thinly we draw the boundaries between classes. If one editor considers an article to be C-class, then another might consider it B-class. There are just too many problems that can easily arise from an overly complicated system. To be fair, I completely understand the angle that the Supporters are coming from—I just have a totally different view on the very foundation of this system. Gary King (talk) 03:05, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
43. Oppose So we have: Stub, Start, C-Class, B-Class, A-Class, GA and FA. Yeah that is really over doing it. → Ãlways Ãhëad (talk) 03:56, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

    Of those you listed, 4 classes are at the higher end of the scale (GA, A, FA, which, with the exception of A class, rated by the community), and only two classes at the lower end (B, Stub, and start). Considering that stub is seen as no more than a dictionary entry, this only leaves two classes in which the majority of articles can be rated. Given now that B class already has very high standards, this leaves start to contain everything else. The proposal is merely to divide start into two sections, that instead of the choice being B (high standard) or start (medium and low standard), the choice is high, medium or low. No-one will be forced to use the new scale, but it would provide the option to assessors.

    Take Military history for example, which since they have a team of assessors, these all "B class" articles are "B class" as defined, the rest being start class. One of these start class articles are .22 Long Rifle, rated during April 2008. Would you now argue that this falls into the same category as SFOR, or the sample start class article? G.A.S 05:22, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

44. Oppose - Unnecessary gradation. Amend Start and B classes to cover any "holes" between them (although I don't really see anything). --EEMIV (talk) 04:29, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
45. Oppose. The criteria that differentiates the current levels are actually quite unclear since articles can be rated on numerous orthogonal parameters (e.g., breadth of scope, depth of content, quality of references, readability of prose, manual of style adherence, etc.). In my experience, the assignment of B-, Start- is already haphazardly done and the addition of yet another level complicates an already arbitrary system. Yes, I realize that WikiProjects are supposedly not obligated to follow or use all of the levels, but as I understand it, the current WP 1.0 assessment system for quality is meant to be across the whole English Wikipedia--it's only the Importance parameter that matters to individual WikiProjects. (That's why I think I'm free to upgrade a Stub article to a Start article on all the article's project banners even if I'm not a member of all of those projects.) As I see it, the only role of WikiProjects in the quality assessment is to provide subject-expert opinion on whether the articles meet the breadth of scope, depth of content, quality of references parameters (other people can check for readability, MoS, etc.). So I'm not really buying the "WikiProjects are not obligated to use C-class" argument, otherwise, why are we having this poll? --seav (talk) 05:04, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

    See my reply above. . G.A.S 05:31, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

    You said that B-class already has a very high standard. Why is that? Even the WP:MILHIST assessment FAQ says that B-class is not a high bar to meet. What happens is that B-class just squeezes the GA-A-FA levels. Why not relax the B-class criteria a bit? As the guidelines say B-class articles "has some gaps or missing elements or references." That's not a very high standard. --seav (talk) 06:16, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Neutral

1. I continue to think it would be better to raise the bar on start class, so that it does not overlap as much with stub class. With that done, the start-B gap will shrink and/or the B class bar can be raised. In my eyes, most of the criteria for entering start class are not sufficient to remove the article from stub class; they merely amount to a stub that has at least one piece of content. Under the current scheme, it seems like very few articles would really merit a start; they mostly should go from stub to B. GRBerry 15:05, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

   The proposal also increases the criteria for B-Class. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 01:28, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

   And pushes Start-class a little lower, which is good, if we are to look at semantics; it's called "start", not "start-and-middle". Waltham, The Duke of 22:58, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

2. Sort out the problem with GA and A-class before you start adding new assessment classes -- Gurch (talk) 18:48, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
3. Switched from oppose; see above. EyeSerene^talk 17:05, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
4. I'm still going somewhat neutral on this one. While I do see some of the benefits in adding a new grading scale to the assessment scheme, I wonder how utilized this scale is to begin with? I'm referring here to the vast number of unassessed articles at wikiprojects (articles with no class or importance assigned). It appears that editors are quick to tag articles into a particular wikiproject, but when it comes down to the gruntwork of assessing them later on, everyone is quick to say, "not it". Perhaps we need to look into ways to increase the awareness and participation in the article assessment process first?

   However, perhaps adding a new C-class, and allowing wikiprojects to assess articles from A to B to C to start & stub, would help increase awareness here. With a clearer assessment scale, it makes the argument for decoupling both FA & GA from the wikiproject assessment scale stronger, since both processes are wiki-wide assessments done outside of the individual wikiprojects. Dr. Cash (talk) 15:35, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

   I think that Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Statistics is very heartening in this respect. It's basically the mother of all assessment summaries, combining the statistics for all projects. As you can see, we have over 1.2 million assessed articles, and only 350,000 unassessed ones. I know on paper that sounds like a huge number, but it represents just 20% of all articles within the assessment project. And let's not forget the huge number of pages marked as "Redirect-Class", "Future-Class", "NA-Class" and all the other 'unofficial' classes that don't make it onto that table. I actually think that awareness of the assessment scale is very good, with the exception of the real definition of B-Class, which is the problem we're really trying to solve here. Happy‑melon 15:55, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

   Of course, it doesn't count all the articles on wikipedia that are not tagged as part of a wikiproject,... Dr. Cash (talk) 16:28, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

   Indeed not, but we can estimate: the site banner currently claims 2,405,948 articles, and there are 1,640,642 articles assessed. That's very nearly 70%, which is actually very impressive coverage. As I said earlier, some of those (probably not many, but some) are also going to be marked with other classes. I think the assessment scale is actually doing very well indeed. Happy‑melon 16:42, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

5. I strongly support the exclusion of articles with copyright problems from B-class, and so to the extent that C-class addresses that, I do not oppose it. Articles with serious POV problems also should be placed in C- or start-class. Otherwise, the difference in quality between B-class and C-class articles is non-obvious; furthermore, if an article fails to meet B-class criteria then it might as well be placed in the start-class. I might offer a counter-proposal to rename "start-class" to "C-class." 69.140.152.55 (talk) 05:02, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
6. I'm not supporting because, as people said above, there is no clear cut boundary between Start-class and B-class and this isn't really a good solution; I'm not opposing because if this was added, I wouldn't see it as a major problem to deal with.   jj137 (talk) 00:55, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
7. I'm on the fence between gap bridging and system complication. If this passes, will a D-class crop up? If this doesn't, how to decide between Start and B? 21655 ^{ταλκ/01ҁ} 02:02, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

   It seems to me that the proposed C-class is solving a special problem: resolving a gray area between well-defined endpoints. Such an argument would not apply to creation of a D-class. We seem to have good definitions (and intuitive understanding) of the low end of Start and the high end of B. The problem is in the gap between them. Moreover, I don't think we're so concerned about precise boundaries for the new C class (although desirable); but rather about having a logical place to reclassify inferior B-class articles – especially longer ones with significant good-quality content. Intuitively, these don't seem to belong in Start-class, yet shouldn't be left in B. It's an excluded middle problem. Trevor Hanson (talk) 03:31, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

8. Neutral Both sides have good arguments. I suggest maybe removing A, and make it Stub-Start-B-GA-FA, and make the definition of B being the same though out Wikipedia as it is for the Military History WikiProject. That should be sufficient.--Bedford ^Pray 03:05, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

   Standardizing class definitions seems problematic, since these have hitherto been explicitly left to the discretion of individual WikiProjects. Moreover, many editors will continue to classify articles idiosyncratically. The most practical scheme is one that will make intuitive sense to new or casual editors. Trevor Hanson (talk) 03:31, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

9. Meh - I don't hold a strong opinion either way. I don't think it will become too complicated if C-class is added so long as it is well defined. On the other hand I don't think there is a real need for it. Personally I only worry about GA and FA because it requires a 3rd party review. James086^{Talk | Email} 05:03, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Comments

• Wasn't there a C-Class before? I vaguely remember one.<3 Tinkleheimer TALK!! 05:35, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

  Not in the scale that was deployed on April 2006. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 05:49, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

• I believe Wikipedia's policy is to rely more heavily on discussion results than polling. If I review the discussions on this page I can see the need for a C-class has been explained and illustrated with several examples. I can also see, it has been clearly established that addition of a C-class won't create any additional work for WikiProjects that believe current grading scale is adequate. On the other hand, the only statement from those countering the proposal is: "I don't think it is necessary". May I request some more details from those countering it on exactly why they are opposing the proposal other than just being resistant to change. Arman ^(Talk) 05:58, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
• I have added this discussion to {{Cent}}, to try and attract more editors. Anthøny 08:42, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
• If implemented, the criteria need to be more tangible than those in the present draft version. Eliminate WP:WEASEL words such as "a few". LeadSongDog (talk) 17:52, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Clear explicit criteria are of course desirable. However, a major reason many people seem to want a C-class is to handle those articles that don't currently fit comfortably in either Start- or B-classes. In other words, they're not looking for inclusion rules for C-class, but want a catch-all for articles of intermediate quality that don't fit well in Start- or B-classes. From this perspective, even using weasel-ish, subjective rules for C-class would still be good, since it would allow enforcement of more stringent and objective rules for B-class. That is the real value that I see in this change. Trevor Hanson (talk) 19:05, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

• If this goes bots that work with article assessment will all need to be updated. Especially WP 1.0 bot. Someone may want to contact those bot owners. §hep • ¡Talk to me! 00:37, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

  I can tell you that Igor, at least, will need only a trivial change. – ClockworkSoul 00:38, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

  Unless the bot operator has done something really wierd with their code, it should only need a trivial change to any bot script. I know I can trivially add C-Class to both MelonBot and {{WPBannerMeta}}. Happy‑melon 10:11, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

• No problem supporting this on the technical side with WP 1.0 bot, once this poll is over and a decision is achieved. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:32, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
• Should we not notify the applicable Wikiprojects of this discussion, as they will have to update their guidelines, and since they assess the articles? A request for comment may also be a good idea. G.A.S 05:14, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Essential, I'd have thought. Milhist, for instance, has about 30,000 articles that potentially fall into this category. Recategorising them is a huge task. --ROGER DAVIES ^talk 05:59, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

If any large-scale recategorisation needs to be done, I can help out with my bot, which was designed for such tasks. RichardΩ612 Ɣ ɸ 06:22, June 5, 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the offer but distinctions between start and C-class are unlikely to be easy to automate. Based on various epic tagging and assessing Milhist drives, I think they'll mostly need doing by hand (along with the million or so other affected articles). While I know that start covers a multitude of sins, nobody has yet provided a practical reason why it is desirable or beneficial – or indeed worth the Heruclean amount of work involved – to divide start in two. --ROGER DAVIES ^talk 10:17, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

<nitpick>It's not a million; there are only 340,000 Start-Class and 50,000 B-Class total (plus there's a lot of duplication in there: you notice it claims we have 200 extra FAs?).</nitpick> On a more serious note, you really are lucky, Roger. Milhist has been the only large wikiproject to use the 1.0 assessment scale successfully: your B-Class assessment scheme is an ideal solution to the problem of mediocre B-Class articles. In a very real sense, Milhist doesn't need this extra class. But implementing B-Class assessments across all projects is an even more herculean task (and would be an ongoing herculean task, as I'm sure you're aware) than this solution. The assessment scale as used by the majority of WikiProjects is broken, as I hope you can see from the above. I think we all applaud Milhist for coming up with a working solution independently of WP:1.0. But I don't think that it's a solution that can be ported to other projects, let alone invoked from 'on high'; wheras this solution can. There's no fundamental requirement, of course, for Milhist to adopt the C-Class: it's your banner, you decide what it will and won't accept. A lot of projects don't use A-Class for precisely the reason of increased administration. But while this will be at worst an inconvenience to Milhist, and one easily minimised, it will have real and significant benefits to those projects which currently dump mediocre articles into Category:B-Class articles, and for 1.0 trying to sift through the slime at the bottom of the barrel for those articles that deserve to be called 'acceptable'. Happy‑melon 10:46, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Refer to my new comment above: Articles could probably automatically assessed by looking at cleanup banners: Those with it being "C-class" and those without it (but with inline tags), "B-Class". G.A.S 14:57, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

That's a very useful suggestion G.A.S. Arman ^(Talk) 01:55, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Also, the new scale would bring the new B-Class to be more similar to the MILHIST B-Class. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 03:58, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

I was just thinking, could someone set up a bot to notify the talk pages of all WikiProjects in this category? This is something all WikiProjects should know about, and there are far too many to completely notify manually (unless everyone wants to take a letter or two and notify all the projects in that letter section). Also, WikiProjects do indeed have a right to decide which parameters of the assessment scale they will use. Technically I don't think that a project even needs to use Start or Stub for example, it just happens that they are both incredibly useful and almost invaluable to project assesment. If Milhist does not wish to adopt the C-Class, then they will not be forced to. Nothing will be imposed on any of the WikiProjects. --.:Alex:.

Frankly, this whole thing was poorly organised. If a ratification for this was to be held it should have started with the notification of all projects independently so as to bring in all members for a broad opinion, a message to signpost so those not in projects but who read the post would be aware of it, and if at all possible one of those message bars we get when checking watchlists that inform us of proposed changes. From where I sit, this is a huge issue being decided by far to small a group of people, and it calls to mind the warning essay on the old Esperanza page that demands "...that existing projects must be open and transparent to all editors at all times...". For me, this vote is cause for much concern. TomStar81 (Talk) 00:18, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

• I know this is minor, but I can barely tell the color difference between C and B class as the templates are set up now. If we do this, would we be able to recolor the templates? Red Phoenix ^{flame of life...protector of all...} 03:44, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

  That's almost a given. I just picked the color as a temporary swath from {{storm colour}}. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 03:56, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

  If that's the case, I've got a suggestion, but it would involve recoloring three templates: Color Stub a dark red, Start a lighter red (not pink), and C-Class orange. Of course, this is all minor stuff, but I think it's the best option should this get implemented, and I have supported this. Red Phoenix ^{flame of life...protector of all...} 17:23, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

• Along with this, the A class really needs to be moved from between GA and FA to below GA, so that the progression for articles is stub-start-C-B-A-GA-FA on a seven point scale. That will also have the nice feature of providing seven categories or buckets, a good number for statistical analysis. The stub-start classes can be applied by any single established editor, the C-B-A classes by a WikiProject assessment process (which might be one project editor that does assessments for the C, consensus of two for the B, and a project assessment process for the A), and the GA & FA classes, as they are now, by a community assessment process. That makes the scale more canonical also. Also, how is this going to fit in with Flagged revisions? Or WP:FLAGREV with this. — Becksguy (talk) 13:48, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
  • Wholeheartedly support this rearrangement. Cricketgirl (talk) 14:04, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
    • I think this is an argument debate we've yet to have; there are a few suggestions emerging re GA/FA/classes/etc, and once the current proposal is addressed I'm sure this will be up for discussion shortly afterwards ;) EyeSerene^talk 16:55, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
  • There has been much discussion on several pages about the A class and it's relationship with the other classes, especially with GA, and the processes to apply these classes to articles. But I think that adding a new class without clarifying the organic whole at the same time is backwards. In other words, we should be discussing the existing six article classes at the same time (leaving lists for later). People's understanding and the resultant discussions will be different depending on how the article classification scheme is structured, especially on what is below the two GA-FA classes. One of the major points brought up here is that the gulf between start and B is overly broad and that having another lower level gives a better progression for the articles to travel on their way to quality. I agree. One way is to add the C class, another way is to move A down below GA, and a third way (and from my view the best) is to do both and thereby close up the gaps between the resultant five classes below GA (stub-start-C-B-A). I personally really like the idea of adding the C class, but I think adding it and then figuring out the appropriate levels and structure doesn't make sense, as that looks a bit like spending a lot of time and energy figuring out how to travel from NYC to Boston, and then figuring out why and if you want to visit Boston, as they really need to be done together to balance feasibility and desirability. So lets discuss both adding C and moving A here as I think they are synergistic. — Becksguy (talk) 19:15, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

This is a valid point, but it reflects a top-down, prescriptive view of classification: "Here are the rules, now apply them consistently." However people will continue to use the classification scheme inconsistently and idiosyncratically, regardless of any rules – especially since the lower classifications are intended for WikiProject-specific interpretation. We thus also need a scheme that will tend to evolve in the right direction, despite bottom-up, descriptive application. A key problem today is that editors have very different ideas of where the line belongs between Start- and B-class. Introducing a "shade of grey" between them, despite the lack of prescriptive classification rules, should still foster evolutionary improvement of the classifications in use. To alter your NYC-to-Boston analogy, we're going from saying "Do you live near Boston or NYC?" to "Do you live near Boston, NYC, or Hartford?" Even without specifying county boundaries, having three options is much better than two. (Note also that four is NOT much better than three. Assuming that we have reasonable consensus about the lower end of Start- and the higher end of B-class articles, then having one catch-all class between them is the best structure for enabling good intuitive classification.) Trevor Hanson (talk) 20:19, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

• What if we automatically reclassify ALL existing B-class articles as C-class, and then wait for the good ones to bubble back up to B-class – as embarrassed or outraged editors review their pet articles for consistency with the (new) published standard? This would eliminate all the stated concerns about what it would take to reclassify all the existing articles. Instead of adding a new middle classification, and waiting for bad ones to get shifted from B- to C-class, all articles would be "presumed guilty" until some editor explicitly asserts that they truly deserve B-class. Articles that get (re-)promoted to B-class would all be held to a higher standard. Trevor Hanson (talk) 04:51, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
  • Na, that's kind of pointy OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 05:19, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
  • I'm not sure that would be the best idea. It may be better to update the standards and allow each project to handle the change on its own. – ClockworkSoul 05:21, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
• I'm becoming increasingly disenfranchised with the concept of a straightforward +/−/n vote on an issue as complicated as this. I've added a banner at the top reminding us all that voting is evil and that we should really just be looking to use the "vote" format as a way of organising discussions. Obviously I'm clearly very partisan in this thread, so if anyone thinks that the wording I added is leading, do feel free to change it. Happy‑melon 17:07, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Well the point of these things is usually to get people's opinions. Not just "Support" or "Oppose" but stating where they stand on the issue and most importantly why. The current problem is that most of the people opposing this have not stated any valid reasons why we should not do this (simply saying "not necessary" is not a valid reason unless you define exactly what you mean by it). If anyone has genuine concerns over this proposal, now is the time to speak so others can address these concerns and determine any possible problems. Currently it's a one sided argument (oh and good idea Melon). --.:Alex:. 17:17, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Really? I see far more content-less supports than opposes. Girolamo Savonarola (talk) 18:08, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

I have to say I agree with you, GS: the supporters here aren't doing enough to explain the meta-arguments that should be making people at least think twice about posting a "clearly unnecessary" Oppose. It may be that after considering all the evidence people still consider it, on balance, to be unnecessary; but if you actually read the arguments it can't possibly be described as "much ado about nothing" or the current system as "more than adequate". I would like to see the opposers here being more active in challenging the plain 'support' votes to a more extensive discussion... but the only thing that annoys me more than a plain vote are the 'hit and run' votes: where an editor has made a vote, with or without a substantial comment, someone comes back with a response or question, and the voter ignores/doesn't check for the response. It's not good enough to consider it "mission accomplished" once you've put your vote in - in fact, that's just the start of (hopefully) a valuable discussion. People should be willing, even eager, to change their minds or be persuaded by opposing arguments. We've had a couple of people change their votes, in both directions; but not nearly enough. That's why voting is evil: it encourages people to dig themselves a hole (trench, shellscrape, call it what you will) wherever their opinions lie at the start of a proposal, and discourages them from moving from it, which basically kills discussion stone dead. Happy‑melon 18:24, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

As one of those who could be considered a "hit and run" voter, the reason I haven't participated in the conversation has been due to constraints of time, & what time I can devote to Wikipedia I'd rather use to improve articles. And, I hate to admit, other opposers have pretty much explained the reasons I have in opposing it -- it complicates what should be a simple system: the aim is not to create clear demarcations of quality, but to provide a guide to both readers & editors which articles need more work. However, I think Happy-melon is accurate in observing that the supporters haven't convinced the rest of us that the work of implementing a new assessment category will result in any improvements to Wikipedia; it might be accurate to consider all of those drive-by "oppose" votes as saying "If this passes, you're going to have to implement this by yourself & without any thanks from me." (FWIW, I'm the only one currently assessing Ethiopia-related articles, & to be blunt, re-assessing those articles to accommodate a "C-class" is at the bottom of my to do list.) As for the fact my vote won't be taken as seriously as others, well I know this & can accept that outcome -- but then again, I'd rather spend my time making measurable improvements to the content, rather than discussing how to better evaluate the quality of the content. -- llywrch (talk) 17:14, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

• Honestly, instead of trying to radically change somethign so cemented, wouldn't it be easier to just rename Start-class to C-class? It solves part of the argument the supporters have, as well as the argument the opposers have. Not ideal, but it's something. Wizardman 03:38, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
• I seem to think that the reason why people see such a large gap between Start and B is because they seem to almost literally see Start as a starting article. In my opinion, Stub-class are the true starting articles and Start classes are any article that has "meaningful amount of good content" to quote the current guidelines. I might agree with renaming Start to something else to lose the connotation that such articles are just a start. --seav (talk) 05:27, 12 June 2008 (UTC)